THE OVERWOODS [[Midnight's Notebooks]]

--ovw--XVIII--ovw--

Kaylee ran over to me as I grasped Wyatt's massive hand with both of mine, the undisguised pulse in my fingers beating onto the rough surface of his pale palm, only a few shades paler than I was.

"Pretty dumb that you lose most of your SRAs."

Wyatt was sitting on the floor of the arena. I still didn't believe I inflicted that much pain. I didn't feel much... even as I used my pain steal on him. Did he?

I let his hand go.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry, all right?"

I rolled my eyes.

"That was amazing!" Kaylee screeched.

"It had to be done," I replied.

"Just let me surrender next time," Wyatt said.

Kaylee glared at Wyatt. They were likely reading each other's minds- and mine; a common thing amongst telepaths.

Though in the Lowdown telepaths were extremely rare, and that was where I spent all my childhood years being abused by adult narcissists prior to Nightingale. People there stared at me all the time- mostly because they had no awareness of their own staring habits and of their own extremely low intelligence and of all of their own repulsive and just extremely repelling behavior- and also because I was not like them; I never was. I didn't spend all my years making excuses and becoming trash like the rest of them.

"Call it dumb," said Kaylee with her physical voice, "or call it whatever you want that he loses on purpose to the likes of you. You aren't worth fighting and his record would beat yours if he did otherwise."

Kaylee sat next to me on the Coliseum floor, tucking her bright orange satin-and-silk skirt, and then brushing the dust off her black Civil War Era Ladies' button boots. Typically, she wore extremely rare vintage Chuck Taylor All Stars' sneakers- orange ones. She bought me a pair once and I wore them even though they were too big. I leaned on her shoulder and closed my eyes, mid-flashback. She scowled at Wyatt.

"I don't even know why he's painstealing you," she said. "Apart from he's nice. You know you don't deserve it."

I coughed from the lingering poison.

"It's fine," I said.

And telepathically to Kayles, I said, "No, Kayles, you're right. He doesn't."

I remembered when he stole my locker keys, and also that time he stole my ACTUAL lunch money. And he was twenty! Can you imagine being so miserable you have to do that to people? Can you imagine picking on someone you barely know and younger than you- being an asshole at all?

An asshole at all unwarranted and unsolicited?

Who on earth lacks that much attention?

These freaking older adults being so miserable they have to behave like actual trash towards people younger than them when those of us who are like me simply try to avoid them-

And he SAID he was twenty.

Guess what: he really wasn't.

Frankly that SHOULD NOT have surprised me.

To me it was extra strange- because if Wyatt wasn't being totally horrible to me, he was extra nice. No, not like Kaylee or Caleb were nice to me; he was extra sweet and companionable. To me it made no sense. That was part of the reason why I rejected most offers to be an interrogator- sure, maybe people thought I read criminals or threats or psychos well, because of my experience. But that would have meant hours alone in a room, with Shafer and a sociopath.

...so basically with two sociopaths.

I didn't realize it until I had that thought, but Wyatt was gripping my wrist. I sighed.

For a while the three of us sat there- me letting my eyes turn gray as the superpower's usage took all the color off of my vision- all of us watching the crowds wave at us, at me, and then smile as I waved back, as people I worked with left the massive arena.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I looked around for Elyza but I didn't see her; I guessed that she must have gone back to her desk at the laboratories. She loved it there, just like how I loved it at the library or at The Port at midnight. She did wave goodbye to us as she caught up with the lab people- the ones who did most of the forensics stuff when I collected samples and located fingerprints. Belinda walked away in the moments prior to that, talking to herself loudly for all the Coliseum to hear. She sounded completely insane and I don't think it was in English. She started laughing loudly, too, but she always did that whenever she was coping.

Which was most of the time if not all the time.

I remembered Skittles and Crayon again. Crayon would lick my face if he were here and Kaylee would give Skittles something totally random, like a lima bean or a cauliflower.

"Your dad went home to check on Henry?" I said.

"No," Kaylee said. "He went to the office."

"There's a million offices."

Kaylee laughed. "His."

"So where do we go for ice cream?" I said.

"Pacifico?" said Kaylee.

"Ice cream sounds so good right now," Wyatt said. Even then he sounded like he was still in pain. "You have no idea."

I let a few seconds pass, watching the faraway T-shirts of the audience members disperse and move toward the exits. I changed the playlist on my cell phone.

"My double-scoop of vegan cookies n' cream is on Kayles or I'm not going," I teased.

"I got you."

One of them was a mildly red color, one of the T-shirts, something not as gray as completely just pure gray.

Color was slowly coming back to me.

"I still want ice cream."

"That isn't what you want," said Kaylee.

"Join us," I said. "And..." I smiled. "I've made a decision; you guys get to be in on it."

Kaylee grinned as she and Wyatt glanced in my direction. Wyatt tried to smile at me but it looked like a grimace.

"I'm not waiting for 'Monday,'" I said.

I stood up. Kaylee spawned herself an apple and munched on it.

"You take the hotel on Monday my CORGI BUTT," I said, flexing all of my fingers; glancing at my left hand.

Even thinking about any hotels caused me flashbacks- anything with a bedroom and where one might be alone with someone else.

...Or multiple someone else-s.

"I'm not waiting for tomorrow. I'm investigating the hotel tonight-" I took Crayon's old collar from where it was in my pocket and ran my thumb over the shiny, golden bone-shaped tag that still had his name on it. "And you guys..." I looked up again to the booth, the James's Throne trademark symbol, the glass platform of the microphone, desks, screens and the chair where James sat- to make sure he wasn't there anymore. A faint shimmer of light beamed down on us from the clear-glass sections of the Coliseum's ceiling. "...are going to come with me."

--ovw--

...is there a difference, between "wouldn't" or "couldn't?"

He was in a black coat, a tuxedo, I think they called it. The man was across from me as I sat on the bed reading my only copy of the Bible. I wanted more books, but couldn't afford them. The only cloth on my body was half the bed sheet.

The man took his watch from the drawer and looked back at me. It was maybe the prettiest, shiniest thing I had ever seen then, his watch. Gold and silver, and shining things, I thought it was made of. He smiled at me.

"You don't want me to go," he said. "Do you?"

I looked at the man- he was somewhere in his thirties, maybe early forties? His hair was a mix of blond and some gray.

"You're the one that... doesn't make things hurt too badly," I said. I surveyed his eyes, any nuances in their movement or any movement of his body that was out of his ordinary behavior. It was something I knew to do, from early. How early, I don't remember. "So I guess not."

I was always honest with these people. Even the ones that hurt me the most. I was eleven.

"Do you have kids?" I asked.

He looked at me.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Curious, I guess."

The man put a stack of paper bills on top of a table beside the bed.

"I'm not supposed to take gifts," I said.

"You don't have to tell anyone," he replied, discreetly. Hushed. "Get yourself something nice. Something new to read. A pair of shoes, something."

"I can't take it," I said. I tried hard to disguise the disappointment I felt but couldn't. "There's a camera."

The man pulled on his pants, buckled on his belt. From his wallet he took what looked like a card. He placed it on the bed, in front of me. I took one look at it.

"I know what the Overwoods looks like," I said.

"Look closer."

It was a map I thought I'd seen before, marking where the mines were, riddled with the lines that divided the Vicinities. But there were strange symbols on it, symbols that I didn't understand.

"What is it?" I asked. "What are these... markers? What do they mean?"

I took my stuffed husky, which was on the pillows, and hugged it. It was the other valuable thing that I had.

"Take the money," the man said. "And get out of here." I think maybe I gave him some sort of confused look, because then he said: "You can. Now."

"I..." I said. "I don't get it. I'm not sure I believe this."

"I know you don't," he replied. "The man who found you at Century-"

"How do you know about that?" I said.

"Questions later," he said. I remember feeling more than just confused. There was consternation, concern in his voice; it was on his face. And even to me, it seemed genuine. I was ready to run, from whatever this was. "You'll find that man at The Port, and you'll be safe there. You'll be old enough soon that you won't be something of special interest here. I know someone that can help you."

"If you cared about me at all then why do you even keep coming here?" I said.

"I would have stopped," he told me. I thought there were tears in his eyes, for just a flash of a second. "I couldn't."