Pulse

Chapter 9

Cian

After Vinny's memorial had been made, I started trudging into the woods that bordered the highway, hoping to find something that might help me in this whole Dempsey case. I flipped my hood up despite the fact that the drizzle had long since ceased. There was something about wearing it that gave me some sort of solitude, a place within myself to clear my thoughts.

I don't know.

I guess I'd never thought Vinny felt forgotten. I mean, he had a grave in the cemetery across town that the whole family still visited, including him. That wasn't enough for him? It was selfish of me that I hadn't noticed it, that for the past two years I'd gone about thinking everything was okay—well, not okay, but not as bad they could be—when Vinny was silently suffering. Somehow I couldn't shake the dazed look on his face from my head.

"Cian! Cian! Wait up!" came Lucie's voice, then her footsteps behind me as she approached, jogging to catch up. She glanced behind herself as she fell into step beside me, sticking her closed Swiss army knife into her pocket. The crunch of grass underneath her feet was almost rhythmic, as nature often was. "Hey, can I talk to you for a second?"

"Where's Vinny?"

She gestured vaguely in the spring air. "Around."

I sighed. "What is it, Lucie?"

"I don't think you heard me at the coffee shop," she murmured, and I looked sideways at her. Her expression was a bit anxious, which blended with the trembling of her voice. She was afraid, but of what? Of me? I didn't know what to think; this girl was never consistent. One moment she trusted you and the next she wanted nothing to do with you. "I'm sorry. I really am. I'm a jerk."

I dropped my gaze and kicked a pile of leaves, watching them scuttle away from me in the wind. I furrowed my brow. It wasn't fall, yet some patches of the ground were still covered in dead leaves. How long had these been here, I wondered? A year back, maybe two? Like Vinny, they were a memory of what used to be and what wasn't anymore, and the realization struck me. No matter how much I wanted to believe he was here, Vinny would always be somewhere I couldn't reach.

I stopped walking.

"Aren't you going to say something?" Lucie asked.

"If you're asking me to deny that you were being a jerk," I said, " then no."

"I'm not asking that."

"Good."

There was a silence, as if she was waiting for me to add to that. When I didn't, Lucie just exhaled in exasperation and ran a hand through her hair, pushing some of it behind her ear. "What else do you want me to say?"

"I don't want you to say anything. I told you that apologies aren't cures, Lucie."

"That doesn't mean they're useless," she argued, turning to me. Sun filtered through the canopy of the trees, falling down in shafts of gold that lit in her eyes like embers. Foliage rustled around us; the air smelled like pine and it smelled like the sea. Despite the words between the two of us, everything was tranquil. "Would you rather I not apologize, and just go about thinking I did everything totally fine? Because I didn't. I pried into your life, you know, without even thinking about it, and if that isn't the jerkiest thing to do in the history of jerky things to do, I don't know what is. So I don't know, Cian. I don't know what I'm supposed to say, but for God's sake, let me start with a damn apology."

I was listening to her, but I wasn't looking at her. I was crouched at the pile of leaves I'd just kicked, tracing the ground with my fingers. There were scuff marks, and they didn't look like any marks your Plain Jane squirrel would make. These were unusual, out of place, like a sudden stench in my nose. I stared at them, trying to decipher what exactly they meant.