Angel's Mark

Twenty-two

When Alan left and I edged back out into humanity again, I found my older brother half-asleep on the living room couch.

The television was set to the news channel, but Cian's eyes seemed to be looking through it rather than at it, the chatter a senseless drone in a night that was already senseless enough. Eerie lights turned Cian's face all sorts of different colors: blue, red, a gentle pink.

He turned to look at me over his shoulder, and as he did, I noticed he had a crumb-strewn plate in his hand. "Ah, Vince, you're alive," he said, his voice husky with sleep, or at least something close enough. "Have a mozzarella stick."

"I'm not hungry."

"Have a mozzarella stick."

I had a mozzarella stick.

I sat down on the couch beside Cian; he offered me a tin of marinara sauce. Careful not to spill it on the couch (one of Mom's prized possessions), I said, "So is Lucie...?"

"She's fine," Cian replied. "She may act tough, but she's like me—a cheese. I hug her a few times and she's happy again."

The mozzarella stick was cold. I wasn't pleased by this. I set it down, my mouth twisted in obvious disdain. "I meant is...is she still here?"

Cian stilled. He'd already been rather motionless, but this stillness was different from the previous. There was something more strained about this one, a rigidity to the shoulders that hadn't been there before. "No, she's not," Cian answered, then glanced sideways at me, an eyebrow risen. "Why, Vinny? Is everything okay?"

Sure, everything was fine. Despite the fact that Silhouettes were hunting Cian down and we still had no idea why. Despite the fact I'd missed my shot and that was the reason we had no idea why. Despite the fact a boy named Alan Fitch was ruining my life and saving it at the same time.

Yeah, if I didn't think about any of that, everything was okay.

I told him, "Yeah. I just...I don't know. I have a question."

Cian seemed to detect that this question wasn't just a question, because he reached drearily for the TV remote, switched the screen off, and sat back again, neatly folding his hands in his lap. I couldn't decide whether he looked more like the psychiatrist or the patient. Either way, it was making me squirm.

He said, "Perhaps I have an answer for you, then."

"It's about Lucie," I began, and noticed his frown deepen. There was forbidden territory whenever we talked about Lucie, and it had to do with Cian's roof and Cian's absence and everything else that had followed. There was a reason it was forbidden territory, which is why I wasn't going to talk about it. I continued: "This is going to sound kinda weird. But I just—how did you know you liked her? Like, as more than just a friend, I guess?"

For a moment, Cian just blinked at me. It wasn't necessarily a confused sort of blink, but a processing one, like a million thoughts were running through his head and he couldn't decide which one to follow. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a brain like my brother's, one that could hold so much at one time, pieces of this and pieces of that, and yet still be lost like everyone else. It didn't matter how ridiculously good he was at chess. There wasn't a strategy for everything.

"You're right," Cian said, finally. "This is a weird question."

"Sorry."

"No, I mean—I'm going to answer it. I just don't know how."

I let him think for a moment. I reached out to take another mozzarella stick, remembered it had been cold, and broke it just to stretch the cheese instead, only to be further disappointed. It was as if someone had tried to fry rubber.