Sweet Lies (sweet little) Lies [D10 Train]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

c a c h i

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer

You don’t really want to hear about the shit that went down when my family came to visit, do you?

Besides, I’d rather save that for the part where I’m bleeding out and remembering the look on Tol’s face when I promised her it was better this way.

She had no reason to stick with the farm when she got old enough – no reason to look over a cross on the lawn every day to remind her of a brother that’d been taken for, well, a reason no one seemed to remember anymore.

You just want to hear about Xavier, eh?

So – the sun comes streaking in through the window and you can see the dust cutting through the air because they don’t clean the justice building for shit. Carpet in here looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in the last decade and there’s cobwebs up in the corners, like they’re trying to collect ghosts. Though I guess we’re the ones who’s souls they get here, dead before we even head out that door.

Not Mace or Saffron, or that nut Ansgar, but the other hundred seventy something must’ve filled up the whole room, whatever ethereal odds and ends were left.

Anyway.

He comes through the door with one of his overalls cast off his shoulder and the other just hanging on and face, tears, just – little rivers running down his face while he just can’t stop shaking. Like he’s the one that’s been sentenced to death, and it almost makes me angry, except when he crosses the carpet and he puts a hand on my chest, his other tight around my waist so his big body tucks in mine, I close my eyes and drink in the earth and clay on his clothes.

‘Fuck this shit,’ Xavier says as though he’s drawing up some incantation that’s about to reverse the last half hour, ‘Sending you away to die for the rest of us.’

I don’t listen to how his voice cracks or how it’s too hot in here, sweat’s already running down my brows.

I press my head against his and steal the moment, something I’ll keep in my back pocket when the world’s decided to collapse in on me.

“Remember that you promised,” I say with a quiet that towers over my soul, ready to snuff out any word, “For the girls. And Zorion.”

I press the fingers of my right hand through his and clasp tight.

Some worlds have to end for there to be new beginnings, I reckon.

We can’t ever be in control of what comes next, but I’ll be damned if I don’t call the shots in the here and now.

‘I’m sorry,’ He apologizes as though he pulled my name from the bowl himself, because Xavier? He’s going to grow up to be a good man. Someone that takes care of my sisters, makes sure each one of them goes to college. He’ll raise Zorion like he’s his own son, and keep him working. And when the winter’s come and gone, he’ll be the first to plant free flowers on my grave.

“Stuff your sorries in a sack. Every last one of them, you here?” I pull back to place a hand on his chin and give him a look, one that I hope to God he knows means, I’m going to be okay.

I’m a good liar, by the way.

‘What are you going to do?’ He asks, as though I’ve ever had a plan in my life.

“Well.” I stare at the heavy wooden door and then to Xavier. What were we supposed to do with the three minutes we had left?

I locked the door.

“Give me a going away present. It’s the least you could do.”

I mean, I’m not gonna lie. I feel a little bad for whoever had to clean up after us. Or the fact that the peacekeeper on the other side of the door first came to try to open it because he thought that I was screaming for help.

But then I think he must’ve realized what was happening on the other side and couldn’t figure out what the protocol was. I mean, we only had three minutes, and here I was, buck naked with my hands on the door for support and Xavier there too, both of us bang, bang, banging against that damn door like we were trying to get out.

Inertia, bodies, teenagers. You do the math.

He went away, I think, I don’t remember, and then I heard voices or something down the hall – Xavier had thought we might need to stop but then I said, ‘if I’m going to die we’re going to finish!' and so we did.

Which is just about when they started pounding on the door and the two of us started laughing, having to throw on our overalls like we were red faced from all the crying and not from trying to rearrange each other’s guts.

It’s why I couldn’t stop smiling on the train, even when we pulled away from the station and it became clear that I was not going to see district ten ever again. Maybe when I closed my eyes over the next few weeks, but I already had it in my head I wasn’t getting back here in less than a few pieces.

Didn’t matter.

I pulled out a piece of rolling paper and poured a mix of tobacco before twisting the paper between my fingers into the most elegant little cigarette you’d ever seen. Hummed to myself, and drummed my fingers against the table.

Should I be smoking on the train and stinking up all the good wood and wallpaper? Should I have mixed in bits of weed and dared to skunk up the cake car – literally, I’m pretty sure this was the car devoted to cakes – absolutely not? But did I care whether or not the rest of the world was about to start revolving around anyone else but me?

The answer to that question was a fistful of red velvet and a cupcake that’d had the icing shaped like snow’s head (they’d even put ‘x’s where his eyes should’ve been, and red jam inside the top).

I’d been wiping the cream cheese frosting off my upper lip when I’d seen someone approaching. I tapped my cigarette on the little silver ash tray in front of me and gave a shit eating grin.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the old so-and-so, you snake in the grass,” I said, because it didn’t matter who walked across the threshold. I picked up a few stray chocolate chip cookies, “You want to see how many of these I can fit into my mouth?”

elegant