Part 7 (1/2)
”You ever go to high school?” Wish asked.
She nodded, looking out across the street. ”Sure,” she admitted in defeat. ”I'm a junior at Jefferson. Getting ready for college applications.”
”Huh,” he muttered. ”I didn't think you were a teenager. I mean, most of us are, but you seem, I don't know, timeless. Ageless.”
She laughed humorlessly, holding out her arms. ”Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving.”
He glanced at her skeleton. ”Yeah,” he said. ”Guess so.”
Their silence fell flat. Wish began tapping, rattling the novelty pins on his sleeves.
She'd made him uncomfortable, which made her feel guilty. Consuela sighed, considering the thin, scraggly boy in the gra.s.s.
”Do you mind if I sit?” she asked.
Wish shrugged, knees bouncing. ”It's a free country.”
It wasn't a yes or a no, but Consuela settled herself down. She read a blue b.u.t.ton near his collar that said I DON'T CARE TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL HAVE ME AS A MEMBER.-GROUCHO MARX.
She tried to break the ice. ”Nice pins.”
”Yeah?” Wish said, looking at the Marx quote. ”They were a collection that kinda took over. You know how it is. Something to do.” He held up the pin by its backing: CRAZY IS AS CRAZY DOES.
Consuela rested her ulnas against her knees. ”You think we're all crazy?”
”Well, I can't speak for you,” he said, ”but being crazy would make a lot more sense than knowing that this was real. Still, when we're like this”-he pointed to himself and her-”we're not like that, you know?” Wish gestured vaguely at the high school. She could almost imagine the babble of petty talk, the bus exhaust, the lunchroom politics, the hallway runways, and the locker-room drama. The Flow was definitely different.
”I know.” She nodded. ”We're more . . .” She struggled for a word, but failed to find a good one.
”Ourselves,” Wish supplied. ”We're more ourselves and more than ourselves . . .” He jutted his chin. ”This is more who we really are than when we were playing it safe, back there. Like this reality matters more than the real one. Know what I mean?”
”Sort of,” Consuela admitted, nodding. ”Yeah.”
Wish's thin-lipped grin tugged at his crooked eyeteeth. ”So this is really you?”
She didn't need to grin back. ”Yes.”
”Sure. See? I'm really me when I can make folks' wishes come true. It's the best!” he said. ”What do you do?”
Fly out of windows? Fall down the drain? Burn in buildings ?
”I save people from dying,” she said. ”Before their time.”
Wish blew a raspberry, his fingers still tapping erratic, staccato rhythms on his arms. ”Well, duh, yeah. We all do that. But I meant how?”
”Oh.” Consuela thought about it. ”Um . . . I can take off my skin and make new ones out of things like air, water . . .”
”No s.h.i.+t?” Wish sat up. ”Sorry. I mean, really? You don't normally look like this?”
Consuela laughed, surprised. ”No! I have a face and hair and eyes and everything.”
”Huh.” He tugged absently at his ear and the tips of his hair. She wondered if he realized that he was doing it. ”So what do you look normally like?”
She thought about embellis.h.i.+ng a little, but why bother? Who did she have to impress?
”Short,” she admitted. ”Round, dark. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. I'm Mexican.”
”Really? You don't look it.” They both laughed at that. ”I meant that you don't sound like it.”
Her mood s.h.i.+fted.
”Excuse me?” she said.
Wish immediately dropped his eyes and scratched a spot of acne on his cheek. ”I meant you got no accent.”
Consuela didn't know what to think. No one had ever thought of her as anything but Mexican American. She'd never been mistaken for Caucasian, but without skin . . . skeletons all looked the same. He thought I was white, like him. Big deal. But that was supposed to be, what, a compliment? Or was it just something everybody a.s.sumed when they didn't know for sure-that people looked like them by default?
”I said I was Mexican,” she said. ”Not that I was from Mexico.”
”Right,” he said quickly. ”Sorry.”
A frigid silence fell under the crab-apple canopy. Wish shrank into a tight, miserable ball.
”h.e.l.l,” he muttered. ”Some things don't change in either world. I can still p.i.s.s people off right from the start,” he said. ”Talent I've had since I was a kid. Sissy can still be popular and V can still be cool and Tender can still be a total head case, but someone you gotta have around . . .”
”Tender,” Consuela said. ”What is it about this guy?” She turned, spinning on her coccyx. ”Sissy seemed totally freaked out by him.”
”She should be,” Wish said simply. ”You should be. I should be. Heck, I am and I'm, like, best friends with the guy.”
”Really?” Consuela said.
”Sure. I even made a wish for him once.” Wish unwound a little from his self-protective hunch. ”Tender's been here years and years. There are all sorts of people who've come and gone, but Tender's role and what he does is something that has been part of the Flow for, like, ever. He gets things, right?” His eyes had a sort of wicked spark to them, like when kids tell each other gruesome secrets or ghost stories in the dark. ”Sissy tell you what he does?”
”He eats pain,” she said back.
”Yeah, right. He digests it. Eats it right up,” Wish said. ”He can take the darkness inside him and chew it up or spit it out. That's what Sissy doesn't get. That Tender's been here long enough that he knows the Flow inside and out. She thinks he's trash and that she's got his number, but she doesn't. Not really.” He sat back with a strange sort of pride in his voice. ”That's why she has to listen to me. I know Tender best. He trusts me.”
”Do you trust him?” Consuela asked.
”h.e.l.l no, but I don't pity him, which he appreciates more than anything,” Wish said. ”I don't spit on him either. Tender's got a short fuse when it comes to respect. He cares a lot about what he does-knows it's a tough-ugly job, but also dead necessary. Useful.” He gestured again at the two of them. ”Folks like you and me? We're temps. Dime a dozen. But there's always been a guy like Tender in the Flow. Just like there's always been a Watcher like Sissy. Yin and yang. Either one of them goes, there'll be another one soon enough. There's got to be or the Flow doesn't. Isn't.” He drummed his fingers against his knee. ”Some think the Watcher and Tender are the same person, the same soul, recycled, you know? Reborn and returning over and over.”
Consuela felt a ripple of nausea like goose b.u.mps on her nonexistent skin.
”Sounds horrible,” she confessed.
Wish shrugged. ”Tender seems to deal with it well enough,” he said. ”He likes being a big guy. Like my mum says, 'He wears it well.'”
Cradling her jaw, Consuela watched Wish unconsciously tapping his b.u.t.tons and scabs. ”So if I meet Tender . . .”
”When you meet Tender,” Wish corrected.