Fighting for Rain Read online

  But the four horsemen never came for us.

  Reality did.

  And from the looks of him, he’s about six foot three.

  Even though I feel like the world is tilting on its axis and there’s an invisible knife twisting in my pancreas, I keep my cool as Reality jogs toward my girl.

  No, not my girl. His girl.

  I’ve done this so many times; it’s almost second nature now. Standing in the Department of Child and Family Services while yet another foster parent gave me back. Standing against the lockers in my fuckteenth high school, acting like I didn’t give a shit whether anyone talked to me or not. Standing behind the bar at work, watching whatever chick I was fucking at the time kiss her boyfriend goodbye in the parking lot.

  Fold your arms across your chest. Keep your posture loose. Look bored. You are bored. People are so fucking boring. Yawn. Light a cigarette. Damn, no cigarettes.

  Rain doesn’t move as he approaches. She doesn’t lift her arms for a hug, but that doesn’t stop LeBron James from wrapping his four-foot-long arms around her and lifting her off the ground.

  My teeth clench together, and my blood fucking boils as he goes to kiss her, but on the outside, I’m the picture of indifference.

  Do what you want. I don’t care.

  You don’t care.

  Nobody fucking cares.

  Rain turns her head before his lips can make contact and grunts, “Ugh! Carter, what are you doing? Put me down!”

  He’s just a shadow, but the whites of his eyes almost glow in the dark as they go wide and glance over at me.

  I smirk and raise an eyebrow, but it’s just for show. Kind of like Rain’s performance right now. I’m not stupid enough to think this means she isn’t going to go back to him. I know she is. I’ve seen this episode before.

  “What am I doing?” His voice wavers as he sets her back on her feet. “I fucking missed you! I never thought I’d see you again. And you’re here. You’re … alive.”

  Rain shoves him with both hands, and he takes a step backward, more out of shock that she pushed him than her actual strength.

  “No thanks to you!” she screams. Screams. It knocks the dust off the rafters and scares a bird into flight.

  I grip the handle of my gun and listen for footsteps. That pigeon can’t be the only thing she just woke up.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Carter reaches for her, and she shoves him again. “I had to go with my family!”

  Yep. This is the part where she guilt-trips him for leaving …

  “One town over? I thought you were in Tennessee!”

  “We were in a bad car accident and got stranded here.” The giant huffs and drags a hand through his hair. “I’ll tell you about it in the morning, okay? Come here.”

  “Stranded?” Rain swats his giant hands away. “You could walk back to Franklin Springs from here! It’s twenty miles, max!”

  “You know it’s not safe to be on the roads! Especially with all the supplies we’d be carrying.”

  “You wanna talk to me about not being safe? You have no idea what I went through while you were gone!”

  Aaaaand this is the part where she uses me to make him jealous …

  “I almost died! Wes, how many times did I almost die?” She keeps her back to me as Carter’s head swivels in my direction.

  Even though my throat is so tight that I can hardly breathe and I have to put my hands in my pockets to keep him from seeing that they’re balled into fists, I manage to keep my voice unaffected when I say, “I dunno. Ten? Twelve? I lost count.”

  “Who the hell is he?” Carter thrusts a massive hand in my direction, and Rain looks at me over her shoulder.

  I lock eyes with her, my feelings safely hidden behind a well-worn costume of confident apathy, and silently ask the same question.

  Yeah, Rain. Who am I? Your substitute boyfriend? Your April 23 distraction? Your meal ticket? Chauffeur? Gravedigger and personal bodyguard? Just say it so that I can get the fuck out of here and go find something to break.

  Rain takes a deep breath and smiles at me in a way that almost makes me think she means it. Her porcelain face lights up, illuminating the dust-thickened air around her, and her shiny blue doll eyes look wild and alive. I know that look. That’s the look she gets before she does something stupid and impulsive.

  “He’s my fiancé.” She beams.

  Motherfucker.

  My shoulders slump, and any doubt I had about her motives leaves me in a bitter, sharp sigh.

  “Fiancé?” Carter jerks his head back as if he’s been punched, but Rain isn’t even facing him anymore.

  She’s walking toward me with a sway to her hips and a smirk on her beautiful fucking face.

  “I just left a month ago! And besides, why the fuck would you get engaged if you thought we were gonna die yesterday?”

  “I knew we weren’t gonna die,” Rain says, standing beside me and wrapping a delicate hand around my bicep. “Wes is a survivalist.”

  Carter throws his free hand in the air in exasperation as I look down at my girl. His girl.

  Fine. I can play this game—the one where she pretends to care, and I pretend to believe her. I’ve been playing it my whole life. At least now, I know where I stand.

  I thought April 24 was going to be a new beginning.

  Turns out, it’s just the same old shit but with no Wi-Fi.

  “Hey, guys? We got trouble!” Lamar’s voice coming from the mall entrance breaks up our happy little reunion.

  We turn and run toward him as the sound of motorcycles revving and guns firing and people shouting builds outside.

  “Shit,” Carter hisses. “Bonys.”

  “What are Bonys?” Rain asks, but as Carter pushes the door open with one long arm, we’re able to see for ourselves.

  Dozens of motorcycle riders have blazed over the downed section of fence around the mall and are doing doughnuts and firing semiautomatic weapons into the air in the parking lot. Bullets leave their guns in orange bursts as they howl at the moon, matching the Day-Glo orange stripes painted on their clothes to look like skeleton bones.

  “Oh my God! Is that Quint?” Carter slides his rifle around so that it’s hanging down his back and leans over to get a better look at the guy we left outside.

  In this light, I can see that Carter is no Franklin Springs redneck. The guy has brown skin and a mop of curly, dark hair, and he’s wearing a fucking Twenty One Pilots T-shirt.

  I think about the oversize Twenty One Pilots hoodie Rain was wearing when I first met her, and I have to resist the urge to kick his teeth in.

  “We can’t fit the hood through the door, so we’re gonna have to lift him.” Rain is in doctor mode, which is pretty much the only time she takes the lead on anything. “Wes, help me hold Quint’s head and neck still, so the glass doesn’t move. Lamar and Carter, you guys each take a leg. Come on! Now!”

  Luckily, the doorway is shadowed by an awning, so the Bonys haven’t noticed us yet. We do as Rain said and move Quint’s lifeless body inside. The first empty store on the left has its metal gate down and locked, but the third shop is wide open. We shuffle inside and set Quint on the floor behind the checkout counter.

  A faded sign on the wall announces that this place used to be called Savvi Formalwear.

  Formalwear. In Pritchard Park. No fucking wonder this place went out of business.

  Lamar kneels next to his brother and holds his hand while he feels for a pulse, and the sight of them knocks the air out of my lungs. I know that fucking feeling. I know what it’s like to lose your only sibling. To find her quiet and cold in her crib. The moment I see Lily’s blank, bluish face in my mind, I feel like I’m being choked. Strangled. I can’t get out of there fast enough. I mumble something about guarding the door as I stumble backward out of the store.

  Rain calls after me, asking for her first aid kit, so I tear her backpack off my shoulders and toss it onto the floor as I bolt.

  I don’t st
op until I get to the entrance, bracing my forearms on the metal door handle and sucking in lungfuls of humid air through the broken glass.

  Fuck, I hate it here.

  The Bonys—or whatever they’re called—are still tearing it up outside. I watch them in a jealous rage. Carter seemed afraid of them, but they look like they’re having a good fucking time if you ask me. Not a care in the—

  Suddenly, the entire mob takes off toward the road in front of the mall. It’s so dark that I can’t make out what triggered them to leave until their headlights close in on a dude riding a bicycle with a backpack on. Even from across the parking lot, I can see the terror on his face as they descend upon him like piranhas. His screams are loud enough to rise over the roar of their engines, and when they finally race off, there’s nothing but some twisted metal and a fleshy lump in the road where a living, breathing man just was.

  “Oh, good. They’re gone.” Rain’s breathy voice sounds like heaven compared to the noises I just heard.

  I tear my eyes away from the cadaver in the street and turn toward her, relieved to see that she’s alone. I open my arms and hug her—I don’t know why. I guess I just need to hold her before the next thing comes to try to take her away.

  Rain hugs me back, and for a minute, we just stand there and take it all in.

  “How’s Quint?”

  Rain sighs. “He’s alive, but I don’t know how long I can keep him that way. If I take the glass out, he’ll lose too much blood, so I just cleaned him up and left it in. I’m hoping his body will push it out on its own. I heard that’s a thing.”

  I force a reassuring smile and kiss the top of her head. “Yeah, that’s a thing.”

  “Lamar’s gonna stay with him tonight.”

  “Good.”

  “And Carter went back to his post by the fountain. He said he’s on guard duty tonight.”

  “So, he’s watching us right now.”

  Rain nods against my chest. “Probably.”

  I let her go and take a step back, searching her face for signs of sincerity. “And that whole thing about us being engaged …”

  Rain blushes and drops her eyes. “I had a dream a few nights ago that we were lying in Old Man Crocker’s field, and you made me a little engagement ring out of a blade of grass.” Rain lifts her left hand and stares down at her empty finger. “It seemed so real, you know? Until you turned into a scarecrow and the four horsemen of the apocalypse came and set you on fire.”

  “You sure you weren’t just trying to make your boyfriend jealous?”

  Rain drops her hand and looks at me as if I just spat on her shoes. “Are you serious right now?”

  “As a fucking heart attack.”

  “I said it because that’s how I feel, Wes. I don’t want to call you my boyfriend. I’ve had one of those, and it didn’t feel like this.” Rain casts a glance over her shoulder at the dark hallway stretching out behind her and the man-child sitting in the shadows beyond. “But considering that you didn’t even fight for me back there, I’m guessing that you don’t feel the same way.”

  I grab Rain by the jaw and pull her into the shadows of the storefront doorway right next to us. I hate the way her eyes go wide in fear, but it’s taking all of my self-control not to scream in her face right now.

  “Listen to me,” I hiss through gritted teeth. “When I found you last night, I thought you were fucking dead.” I spit the words out, remembering how heavy her lifeless body felt in my arms. How her hands dangled at her sides and her head fell back as I clutched her to my chest and cried against her cold, slack cheek. “For the first time in my life, I thought about killing myself. If I hadn’t finally found your pulse, I was prepared to lie down right next to you and blow my own fucking brains out, so don’t tell me how the fuck I feel.”

  Rain’s mouth falls open in my palm as her eyebrows pull together in pain. “Wes …”

  “I’ll fight to keep you alive. I’ll fight to keep you safe. But I will never fight to keep you, or anyone, from leaving me.”

  A tear slips from the corner of Rain’s glassy eye and rolls down the edge of my index finger to her parted lips. Reaching out, she places one tiny hand over my heart, over the place where thirteen jagged tally marks tell the world how many foster homes I was kicked out of, how many times I wasn’t good enough, how many times I fought to stay and was left behind anyway.

  Then, she says the words that make me want to put my fist through the glass shop window beside her head, “You’ll never have to.”

  I tilt her face up and kiss her salty, wet mouth until her breath becomes ragged and her hands begin to claw at my belt buckle. Carter can’t see us—I made sure of that when I pulled her over here—so I know this isn’t just for show. Rain actually believes the four little words she just whispered.

  If only they were true.

  Rain

  “Pleeeeease!” I cry, tugging on Mama’s hand and leaning with my whole body toward the Hello Kitty store. “I promise I won’t beg for nuthin’! I just wanna look. Real quick! Pleeeeease?”

  “Rainbow, stop it,” Mama snaps, looking around at all the other shoppers. “You’re making a scene.”

  “But Tammy-Lynn got a Hello Kitty binder for her birthday!”

  Mama’s eyes get softer, and I know I got her. She never lets me get nuthin’ at the mall unless it’s my birthday, and it just so happens that I’m gonna be eight in exactly three days.

  “One thing, okay? And you can’t have it until your birthday.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  This time, when I yank Mama’s hand, she lets me pull her into the store, and it’s like a Hello Kitty wonderland in there. Purses and T-shirts and lamps and stuffed animals and bath mats and bedsheets and, “Oh my God, slap bracelets! Look, Mama! Look!”

  “One thing, Rainbow. And hurry up. We still have to get you some new shoes for school.”

  Shoes!

  I run to the shoe wall and drool as rows and rows of Sanrio characters stare back at me from the sides of sneakers and sandals and even fuzzy little bedroom slippers. But one pair calls out to me. I grab the black low-top Converse with Badtz-Maru’s cute little face right on top.

  “I want these, Mama! Please?”

  My mother scrunches her face up as she takes the shoebox out of my hands. “The grumpy penguin? Out of everything in this store, you want the black grumpy-penguin shoes?”

  I bite my lip and nod all my nods.

  Mama turns the box sideways in her hands and reads the description of my favorite Hello Kitty character out loud. “Bad Badtz-Maru is a mischievous little penguin who has dreams of becoming the king of everything one day. Although he’s bossy and he has a bit of an attitude problem, Badtz is a loyal friend to Pandaba and Hana-Maru. When he’s not getting into trouble, Badtz-Maru can be found collecting pictures of movie stars who play his favorite bad guys?” Mama’s voice goes up at the end like she’s asking a question. “Rainbow!”

  “What, Mama? He’s my favorite! Look how cute he is!”

  “Cute? He’s scowling.”

  I stick my finger out and stroke his frowny little canvas beak. “He just needs somebody to love him. That’s all.”

  Mama sighs and slaps the lid on the box. “Fine, but only because it’s your birthday.”

  We check out, and I don’t even let the cash register lady put my shoes in a bag. I just hug the whole box to my chest and wait for the receipt to print. It prints and prints and gets longer and longer until it touches the floor.

  I look up at the lady, but she’s gone. Everybody’s gone. The store is empty, and it smells bad, like the attic. Everywhere I look, the lights are off, and the shelves are empty. Even the shoe rack. The counter that was just shiny and white a second ago is now covered in dust so thick that I could write my name in it with my finger.

  The receipt is still printing, so I follow it out the door and into the hallway. The benches are rusty now. The floor tiles are all cracked, and some even have grass growing i
n between them. And the sale banners that used to hang from the ceiling don’t say Sale no more. They’re all red with demon people riding black, smoke-breathing horses on them.

  I don’t like it here. I wanna go home.

  I turn in circles, trying to find Mama, but she’s gone too.

  It’s just me and Bad Badtz-Maru. Even though he’s just on a pair of shoes, I know he’ll protect me. He’s going to be the king of everything one day.

  I follow the receipt out the door and into the parking lot. It’s empty now. More scary banners hang from the light posts, but I ain’t afraid of them. I’m mad at them. They made everything go away. They made Mama go away. So I stomp over to a junky old car and climb up on top of it, all the way to the roof. Then, I reach up and pull one of those banners right down.

  “There!” I yell, throwing it on the dirty ground. “See? You’re not so—”

  But I don’t get to let all my words out before these real, real loud motorcycles drive up super-fast from all around me. The people driving them are dressed like skeletons, and some of their helmets have spikes on them.

  I wonder for a minute if they’re friends with the demon horse riders. I hug my shoebox tighter, hoping they won’t be mad about me ripping down their friends’ banner, but then they do something even worse than ripping the banners down. They start lighting them on fire!

  I cheer and put my fist in the air like people do in the movies.

  They hate the horsemen too! Maybe they’ll help me. Maybe they know where everybody went. Maybe they can take me to my mama.

  A few of the skeleton people see me and start driving their motorcycles in a circle around the car I’m on.

  I smile. “See, Badtz,” I whisper to my shoebox. “It’s gonna be okay. We found some new friends.”

  There’s a guy on the back of one of the motorcycles, and he’s pouring something all over the car out of a big red jug. Some of it even splashes up onto my shoes.

  “Hey!” I shout, taking a step back.

  I wonder if maybe the guy driving will tell his friend that he’s spilling his water, but he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls to a stop right in front of me, flips open a fancy lighter—the silver kind that Daddy uses to light his cigarettes—and tosses it onto the hood of the car.