Page 25

25

TREY

I’m not breathing. I—I don’t think I know how to anymore.

“Maybe you should sit down.” Li snaps her fingers. “Tao, hurry. Bring him a chair. One for the girl too.”

The world seems to blur as Tao appears behind me with two clanky folding chairs. I don’t register anything he says as he puts a hand on my shoulder, gently shoving me into a chair. My ribs ache as I sit.

Tao says more stuff to me. I know because his mouth is moving, but his words aren’t making it to my brain.

The knot in my chest tightens as my fingers tremble. My breaths are short. My mouth feels dry. I feel like I’m going to fall over. Breathe , I command myself. I shut my eyes and try to take in a breath, but my lungs don’t obey. If I can’t get myself under control, this entire place will go up in flames.

A warm pair of hands cups my face, jump-starting my lungs. Finally, I can breathe again. I know whose hands these are because they’re the same hands that have always centered me before.

I open my eyes to find Arella’s brown ones staring back at me. She’s kneeling in front of me with concern etched into her furrowed eyebrows. Behind her, Li and Tao are whispering to each other in Chinese.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out, staring at my shoes. I can’t look anyone in the eyes.

Arella doesn’t take her hands off me. “You’re okay, honey. Just breathe.”

I suck in a deep breath through my nose, then let it out through my mouth. She just called me honey . She hasn’t called me that in too long. Hearing it offers me a tiny sense of peace.

“Tao asked you if you’d like some water,” Arella says.

I keep my focus on her, hoping she’ll continue to calm me. “Water sounds great.”

Tao’s legs leave my sight. On the other side of the basement, a fridge door opens, then closes. Then Tao returns with two bottles of water. He hands one to Arella, then one to me. I place mine in my lap while I continue trying to pull myself together.

Li grabs another folding chair from the other side of the room and sets it in front of me to sit on. Tao does the same, then Arella climbs into her own chair until the four of us make a square. As if reading my mind, Arella scoots closer to me, placing her hand over my thigh. It’s exactly what I need.

Li folds her hands together in her lap. “I can tell you as much or as little as you’d like, Trey. Just tell me when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” I lie.

“How much do you want to know?”

“Everything,” I say breathlessly. “I want to know everything.”

“All right. Um, how about I start from the beginning? Your mom, Suzie, and I met during our first year at California State University in Fresno. We became instant best friends and did everything together. That’s the year she met Andy too. They began dating right away. He proposed the next year and they got married the next.”

Li leaves our talking square and returns with the photo album she had earlier. She pulls out a 4x6 print and hands it to me. In the photo, my mom is wearing a lacey white dress. Two ladies stand on each side of her. One is Aunt Debbie. The other is a younger version of Li. They’re wearing matching burgundy dresses and holding bouquets of flowers.

“I was a bridesmaid. Suzie’s sister was the maid of honor. Small wedding. Close friends and family only. Victor flew in from New York just to attend. Over the years that Suzie and Andy were together, she and Victor didn’t have many interactions. Victor was super focused on finishing his engineering degree, and he spent a lot of time with his fiancée, Jodi, in New York. After he finished his degree, Victor and Jodi moved to Three Rivers, where Victor started working at ZIRDA. Shortly after, they were married as well.

“Suzie and Andy had already been ZIRDA agents for about a year. They were researching how to transfer the healing ability from a Healer’s tears into a usable product. It was Andy who theorized that it could happen and the both of them who put in the years of research to make it happen.

“In the end, it was Suzie who made the groundbreaking discovery of which chemical component of a Healer’s teardrop gave it its healing abilities. She named it Chemical T , after Tao.”

I’ve never heard the history behind Chemical T’s name before. As a kid, I thought my mother named it after me. Now I’m realizing it couldn’t have been named after me. She discovered the chemical before I was born.

Li continues, “Once Suzie and Andy knew which chemical component had the healing ability, they needed a way to extract it from the teardrops. That’s where Victor comes in. He was the engineer who designed the machine that could remove Chemical T. Smart man, that one. He designed, built, and modified hundreds of machines before it worked.

“Anyway, through long nights working in the lab together, Suzie and Victor fell in love. You should have seen them, Trey. Your parents were made for each other. From the way they looked at each other to the way they could communicate without saying a single word. There’s no doubt in my heart they were soul mates.”

I know the feeling. That’s exactly how I feel about Arella. There’s not a single doubt in my heart that she’s meant for me.

Li continues again, “The night Suzie found out she was pregnant was the night I found out about the affair. Tao and I had already moved here to Vegas, so Suzie and I didn’t get to see each other much. We were still best friends though. We spoke on the phone every day. I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other until she called to tell me she was pregnant with her husband’s brother’s baby.

“That weekend, she and Victor drove out here so we could talk. That’s when Tao and I got the whole story. They told us that the affair had been going on for a while and that no matter how many times they tried to end it, it felt like torture to be away from each other. They cried over how much they already loved their unborn baby. Getting pregnant only reinforced their love for each other and confirmed how badly they wanted to be together. I told them they should be together, until they explained why they wouldn’t divorce their partners. It was a wholesome reason, really. Very selfless. Those two always had the good of Zordi people in mind.”

“What was the reason?” I ask, desperate to know. “Why couldn’t they be together?”

“At the time, Andy was in the midst of creating a liquid solution that could preserve Chemical T. You see, the chemical doesn’t survive outside of a Healer’s body for more than five minutes. That’s why it took so long for Suzie and Andy to discover the chemical in the first place. Can you imagine putting something under the microscope to study for over a year, not realizing that the chemical component you’re looking for had died off within five minutes of it leaving its source? The time they wasted...” Li shakes her head with a sigh.

“Because Andy was in the middle of creating the preservation solution and was near completion, your parents decided they couldn’t tell him they were in love. They were concerned that if Suzie left Andy, he would quit working on the project and they would never see it finished, so your parents made the tough and heartbreaking decision to raise you as if Andy was your father.

“In the end, it took Andy another year to finish the preservation solution. Then it took them all another three years of research to create healing products in the forms of a beverage, an ointment, and a mist.

“For all those years, Tao and I watched how much it killed Victor to have to say he was your uncle. The only times he ever got to freely be your dad was when they came here to visit us. Here, Victor didn’t have to hide how much his spirit brightened every time you sat in his lap. He could barely take his eyes off you as you ran around and played with our kids. The way he looked at you was the same way he looked at your mother—with pure love and happiness.”

I think I’m in shock. I can’t move. I can’t do anything but blink. Everyone’s staring at me, waiting for me to react. I don’t know how to, mostly because I don’t believe it.

Does this lady really expect me to believe that the cruel and abusive man I grew up with is my father? The man who allowed adults to beat on me until I bled—when I was a kid? The man who refuses to call me by name and opts for demeaning terms? The man who used me in his Royal-based schemes, who just days ago almost murdered me? That man? My father ? No way in hell.

“How did my mother know for sure that Victor was my father?” I ask. “If she was having sex with both of them, it could have been either of them.”

“I asked the same thing,” Li says. “Turns out, when Suzie found out she was pregnant, she and Andy hadn’t been intimate for months. Once the decision was made to raise you as Andy’s son, Suzie went home and seduced him that night. Two weeks later, she made a show of being shocked by a positive test. When you were born, she told everyone you were early. Since Andy and Victor look so much alike, no one questioned it when you grew up looking like Victor, because you looked like Andy too. Tao and I were the only ones who knew the truth.”

“No!” I burst out of my chair. It falls behind me with a clank! The unopened bottle of water in my lap tumbles to the floor and rolls away. My ribs burn from the sudden movement. “You’re lying! Victor can’t be my father.”

Tao, who has barely spoken a word this whole time, calmly says, “Ask yourself, Trey, what reason do we have to lie?”

I think about that for a moment, then sigh. He’s right. They have nothing to gain from lying to me.

“Here,” Li says as she hands me the entire photo album. She points to one of the pictures on the page. It features a toddler me sitting in Victor’s lap. He’s hugging me tight as he kisses my cheek with a light in his face I’ve never seen in him before.

I flip the page to find more pictures of me with my mom and Victor. Most of the photos look like they were taken somewhere in this shop. Some are of me learning to walk while Victor holds my hands. There are a few photos where he’s got me sitting on his shoulders with my little fingers gripping his dark hair.

In one picture, my mom stands with me on her hip, feeding me a blue popsicle. The colorful evidence is all over my face. In the background, Victor stares lovingly at my mother the same way I always stare at Arella.

I flip the page again, and my heart drops. These images were shot so early that my mom is still pregnant. Victor has his hand splayed across her rounded belly as he kisses her temple. In another photo, they kiss each other’s lips as he hugs her from behind and cradles her belly like it’s his entire world.

The more pages I flip, the more I get a glimpse into a past that seems impossible. My mom and Victor look genuinely and hopelessly in love with each other.

“We assumed you already knew,” Li says. “After Suzie and Andy were killed, didn’t you go live with Victor? Why didn’t he tell you the truth? By that time, Jodi was long gone, and without Andy around, he had no reason to keep it a secret anymore. We figured he would have told you right away.”

“I thought you guys were best friends ?” I sneer. “Wouldn’t he have told you if he had told me?”

“Actually, as soon as Jodi left him, Victor broke things off with your mother. She was devastated. None of us could understand it. One day, he was completely in love with her. The next, he didn’t want anything to do with her. It was like if he couldn’t have Jodi and Suzie, he didn’t want either of them at all. Around that time, he also stopped speaking to us. No matter how many times we’ve reached out over the years, we never heard back. Years of friendship right down the drain.”

Now that’s the coldhearted Victor I know. Selfishly, it makes me feel slightly better that I wasn’t the only one he pushed away. But why my mother? If he was as in love with her as these pictures depict, what changed?

The room goes silent as I gather my thoughts. I feel sick, and disoriented, and confused, and fuck... my ribs are killing me.

As if reading my mind, Tao stands and points toward a padded medical chair in the corner. “You came here for some healing, right? Let’s do duh lady first.”

“Actually,” I say, snapping out of my bewildered state, “you won’t be able to heal her. She’s immune to Zordi powers. You can use Healing Products on her though.”

Tao glances at Li with a look that says, What’s duh boy talking about?

Li responds with a hell if I know shrug.

I don’t blame them. It’s as strange for me to say that someone’s immune to Zordi powers as it is for them to hear it.

“What do you mean, she is immune ?” Tao asks.

“See for yourself.”

Tao gestures toward my T-shirt wrapped around Arella’s arm. “Can I heal foh you?”

Arella nods. Tao kneels by her chair, then carefully peels the bloody fabric off her skin. She winces a little.

“Just sit still.” Tao closes his eyes, then hovers his hand over Arella’s knife wound. A moment later, when nothing happens, his mouth pops open. “How?”

I’ll never get tired of seeing the shock on people’s faces when Arella amazes them with her—what can only be described as—magic. “Told ya.”

“Let me try,” Li says, perking up. “Tell me a lie.”

“Um, I hate bacon,” Arella says, and it makes me smile. This woman loves bacon. Whenever she eats it, she moans like I’m eating her out.

“Hmm,” Li says. “My inner alarm didn’t go off. I can’t see through your body either.” Li aims her gaze at me. “I can see through Trey’s body though.” She turns back to Arella. “Tell me another lie.”

Arella thinks for a moment. Then her eyes flick up to me. “I’m not in love with Trey.”

It takes my shattered heart a second to realize she means the opposite. I haven’t forgotten that each time I’ve confessed my love to her, she’s never said it back. I didn’t tell her I love her with hopes that she’d return the words, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping she’d say it back. In a way, she just admitted that she loves me. It’s not the same as actually hearing her say I love you , but it’s close enough.

“Hmm,” Li says. “Try another one. Something obvious, like one plus one is five.”

“Um,” Arella says, “the grass outside is blue.”

Li gasps with a hand to her chest. “Wow. She really is immune.”

While Li grabs the healing products for Arella, Tao asks me to climb into the medical chair. I don’t hesitate to obey. With a few cranks of a lever, the back of the chair reclines, and suddenly, I’m staring into a blinding chicken lamp clamped above me.

“The ceiling lights down here are kinda dim, huh?” I say.

Tao scoffs as he examines my face. “Landlord said to install good lights down here, it be over three thousand dollah and I am responsible for pay. I said no thank you, went to duh store, and got three lamps for less den thirty bucks. Do same job, but cheaper.”

“Didn’t Li say you guys get royalties from Healing Products?”

“Yes. One percent.”

I do the quick math in my head. “That’s still six figures a year.”

Tao wiggles a finger at me. Tsk. Tsk. “Having money does not mean you should spend it on three-thousand-dollah lights when thirty-dollah ones do duh same job.”

I feel that. I collect fifteen percent on my parents’ inventions and still buy plain shirts online that come in a three pack for twenty bucks.

Tao lifts my shirt up, then gasps. “Aiyah! What duh hell happened?”

“Royals,” I say, and it’s all the explanation he needs.

Closing his eyes, Tao hovers his open palms above my torso. “Three broken ribs and a lot of bruising. How long ago did dis happen?”

“Twelve hours, maybe?”

He slaps the side of my head. “Why you not come sooner?”

“Ow!” I rub the spot he hit. “We got here as fast as we could.”

“Not fast enough. Now be quiet so I can work.”

Tao’s warm palms press against my aching ribs. The light pressure he applies makes me wince until, gradually, the pain fades away. Several seconds later, the pain is completely gone.

Next, Tao places his hands on either side of my face. Soon after, my cheek isn’t throbbing anymore and my headache has vanished. The soreness at the back of my head disappears too.

When he drags my sweatpants down and tears the gauze off my thigh, he makes some more tsk-tsk sounds. He places his hands over my thigh, and I hiss when he applies some pressure. This time, it takes at least a minute before the pain disappears. Once it does, I take a look at my thigh. Minus the remaining blood on my skin, it looks normal again. Not even a scar to show for it.

Tao leaves me for a second, then comes back with clean hands and a wet towel. After he wipes off the blood from my leg, he does one more pass on my body. Everywhere he hovers his hands, the aches diminish until they’re gone.

“Done.”

I sit up and press a finger against my ribs. No tenderness. No agony. I don’t even flinch. Why didn’t we start with this instead of Li’s crazy story?

Arella is in the middle of getting her arm wrapped with gauze when I kneel at her side.

“Wow.” Her eyes go wide. “You look brand new.”

“I feel it too.”

Tao taps my shoulder and hands me a bottle of Healing Water. “Foh her face bruises.”

“I’m almost done,” Li says as she finishes taping the gauze around Arella’s arm. “Although, I’m confused as to how the Healing Goo will work if she’s immune to our powers.”

I unscrew the cap off the lemon-lime Healing Water and hand it to Arella. She accepts it with her free hand and chugs.

“For some reason,” I say, “Arella’s not immune to healing products. I’ve used them on her before, and she takes to it. I think it has to do with the power coming at her from outside her body. She can get burned by a fireball, but if someone’s got the power to incinerate her from the inside out, she’d be immune to that.”

“Interesting,” Li says, then taps Arella’s shoulder. “All done, beautiful girl.”

“Thank you.” Arella finishes the Healing Water, then tilts her head back to look at me with crumpled eyebrows. “When did you ever use healing products on me?”

“How do you think you recovered from that car accident so quickly? That Sprite I kept giving you wasn’t Sprite.”

She stares at the empty bottle in her hands. “Huh. I never would have?—”

Thud! Thud! Thud! Someone pounds against the front door upstairs. Instinctively, I seize Arella’s hand. She jolts out of her chair and squeezes mine back. By the concentration in her eyes, I’m certain she’s projecting her immunity onto me.

“Seriously?” Tao groans. “Can people not read my sign? We are closed until October one. Right now, not October one. I’ll go tell dem to go away.”

“Wait,” I whisper. “It could be the Royals. They might have tracked us here.”

“I’ll check.” Li narrows her eyes at the ceiling in the direction of the front door. “Three large men, and they don’t look like they’re here for herbal medicines.”

Thud! Thud! It’s louder this time.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“Should we fake like we aren’t here?” Tao asks.

“No,” Li says. “These guys look like they’ll let themselves in if we don’t first.”

Tao closes the photo album. “Quick! I’ll hide the pictures. You hide the kids.”

It takes me a second to realize that the kids is referring to me and Arella.

Li clutches Arella’s other arm. “Follow me.”

Practically leaping over the many boxes on the floor, Li takes us to the farthest back corner under the stairs. It’s dimmer back here. A bunch of glass jars are stacked on bookshelves. In the corner against the wall stands a freezer chest that Li shoves aside to reveal a dusty floor. She steps onto one of the wood planks, and up pops a square section of the floor. It’s just wide enough for a person to crawl through.

“Get in,” Li says.

Using the questionable wood ladder, Arella climbs down first. I follow shortly after. The second my head clears the flooring, Li shuts the trapdoor and we’re surrounded by black. There isn’t a single crack of light with how sealed it is. The floor rumbles above us as Li returns the freezer chest back to its spot.

“Can you make me immune?” I ask.

Arella grabs my hand. “Done.”

I imagine a tiny flame on the tip of my finger, and it appears. My little fire illuminates the space that’s just tall enough for me to reach up and barely touch the trapdoor. It’s not wide enough for me to lie down though—not that I’d want to. It’s dustier than hell, with cobwebs hanging along all four walls.

I move my little flame to see Arella. Her face is crumpled with concern.

“Don’t worry, baby,” I whisper. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” She hasn’t given me permission to call her pet names again, but I won’t correct myself this time.

Without warning, she slams her front against mine and circles her arms around my back. Then she buries her face in my chest. I’m so shocked that I can’t move. A heavy weight lifts off my shoulders as her warmth envelops me.

Eventually, I regain my composure and wrap my arm around her too, squeezing her so tight, she exhales a little breath. The relief that eases through me almost makes me tear up. It’s been eating at me that Arella no longer trusted me or felt safe around me. This is proof that she knows I’ll do anything to protect her. If any of those men lay a finger on her, I won’t hesitate to kill ’em.

Things are quiet for a minute before some heavy pairs of footsteps come stomping down the stairs.

“Then you won’t mind if we look around,” a deep voice sneers.

“Excuse me,” Li says sternly, “we are closed.”

“Dat is what I told dem,” Tao says. “Dey not listening.”

“We aren’t here to shop, ma’am. We’re looking for fugitives. Have you seen either of these two?”

“No. I have been in my shop all day since seven this morning. I have seen no one except my husband because everybody else actually reads the sign that says we’re closed. We’re in the middle of remodeling.”

“I can tell,” a second guy scoffs. “It’s a fucking shit show in here.”

The first guy speaks again. “This will only take a minute.”

“You can’t just barge into someone’s business and trample around like you own the place!” Li shouts. “Get out of here before I call the Enforcers.”

“We are the Enforcers,” a third voice says.

“Are not.” The confidence in Li’s tone is unmatched.

“Yes, we are. See?”

Li chuckles. “Fake badge. Also, I’m a Detector. The alarm in my head is going off right now. So you have three seconds to get out before I call the real Enforcers.”

A pair of footsteps tramp on the floor above us. I put out my flame as if the man can see it. Blackness engulfs us as Arella curls into me, gripping my shirt. I clench her tighter, just in case the man has the power to reach through the floor and snatch her from me. Zordi powers don’t normally work between surface level and underground, but I’m not taking any chances.

“Three,” Li counts like an annoyed mother.

“We’re almost done, old lady. Chill the fuck out.”

“Two.”

The man above us isn’t moving. What is he looking at? Can he see us through the floor?

“I think you liars are forgetting what the consequences are for impersonating an Enforcer,” Li says. “What is it? Five to ten years? I hear they drug you up good with perrizo in z-prison. Do you need me to finish counting to one?”

The man above us sighs. “Come on, boys. They ain’t here. Let’s go.”

I don’t let out a breath until I hear their footsteps trudge up the stairs and out the door. A moment later, a gentle pair of feet shuffles back down. I imagine it’s Tao after relocking the door.

Arella and I remain silent, still hunched into each other as we wait to be released. Our freedom doesn’t come right away. Instead, Li and Tao speak to each other in Chinese for a while. I’m fluent in English, conversational in French and Spanish, and I know enough American Sign Language to get by. Whatever Chinese language they’re speaking has now made it to the top of my list of languages to learn. I’m going to assume they have a reason for not immediately releasing us, and although I only met them within the last hour, I trust them.

Arella tilts her head up and brushes her lips against the base of my neck. A bright beam of light shines inside me, filling the dark hollow hole where my heart used to be. It’s not just that she’s breathing on me and almost kissing me that’s got me reeling; it’s that she’s doing it so tenderly, willingly, and unprompted.

Mere hours ago, we were on a flying tire, where she told me she never wanted to see me again. She meant it so much that she even tried to lose me at a gas station. Now she’s letting me hold her like I’m the only person she wants holding her forever.

My little fireball reappears on my fingertip again, and I move it near her face. She gazes up at me with her big brown eyes, the fear in them from earlier dissolved. Replacing it is that lustful trusting look I’ve wanted to see for days. It’s the look she used to give me before all this shit happened.

I free my hand that was glued to the small of her back, to push some of her hair behind an ear. She closes her eyes and melts into my touch the way I always melt into hers. Before I even realize I’m doing it, I lean down to plant a heavy kiss against her forehead. When she doesn’t pull away, that light in my chest shines brighter. Then she sighs and squeezes her arms around me tighter, making me choke up a little.

If I never have to leave this dusty, dirty, cobweb-infested underground hideaway, I’ll be happy. It’s like a sanctuary down here when I’ve got my girl back in my arms.