Page 2 of The Bleeding Woods

No one in this world is good, not really.

People pretend to be more than they are, but human nature cannot be changed.

We’re selfish survivalists caught in a system built to kill us on an orb of misery spinning through a void.

Every second of every hour comes with the same assignment: Do what’s necessary to make this droplet in the ocean of existence bearable.

For that reason, I spend as much time as I can with Clara Lovecroft.

Clara is a sunset in the dead of winter.

She is beautiful in every eerie, frigid sense of the word, and she is completely off-limits.

The whole Lovecroft family is to be kept at arm’s length if I’m to avoid the tongue-lashing of a lifetime.

Usually, I’m good at following orders. For them, unfortunately, I falter.

A knock rattles my apartment. Its volume suggests irritation, and its speed suggests urgency.

On opening the front door, I find my forbidden best friend of too many years, Jade Lovecroft.

She wears a frown like fangs and speaks with a voice like venom.

Only those equipped with the antidote come away from interactions with her unscathed.

“What happened?” I sigh.

“I need food,” she says.

A glance down at her knuckles clues me into her situation. They are wrapped in ivory gauze, but bruises trickle out from beneath it. They crawl down her fingers like a case of gangrene.

“You need a doctor,” I correct her.

She scoffs, shoving her way past me. What she lacks in height, she makes up for with brute strength.

Though she’s Clara’s sister, the two are nothing alike.

If Clara is icicles and overcast skies, Jade is blazing sunlight at the height of July, a scorching red-sand desert with inescapable fury.

She tramples over the welcome mat and leaves a trail of brown gravel on the white tiles of my kitchen floor.

Her hands tear open the cabinets with an unspoken vendetta, and she rips a bag of potato chips from my alphabetized pantry as though the pantry might have wrestled her for it.

“I’m entering another tournament,” she announces.

“I thought you were done street fighting.” I start on the preparations for a pitcher of lemonade, tossing her the lemons to pulverize.

“I need the money. It’s as good a job as any.”

“It’s a coping mechanism, and a stupid one at that.”

She reduces the lemon in her hand to citrusy entrails entangled in the thick spirals of a crushed rind.

I curse under my breath and follow it with an apology.

I shouldn’t have mentioned it; I’m never to bring this topic up first. Jade is sensitive about it year-round, but this weekend marks the ten-year anniversary of her parents’ death.

It hangs in the air like smoke carried for miles, leaving a noxious stench on all it touches.

Death has a way of tainting life.

Jade was happy once. Her gaze was sharp, and she existed at the center of a singularity.

She saw only possibility, only hope. She wanted to be a physicist, a video game designer, and a firefighter.

She wanted to rescue animals from kill shelters, become a lawyer for underrepresented communities, and learn how to farm vegetables in inhospitable environments.

If no one stopped Jade Lovecroft, she very well may have become president.

Then we received the phone call.

We were seventeen and much too cool to attend a junior ballet recital.

It was meant to begin at eight o’clock. At seven, we were buried in a console battling for crudely pixelated coins.

At seven fifteen, we were raiding the liquor cabinet for swigs of vodka neither of us could keep down.

At seven thirty, red and blue lights were pouring through the windows.

“Jade Lovecroft?” an officer said, his navy uniform pressed to perfection. “Your sister is in the hospital.”

Jade snickered, unmistakably tipsy. Then her face blanched at the thought of tiny Clara in a cast. “Did she actually break a leg?”

Someone better equipped to handle the shattering of a teenager’s heart should have been sent.

Officer Thornefield and his overgrown mustache were not ready.

He furrowed his brows, sucked in a breath of preparation, then explained the reason for his arrival like an android attempting empathy for the first time.

Jade cried for weeks. She might have mourned longer if not for the vitriol that developed after she visited the site of the incident.

Her grandparents brought her there for closure before moving the last of her things into their lavender-scented, doily-infested apartment.

It only opened the wound wider, and Jade’s been swimming in blood ever since.

Her parents were her Polaris. Without them, she sees no light, no direction, and no hope.

There is only agony, anger, and an aimless trek forward with no destination.

“What do you need the money for?” I offer her a glass and an unspoken apology.

She huffs, her breath rattling on the way out. “I got into that criminology program, and pity scholarships will only get you so far.”

“Come again?” I drop my lemonade mid-sip, incredulous. “I thought you withdrew your application.”

“Yeah, well . . .” She exhales, stalling. “I didn’t. It’s not a big deal, so don’t make it one.”

“Can I give you a hug, or will I get a black eye for trying?”

Her knuckles flex, setting off a succession of crackles and pops.

“Noted. Have you told anyone else?” I’m referring to Clara. I raise my brows. She raises hers right back. “She’s your sister, Jade. She’d want to celebrate with you.”

“Don’t give me that. You and I both know the real reason you want us on speaking terms, and it has nothing to do with the sanctity of sibling bonds.” She launches a potato chip, sharpened into a shard, in my direction.

“I don’t like seeing you two like this.”

She scoffs. “It’s bad enough I had to spend two miserable years living with her after the accident. Must you insist on subjecting me to more of her?”

“Don’t you miss her?” I do insist, ironic as it is. “You used to be so close.”

“The circumstances changed, and we changed with them. Drop it, Warner.”

“All I’m saying is, you might be happier together than apart.

There are times when I never want to speak to Joey again, but I’d never be able to just leave him.

I get why you moved out of your grandma’s place the second you could.

The whole place smelled like old-lady soap, and the porcelain dolls were creepy.

I get why you want to hold Clara at arm’s length, but she needs you more than you realize.

She needs you now more than ever, and maybe . . . maybe you need her too.”

At the apex of my next inhale, she shoves me into the nearest wall of plaster and holds me to it by my shoulders.

Her eyes are bottled lightning, and her teeth are clenched and bared like a wolf’s.

If I push much further, she won’t hesitate to deliver on the promise made by her knuckles moments ago. So I concede, but only partially.

“Clara, Joey, and I are going upstate this weekend,” I say. “It’s just a quick trip—three nights, tops—in Mom’s cabin past Blackstone.”

“And?” she growls.

“Consider this an invitation. We could celebrate your acceptance, all the tournaments you’ve been winning, and .

. .” I smile, though the weight gathering in my chest drags it down.

It’s half-hearted, in the sense that only half my heart escapes the increasing gravity.

“We’ll be together. This weekend isn’t going to be easy for either of you.

Even if you’re not ready to let her back in, it could be a good way to test the waters. ”

The way she narrows her eyes is a feral flare of warning. My eyelid aches in preparation.

“Just think about it. I’m picking Clara up in about an hour, though. So if you don’t mind, I have to head out.”

Slowly, she backs away from the wall, allowing me to peel my bruising back off it.

I sweep my jacket up in one arm and hook an indigo backpack onto my shoulder with the other.

The flares in her eyes are doused in sunlight.

We stare at one another, caught in a standstill but not a standoff.

I’m not her enemy. She isn’t mine. The only adversary we face is the one all human beings fight against.

She avoids Clara because, by avoiding Clara, she sidesteps the hungry maw of death and memory. She left Clara because, in leaving Clara, she was able to keep the pain of their loss in her periphery.

“Fine.” She speaks at last. “I’ll come, but only because making Joey third wheel is cruel. I’ll keep the kid company. Pick me up at the corner of Aspen and Deadhead after you grab him from school.”

Tightening the gauze around her purpling fingers, she starts for the door on footsteps hastened by frustration. I can’t help but smile, watching as her platform boots pick up some of the gravel they’d spread on arrival. “See you then, Jade.”

“Whatever.” She slams the door. That’s her way of saying I love you anyway.

As Heat Wave Jade dissipates, I pull out my phone to text Clara, wandering into the storm tides of an entirely different natural disaster.