Avery
“What happened now?” I asked, taking in the charred sofa and the discarded fire extinguishers littering the floor next to Azda’s rocking chair.
“What is the Caribbean?” Azda said in response to the Jeopardy answer at play on the television screen before telling me, “Another Red Vine incident.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Azda, we talked about this. I bought you guys two huge containers last time so this wouldn’t happen.”
“Who is Jefferson Davis?” she told Alex Trebek on the screen before giving me a shrug. “She finished hers on the drive and wanted mine.”
I let my backpack drop to the wooden floor with a thud. “So just let her have them, for God’s sake.” I was exhausted, filthy, and out of patience.
“I did.” Her tone became defensive. “I agreed to share mine with her. But she wanted me to keep the lid off. She likes them stale; I don’t. And they were my Red Vines—”
“Who cares? She’s nine. It’s just cheap candy. You’re the adult. C’mon, you know how much soft Red Vines set her off.”
“What is the Guggenheim?” she said in answer to the television screen, then gave a celebratory fist-pump when Alex Trebek confirmed her answer as correct and the contestant’s response as incorrect.
“Azda, memorizing the answers to rerun Jeopardy shows doesn’t count. It’s not the same as guessing it right the first time.”
She huffed. “Says who?”
“Common sense and Alex Trebek, for starters.”
“Bah,” she shooed a dismissive hand at me. “I am a Jeopardy champion.”
“We can’t afford to keep destroying every house we rent. Aside from the cost, we risk drawing attention.”
Her milky eyes cut to me. “The darkness grows in that child, Avery. Avoiding parenting her isn’t going to stop it.”
“Avoiding—” My mouth fell open. “Do you have any idea what I go through in any given day just to keep her safe?”
“Sloane cannot get her way in everything. Your job is to shepherd her, not simply protect her.”
“I’m trying, damnit!”
“I am blind, not deaf. You must try harder. It’s like our ancestors say: when your fingers are frostbitten and your toenails have fallen off from herding, only then do your sheep belong to—”
“She’s not a sheep,” I said through clenched teeth. “She’s a child. I don’t need a sheep-herding analogy from you right now, okay? I’ve got superbeasts wielding crazy-scary powers coming to kill me. I need to shower, sleep, and plan. I don’t have energy to debate sheep-herding or stale Red Vines with you tonight.”
I stomped to the kitchen, snagged a beer from the fridge, and guzzled half the bottle before returning and plopping down onto the ruined couch. Seven a.m. was as good a time as any for a beer, right?
Azda remained silent through the next several Jeopardy questions, even forgoing the daily double as her milky pupils stared unseeingly at the television screen, her rocking chair creaking against the wooden floor. She was half-blind from glaucoma and cataracts—which she refused to see a real doctor about. But she didn’t miss much. It was one of the reasons I trusted her with Sloane.
I knew she was right. I just didn’t know how to fix it—how to fix Sloane. Or my relationship with her.
Azda had been a close friend of my late paternal grandmother. She was the only link to my biological parentage that I had. The irony was that she’d come looking for me in order to fulfill some mysterious promise she said she’d made to my dying grandmother—a promise that Azda had never to this day revealed. She said it was because it didn’t translate from the Navajo language to English in a way that I’d understand it.
When Sloane was almost two years old, Azda had come knocking on our door. Literally. Where supernatural rogue hunters had failed, an old, half-blind Navajo woman who’d lived on a reservation for most of her life, and who’d barely understood how to use the Internet or a phone at the time, had managed to locate us and show up on our doorstep. That alone had earned her props in my book.
Sloane had also tolerated Azda’s presence from day one far better than she did anyone else’s—almost better than she tolerated my presence at times. So I’d decided Azda’s involvement in our lives might prove useful, particularly given the Navajo connection it afforded us. The ability to hide out on a reservation when necessary was a valuable perk of my heritage indeed.
The transportation logistics that had come with having a half-blind caregiver for my toddler had been tricky to navigate at first, but Azda and Sloane managed to get around by car on their own for the most part these days when they needed to. I’d found a guy to help me jerry-rig an autonomous Mercedes-Benz a few years ago so that Sloane was able to program it. Sloane and Azda had driven up from Arizona by themselves two days ago—and had consumed too many Red Vines on the way, apparently.
“I’m sorry,” I said, breaking the silence between us. “I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Maybe I did,” I admitted with a dry chuckle. My eyes lifted from my beer to meet her milky pupils. “I just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know how to reach her.”
“Dark and light energies exist all around us, Avery. Influences not of this world, and not of the next, call to each of us.” She halted her rocking chair. Abruptly, her eyes flicked back to the television screen, and she answered, “What is Istanbul?” before continuing. “But for Sloane, the dark energy lives inside of her. It breathes every breath with her. It speaks to her constantly. You are her mother. You must speak louder than the darkness, or you will lose her forever.”
I nodded and pushed up off the couch as Alex Trebek recaptured Azda’s attention.
The truth was I barely knew how to nurture the light within myself, much less foster it in another person. That was the problem. I was good for punching darkness in the face with more darkness—that was my greatest talent.
I’d been a fool to think that the three years of decent parenting I’d received from my eighth foster mom could prepare me to be a mother myself.
I found Sloane in her new room, sitting atop the bed. I noted that the little Disney suitcase I’d gotten her for her ninth birthday last month was laying open on the floor by the dresser, but she hadn’t unpacked anything yet. She was probably wondering how long we’d really be here. She’d been living on the run and out of suitcases for most of her short life.
She was talking to herself. Only she wasn’t speaking; it was more like humming. And not a tune, either. She would often vocalize hum-like sounds and moans in varying inflections for hours, nodding her head and responding with facial expressions as if she were having an internal back-and-forth dialogue—or perhaps multiple conversations. Her eyes often remained blank as she did this, drifting listlessly or staring into space.
Sometimes she’d unexpectedly burst into tears. Other times, she’d start screaming for seemingly no reason at all. Most recently, she’d started setting things around her on fire. With her mind.
She never allowed me or anyone else to comfort her when she cried. She didn’t want anyone to touch her when she started screaming either, but the contact was often necessary in order to physically silence her—particularly when she awoke screaming from one of her recurring nightmares.
I feared she’d somehow developed this new ability to telekinetically set fires in an effort to create even more distance between herself and the few people she was forced to be in contact with.
I’d held her near constantly as an infant. Nursed her for almost a year until one day she’d stopped—refusing to latch on or take any interest anymore. It had seemed abrupt to me at the time, but I knew babies were supposed to wean when they were ready, and mothers were supposed to take cues from their babies, so I did.
That was the beginning. The void between us had continued to grow ever since, morphing into an abyss the breadth of an ocean.
She stopped hum-talking to herself, and her amethyst eyes settled on me in the doorway, taking in my bedraggled appearance and bloodstained clothing with a quiet apathy that belied her youthful innocence.
At nine, my daughter had the makings of a great beauty already—with her midnight black hair, olive complexion, high cheekbones, stubborn chin, and regal, upturned nose. But it was those eyes—the unusual hue of those strangely vacant yet all-seeing eyes—that had always caused people to take notice, to stop and stare.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t come back this time, Avery.”
Her words were spoken without malice or scorn—without any emotion at all. I didn’t think she said them to be hurtful. She said them every single time I returned home as if simply confessing a fact.
And even though I was prepared, it somehow gutted me just the same.
Every time.
She’d stopped calling me mom at age three, when she realized that Avery was what everyone else called me. It bothered me a little, although I tried not to let it. I rationalized that it was better to be called by my given name than something rude and random—like what Sloane had recently begun calling Azda.
“Well, of course I came back,” I said with a practiced smile. “Moms always come home.”
“If you were smarter, you wouldn’t,” she told me, her expression frank. She really believed it.
That was the toughest part to reconcile. That and the fact that she spoke like a twenty-year-old already at times. Still, I attempted to respond to her as if she were a preteen—as if I didn’t realize her IQ was already higher than mine.
I shrugged and teased, “Maybe I live to disappoint you. I hear that’s what moms are for.”
“You won’t live much longer if you keep coming back.” She tilted her head in indication of my bloodstained clothing as I fought the lump forming in my throat, knowing what she was going to say next.
I nodded mechanically as I tried to emotionally prepare myself. I had yet to manage a good response to this line of conversation we’d been repeating lately.
“You’re going to die when they come for me,” she announced. There was no emotion in her violet eyes as she said it. There never was. “I’ve seen it. It happens that way in every dream.” She was simply reciting the facts, as she knew them. “You always die. I can never stop it.”
I nodded. The tears slid down my cheeks as she stared stoically back at me. It was the statement of fact that she spoke at the end that always made me cry: “I can never stop it.”
She said it with zero emotion, yet the meaning was there: In her dreams, she had tried to stop me from dying. More than once. Perhaps in every dream.
My daughter didn’t want me dead. For a little girl prophesied to be the ultimate Rogue, it was as strong of a profession of love as I could ever expect to get. It filled me with hope. Hope that Sloane could connect. That she could love. Maybe in a way that would always be different than what the world wanted from her, but it still counted.
It fucking counted. And I would make the world see that it did.
“I wasn’t supposed to be born. I was a mistake.” More statements of fact.
“No.” I shook my head, wiping my tears away. “No, it wasn’t a mistake, Sloane.” I forced an easy, gentle smile as I took a few steps into the room, careful not to come too close. Getting too close to her physically too quickly often set her off. “I wanted you to be born. And your … soul … wanted to come here,” I faltered. I’d never been religious, and I still struggled with the concept of souls, even though I’d felt firsthand the part of me that had survived death. “So we could be here together on earth … and have fun … adventures together.”
She gave me a dubious look that called bullshit. I couldn’t blame her. We didn’t really have a lot of fun. Hiding and running for your life all the time got tiresome fast.
“I can’t have fun, Avery. I can only do bad things. The voices know. If you could hear them, you’d know, too.”
“What!” I laughingly shrieked, while inside, her words eviscerated me. “Are you kidding me? You were born to have fun! My mission in life is to have fun. It’s impossible for my daughter not to be fun, too.”
“You don’t know that. You just like to believe it. You and the old blind spot like to pretend you see good in me so you can sleep better.”
I took another step closer, reminding myself that I needed to ask her at some point why she’d started calling Azda “the old blind spot.”
“Look, Sloane, I did some … not-so-nice things as a kid. Most of the adults around me all thought I was … well, pretty much evil, and that I was destined to only do bad things in the world. I heard them tell me so for years, and their voices stayed in my memory, playing in my head long after those adults were no longer around. But they were wrong.”
“I was supposed to die,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me, her eyes drifting to a corner of the room. “I was supposed to take the voices with me and stay dead. It was a mistake when I was born.”
How I despised those voices in her head. I wished I could strangle every one of them. “It wasn’t a mistake, Sloane. I was there. I wanted you to be born. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
It was the truth. Sloane was my greatest love and life purpose. If I had a soul mate, she was it for me. More so than Marcus had ever been. I hadn’t realized it until my death—when I’d experienced how easily I’d been able to separate from Marcus. I’d loved my fiancé very much. He and I had shared a strong connection, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t enough to hold me to him in death. I’d had a stronger bond with my best friend, Sloane, and even that hadn’t been enough to keep me from my baby, Sloane.
She was my reason for being. I had come back to life for her. And I would never give up on her.
“That’s what you have to say.” She shrugged at the empty corner of the room as she dismissed my words. “You won’t think I’m the best thing that happened to you when you’re killed because of me.”
“Yes. I will, baby. I’ll still think it.” I knelt on the floor by the edge of her bed, trying to catch her line of sight. “If it happens that I have to leave you because I leave this world, you’ll still be worth every moment I’ve gotten to spend with you. You’ll always be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She didn’t make eye contact with me, and she began hum-talking to herself once more. I stayed and watched her for a while. Watched as she became more engrossed in her strange, internal discussion, as she shut the world around her out until her entire focus was inward—on the darkness that lived and breathed inside of her.
Unlike the rest of the supernatural world, I refused to accept that it was an indomitable darkness borne of magic or prophecy. Although, sometimes I felt that might’ve been easier for me to face.
My greater fear was that this was a darkness I already knew. One I had seen and faced … and lost to before.
“Peter has always reminded me of my most delicate garden flowers.”
I snorted, eyeing the old bat’s grandson with disdain where he sat on the swing set all the way on the opposite side of the yard—too scared to come near me. His head hung low, and his long, auburn bangs blew across his face, partially concealing it. I could still make out the black eye I’d given him the day before, though, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.
Poor kid. He was already weak enough. The last thing he needed was a grandma who compared him to a fucking flower. He probably got his ass beat daily at school. I would find out soon enough when I started going with him in a few days.
“Do you know why I picked you, Averhilda?”
I was about to say the extra cash from the state that I knew foster parents got, but instead, I went with, “Don’t really care.” I gave her my best bored, “fuck off” face that got me slapped by most adults. When she didn’t hit me, I sassed, “My name’s Avery. Remember it if you want me to answer.”
She smiled and nodded. “Okay. Avery, then.” Her white hair was streaked with dirt. She even had dirt smudged on her face.
I missed the smell of the city already.
“I chose you because you are not a flower,” she told me.
Oh, boy. I had a live one here.
“Flowers are beautiful, but fragile,” she continued to ramble. “They can be temperamental. Their existence fleeting.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners despite her smile as they darted a glance at her loser grandson. “You remind me of a lovely, stalwart garden weed, Avery. The kind of weed that grows strong and proud despite less than favorable soil conditions.”
I rolled my eyes as she bent to pat more dirt around whatever she was planting. I decided I’d hit her grandson every chance I got until she sent me back. Anything was better than hanging out in Bumfuck with a gardening old lady and a boy too slow to block a punch.
“A weed that can survive even when it’s starved of light and water. A weed that has managed to thrive even though it has received no love at all.” She paused in her dirt patting to look up at me. She smiled and bit her wobbly old lip, looking as if she might cry. “Because your power is sourced from within, child.”
Aw, crap. “Gardens suck,” I interjected. Lame comeback, Avery. Her weird, emotionally charged gardening lecture was making me uncomfortable, though, giving me this terrible hollow feeling in my chest.
She laughed like I’d said something hysterical. “Hellfire, Avery, gardens are life. And the weed is the hardiest, most enduring plant in any garden.” She looked around her ugly garden full of random weeds and flowers and dying tomato plants like it was some kind of paradise to take pride in, before returning her gaze to me.
“We live in a world filled with delicate flowers. It’s a rare gift to be born a weed. Be glad of it. You were meant to rule the garden, dear. You may choose to be a weed who overpowers and strangles the delicate flowers around her, or you may choose to protect them.” Her eyes cut to Peter. “Maybe even teach them to be stronger flowers.”
Now we were getting somewhere. The awful hollow feeling in my chest fell away the minute I knew the score. Gardener Granny was speaking my language now.
“You want me to keep other kids from bullying Peter,” I concluded. “Because he’s a weak flower who gets beat up by weeds like me.” Why hadn’t she just said that?
Her brow wrinkled and she nodded. “That’s right, Avery.” The sad yet hopeful look in her blue eyes suddenly made me feel powerful. Less than forty-eight hours in and already I owned these country hicks.
The old lady could think me a weed if she wanted to. A scrapper was what I was. Some had used the term “hustler” before. There was no great mystery to how the world worked. You figured out what people were after and then figured out how to give it to them in exchange for what you wanted. It was that simple. And I was good at it.
I looked over at pathetic Peter, then at his pathetic grandma. “Yeah, I guess I can do that,” I told her with a shrug. “But it’s gonna cost you.”
She nodded and bit her lip again, only this time it looked like she was trying to hold back laughter rather than tears. “Okay.” She held her soil-coated hand out for me to shake. “Let’s cut a deal then.”
I took her bony, wrinkly white hand and gave it a firm shake, our palms mashing the soil between them.
The deal I struck with Grandma Ellie at age eleven was a momentous turning point in my childhood. Being placed with Ellie resulted in one of the most important shifts of my life. My happiest childhood memories were of the three years I spent befriending Peter while living at Ellie’s home.
I protected Peter from bullying kids at school. And I grew to love him like he was my own brother. But he remained a delicate flower. Try as I might, I never managed to strengthen him. Not while Ellie was alive, and not after her death that would thrust us both back into the state’s care.
I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes as the warm shower spray rained down on me, blocking the memories of the years that followed Ellie’s death from my mind as I washed away the sins of my day.
Sloane wasn’t Peter. She never would be. No matter how much she spoke of death, she didn’t mean it. She didn’t understand what she was saying.
My daughter was a stalwart weed. Like me.
She was destined to grow and thrive and weather any storm. I’d known it from the moment our souls connected: She was a weed like me. I wouldn’t accept otherwise.
Weeds didn’t give up. Weeds clung to life even when the delicate flowers around them they loved most withered and died.
Peter wasn’t the first or last fragile soul to enter and leave my life. But he remained my deepest loss and greatest regret.
There had been times when I’d hated him for being weak. Resented how easy it had seemed for him to give up. To leave me behind.
But that would always be the hardest part about being a weed: Seeing the fragile flowers around you give up and fade away. Not understanding why they were made that way—why they couldn’t seem to change. Watching the inevitable, dark storms brewing within them and not being able to stop it.
Knowing you’d always be the one left behind, because it was written in your DNA to survive.