Helix academy
1421 Words
The back door opened and Naza leaned out.
"Is this the part where—"
"Yes," all four grandchildren said simultaneously.
She came outside, dish towel gone, and sat down on the step beside the group with the unselfconscious immediacy of someone who had been listening from the kitchen for the last twenty minutes and was done pretending otherwise.
Old David looked at her.
She looked back at him with an expression that said she was forty three years old and did not require permission to sit where she wanted to sit.
He smiled.
"So did you save her?" Eli said. "The girl?"
"Her name was Elena," David said.
"Did you SAVE her—"
"Dark skinned," David continued, at exactly his own pace. "Blue eyes — her mother's eyes. Tanisha's eyes."
He paused.
Thought about it.
"She was seventeen," he said. "About Tobey's age."
"Blue eyes on dark skin?" Tobey said from the back seat, processing this information with the focused attention he usually reserved for tech problems. "That girl is gonna look like an absolute model. Like genuinely. That's a spectacular combination."
David actually laughed at that. Short and real.
"I'm serious," Tobey said. "I'm speaking objectively, as someone who appreciates—"
"We understand," Kai said, from beside him, in the tone of someone who did not appreciate further elaboration.
Tobey elaborated anyway, briefly, before reading the room and stopping.
David was still smiling when he glanced over at Lia.
The smile faded slightly.
She was looking out her window. Had been since they got back in the car after Derek and Tanisha's. She wasn't tense exactly — nothing you could point to — but she was somewhere else. Quiet in the wrong direction.
He watched her for a second.
"Hey," he said.
She turned. "Hmm?"
"What's going on."
"Nothing." She said it easily. Smiled briefly. Looked back at the window.
In the back seat Tobey clocked this exchange, said absolutely nothing, and turned to Kai with the expression of someone settling in for quality entertainment.
Kai looked out his window with total disinterest.
Tobey watched David anyway.
David looked at Lia. She was vibrant — that was the thing, that was just what she was, the particular energy she brought to every room and every conversation, the way she filled space without trying to. This quiet wasn't her quiet. This was something sitting on top of her.
He thought about it for a moment.
Then he leaned slightly toward her.
"Are you shy?" he said. Low. Almost a whisper.
She turned so fast.
"I am not shy," she said. Which would have been more convincing if her ears hadn't done what they did.
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"Because you've been very quiet since—"
"I said I'm not shy David—"
"I'm just asking—"
"Well stop asking—"
"You're blushing—"
"I am not—"
"A little bit—"
"I will physically harm you—"
He was grinning now and she could see it and that made it worse and she looked away and then back and then away again and then she laughed — the involuntary one, the one that escaped — and after that she just talked. Whatever it was she'd been sitting on quietly since the car incident, it came loose and she talked and he listened and the window she'd been staring out of stopped being interesting.
From the back seat Tobey watched all of this with the quiet satisfaction of a man attending a very good film.
"You know," he said, to nobody in particular. "A couple that knows each other that well—"
Lia turned around.
The gun was already in her hand. c****d. Pointing at Tobey with the calm precision of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment and had mentally rehearsed it.
Tobey's mouth stopped working.
His hands came up slowly.
"I told you," Lia said pleasantly. "Next time. I would shoot you." She tilted her head. "Seems like the day has come."
"Lia—"
"Tobey."
"I was just—"
"Tobey."
"Okay." He swallowed. Hard. Multiple times. "Okay. I'm sorry. I deeply, sincerely, genuinely apologize for everything I have ever said and everything I was about to say and everything I might say in the future—"
"I'll let you live," she said. "For now."
She turned back around and held the gun out toward David.
David looked at it.
Then he looked at her.
He pushed her hand gently back toward her.
"Keep it," he said.
She looked at him.
"You've had my back since day one," he said. Simply. "That's yours. As a—" He thought about the word. "Token."
Lia looked down at the gun in her hand. Something moved through her face that she let move through it without stopping it.
"Awwwwn," Tobey said softly, from the back seat. "So lov—"
Lia's elbow went back and connected with his knee.
"OW—"
"You never learn," she said serenely, facing forward.
David let out a short, sharp laugh — real and unguarded.
From the back seat, through Tobey's ongoing commentary about his knee, Kai's mouth moved. Small. Brief.
"At least that'll shut him up," he said.
Tobey looked at him with wounded dignity. "No it won't, Mr Cool Guy. For the record. No it absolutely won't."
Helix Academy appeared at the end of the fourth street like a bad answer to a question you'd been hoping wouldn't be asked.
It was a proper school building — brick, wide, the kind of architecture that said institution and stability and permanence. It had a green gate, like Derek said. A yard. Windows along the front that had stayed mostly intact.
And across the main signage — HELIX ACADEMY, in the large letters that schools use to announce themselves — something dark had been dragged or pressed or left in a way that read like a warning.
Blood. Spelling nothing. Just there.
"How did that get there," Tobey said.
"I dunno," David said.
They both looked at it for another moment.
"Cool name for a school though," Tobey added.
They got out. The air here was different — stiller than still, the particular held quality of a place that had something in it.
Kai looked at the building. Looked at his watch map briefly. Looked at the group.
"Two man teams," he said. "But we switch. David — you take Tobey, go left wing. Lia, you're with me. Right wing." He looked at each of them. "Leave nothing unchecked. She's in there or she isn't — we find out which." His jaw set slightly. "Her life is on us until we know."
They went to the jeep.
David lifted the weapons bag and set it on the hood and they each took what they took — no discussion, no deliberation, each person's hand going to the thing that was theirs.
Lia's hand went straight to her Glock. David's gift. She checked it once and holstered it.
David picked up the HK-416 — felt the weight of it, checked the magazine, slung it across his shoulder. Added the survival knife at his hip.
Kai took the M4A1 carbine, smooth and practiced, plus the Glock 17 at his side.
Tobey picked up the AK-47, looked at it with the expression of someone choosing a favourite, and grinned.
They stood in front of Helix Academy.
Four people in military armour in the quiet of a street that used to have children on it.
"Roger," David said.
"Roger," said Kai.
"Roger," said Lia.
"Roger roger," said Tobey. He caught the looks. "Sorry. Just the one. Roger."
They went in.
The grandchildren looked at old David with a specific kind of awe that has nothing to do with age or wisdom and everything to do with the image of someone you love holding an assault rifle in front of a blood-stained school.
"Grandpa David and Grandpa Tobey are so cool," Theo said.
"I haven't even gotten to the good part yet," David said.
"You're already cool," Eli insisted, with the absolute conviction of a seven year old.
Amara nodded. Naza, on the step, said nothing but her expression said she agreed.
Old David looked at all of them.
These people. This porch. This afternoon in 2200 that he hadn't planned and didn't deserve and was grateful for in a way that went too deep for words.
He picked up his tea.
"Alright," he said. "The good part."
- Writer
