“Race you to the car!”
“Sony, stop running!” I yell.
Her laughter vibrates down her body like chills, dirty white sneakers smacking against the sidewalk. The back exit isn’t busy this time of day. We manage to make it through without anyone stopping us and asking where the hell we think we’re going.
Neo’s hood hides his face as he scurries with his papers nestled against his chest. C is right behind him, fumbling with the car keys.
“Crap–crap–crap–” he curses under his breath, finally managing to unlock the doors. Neo climbs into the truck’s front seat while Sony throws herself in the back.
Hikari ran back inside, to get something important, she said. I keep looking over my shoulder, waiting for her to come running back out.
“You can drive, right?” Neo asks.
“Sure,” C says.
“Sure?”
“I can drive.”
“But you have your license, right?”
“I took my driver’s test.”
“And passed, right?”
“Neo, it’s rude to ask about grades.”
“It’s rude to get us killed in a car accident.”
“There’s Hikari!” Sony yells, pointing out the window.
Sundress swaying around her legs and sprinting back to us, Hikari throws an arm up in the air, a prize in hand. The metal spirals catch the light, the front page torn off. Hikari smiles at me through the glass. Victorious smile. Contagious smile.
C starts the car.
Hikari doesn’t bother opening the door. She throws herself through the open window, flipping over, her legs landing on my lap. We all shriek at the same time. Hikari’s glasses almost fly off her face.
“The Hit List!” Sony yells.
“Our Hit List,” Hikari pants, reaching across me to kiss her face. “Let’s go, C!” she yells.
Neo huffs out a breath, bracing. “Put on your seatbelts.”
“Put on some music!” Sony throws both arms up, bouncing in her seat. C turns on the radio, the engine rumbling as he drives it out of the parking space and onto the road. The turn is a tad dramatic, more of a swerve than a turn, really. The visitor pass on the dashboard flies to the opposite end. Neo hits an imaginary brake with his foot, holding onto the door and seat for dear life.
“Wanna hold my hand?” C asks.
“I want your hands on the wheel. Look where you’re going! Coeur!” Neo tries to protest, but before he can, C interlaces their fingers and brings Neo’s knuckles to his lips. He gives him a side-eye, a crooked grin playing on his face. “Let’s go have that 16th-century heartbreak on a beach,” he whispers.
Neo doesn’t blush like you’d think he would. Instead, he looks directly at C’s profile, unsaid gratitude of sorts mustering behind it.
As we pull out of the street, the hospital lessens in the rearview mirror, like a mountain peak slowly disappearing into the clouds.
I look over my shoulder again, this time at the buildings swallowing my home’s image. A nervous flutter runs through me. The further we get, the more I think maybe we’re making a mistake.
I can hear the water, the bridge we near with every ticking second. I can hear the snow, the shadows, all of it whispering that I am violating a law of nature, that I’m spreading myself thin across my world, straying too far from my palace.
We near the bridge, my entire body tensing. C turns into another lane. I brace for impact as we drive into the tunnel that takes us to the other side of the river.
I grab Hikari’s hand hard and press my face against her sternum. My instinct to shield her from the dark overtakes me. I hear the echoes of what has been and what will be. Then my eyes shut, and the shadows envelop us.
“Sam,” Hikari whispers, her lips against my ear. “Sam, look.”
When I do, I realize no one is in the tunnel but us. C’s truck is lonesome, trekking the road. And above us, light streaks in stripes across the ceiling, moving so quickly you can barely catch them.
C drives on, dragging his thumb back and forth over Neo’s knuckles on the gear shift. Neo lets the cool air caress his face, leaning back against the headrest with closed eyes. Sony chuckles, reaching out the window like she could grab freedom by the hand.
Hikari holds me, leaning her head all the way back on the door and staring up at the cavernous lights. She has no hair to flow behind her. Even so, the wind hasn’t lost its infatuation. It takes to her as it did on that rooftop on our very first night.
“You’re beautiful,” I breathe.
Hikari slowly raises her head, still rocking to the music. She links her wrists behind my neck.
“So are you, my beautiful set of bones,” she whispers back.
“Not anymore,” I say, leaning into her when she tries to lean away. “You brought me to life.”
“And I’m only just beginning,” Hikari says. She kisses me on the nose, quick and briefly connecting. “I’ve yet to make you dream, Yorick.”
We emerge from the tunnel, on the other side of the river. The hospital has ceased to pull me back for I can stretch as far as its influence allows. My friends and Hikari are stronger.
We have no provisions, no stolen apples, no safety nets. Our only possessions are made of ink and paper and the clothes on our backs. We are aimless, but aimless adventures become the greatest stories.
This is it, I think, this is our escape.
—
Our first stop is unprompted. We were driving along to classic rock stations, when C said he was hungry. Neo reminds him he has about five dollars in his wallet. Hikari then says she has ten. Sony says she has ninety cents. (Sony is a natural freeloader, as thieves must be. Those ninety cents came from a fountain she decided to swim in the other day for no particular reason.)
C drives the truck to a parking lot with a variety of stores and restaurants all stuck to each other.
I’ve never been this far from the hospital before. As such, I’ve never had the luck of smelling a fast food restaurant. The scent of the french fries is ethereal, like palpable heat and salt. We eat them in the car.
Hikari gets ketchup on her face. I mock her, and she stuffs fries in my mouth to shut me up. Sony plays I spy with Neo. He ends up eating about half his portion and giving her the rest. She eats like a starving animal, her mouth a veritable black hole for hamburgers.
Just as Sony finishes chewing a bite the size of a tennis ball, she screams.
“Are you okay!?” C asks.
Hikari instinctively reaches under the front seat. We brought an oxygen tank just in case.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Neo yells.
“Look!” Sony’s greasy hands press against the glass as she points to the building adjacent to our restaurant.
—
“Hi. Can I help you?” The attendant behind the desk has a single nose piercing and trails of ink mapping his neck from jaw to collar. He sits with a magazine on a crossed leg, his attention diverted to the five nearly hairless people who just walked into his parlor.
“We would like five tattoos, please!” Sony exclaims.
“Um, okay,” the front desk man says, looking between all of us like he isn’t sure whether we’re in a cult or just think military cuts are in season. “Do you have any designs in mind? For the cost–”
“Oh no, we don’t have any money,” Sony says.
The man opens his mouth, and nothing comes out for a moment.
“But you want tattoos?” he asks.
“Yes!” Sony says. “We are tragically ill. Neo, this sickly young chap here, he’ll probably drop dead tomorrow!”
Neo nods his chin. “Sup.”
“Uh, hi–Boss! I need help up here!”
Emerging from behind another wall, a man considerably balder than we are marches out of his office.
“What the fuck do you want, Carl?”
Carl points at us cluelessly. “They don’t have money.”
Bald boss cocks a brow at us. “You don’t have money?”
“We have six dollars and ninety cents,” C says.
Sony snickers. “Hah, nice.”
“Get out,” Bald boss says, then turns back to Carl. “There. Was that so hard?”
“But–they’re tragically ill,” Carl says.
“So?” Bald boss smacks the back of his head in a very Eric sort of way. “We don’t take pity cases because they claim to be pity cases.”
Sony clears her throat. At this point in time, the remaining tattoo artists in the parlor have already started looking in our general direction.
C bends down to our fearless leader’s level. “Sony, before you open your mouth, please remember that I’ve never been beaten up before, and I don’t know how well I’d handle it.”
Neo holds his manuscript against his chest, nudging C with his elbow. “It’s fine. I’ll teach you.”
“Sir! A moment of your attention,” Sony calls.
Hikari looks at me. “She’s gonna get us arrested, isn’t she?”
“We may not have a method of payment, but money itself is a scheme!” Sony begins, quite theatrically, for that matter. “A story is worth more than a crumpled bill. Money is an illusion of security. And yeah, yeah, money can’t buy happiness, but you can’t skip over the most important part: Money can’t replace happiness. It can’t replace a memory of dancing on a rooftop or the adrenaline you felt running away with your friends.
“So we all agreed that the crumpled bill is worth something as a society. Do you know what conforming to society is, sir? It’s cowardly! I mean, look at us! Sure, our diseases don’t make us who we are, but diseases are like pets. When you’re out with one in public, some people are repulsed, some are intrigued, but everyone is watching. It’s all they can see. And Death may as well be a pet leashed to our wrists.
My point is that we don’t have the luxury of being cowards. We’re like everybody else. We’re like you even. We just know the value of today is infinitely greater than the value of tomorrow.
So take a risk! Make a lousy investment and tattoo some people with missing body parts, security be damned! Because you know in your heart that sharing this story and a few laughs will have more value than making a few bucks ever will.
“Now. Are you going to take the pity case or not? Cause I’m about to faint from lack of air here, so I could really use somewhere to sit.”
Sony’s voice falters at the end as she lays her upper body weight on the counter. Hikari helps her remain upright from behind while bald boss stares in bewilderment. He blinks a few times, his jaw slightly parted.
Then eventually, he marches back into his office, grabs a coat, and starts to leave.
“You. Sit in that chair,” he says to Sony. “Carl, you take them.”
“Boss?”
“I’m going out for a drink.”
“Sony’s got that effect on people,” Neo says.
Hikari and I look at each other and shrug. None of us are really shocked at Sony’s bullshitting abilities. We’re just impressed they worked.
Carl leads us to one of the hydraulic chairs. Sony plops herself down, shimmying in excitement. Carl puts on his gloves, gathering his supplies.
“Um, that was amazing, by the way,” he says.
Sony blanks. “What was?”
Carl points back to the front desk. “What you said.”
“Oh, that?” Pride licks Sony’s teeth. “I stole it from a book.”
“Everything’s stolen from books anyway,” Carl says.
“Everything’s stolen,” Sony rebuts, poking his nose ring as if he’s a close friend and not some stranger, although Carl doesn’t seem to mind. “Or it will be. By us. We’re killer thieves.”
Carl smirks. “Where do you want the ink, honey?”
“Right here. In the middle,” Sony says, taking off her sweatshirt and pointing under the crest of her collarbones, the peak of her sternum.
Carl nods and explains the process to her, says it might sting a little bit and if she’s on any medications, she should tell him before he starts.
Sony and C listen attentively. Neo, for a change, half here, half in his own head. He props his chin on the manuscript against his chest, swallowing once.
Sony looks at him out of the corner of her eye, then she glances at the pocket of her sweatshirt, the one Neo is wearing. One of her mischievous little grins lights her face.
She grabs Carl mid-speech and pulls him closer to her. Carl stutters over his words, and deftly shuts up when Sony whispers in his ear, “It has to say this, pss, come ‘ere.” I don’t hear the rest, but Carl looks up as she talks, as if memorizing her words.
“Alright,” he nods, once she’s done. “You want a design with it or just the phrase?”
“A design?” Sony cocks her head to the side, her knees up, dirty white sneakers tapping on the chair’s seat.
Our first meeting flashes in my memory. The same shoes forever on her feet, the same temper and bravery no matter how much breath she can draw. The same careless, joyful, passionate attitude she’s always had, the spirit of a child in the body of a thief that could rob even a sentimental vending machine.
“I have an idea,” I say.
Sony beams at me. “Okay! Don’t tell me though! I want it to be a surprise! It better not be Eric’s face.”
“It’s not,” I promise.
I whisper my idea in Carl’s ear. He pulls out a little notepad and draws a simple version of my request. I tell him it looks right, and he prints the stencil.
“Remember, it’s gonna hurt a little, okay?” he says.
“Go for it! I fear nothing.”
Carl laughs. “I don’t doubt that. Try not to move, honey.”
Sony hums for the endearment.
While Carl gets to work, Hikari and I explore the graffiti rampant parlor. Bold colors pop against the dark walls, drawings like I’ve never seen all over them. Hikari takes my hand in hers and points to her favorite designs. I ask her what kind of gods tattoo artists are in her bohemian religion. She smirks over her shoulder, lips twisting as if she’s trying to rein in her amusement. She doesn’t answer me. Her arms have more devious ideas. They sneak and interlink around my back as she recommends I get definitions tattooed on my hand. For the sake of remembering pretentious Latin meanings. I tell her she should get her drawings tattooed on her so they live forever. She tells me sometimes I am more considerate than her teasing allows.
“How are you doing, Sony?” C asks.
“I’m great!” Sony yells. We are only privy to the finished product, she said, so we listen from the other side of the shop. Sony chuckles. “It feels like a spicy ultrasound.”
“So what do you do? You a college student?” Carl asks her.
“Nah. I just take care of kids. Most of them are in oncology or the daycare center. It’s gonna be my job soon.”
“That sounds fun.”
“It’s so fun! Kids are great. I mean they can be jerks sometimes, but they’re honest and funny and a little crazy. It’s never boring.”
“I get what you mean. I have four younger siblings. They’re monsters, but I love ‘em.”
“Those are my four little monsters right over there,” Sony says. I see her finger pointing at us.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sony says. “They’re my family.”
Carl and Sony continue their conversation over the subtle pen’s buzzing. Hikari tells me Carl is smitten. I ask how she’s able to tell. She says he has the same look I did when we met on the roof. I remind her that I was equally terrified as I was smitten. She says Sony is equally terrifying as she is beautiful.
C agrees. He flips through outdated magazines, one earbud blasting in his ear, his natural state of being.
Neo on the other hand, still isn’t with us. He’s in his hospital room, fixed to his chair, his father’s figure looming over him. His only sign of life past staring out the window is a methodical thumb and forefinger looping around his wrist.
“Neo?” C draws a hand over Neo’s knee. “Where are you?”
“My dad’s gonna be angry about this. He’s gonna look for me. You know that right?” Neo asks, holding his papers so close that the stack’s wedges crease.
“Hey,” C says. “What’d I tell you? No one’s gonna get through us.”
“I don’t care what he does to me,” Neo bites.
C stands, towering over Neo, taking the same care of him as he has since Neo was at the mercy of crutches and wheelchairs.
“He can’t hurt any of us. Not here.”
C grabs Neo’s face in his hands. Neo’s face is so small compared to his palms. They practically envelop him. C smiles as he does this, poking Neo’s cheeks. Even if Neo is in the process of creating wrinkles between his brows, you can tell this calms him.
“You’re getting one too, right?” C asks.
Neo’s lip lifts in disgust. “A tattoo?”
“Yeah. When you’re a big famous author, and you’re being rude to all your fans at signings, you’re gonna need something to remember us by.”
C’s words crank a lever, wounding up Neo’s face. He pulls C’s hands off his face and turns around.
“You’re an idiot,” he says under his breath.
C gets defensive. “Tattoos aren’t that reckless, Neo-”
“You’re an idiot to think I could forget you,” Neo says with his chest, offended. “And don’t act like you’re not going to be bothering me at signings, anyway. It’s our book remember. Not mine.”
Neo and his words are in a forbidden affair. A robbed passion. Language and his craft are furiously in love. You can feel their bond radiate from every drop of ink that ever was and will be.
“We’re all done, guys,” Carl calls.
Hikari and I are the first to see the tattoo. Sony sits up, admiring the mirror Carl holds up, so that she may take in the subtle beauty of a symbol that will live as long as she.
“Neo,” C says, making room for our poet to see. “Look.”
Beneath the crown of Sony’s collarbones, etched onto the meeting place of her heart and lungs, a pair of wings spread above words of promise.
time will cease disease will fester death will die
Neo’s jaw slacks, his eyes gone soft.
“It’s for you,” Sony says. “It was the first thing you ever wrote in our Hit List.” She meets Neo’s gaze. In it, every single gasp, fit of snorty laughter, and tear shed that Sony gave Neo’s stories lives. “You always said you wanted just a little piece of you to be immortal.”
Neo’s hands shake around his stories. His babies that have been torn, taken for granted, mistreated, thrown like corpses in his face–he remembers them all. Because his sea is thick with suffering and we are who he chose to row with.
Neo drops his story into C’s arms, stifling a sob. He covers his mouth with a bony hand and, without hesitation, he hugs Sony.
“Silly crybaby,” she whispers, embracing Neo as he cries on her shoulder. Sony reaches into his (or really her) sweatshirt pocket, removing a crinkled piece of torn paper. “I promised I’d get you happy tears, remember?” she says. “I’ve been telling you from the beginning that you’re a pillar. Did you think I was just teasing?”
“You’re a stupid idiot,” Neo blubbers, his tears soaking her shirt.
Sony hugs him back, pressing kisses to his head.
“I love you too, Baby.”
—
“Hikari, hold my hand.” C huffs out a breath. He braces in the hydraulic chair much like Neo does when C operates a vehicle.
“Deep breaths, bud,” Hikari teases, abiding by his request.
“Don’t laugh at me,” C warns.
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re laughing.”
“You’re a funny guy.”
“You ready?” Carl asks.
C squeaks. “No. Can you count down from three?”
“He’s ready!” Sony says, hopping up and down, using Carl’s shoulders as a pogo stick.
C took his shirt off for the process, bearing the circuitry of his body. Along the faint memory of muscles, his heart pulses beneath the branching outlines of his veins. Thunder and lightning arisen from a gentle organ.
C sighs, throwing his head back. Sony tries to distract him from the spicy ultrasound with dramatic readings of Neo’s manuscript.
On a particularly grueling passage, audible reactions over the quiet buzz echo through the room. Unbeknownst, Neo looks around and realizes the whole shop is listening in, artists too. He swallows down disbelief, suppressing a smile I never knew could grace him with such brilliance.
C gets a rendition of Neo’s quote in the same spot as Sony and a pair of earbuds over the text. Neo goes next, same quote, an open book crowning the words.
Hikari and I watch from a distance. She removes her sweater to go next. Self-consciousness pulls at her bandages and tucks her forearms behind her back. I take her hands in mine, tangling our fingers together. Standing at an angle, I conceal her arms between us so no one can see.
“You never told me what this scar is from,” I whisper, tracing the thick, jagged line crossing from shoulder to the apex of her breasts.
“When I was little, I had imaginary friends,” she begins, “I chased them all around the forest in my backyard. I climbed the boulders, the trees, all of it. One day, I climbed a little too close to the sun and–” Hikari blows up her cheeks, flicking the length of her white line. “When I got older, I had real friends, but they didn’t feel real. I felt closer to my imaginary teddy bear. I never connected with anyone, or I guess, no one ever connected with me. Anyway, it was clear that I was the problem, so for every person I met, I acted a little different each time.”
As if identity should be rewritten to the whims of others. A thing to be solved rather than nurtured.
“Over time, I realized that creating a new personality for every friendship is a temporary effort. You can pretend as long as you want, you always revert back to who you really are.” Hikari licks her lips. Her fingers fidget with a piece of lint on my shirt. Her eyes stray from the present, sadness not unlike the kind that took her the night she told me of her childhood ghosting over her face. “So, I just started acting like myself. A lot of people thought I was weird, but I liked just being me for a while. I reopened this scar climbing the same exact tree.” Hikari tries to laugh, but the joyful memory is tainted with sourness, a little bit of a lie stitched over the truth.
“It grew a branch,” she says. Her joy fades. Her eyes unfocus, drifting behind me to the sight of our friends.
Regret coils in her gaze, originating from the ravines beneath her bandages. All the other little branches that riddle her body send pinpricks up her spine.
“You know I don’t like hurting myself, right, Sam?” she whispers.
“I know,” I say.
“It’s like a release,” she goes on. “Like everything becomes too much, and I can transfer the pain somewhere else and–” She looks down at her hands as if the blood of another, pools between her fingertips rather than her own.
“They’re only scars,” I say, kissing the edge of her wrist. “Like the essential parts of us kept only for the gazes of mirrors and lovers.”
She blinks, returning to me, gradually, then completely. I bring my forehead to hers, wondering how there was ever a time I had the strength to stay away.
“Are you my lover?” Hikari asks.
“You’re my mirror.” I poke the bridge of her glasses, making her laugh.
“I never knew you liked my glasses.”
“Maybe I need a pair of my own.”
“You did tell me that hope is nearsighted.”
“Am I your hope, Hikari?”
“Am I your despair, Sam?” She smiles. A comforting smile reaches my face as she runs her thumb across the curve.
“I’ll draw it for us,” she whispers.
“Draw what?”
Her lips meet mine, the parting like light admiring darkness.
“The moment despair fell in love with hope.”
