“Leave our old lives behind?” Alexis asked.
“If this gets messy enough, might be I and everyone associated with me need to leave Toronto. There might be danger.”
“Do you know how you sound?” Joel asked.
“Crazy,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It would sound even crazier if I told you everything. But I guess I need you guys to trust your instincts. Decide if it’s possible for you to believe me, and decide if you’d want to make this sacrifice.”
“Without you telling us what that sacrifice is?”
“It’s dealing with the kind of horror you usually only read about in fairy tales. The sort of thing you were afraid of when you were little.”
Evan nodded. I saw eyes turn his way.
I added, “It’s being in danger. Though I don’t necessarily want you guys in the thick of it.”
“Assuming this is for real, making this leap of faith?” Alexis asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’d try to back you up.”
I nodded. I hadn’t expected any different from Alexis.
“Turning the tables,” Joel said, “Can you do us the favor of maybe accepting that you’ve gone around the bend? You’re in bad shape, and there are treatable things like thyroid problems or manageable stuff like mental problems that could explain a lot.”
“If you’re willing to entertain the idea that I’m not completely off my rocker, just for tonight, I can return the favor later,” I said. “I can do what I can to accept that I’ve maybe lost it. Tomorrow.”
“If it involves leaving life behind, or the possibility that something could happen to me,” Joel said, “I don’t know if I can.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Your mom?”
“My mom, yeah. A couple years ago? Maybe. Another few years? She won’t last that long. But right now?”
I nodded. I understood, and I didn’t want him to lose ties to his ailing mother for my sake. It still stung, just a little.
“I can give you help in other ways,” he said. “Lend you my car again…”
I shook my head a little. “No need, not really.”
“Okay,” he said. “The offer’s open.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I dunno if you want to leave, but-”
“No way,” he said. “I’ll hear you out. Never let it be said I wouldn’t, baby.”
I nodded.
Four more people remained almost silent. Goosh, Joseph, Tyler and Tiffany.
“I’m thinking of Natty,” Goosh said, when I met her gaze.
“I know,” I said. “Joel brought her up not long after I showed back up in Toronto.”
“I was close to her. We’re still in touch. The bad days from that… it wasn’t all fun. The bad days sucked, more than I can say.”
“You don’t want to get involved if I’ve lost it?” I asked.
“That is not what I’m saying,” she said, stabbing a finger my way. Goosh could probably beat me in a fight, on a good day, so it was a little intimidating. “You know that if you’re in trouble, you can come to me, just like I came to you back then for help with Nat.”
I nodded.
“That said, I’m having trouble believing you’re coming from the same place as her. I don’t know if that’s Natty being so fresh in my memory, coloring my expectations, or if you aren’t crazy…”
“But?” I asked.
“I’ll hear you out,” she said, as she stuck her hands in her pockets. “Even if you’re not for real, I’d really like to know more about where you stand and what’s going on.”
It kept coming back to mental illness. I wasn’t sure how much resistance there was when introducing the unawakened to this world, but I could worry that, no matter how hard I tried, they might keep going back to that.
At the same time, it was rooted in them caring about me, and nobody had said or done anything to suggest they wouldn’t have my back if I had lost my mind. It wasn’t just lip service, either. It was being offered with full knowledge of how much that stuff could suck.
That was gratifying.
“Tyler?”
Tyler was black, skinny, his hair cut short, with a toothy smile. He wore thrift store clothing that was badly out of date, but put together with an eye to color and style. The thrift store aspect of it wasn’t so much that he was poor – he was, kind of, but even so – he just preferred to buy more, cheaper clothes to mix and match over having a few top notch outfits. Sort of a metaphor for Ty as a whole.
Ty was one of the artists I worked for, a challenge of sorts. He had a hard time sticking with things, meaning I had to constantly adapt to whatever new thing he’d picked up. Thing was, Ty had a way of taking on something totally new and foreign and then abandoning it not long after he’d started to make money off of it.
There had been a time when I would have lopped off a foot for his talent at any one thing. It was painful, sometimes, watching him struggling to get by. A part of me wondered if he loved the process of learning something more than he loved being good at that something. Another part of me thought that he might be addicted to the rush that came with uncertainty. Anxiety wore on some people, but it very possibly drove people like Tyler to flourish.
The same part of me that worried about his addiction to anxiety wondered if asking him to help me out here was the right thing to do.
“I’m in,” Tyler said. “A part of me wants these monsters to be real.”
Case in point.
“You wouldn’t really want to, if you knew the full story,” I said.
“Wanna bet?” he asked.
“Not on that one point,” I said.
“Well I’m in. There’s no way I don’t want to hear more about this.”
“Okay,” I said.
“How are you going to prove it?” Joseph asked.
“Do you believe me?” I asked. I was a little surprised. Joseph’s critical eye was easily the sharpest in the room. He had a way of swinging between what looked like unfailing good cheer and deep, dark moods. Sometimes it was little things that set him off. The inability to get one detail right on a project. Other times, he could toss a project aside without a care. Though he wasn’t as talented as Tyler or Alexis, his ability to fit what he did make to the ‘scene’, making it applicable and different enough to get noticed, made him perhaps the most successful of us here.
“I don’t not believe you,” he decided.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He shrugged, smiling a bit. “It means only that. Like Goosh says, you don’t give off the right vibe. I’ll listen.”
I nodded.
“Tiff?”
Tiffany’s expression was worry more than anything. Not directed at me so much as herself. “I’m not sure why Joel invited me. There were others the other night that have known you longer.”
I’m kind of wondering that myself.
“Because I trust you,” Alexis said.
Going with her gut?
“Okay,” Tiff said. “I don’t feel like it’s my place, but I’ll listen.”
I nodded.
It would have to do.
“Evan,” I said, addressing my familiar. “Maybe you want to write a letter?”