27. RAVEN

27

RAVEN

I've always been careful with indulgences. Booze—not too much. No drugs. Few words. Violence—I always had to curb the urge to break someone's face, hence, working out and the love for fighting at Carnage.

"Discipline," Mac always said. "Keep your head straight."

And then there's Maddy. She makes it hard to keep my head cool. If I let myself go with her, it won't be a white flag. It will be a white fucking blanket, I know it. I will eventually throw it to her feet and kneel right before I fuck her on it and keep fucking her until I'm addicted and crave more and she's had enough, and both of us will be left empty. It's scary to know that everything has an end. Two months , I said to her back then. Should've said three. Half a year. I'm already angry at seeing that finish line in the future.

I stop by my house, grab my gun, go to my alcove, and shoot two clips into the fucking ocean. But it fails to scare away the images in my head—me pulling her panties aside and fucking her on the bathroom counter, how good it felt to be inside her, her moan as she came around my cock, her hand that slipped into my hair as I did, the way we stayed close in an embrace for seconds, panting away the high. The seconds that felt more intimate than the actual sex.

I planned on teasing her as long as I could, having that power of her being at my mercy. But now that I snapped, I want to feel that closeness again.

And I want to know how she feels.

I don't think she'll pick up. My thumb hovers over her name in my phonebook until I finally press the call button.

No, she won't pick up, I know, until I hear her soft voice.

"Hello…"

And here they come, flooding me again, the memories of her touch, her legs wrapped around me, my bare skin against hers, how soaked she was, so easy for me to slip in.

I must've stalled for a moment because she speaks again, "What do you want, Raven?"

From now on, everything .

"Tell me something about yourself," I say instead.

"I didn't know that conversations were part of our deal."

Her constant reminders of the rules rub me the wrong way. I feel a tiny flicker of irritation and feel like driving to her place and fucking her again, long into the morning. But then I remind myself that I am the blackmailer, and she tries to hold on to her pride and uses bitterness to protect it. That's fine.

"They weren't," I say calmly.

Silence falls between us. She can hang up any moment. I know it and won't judge her. But I wait, and wait, and wait for that ice to break?—

"What do you want to know, Raven? Your research lacks details?"

I smile. She is a smart girl. A curious one, too.

"It has plenty of details," I say. "I'd like to know the version of you from back in the days. Tell me something I don't know. Anything. A story from the past. The saddest time in your life. The happiest. The most fun you've ever had. I know you used to have fun, Maddy."

"Why?"

"I'd like to understand why you did what you did."

"Why?" she repeats.

"Because you lasted a long time on the Eastside. Considering your previous lifestyle, it's impressive. People with strong character interest me."

"Me?" she echoes in surprise.

"Yes, you, Maddy."

I hear her hum to herself, and in a moment, she starts talking.

"The happiest I've been besides taking MDMA or being stupidly euphorically drunk?"

I let a chuckle escape me. "There's plenty of that on your social media. That's not what I'm asking."

"Right." She goes quiet again as if deciding whether to share more of herself with me. "Maddy, the actual Maddy Wise and her family took me with them to the Sierra Nevada mountains on a camping trip my junior year in college. There was no reception there. Her parents talked to my dad, and they agreed that two of my bodyguards would camp out a mile away from us and use drones to check on me twice a day. That week in the Sierra Nevadas was the most fun I've had in years. I felt so free. Sitting on the rocks. Overlooking the running river. No care in the world… That was the first time I thought that… It's messed up, really…" I hear a smile and nostalgia in her voice. "I thought… If I was ever dropped off in the middle of nowhere, I would've probably been happy living on my own. For a nineteen-year-old with my history, it was a pretty cathartic revelation."

She goes quiet, and right away, the dirty world around me comes alive when her sweet voice disappears.

I wish we had a chance at something else. In a different lifetime, we could. I wish I could talk, tell her about Mac, though I won't tell anyone about Emily or what happened to us back then.

"Why are you so good, Maddy?" I ask on reflex and right away regret it. It's the thought of Emily that brought that question.

"What do you mean by good, Raven?"

I love the way she says my name. "After all you ran away from. After being raised the way you were. Rich girls don't turn into Mother Theresas. Mafia princesses don't become nurses. Party girls don't go celibate."

She laughs quietly through her nose. "Occasionally, they do. We all have a reason for what we do. Why do you read so much?"

How would she know? Unless she asks around about me, and the one person who knows me best on this island is probably Archer.

"I like it."

"No," she says sharply. "You give me a simple answer. There's always a deeper reason."

Sure, there is. Because Mac got me into that habit. Because he didn't have TV. Because I looked up to Mac so much after he picked me up that I would've eaten cyanide if he told me it was good for me. Because I needed to find a reason why some people get the best lives and others are constantly dealt shitty hands.

What I tell her sums it up. "Because it helps me understand why people are the way they are. Reasons for bad things happening, I guess."

"And the good ones?"

"Not really. We don't need the reasons for the good. Good is always taken for granted."

"It is."

It's the first time we are discussing something other than me and her and our deal.

"But you didn't answer my question, Maddy," I say.

"I thought you didn't need a reason for the good. Why ask me?"

Touché. I smile but don't answer, waiting for her to talk first.

She sighs a little into the phone. "I did enough selfish things in my life. I was young. I had everything handed to me on a gold platter. I rebelled and got away with it anyway. Because I could. Because I thought I would always get what I wanted. Until someone told me my time was up, and I had to pay it back. When the Change happened, people around me were in shock. Grieving, you know. Or trying to kill themselves. Or drowning in guilt because they survived the event that killed their entire families. And I didn't."

She goes quiet again for a moment, and I don't interrupt. Her words resonate with my own history and tug at my heart.

"While everyone's lives were broken and families lost, I intentionally lost my family and for the first time felt like I got my own life back."

This sounds achingly familiar. It's hard to boast about thriving during the world war while others fall apart. You can't admit it to others because they'll hate you. They'll think you are a monster because you are not grieving with everyone else. Though they don't understand that before, when the world was happy, it didn't exactly give a single fuck about your broken life as a kid or your sadistic foster father beating you senseless while drunk. Nor did that world grieve for your foster sister who was repeatedly raped by that same sick fuck.

"You know why I help others?" Maddy's soft voice is almost angelic. "Why I really enjoy doing something good? Even if it's simply patching someone's wounds?"

"To patch up your karma?" I offer the easiest explanation.

She laughs, the trickle of it tingling in my heart, but her voice is serious and soft when she says, "Wishful kindness."

I'm not sure I heard it right. "What is that?"

"Wishful kindness," she repeats. "Like that ‘free hugs' guy. Like the ‘if you don't have money to pay for a meal, grab the paid ticket at the front desk.' Like tying your mittens during a cold winter to a public fence for the homeless. Like arranging for a mass shelter for the homeless when the temperatures drop dangerously low in cities. Did you know they do that? That sort of thing. You do something good, hoping it will have enough effect on others for them to pass it forward. You simply hope they do."

She sounds like Mac with her soft, non-deliberate wisdom. It's uncanny for a twenty-two-year-old.

"Do you know what a group of ravens is called?" she asks softly.

A flock. I don't understand why she's asking me except its obvious connection to my nickname.

"I am the only raven that you'll ever have to deal with, Maddy," I say. It's intended to be a playful threat.

"Good," she says back almost in a whisper that sounds like a promise. "I have to go."

Her voice riles me up emotionally but also calms me mentally. It's hard to explain. I wish we could talk forever, but I can't be taking more of her time. She might get the wrong idea. Our deal didn't involve long night-time conversations. But when the line goes dead, I feel an urge to dial her again, ask something stupid, anything really, just to keep her talking.

When I hang up, I pick up my notebook of quotes and write just that:

"Wishful kindness." —Maddy.

Out of curiosity, I open my phone's browser and search for the collective word for a group of ravens. Here it is.

A proper collective name for ravens is "unkindness."

I stare at the word in a stupor…

There's only one Raven, Maddy. Just one.

I pour myself some whiskey and sit in the wicker chair in front of the open balcony doors, thinking about Maddy and kindness and unkindness and coincidences and killers and the notion of God.

I get online again and order a scooter for the little dude. If he has a faster way to get around the resort, he won't stalk me and bother me with his conversations.

Maddy is on my mind again. The kind smile she offers others often disappears when she thinks no one is looking, replaced by a haunting look. I've watched her plenty of times, and I know that she often sits for long periods either outside the medical center or on her porch in the evenings and stares at nothing in particular.

She is an oxymoron. There's danger in her, I know that. She's been raised by it. But there is also that quiet strength that probably comes from the same place. There is gentleness about her, and that contrast fucks me up but draws me to her. I want to know more about her. She reminds me of a flower when she is quiet, deep in her thoughts, when no one is looking.

You see, there are weeds, there is grass, and there are flowers. Just like people. I've been sifting through garbage and weeds my teenage years until Mac plucked me out and replanted me. Fresh grass—that's what I think about when I think about Mac. He never raised his voice at me. Hardly argued. His wisdom wasn't intrusive. Our late-night conversations were my favorite pastime. Come to think of it, I talked to Mac more than I talked to everyone in my entire life combined. He changed me without trying. Since I met him, I tried my best to pluck out the weeds around me and carefully manicure my surrounding.

And then this flower shows up. M. Maddy. Mayflower.

I feel like being around her is more important than anything else I've done before. I don't know what it is, but it's scratching at me from the inside, keeping me restless. Maybe she is in my life just like Mac, to give me a different perspective on the future.

I get up for another drink and notice a little clear baggy sticking out of my pocket. I search the web for the NDC number and find the prescription drug that the guard, Ali, takes, then research the medical conditions it's used for.

The word "unkindness" rings in my ears.

I really shouldn't care, but I pick up my phone and dial one of my pharmaceutical connections on the mainland and place an order—the prescription medication for Ali Baba.