Page 99 of Chaos

It happens.

All of that, and Ben didn’t even die? I guess I’m glad of that, since if it had worked, then Cain would probably be dead too.

Still, guilt lingers as Shasta and I go to the bathhouse, while Yorke gets ready with the boys, and while we wash up under the haughty gaze of George Washington holding his stupid hot pink rubber chicken.

Yorke could die tomorrow going after bullets.

I could die when I deliver Maybe.

And in the meantime, what’s the difference between the nirvana plane and the Flower-verse?

There isn’t one.

I just renamed it and pushed it after death and denied it to us both; because I thought Ben and Scraggle stole it along with all the hope I ever felt. But I felt it this morning before Auden blasted in.

When Yorke spoke, when he reminded me that everything I feel for him, he feels for me. Not one-sided, not imbalanced. The same.

“You’re brooding so hard I can feel it,” Shasta says from across the pool. “If this is about Cain, we need to shake it off. I won’t lie, I stayed up all night, and I finally decided we all got lucky there. No more cooking the stuff. We just have to push forward. He’s going to be fine. Just say it out loud.”

“No, it’s not Cain. I reached the same conclusion.”

“Then what?”

“I need nirvana,” I mumble.

“You need Havana?” Shasta paddles closer. “Is that code for something?”

“No. I think—“

A knock at the door has me turning.

It’s Tani.

She twists at her dark hair, the noses of her sneakers pushing together like awkward mice squeaking on the blue mosaic floor tiles. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Of course.” She and I have been working together all week to get Thornewood ready, but we haven’t spoken much beyondpass the garlandandhere, hold this.

She takes off her towel and sets it on a lounger, climbing into the pool in a swimsuit.

I wait until she surfaces. “You’re the artist, right?”

She blinks, pushing water from her eyes. “Artist?”

“You painted the chicken?” I point at old George.

She follows my arm. “Guilty.”

I could ask why, but I feel like I know why.

Instead I ask the question that bothers me most. We were a bedraggled crew, having just escaped DC, Yorke was drenched in his brother’s blood, we were petrified. We’d finally gotten to a place that felt like it might be safe, and we woke up to screaming and flowers and a dead body. “Why’d you leave Nando’s body like you did?”

Her chin rumples. “I didn’t know what else to do with it. I figured either you’d deal with it or it would scare you away. Either option was better than having you living thereandhis body rotting in the freezer.”

I can’t really argue with that.

So I don’t.

“You done yet?” Shasta asks, patting along the edge of the pool for the towel she left, and blotting her eyes.

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