penny's writing blog

(Dammit I may have to expand this one later)

—

Blue is gone and all Gansey has left of her is a wedding ring and a holotape and some memories, but he leaves Sanctuary for Concord knowing that somewhere out there is his baby boy.

In Concord he meets a man named Adam struggling to keep the last of his friends alive, and in Diamond City he meets a man named Noah looking for the truth, and in Goodneighbor he meets a man named Ronan who wields a rifle and a broken heart.

Let’s have a look at the Community Calendar.

Thursday afternoon, Dark Owl Records will be hosting a live concert featuring popular rock band Panic at the Disco.  Instead of promoting their new album, Panic at the Disco (which now only consists of one member playing every instrument by himself simultaneously) will be performing a previously unreleased track called Murder Squash.  Panic at the Disco will perform this song forty-seven times in succession.  Remember, concert attendance is mandatory.  The Sheriff’s Secret Police would like to remind residents that failure to attend the mandatory concert will result in your implication in a series of nasty child murders you did not commit.

Friday, the Night Vale PTA is sponsoring its annual “Hug a Hitman” carnival.  Come on down to Night Vale Elementary for fun and festivities and the chance to hug or maybe adopt a lonely, abandoned hitman.  Bring the whole family!

Saturday and Sunday will be rewritten in future history books anyway, so what’s the point?

Monday is “Sleeping Kings Day” at the Night Vale Public Library.  The Librarians have set up a workshop for any young Night Vale residents who might be searching for ancient sleeping kings.  “We know who you seek,” they hissed through the library doors, their claws digging gouges in the glass panes, “we know where he lies.  Come see, come seeeeee…”  Then, one of their venom sacs erupted and Intern Noah was unable to get the rest of their statement.

To the family of Intern Noah, we offer our sincere condolences. Please come pick up his car, we need the space in the station parking lot.

Tuesday is the day to ponder your impending death.  Alllll day.

Wednesday will be a dream.  You will find yourself in a nighttime forest.  Mist coils around your ankles.  Behind you, a raven caws.  You look… Nothing there.  In your hands…  Was this here before?  A book.  A leather journal.  You open it and you are enlightened.  Wasps patrol your skin.  Behind you, a raven caws.  You know what it is you need but you cannot find it.  You beg the forest, but the trees do not speak your language.  There is a girl holding your hand.  Behind you, a raven caws.  Behind you, a raven caws.  Behind you, a raven.

(I’ll get Jamie and Emily to you in a separate post.)

—

Blue Sargent goes to college because Richard Campbell Gansey III loved her.  She hates that it’s on his money but she knows where his heart was when he left the tuition to her.  And really, she wants to go.

When she comes back from California, she’s browner than ever and she feels at least more well-informed, if not necessarily smarter.

300 Fox Way is a hive of activity as usual, but this time it’s a welcome home party and she has to pretend she isn’t tearing up over her aunts and cousins and half-cousins and second cousins cheering.  Mr. Gray’s shoulder is a suitable handkerchief because he hugs her for a long time.  She thinks eventually she will be able to call him Dad.

Later, she bikes past Monmouth.  It stands empty, a ruin again, panes of glass broken out everywhere.  Whoever owns it now doesn’t care.  She leaves her bike in the grass and takes the stairs.  The door is open and there is a bird nesting somewhere in the rafters.

Blue tilts her head back.  “Chainsaw?”

The bird doesn’t answer.  Not Chainsaw.  Probably a pigeon.

“You’re back.”

The voice startles Blue.  She whirls in a circle but no one is there.  Had the voice even been real?

“Blue.”

There it is again, so gentle, so subtle.  Blue knows it now.  Tears well in her eyes, horrible hot ones that burn all the way up.

“Hi, Noah.”

There he is, in the doorway of his old room.  He’s almost formless now, with no one to hold onto.  Everything about him seems to slump to the left, like that side of his body has become to heavy to maintain a fully upright position anymore.

Noah is a terrifying and heartbreaking thing.  His eyes are dark hollows now, all the color washed out of him.  Blue can no longer make out the Aglionby crest on his sweater.  She reaches for him.  He reaches for her.  Their hands almost touch, and then his fingers pass through her palm and out the other side.  He isn’t just insubstantial, he’s almost nonexistent.

Blue says, “I missed you.”

Noah says, “I loved you.  As much as I could love.”

Blue says, “I’m so sorry.”

Noah says, “He says hi.”

“You’re aware that it’s going to hurt, Parrish?” Ronan says.  “There will be pain involved.  You know, that, right?”

Adam is in the passenger seat of his own car.  Ronan drives, and the only reason the mixtape he made for Adam isn’t blaring at full volume from the shitty speakers is because Blue confiscated it for everyone’s safety, just like she did with the last one, and the one before that.  Adam is glad for the lack of gratuitous noise.  The hot summer wind rushes by the open windows, carrying the smell of cut grass and dust and exhaust, blowing pollen into Adam’s hair.

He forgets that Ronan has spoken until a hand grips the back of his neck.  It’s not like his father’s hand, hard and forceful.  Ronan’s touch is slow and easy, fingers worshiping the tendons under his skin and the soft hairs at the nape of his neck.

Ronan says, “Adam.”

Adam says, “I know.”

Ronan drives.

Adam says, “I’m not worried about the pain.  I just want it to be right.”

—

Later, when it’s all over, Adam lets Ronan inspect the image on the back of his neck, where Ronan’s hand had been before.  Ronan snaps a picture with his phone so Adam can see.

“Well,” Ronan says, hands in his pockets, “are you happy?”

Are you happy now, Adam?

“No,” Adam says, “but it’s what I wanted.”

They pay and head home.  Ronan drives, only because he’s stronger and likes to wrestle Adam’s keys away from him.  Lately, Adam lets him.

Back at the Barns, Ronan stops him and kisses him outside the farmhouse.  Dusk is falling, casting everything in shades of purple and blue.  A choir of crickets sing their approval of the soft, stolen moment.  When they’re left standing, holding on, breathing each other’s air, Adam asks the question that’s been lingering in his mind all day.

“Would he have liked it?”

Ronan doesn’t touch the new tattoo, but his hand slides up Adam’s back all the same, palm hot through Adam’s t-shirt.

“He liked everything about you,” Ronan says, which isn’t the kind of answer Adam wants.

Inside, while Matthew chatters over reheated pizza, and Chainsaw tears strips out of a phonebook containing only the address of Blue’s college in California, Adam sneaks a glance at the photo of his tattoo on Ronan’s phone again.

There is the back of his neck, and there are Ronan’s fingers holding down the collar of his t-shirt, and there is the stark black shape of the oyster-shell raven in the field outside Cabeswater, and there, wound through the lines of the bird, are Gansey’s last words.

Non mortem.

Somni fratrem.