Gird Me With Strength…Psalms 18:39
I don’t know whether I’m awake or dreaming any more. A week ago I thought my whole life was over, and right now I’ve never felt more alive.
I think maybe I’m not supposed to feel this way. I should miss home. I should be afraid.
I’m not. I can’t be.
I don’t understand any of this. It’s all too much to take in. I don’t know what I thought would happen—maybe some kind of runaway organization, I’ve heard of places like that. A hospital, only I wouldn’t go to one, or I’d find a job, or…
I don’t know. Whatever I thought, this isn’t what I expected. Most of all, I didn’t expect Logan to still be around. I thought he’d leave me at—wherever, and that would be it. Instead, we’ve been staying with his friends and he doesn’t seem to be planning on going anywhere.
I’m not used to grownups who act like them. If I knew them back in Meridian, I’d have called them Mr. and Mrs. Devereaux and actually I wouldn’t have because I would never have known them. My mama wouldn’t have let me. She’d have said they were trashy.
But my mother threw me out of her house, and Lynn takes me shopping for makeup and clothes and she doesn’t care if I can’t touch people. Just because Logan brought me here, they took me in, no questions asked, and I didn’t know people did that. Not for someone they didn’t even know.
I never really thought about how many people there are in the world. Just in New Orleans, even. People back home talked about this city like it was some kind of strange foreign country, and it kind of is. Boys in college would go there on spring break, and my friends who had older brothers knew stories they’d whisper at parties and over sandwiches on the school lawn at lunch. And Jessie, my cousin who doesn’t even go to church any more since she went away to college. She was planning to go back after she graduated and she only stayed in Meridian because of the flood. She told me things. I never quite believed them.
Now I know they didn’t tell the half of it, and besides, they’re probably all whispering about me now.
New Orleans. God, it’s incredible. Parts of it are still so awful and so sad—whole neighborhoods that are just destroyed, just boarded-up houses waiting to be demolished with the homeless trying to find a corner to call their own. But parts of it are still beautiful, and it’s so teeming with life, even the broken bits—the people who live here want their city back, and they seem so hopeful, really. I saw a band playing in the street the other day and it turned out it was a funeral. It was a funeral and people were singing and dancing in the street. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in my life. There’s so much going on, everyone fighting to figure out how it’s all going to work, and it would be kind of scary if Logan weren’t here.
It’s so strange. I should be scared of him. I can’t even imagine what my mother would say about Logan. She’d probably have crossed the street just to avoid him, and my father would have wanted to shoot him on sight. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same room with him back home.
No. That’s not true. I just wouldn’t have dared.
I have never known anyone even remotely like him. I like being with him. I like what I feel like when he’s around. I even like how I see other people looking at him—at us. Other women.
I know that’s stupid. It isn’t like that. But he’s been so nice to me, taking me places and showing me around. I know he gave Lynn the money to take me shopping, so it’s almost like he picked the things out for me. I got lots of gloves and scarves so I don’t have to worry so much about brushing up against people accidentally, and it’s okay here because people dress every way you can imagine—no one thinks it’s strange. I saw a lady last night wearing a lacy shawl for a skirt and just about a thousand strings of beads around her neck—it wasn’t even a top. I thought I would die of embarrassment, and Logan just laughed at me.
He does that. And he doesn’t let other people get too close and make me nervous, even in the crowds in the streets at night. He always puts an arm around my shoulders and walks and somehow the Red Sea just parts. It’s pretty cool. It’s like they all know not to get in his way, like they know he’s in charge. He won’t talk about it, but I think he used to be in the Army. You can just tell he’s always in control, and he always wears a dogtag like my daddy had from Vietnam. I think I understand that—my father never wanted to talk about the war. He said it was better off forgotten.
Nights in New Orleans are crazy. And wild, and rowdy, and colorful. I used to be really good in art class, and I got a sketchbook and tried to draw some of it the other day. It looked awful, but I’m going to keep trying. Logan got me a little camera, one of those ones you just use up and then throw away, and I took lots of pictures of the streets and people partying. That was an amazing night. We went out for dinner and then down by the water, where there’s all these old cast-iron fences and really ancient-looking stone walls, and he even took a picture of me. And Lynn took one of both of us in the bar later. I can’t wait to see them.
That’s another thing. Since the flood, there’s been a lot of strange things happening here, things that wouldn’t normally go on, at least not openly. I guess Toby and Logan both used to fight on some kind of tour, like wrestlers, and now Toby has fights in the bar once in a while, because the regular tourist business still isn’t back to normal and they can make a lot of money betting. And since Logan’s staying for a while, Toby asked if he wanted to earn some money that way.
He didn’t want me to know at first. I don’t know why—it’s kind of exciting, honestly. Lynn snuck me in the first night and that’s when I found out what the weird cage thing in the back room was for. I sat at the bar and Toby made sure no one bothered me, just like Logan does, and everyone was yelling and betting on the fight. Which Logan won.
He saw me at the bar—well, heard me, really, I guess I was cheering kind of loudly—and at first he was mad, but Lynn just laughed and told him not to be such a stick-in-the-mud. It was so funny, how she could just say something like that to him after he’d just knocked some huge guy cold, but she did. And then she tried to serve me a beer and Logan took it away from me, but he let me stay. And he’s fighting again tomorrow night, and I’m coming too.
The only bad thing that’s happened since I’ve been here was last night. I had this really awful nightmare, and it wasn’t what I would have thought, not about the church or anything. I didn’t understand it at all—I was dreaming there were doctors doing something awful to me, and it felt like I was drowning, and I woke up screaming and then Logan was there.
He made me tell him what the dream was about, but as soon as I started he got really upset. He cut me off and started to leave, but then he came back and he told me something. He said he had the same nightmares.
He wouldn’t really talk about that. He just asked me about my skin again, how it works. My mutation, he calls it. But I couldn’t really tell him much, just that I sometimes knew what Father Fallon was thinking after he touched me. I didn’t tell him about what—I wouldn’t tell Logan that for anything in the world. But he didn’t ask. He nodded, and then he said he thought it might be something like that, because he thought I’d absorbed his mutation that night.
I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t remember anything about that. It was the rope around my neck; when he took it off he touched me, because of course he didn’t know about my skin. He said there was a mark, but later there wasn’t. He heals that way, and that night I did too. So I must have gotten that from him, and the nightmare too.
That was all he said about it. He asked if I was all right, and I said yes, and then Lynn appeared in the doorway and he got up and left. I hadn’t really realized he had his arm around me until then.
I can’t remember it. I was drugged that night, and I must have passed out—but I wish I could remember that. Still. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I can ask him about it again later. After tonight.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sometimes the answers to the questions don't really matter. Marie's POV.
Chapter End Notes:
Thank you all for coming along for the ride!