Nothing Breaks Like A Heart

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Raja maybe had bad taste in guys, but he had always liked the look of Ambrus Lugosi.

Ambrus had that dark hair and blue eyes thing going on that Raja liked, and he was tall and olive-skinned and dressed like a Byronic novel protagonist. They had read The Portrait of Dorian Gray in English lit during junior year, and Raja had really embarrassingly pictured Dorian as a little too similar to Ambrus, and it had resulted in him not actually absorbing the book all that much. Ambrus didn’t seem to have all that many friends, and during free periods at school, he mostly sat around looking like he was going to catch the consumption or whatever and die, but like in a glamorous way.

His Gift gave him the ability to set blood on fire or something to that effect, which was gross and smelled horrible, but nobody was perfect. Anyway, Raja only knew that because Ambrus had demonstrated it during a biology lab and had gotten all of them out of the rest of class by accidentally triggering the fire alarm. It was the first time that Raja had seen Ambrus look embarrassed and also the first time that Raja had seen him laugh, and that was about the time that he realized he probably had bad taste in guys.

Ambrus was surprisingly nice once you got to know him though, more awkward and kind underneath the “cool loner” exterior than Raja would have thought. Raja had spent the better part of the end of junior year and some of that summer worming his way into Ambrus’s basically nonexistent inner circle, listening to him talk about old films and weird gothic stuff and pretending it interested him, when he was mostly just interested in the way that Ambrus got more animated than usual when talking about his favorite movies. Naturally, when Ambrus extended the invitation to visit his house and maybe go through some of his parents’ film collection after school one day, Raja had jumped at the chance.

The house was big. Almost mansion-big. Raja had been vaguely aware that the Lugosis were kind of wealthy, but apparently they were loaded. He’d felt like he shouldn’t touch anything or sit on any of the chairs. He almost swore that he saw a cockroach out of the corner of his eye, but he bit the inside of his cheek to keep from reacting to it, and convinced himself that he’d imagined it. The house was decorated in a sort of eclectic, old-fashioned way, but it wasn’t abandoned. People who owned a house that nice wouldn’t have roaches.

He had followed Ambrus through the kitchen and out to a sprawling deck that overlooked a kind of ridiculously big backyard and garden. They had an above-ground pool, because of course they did, though it was weirdly a little green and scummy-looking from where Raja was. He supposed that they just didn’t use it much. Ambrus had talked about getting drinks and hanging out back there for a while, but at that point something else had caught Raja’s attention.

Because she was there. Isabella.

She’d been wandering around the backyard, looking dazed. Raja had actually never seen her up close before then; she was a grade below him and Ambrus, they didn’t share any classes, and Ambrus never seemed to spend time with his sister at school. Raja’s thoughts when he did see her in passing had usually been something about how she looked unwashed and out of it. He’d just assumed she had issues and didn’t pay her much more mind than that. It wasn’t his business, and what he had seen of her Gift creeped him out, so he was happy to not think about it.

She had come towards him and Ambrus as they stood on the back patio, though maybe it would have been more accurate to say that she just happened to be moving in that direction. She didn’t acknowledge either of them, or even seem to fully realize that they were there. She’d been wearing a blue sundress, which was streaked with dirt, and her legs had been covered in scratches. She was barefoot. She had moved and sounded like she was completely disconnected from reality. Raja had been unsettled as soon as he got a look at her and realized that she was coming closer.

Then he noticed the bugs.

They were crawling up her bare legs, and minute movement of the grass around her feet indicated that there were even more moving about with each step she took. A cloud of gnats and flies and ladybugs and God knew what else spiraled loosely around her head like a halo (he’d certainly felt like there was something Biblical about it, in a Book of Revelations kind of way).

Swaying. Singing. Raja had once again been rooted to the spot, horrified and disgusted, and he’d only broken out of his trance when he thought that he saw something skitter across Isabella’s cheek like it was about to crawl into her slack-jawed open mouth.

He’d spun right around then and bolted back inside, feeling like he was going to vomit. Ambrus had followed him at a sedate pace; he barely seemed surprised, much less concerned. While Raja stood in the Lugosi kitchen trying not to dry-heave and brushing at himself like some of the pestilent cloud following Isabella might have transferred to him, Ambrus casually asked if he wanted some iced tea.

Raja had come up with something on the spot about how he’d forgotten his mom needed him to do something and actually, he had to go home right this second, sorry. It was an obvious lie. He didn’t even try to make it convincing. Ambrus conversely did a pretty good job of acting like it didn’t bother him at all. Only pretty good though, not perfect. It still made Raja feel a little guilty when he thought about it, but at the same time, he was absolutely convinced that he’d have lost his shit completely if he spent five more minutes in that house, because now he knew that they absolutely did have to have roaches, and oh God, what if Isabella came inside?

Ambrus had texted him later that evening to ask if he wanted to hang out another time and maybe grab an old movie from Blockbuster (Bend had what might have been the last Blockbuster in the world, and apparently that was where some of the edgy kids would hang out). Raja never texted him back.

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((Raja Narang continued from The Dream Machine Takes All of Us))

Raja was a swimmer, not a sprinter, but he was pretty sure he might have broken some records in his mad dash away from the compound. He thought that he caught sight of Dan at some point but then lost him again. He thought that an intercom screeched on somewhere, but he couldn’t hear what was said over the pounding of blood in his ears and his ragged breathing. He kept going until he stumbled and couldn’t catch himself, finally going down hard on his knees and just barely keeping from fulfilling his previous thought about faceplanting right in the dirt. Then he threw up.

It was just water and bile, and it made his eyes water and his throat sting. For several minutes he stayed braced on his hands and knees, digging shallow gouges in the dirt with his clenched fingers, gagging and coughing. When that finally subsided, he stayed there for several minutes more, shaking too hard to do anything else.

Finally, something like a second wind caught up to him, and he shoved himself up to sit back on his knees. He shoved the duffel bag that had been knocking against him the whole way off to the side and then tore off his denim jacket and tossed it over the bag. A few angry red welts dotted his hands and forearms, and the thought of what had to have made them made his stomach churn again, but swiping his hands over himself found no creepy-crawly stowaways. It was just sweat trickling down his back. After that, Raja yanked his hair out of its bun as well and ran his hands through it several times, making very sure that there was nothing in it, either. His scalp still tingled like something was there.

“What the… fuck…” He swallowed, grimaced at the taste of bile, and dragged the duffel bag back over to retrieve one of the water bottles. It took most of his remaining self control to not chug it down and make himself sick again.

“What the fuck,” he repeated with feeling after breaking away from the bottle, and saying it out loud like that actually made him feel a little better.

The bites and stings on his arms throbbed with pain in time with his pulse, but at least that was slowly returning to normal. Raja sipped down a bit more water and then replaced the bottle into the bag, and then he strongly considered just sitting there alone in the desert until he got a sunburn or something. No way in hell he was going back inside the compound now, and its hunched, blocky shape in the distance was the only thing around in any direction that even resembled a building.

It was hard not to think that maybe Isabella’s words had been directed specifically at him. He had no way of telling, since as far as he knew, she was always like that when using her Gift. He sure as hell hadn’t gone for a second look after that one visit to the Lugosi household. Honestly, he didn’t even know if Isabella was aware he’d ever been to her house at all. Still, it all felt a bit targeted when a huge swarm of things that Raja specifically hated came flying at him and telling him to get out.

“You want the building, you can fucking have it. I wanted to be out here anyway.” Telling himself that did not make him feel better this time.

He’d lost his map in the scramble, but it had looked like there was a fence or some kind of border around the area. He just had to pick a direction and walk. That had been the plan, for all of a couple minutes.

He stayed sitting a while longer, shifting only when his legs started to fall asleep from sitting on his knees for so long. It was a nice day. That felt like a stupid thing to notice after what had just happened, but maybe that was why it struck him the way it did. He’d woken up in the dark, boxed in by concrete underground, and all the while, this place was sitting just outside.

Fuck. Something had to have gotten tweaked in his brain in the last twenty-four hours, but here he was, freshly traumatized and still feeling guilty about the idea of wasting a beautiful day. Silver lining: every goddamn bug in a five-mile radius had to be in the compound instead of out here at this point.

Raja climbed to his feet with a groan, picking up his jacket and duffel bag and swinging one over each shoulder. His legs shook, and he hissed through his teeth at the knowledge that he was going to be feeling that for the rest of the day, and tomorrow too. His side was a little tender where the bag had repeatedly bounced against him, so he had to take care with that also. After that, though, all there was to do was… walk.

He couldn’t help itching at the bites every so often as he went, even though each time only made them sting a little more.

((Raja Narang continued in And So It Goes))