Rhymes With Nothing (pt 3).

Two-thirds of Rain City is a ruined mess, and its housing lots sell for a song – you were able to build brand new, right on the river, six bedrooms that meant you had finally made it with respectable offices and bedrooms for the someday kids. You joked about it, practiced, gave your imaginary son a name; you walked barefoot at night into the empty squared-off lots on either side of your house, the ones that would grow other houses and bring neighbors you could talk to and have for dinner and let your kids play together. You squeezed the mud and gravel between your toes and hoped that they would hurry up and get there. You hoped and you hoped and you hoped.

*

The kid comes back with a plate of eggs in one hand and a glass of milk in the other; he offers some to Lee, who shakes his head, holding his stomach. His queasiness is paid no mind by the kid, who shovels the eggs in relentlessly, punctuating every bite with a drink; unable to take it, Lee gets up and goes to the fence, looking for the mutant Calico but not seeing it. Black headstones are dropped on the ground haphazardly on the other side of the planks, their surfaces dully reflecting sunlight as if unwilling to give it up. One of these belongs to the kid – there are forty-three others all bunched up in the worst end of the graveyard where the ground is infertile clay.

They all have the same last name, Lee says to the kid. It can’t all be a single family.

Back in the shade of the diner, Jan brushes the hair out of his eyes, chewing, looking at Lee thoughtfully. Then he nods, considers for a moment, and then shrugs.

The kid gets up, leaving his plate, and walks past Lee, grabbing the handle to the gate and dragging it open, grimacing at the squeal of the hinges. He gestures for Lee to follow and stops just inside, pointing to the noticeable border just past the Rhodes graves where the clay turned to carefully tended lawn and the headstones became varied and lovely. It wasn’t that they were poor as he’d originally thought, Lee realized; whatever those black markers were made of, it wasn’t cheap.

The kid follows him, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, his scar ghastly in direct sunlight, tucking some of his hair behind his ear (half-missing, and just as ragged-pink). Lee taps each grave marker with his food as he passes. Blacksmith, he reads, Goliath, Empress – what about these name, huh?

He deliberately stops at the foot of Jan’s grave; he crosses his arms as tight as he can.

I’ve asked around, Lee says. People call you guys Liars. They say a lot of stuff about you guys.

The kid titles his head to the side; his eyes spin, and spin. I don’t even know what that color is, Lee finds himself thinking. I don’t think it even existed before right now.

I was told that the Liars live in the Outside, Lee says, barely able to speak above a whisper. They say you guys know how to do stuff.

Jan bites his lip. He strokes his scar with his thumb and nods.

And then he bends down, and writes in the shallow clay: THERES A PRICE.

Lee snorts. There usually is.