Page 147 of Because I Killed Him
I nearly fling myself off the sofa, where I’m stress-sweating through my pajamas. It’s no longer a mystery why only Blues and Oranges enjoy this game. “Let’s take a break,” I mutter, even though I’m sure Dickie will keep me shackled to this time-bending nightmare for as long as he possibly can.
He pauses mid-bite on a truffle, then slowly lays down his cards. “Take a break to do what?”
I pull the Florence Engine from my pocket and roll it between my palms, thinking for a moment. It’s a question I could ask any of them—Edmund, Jack, or Dickie—but we’re always together, packed into the same cafes and clubs, and it feels like the kind of question that should be asked one-on-one.
“How did you, Edmund, and Jack meet?” I ask.
Dickie’s face brightens, his eyes going wide as cherry pies. “Oh, it’s a swell story, broad. A real touch of terrific.”
He leans back on the sofa and gets a faraway look, as if he’s eighty years old and about to tell me how he hiked up a mountain barefoot through a snowstorm and discovered the secret to immortality at the top.
“Jack and I knew each other for a year before we met Ed. He showed up with his folks for one of those media fluff jobs—you know, shake hands with low-citizens, kiss a few babies, smile for the cameras. Real showbiz stuff. His old man was running for a Blue Rep seat back then and figured a photo op with a bunch of hard-knock kids might win him some sympathy votes.”
Dickie pauses to cram two truffles into his mouth and keeps talking as he chews. “We met Ed at lunch hour. Jack and I were in the mess hall, minding our business, when in walks this tall drink of trouble in a velvet suit, with his nose in the air like it was strung on a hook. Ed broke off from the tour ’cause he was hungry. Jack and I didn’t think much of it until one of the Pinkies stuck him next to us. And we were looking at this fella’s shined shoes and double-breasted frills, thinking,this one’s about to cry over the soup.”
Dickie swallows the truffles and cackles, more to himself than to me. “Then comes the best bit. Ed picked up his spoon—a little tin thing, all covered in scratches—and looked at it like it just told him his blood wasn’t blue. He called the Pinkie over and said he couldn’t eat unless the spoon was gold.”
“And that’s when Jack lost it. Stone-faced, cool as you like, he grabbed Ed’s spoon, dunked it in the honey jar, handed it back, and said, ‘Gold enough for you, chap?’”
Dickie slaps his knee and sniggers as if the memory might knock him over. “The look on Ed’s face was priceless, like Jack had slapped him with a wet glove.”
My thoughts jump back to Edmund’s birthday, when Jack gave him a tin spoon as a gift, and all three of them burst into laughter. It must’ve been the same one.
“What did Edmund do, then?” I ask.
“What most Blues do. He got all puffed up and challenged Jack to a death duel right there in the mess hall.” Dickie barks a laugh. “Only problem? No sabers. So Ed grabbed a butter knife from the table, mad as the devil himself, and Jack—Jack grabbed the same tin spoon. He was swiping at Ed with it, licking honey off between swings, and all the kids were hollering, climbing on tables, and cheering them on.”
Dickie pauses, his grin slipping a touch. “Ed was starting to go red in the face. He realized how daft it all looked. But that’s not what stopped him. What stopped him was Jack pointing the spoon at Ed and saying, ‘Look where we are, chap. You can kill me, but it won’t hurt any worse.’”
Dickie cuts off, eyes alight, still high on the memory, but I’m not. Because it suddenly occurs to me that an important detail is missing from this story.
“Where exactlywereyou?”
“Um, hello—a Civilized Youth House.”
I bite down on my lip, trying to keep my shock from showing. “Oh, shit. Dickie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He shrugs and reaches absentmindedly for his chocolate milk. “Thought Lady Charlotte would’ve told you.”
No. Ever since her mom died, Charlotte’s avoided the topic of family almost entirely. “What happened to your parents?” I ask. “And Jack’s?”
“Jack’s folks dropped him off when he was five. Didn’t want him anymore.”
I can partly imagine it because the same thing happened to Mom. Her parents abandoned her as a baby, and she spent the first twelve years of her life in a Civilized Youth House, raised by Pinkies like crops in rows, until her uncle finally tracked her down and took her in. Mom doesn’t talk about it much, but I know she still hasn’t made peace with the abandonment,especially since her parents died before she ever had the chance to confront them.
I wonder how similar Jack’s experience was and whether being abandoned by his parents at an age when he probably still remembers them led him to start drinking.
“What about your parents, Dickie?” I ask quietly.
His hand stalls on the rim of his glass. His lashes flutter, and his eyes tremor for an instant before hardening. “That’s none of your business, broad.”
I nod, aware I pushed too far, but I also notice something strange: the way Dickie tosses other people’s secrets around like crumbs from one pocket yet guards his own like a blade in the other.
“Anyway,” Dickie says, dragging his straw noisily through the last of his chocolate milk, “that’s what shook things loose. Ed came back twice more with his folks for reshoots. All stuffy politics and photo ops. Eventually, he got sick of polishing his old man’s halo for the cameras and started ditching to hang with us instead.”
“Have the three of you been friends ever since?”
He shrugs. “I guess so… Wasn’t all fun and sun from the start, though. Jack and Ed butted heads over the blood color thing. And Ed—he had a real hair-trigger temper back then. One time, when we were smack in the middle of a fight about whether the Blues fairly earned what they’ve got, Ed called Jack and me ‘low’ and ditched us on the side of the highway. We thought he was gone for good. But he showed up a week later with big, sorry eyes, wearing the ugliest green-and-orange suit you ever saw.” Dickie slides the empty glass onto the table with a wistful sigh. “Then one day, a couple of months after his old man died, Ed took us in. Even bought us a place in the Rainbow District and helped Jack get a job repairing aircraft. And that was that. Like it’d always been the three of us.”
