Chapter 49: 49. A Midnight Confession

Ronan's box truck hurtles over a speed bump and the entire vehicle careens through the air. Inside the truck's container, Thea's stomach coils tighter toward the ground before springing to her throat as her body leaves the floor. In the middle of that weightless moment, wheels crash down onto pavement. Her stomach flips through the air and she plummets back to earth.

Near simultaneous, everything smacks onto the plywood floor: Ivan's fifty pound sack of salt thumps down beside him; Thea's cane clatters out of reach; and her own butt—

A shock jolts from her hip, down her leg, and back up her spine. Her head snaps backward out of instinct. Bone meets solid metal in a hollow clang, like a bass drum with its tension rods set too tight.

Stars burst into her vision. They blink out in the same breath and she slaps a protective hand over the swelling knot of skin at the crown of her head. "Ow. Gosh that really hurt."

At the end of the truck's container nearest the cab, her cane skitters to a rest. Exhaustion tugs her eyelids down into a tired stare. Of course.

It's not that far away from her: just a dozen feet or so. Still, the thought of it. It's dreadful. Exhausting. The thought of crossing that short distance feels like she's aged ten years in an instant.

Ivan's eyes shoot between her and the cane. His brow jumps with recognition and he scrambles over toward the godforsaken stick on a mixture of hands, knees, and feet. His New Boston accent echoes back to her off the metal wall. "Oh, sorry. Please. Let me just..."

Thea winces at the scene, at his eagerness. "Come on, you don't have to treat me any special. I'm not even—"

His hand wraps around the wooden shaft and he whips his head around. He raises the cane above his head like a trophy. "Don't worry. I got it for you, Miss Thea. I'll—"

The truck lurches up. Once again, everyone and everything floats into the air and comes crashing down.

Thea's head strikes the closing note and she slaps a hand over a second forming lump. "Gosh. O-ow. Can't they drive a little more careful with us back here?"

Ivan holds her cane down to her from his full height, handle first. "Here."

She takes it from him, still massaging at knots with her other hand. "Thanks. And Ivan: 'Miss' is even worse than 'Sister'. You really can just call me Thea."

He slides down to the floor on the wall opposite her, kicks up a knee, and flops an arm over the sack of salt. "If you insist Sis—" A thread of the burlap sack that he's fiddling with snaps. "Shit, damn it. I mean, if you say so. Thea. Thea. Sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine. What were you saying, by the way? The bit about your parents?"

His cheeks flush red. "We don't need to go back to that."

Heat and stale air hang between them: oppressive, way too dry. Tinged with the scents of rusted metal and rotting wood. Amid the mundane, a hint of cranberry wafts over from somewhere beneath Ivan's unsteady gaze and piques wrinkles along Thea's nostrils.

Nerves send static along her collarbone: should she push? It might help him, but... Before she can second guess herself, she settles her cane across her lap. "It smells like you've got something on your mind."

A visible shiver runs up his spine. "No disrespect, but that's pretty creepy. Do you still say that to people who don't know about your whole nose deal? Not going to say you're wrong, though."

"Well? I've made I habit of listening if you're feeling like talking."

"It's pretty childish, I think."

"That doesn't matter."

He chews on his lip, working through his thoughts. "Can you, you know." He swirls a finger in the air. "Maybe turn away? Like confession?"

She spins on her butt to face the container's doors. "Ah, yeah. Okay. Is this—"

Something inside her hip seizes. Pain floods her senses and bursts of flickering white obscure her vision. She catches herself falling toward the floor, but the motion is rickety. A fresh wave of pain hits her with each jerk. "Ooh. On second thought, how about I just lay down?"

He twists himself around to face the same way as Thea. "That works."

She crosses her hands over her stomach, cane tucked underneath. "So what troubles you, brother?"

"Do you know anything about professional wrestling?"

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Surprise digs furrows in her brow and widens her eyes. "I-I can't say I do. What about it?"

"That's why I'm here. You know how much money the pros drop on research and development of their powers? Whole teams of scientists and shi— ahem — among other things that is."

"A lot I'd assume?"

"A load. Metalwork doesn't pay well enough to get me in before I'm too old for it to matter."

"But Waylon said you've got a teleportation power right? Wouldn't you make more money using that for something?" Thea says.

He scoffs and the surrounding metal almost seems to vibrate with the noise. "You kidding? No one is taking a risk on some no-name, unaccredited teleporter. Especially not someone as limited as me."

"Okay, so you've got your reason to be here. What does that have to do with your parents?"

Silence stretches between them overtop the steady rumbling of the truck's frame. "They're not the most supportive of that particular dream. Says the displays the performers put on are Godless or some other nonsense." He says.

"Does that matter to you?"

He gesturing wildly with at least one of his hands, sending it flitting through the corner of Thea's vision. "Of course it does! Don't you care what your family thinks about your choices?"

Thea rolls her head to the side and her breath bounces back at her off the metal container wall. "S-sorry. I was left at the monastery as a child, so I don't really remember my parents. Sure, I've talked to others with similar stories as you, but even then, all of their reasons were different."

Another stretch of silence.

"Sorry." Ivan says, regret obvious in the weight of his words.

"No, no. Don't worry! It's not important. But I have to ask again: why does it matter so much that your parents approve? Help me understand."

Ivan rolls that snapped piece of thread between his fingers. "I guess... I guess that I want them to come to a match. See me actually happy for a change."

A pang of empathy echoes in Thea's heart, like a sound carrying through a cavern's tunnels. "Do you think that'll change their mind?" She says.

His hands clench and some of his knuckles pop under the pressure. "I don't know. Probably not."

"Then could you do it for yourself instead? No grand ideas of winning them over?"

Ivan runs a hand through his hair, then down his face, dragging the loose skin of his eyes and cheeks along the way. "Gah, I don't know. I guess... Just tell me: am I making the wrong decision? I feel like I'm letting my folks down again, resorting to this. If it doesn't work out, I'll be back where I started, maybe worse off even depending how bad we fuck— I mean, screw up. What if this is the last straw with them?"

"Does the thought of that scare you?"

"More than anything." He says.

Thea lets herself lay there, the truck's vibrations lulling her into thought. She tightens her grip around the cane still resting atop her torso. "I don't normally do this, but do you want to hear from a priest or someone just as lost and out of place as you?"

"Both?"

"Well, in my opinion, you should be scared. Losing the people you care about, your actions pushing them away. It's scary. None of us know the right answer or how to avoid every mistake. Not you, not me, not your parents. And certainly not the mess that is the Church. We're all scared little kids bumbling through the dark hoping against hope that the way we live will matter."

She sighs and lets silence linger, collecting her thoughts. "I can't tell you that it will matter in some grand sense. There's this thought I keep having; it scares me. Thinking that the people I love will blink out of existence one day and their entire life will only mean as much as I can remember. And after that? After I'm gone? There aren't any memories of them left and it's like they never mattered in the first place. It's terrifying, especially if I'm the one passing on." Her voice trembles. "I hate it."

Her flow of thoughts breaks and a flood of nerves shifts her stomach in uncomfortable circles. She sucks a stream of snot back up her nose. "Sorry, just me rambling about my own stuff at this point. I guess the gist is: what if you and I thought about our life as ours? Ours to explore. Ours to... I don't know: to flail wildly with or flush down a toilet if we so please. What if we take all this time we have and stop giving it to people who don't have to live with how they spend it?"

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