Yesterwary

Demi clanked away at the stove, barely aware of Chef Kraus’ graceless maneuvers around her. After three days, they’d decided it was safe for her to return to work, and after three more days, they’d concluded that there was very little he could do to help without affecting the food’s flavor. He could plate, and he could prepare things for Demi to cook, but that was about it, and his lack of duties only made him restless. In less than two weeks, Demi had gone from having never really cooked in her life, to running an entire kitchen nearly by herself.

“You’re going to make me dizzy,” she mumbled, even though her back was turned to the frantic chef. Having spent the last six days dealing with a distant, yet somehow over-protective, Bastian, ‘moody’ was her new default.

Kraus groaned and slammed a package of frozen hamburger onto the counter. “There is nothing to do.”

“So, go help the waitresses,” she suggested.

“If I am out front, people will know that I am not cooking food.”

“Then chop some onions for me,” Demi sighed, exasperated.

He picked up a knife and mumbled angrily to himself, something about ‘chopping onion for someone else to cook in my own damn kitchen.’

A few swift knocks at the door—which they had begun locking during the day, ever since one of the customers mistook the kitchen for the bathroom—made them both jump.

“Who is it?” Kraus called in a sing-song voice that was completely unfitting for a man of his stature.

“Bastian.”

With a sigh of relief, Kraus unlocked the door, but immediately slammed it shut in Bastian’s face.

“What the hell, Chef?” Demi asked.

He raised one thick finger to his lips and shook his head. “He is not alone.”

“What?” she breathed, shocked at the thought that Bastian might jeopardize their situation.

“It’s okay. Just let me in,” Bastian called through the door.

Demi nodded, and Kraus hesitantly opened the door. A hot skillet crashed down from Demi’s hand, landing directly on one of her feet, but she didn’t move. A wave flooded over her, saturating her insides until they were as heavy as lead. She was paralyzed at the sight of the man who’d followed Bastian into the kitchen.

“What the hell is he doing here?” The words were barely audible, held down by the weight of panic and confusion.

“He ran out,” Bastian explained quietly.

Demi backed up against the refrigerator as the man moved toward her with open arms and watery eyes.

“Stay away from me,” she commanded.

“Sweetie—” the man said.

“Don’t ‘sweetie’ me,” she huffed with amused disbelief. “In case you don’t remember, our last conversation ended with you hauling me off a ladder at my sister’s wake. So don’t fucking ‘sweetie’ me.”

Mr. Harper nodded and cooperatively lowered his arms. But regret shone through his face, as brilliant and clear as the rage that shone through Demi’s.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“What was that? You’re sorry? Sorry for what, exactly? Years of mental and physical abuse, or just the ladder thing?” she rambled. Kraus was bouncing his hands, trying to get her to lower her voice, but it did little good.

“Everything, Demetria. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Now that you’re here, you mean? Now that you know a place like this exists, and you’ve gotten yourself stuck here. What happened? Did mom finally run off with the pool-boy?” Demi crossed her arms. She knew her words were only meant to hurt her father, and she felt no shame for it.

Mr. Harper raised a palm to his forehead, his signature move for trying to hide the fact that he was feeling real-people emotions. “No,” he said. “She… She couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Your ass-hattery? I’m surprised it took her so long.”

“No, Demetria. Your brother… Margaret-Jean… and then you… She… she…” He’d given up on trying to hide his pain, and broke down right there in the kitchen.

She didn’t need an explanation to understand what her father was trying to say, nor did she find it incredibly surprising. Growing up, Margo and Demi had always been worried that they might, one day, find their mother’s cold body next to an empty pill-bottle. Every day they found her alive was more shocking than the alternative.

In any normal situation involving normal people the proper response, probably, would have been a hug, or, perhaps, some comforting words. But it was not a normal situation, and Demi did not consider her father to be a normal person.

“Bastian, will you take him to the house?” she asked, voice emotionless. Bastian nodded. “I’ll talk to you after work,” she said, staring coldly at her father’s face.

“You can take off now, if you need—” Kraus began.

“No,” Demi said, retrieving the pan from the floor and tossing it into the sink. She turned her back to them and went about her business in an angry fluster.

“That was cold,” Kraus said, after Bastian and Mr. Harper had left.

“He’s a cold person,” she retorted, cheeks glistening from, what she told herself was, the kitchen heat.

Demi walked along the dark alley, food in tow. She hadn’t planned on making enough for her father, but Kraus insisted. They came to an agreement that she would take extra, but only if he prepared it, so her father’s food would be tasteless. She wanted him to get the full experience of what Yesterwary had to offer.

She took a deep breath before opening the door, preparing herself for another encounter with her father, which she’d hoped had been one of the things she left behind in the old world.

Bastian swung open the door before she could even find her key, and pulled her inside.

“Problem,” he said, leading her up the stairs.

The bathroom door had been busted inward off its hinges, littering the floor with jagged fragments of wood. Inside, Mr. Harper was sprawled out on the tile, surrounded by tiny, empty vodka bottles.

“Of course,” Demi muttered, kicking his foot to see if he was conscious.

At her father’s groan, she nodded her head. Bastian and she heaved the man up—which was not an easy feat, considering the extra amount of weight years of alcohol had left around his middle bits—and shimmied him down the hall onto Demi’s bed. Bastian fetched the laundry bucket from the kitchen and left it next to Mr. Harper’s head, hoping that, if anything from the inside of his stomach needed to suddenly evacuate, it would have the decency to find its way to the plastic container, and not onto the sheets or floor.

“Why’d you let him drink?” Demi asked testily, following Bastian down the stairs into the sitting room.

“He asked for a drink, and I gave him one for his nerves,” he explained. “I went to the kitchen to get him something to eat, and when I came back, he’d taken my first-aid kit and locked himself in the bathroom.”

Demi sighed and fell onto the graying, velvet loveseat, dropping her head into her hands. Bastian sat next to her and rested a comforting arm on her shoulder, which she immediately shrugged off.

“I take it you two aren’t on good terms,” he noted.

“What could have possibly given you that idea?” she asked, glancing up with anger.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” he said, more of a side-note than real sympathy.

“She checked out a long time ago,” Demi whispered. “I haven’t had a mother since I was eight. Or a father, for that matter.”

“What changed?”

Demi stared at her feet, hunched over with her arms wrapped around herself. She’d never talked about it to anyone, other than her sister.

“I had a brother.” She remembered the day she’d fallen through the ice. It hadn’t only been herself. She and her brother had been playing together, and Margo was watching them from the edge of the pond. Her brother had fallen in, and she’d found herself in the water after desperately trying to save him. For whatever reason, Margo had pulled her out, first. Their brother had spent significantly more time in the iciness than Demi had. “He and I came down with pneumonia at the same time.” She remembered looking over from her hospital bed, her parents huddled around her brother, sobbing. “I got better, and he didn’t.” Demi’s words were distant echoes in her own mind. She couldn’t feel them, she could only hear them, as if someone else were using her for ventriloquism.

Bastian returned his hand to her shoulder, and she let him keep it there.

“My parents always acted like the wrong kid died,” she said.

“I’m sure they didn’t—”

“My mother told me, ‘I wish it had been you,’” Demi snapped.

“People say things. That doesn’t mean they’re true,” he said.

“The fact that I’m here proves they didn’t love me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have run out.”

Bastian wrapped her in a hug, not minding the tears that were dampening his collar as she cradled her forehead into his neck.

“Your dad was talking to me before he stole all the vodka,” he said into Demi’s hair. “He told me about your sister. And… he thinks you tried to kill yourself.”

“What?” Demi gasped, whipping her head up to look into his eyes.

“They found your body on the ground in front of the library. You’re in a coma. They think you jumped.”

Demi was stunned into silence at how little anyone from the old world actually knew her. It would have taken Margo a fraction of a second to dismiss their insane theory. But then, if Margo had been there, Demi probably wouldn’t have been on the library roof in the first place.

“Did you?” he prodded quietly.

“No!” she cried. “I was on the roof because that’s where I used to go with Margo,” she said, recalling the night of her sister’s funeral. “I just wanted to feel close to her.”

“How’d you end up on the ground?”

“I… I don’t know,” she said, getting to her feet to find her jacket, and digging a container of food from the bag she’d brought home.

“Where are you going?”

“Michael will be waiting for me,” she said, distracted.

“Demi—”

“I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Demi!”

She slammed the front door between herself and Bastian, leaning her head back against the cool wood. She couldn’t remember what had happened on the library roof the night of Margo’s funeral. And tears poured down her cheeks as she considered the possibility that, maybe, she had tried to kill herself. That, maybe, she hadn’t wanted to continue living in a world without the only person who loved her.

“You don’t have to tell me a story, tonight,” Michael said quietly, placing a small hand on Demi’s shoulder. “You’re sad.”

“What makes you say that?” she asked.

“Your eyes don’t look like they usually do,” he observed. “They’re usually squinty at the corners. They just look like everyone else’s eyes, now.”

“Well,” she said, brushing a tear from beneath her lashes, “sometimes, when you’re sad is the best time for stories. They can make you feel better.”

Michael thought over her words for a moment, wobbling back and forth a few inches on the swing.

“In a world far and different from here,” he started, looking up at her expectantly.

Demi’s lips twitched, and she continued where he left off. “There’s something unlike anything you’ve ever known. Not a sound, or a smell, or a taste, or a sight. It’s something you feel inside.”

“Like a kidney stone?”

Demi looked down at him, mouth agape in befuddlement. “Why—no, not like a kidney stone, Michael. It’s like when it stops raining, and the clouds part just enough for the light to come through. It’s like that, but inside your chest and your stomach and your toes. It makes you feel magnificent, and invincible. As long as you have it, you’ll live on forever.”

“What is it?” he asked in captivation.

“Love,” Demi whispered, closing her eyes to fight off the tears that were determined to burst through.

“It sounds wonderful,” Michael said, voice airy. “I want to go to there, the world far and different from here.”

“You will,” Demi lied. Her voice wavered as she looked to the boy at her side, and she finally acknowledged why she’d been so fond of him. It wasn’t because he was different, and it wasn’t because he was amusing, and it wasn’t because he liked sandwiches. It was because he shared the same eyes and name as the brother she had forced herself to forget. “You will, Michael.”