Hell Followed with Us(9)

As interesting as this is, though, I feel like shit. And so does the person in the chair across the room, if their scars and grief-reddened eyes have anything to say about it. The right side of their face is destroyed with pockmarks. One eye doesn’t open all the way. Latinx, scarred face, and painted nails don’t combine into a person I recognize. “Who…?”

“Shit, we gotta do introductions.” The stranger leans back, fingers lacing together as if to distract from the obvious tears. “Name’s Salvador. I was with the group that found you, though I didn’t get to say hi before you passed out. Got stuck on babysitting duty—no offense—to make sure you didn’t lose your shit when you woke up.” I’m too tired for that. I’ve lost it enough for one day. “So yeah, nice to finally meet you. Xe/xem pronouns.”

Right, Salvador was the one who pulled the sunburned boy away from the body. The memory is hazy, though. There’s a fog in my brain I’m too tired to claw through. I recognize everything that’s happened today from a distance, like the color’s been bleached out by the sun. Dad’s blood under my nails is the only evidence that he died today. That he died a few hours ago.

Salvador watches me warily.

“Yeah,” I say. “Cool. Xe/xem.” I go through the rest of the set: xe, xem, xyr, xemself. I read about neopronouns in a book Dad smuggled from the burn pile of confiscated items at New Nazareth. He brought up the book again our second night in the city, just a few days ago, when we sat in a dead stranger’s bathroom and cut off two feet of my hair with sewing scissors. He apologized with every snip, certain he was ruining it. By the end, I was sitting in a pile of red-brown scraps and running my hands through my choppy, shaggy, awkward boy hair.

I need to stop thinking about Dad. So I say, “Are you trans?”

Salvador blinks. “Uh.”

“Wait, no.” I can’t just ask people if they’re trans. “I shouldn’t have…”

“No, it’s fine,” Salvador says. “I mean, yeah, of course. I’m super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?”

I’ve never met another trans person before. Can I say that? Would it give me away as an Angel?

I decide on, “It’s been a while.”

“Then you’re going to lose your mind when I tell you this is an LGBTQ+ youth center.”

Xe’s right. “A what?”

Salvador gestures to the office. “This is the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center. Kind of like the YMCA but even gayer somehow. We call it the ALC for short.” Alck, xe pronounces it, like it’s some sort of medicine or maybe a hard liquor. An entire building, just for people like us? “It’s not much, and we’ve had to make a few adjustments”—xe nods to the boarded-up window beside xyr head—”but it’s home.”

A pause.

“Granted,” xe mutters, “today’s been shit. So.”

“I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Xe tugs at one long curl of hair falling out from behind xyr headband and changes the subject. “Nick said you’d been kidnapped.”

“It’s, uh, it’s a long story.”

“I mean, I figured,” Salvador says. “Angels don’t kidnap people.”

They don’t. They string up the heretics and cut them open. Maybe they make it painless if the nonbelievers come willingly. Hell, I remember a reverend praying to a newborn child before their parents drowned them in the river, repenting for bringing a sinner into the world without the church’s blessing. There is no need for new flesh.

Not with the Flood. Not with Seraph.

“I thought that too,” I say.

“Well, terrorists are terrorists, I guess. What I’m getting at is that Nick wants to talk to you. He’s picked up some kinda scent, and he’s not gonna let up until he figures it out, so you might as well get it over with. Think you can manage?”

Manage? I can manage a hell of a lot—whether it’s a smart idea is another thing entirely. “No better time than now.”

“Thought so.” Salvador gets up with a stretch. “Be right back. And don’t try anything funny. Cormac is outside, and he has an itchy trigger finger.”

That almost sounds like a threat, but before I say anything else, Salvador is gone.

So. An LGBTQ+ center. I stand, bracing myself on the desk. I’ve spent a lot of time in Sister Kipling’s office over the past few months, staring at the sparse decorations to avoid looking at the prophet of Armageddon, the woman who created the Flood. Sister Kipling had a crucifix above her door, framed diplomas above the desk, and WALK HIS PATH, FIND SALVATION, RETURN TO EARTH painted across the back wall.

This office is completely different. There’s a rainbow flag behind the office chair, a biography of a trans-rights leader on the bookshelf. One of the newspaper clippings is from all the way back in 2015, celebrating the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. I can’t picture 2015. I don’t think Mom and Dad had even met.

Every picture shows a world I left behind when I was eleven. A world the Angels destroyed when I was fourteen. A world I don’t know at all.

I’m staring at a photo—people with their fists in the air, screaming with rage and power—when the door opens again. I shove my hands into my pockets. Back straight, chin up, like Mom is checking my posture at church.