Opal (The Raven Cycle #4.5)(10)

“I’m not going if it doesn’t stop,” Adam said, and Opal’s heart exploded with gladness. She imagined an autumn where Adam’s car stayed on blocks and nothing ever changed.

“Fuck that,” Ronan replied. “You’re going.”

“You must really think I’m a monster.”

“Don’t even start. Shit. Could you—”

“God.”

“God won’t get me a towel.”

Adam thumped by Opal and Chainsaw without seeming to even notice the two of them huddled by the door, and then he thumped back down the exact same way. Ronan’s dreamnoise hitched. Chainsaw rapidly tapped her beak open and shut and Opal aimed a fist at her to quiet her.

“Why is this happening?” Adam asked.

“I was hoping you’d tell me.” Ronan’s dreamnoise fuzzed and burned in Opal.

“How would I know?”

“You know everything.”

“I don’t — maybe I should call Fox Way.” But Adam sounded dubious.

“Because that worked so well last time.”

Happiness and sadness were rising up in Opal, both at once. Now that she was not screaming, she knew what was causing the reappearance of the dark unmaking. Because even though she now would have preferred to be properly animally, she was still made of dreamstuff. Moreover, she was not just dreamstuff, she was excellent dreamstruff, a psychopomp, designed to save Ronan again and again, ever since he was a little boy. She knew what she sounded like as a dreamthing, and she knew what the ley line sounded like as a dreamsource, and she knew what Ronan was supposed to sound like as a dreamer. She knew it in the way that she knew all the time that she was a piece of him, a manifestation of a part of him. It was this terrible trueness that had drawn her to other things like her at the same time that it drove her away.

So she could save him now.

But if she stopped the black-oozing present, she would have an Adamless future. He had just said it: if it didn’t stop, he wouldn’t go away.

Ronan abruptly strode past her and Chainsaw, filled with such brisk purpose that both she and the bird reared back. But he didn’t pause; just opened the front door and went outside. Adam, Opal, and Chainsaw all hurried to follow him.

The three of them stood in the dull, friendly light of the porch and watched Ronan. He was not on the porch. He was next to his car, which was on its wheels next to Adam’s car, which was on its blocks, and he had all the doors open. The little interior light looked like the single shining eye of some kind of creature, and it winked sometimes as Ronan moved back and forth in front of it. He was harvesting trash from his car, which he did very rarely — more often Opal would have to do it as a punishment — and placing the papers and wrappers into a bag. Opal did not understand why he was doing such a thing with such furious import. He never ate the trash harvest. Surely he couldn’t really believe the trash harvest would help him with the unmaking. But he continued to rip great handfuls of paperwork from its roots before stuffing it into a Food Lion bag.

“Come on, Lynch,” Adam said.

Ronan retrieved a receipt as it danced and twirled across the driveway. They were delicious, but sometimes the edges gave Opal a paper cut on the corners of her lips if she put them in her mouth the wrong way. He stuffed it into the bag. “Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m a real thing. Why isn’t there anyone else like me?”

“Your dad. Kavinsky.”

“I meant living people. Unless the takeaway is that we’re all just really good at being dead.”

“Ronan. What the hell are you even doing?”

Ronan put a soda bottle in the bag. “What does it look like? Cleaning the car before you take it. I just want you to go, tonight.”

Adam laughed, but it was a laugh that sounded like punching air. “It’s like you want it. It’s like some part of you always wants it.”

Ronan rummaged in the trunk, which was a part of the car Opal had been forbidden to harvest from. She had tried to guess what might be in there, thrilling herself with the most terrifying and terrible of options (her favorite was that there was another Opal in there). She couldn’t see what was in it now, but it was making a chattering, metallic sound. “That’s not true.”

“It’s like you don’t care if it happens, then. It’s like you’re never afraid.”

The noise in the trunk stopped. Ronan said, “You already knew that part of me got fucked a long time ago, Parrish, and it’s not changing anytime soon.”

Adam crossed his arms. He was getting very upset, and Opal’s heart was bursting with love for him, and when she held on to him, he didn’t push her away. “Well, that’s not okay with me.”

“Luckily for you, looks like that isn’t going to matter.” Ronan threw his car keys in the direction of the front porch. They clattered and slammed against the topmost stair, where they remained. Ronan was often losing his car keys by putting them in stupid places, and Opal thought about how this was just another stupid place because no one would think to look on the front porch stair for the keys.

Adam turned away and just looked at the front door as if it were the most interesting thing. It was not, so Opal turned back to Ronan, who sank down into the passenger seat of the car and let his harvest bag rest on the ground. Black was running out of his ears and soaking his collar, and between his parted lips his teeth were coated in it.