Jasper rubs his chest. “I think I’m getting worse. It hurts more this time.”
“Did you hear me?” I ask. Maybe I didn’t speak. The words keep yelling themselves over and over in my head.
“Hmm?” Jasper says. His eyes are ringed in dark purple-like bruises, and even his cheeks look sunken.
“I said, Indigo is Ezekiel.” I half shout it, trying to quiet the noise in my brain.
Jasper pales further when I didn’t think that was possible. “What?”
“Indigo is who?” Vee has returned to the table and is staring at us with undisguised shock. The table descends into awkward silence as I wrestle with what to say, but you know what? Fuck it. My stepfather is a supervillain, and my boyfriend is dying with alarming frequency. I need all the help I can get.
“Indigo and Ezekiel are the same person.”
Jasper frowns. Vee gasps.
“How do you know?” she asks.
Oh, that might be a reason to not tell her, because there’s not enough time to cover that whole backstory.
“I saw him,” I say, abbreviating. “In his office. He snapped his fingers and suddenly he was...” I wave my hands. “Empty.”
“So what do we do?”
“We?” Jasper says. “Aren’t you a waitress?”
My toes curl in my shoes as my ears go flaming hot. So much backstory. For everyone.
“Vee and my mom were... they knew each other.”
Vee jerks a thumb at Jasper. “Who’s this?”
“He’s my... partner... boyfriend. Uh... we’re on a blind date for the sixty-seventh time. Maybe more. You’re going to need more pins for the board in your freezer tonight, by the way.”
“Feels like I’m missing some details here,” Vee says. “And how do you know about the board?”
Jasper laughs, which quickly turns into a consumptive cough. The effort doubles him over. He appears to be shrinking inside his flannel.
“We don’t really have time for that,” I say, pushing up from my chair.
“Does he need an ambulance?” Vee asks.
“More like a miracle,” I say. People are watching from their tables. My mother is watching from overhead, and I can’t think like this. “Can we go downstairs and talk? We need help.”
Vee doesn’t hesitate. Jasper stumbles. I put an arm around him to help guide him between tables. Getting down the stairs to the basement is trickier, but we manage. Jasper’s breathing hard by the time we’re all tucked away in the freezer.
“Wow,” he says as Vee helps him sit down on an old leather desk chair with cracked arms. “This is pretty cool.”
It is. The maps. The lighting. There are fewer pins on the board than there were the last time I was here, but as I watch, they begin lighting up. Tiny explosions that start at the diner begin radiating outward.
Silently, I count. One, two, three. I lose track somewhere around thirty when Vee goes, “What the hell is that?”
I don’t need to count to mentally tick the number going up higher and higher.
“It’s me,” I say on a sigh.
She looks me up and down. “What do you mean?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. It would be so helpful if just one person could remember what was happening here so I didn’t have to explain every time.
