Chapter Two
Days later, I stood looking over the Bellingham Bay from the student union at Western. We’d come up for the memorial service the university put on for Ginny. They had several counselors set up in the student union to answer questions. Most of the students just passed through, not really paying attention to all the fuss. I remember being that self-absorbed.
A couple dozen kids stood clumped in groups, crying or talking. Ginny had been a well-liked teaching assistant in the theater department—explained a bit about her flamboyant personality.
Katie was out in the lobby chatting with one of her old professors while Jai Li and I finished our lunch in the commons. I’d polished off my burger, but the remains of Jai Li’s lunch had congealed into a mass of cold fries and ketchup. She claimed she wasn’t hungry. I figured she was worried about Katie and contemplating all the death she’d been witness to in her short life.
“You okay, hon?” I asked her. Jai Li was tiny for six. She looked like a doll with fine facial features and long black hair. She’d decided to grow it out after Christmas. I thought it looked good on her. Nidhogg, the dragon who’d owned Jai Li before I came along, had insisted her servants keep their hair short.
We changed most of the rules when she came to live with Katie and me at Christmas. All our lives had grown to be more amazing than any of us could have imagined. I can tell you Jai Li was full of typical little kid attitude most of the time. The fact she’d had her tongue cut out at birth gave her a bit of a disconnect with normal folks, not that she let it stop her. One thing about our foster kid, she was tenacious.
“Are you going to finish your lunch?” I asked, stroking her hair.
She looked up at me and shrugged.
“It’s okay. I understand.” I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close. She snuggled into my arm, a little sigh escaping her.
Mei Hau, Jai Li’s twin sister, had been killed just over a year ago. They had been thralls of the most ancient of dragons—Nidhogg, She Who Must Be Obeyed. Nidhogg ruled Seattle and all of Washington. Think steel fist in a velvet glove.
It was a year ago, around the same time that Mei Hau had been killed, that we had all found out that dragons really exist. Jai Li had known her whole life, of course. The rest of us had been more sheltered.
As it was, the minute I remade the sword Gram, Nidhogg went into a rage, setting all our lives on a roller coaster of battle, pain, and unexpected joy.
I held one of those joys in my lap as we sat and looked out over the bay, letting the clear day hold our attention while our minds whirled off into secret directions.
Katie had wanted to come up to the memorial service. We’d both gotten off work, as it was Friday. The funeral wasn’t until Saturday afternoon, so we decided to visit Rolph and Juanita as well. Juanita was staying with her sister here in Bellingham, since she’d just had the baby and all.
Juanita was a human, like most of us, but her hubby, Rolph, was a dwarf. Not the Disney type of comical dwarf—all waggling beards and bulbous noses. Rolph was a Nordic dwarf. He stood over six feet, with a shock of black hair and a great bushy black beard, more of a cross between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus hair-wise. His job kept him over the Canadian border in Surrey most days. I wasn’t sure exactly what his job was—he didn’t talk about it and I didn’t ask. He’d had a rough life. I’m sure he was doing what he had to to get by. It would be good to see them.
If we could only get out of here.
Unlike Mei Hau, Ginny had chosen to check out. Not something that jived with my worldview. She’d been happy, a good student, well-liked. She’d written and produced several plays and had been up for a national award for one of the musicals she’d created.
No one was sure what had triggered the jump. Samantha had needed a few stitches from where she’d hit the table when she passed out. She was a real mess. We’d expressed our condolences to her when we arrived at the memorial, but she was too far out of it. Shock, I think.
I spoke with one of the counselors before the memorial had gotten started, and she told me that it was not uncommon for people with depression to commit suicide when they were at their most successful. They’d achieved their dreams and knew it could only go downhill from there. Funny thing was, no one ever thought Ginny was depressed. If she was, she hid it really well.
Samantha didn’t think Ginny had been depressed, and she’d know. You can’t wake up with someone every day and not begin to get a pretty clear picture of their moods and issues.
The funeral Saturday would be small. Not sure why we were having a service anyway, not with the memorial. Ginny had no family. She’d told everyone she was an orphan when she first showed up at Western. Katie took her under her wing that first year, made sure she was surrounded by people. It hadn’t lasted. They each had their own wants and desires. Katie had Melanie at first, and Ginny experimented with a whole rainbow of choices. Katie said Ginny had seen the world as an array of flavors, and she was in a hurry to try them all.
You had to admire her lust for life—and undergrads. Until we got the call for the birthday party, Katie hadn’t heard from Ginny in a couple of years, other than the occasional social media update. They were all so busy. That’s just how life got to be. But the suicide brought important things back into focus. Like the little girl who counted on us to keep her safe.
Katie was still in deep conversation, so Jai Li and I headed out to the balcony along the back. The view was just as breathtaking as it had been when Ginny took the plunge. We stood at the railing and looked out over the bay toward the open ocean. I couldn’t get Ginny out of my head. The way she fell like that, peaceful and content. Made me wonder what she knew that I didn’t.
We walked around to the front of the student union, and I pointed out the various buildings. Jai Li drank it all in. Until Christmas, she’d lived the majority of her life inside Nidhogg’s mansion. The outside world fascinated her.
That was one of the wonderful things about having a kid. They made you pause and look at the world through new eyes. Made you think about things you’d long forgotten. Not all of them were pleasant, mind you. There were plenty of things in my past I’d have liked to never think of again.
Like this campus, for instance. Jai Li saw it as wondrous and full of secrets to discover. Me, not so much.
It was haunting, being back here after going on seven years. I’d started at seventeen, excited to be away from home and scared out of my mind. I’d felt like such an outsider here, no matter how hard some of the people around me tried. I’d lived up on The Ridge for four years, never daring to go out and get my own place. It was too terrifying. Da couldn’t afford for me to get my own place, and I barely got by on the cafeteria food and student housing.
There had been this one kid, though, who had been worse off than me. She had to be a girl since she lived in my dorm, though you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. Not sure she was sure who she was. She lived down the hall from me. Kept her hair over her face and her body buried in layers of bulky clothes. I tried talking to her a few times, but she only grunted. She disappeared partway through my sophomore year. I heard she got a place in one of the local boarding houses. I’m not sure if she ever finished the year, but people I know said she didn’t come back junior year.
I always wanted to talk to that girl, see what her deal was. I felt that if I’d reached out to her, maybe I could’ve been a friend, you know. Instead I kept my own shields up around me. Safer that way.
Katie finally finished with Doctor Weepy-McCries-a-lot. They hugged and I tried not to gag. I remembered that professor. I didn’t take her classes, but I knew people who did. Brilliant, they assured me. Only thing was she always reminded me of that Trelawny character in Harry Potter.
Katie loved her, though. Go figure.
“You ready to get out of here?” Katie asked me, giving the good professor a little wave as she walked out to meet us.
I shrugged and let her fall into my arms. At least Katie had stopped crying.
“Death sucks,” she said.
Had to agree with her there. I know she was thinking of Jimmy. I didn’t blame her, losing him while she was in a coma, not getting a chance to say goodbye. Never resolving their outstanding issues. It was the same with her parents. Just gone one day with no recourse.
And don’t get me started on funerals in general. I couldn’t take all the thrashing and moaning. Maybe I’d seen too many die over the last year. Maybe I was a cold-hearted bitch. Likely both.
“Why don’t we stop at Mallard Ice Cream before we head over to Juanita’s?” I asked.
Jai Li’s head snapped around at the words “ice cream.” Girl had a sweet tooth.
Katie rolled her eyes at me. “Of course. Can’t come to Bellingham without getting ice cream at Mallard’s. I think that’s where the freshman fifteen was invented.”
I hadn’t been able to afford Mallard’s when I went to Western. I never gained the freshman fifteen, either. But she knew both. She was just busting my chops.
Katie was looking worn, thin. I was putting together a theory about her ailment. She seemed to be better, stronger when she was eating huge amounts of calories. Ice cream would definitely fit the bill.
“Juanita just had the baby, of course she wants ice cream,” Katie assured me. “We should get something with dark chocolate. Really helps with the post-delivery hormone crash.”
Whatever, as long as Katie had a supersized portion.
Jai Li was practically vibrating by the time we were all buckled into the pickup. She loved ice cream and babies. Today would end up full of wins for her. Now if my stomach would unclench and Katie would stop looking so haunted …