Free Indelible Ink by Matt Betts Page A

admit it’s a horrible time to become addlebrained, no matter what I decide to do.”
    Avi took a deep breath and Deena was sure he still didn’t believe her. “Just get some rest when we get on the train. We’ll decide what you want to be when you grow up later.” He turned and looked out at the city.
    “ Jesus. Stop saying that. I don’t understand it, and I keep hoping it will get sorted out by the time we hit Los Angeles, but I don’t think it’s going to.” Deena looked at the little spot on her right arm. It looked innocent enough; small, lighter than normal. She knew it could turn on a dime if it were any other day. “I feel like I have the ability to make choices for the first time here. It’s always felt like I had to do what this inner voice has told me to for so long, for as long as I remember.” Deena didn’t look at him. She couldn’t come right out and say there was no way for them to be together again. She faked looking at traffic, but knew he could see through her. “All I’m asking is that we take our time getting back to the city. Give me time to heal. Maybe I can get myself figured out so I handle this change.”
    “I understand changes, I get it. But that doesn’t mean you stop being the person you were.” Avi sounded bored with the conversation already.
    “In this case it does, I know it does. I can’t feel the same things the same way.”
    “You said it yourself, you aren’t completely back to normal yet, you’re still healing and you will be for some time. Remember that job in Omaha? It took you most of a week to recover from that.”
    “Avi. I had a migraine. This seems like a little more than a bad headache.”
    “So maybe by the time we get back, you’ll see things more clearly and you’ll know what’s what.” Avi fell silent for a few miles.
    She wondered what ideas were forming in his head, how he was going to move forward with the new information. His loyalty to Marsh went back further than his affiliation with Deena. “What’s going to happen when we get to L.A.?” Deena asked. “Are you going to let me do this? Or are you siding with Marsh to try to get me to stay?”
    “We’ll be at the train station in a few minutes. What say we pass that time in silence or play that game? I Spy?” Avi folded his arms and fidgeted in his seat. “I spy something that begins with the letter ‘D’,” he said.
    Deena looked around at the quiet streets. “Is it a dumbass? A douchebag, maybe?”
    The driver chuckled a little. Deena leaned back in her seat and took Avi’s first suggestion—passing the rest of the short ride in silence. The area of town was quickly fading from busy office buildings to smaller shops and storage units. She’d grown used to the same type of scenery for the past several years. She hadn’t been back to the country much since she left home. She missed it really: the trees, the open air. It was a part of her that she’d shoved down deep since she left.

15
    Deena at 15 the first time around

    “It moved,” Deena said.
    Harper threw her dirty jeans in the basket and chuckled. “Didn’t.”
    Deena pulled her sleeve up to reveal the tiny blemish. “Look. It was closer to my elbow last night. Swear.”
    Harper barely glanced. “Same place it’s always been.”
    Deena sighed. She’d been sure of it this time. The blemish had jumped from place to place a number of times, but always ended up back where it started when she went to show someone. “It is now, but yesterday…”
    “Yesterday, whatever.” Harper looked around their bedroom and spotted more rumpled clothes and stuffed them in with the rest.
    “Come on,” Deena said. Her sister was always dismissing Deena. It wasn’t just this little pimple or mole, or whatever the hell it was, she never listened to anything Deena had to say. They were separated by just a few years, but they never seemed to see eye to eye on anything.
    Harper tossed the laundry basket on the bed and pulled open