My Marionette Lover novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Tug of War

Hazel experiments in her workshop and learns the black thread is thicker and older; at a party she pulls Arlen's hand off a girl, and he shows up at her door with a welt across his back.

I held on for a full minute.

The silver thread burned my fingers where it ran over the bar.

The black thread pulled on Arlen's wrist.

Then something let go at the far end.

His arm dropped to his side, and he sat down hard on the dean's carpet.

"Thank you," he said, breathing like he'd run a mile.

"Don't thank me yet." I had my knuckles pressed against my mouth. "That thing is strong."

"It's always been strong."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"You must have an idea."

He shook his head.

"It started when I was nine. My parents died in a car crash that winter, and after the funeral I started doing things."

He looked at his hands.

"I broke a window at school and didn't know why. I hit a kid. By fourteen I was in every gossip column in the state."

"You said you don't drink."

"I don't." He gave a flat laugh.

"Everyone thinks I do."

"I get thrown out of places with a bottle in my hand and I haven't swallowed a drop."

I sat down on the carpet beside him.

"Does it hurt?"

"Only when I fight it."

"Then don't fight."

"I'm tired of not fighting," Arlen said.

I spent the afternoon in the puppet workshop with the black thread.

Arlen sat on the stool by the door, and I stood at the bench with my carving knife.

I wasn't going to cut it.

I only wanted to see it.

Silver thread feels like warm wire when you touch it.

His black one felt like old hair, thick and oily, and it hummed when I put my hand near it.

"Don't," Arlen said, when I touched it.

"Did that hurt?"

"No. It just knows."

I took my hand away.

"It's older than mine," I said.

"It's wound round you in knots, and at the back it splits into dozens of little lines, like a net."

"Is that bad?"

"It's what you'd tie if you wanted a person to move a thousand different ways."

He didn't say anything.

I wrote it all in my grandmother's notebook.

Birdie came in at six wearing a feather boa and a face like thunder.

"There's a party at the Sigma house," she said. "Everyone's going. Brad texted me, which is weird, because Brad has never once texted me."

"We're not going," I said.

"Arlen is going."

I looked at Arlen.

He had stood up, and his face had gone blank.

"I wasn't going to," he said. "I can feel it. It wants me there tonight."

The Sigma house was loud and warm and smelled like beer and cheap candles.

Birdie and I stood at the back wall with plastic cups of seltzer.

Arlen stood in the middle of the room with a blonde girl on his arm.

I knew the look on his face.

It was the lazy smile from the front row, and I could see how he held it up, like a man holding a heavy door.

The girl leaned into him.

His hand slid down her back, and I watched his eyes.

They were pleading with me across the room.

"He's doing it again," Birdie said. "God, I hate him."

"He's not doing it."

"What?"

"Watch his shoulder."

The black line ran down from the ceiling over his left shoulder, and every time it twitched his hand moved.

I opened my bag and took out the jester.

It was the small one, with the cap and bells.

I reached out with my thread, quietly, and tied it to Arlen's wrist.

I did not ask him first, and I would owe him for that before the autumn ended.

When the black thread pulled his hand down, I pulled it back.

His hand lifted off the girl's waist and stayed there, hovering in the air.

She frowned.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Arlen said, and his voice cracked with relief.

The black thread yanked, hard.

I yanked back harder.

His hand flew up, and the whole room turned.

Somebody laughed, and the girl went red and shoved him.

"You are such an ass, Redfern!"

She threw her drink in his face and stalked off.

Arlen stood dripping, in a silence that spread all the way to the kitchen.

Then he started to laugh.

It was a real laugh, the first I'd heard, surprised and loud and a little wild.

"Get me out of here," he said, and he walked toward me with water running down his chin.

I took the bar back and let the thread slide off.

"You can walk by yourself?"

"I think so," he said.

He walked the whole way to the door on his own.

At midnight, Birdie was asleep and I was alone in our room with the prince in pieces on my desk.

Someone knocked on the door.

It was a quiet knock, three taps.

Arlen stood in the hall in a wet shirt, gripping the frame.

He was gray in the face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't know where else to go."

He turned his back to me and lifted his shirt.

A red welt ran across his shoulder blades from one side to the other, thick as a rope, blistered at the edges.

"She didn't like that you pulled," he said.

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