Talker's Redemption Read Free Page A

laugh.
     
    “Don’t worry about me, Doc,” Brian said, his eyes still far away, the part of him that Talker loved still mostly on Mars. “Don’t worry about me. I found a way to let it out. Trust me. Most of it’s not in my chest anymore.”
     
    Brian had smiled then, and it was a chilling, dark-side-of-the-moon sort of smile, and not Talker’s Brian’s smile at all. Tate shivered, and Brian seemed to snap inside himself, and his smile warmed up and became Talker’s Prince Charming smile again, and the session went on.
     
    Tate would wonder, though. What was behind that smile? What was it that Tate had missed, when he’d run his own mission to Mars? A lot could have happened when he was getting his shit together after The Worst. Date. Ever.
     

     

     
    “So the thing is,” Jed said seriously as they were in his car, following the ambulance through the mostly empty streets of Sacramento, “the thing is, you can’t mention Trevor’s name.”
     
    Talker jerked—hard enough to run into Jed’s arm as he shifted the ancient Ford Escort, and beyond swearing under his breath, Jed didn’t say or do anything.
     
    “Why wouldn’t I tell the cops it was Trev?”
     
    He’d been living for that moment, the moment they came and took Trev away, Brian’s ruined face being the only thing they needed to convict the guy.
     
    Jed looked at him sideways as they sat at a red light. It was the moonless part of the night, and Jed’s dark face was hard to read anyway. Talker could only wait for him, patiently, and hope he could make himself clear.
     
    Jed shook his head. “You were out of it, you know. For a while, you really didn’t notice shit. Let’s just say that some shit went on between Brian and Trev that won’t look too good if the cops hear about it, okay?”
     
    Talker stared at him like he was from far away. “Do you know we’ve got a rat?” he said after a minute, and Jed just stepped on the accelerator. Tate watched him fight not to give a double-take to his passenger, but he couldn’t help it. Sometimes his brain was as confused as the scars and the tattoos on his face.
     
    “She’s really sweet—Brian wanted to name her ‘Talkette’, right, because she’s a pied rat, and she’s all patchy, but only one side of her face is black, like me, but I said name her something happy, and so we named her Sunshine. We keep her with a sunlamp, you know? And Brian made her a blanket over her cage, because it’s cold, and even though we have heat this year, the place is drafty still, and he heard that they get delicate with temperature drops. And he cleans her cage every week, and gives her a bath and trims her toenails. I mean, we get home, and he just plops her on his shoulder and she puts her paws on his ear and reaches over and gives him little rat kisses and… and….”
     
    Talker twitched—Tate-the-twitch, that’s what they called him in school, and even his favorite teachers had moments when their eyes got big and they breathed hard through their noses because he would do it when things got quiet, and it would always, always send the class into chaos.
     
    He heard that same exasperated breath from Jed, and tried to focus himself on what he was talking about.
     
    “He’s the gentlest person on the planet, Jed. What could he have possibly done to deserve this?”
     
    Jed’s indrawn breath had a very different quality to it this time. “He defended you .”
     
    Tate’s goddamned vision went gray at the edges, and red spots surfed in front of his eyes. His lungs burned, and he must have made a strangled sound because suddenly Jed was pulling over and putting the car in park and shoving his head down and yelling at him to breathe.
     
    He did, eventually, remember to breathe, and the burning in his lungs and the strange auras in front of his eyes all eased up, and there was nothing but the steady rubbing of Jed’s hand on his back.
     
    “He didn’t… he didn’t… he