Brain(57)
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Harmony
Brain and the nurse had called me Harmony every other sentence those first couple of days, and Brain was still overusing it, but it was working.
When I looked in the mirror, the girl I saw was Harmony. I’d bought purple sparkly fingernail polish, and done my toes and fingers with it, and every time I looked at my hands, I told myself these were Harmony Johnson’s hands. Same with my feet.
“What did your parents and friends call you, when you were growing up?”
“My parents called me Thurston — no nicknames for them. Sometime in late middle school, someone figured out Thurston originally meant Thor’s Stone, and my friends started calling me Thor.”
He’d gone on his adventure earlier that morning, and now we were sitting outside in the shade, eating our lunch. He’d bought a huge assed umbrella, and when he used it in conjunction with the shade trees, we felt confident I wasn’t getting sun on my face, which would be bad while it was healing.
But I’d have gone crazy if I’d had to stay inside two weeks. Going this long without running or working out was bad enough.
“In a weird sort of way, Thor fits you. I mean, you’re tall, and muscled, and smart.”
He shrugged. “My dad hated it, which kind of made me embrace it.”
“Why did you choose Wulff for your hacker name?”
He eyed me a few seconds and said, “Not time for the conversation yet, Buttercup. The nurse says you can start wearing makeup in another couple of days, let’s see how that goes, and then we’ll set a time for me to tell you my secrets.”
“Why do we have to set a time?”
“Let’s say, hypothetically speaking, I’m really one of the famous superheroes, and there’s a club of us. If one of us is found out, all of us would be at risk, right? If Spiderman exists, the Flash and Batman and Superman are suddenly possible. So, there are rules about who can know, and people who oversee the rules, and I need for you to believe you’re Harmony when I introduce you by the name.”
I shook my head and told him, “You’ll tell me your secrets by Sunday, or you can pack your shit and go.” I believed him, but at the same time, worried he was stringing me along. He needed to know I was serious. He knew practically everything about me, and there was so much I didn’t know about him.
“Okay, Harmony. Meanwhile, tell me what you’ve learned about me.”
“You’re Thurston Silas Alexander, grew up in Chevy Chase Maryland, and your family is so politically connected you could probably be a Senator alongside your brother by now, had you chosen to go that route. You were accepted to all the top colleges, but told your parents you wanted to take a year to travel Europe and live a little, and they financed it. You toured Europe on a motorcycle, and appear to have decided you didn’t want to live the life your family chose for you. They lost track of you, but I found you in Tibet, of all places. When you came back to the States, you started college but took classes they didn’t approve of. When they cut you off, you bought another motorcycle, and seem to have become a beach bum for a while, before you bought a cabin in the mountains. They must’ve thought you’d come back when you ran out of money, but you didn’t, and I’m guessing they sent people after you, and you went into hiding to keep them from dragging you home. I lost track of you until you resurfaced as an RTMC member a few years later.”
He nodded, and told me, “Your brother is working his way up to Senator? My brother is a senator. My grandfather was a Supreme Court justice, my sister is the head media advisor for the President, and my dad… well, Treasury Secretaries come and go, and are basically the mouthpiece of the treasury. My dad? Isn’t elected or appointed, and he’s the real muscle behind our economy. The President doesn’t do what he wants? The economy takes a dive. The Department of Defense goes off the rails and displeases him? He alters things so their bonds tumble and their funds are short. My dad has more power than the President, and no one knows his name, which is exactly the way he wants it. People may think bikers are scum of the earth, but the people running the governments of the world are the true trash of the planet.”
Okay, so maybe I did know a lot about him. Still, he had secrets — big honking secrets — and he knew all of my big stuff.
And yet, he’d taken care of me. I looked down as I told him, “The nurse was more talkative this morning, without you around. She said I’m healing ahead of schedule, and part of it is because I’m eating so healthy, but she says it’s also because of all of the foot massages. She says touch, especially massage with a loving touch, speeds the healing process, and she told me you’re a keeper.” I shook my head, glanced up, then looked back down. “No one’s ever taken care of me like you have, Brain. You’re spoiling me.”