Survival Rout Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2016

  SURVIVAL ROUT by Ana Mardoll

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Acacia Moon Publishing, LLC

  Cover illustration by James, GoOnWrite.com

  Books by Ana Mardoll

  The Earthside Series

  Poison Kiss (#1)

  Survival Rout (#2)

  Rewoven Tales

  Pulchritude

  To Mom and Dad, my fiercest advocates and the first to see beauty in my scars.

  Survival Rout

  Earthside

  by Ana Mardoll

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Characters

  Content Notes

  Version History

  Chapter 1

  Aniyah

  "Aniyah, can I borrow Timmy for Labor Day weekend?"

  I've only just hung my purse on the back of the bar stool when Miyuki pops the question; she hasn't even waited until we've sat down. I tear my eyes away from Timothy—who nods at us in warm welcome but is too busy filling drink orders at the other end of the bar to rush over—and stare at her.

  "Miyuki, that's not until September! Anyway, what do you want him for?" I ask, not bothering to disguise my mystified tone. I'm grateful he's too far out of earshot to hear us over the noise of the band, because I can't imagine what he'd think of her question.

  She sniffs in a pretense of haughtiness and perches on the edge of her stool, pulling at the hem of her sweater where it rides up over the curve of her stomach. Miyuki is taller than me when we're on our feet, but on the barstools we're almost eye-to-eye. She aims an arch gaze at me over the top of her rectangular-framed glasses. "Well, you're not going to be using him, are you?" she points out in her most reasonable tone of voice, leaning closer so I can hear her. "Unless you asked him to fly out to Atlanta with you?"

  "I don't think dating over the summer justifies the price of a plane ticket, especially when we'd just end up spending the weekend at the public pool with my folks." I settle into my own hard vinyl chair, wishing for the umpteenth time that the stools here were more comfortable. Timothy sometimes brings me a little travel pillow that he keeps under the bar to brace my back, but it doesn't do much good.

  "Besides, you know we're not serious, right?" I add the qualifier quickly, anxious to downplay the importance of Timothy. "We're not at any sort of meet-the-parents stage yet."

  I can't quite meet her gaze, opting instead to pick at a stain on the bar, my fingernails flicking crusty sugar from the varnished wood. We haven't spoken, she and I, about the night she spent in my bed last week, nor have we repeated the experience. But she must have noticed that I haven't gone out with Timothy since it happened, opting instead to stay home so I can study for summer finals—a 'studying' that mostly involves lying on my stomach in bed and staring at theorems I can no longer concentrate on.

  She flashes a triumphant grin at me. "Well, yeah, that's why I feel pretty comfortable asking to borrow him, Ani," she teases, leaning over to nudge me with her shoulder. My hands instinctively grip the edge of the bar for balance, but she moves slowly to telegraph the gesture and her touch is as light as a feather. "If you two were engaged or something, it would be so very awkward."

  My lips part in an answering smile to her own wide grin, unable to remain serious in the face of her teasing. "Okay, okay, you can borrow him," I relent, laughing in surrender. "But why do you want him? You don't even like him!"

  Her hazel eyes dance as she feigns a scandalized expression. One hand reaches to flip her hair over her shoulder in that dismissive way of hers, but she's still getting used to her new pixie undercut that left the top shaggy but shaved everything up the back; her fingers meet only soft baby fuzz. "Aniyah! For shame. You know I adore Timmy." Her wry grin is unrepentant. "He pays for our drinks."

  I roll my eyes in acknowledgment of her damning faint praise, and she laughs with me; yet I can hear the strain in her laughter, a tiny forced note just audible under the raucous music flooding the mostly empty bar. "Miyuki, you know I can't say no to you," I point out, my tone gentler than before. "But won't you tell me why?"

  She doesn't answer right away. Leaning her elbows on the counter, she rests her chin on her hands and stares at the brightly-lit liquor bottles lining the back wall of the bar. "Truth is," she admits in a low voice, "I've been informed I have to put in an appearance at John's house for the holiday weekend. Since he hasn't yet written a check for the fall semester, the usual threat looms."

  My breath catches in instant sympathy. I've met Miyuki's father on the rare occasions when he's come out to our apartment rather than summoning her to his palatial lake house. In none of these visits has John endeared himself to me, and my antipathy appears to be mutual. Withholding financial support is a favorite tactic of his, and I know Miyuki's driving goal is to finish her degree in physical therapy as quickly as possible so she can shed the last of her dependency on him.

  "Oh, Miyuki, I'm so sorry. That sounds miserable." I reach out to touch her arm, wishing I had more to offer than commiseration. "But... you want Timothy to come with you?" I'm still confused on this point; although she gets along with Timothy, they don't interact much apart from me. He's my summer boyfriend and she's been my roommate since freshman year. Their relationship, such as it is, seems defined by that loose connection alone.

  She shrugs but her shoulders are stiff with tension. "Well, you know how John is," she says, waving her hand in airy dismissal. "He'll love Timmy; he's white and male and gainfully employed while working on his master's degree. They can talk about what a darling housewife or adorable secretary I'll grow up to be, while I catch up with Okaasan in peace. She'll be visiting too, for my sake, so it won't be total hell."

  I remember the meaning of that one: Mother. Over the past three years, Miyuki has been picking up the language her mother, Yumiko, was forbidden to teach her as a baby. John hadn't wanted his child speaking words he didn't know and, according to Miyuki, John always got his way. Yumiko had stayed for the sake of their daughter but filed for divorce the same week Miyuki moved out to start college. Miyuki had been ecstatic, breezing through freshman year with a wide smile that never left her face.

  She visits Yumiko at her studio apartment once every couple of weeks now, and devours vocabulary books in her spare time. I help make flash cards and compliment her attempts to incorporate kanji into journaling. Sometimes she brings me along for her visits, but I try not to get in their way. I'm glad she has this chance to connect with her mother but remain
privately astonished by John's actions. My own parents didn't always agree on how to raise me, yet I can't imagine one of them denying me my heritage.

  "So you want Timothy to play your decoy boyfriend for the weekend?" I ask, the familial scene she describes slowly solidifying in my head. "The plan is to throw him at John so that John will be in a good mood and the weekend won't be miserable for everyone else?"

  Miyuki shrugs, her shoulders set in a defensive hunch. "It's just for a couple of days and it wouldn't be hard. Timmy knows me well enough to play the part and he's ridiculously good with people. Anyway, he's watched movies at our apartment with us at least half a dozen times! He can just imagine he was there for me instead of you." She takes a deep breath, not meeting my eyes. "Besides, I don't know any other boys who'd do it without wanting something in return."

  "Oh." My cheeks heat as her meaning sinks in. "No, he wouldn't." I reach out to touch her again, wishing we were home so I could wrap her in a proper hug. "Of course you can borrow Timothy. I mean, you're going to have to ask him if he wants to spend Labor Day with you," I amend, glancing down the length of the bar at the smiling man working his way steadily down to us, "but I'll let him know it's important to me. I can't imagine he'll refuse. Free food, right?"

  She grins, relief palpable on her face underneath the playful scorn she quickly affects. "Aniyah! Food is the least of the treasures on offer! You haven't even seen the remodeling that's been done on the lake house; I guarantee he'll come out for that alone. John just bought the most ludicrously expensive boat and he'll want to show it off. What could be more fun than barreling at breakneck speed all over the lake, polluting the environment like proper manly men?"

  "Maybe you'd better let me sell this to Timothy," I observe in my driest tone. "You're not helping your case one bit."

  "Sell me what?" He reaches the end of the bar where we perch, having finished with his paying customers. Flashing me a warm smile, he adds, "Hey, babe, I've missed you! What are you girls up to tonight? Any chance I can convince you to come back to my place for a movie after I close up?"

  "Well, in answer to your first question," I tell him, "it just so happens I have an exciting limited-time offer: Emma here wants to take you boating for Labor Day." Miyuki bestows a wry grimace, but doesn't interrupt my sales pitch. "And, uh, a movie sounds tempting, but I've got work tomorrow," I add, grimacing in apology.

  It's not a lie; I do have work tomorrow. But even if I didn't, I think I'd still want to go to my home instead of his. I feel off-balance from the noise, the band, and the presence of the other patrons. I'd rather snuggle Miyuki on our couch, chasing away her family woes with a liberal application of ice cream and shitty movies. I don't want to be here at this bar, struggling to remember to switch over to her first name for Timothy's sake. It isn't his fault, of course—the use of her middle name is reserved entirely to her mother and, after I asked about it last year, to me—but lately I find it increasingly difficult to switch.

  "Oh, that sounds fun," Timothy agrees in his easy way, leaning against his side of the bar. "What's the catch? And what do my two best girls want to drink tonight? We've got a new sour green apple Cosmopolitan I'm supposed to be pushing."

  Miyuki has gone quiet, taking off her glasses and wiping them with her shirt to avoid eye contact. "That sounds great, thanks," I tell him, flashing a grateful smile for the both of us. If he notices Miyuki's awkward silence, it doesn't show on his face as he strides off to prepare our drinks.

  Once he's out of hearing, I slump in my seat and sigh. "You know, if you take him out to the lake as your fake boyfriend, you're going to have to be nice to him," I point out, giving Miyuki a stern look.

  She twists her lips as though she's tasted something bitter. "I'm nice!" she protests, shoving her glasses back up her nose. Her hands fuss with the composition notebook she carries—one of her many journals—playing with the ballpoint pen she leaves clipped in the binding coil. "It's just: does he always have to call us 'little women' or his 'best girls'?" Her voice is so low I can barely hear her over the noise of the band; as near as it is to closing time, I hope this is their last song. "John does that to me and Okaasan, and I hate it."

  I bite my lip, glancing up to reassure myself that Timothy isn't close enough to hear. "I don't think he means to be condescending; he's just trying to be friendly. Do you want me to talk to him about it?" I can hear the reluctance in my tone; we're racking up a lot of favors from Timothy today.

  "No." She sighs and doesn't meet my gaze. "The problem isn't Timothy, not exactly. Aniyah, do you ever think about whether you might not be a woman at all?" Her low tone has turned strangely urgent. "No one ever really asked our opinion on the subject; people just assume."

  "What, like, do I think I'm a man?" I'm thrown by the direction this conversation has taken and I smile at her, expecting a joke. Yet if there's a punchline here, I don't get it. I frown at her, a sudden thought striking. "Miyuki, are you saying you're a man?"

  There's a transgender man in my math department, so I know gender isn't always what you're labeled at birth. He was nice and gave me less shit than the other boys in the department did, but never did I think I might be like him. I was a girl, and all this time I'd assumed Miyuki was too. Sure, she kept her hair cropped short and hung around the apartment in baggy sweaters and boxer shorts, but she always wore makeup when we went out together and she owned at least a dozen skirts.

  She shakes her head at my question, shoving her bangs back from her eyes as she stares down at the counter. "No! Do you ever think you might not be a man or a woman? You might be neither, or a little of both, or something else entirely." She drags her gaze up to me, watching my face for a reaction.

  "How would that work?" I'm trying to keep my voice neutral but I'm flailing. I can't tell where she's going with this or if it's purely hypothetical. "What would you call yourself, if you weren't a man or a woman?"

  "Well, there are other words," Miyuki insists, defensive now. "There are nonbinary genders for people who don't fit neatly into one or the other. Lots of cultures have them! There's genderqueer and genderfluid, and then you have demigirls like me who are part-girl but also something else that isn't girl at all, and look here!"

  Yanking her pen free, she clicks the point and begins to draw on her wrist, her usual method for note-taking when she's working on an idea that isn't fully formed and ready to commit to her journal yet. She picked up the habit as a child, washing words away from John's prying eyes.

  "You've got these pronouns that everybody knows, right?" she says. She's hunched over her arm and talking quickly, almost to herself. "She, her, hers, herself." She prints the words in neat tiny letters on her arm. "Well, there are other pronouns, new ones people have made up. Neopronouns like xie, xer, xers, xerself." These go on her arm under the first words, the ink dark against her fair skin.

  "Zee?" I repeat, straining in my seat to see the tiny letters. She pauses her hurried writing to look up at me, her face unusually vulnerable. "Miyuki," I say, hesitating as I search for the right thing to say, "is this a new piss-off-John thing? Like the purple dye you put in your hair sophomore year?"

  Hurt flashes in her eyes as soon as the words leave my mouth. "No," she mutters in a dejected tone, looking away from me. "I'm not going to tell him. You know how he is; he'd just mock me for it."

  I could kick myself for being such a heel. "Hey. Sorry! If it's a secret, it can be just between us," I promise, reaching out to touch her wrist. She looks up at me and I give her my warmest smile. I still don't understand a word of this, but if it's important to her I'll damned sure learn. "Like your middle name, right? 'Miyuki' and 'xie' with me, 'Emma' and 'she' around everyone else. That's easy enough, yeah?"

  Her hazel eyes shine at me from behind her glasses in the low bar light. "Aniyah, I fucking love you," she says, a slow grin spreading over her face. The words don't mean anything; I know that. Miyuki has been saying she loves me for years. It's just a thing she says to me, her r
oommate and best friend, and a sentiment I'm used to echoing back without thinking. It's not meant to be taken seriously.

  So why does my heart leap now when she says it, her joyful eyes holding my gaze such that I can't look away? And why do I feel so guilty when I hear Timothy's voice at my elbow cheerfully announcing, "Here you go!", as he plunks down our free drinks? I jump in my seat, as startled as a cat, hoping none of my thoughts show on my face when I smile at him.

  I like Timothy, even if this thing with him wasn't meant to be serious. He's older than us, working on his master's degree while we're still undergrads. It was supposed to be a simple summer fling, easy and sexy and fun, but then everything got tangled up with emotions. He's sweet and understanding and easy-going, willing to accommodate me when my back pain flares up and kind to Miyuki even on her snarky days. I haven't stopped liking him just because I like someone else. I don't think my brain works that way.

  My fantasy would be for the three of us to agree I could be with both Timothy and Miyuki without giving either of them up. But I'd need to sit down and talk to them individually, and I don't know how to ask permission for something like that. I'm not ready to lose Timothy, but when I sit here with my fingers lingering on Miyuki's wrist and feeling the warmth of her skin under my own, I know I can't let my chance with her pass me by. I want to be able to take her home and kiss her and share a bed together without worrying that I'm cheating on someone else. And it's not right to keep racking up favors from Timothy if he's expecting exclusivity from me. Better to be honest with him now than to hurt his feelings later.