A Line In The Sand, A Name In The Dust [Lalia]

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

Drink up, baby, down
Are you in or are you out?
Leave your things behind
Cause it's all going off
Without you

There were days when I wanted this kind of life, but those fading moments of forever-away have such a dulled magnetism for me now. Back then, Auggie and Zane would scold me for my envy, angry that I didn't feel like I had enough with them. Of course it was always enough to survive, but I wanted more. That's what they never understood about me: my insatiable greed. I daydreamed of solid gold floorboards and silk sheets; I would have entombed myself in excess if I could... and didn't I? I knew I was a goner the second that long-departed stranger of mine asked me to trade him the flesh and sweat of my body for jewels. Or his more dangerous bargain: anything.

Temptation has always been my vice, the idea of being given things to have and to hold makes my heart race like a child. If someone puts something in my hands for even a moment, I'll tuck it away into the deepest, most unreachable void of me like buried treasure. So maybe it wouldn't have taken much for the Morenos — or anyone else — to convince me to leave the Community Home with them, but I won't lie and pretend their money didn't help. I could see it glinting off their skin as if they had gilded themselves with it and, even after all my sins of destruction, I wanted to know what that felt like. Not as a dirty secret locked up in a sadist's bedroom, but as a way of life. All they wanted in exchange was my name (there's always a deal to be made) and what's in a name? Still, signing that piece of paper that turned me from a Dahl into a Moreno felt an awful lot like a contract for my soul.

Excuse me, too busy
You're writing your tragedy
These mishaps
You bubble wrap
When you've no idea what you're like

Little did I know what else I was agreeing to, but the fighting doesn't bother me as much as the feeling that I've forsaken my brother in some unspeakable way. The way they're asking me to claw out the eyes of my adopted "siblings" is hardly different than them simply asking me to be myself. I think that's why they picked me out. They saw the way I wanted throats to hold my knives against and punching bag bodies to unload my endless rage upon. I've always been a destroyer. Only, now, I'm a destroyer in a dress made of liquid silk, the color of all the blood I've been spilling in exchange for it.

The fabric billows in the night air like a flag transforming me into a living declaration. There was an automatic flash of anger when they presented me with it this morning, informing me of the party I was to attend and outlining all the necessary preparations and expectations. I've never taken kindly to demands, but when my temper flared with refusal, teeth bared and insults flying, they smiled even more widely until I slowly began to realize: This is exactly what they want me to be. Violent defiance is not rebellion to the Morenos, it's exceeding expectations. So I washed my hair, filed my nails into pristine ovals, and shimmied into that dress with enough serene compliance to drop the corners of their mouths into something a little less pleased. Slipping between the sticky fingers of strangers has never been all that difficult for me and allowing them to turn my body in a waltz is nothing compared to —

So let go, let go
Jump in
Oh well, whatcha waiting for?
It's alright
Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

Maybe it was the part where I started to replay all those old emotions or maybe it's that I'm a lousy actress when it comes down to it, but the air was thick with perfume, pretentious music (nothing like the earnest lull of Zane's old guitar), and the filth of the rich... I can't breathe worth a damn in that room. Not with this suffocating fabric coiling around my lungs like a serpentine parasite whispering: Quit with the repeatrewindredo (Say again? Say again? Say "again"), Ella. Isn't there enough blood on your conscience without the help of this dress? Next thing I know I'm walking out the back door and into the alleyway, pacing the soothingly familiar dirt of a neglected space.

Returning to District One feels like being simultaneously exiled to Heaven and Hell. It will never stop being Home for me, but I still see Auggie's blood trickling down the street gutters like thin rivers of guilt that will never stop until they've carved fathomless chasms of emptiness into the earth beneath my feet. Once upon a time, I owned these streets. They belonged to me in a way that nothing else ever had — there was something mutual about it. Whatever it is I'm doing with my fists in the Moreno household isn't anything like when I held them above my head in triumph back then. I was a different kind of seductive in those days, when the things I declared ownership of claimed me back. We belonged to each other.

So let go, let go
Just get in
Oh, it's so amazing here
It's alright
Cause there's beauty in the breakdown

With a frustrated yank, I pull at the neck of my dress, even though it's low cut, loosely flowing, and the opposite of everything that's supposed to possess the ability to choke, I'm still convinced it's wrapped far too tightly around my chest. It's not until I hear the threads beginning to split that I tell myself to, "stop." The barest of whispers slips from my mouth, but it has enough strength to it to remind me that I'm not powerless. The Morenos don't own me. I'm untamable and I can prove it. Breaking off a thin branch from a nearby tree, I kick the stilettos off my feet and strut barefoot down to the far end of the alleyway, dirt climbing up the hem of my dress as it snakes across the ground in my wake.

Pressing the tip of the branch into the earth, I engrave crisp, decisive lines up the entire length of the unpaved road, as though I am a force beyond the shifting of tectonic plates. All of my intentions are drawn into these marks — valleys and canyons for a new civilization from a god named Ella. After all, if I can play god for a lonely boy lost in a forest, freeing him from the crush of a river's rage and breathing life back into his lungs, then I can claim divine rights over a forgotten alleyway. Pacing back to the beginning like a serpent preparing to devour its own tail, I underline my proclamation, each footprint riveting it into permanence. A spectator might flick their eyes over the five foot high letters and read them as E L L A, but what they really spell is: M I N E.

It gains the more it gives
And then it rises with the fall
So hand me that remote
Can't you see
That all that stuff's a sideshow

"Ella..." The unknown voice skims across the evening breeze to twist around me and at first I'm convinced that's simply all it is — the wind. For a moment I'm pleased, reveling in nature's acknowledgment and exhaling my next breath in a low hiss, as if respectfully speaking the dancing language of its air currents in reply. Then I notice the shadow reaching up like a ghost wandering the nerve networks of my own name and finally turn my head back to discover that someone has followed me out from the party. While that might have thrown me into a rage only minutes ago, maybe it's okay in this new world of Ella. We're standing in my territory now.

Arching an eyebrow, I cock my head and stare him down questioningly. The tree branch gripped loosely in my hand, as if it were a scepter, there is nothing like shame edging my gaze — I am all confidence and street gutter self-assurance. Somewhere in the dust beneath my dirtied feet was a piece of my soul that I had buried years ago for safe keeping and tonight I have dug it up and reclaimed it. "It's dangerous to follow a Moreno into the dark." My voice is so casual it loops around the spectrum of sound and becomes one step shy of sinister, while an unspoken follow-up hangs in the space between my still parted lips: And downright deadly when they're a Dahl. As the wind unravels my hair into the encroaching night, a lazy swell of air digs its own greedy fingers into my dress until I'm enveloped in a swirling flame of fabric like a phoenix burning its way towards rebirth. Yes, there have been days when I've wanted the Moreno's kind of life, but tonight I only want: M I N E.

Such boundless pleasure
We've no time for later now
You can't await your own arrival
You have twenty seconds
To comply

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

I was a heartbeat on the danger side
Just had to see what it all was like
Put your nose in that
Although you try to sidestep
Merchants of soul don't let

The two of us play such wildly different Games. Even with the shallowest of glances, it's not difficult to notice the inherent arrogance in his relaxed stance or the overly self-assured confidence of his easy smile. He thinks he's earned it all, as if feeling tough might be enough to make that true. My own arrogance was beaten into me by the fists of starving children, the tiny bones of their hands secretly forged from brass beneath their skin. Likewise, the bruises they gave me went deeper than muscle, giving me my first — and certainly not last — lesson in permanent damage. For him, fighting is a grand theory written up in black and white future-tenses. I know better. There's a reason it's anything but easy to earn a smile from me these days. Still, I defy my own facile instincts and refrain from scowling at him. In this alleyway of Ella, I refuse to be so simply swayed into anything. Maybe I can teach him a thing or two about earning or the honest worth of a smile.

"The same can be said of many in District One." Something deep within me darkens at his response, because his coy words hold a sharper truth than he intended them to. "We'd be a poor Career District if that were not the case." Career District, he says and this is where our true difference lays. Our approach to our commonalities sets us on divergent paths: He steadily walks a paved, yet unknown road of wanting, while my haphazard footsteps careen down a makeshift dirt path of wanting to get away. That Career District mentality of being raised to romanticize murder — I've lived too much enough to know better. Allowing silence to hang in the air, I remain placid, unresponsive, and little more than a contemplative flutter of eyelashes in the wind.

The Morenos are changing me. The sudden twist of the thought through my consciousness wraps itself around my lungs once more, begging the threat of suffocation to return. This kind of quiet defiance was never mine before. What happened to the girl who replied to hello with a knife to the offender's throat? How is it that a house built for violence and uncertainty is reigning me in? Who are you? His glib follow-up — "Well, I don't have to worry about getting your name." — seems to taunt me with my own worries, until he's not the only one glancing down at the dirt for a quick reminder of who I am.

"I take it the party was not to your liking then, Ella." The sound of my name curling itself around someone else's tongue is reassuring enough for me to flick my eyes back up to meet his. I've always reveled in the assurance of knowing I've possessed someone for a solid moment in time. Ella, he says and I throw a mental fist into the face of the smirking Moreno-ghost within my mind. Only, this is a ghost that fights back and seems to know how to possess the boy in front of me just as easily as my name did. "It was, I must admit, a touch stifling." When he nods knowingly to the damaged threads of my dress, it's all I can do to stop myself from throwing a far less imaginary fist into his face. "Seems it wasn't just the festivities you found suffocating." However, watching him loosening his tie and the buttons of his shirt sends a jealous impulse crackling through my hands until the only thing they want is to wrap their claws back up in the silk of my own dress and pull until the sound of tearing climbs the shadows of the surrounding houses, echoing up to split the sky in half. Suffocating, yes.

Hey, what're you doing on the danger side
Yes, you're lookin' for us we know that's right
That way you move it's all an act
So get in
We know you wanna give in

Cursing the way one of my traitorous hands has begun tentatively plucking at the whirling fabric each time it billows out to dance with the wind, I suck in a deep breath — just to prove I can. "So, why the name in the dust? Not exactly common practice for people who leave parties." The exhalation is far steadier than the intake as his question encourages my ego to pull itself up by the boot straps and take a walk. Or a stomp. "I'm Indrik. Felt it was only fair since you so kindly wrote yours down for me." Maybe I'll start small, Indrik, and teach you exactly how much dust is worth. He smirks freely, but it's my own conceit that's about to run unchecked.

The sharp sound of splitting threads fills the back alley street as my hand gives a different kind of impulsive tug to my dress, ripping a scandalous swath of the fabric clean off. It's easy. Effortless, even. "You clearly don't know my name half as well as you seem to think you do if you have to ask something like that." There's no smirk on my face as I say it, but my voice is more smug than any expression his features could settle into. Anyone who's really lived in District One, duking it out for the right to exist, knows my name. It was my battle cry. "Here," closing the distance between us, I take his hand and push the piece of torn red silk into it, "you can have the Moreno's party." A single beat of almost-laughter slips out my throat, heavy with an over-release of air that turns it into something thick and lazy. "I'll keep my dust and we'll see who ends up with the better deal."

Bending down, I disdainfully brush the flat of my hand over his shoes, wiping them clean, as though worried their shine might dirty my dust. Instead of getting back to my feet, I sprawl out backwards to lay in the middle of the street, spine pressed to the ground and eyes trained on the stars that don't feel so unreachable from where I am. "My name is Ella Dahl. This street belongs to me." My words are as much a reassurance to myself as they are a declaration to him. And I belong to it, too. I always have. Fingers absently tracing shapes across the earth below my careless palms, I drop my eyes back to his face and can't help wondering if he gets it or if he's even capable of understanding.

"You're right, the party wasn't to my liking. Not a lot of things are, but this —" There is dirt beneath my fingernails and matted into my hair. It's on my neck and ankles, consuming skin and clothing without differentiation. The dirt was there before I laid in it, before I traded my shoes for it, and long before I ever took a step outside. You're a blind man if you couldn't see it before, Indrik, but I'll make sure you see it now. I'll make sure everyone can see it. Reflexively raising an arm up to play a game of connect-the-constellations with the distant lights hanging in the sky (my brother Auggie and I used to invent star-myths for hours, whiling away our nights laying in the middle of an alleyway so much like this one), traces of dust follow a gust of gravity back down to scatter across my face, catching in my eyelashes like a poor man's snowflakes. "— this I like." This I like better than any of the Games you or I spend so much of our time playing.

The fiends are fiendin' outside
Merchants of soul, so unkind
Merchants of soul, they don't mind
They'll take your soul
I need mine

( E L L A W R E N D A H L - M O R E N O )

Something's unguided
In the sky tonight
There is something
Unguided
In the sky

"What exactly are you doing Ms..." There was never an expectation within me for him to understand, so I don't know how the smallest flicker of disappointment manages to pluck at me. "...Ms. Dahl. Claiming the street huh? Better to claim it than let it claim you I guess." For a moment I'm on the brink of explaining that the street is claiming me and doesn't he know? Doesn't he know that these streets own my soul and I love them for that... for loving me back.

Of course he doesn't understand. Even as he slides down the wall to sit on the ground across from me, it's a matter of indulgence on his part. So as stones start to thump against the drainpipe, I push the fleeting disappointment away with the steady sound. "To each their own. Between you and I, there's something to be said about the street at night. An elegant simplicity I suppose. No false smiles, strained handshakes and dances with people you would gladly cast asunder for them simply being in your presence." Absently picking up a pebble from the ground beside me, I toss it after his, the echo easier for me to understand than his words.

The distance between us becomes tangible on multiple levels in this moment. I spent my childhood sprawled out in alleyways, but he doesn't know that this kind of space is more like home to me than any house ever was. In those days, I was too busy digging through trash cans for discarded food scraps to learn words like asunder. However, I'm not about to tell him that anymore than he's going to explain how he doesn't think it's quite normal for me to lay down in the dirt. Even if I told him how there are days when sleeping in a bed still doesn't feel quite right, I don't think he'd get it.

"I take it from your name, and your seeming infatuation with the concrete that you once... Lived rough, to put it bluntly? Must be rather different moving from the street to the mansion." Eyebrows further furrowing with confusion at the word infatuation, my pride flares up until my jaw clenches tight. My silence is stubborn and unwilling to admit to my own educational shortcomings. I know my ABC's, I can add and subtract, and I learned all about how the world is flat, but I wasn't raised with fancy words any more than I was raised with fancy clothing. Yet, listening to him speak with such easy eloquence, there's a hint of that same greed rearing up in me that tangled me up with the Morenos. And when he follows my thought up with — "So, how'd the Moreno's net you? Community home get you first? Or did they pluck you clean from the street?" — I have to wonder if maybe he knows it.

Complicated history aside, there's the simplest of answers to his question and in a fit of honesty, I tell him the truth of everything: "I'm greedy." I stare up at the stars again before he can catch my eye. My fingers fall still, ceasing their pattern-making and resting in the dust, the dust that was always enough to keep me alive, but not enough to stop me from wanting more. "That's how they got me. I'm greedy and they know it." I don't want to tell him the long story about how I wound up with the Morenos, about how my greediness caused me to sell my body to a man I wound up killing. How that made people angry and they killed my brother. How I ran away into the wilderness and lost my lover to a kinder girl. How I met someone who called me out on my awful habits, but I lost him too, because of my goddamn greed. I tried to steal from a government train and I got caught and sent back to where I'd started, stuck in the community home until the Morenos saw an opportunity in my sticky fingers.

The breeze tugs at the shortened hem of my dress, as if seeking to remind me that sometimes I have my moments of redemption. Reaching up, I pull at the fabric near my neck once again, the crackle of splitting seams breaking the silence. With a deep breath, I set my sights on the stars and try to forget about the part I left out, the part that's suffocating me. I'll take and I'll take... but I can't stand it when the people I take from expect something in return. Suddenly I'm pointing, arm held straight up to the sky I've been studying. "That's my star, you know." Mine. "Right there. The really bright one." I've heard other people call it the North Star before, but Auggie said they had it wrong: It's the Ella Star. He always knew more about stars than anyone, so I believed him. "My brother used to tell me that he could use that star to find his way home to me if he got lost. That's why it's mine." And I liked when he said that, because it was the biggest, brightest star in the sky. Giving another tug at my dress, my next breath hangs on the sound of a snapped thread. "The Morenos act like they have everything, but they don't have so much." They don't have stars. "I bet you don't either, Indrik." Flicking a pebble at him, I start to wonder if I'm right. He can think whatever he wants about my laying down in the dirty street, but I'd bet my star that he doesn't have anything better.