Adeline and the Opal Pendant

In the alleyway just outside the Gernard, Ida leaned against the wide, two storied building standing low in the belly of towering skyscrapers. The sun had all but set, leaving a residue of heavy blues and grays to blanket the city between scattered rain. She took one last steadying puff of her cigarette before flicking it away.

The industrial back door she propped herself up next to heaved open, revealing her coworker, Adam. He pushed past the weighted door and limply fell against it, eyes closed. A hollow sigh escaped him. 

With folded arms, she broke the silence flatly, “Rough night?” 

His tired eyes sprung open and he quickly straightened himself. 

“Ha- yes,” he responded with a slight smile, though the question was rhetorical. She had been there. He adds, “I thought you would have left by now.”

Ida gestured to the rain. 

“Ah,” his eyes swayed toward the puddles pooling at their feet. Then he adds, thinking of his agreement to help Ida, “Well, I still haven’t heard anything. No one I spoke to today even knew what I was asking about.”

She said nothing and finally looked away from him. With how busy everything was, even she was hardly able to get a word in with a single guest, let alone glean information from them in their drunken state.

She did get one useful tidbit of information, though, about where she might find what she’s looking for. It was from a tall monkish figure she served who drank straight liquor from the bar all through the night. She refrained from telling Adam this.

He took her silence as an opportunity.

“You know-“ he stopped briefly, eyes apprehensively flicking to hers, “maybe it’s time you…took a break from all this searching stuff.”

She did not move. She only heard him inhale deeply. 

“Ida, you don’t even know that it’s still out there. You don’t even know if it’s real-“

Now she snaps, body rigid, one righteous finger pointing right between his eyes. “I saw it, Adam. I saw it. It’s out there and if there’s anyone who would know where to find it-“

“They’d be here at the Gernard, I know,” he paused, daring himself to continue, “but… I have watched you every single day for the past three years following dead end after dead end, and it never leads to anything but danger and criminals. You are going to get yourself killed if you don’t drive yourself crazy first. Putting yourself through all of this… just to be able to shapeshift? Ida, anyone else would have given up long ago.”

At that, her stomach tightened.

“You don’t understand. I don’t have any other choice. It's the only way I’ll-“ she huffs and stops herself briefly before continuing, “Who says one of the hundreds of crooks we get in here every day won’t know something useful eventually? I have to keep trying, Adam. I have to. Even if you never understand. Even if it kills me." She is speaking even and stern, but she's not saying anything he hadn’t heard before.

“Alright, alright.” He lets out a resigned sigh and her body relaxed. “Just try to stay out of trouble. At least for tonight. I won’t be able to save you this time,” he shrugged, “I have plans.”

She looked down with a smile, and with that, he turned and opened the door.

Before shutting it completely, he looked at her and said, “Get home safe, okay?” 

Click.

She scoffed. ‘Home.’

***

The monkish man’s words from earlier that night led her to a lavish house, and for the first time in years, a ringing echoed in her ears. Something about this lead felt different from all the others.

She slipped through a window under the veil of darkness, and she saw there, from the corner of her eye, a glittering opal pendant. Her heart began to race. It sat on a bedside table, and as she moved closer, colors shifted from white to blue to green within its iris. Her breath remained caught somewhere between inhale and exhale. Could this be? Before she could discern anything logically, an uncontrollable cascade of memories from three years before came flashing before her.

***

She remembered fire. Flames flicking violently at the cold of the night. Her mother’s silhouette sharply outlined against the rage of orange and red. And there she was, standing in abject horror, tears glinting in the light. What else could she do? The damage was done.

Her mother watched the beast of heat and damage howl and slowly die with crossed arms. In the blackened spot before them lay the ashes of everything Ida had ever held dear. Pictures and toys. Clothes. Books. Memories. Everything. 

She remembered charred dirt smearing her knees as she leaned over the fading embers, her tears falling like rain into the pit as if they could water her lost things back to life. 

She remembered turning around, slowly, venomously, still on her knees and looking up at something evil. She remembered each line on her mother’s face. Still and cold. 

This was her punishment. Being greeted at home on her sixteenth birthday by a roaring fire in the front yard burning everything that had ever brought her joy. This was about control. Because Ida had ‘defied’ her mother. On Ida’s own birthday. 

She remembered a faint yet high pitched ringing. It grew in her ears, resonating against the silence all around them. Call it intuition, a knowing. Whatever it was, it told her that the woman hovering over her would never be a mother to her. The seething and hateful words Ida will never forget, seared into her mind like the black spot in their yard, made sure of that. She knew nothing would ever change. Nothing would ever get better here. Ever.

Her mother spoke, low and taunting, “Ida get up. You did this to yourself, this is exactly what we talked about.” 

‘Talked.’ Ida scoffed. The trail of bruises on her stomach would call it something different.

“You wanted to go off with that girl every day and act like you don’t live here. Well, little girls that don’t live in my house don’t get to keep their shit in my house. You tell that to your friend. Now, Ida. Get. Up.” She spoke the last words through clenched teeth. 

Her friend, Adeline, with her house down the street and around the corner, was Ida’s safe haven. It was what she considered her true home. Her and Adeline had grown together for the past seven years of their lives from when Ida was nine and Adeline, eleven. 

She knew of the horrors Ida lived through. She never judged her bruises or when Ida knocked on her door with a red nose and tears streaming down her cheeks. Instead, she drew flowers over the black and blue patterns on her skin and danced in her tears. 

Adeline’s opal pendant, with her initials, ‘A.S,’ etched on the back and that she was never seen without, always glowed like the first light of the morning. Her hair was like gold. Her eyes shone brightly. She was so self assured. So herself. So beautiful. Adeline was the closest Ida ever got to the sun.

“Ida. I said get up. Now.” 

Ida’s gaze, now contorted into that of indignant rage, sizzled into the eyes of her mother’s. She’d never looked so closely at her. She’d never realized how menacing she was. How beastly. 

A single word resounded from somewhere deep inside Ida. It poured from her lips slow and guttural, as if coated in tar. 

“No.”

Her expression glinted with surprise and this made Ida happy. Then, as if regaining her senses, her mother scoffed and made for Ida’s head, meaning to grab a fistful of her hair and drag her back into the house. When she latched on and began to pull, Ida whipped forward and bit down on the hand that dragged her, clenching her jaw down as hard as possible.

Her mother fell back, cradling her arm as if it were broken. She trembled, feigning fear. Ida rose and now she stood over her, staring down at the woman laying there. How pathetic. Then, without wasting a single word more and for the last time ever, she began to walk away.

She made it a few steps before hearing a piercing, “No!”

Before Ida knew what was happening she was in the cold grass, a flailing weight on top of her. She was now being rained down upon by fists, pathetic but impactful. 

“You,” whack, “can,” whack, “not,” whack, “leave me!”

Just as Ida clasped her hands over the back of her head in a protective stance, a deep voice echoed behind them. 

“Hey!” and a sweeping flashlight engulfed them both. 

There was a moment of stillness, as though if she did not move, the voice would not see her. Eventually, though, her mother slid off to the side. Even still, Ida remained there in the grass. She kept her fingers locked over her head and her face in the ground. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps embarrassment.

“Stay right there,” the voice commanded, closer now, and Ida wasn’t sure who it was talking to. All she knew was that now and without explanation, someone was bringing her to her feet and leading her away. She dare not look back.

It was then that Ida noticed the badge. The gun. The police uniform. All she could do was keep walking. 

She remembered they stopped in front of Adeline’s house, that they stepped through the door. She remembered confusion. Relief. She remembered the police officer that saved her looking painfully at her. She remembered a moment of recognition before he removed the opal pendant from around his neck and at once he began to change. His physical form, in a flash of debilitating light, deflated and contorted. She blinked into the blinding light that was like the first light of the morning, and when she could see again, there stood Adeline. 

Ida mouthed silent, incoherent words, but Adeline put a finger to her lips. 

“You are safe now. You don’t have to run anymore. Live here with me, Ida.”

“But you just-“

“I can keep us safe with this,” she frantically held up the opal pendant and slipped it around her neck. She morphed into who Ida had always known to be Adeline’s mother. Before her eyes, Adeline became a police officer, a mother, and finally a dog yipping at her feet.

“I can be anything. Anything, Ida. I can keep us safe here. Together.” Adeline was herself again, clasping both her hands tightly, desperate eyes raking over Ida. “You don’t ever have to go back to that woman.”

“Adeline, I- I’m confused. Is this a dream?”

Adeline’s face conflated into a relieved smile and she laughed. “No, no. You’re not dreaming. This is real and you’re free now. We can do anything. Go anywhere.”

Ida remembered being twelve, dancing in the rain, hands bound as if by glue, jumping up and down, turning their faces to the sky. She remembered Adeline’s gentle fingers rubbing tears from her eyes, her telling Ida it will all be okay. In time, it will all be okay. She remembered the way Adeline told stories, fragmented but filled with enthusiasm. She remembered joy. 

That faint, high-pitched ringing began in Ida’s ear again. Slower now. Deliberate. It called to her. Stay, stay, stay. But logic and reason roared louder in her other ear. 

“I… I can’t stay with you. I can’t just… it just doesn’t work like that,” Ida rasped, eyebrows furrowed into an expression of shame, her gaze drifting to her feet.

Adeline’s face fell. Tears bubbled along her waterline. She waited for a moment, but Ida said nothing.

“Fine,” she croaked, then continued on louder still, “Fine. Leave! Just leave like everyone else does!”

“Adeline…” Ida started, but before she could get another word out, Adeline was pushing her out the front entrance and slamming the door in her face. 

She then remembered silence. She remembered feeling hollow, a deafening emptiness. Sitting there on the front porch, sobbing. Silence. Sobbing. Silence. She remembered banging on the door, calling out Adeline’s name. Silence. One day went by. Two, then three. Banging. Sobbing. Silence. 

Eventually, in an act of desperation, she broke in through the window, but it was like no one had ever lived there. All the furniture along with any and every trace of human life had vanished as if into thin air. 

Adeline and her opal pendant were gone.

***

When Ida blinked away the memory and, with it, the tears glossing over her eyes, the pendant from the side table was already in her hand, a thumb lightly tracing its smooth face. Instinctively, she turned it over in her fingers. 

There, in faded marker, were the initials ‘A.S.’

She gasped sharply, bringing a hand to her mouth and letting the pendant clatter to the floor at her feet. She staggered to the ground and sat there for a long while, staring in disbelief at the thing discarded some ways in front of her.  

Three years. Three years since she laid eyes on Adeline or the pendant, sparkling like the sun. Three years since Adeline vanished off the face of the Earth. Three years on this goose chase, thinking of nothing else but coming home to her. 

And here Ida was, at the end of it all. If the pendant was here, then Adeline must be here, too. Panic swelled in her. What if after all this time Adeline still wouldn’t face her? What if it was all for nothing? All the times she almost got killed in her efforts of searching, all the times she had to get bailed out of a cell by Adam, all the silence, all for nothing.

Ida squeezed her eyes shut. She thought of the summer when she was fourteen. Laying in the grass in Adeline’s back yard. She thought of clouds and sun. Adeline passing Ida’s hair back and forth into a braid. Ida never liked her hair. It was brown and boring and hard to keep up with. Adeline said if only you could see how it burns red in the sun. She said, “Like fire,” and smiled down at Ida.

She thought of sleepovers, crying with laughter, staying up all night and rising with the sun. She remembered how Adeline looked in that first light. How she shined.

She thought of freedom. The freedom she had been promised but refused.

Then, a rattling came from the door knob. Ida’s eyes snapped open and shot to the door, then to the bed. In a frenzy, she squeezed herself between the mattress and the floor. Deathly silent and stiller than she’d ever been, she watched as the door opened and revealed two sleek boots. They paused, only briefly, before entering and shutting the door carefully behind them. 

They clicked slowly and methodically over to the side of the bed where the pendant lay and where Ida hid.

There was a long, long moment of silence before a familiar voice came from beyond the mattress that made Ida tense and her heart pound in her ears.

“I think,” she paused and tapped her foot playfully, “we have a little mouse hiding under the bed,” and Ida could hear the cheeky smile on Adeline’s face. It was something she’d heard many times before. 

Adeline still didn’t know who was hiding under the bed, only that it was a meager and timid thief who wanted her pendant. This was something she had dealt with before, but their childlike instinct to hide under the bed amused her.

Ida knew this and it only brought heat to her cheeks. The moment when she would be revealed was nearing. And what would she say? How would she-

Adeline’s glimmering face appeared just then, peering through the narrow darkness, and Ida quickly hid her own face in her hands. It was so strange to finally see her again. Especially like this. She had grown into her features gracefully. Her hair was noticeably longer. Her dimples shined brighter still. Time had treated her well. 

“Hello?” she teased, “I’ve found you. You can come out. And please don’t try anything dumb, I’m very tired today.”

Ida remained there, motionless, just like she had the day Adeline came to save her. 

Ida could see through her fingers how Adeline’s face contorted from amusement to confusion, and finally, to irritation. 

“Enough,” Adeline stated with a sense of finality. The game was over. It was time to come out, but still, Ida could not move.

Adeline, tired of waiting, tired of the anticipation and running out of excitement, grabbed a fistful of Ida’s shirt and started dragging her out. Ida kept her face hidden beneath her hair even as she sat up with Adeline knelt before her. 

Ida could feel her eyes boring into her. 

“Is- are-,” Adeline stammered. It was perhaps the first time Ida caught her, Adeline, who was normally so self assured, stumbling over herself. It made her peek out from behind strands of hair just to catch a glimpse. 

Ida’s cautious gaze caught Adeline’s. Ida froze. So did Adeline. Neither dared move first, they hardly dare breathe. Ida searched for anger in Adeline’s face, but there was none. Her face only told of loneliness and regret.

It was Adeline’s quivering lip and eyes glossing over that gave way to a well of built up sorrow. Adeline slumped over into Ida and grasped on desperately, Ida clinging on right back. Tears meshed into tears. They wrapped each other up so tightly, meaning never to let go. Not this time. 

“I’m sorry,” one said.

“Me too,” the other replied.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“I never knew what I had until I lost you.”

“Let’s never do it again.”

“Agreed.”

Ida was home.