Charm & Strange (16 page)

Being back in my room meant more dark thoughts. I turned on Lex’s computer to watch some of his porn, but even that didn’t offer any relief or release. Seeing all that thrusting and sweating just brought on a gloomy sense of panic and a dull ache in my gut. I shut it off before I finished. Zipped my pants back up. Switched on a local jazz station instead.

There was a soft knock on the door. Against my better judgment, I turned the handle and found myself looking into the wide doe eyes of the ballerina’s roommate. Lex’s girl. She stood there, a true vision, almost achingly lovely with thick black hair that spilled down her back in shiny waves and a smattering of brown freckles that splashed across the warm glow of her skin.

“Can I wait here?” she asked, her voice husky and low. “You know, for Lex?”

I gave her a hard look. “Lex is gone.”

“He’ll be back.” She walked in tentatively, brushing against me. She smelled of smoke and peaches. “God, your side is clean,” she said, looking around. She moved toward my bookshelf and ran her fingers horizontally across the spines.

I followed.

“Your walls.” She gestured.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s nothing on them.” This was true. A number of syllabi and study guides were pinned to a bulletin board that hung adjacent to my desk, but other than that, the only item I’d put up was a small, framed photo of a brown-and-white collie. A long-dead friend. The girl studied it briefly but didn’t comment.

“Well, make yourself at home.” I lay down on my bed.

The girl said nothing.

I closed my eyes.

The radiator hissed and gurgled. John Lee Hooker strummed his guitar and sang sadly. The trees outside whipped violently in a sudden wind. Snow continued to fall. We were quiet for a long time.

“I love this book,” she said suddenly. I opened an eye and saw her sitting on the floor, holding my worn copy of
The Chocolate War
.

“You’ve read it?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

I shrugged and put my arms behind my head.

“You think a girl like me doesn’t read?”

I smiled.

Five more minutes passed.

“What kind of name is Winston?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is that your first name? Or your last name?”

“I wasn’t aware we were on a first-name basis.”

More silence.

“Winston is my father’s name,” I offered after a moment.

“Oh, yeah? What’s he like, your dad?”

“He’s an economics professor. Or, he used to be.”

“He sounds smart,” she said.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Like father, like son.”

I didn’t answer.

The girl got on her hands and knees. She crawled toward me.

“So, is it true?” she whispered.

“Is what true?” I whispered back.

“That you … that you’re as crazy as Lex says. He says you’re, like, anorexic. Or something.”

I rolled onto my side and looked her in the eye. “Oh, well, if Lex told you that, then it must be true.”

A flash of confusion crossed her face, but she recovered. She sat up and wound a lock of inky hair around her index finger.

“I’m not trying to be nosy, you know. Everyone’s a little bit crazy, right? I just thought it was interesting. Guys don’t usually—”

I cut her off with a dark look.

She laughed nervously. “You’re funny.”

“Am I?”

The girl nodded. She inched even closer and put her hand on the bed next to mine so that our fingers were almost touching. Then she breathed deeply, the round swell of her breasts lifting on inhalation, and I knew what was coming.

I knew what she was going to do.

I simply closed my eyes and waited for her soft lips to touch mine.

*   *   *

Lex saw her leaving as he came back. I don’t know what she said or what she didn’t. But he knew. I could tell from the moment he slammed the door shut. From the snow melting in his hair and the tears melting on his cheeks. From the way he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

I lay belly-down on my bed, reading Robert Cormier.

“Well, now I know why you didn’t want to come.” His words slurred together. “Too bad the party got snowed out, huh?”

I said nothing.

“Asshole move, Win.”

Still I said nothing.

“Did you fuck her?”

“No.”

He swiped at his eyes. “All I’ve done is
kiss
her.”

“Well, it’s not like I forced her,” I said. I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. A water stain in the shape of Japan stretched from the far corner above me.

“I don’t get it. I thought you were a virgin, man. Like totally inexperienced. You won’t even touch Brynn’s tits, but you’ll let the girl I like do
that
to you?”

My head felt very dark. Black. I had no answer for what he was asking. He didn’t want to know. I never said I was a virgin.

“She said you knew what you were doing. You told her what to do.”

“You have to take charge with girls. Tell them what you want.”

“What’s
wrong
with you?” he whispered.

“I’m not a good person.”

“No shit.”

“I mean it.”

Lex lurched across the room toward me, eyes bloodshot and wild. He lost his footing on the slick covers of his own rock magazines and went down hard on his side with an
oof
. He tried but couldn’t get himself up again. Still on his knees, he raised one arm and pointed at me. “I. Hate. Excuses.”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Oh, so now you
want
an excuse?”

“I want to know
why
!”

“I told you,” I said. “There’s nothing good about me. Nothing at all. I—”

“Shut up.”

I shut up.

He sat back. Shook his head vigorously like he had water stuck in his ear. “Why did you say that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“God, I hate you!” Lex turned and crawled toward his bed. He hauled one arm onto the twin mattress and put his head down. It sounded like he was sobbing.

My heart pounded. I had lots of thoughts, too many. I thought,
Go to him
. I thought,
Apologize, make a joke, say something, say anything
. I thought,
That’s what a real friend would do
.

I did none of those things.

I rolled over and went to sleep.

*   *   *

I have good instincts. Very good instincts. It still took a minute to register that Lex wasn’t in the same place when I woke up. He lay on the floor, but not in front of his bed where I’d last seen him. Instead he was slouched beside my desk, face slack, arms splayed. My nose wrinkled. It smelled like he’d gotten sick. I didn’t want to know where. My alarm clock flashed 3:15. In the morning. The world around me was black. And silent. Utterly silent. What had woken me up?

I swung my feet to the floor. My heart leapt into my throat when I saw that Lex had touched my desk. For a second, I thought he’d found my photo album. The one I kept hidden in the bottom drawer. Besides the pictures of my family, I had other things in there—like clippings from the newspapers and the magazines. Like my brother’s and sister’s obituaries and all those articles about
me
. With my face. My real name. But as I got closer to Lex, I saw I was mistaken. Snow layered my desk, not memories. He’d opened the window before passing out.

He’d let in winter’s end.

They wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance, but I raised hell to drive over to the medical center with Mr. Galveston, our dorm parent, after I called 911. The ER physician and the police asked me a lot of questions. What he’d taken. When. Why. With whom. Had I seen him at all? My legs shook and I answered as obliquely as I could. I knew nothing.

I crept into the hospital room hours later. Lex might be angry with me, but he was alone and I couldn’t just abandon him. His parents were three thousand miles away. Who else would visit him? I sat by his bed. I saw the bruises on his face, the IV in his arm. I hated myself.

His eyes fluttered open, very blue. He saw me. He couldn’t talk.

“They pumped your stomach,” I told him. “But you’re going to be okay.”

He blinked.

“I told them you drank too much. That it was an accident. You didn’t know your limit.”

He wheezed.

I hunched forward in my chair. “Look, I haven’t been honest with you, Lex. What I said earlier, about being a bad person, it’s true. There’s a reason I don’t talk about my family and it doesn’t have anything to do with my parents’ divorce or me not getting along with my mom. It has to do with
me.
Who I really am. My real name. It’s not Winston.…”

I kept talking. The two words I intended to say,
I’m sorry,
wouldn’t come. But other words did, ones I’d never given voice to. I struggled to say them. Lex struggled to listen. As I continued talking, he looked away. Maybe he didn’t believe me. Maybe he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. My wretched guilt. But sitting in that room, in the weak light of morning, for the first time since their deaths, I couldn’t stop talking. I told him everything.

About Keith and Siobhan.

About how they’d died and who I was and what I’d done.

About what it all meant.

About what I would become.

What I
had
to become.

My destiny.

chapter

thirty

antimatter

I heard voices on the front porch.

Whispers. What sounded like crying. Or laughter.

My body refused to move.

“Just shut up!” a female voice rang out.

More mumbling.

“No. Just go, okay? Go!”

I finally sat up. Looked around. I was on the couch in the living room of my grandfather’s cabin, and I was in shock.

Some part of me hurt. Badly. A type of pain and a type of place I didn’t have words for. My head lolled, heavy with a funny residue that reminded me of Phenergan or worse. Only I hadn’t traveled anywhere. Had I? I tried to remember. I’d gone upstairs with my dad. I had seen a wolf. So why was I down here, all alone, in the living room, with just a—

Sssnap!

I whimpered.

No. That didn’t happen. No one hurt you. Not like that. Push it away. Remember the wolves instead.

The door slammed shut. Footsteps approached.

I waited. Anna appeared in the threshold. Her head turned and she saw me. Her legs buckled and she almost fell. Then she laughed, a wild, out-of-control sound, and put a finger to her lips.

“Shhh,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be up. It’s too late for you.”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

Anna came closer, crossing the floor with a looping twist of her feet. Her hair was very messy and she smelled different, pungent, almost smoky. I couldn’t place it. I had a large fleece blanket wrapped around me but still couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. I didn’t think I wanted to remember. A part of me wanted to cry. Or scream.

Anna leaned against the back of the couch, then swung her long legs over to sit beside me. She peeled off her jacket. She had nothing on beneath it.

I blinked. I had to still be dreaming. I had to be. None of this, my confusion, my fear, my bubbling well of insanity, the half-naked girl in front of me, it couldn’t be real.

The roar of a car engine filled the room. Headlights flashed through the window, cutting across Anna’s face.

“Shh,” she said again. “This is our secret, little Drew. Okay? Don’t be scared.”

Sssnap!

Another flash. This one too vivid. Too real.

I gagged.

Anna’s dark eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Could you hear what Ricky and I were saying outside?”

I still couldn’t answer.

Anna leaned forward to grab on to me, filling my head with her bad smoke-smell. I reared back with a tiny growl and my heart beat hummingbird fast. I didn’t want to be touched.

I didn’t want to be touched.

She babbled, “Look, it was an accident. I swear. Please, Drew, just don’t freak out, all right? You can’t tell anyone, you just can’t. Ricky was drinking, well, I was, too, and it just happened so
fast
. I mean, he came out of nowhere! But it was a total accident, I swear, Drew. I swear. We tried to help him, we both did, but we couldn’t do
anything
. I told Ricky that we’re both leaving soon, we need to forget this ever happened. He’s back at Colgate in the fall and I’m going to be a senior this year. We can’t just, like, ruin
everything
over an accident, right? You get that? You understand?”

I had no idea what she was talking about, I didn’t want to know, but she reached for me again, pleading and desperate.

I hit her.

Anna gave a yelp and her whole arm tensed. Like she meant to hit me back.

I kicked her in the stomach.

She froze, her face sliding into a mask of pain and disbelief. Then she fell back against the couch cushions and began to cry, coarse, jagged sobs. I stared. Anna’s tears evoked nothing in me. I did not care.

I continued to stare at her, at her body. Like yesterday morning, small sticks and dry leaves lay tangled in her hair. But unlike yesterday, dark spots were now crusted across her cheeks, her hands, her forearms. Crimson and brown. Blood.

The sobbing ceased. She turned her face sideways and watched me, too. Her side heaved with each breath, and her one visible eye drooped with fatigue. The lid began to close. I crept forward from where I lay huddled until I was on my hands and knees. I inched forward even more, crawling over her with my arms anchored on each side of her torso. I liked the way my shadow fell across her bare body. I used one hand to push her onto her back. I wanted to take her in. She grunted and strained to lean forward. I pushed her back again. And again. There was nothing sleepy in her expression anymore, but she finally lay still, tolerating me as a bitch would her whelp. Anna’s nipples were very pink and I saw a small line of moles running down her stomach. I reached out and touched one of her breasts. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was warm, very soft, with real weight to it.