Delicate Monsters (9 page)

Well, well, she thought.

Emerson Tate hadn't changed at all.

 

part 2

Little Lamb

Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

—Genesis 22:7

 

chapter sixteen

“Get over here and suck me, girl.”

“Squirrelly little shit.”

These were the words that greeted Miles when he got to school Monday morning, which were then followed by jeering laughter. Not his. Naturally, the invitation was one he declined—or more accurately, ignored—and Miles made a mental note to avoid the west side entrance to Sonoma High until the end of time. This was in addition to the other places on campus he was loath to go, like the third-floor bathrooms, the school library, and any area that wasn't well lit or well populated. There was a terrible injustice, he thought, in being an introvert who was afraid of being alone.

Miles dragged himself to fencing class out of obligation more than anything. It's where his vision had first shown up, after all, and it's where he yearned to see more. No matter how wretched the future might be, the need to know it burned inside him like a hot candle on a cold night.

And it couldn't be worse than his present.

“You weren't here on Friday.” The PE teacher didn't bother looking at Miles when he spoke to him. He just stood there in the gym with an oversized Styrofoam cup of coffee gripped in one hand and stared at the clipboard he held in the other. As if it were the one more likely to come up with an adequate response.

“I was sick,” Miles said softly. And while he was safe from harassment in here, in this space, he still felt meek, a little flushed, a little out of sorts. Even his stomach rang hollow, despite having eaten breakfast, and everything around him felt so
bright
. An assault of the senses.

“You gotta note?” the teacher asked.

“No.”

“Gotta have a note from your doctor or the absence is unexcused.”

“Okay.”

The teacher glanced up at him then. He was a big man with a bald head, scald-pink skin, and lines of wrinkles in his neck, like a shar-pei or one of those pug dogs with the curly tails that meant you had to look at their butts when they walked away. His mouth opened wide as if he were going to say more, but he stopped. Ran his beady-eyed gaze over Miles. Not unkindly, but still.

Miles shuddered and ducked his head.

The girl he always sparred with stood in the corner of the gym by the foldable bleachers. She had her helmet on, along with a black shirt and a pair of black tights, and she was poking at the blue floor mat with the knobby end of her foil. She was really going at it—the mat had dimpled unattractively as a result of her efforts and sad clumps of gray stuffing were visible.

“I'm pissed at you,” she warned as he approached.

“Why?” Miles asked, picking up his own foil and sliding on his mask.

“You left me alone last week. I had to spar with that asshole.” The girl cocked her head toward the other side of the room, but Miles didn't know what asshole she might be referring to. It could be anybody.

“I was sick,” he told her.

“Oh, yeah? That's convenient. Maybe give me some warning next time, okay? I can be sick, too, you know. I can be anything. I can even forge a damn note from the doctor. How 'bout that?”

“I had a seizure.”

The girl stopped jabbing at the mat. She didn't look up or anything, and it was hard to tell through the mesh of her helmet and his, but to Miles it felt like she was staring at him. Glaring, really, and she did it for a while, the glaring, before finally lifting her foil up and pointing it at him. “Whatever,” she said. “I don't need to know about how fucked up your brain is. Keep it to yourself.”

Miles nodded, but felt his cheeks burn beneath his mask.

He took a deep breath.

Then he lifted his own foil to meet hers.

*   *   *

After spending forty-five minutes instructing high school students on various ways to kill one another, the fencing teacher raised the white flag. Actually, what he did was toss his coffee cup in the trash, grumble something like, “should've stayed in my goddamn bed this morning,” and waved them all on their way, but it was definitely a form of surrender. Miles understood that.

This left ten minutes to change and get ready for second-period classes. For Miles that would be social studies, which didn't involve dueling but still felt draining. He put his fencing gear away, along with everyone else, then slipped into the boys' room. But rather than head to the showers or sinks to wash up, he sat down on the metal bench that ran between the lockers.

And waited.

For
something
.

But nothing happened. His own surrender hung limply and unseen. After checking and double-checking that no one was in his immediate vicinity, Miles slid his gym shorts off. Socks, too. The cold air quickened his pulse. He wriggled as fast as he could back into a pair of faded jeans, but his sense of failure failed to dissipate. If anything, it grew sharper, bolder, because one room over, separated by mere plastic sheeting and institutional tile, all the other guys from fencing class were doing things Miles longed desperately not to know about: They snapped towels at each other's asses and turned the hot water on high. They filled the air with moisture and crassness and shouted about tits they'd seen and the size of their dicks and whether or not their girlfriends liked to squeeze the zits on their backs.

Eventually the other guys turned off the hot water. They spilled from the showers to the rows of lockers, tracking their wet footprints all over the place, still talking, still joking. A few insults—“fucking loser” and “look at that asshole”—were thrown in his direction, but that was all. They got dressed. Applied body spray. Grabbed their belongings.

Then they were gone.

Miles's muscles melted then, like soft butter on a hot pan, with all the pain implied in that, and he slumped over onto the bench with one shoulder. He lay there, very still, as his heart whooshed and his hair clung to his skin, damp with sweat and steam.

Being alone was better than not, he reminded himself. Then again, seeing as he was always alone, no matter where he went or who he was with, maybe the sad truth was he just didn't know any better.

 

chapter seventeen

What do you like to do for fun?

Emerson stared at the paper in front of him, fingers clenched around a nubby and tooth-worn no. 2 pencil. This question was inane. Pointless, really. More pointless than most school assignments, since it was a question being posed by a group of students who had designed this survey as part of their latest research methods project. Whatever Emerson wrote down was just throwaway data for them to use—an exercise for someone else and not worth putting any effort into. And seriously, what the hell was
fun
anyway? It was one of those words that belonged with concepts like
happiness
and
joy,
ideas that seemed nice enough until you realized they didn't mean anything. Emerson knew for a fact that you couldn't measure fun or bottle up bliss. Things like that were just abstractions, names for what you called the moments between sorrow.

The multiple-choice options read:

a) spend time with friends or family

b) play sports or be active

c) watch television, play video games, spend time online

d) art or craft type of hobby

e) other—please describe_____________________________

Emerson couldn't resist rolling his eyes. And he couldn't resist pressing graphite to paper, circling the letter (e), and readying himself to scrawl “jacking off” in the space provided.

Then he stopped.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose up. Emerson turned to his left, sneaking a glance over his shoulder while trying to look like he was doing anything but. May sat two rows back, wearing a hunter green miniskirt, and she crossed and uncrossed her legs while he watched. From what he could tell, she was either daydreaming hard or thinking deeply about whatever the hell it was she did for fun. Her head was lowered and her reading glasses were on, but instead of writing anything down, she twirled her ballpoint pen around and around the tops of her fingers. It was a balancing trick Emerson had never mastered; the blue pen whipped and spun across her knuckles like magic.

His mouth went dry. She couldn't know what had happened between them at that party, up in that bathroom. There was no way.

He'd
feel
it if she did.

Wouldn't he?

Swallowing hard, Emerson peeked next to his right. Sadie Su sat one row behind him and two seats over, beside a wide bay window where autumn sun flooded in and lit her dark hair so that it glowed like fire. He stared openly at her. He couldn't help himself.

Just then, Sadie looked up.

Caught his eye.

And smiled.

*   *   *

Emerson bolted like a racehorse once class was over, long legs carrying him down a flight of stairs and past the school auditorium toward the door that led to the courtyard outside, but it was May who caught up with him. Not Sadie.

He wasn't sure which was worse.

“Hey,” she said, reaching for his arm. “Wait up.”

“Oh, hey.” Emerson slowed his stride. He tried to sound casual. Like he wasn't trying to outrun her. Like he wasn't so jumpy he was on the verge of losing his goddamn mind right there in the middle of C Building, while waves of other students pushed past them, using elbows and backpacks like machetes in order to clear the way. A flash of darkness stirred inside Emerson. One that made him want to shove back. Kick a foot out and trip somebody. Laugh when they fell.

But he didn't do any of that. Instead, he took a deep breath. Pushed his hair back as he looked down at May.

She was biting her bottom lip, and what he saw pooling in her pretty brown eyes shoved at Emerson harder than any jabbing elbow or asshole kid racing against the bell. Because what he saw there was insecurity.

Shame.

Doubt.

Not about him, but about
herself.

Shit.

“I tried calling you all weekend,” she said.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Emerson pressed a sheepish grin onto his face. “I was with my family. My brother came home from the hospital on Saturday. It was all kinds of hectic. You know how it is.”

“How is he?”

“Miles? He's good. Pretty good.”

She nodded, but there were streaks of red coating her throat, staining the top of her chest—crimson-on-brown, like a rueful songbird in spring. “Look, I just wanted to apologize. About Friday. Getting drunk like that was stupid. Really stupid. Humiliating, actually. I mean, I can't remember
anything
.”

“Don't apologize,” he said.

“But—”

“Please.”

She nodded again, less tentative this time, but the red streaks remained. “Let me say thank you, then. Leigh told me you took care of me. That you got me home safe. I don't know how to repay you.”

“You don't have to do anything. It was nothing, M.”

“It was definitely something.”

Emerson shrugged, wishing like hell she'd change the subject or let him go so he could hang himself or cut his wrists or jump off a goddamn roof, but that's when she leaned forward, rose up on the tips of her toes, and kissed him on the lips. Quickly, but not too quickly. Emerson was stunned, totally taken aback, but she tasted good, so good, and her touch was everything he'd dreamed of, warm, powerful, a tumbling force of nature he couldn't deny.

So he let himself do what he'd wanted to do for so long. In front of the whole school, he held her closer. He kissed her deeper. Because he had to erase the self-doubt and shame pooling in her eyes.

He had to.

It
killed
him to see it.

 

chapter eighteen

Sadie thought, if anything, Dr. Call-Me-Tom looked
more
disheveled this week than last. Maybe this was because they were meeting in a different office, one that made her wonder who he must've pissed off in order to justify the move. The new space was smaller, was situated uncomfortably close to the administrative bathrooms, and came with a scarred metal desk that looked like it had survived the days of mass polio vaccinations and mandatory lice checks.

He'd brought his dumpy laptop with him, along with his rolling chair, although he clearly hadn't had time to unpack. A few milk crates and recycled banker's boxes were shoved haphazardly into a corner, and the only thing on the wall was a bright-colored poster distastefully labeled a “Feelings Chart.” The Feelings Chart consisted of a repeated line-drawn character whose frowned and pouted and pulled faces meant to show off his/her emotional state. Sadie wasn't sure if the chart was intended to teach her how to express herself or how to understand others, but seeing as both endeavors were pretty much scraping the bottom of her priority barrel she asked Dr. CMT if he could move it to the opposite wall.

“Why?” he asked.

“So I don't have to look at it.”

“The poster bothers you to look at?”

“It's unattractive. It bothers me to look at things that are unattractive. Especially when there are eyes involved.”

“Eyes,” he echoed.

Sadie waved a hand. “I don't like looking at all those eyes. There's a lot of them on there in case you hadn't noticed.”

“You're saying you don't want to be watched.”

“Do
you
want to be watched?”

“The poster doesn't bother me.”

“Well, you're not the one looking at it, are you?”