Experiment in Terror 03 Dead Sky Morning (5 page)

“How long have you guys been dating?” I asked, feeling just a tad protective. I remembered last month I had found a box of condoms in her drawer (I wasn’t snooping if that’s what you think) and prayed she wasn’t using it with this guy. He looked too old for her.

“Oh, since the beginning of the school year,” she said in a tone that was both casual and proud.

“And he’s a good kid?”

“Yes,” she sighed, and snatched the photo out of my hands. “Are you Mom now?”

“I’m just wondering.”

“You don’t trust my judgment.”

“I…” I put my hands up in the air and ended up shrugging. “He looks cute. I’m glad he makes you happy.”

“He does,” she squealed. “He’s more than cute, he’s fucking hot. And he’s on like every sports team there is.”

I never pegged Ada to be the type to think dating a jock was cool, but if it was popular, then that explained a lot. Ada operated a successful fashion blog and who knows how many people she won over on a daily basis from just showing off her enviable body and insane wardrobe.

I wonder if she gets any hateful blog comments
, I thought. I made a mental note to ask her later.

The image of the condom box flashed in my head again. I had to say, “I hope you’re not sleeping with him.”

“Perry!” she admonished. “That’s none of your business.”

“Maybe not…and I don’t want it to be. I just want you to be careful. Things can turn ugly really fast and if you’re not careful…” Fuzzy, angry memories drifted into my head. I waved them away.

“I am careful!”

“So you are having sex!” I exclaimed.

She leaped off the bed and crossed her arms. “For your information, no I’m not. And like you’re a saint…you’re sleeping with Dex.”

Now it was my time to leap off the bed. “I am not!”

The accusation was ludicrous (though immensely appealing).

She raised her penciled brow at me. “Right,” she said slowly. “You just spend all this time with this ‘hot’ older guy, you know, being chased by ghosts or whatever and jetting all over the place. Sure you’re not fucking him.”

My jaw dropped. It all sounded so vulgar coming from her mouth. Suddenly I felt ashamed that I had those feelings to begin with. And why did she use air quotes around “hot”?

“First of all, Missy,” I said, sticking up my fingers and ticking them off, “I’m 23–”

“22.”

“Whatever. I’m 22. Which means I’m old enough to be able to handle having sex with someone. Second of all, Dex has a girlfriend. Third of all, Dex is my partner. Yes, we spend a lot of time together, but it’s on a purely professional level.”

More images flitted into my head while I was saying that. The way he sometimes looked at me, like he was searching deep inside my skull to discover how I was really feeling. The times I found myself being comforted in his arms. The way I had fallen asleep with my head on his bare chest, hearing his heartbeat lull me to sleep. The way his lips felt on my mouth, the jolt of electricity that made dying almost seem like a fair tradeoff.

“Yeah, well you obviously want to sleep with him and it’s only a matter of time,” she said, stuffing the photo back into her purse like it was a secret document.

My ears pricked up at that comment but I brushed it away. “I doubt it, Ada. It won’t happen.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said as she walked over to the side table and picked up the cold mug of tea. “Do you want me to make you more tea since this went to waste?”

“Sure and what do you mean, you hope I’m right?”

“I’m sure you can figure it out,” she said overconfidently and walked out of the room.

Figure it out? Figure what out?

I hopped off of her bed and followed her into the hallway like a curious cat. She had stopped halfway down the staircase and was just standing there, staring into the living room just as she had done earlier when I was fighting with my parents. A horrible feeling swept across me. What was she looking at? Were my parents both dead in the living room?

I didn’t even let my mind dwell on that morbid thought. I walked down the stairs to join her and heard my dad’s voice boom, “Just know I don’t like this one bit,” letting me know that they weren’t dead after all.

I stopped beside my sister and followed her gaze.

My dad and mom were sitting in their armchairs. It was like they hadn’t moved at all. The glass fragments and paintings were still on the floor.

They weren’t alone. On the couch across from them was a man.

It took a few seconds to realize that I knew who the man was. I knew his slouchy position as he leaned forward on his cargo pants, his grey hoodie, his floppy, messy dark hair.

My nerves were on fire, gluing me to the spot. I wanted to look at Ada to see if she could see what I was seeing but I couldn’t look away.

I closed my eyes tightly, thinking it was some fucked–up illusion. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

When I opened them, the room had gone quiet and my parents were looking up at me. Dex slowly turned his head in my direction and our eyes met. Those eyes of his were unmistakable. Dex was in my living room, talking with my parents.

What. The. Fuck?

I was speechless. And thoughtless. I could only stand there, staring. I’m pretty sure my mouth was agape too.

“Perry, seems you have a visitor,” my mother said.

I barely heard her. My eyes were still locked with Dex’s. They were masked and offered no clues to what was going on. But the tiniest twitch of his upper lip said enough.

Out of the corner of my eye I became aware that Ada was watching me closely. Everyone was waiting for me to say something.

So I said the first thing that came to my mind. “Dex…what are you doing here?”

He pursed his lips and let it slide. He casually looked at my dad, who had stood up.

“Dex came all the way over here from Seattle to talk business. Your business,” Dad said in that command respect sort of way. It was the professor in him coming out.

I finally looked at Ada. Her eyes were wide but she seemed to be enjoying the whole situation.

Dex was looking at us. He got up, easing himself off the couch, and sauntered over to the staircase, eyeing Ada with a bemused smirk.”This must be Little Fifteen.”

“The name’s Ada,” she said in her angsty teen voice, the amusement disappearing from her face. “You must be Perry’s crazy partner. You’re a lot shorter than I thought you’d be.”

I closed my eyes in embarrassment while Dex said, “Ah. I can already tell you guys are related. The Snarky Sisters.”

I opened my eyes at that just in time to see Ada muster the evilest stink eye as she flounced down the stairs and went into the kitchen. I looked back down at Dex.

“Sorry to just show up unannounced. Can we talk?” he asked in that rich voice of his. I glanced over his head at my parents. They seemed to expect it. I don’t know what they had been talking about but it was obvious Dex needed to bring me up to speed in private.

I nodded and looked up the stairs. My bedroom seemed like the most obvious place. I could almost feel Ada snickering in the kitchen at how absurd (and fitting) the situation had gotten in the last few minutes, from talking about how I hadn’t slept with Dex, to leading him to my bedroom. It was insanity.

I walked up them with Dex coming up behind me. I felt shaky, nervous and pale. I wasn’t prepared for this. I could almost feel the energy he radiated glowing at my back. Then vanity kicked in. Was my bedroom clean? Did I have underwear flung all over the place? I must have looked like absolute shit from crying my eyes out.

I opened my door. The desk lamp was already on but that light was a bit too romantic so I flipped on the overhead lights and ushered Dex inside. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around, taking it all in. I closed the door behind us and did a quick scan to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary.

It was messy as usual but my underwear and embarrassing items were tucked away for once. Well, I guess the row of stuffed animals I had could have counted as embarrassing. Least they were when he laughed and lazed over to them, picking up my tattered monkey Tim.

He waved it in my direction. “How old is this poor guy? His fucking eye is hanging out.” He flicked it with his finger and it waved back and forth like a pendulum.

I gasped and ran over, plucking Tim out of his destructive hands. “That’s Tim and I’ve had him since I was two years old.” I held Tim to my chest in protective instinct. Dex stared at me with utter amusement.

“So I have stuffed animals, so what?” I asked defensively. I thought my Alice in Chains and Melvins posters made up for that fact.

He smiled, shrugged. I put Tim back down in the pile with the rest of his friends.

“So?” I asked, turning around to face him, feeling all nervy again.

He was looking over my walls. “So what?” he repeated blankly.

I reached over and smacked him lightly on his shoulder so his focus was on me.

“Dex. What are you doing here?”

He frowned. “You’re not happy to see me?”

My head craned back on my neck, caught off guard. “Well, yeah, but…I mean...”

“It’s OK, I won’t hold it against you. Unless you want me to.”

I raised my brow.

He grinned, a very quick flash, before he wiped it off with the back of his hand. Then he was all serious, his lips in a tight line.

“I couldn’t let you back out of the show,” he admitted. “I knew if you talked to your parents you’d just fuck it all up even more.”

I winced. That wasn’t very nice. But Dex was nothing if not brutally honest at times.

“It’s just a two–hour drive,” he continued, oblivious. “I’ve done more for a lot less.”

“You should have told me,” I said.

“Yeah? And have you freaking out for the next two hours? Come on, kiddo, I think I know you by now. This way was easier. And it worked. You can thank me, by the way.”

“What do you mean, it worked?”

He walked over to my bed, humming some song to himself. He lied down on it, putting his hands behind his head and kicked the mattress with the back of his heel. “Not bad, not bad. Could be a bit bigger, though. How do you fit your boyfriends on here?”

As annoying as he was being, it was a nice change to see him being a little more playful than the last time I saw him. Still, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea and I wanted to be a little bit serious about the situation. I went over to my chair, pulled it over to him and sat down.

“Dex. What did you talk about with my parents? What was the business?”

“Oh,” he said as if he was surprised. “I just told your father that you’d be in some legal trouble if you broke your contract.”

My jaw opened a little bit.

“Uh, you have some balls, you know that?”

“Oh, I know.” He grinned to himself.

“I’m serious. That’s like…that’s like threatening my father. My father does not take threats well. Believe me.”

Dex looked at me, turning his head to the side. “You give your parents too much credit. Your dad is just a dude. He may be your big, scary father but to me he’s just a man who likes his wine, indulges in hypocrisy on a daily basis, and does what he can to be the main provider of the house. He responded just like I thought he would, like any man would. To reason. To logic. If you backed out of the contract, ShowNet would take action. You can’t break it without just cause and the fact that you haven’t figured out how to have a proper relationship with your parents is not just cause. Sometimes you need someone on the outside to point out common sense.”

I mulled that over with a mix of emotions. I didn’t like how Dex assumed he knew my parents better than I did, and I didn’t appreciate his condescending opinion on our relationship. He knew nothing about me and my parents – he hadn’t been here, growing up in this house, dealing with all the shit we had to deal with. But on the other hand…it worked.

I didn’t feel like giving him credit though.

“And then…” I coaxed him.

“What? He agreed. He gave me some big long spiel about how disappointed he was in you and how he raised you better than that, which I tried not to laugh at, and how this show was not a proper career and blah, blah, blah–”

“Yeah, I’ve heard enough of that today, thank you.”

“But then he came around and said it was only professional to do the right thing. Which is to keep doing the show. But you’re going to have to start paying rent here. Sorry about that.”

“What!?” I yelled, the loudness of my own voice surprising me. It didn’t surprise Dex, though. He only looked mildly apologetic.

“You’re 22. You probably
should
start paying rent. I have to pay my mortgage. It’s called being an adult. Responsibility.”

My fists began to clench again. I’d have a heart attack by the time this dreadful day was over.

“Thanks for the lecture, Dex. I turn 23 next week.”

He chuckled. “That’s not helping your case.”

I sighed angrily and walked over to my dresser. I spotted a vial of this herbal remedy you sprayed in your mouth every time you were upset or about to have a panic attack. It was probably all a placebo effect but that didn’t matter if it worked, did it? It was almost empty.