Miss Misery (33 page)

Ashleigh popped back into the room with a can of Dr. Pepper in her hand. “Yeah. That's Nancy. She's a Maltese.”

“Is she dead or something?”

“What? No! That's horrible. She's probably out back.”

I wasn't sure what irked me more, pets with human names or pet owners with framed shrines to still-living animals.

Ashleigh took a long sip of soda. “Do you want to meet her? I can bring her in.”

“Nah, that's OK. I don't really get along with dogs.”

“What are you talking about? Everyone gets along with dogs. She's a sweetheart.”

“No, really,” I said, backing away from the mantel. “It's weird—they really don't like me. When I was in Mexico once, all the dogs in the town actually organized a dog gang against me. They would form a mob every time I tried to walk down one of their streets.” I shivered at the memory.

Ashleigh was staring. “A dog gang?”

“Yeah, like a gang. But of dogs.”

She shook her head. “You really are weird. C'mon, I'll give you a tour.”

The rest of the house was similar to the front room: gaudy, faux-sophisticated fixtures; glorious, framed celebrations of family at every turn; and not a single
thing
anywhere. No books. No magazines. No records. No sign of human life—or at least interesting human life. Other than a loaf of white bread on the “island” in the kitchen, I didn't even see any food. I tread lightly, feeling like the entire place would shatter with one wrong step.

“It's horrible, isn't it? My father calls it his castle. I try to spend as little time as possible out of my room.”

Ashleigh led me up the softly carpeted stairs. The second floor was just a long hallway with a number of doors off of it, all of which were blank and closed except for the last one, farthest away from the stairs, which was decorated by a piece of white paper with a red heart drawn on it with a rough brush. “That's my room,” she said, walking toward the heart. “Krystal painted that for me. I told my parents it was about love and friendship, and they let me put it up. But it's called ‘Shattered Trash.'”

“Nice,” I said.

When we reached the door, Ashleigh turned and said, “Wait out here for a second, OK? I want to tidy up. Super quick.”

“Fine, but be fast, OK? I have to get out of here. I'm more than a little freaked out.”

She rolled her eyes, then slipped in her room, shutting the door in my face. I heard the snap as the light went on and then the gentle strum of an acoustic guitar. Dashboard Confessional's plaintive sound filled the second floor.

I knocked on the door. “I thought you sold your stereo.”

Ashleigh's voice was muffled through the door. “It's on my computer, dummy.”

“Well hurry up, OK?” And then to myself I added, “This is ridiculous.” I paced the soft carpet and then cracked open the door that I figured was the bathroom to answer a bet I had made with myself. I flipped the light on. Yep—the toilet seat was cushioned. Amazing. I shook my head and closed the door. What was I doing here? How did I end up in this totally random, truly horrible house in the middle of nowhere? But nothing was truly random or nowhere these days. Roger Bortch had built himself a castle all right, but no security system, moat, or dog named Nancy could keep the world away. There were electric lines and cables and Ethernet cords snaking through all of these pristine walls, a digital escape route that his elder daughter clung to like a lifeline and that she had used like a lasso to rope me in. You can't build the walls high enough, Roger. I may have brought her back, but she's already long gone.

Just then Ashleigh's door opened a crack, and I heard her say, “OK, you can come in now.”

I turned around and walked back toward her voice. “Fine, but one look around and then I have to get out of here. I—”

Ashleigh's bedroom was lit only by a halogen lamp in the corner; covered now by a purple scarf, it cast the entire room in a hazy, possibly flammable reddish glow. The walls were wallpapered with small images of lilacs and peppered with a few neatly organized band posters and photos cut out of magazines. The bed in the corner was a frilly canopy number, and beside it was an orderly desk with a boxy PC on top of it. Two bulky speakers sat next to the computer, and the voice of Dashboard's Chris Carrabba poured out of them, wailing something about chasing a ghost of a good thing. There was a window above the computer looking out into inky black nothingness.

I said, “Ashleigh?” She didn't seem to be in the room, but then I felt her come up behind me, wrap her arms around my chest. “What are you doing?” I pulled her hands away and turned. She had changed into polka-dotted pajama bottoms with only a frilly white bra on top. “Whoa,” I said, and then she threw herself at me, smashing her lips into mine with such force that I stumbled two steps backward, my arms flailing as I tried to balance. It wasn't a kiss—more of a face-punch. I managed to pull my head away and untangle my torso from her grasping arms and hands. “Hey,” I said. “Stop. Stop!”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What? I thought…”

“I think you thought wrong, Ashleigh.” I took another step back toward the wall. “I'm sorry.”

Her eyes were wet and she flushed crimson. “Why not?”

“Ashleigh.” I spoke quietly, taking a step toward her. “You're a great girl. But I'm way too old for you! We're friends, remember? Good friends.”

“It's not fair,” she said. “It's not fair.”

I was about to tell her why fair had nothing to do with it when something faint but insistent tickled my eardrums. “What's that noise?”

Ashleigh was still covering herself. “Don't change the subject.”

I walked to the computer and turned down the volume. “No, really—I hear a dog barking. Don't you?”

“No, I don't hear anyth—”

“Shh! Listen!” It was definitely a dog barking; I could hear it even over the hum of the central air. Ashleigh opened her mouth as if to respond, when suddenly the air-raid-siren alarm burst through the house.

“Oh, no!” Ashleigh's hands flew to her face. “My parents!”

“You're kidding.” My face grew hot and my vision wavered. I felt like I was going to faint, vomit, or both.

Ashleigh looked rabid. “No!” she hissed. “It's them! They must have come home early!”

I could barely form words. “What do we do? What the hell are we going to do?” My mind spun. I was dead. I was a dead man. So much promise, and to what end? Murdered by a vengeful fitness-obsessed Mormon in a tacky tract house in Utah. It didn't seem fair. I felt like crying. “Ashleigh!” She seemed frozen in terror. I shook her shoulders. “Ashleigh! Get dressed!”

The alarm stopped suddenly, and the silence that took its place seemed even louder. But it was enough to snap Ashleigh out of her fear coma. She dove onto the bed and pulled a sweatshirt out from under the pillows, threw it over her head. “Don't just stand there,” she whispered. “Hide!”

“I can't! They've already seen my car—it's right out front!”

“Shoot…well then go in the bathroom! Quick! We'll figure something out.”

I said, “We will?” But she was already pushing me out the door and down the hall.

I heard footsteps below. A deep male voice bellowed up the stairs. “Hello? Ashleigh? Is that you, sweetie? Are you home early?” My vision blurred around the edges and my feet started to drag on the carpet. I felt like the elderly wolf in a Jack London novel, ready to give up and surrender to the cold and relative certainty of death.

But Ashleigh wouldn't let me die. “Move it!” she hissed, and shoved me into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard her yell, “Daddy, it's me. I'm home early!” And I spun around in a circle three times and collapsed on the cushioned toilet seat, my head in my hands.

Through the door I heard Nancy bark a few more times, and then a woman's voice said, “Honey, why didn't you call us? Is everything all right?” I opened my eyes and stared at my unshaven reflection in the mirror. I wondered what it would feel like to be hit, stabbed, strangled, or just generally killed at the hands of Roger Bortch. Would he show any tenderness? Mormon mercy? My guidebook had said that the LDS Church had abandoned the practice of blood debt earlier in the century. I hoped news of that particular revision had trickled down to South Jordan.

I heard Ashleigh thump her way down the stairs, then say, “I'm fine. I just had to come home early because I, um, forgot my contact lens solution.”

The male voice again then: “Whose car is that parked outside?”

I clamped my eyes shut again and reached for the door to lock it—only to discover that there was no lock. Downstairs, Ashleigh was a maestro of improvisation. “A BYU student,” I heard her say. “On the, uh, orientation committee. He was heading up here to town and offered to drive me.”

“A student?” said the woman's voice.

“He?”
said the male. “Where is
he
now?”

“He's in the bathroom,” said Ashleigh, extra loudly as if she were playing to the cheap seats. Which, in fact, she was. I realized that that was my cue, so after flushing the toilet as loudly as I could, I took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom and then down the stairs. I felt the curious, burning eyes of the Bortches the entire way down. As I carefully navigated the steps, I saw the Bortch family appear in slow motion from the bottom up, as if a curtain were being raised on them. High-top sneakers, legs like ornery treestumps, and then the big reveal: Roger Bortch, recognizable from his billboard, standing impressively at the foot of the stairs, his waxy blond mane golden in the bright light. He was wearing a blue and black Sergio Tacchini tracksuit and had a wingspan like an eagle; his thick, sunburned neck gave way to rolling shoulders and muscular arms that were wrapped around a confused, yelping mound of white dog. Gleaming in his left ear was a tiny hoop earring that fell somewhere between midlife crisis and pirate. To his right stood Mrs. Bortch, a tiny skeleton of a woman with a judgmental nose and Ashleigh's apple cheeks. She had loud, clattery doorknob earrings of her own and wore a gray sweatshirt that said
MOMS RULE
! in plaid stitching. I took my time with the steps, gripping the bannister so tightly I thought maybe it would explode into a diamond.

“Hello, folks,” I said with as much homespun charm as I could muster. “Hope you don't mind that I stopped in to use your facilities.”

The Bortches stared at me like I had just beamed down from the
Enterprise.
Ashleigh had somehow managed to change into jeans—though she was still suspiciously barefoot—and she leaned against a chair with a “don't you dare fuck this up” expression on her face. “Not at all,” said Roger Bortch with a tight smile on his face. “Anything for a fellow BYU man.” He adjusted the dog, who was emitting a low growl in my general direction, and held his hand out to shake. “Roger Bortch,” he said. His hand was bearlike and squishy. “This is my wife, Emily.”

“Nice to meet you both,” I said, grinning like a mentally deficient chimpanzee. My cheeks were burning underneath my totally inappropriate week's worth of stubble.

“And you are…?” Emily Bortch gave me an encouraging smile.

“Yes,” I said hopefully, returning the smile. She smiled more broadly, so I nodded and smiled.

“Yes, what?” Roger Bortch was no longer smiling.

“Hmmm?” I was still standing on the second to last step, oddly above the Bortches, like I was on display.

“What's your name, son?”

I froze. “My name.” I didn't say it as a question, really. More like a resigned sigh.

“Yes, that's right. Your name. You've got one, right?”

“Oh yes, sir. I certainly do.” I gazed into the eternal golden blankness of Roger Bortch and somehow found a lifeline. “The name is Rulon. Uh, Rulon Barber.”

There was a pause so pregnant I feared in another nanosecond it would go into labor. I could hear Ashleigh not breathing, practically see the dubious thoughts coursing through her father's veins. But all of a sudden Roger Bortch broke into a trusting, masculine grin. “A pleasure to meet you, Rulon. A fine old-fashioned name you've got. Would you care to join us for a cup of coffee?”

My blood screamed: Get out! Now! Run for the door! Never look back! But my mouth said, “Thank you, sir. I'd love to.”

 

I sat on the white couch as calmly as I could, while beside me Emily Bortch poured lukewarm Sanka into a BYU mug.

“So, Ashleigh tells us you're a student.” Roger Bortch sat in the broad-backed easy chair directly to my left, legs spread wide, master of his off-white domain.

“Yes, sir,” I said, hoping my voice wouldn't crack. “Actually, a graduate student.”

“Really!” Emily Bortch seemed impressed and stirred an extra splash of half-and-half into her coffee.

“What do you study?”