The Female of the Species (12 page)

My dad was right.

Skin makes a sound when it tears, one that burrows down into your subconscious and makes a home in the gray matter of your brain. It won't slip away easily and can't be replaced. Instead it takes precedence over everything else, so that the sound of Mom stripping the plastic off slices of cheese as she packs my lunch for work has me cocking my head, thinking,
No . . . that's not quite it.

I've spent twenty-four hours simultaneously trying to forget the sound of Ray Parsons's ear coming away from his head and comparing everything else I hear to it. I've done that about as much as I've tapped my finger against my phone, debating about whether or not I'm
going to call Alex. Every time I tap on her profile the pic of her and Peekay pops up and I suddenly have no problem remembering
exactly
what skin tearing sounds like, and how Ray's voice came out awkwardly, words bubbling through blood.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Mom says as she puts my lunch in the fridge, ready for me to grab in the morning when I head out. It's like I'm five. I don't know if I love it or hate it.

“You'd be overpaying,” I say, an old joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. Mom could fake laugh and rub my arm casually, walk away feeling like she's got a great relationship with her son. But she's not like that.

“Girl problems?” It's a question, but there's more of a statement in it than anything. She pulls out a barstool on the other side of the counter and rests her chin on her fist.

“Don't wanna talk about it,” I say, which is only half true.

“Okay,” she says brightly. “We can just stare at each other, then.”

“Mom . . . ,” I say, the inflection so much different than it was ten years ago. All the annoyance of my life is buried in that syllable, just like it used to be the one word that could fix everything.

“Jack,” she interrupts me. “I'm not stupid.”

“I know.”

“No, Jack, you don't. I am not stupid and I was a teenager once too, right here in this same town. I know what alcohol smells like. I know what pot smells like. I've smelled them both on you, and I can't even keep track of how many different girls' perfumes—”

“
Mom
. . .”

“Oh, shut it. You're lucky I said
perfume
.”

I shut it.

“You're not out there breaking new ground and making discoveries, Jack. You're living the same life your father and I did twenty years ago. But I never had the look on my face that you did just now, and it worries me. I'm your mother and I'm asking you what's going on.”

I spin my phone in a circle, the black screen reflecting our faces as we have a stare-down. And Mom's not blinking.

“How much do you know about Alex Craft?” I finally ask.

She definitely blinks then. “Alex Craft? The girl—”

“—with the dead sister,” I finish. “Yeah, her.”

Mom straightens up on her chair, back into full-on parent mode. “Well, I guess I don't know much more than that. She had an older sister who . . . died.”

Died
. Like she had an unexpected heart attack or something. But I'm not going to get into semantics
when my mom is clearly trying so hard to keep her face open and blank. And it's totally not working.

“What else?”

She goes doe-eyed. “What?”

“I'm not stupid either, Mom. And I know you pretty well. So what are you not saying? Is it weird because you dated her dad?”

I thought she'd blush, maybe swat that little fact away and change the subject. But instead she busts out laughing. “God, no. It's a small town, kid. I probably dated the dads of half the girls you've—”

“—borrowed perfume from?” I cut in before she can finish with something that'll make me blush instead.

She puts her hands up. “Fair enough.”

“So what's the deal? Why when I said Alex Craft's name did your forehead wrinkles get a lot deeper?
Is
it because you dated her dad?”

Mom ignores the jab, her gaze traveling to the well-worn path on the kitchen linoleum that needs to be replaced. Dad priced new flooring last year, and even though it wasn't expensive, my mom didn't get a new kitchen floor.

“Nick Craft is not a bad person,” Mom says in a way that makes me think it's something she's repeated more than once. “He split when those girls were little, left a lot of tongues wagging behind him. People said it was
because he made out good with his trucking company and wanted to go live it up. But I knew him, and if that's the truth, then the man was a far cry from the boy I grew up with. Nick wouldn't have left without a good reason, and whatever it is—that's between him and his wife.”

I think about the cardboard cutout of a woman standing in the doorway, chewing her lip in confusion when I ask if her daughter's home. “She's different,” I say.

Mom shrugs. “He married outside the county.”

It's something you can't miss if you're raised here. Most of us don't have money, but that doesn't take away a certain element of pride that goes along with being part of this place, right down to the literal sense that your ancestors actually are in the dirt that grew the crops that you'll have for dinner. When I've gone out with a girl more than once or twice, Mom and Dad have filled me in on her biological heritage, maybe just to reassure themselves that we're not related.

But if you step outside the county line it's like you're taking your chances, rolling the dice to see what kind of inheritance you might be marrying into.
Not from here
is one of the most damning insults that can be tossed, carrying with it the eternal question mark of what an outsider might be carrying inside of them, a mental or biological dark passenger that will rear up and bite your
ass thirty years down the road. And I realize maybe that's what I'm actually asking.

“How do you ever really know someone, Mom?”

She smiles then, real slow. So slow that there are tears pooling in her eyes before the edges of her lips have made it up into her cheeks.

“Honey, you just don't. You can love someone down to their core and they can love you right back just as hard, and if you traded diaries you'd learn things you never suspected. There's a part of everyone deep down inside of them not meant for you. And the sooner you learn that, the easier your life is gonna be.”

I swallow hard. “So how do you try?”

She stops my phone in midspin, pointing it toward me. “You start by calling her, I guess.”

And right then my phone rings. Alex's face fills the screen and my heart leaps into my throat, my pulse so loud in my ears that it drowns out the sound of skin tearing.

It's very odd to me that a string of numbers can put me in contact with a specific person. I told myself that I bought a phone because Claire might need to call me about the shelter. And while her name was the first entry, it still felt like an incomplete action until Jack was in there too. It feels heavier in my pocket now. Like a loaded weapon. One that might backfire on me.

Branley also put her number into my phone when we were taking Claire home, along with strict instructions to report back to her. I shot her a quick answer (
she's fine
) shortly after my friend stripped down and vomited. It's not true. Claire is not fine.

I now have three people in my phone. I can call them at any time, invading their lives with a series of numbers,
like spinning the combination on their locker and suddenly being in their space. It's so intensely personal it almost feels profane. I haven't taken advantage of this permission yet, because they will know it is me calling. Which means they can choose not to answer.

This is what bothers me.

Jack can choose not to let me in, and I will know by the time his voice mail picks up that the decision has been made, and I will know why. Part of me will understand. Part of me knows that I should have never been admitted, that I should not be walking among these people. People who are able to make friends easily because they don't first assume everyone is a threat. People who can get through a party without tearing a man's face off.

I am a wolf that my sister kept in a cage, until her hand was removed. I have been out, curious as I wake up from a lethargic solitude, self-enforced because I know I don't belong here. It's not safe for me to be out, but they rattled my cage. First Claire and then Jack. And now I'm awake, deviating from the paths I created in order to remain stable. I'm out, and awake, and afraid I won't be easily put back in.

It's not the sheep that call to me, but the other wolves. I want to run with them, so that I may tear out their throats when they threaten my flock. But I can't return
to the sheep with blood on my breath; they will shy away from me.

Even when I was a child they knew.

I remember the only family reunion my mother ever took us to, the first and last time we met our cousins from her side. One of my male cousins had taken my doll and stripped her, taunting me with her naked body high above his head while I tried to reach, red-faced and shouting. Anna put an end to it before I was pushed too far, snatching it back and redressing her, assuring me everything was okay.

But everything was not okay.

I waited until everyone was asleep, our pleasantly warm child bodies relaxed in the blue light of the television, the dull undertones of the adults' conversation reaching us from the outside deck. My cousin was out cold, his head thrown back against the couch, a snore emanating from him.

Until I punched him in the throat.

Lights came on and accusations flew once he had his breath, the adults bringing a cloud of alcohol fumes and confusion in with them as he tried to explain what had happened, the pointing finger always returning to me. One woman kept insisting it wasn't possible. I was too little. Too cute.

But the other children knew, with their survival
instincts still fresh on them, not tempered by assumptions. Anna knew. My parents knew, an understanding shared in a glance that carried over into a long, silent car ride home, my fully dressed doll belted in safely by my side, the wolf in me satiated.

We never went to another reunion.

And so I'm waiting for another rejection, another affirmation that I don't belong among these people. That it's not safe for me to be here. The wolf in me is expecting it.

But another part of me will die a little bit when that happens. The part that enjoyed the easy familiarity of borrowing Claire's ill-fitting clothes. The part that likes the way Jack's eyes stay on me, even in a crowded room.

I've spent an hour staring at my phone, trying to decide which of those is the better part. Which of those is really me. And if there's any way that I can be both.

When he answers it's like the better half of me explodes into a thousand pieces of light, hope spreading through me to touch places that can't recall the feeling.

“Hey,” he says, and I love the casualness of his tone, like this isn't the first time I've ever called him, like there's no reason for either one of us to be nervous. And suddenly I'm not.

I don't have many words inside me. All I know is that I like being with him and I want to be exactly that right
now, and I can think of only one way to make that a reality.

“Do you like to run?” I ask.

“I don't know,” he says. “In every sport I play running is a punishment, so it's kinda hard to
like
it. I mean, I would run if something was chasing me, though.”

“Would you run if I was chasing you?” I ask, because I'm still trying to create this scenario where we're together, and I don't do many things that I can invite other people to do with me.

“If you were chasing me I would definitely
not
run,” he says, and I'm laughing because this is so much easier than I expected.

“How about if we were running side by side?” I ask.

“That I can do.”

We are running.

When Alex asked if I'd meet her at the track, I said yes without caring about the temperature, or that it's supposed to snow, or that it was going to be dark in just a few hours—a fact Mom yelled after me as I rushed out the door, grabbing my coat. Alex was leaning against her car when I got to the school and we took a few laps without talking, our legs finding the same stride perfectly comfortable as we looped once, twice, and then again, our footfalls still the only sound passing between us.

When she breaks away from the track and shoots for a path into the woods I go with her, keeping the quiet intact. The path meets a gravel road and she follows it,
me taking a wider stride for the beat of a second to draw alongside her. The road arcs slightly under our feet, the rise not visible to the eye but felt in the burn of my calves. I toss a glance sideways but she is lost in movement, brow furrowed and cheeks a blazing red from the cold.

The woods suddenly fall away on our right and she nudges my shoulder with her own, the first contact we've had the whole time. I follow her unspoken instruction, taking the grass-covered drive that leads to the last thing I expected to see.

A graveyard.

Alex stops, puts her hands on top of her head, and breathes in deeply. “Sorry,” she finally heaves.

“I can keep up,” I say, even though I'm sucking more wind than she is.

“No.” She waves one hand at the stones in front of us. “Sorry that I didn't warn you I use a graveyard as a turnaround.”

I shrug. “It's fine.” Our words are weightless, none of them carrying any of the importance they have in the past.

“Rest for a minute?” she asks, walking toward a bench. I nod and follow her, sitting near her but not next to her. The inches of air in between us could be filled with concrete. The sun is sinking and the last
bits of warmth are leaving the air, letting the cold in. I scratch my nose, suddenly bothered by it.

“Sorry,” I say. “My nose itches.”

“It's okay.”

“Doesn't it mean someone is talking about you if your nose itches?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “That's if your ears are ringing.”

“That's it. My dad always said if you pull on your earlobe the person talking about you will bite their tongue.”

Alex stiffens and I realize that I just said
earlobe
, and now we're both picturing large red drops of Ray Parsons's blood on the dusty floor of the church, his chain hanging from her hand.

“I hate that we're talking about stupid things,” she says, kicking the toe of her shoe into the little pockets of snow scattered in the grass.

I grab her hand, breaking the wall between us and linking our freezing fingers. “I hate it too,” I say.

She looks at me for a second, her eyes roaming over my face in search of something. “I'm sorry if I scared you the other night.”

“You don't scare me.”

Her mouth pulls to the side like she's about to argue, but I stop her with a question. “Why'd you call me?”

“Because I wanted to see you.” It comes out quick and honest, and she looks a little confused about how easy it was, or maybe that it's the truth.

“I wanted to see you too,” I say.

I don't know which one of us leans in first, or if we've both been covering the distance while we talk. But we're talking and then we're kissing like it's how a run is supposed to end, and it's electric and fluid and totally normal all at the same time. I pull her into my lap and she wraps her legs around my waist as if she knows exactly what she's doing, even though she's clearly an inexperienced kisser.

Which I'm thrilled about. I can tell I'm the first guy to kiss her, the first guy to bury his hands in her hair and crush her against him, torso to torso. And while making out isn't part of my usual run, I'm all for it becoming a habit. Because I'm definitely running with Alex again. I'm definitely going to hold her hand in the cold and cross all the space between us until we can't be any closer.

I don't realize until later, when I'm lying in bed with lips swollen from kissing, replaying every second, that she didn't say she was sorry for tearing into Parsons.

She said she was sorry if it scared me.