The Pact (14 page)

Michael's heart was pounding so heavily in his chest that he could not even gain the composure to look at his wife until they were all the way down Wood Hollow, waiting at the stop sign to take a left toward town. He put his hand on Melanie's wrist, still speechless.

She turned to him, unruffled, guileless. “What?” she said.

Chris remembered being a little kid, pretending along with Em that he had the power to make himself invisible. They'd put on some goofy baseball hats or cheap dime-store rings and, bam, just like that, no one would be able to see them sneak into the pantry for an Oreo or empty the bottle of bubble bath into the toilet. It was a handy thing, the suspension of disbelief. And it was apparently something you outgrew pretty fast, because no matter what Chris did to imagine that no one could see him as he walked down the dull, narrow halls of the high school, he could not convince himself that this was truly the case.

He kept his eyes trained straight ahead as he maneuvered around the salmon flow of kids between classes, couples making out against the lockers, and surly underclassmen spoiling for a fight. In class, he could just sit with his head ducked and zone out like he usually did. In the hallways, though, it was brutal. Was everyone in the whole school staring at him? Because it sure as hell felt that way. Nobody had tried to talk to him about what happened; instead they all whispered behind their hands. One or two guys he knew said it was good that he was back at school and all that, but they made sure not to come too close while they talked, in case unhappiness was contagious. You always knew, after shitty things happened, who your friends really were. It was perfectly clear to Chris that his one real friend had been Emily.

Fifth period he had AP English with Bertrand. He liked the class; he'd always done all right in it. Mrs. Bertrand was after him to major in English in college. When the bell rang, Chris didn't hear it at first. He was still sitting slumped in his chair when Mrs. Bertrand touched his arm. “Chris?” she said softly. “Are you all right?”

He blinked up at her. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yeah, sure.” He made a big production of gathering his books into his backpack.

“I just wanted you to know that if you want someone to talk to, I'm here.” She sat down at the desk in front of his. “You may want to write about your feelings,” she suggested. “Sometimes it's easier than speaking them out loud.”

Chris nodded, wanting nothing more than to get away from Mrs. Ber-trand.

“Well,” she said, clasping her hands. “I'm glad you're all right.” She stood up and walked back to her desk. “The faculty is planning a memorial assembly for Emily,” she said, and she looked at Chris, waiting for a response.

“She'd like that,” Chris murmured, and he dashed from the frying pan into the fire, where a hundred pairs of curious eyes stood their distance.

The IRONY OF THE RELIEF that swept over Chris as he entered Dr. Feinstein's office did not escape him. This had been the last place in the world he'd wanted to be, but that trophy now belonged to Bainbridge High School. He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his feet anxiously tapping.

Dr. Feinstein himself opened the door to the waiting room. “Chris,” he said. “It's good to see you again.” When Chris chose to pace in front of the bookshelves, he shrugged and came to stand beside him. “You seem a little restless today,” Dr. Feinstein said.

“I went back to school,” Chris answered. “It sucked.”

“Why?”

“Because I was a freak. No one came up to me and God forbid they should touch me ...” He exhaled, disgusted. “It's like I have AIDS. No, scratch that. They'd probably be more accepting.”

“What do you think sets you apart from them?”

“I don't know. I have no idea how much they know about what happened. And I couldn't get close enough to people to hear the rumors.” He rubbed his temples. “Everyone knows Em died. Everyone knows I was there. They're rilling in the blanks.” He leaned against the back of the wing chair, skimming his thumb over the row of leatherbound books closest to him. “Half of them probably think I'm gonna slit my wrists in the cafeteria.”

“What do the other half think?”

Chris turned slowly. He knew perfectly well what the other half of kids believed-anything that could be escalated into a juicy story would be, in the rumor mill. “I don't know,” he said as offhandedly as he could manage. “Probably that I killed her.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because I was there,” he blurted out. “Because I'm still alive. Christ, I don't know. Ask the cops; they've thought that since day one.”

Chris did not realize until he'd spoken how bitter he was about the accusation, veiled as it had been.

“Does that bother you?”

“Hell, yes,” Chris said. “Wouldn't it bother you?”

Dr. Feinstein shrugged. “I can't say. I guess if I knew I was being true to myself, I'd want to believe that everyone would come around sooner or later to my way of thinking.” Chris snorted. “I bet all the witches in Salem were thinking that, too, when they smelled the smoke.”

“What is it that bothers you the most?”

Chris fell silent. It wasn't that he was not being taken at his word; if the situation had been reversed, he too might have his doubts. It wasn't even that everyone in the whole goddamned school was treating him like he'd grown six heads overnight. It was that, having seen him with Emily, they could believe he would ever willingly hurt her.

“I loved her,” he said, his voice breaking. “I can't forget that. So I don't see why everyone else can.” Dr. Feinstein motioned again toward the wing chair; Chris sank into it. He watched the tiny cogs inside the tape recorder chug in slow circles. “Would you tell me about Emily?” the psychiatrist asked.

Chris closed his eyes. How could he convey to someone who'd never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, turned the mug they were sharing so that her mouth landed where his had been? How did he explain the way they could be in a locker room, or underwater, or in the piney woods of Maine, but as long as Em was with him, he was at home?

“She belonged to me,” Chris said simply.

Dr. Feinstein's eyebrows lifted. “What do you mean by that?”

“She was, you know, all the things I wasn't. And I was all the things she wasn't. She could paint circles around anyone; I can't even draw a straight line. She was never into sports; I've always been.” Chris lifted his outstretched palm and curled his fingers. “Her hand,” he said. “It fit mine.”

“Go on,” Dr. Feinstein said encouraging.

“Well, I mean, we weren't always going out. That was pretty recent, a couple of years. But I've known her forever.” He laughed suddenly. “She said my name before anything else. She used to call me Kiss. And then, when she learned the word kiss for real, she'd get it all confused and look at me and smack her lips.” He looked up. “I don't remember that, exactly. My mom told me.”

“How old were you when you met Emily?”

“Six months, I guess,” Chris said. “The day she was born.” He leaned forward, considering. “We used to play together every afternoon. I mean, she lived right next door and our moms would hang all the time, so it was a natural.”

“When did you start going out?”

Chris frowned. “I don't know the day, exactly. Em would. It just sort of evolved. Everyone figured it was going to happen, so it wasn't much of a surprise. One day I kind of looked at her and I didn't just see Em, I saw this really beautiful girl. And, well.. . you know.”

“Were you intimate?”

Chris felt heat crawling up from the collar of his shirt. This was an area he did not want to discuss.

“Do I have to tell you if I don't want to?” he asked.

“You don't have to tell me anything at all,” Dr. Feinstein said.

“Well,” Chris said. “I don't want to.”

“But you loved her.”

“Yes,” Chris answered.

“And she was your first girlfriend.”

“Well, pretty much, yeah.”

“So how do you know?” Dr. Feinstein asked. “How do you know that it was love?” The way he asked was not mean or confrontational. He was just sort of wondering. If Feinstein had been bitter, or direct, like that bitch detective, Chris would have clammed up immediately. But as it stood, it was a good and valid question. “There was an attraction,” he said carefully, “but it was more than that.” He chewed on his lower lip for a second. “Once, we broke up for a while. I started hanging around with this girl who I'd always thought was really hot, this cheerleader named Donna. I was, like, totally infatuated with Donna, maybe even when I was still together with Em. Anyway, we started going out places and fooling around a little and every time I was with Donna I realized I didn't know her too well. I'd hyped her up in my head to be so much more than what she really was.” Chris took a deep breath. “When Em and I got back together, I could see that she had never been less than what I'd figured her to be. If anything, she was always better than I remembered. And that's what I think love is,” Chris said quietly. “When your hindsight's twenty-twenty, and you still wouldn't change a thing.”

As he fell silent, the psychiatrist looked up. “Chris,” he asked, “what's your earliest memory?” The question took Chris by surprise; he laughed aloud. “Memory? I don't know. Oh-wait-there was this toy I had, a little train that had a button on it which honked. I remember holding onto it and Emily trying to grab it away.”

“Anything else?”

Chris steepled his hands and thought back. “Christmas,” he said. “We came downstairs and there was an electric train running around the tree.”

“We?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Emily was Jewish, so she'd come over to our place to celebrate Christmas. When we were really little she'd sleep over Christmas Eve.”

Dr. Feinstein nodded thoughtfully. “Tell me,” he said, “do you have any early childhood memories that don't include Emily?”

Chris tried to run backward in his mind, replaying his life like a loop of film. He saw himself standing in a bathtub with Emily, peeing in the water while she giggled and his mother yelled bloody murder. He saw himself making a snow angel, swinging wide his arms and legs and hitting Emily, who was doing the same thing beside him. He caught glimpses and snippets of his parents'

faces, but Emily was off to the side.

Chris shook his head. “Actually,” he said, “I don't.”

THAT NIGHT WHILE CHRIS was in the shower, Gus ventured into his bedroom to clean up. To her surprise, the mess was contained-basically a pile of dirty dishes covered with meals that remained uneaten. She smoothed Chris's covers and then fell to her knees, instinctively checking under the bed for mismatched socks to place in the wash, for food that had unobtrusively rolled beneath.

Her thumb pricked the hard edges of the shoebox before her mind could consciously register what she'd stumbled across. She reached inside; her fingers ruffled over pages of secret codes, filmy 3-D

glasses, invisible lemon juice ink messages that had been decoded over a bare lightbulb. God, how old had they been? Nine? Ten?

He laughed softly at first, and then a guffaw burst out, impolite and rancid as a belch. He laughed and he laughed in counterpoint to the utter silence of the auditorium. He laughed so hard, he started to cry.

His nose running, his eyes so blurry that he could not see the podium in front of him, Chris pushed away and headed toward the stairs at the edge of the stage. He ran down the long aisle of the auditorium until he exploded through its double doors into the empty corridors of the high school, and he sped toward the locker rooms of the gym.

They were empty-everyone had been watching him-and he changed into his Speedo in record time. He left his clothes in a puddled heap on the cement floor, and exited through the door that led directly to the pool. Its soothing blue surface was glass, he thought, and he imagined it shattering and slicing through him as he dove into the deep end.

The healing wound on his scalp stung; the stitches had been removed only the day before. But the water was as familiar as a lover, and in its ample embrace Chris heard nothing but his own heartbeat and the intermittent pump of the heater. He let himself float motionless underwater, glancing up occasionally at the rippling bleachers and fluorescent lights. Then, carefully, deliberately, he blew bubbles from his mouth and nose, depleting his supply of oxygen and feeling himself sink inch by excruciating inch.

“Listen,” THE voice SAID, more hostile now. “Does Emily live there or not?” Melanie's fingers clenched the phone receiver so hard her knuckles went white. “No,” she said. “She does not.”

“And is this 6564309?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure, now.”

Melanie rested her head against the cold door of the pantry. “Don't call back,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

“Look,” the voice said. “I have something of Emily's. Can you just tell her that, when you see her?” Melanie raised her face. “What do you have?” she asked.

“Just tell her,” the voice said, and hung up.

Dr. FEINSTEIN OPENED the adjoining door with a frown on his face. “Chris,” he admonished,

“you can't just run in here, you know. If you have a problem, call. But the only reason I'm free is because another patient is ill.”

Chris didn't bother to listen. He shoved past the psychiatrist into the office. “I wasn't going to do it,” he muttered.

“Excuse me?”

Chris lifted his face, contorted with pain. “I wasn't going to do it.” Dr. Feinstein closed the office door and sat down across from Chris. “You're upset,” he said. “Take a minute to calm down.” He waited patiently for Chris to take several deep breaths, then sit up in his chair. “Now,” the psychiatrist said, satisfied. “Tell me what happened.”

“They had a memorial for Emily at school today.” Chris scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes, the combination of his sorrow and residual chlorine creating a powerful sting. “It was totally lame, with these flowers and . .. whatever.”

“Is that what upset you?”