Later, we ate lunch at a roadhouse across the highway from the preserve. It was a giant wooden structure full of dusty nooks and crannies and a sparsely populated bar. My father drank quietly while NASCAR played on about eight different television screens. I was starving. My mother admonished me not to eat too much, but I ate my entire burger and finished Siobhan’s, too, when she passed it to me under the table. Afterward, Keith and I slipped away and snuck up a rickety staircase to the second floor, where we discovered an air hockey table and an old jukebox. The only song I recognized was Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles.”
The Phenergan didn’t work on the ride back. My sleep was fitful and in my dreams I saw the old wolf, her yellow gaze and the points of her teeth. Even she hated me. I was worthless. My eyes flew open when we were about halfway home and I vomited suddenly with a groan and a rush. Siobhan screamed and held her nose. I started to cry. We pulled over at the next gas station and Keith helped me change my shirt and tried to comfort me.
“It’s okay, Drew,” he said, and tousled my hair. I kept sobbing and hiccuping. I could feel my father’s disapproval, my mother’s disdain. I knew I could only be falling short in their eyes.
“I hate myself.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I want to die.”
Keith put an arm around me. “No, no, you don’t. Okay, kid? Just believe me when I say, someday life is going to get a lot better. I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Soon you’ll know, too.”
chapter
seven
matter
While everyone else is busy bitching or gossiping or spilling fake tears over the dead townie, I slip from the chapel into muggy morning air that’s way too warm for this time of year. It feels like autumn’s missed its stop or had to reschedule because I’m already sweating bullets.
In the slowly dispersing crowd of three hundred or so other students, I can’t see where the dark-haired girl has gone. I don’t go out of my way to find her, but it kind of bothers me that she was staring like that.
What was she looking for?
And more important, what did she see?
I trot beneath a line of weary birch trees over to Hudson House, the third-year dorm. My dorm. Once inside, I make a beeline for the communal bathroom. It’s deserted, so after I use the toilet and wash my hands, I peer at myself in the mirror for a long time, examining things like the size of my eyes and the size of my teeth and the way my ribs show through my skin. I’m looking for answers, I guess, but I don’t find them. I do find I need a haircut. My hair falls across my eyes in a way that’s rakish when I squint but sloppy when I don’t. Once, when I was a freshman, a senior girl called me cute, but people usually say I look intense. A lot of times they ask why I don’t smile, which I hate. No one wants to answer that question.
Ever.
Trust me on that.
Leaving the bathroom, I run smack into Donnie Lipman. I literally run into him. Good thing I’m tall or I’d have a face full of chest hair and polo shirt. Instead it’s shoulder against shoulder, like two bucks in rut, and Donnie and I jump back at the same time. He’s got the single next to mine, and he listens to dubstep and trance music all day and all night, which means I do, too. Donnie doesn’t like me. The feeling’s mutual, of course, but I stop him anyway.
“Hey, what’s the name of that new girl?” I ask. “The junior transfer.”
I get a tight nod in return as Donnie pointedly avoids eye contact. “That the chick Channer’s trying to bang?”
Blake Channer plays goalie for the ice hockey team, which can’t be right, so I shake my head.
He shrugs. “That’s the only junior transfer I know. Redhead. Cute ass, kind of a butterface.”
Definitely not her. I turn and walk away from Donnie, straight down the hall, straight into my room. I’m lucky. I have a corner single with lots of windows. It should feel like an aerie in the trees, but today I’m reminded of gallows. Today I’m reminded of impending doom. My hands shake as I close the door.
Breathe, I tell myself, but it’s not that easy. I’m filled too tight with this sharp sting-stab of guilt.
Or is it shame?
I don’t always know the difference.
The thin white curtains are pulled wide open. I spy other students walking on the path below. They are out there. I am in here. Even though it’s what I wanted, it feels wrong not having a roommate this year. I’m used to having a second nervous system in my living space. Something to distract me when my mind rockets off on a tangent like it is now. Someone to keep me grounded.
Inhale through the nose, I tell myself. Exhale through the mouth.
As usual, I don’t want to think about Lex or why I live alone these days, and I really don’t want to think about her, so I pace the hardwood floor once, twice. I pass a bed, a desk, a chair, a dresser, a shelf full of books, a pile of dirty clothes, a pile of clean ones. It takes eighteen steps a lap. It takes 4.2 seconds. I think I could die in 4.2 seconds if I jumped from the proper height or used the proper weapon.
In fact, I know I could.
Damn. I turn and fumble for my backpack. I need to get out of here. Like now. This breathing thing is going nowhere fast, like world peace and those predictions of the Rapture. Besides, I’ve got things to do. Information to find.
I need to understand what’s happening to my own body.
And it’s not like I’ve got all the time in the world.