“Jesus, really? I’ve heard worse out of you when we’re—”
“Shut your mouth! Shut your filthy mouth,” I yell, crossing the distance between us and covering his lips with my hand. He steps back against the wall, grabs my wrist, and pulls it away from his face, all the while hissing at me.
“Sshhh . . . Christ! Okay, all right already.” His eyes shoot to my door, which remains closed, the silence that fills the rest of the house in stark contrast to my room, which feels like the inside of a timpani, noises rolling off tight surfaces to bounce back from the next.
“Could you not get me arrested, maybe?” Isaac says, but I’m not really hearing, the continued roar in my ears feels like the pulse of something new and different, a creature I’ve just become aware of that can exist only here, between the two of us.
We’re pressed against each other, anger faded, but blood still up, our potential energy about to unload on each other in a frenzy of action that must be spent in one way or another. I move away quickly, until the back of my knees hit my bed and I crumble onto it, all fight gone.
I’m about to cry, tear ducts that haven’t been used in years perking painfully at the very thought. I cover my face with my hands so Isaac won’t see it happening, all my control slipping out from under my eyelids in a river of salt. I want him to go, want the smell of cigarettes out of my house and the feel of rough hands off my face. I open my mouth to say so and instead I ask: “Do you believe me?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re pretty smart, right? Sasha Stone. She’s number one. If you say that’s the deal, then that’s the deal.”
Whatever resolve I have breaks completely, a sob shaking my body as someone tells me I’m right, that I’m not crazy, that all this darkness inside me isn’t my fault.
“Sasha . . .” My name has never sounded so much like music, every step he takes toward the bed a note leading me closer to a measure that can’t be played.
“You need to go,” I say, dropping my hands to meet his gaze.
He holds mine for a second before shaking his head. “You’re—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupt, scrubbing away the tears as they fall. “I’m a mess.”
“I was going to say addictive,” he tells me, before throwing open my window like he’s done it a thousand times before. He’s got one leg out, one in, before he turns back to me. “And that means you’re not the only one that’s got something wrong with them.”
And then he’s gone, the black emptiness of my window staring at me as if I’d done something I shouldn’t.
nine
I can’t sleep after that.
The truth of what’s happening to me is like a thick fluid in my chest, a pressure no amount of coughing could dislodge. But I said it all to Isaac, the one person in my life who doesn’t belong, the puzzle piece that turns my perfect square into an unnamed shape. And he believed me—granted, he got totally pissed off at the implications—but he believed me, which was more than I bargained for.
Part of me thought he’d tell me I was crazy, and make an invective-laced escape before my insanity spread to him. In a way, I’d counted on that being our end, an easy way out for both of us. Isaac had surprised me by rolling with the punches, accepting everything I said as truth—something Heath couldn’t do even when my words were much more believable.
I hop online, nerves telling me there’s no sense lying in bed. I pull up my assignment for English, maximizing the word processor window to glance over where I’d left off on my paper about a Faulkner short story.
Much in this story depends upon the classic and stereotypical gender roles that both men and women succumb to. For instance, on the surface, it seems that the majority of the men’s primary focus is on defending women.
It’s a decent start, but I have no idea why I apparently hit return a thousand times before typing the next sentence. There’s a huge block of blank space, and I can just see the top of the next line of text peeking at me from the edge of the paper. I scroll down.
And nearly vomit.
It’s only one line, but even her font is aggressive to me, to be sure this is a message I can’t ignore.
WE NEED TO TALK
If I saw that written on the top of a test I’d feel my heart plunging along with my GPA. It’s a damning sentence, one that invites the reader to freely interpret until the conversation is rejoined. It sends alarm notes through my entire system, like the marching band just matched the natural frequency of the football stadium and the whole thing collapsed in a pile of concrete dust and broken rebar, human limbs sticking out at odd angles.
So talk
I type, having to delete and fix those two simple words three times because of my shaking hands.
I sit there stupidly for a full minute, staring at the blinking cursor, but nothing happens. Which is not all that surprising, since this isn’t exactly a text message I’m sending here. Plus, the person I’m expecting to answer me is me so . . .
I rest my hands on the keyboard and exhale, doing my best to empty my mind the way Lilly always says to when she pulls out the Ouija board at sleepovers. I’m as blank as can be, focusing on the beating of my—or her—heart, willing the twin inside of me to answer, when Mom opens my bedroom door.
I make an inarticulate shrieking noise that would get me expelled from any and all music programs, and fly about two feet up in the air, banging my knees on my desk.
“Jesus, Mom!”
“Honey, language,” she says, brow furrowing.
“Sorry,” I say, my hands rubbing my bruised knees.
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, but I saw your light . . .” Her eyes trail to my laptop, like she expects to see something as equally appalling as my taking the Lord’s name in vain. “Are you doing homework? At this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell her.
“Honey, it’s . . .” She looks at her wrist like everyone her age who used to wear a watch, then squints at my bedside clock. “It’s four in the morning. You need to go to bed.”
“You’re right, I should,” I agree, quickly minimizing my Faulkner paper before she sees I’m using it to communicate with . . . myself.
My laptop goes to sleep before I do, the dark screen staring vacantly back at me.
I wake up with a scratchy throat and swollen feet. I know exactly what’s going on with my throat; the smell of cigarettes is still in my hair, something I remedy immediately, washing away Isaac and moonlight and words I should’ve left unsaid with a thorough scrubbing of raspberry shower gel. How the heck one cigarette made my feet swell I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m allergic to tobacco.
“Virgil my ass,” I say to the showerhead, then clap my hand over my mouth.