by Alice Bell
One morning, she wasn’t sitting in her chair by the window. I got a funny feeling, like when I used to wake up in the middle of the night to find my mother had gone out and left me alone.
I went to Zadie’s room and ran into a nurse just leaving. I asked where Zadie was. The nurse said she left.
“Did anyone come to get her?” I said.
“No, dear,” the nurse pulled the door shut. “No one came.”
I pretended to leave but as soon as the hall was clear, I tried Zadie’s door. It wasn’t locked.
I saw a pink plastic lunch box on a cramped little desk in the corner. I thought Zadie must have left it. She favored pink, which was my favorite color too. All her things looked like they were from a thrift store.
I opened the box and found a newspaper clipping inside, the piece of paper I now held in my hand. I had kept it all these years, hidden away in my suitcase.
I sat up in bed and unfurled the paper. There was a black and white photo. Of Devon. My eyes scanned the words beneath it with disbelief.
On the evening of July 7, Devon Slaughter passed away at Hospital Metrapolitano in Managua, Nicaragua. Devon was a doctor of philosophy and taught at Hawthorn College before leaving to travel in Central America. A celebration of his life will be held at 7 p.m. on Sunday at the Episcopal Parish of St. Barnabas. Donations in his name can be made to Doctors Without Borders.
Devon
My head throbbed like I had a hangover. I opened one eye. The dark swirled around like fog until my sight adjusted. I recognized the color of twilight coming through a crack in the curtains.
I was hugging a soft pillow.
I shot up out of bed. My gaze sought the corners of the room. Where were my boots? Damn. I felt disoriented though I seemed to be back to normal, more or less, aside from the dull ache behind my eyes.
I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced down and buttoned my jeans. Oh, man. Zadie. What a fucked up night. Is that what it took to remember?
Did I want to remember? It was like being dealt another losing hand. Same shit, different day.
I pulled on my boots. I liked to be ready for a quick exit, no matter what. Under normal circumstances my shoes stayed on. A sloe (slow) screw up against the wall wasn’t just a drink to me.
I ran my fingers through my hair and listened, hearing what at first I thought were mice scampering across the floor above. When I honed in, I realized it was the sound of crying.
So that’s where Scarlett had gone. She did cry a lot.
Why was she crying? Her rampant emotions had excited me, at first. And now they stirred something deeper, what I’d been searching for when I watched those old movies—a dull flicker of humanity.
At the end of the hall, I saw a door cracked open. I went to it and found a narrow stairway. When I went up, my head brushed the ceiling.
Scarlett heard me. I caught her sudden stillness, before her little footsteps scurried. When I reached the top of the stairs, my gaze fell on what looked to be discarded clothes. I followed the trail and found her hiding behind a red Venetian screen.
“Scarlett?” I expected her to come out. I thought it must be some kind of game. Or maybe she had been doing something embarrassing and her first instinct was to hide.
She was crouched on the floor in a white gown. The folds fanned out around her. She stared up at me with huge black-smeared eyes. Her long red hair was disheveled, as if she had been tearing at it. Her gown looked like something a little girl would put on for dress-up.
I wondered why her hands were behind her back. “What are you doing?” I said.
“Go away,” she hissed.
I figured I must have scared her last night. But seeing her huddled in the strange dress, her hair wild, her eyes ravaged, I was afraid it might be something worse, something I should have seen coming. I thought of the full bottle of Lexapro in her dresser. Which brought me to: What exactly is wrong with her?
She stood up, keeping her back to the wall.
“What’s in your hand?” I said.
When I stepped around the screen, she bared her teeth and brandished a knife.
“Whoa. Hey. Take it easy…”
I wasn’t worried about myself. She couldn’t hurt me if she tried and it looked like she might. I was afraid for her. The last thing she needed was a bloody accident. Though it was small, the knife appeared sharp. “Scarlett, what’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”
Her lips were pale, trembling. “You’re not real,” she said. A sob wrenched from her throat. She held the knife higher. “Stay away from me, I’m warning you. Please.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will. Just give me the knife.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
I stared into her eyes and she stared back. Time slowed.
She tore her gaze away. “Oh, God,” she said. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happen-ing…” the knife dropped on the floor and she put her palms over her ears.
TEN
Scarlett
What was the truth?
I saw his dark eyes go to the knife. Or I imagined it. My hand shot out, quick as lightning. I snatched up the knife again. The handle was cool and smooth. The knife was real. I was real.
Devon was not.
He was born of my mind, fully formed, like Athena sprouted from the head of Zeus. I brought him to life from the pages of an obituary. I was inside a horror movie and I had no one but myself to blame. I couldn’t remember why I’d stopped taking my pills. It seemed as if I had been cocky, like calling Dr. Ess a shrink and laughing.
I don’t want to end up like my mother.
“Scarlett, come on. Just give me the knife,” he sounded alarmed and even annoyed. Who did he think he was? A strange sound escaped my lips, a high careening giggle. My own fantasy had the nerve to tell me what to do.
Fury gripped me.
Curling my fingers tighter around the knife, I stood up and squared my shoulders. Devon’s face loomed above me, like Georgie’s had; only Devon’s was inhuman, perfect, so as to steal your heart with a single glance.
I forced myself to meet his gaze. His eyes were inscrutable. “Scarlett. Give me the knife.”
My heart fluttered. I looked away. If I could conjure him out of thin air, I could make him disappear. But I didn’t want him to go away.
Images flashed through my mind, faster than I could grasp. Other people had seen him. Hadn’t they? What had Wong said about him? Hot, as in dangerous. And Henry met him. Didn’t he?
Oh, God. My hand holding the knife shook violently.
“Scarlett,” Devon’s voice was low and seductive. “Look at me.”
I imagined him reaching for the knife again. I lunged back and pointed it at him. His eyebrows drew together. He licked his bottom lip and I saw the white edge of his teeth. I felt dizzy. “Let me see you bleed,” I said.
“What?”
“I want to cut you.”
Something flashed in his eyes. I held his gaze, unyielding.
“Why?” he said.
I blinked. I would not cry. I was done with crying. I was going back on my meds tomorrow. I heard my grandmother’s voice in my head, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he whispered.
I was quivering from head to toe. “Please,” I said. “Please just… let me cut you. On your arm. I—I have to see if you’re real…”
The silence was unbearable. I lowered the knife.
“I could hurt you, Scarlett. I don’t want to. But I do it all the time… things I don’t want to do.”
For the first time, I felt the real danger of him. My heart raced. It was an insane idea, and yet it was the only answer, aside from waking up in a padded room. He’s a monster.
“I want to see,” I whispered. “I want to see what you’re made of…”
“No.”
In the next second, the room tilted. The knife left my hand. I spun around. I dropped to my knees, searching. Bl
ack spots swarmed in my vision. When I glanced up, I saw the blade glinting in Devon’s hand.
He wouldn’t give me this one thing. He didn’t trust me. He would rather hurt me. I closed my eyes, bracing myself.
But he said, “I’ll do it.”
My breath caught.
“Stand up, now, Scarlett. Please.”
I scrambled to my feet. My legs were jelly.
He held out his arm and studied it, like he was a doctor. I wanted to kiss the smooth underside of his wrist. He made the cut across his vein. Blood spurted, red and thick. He tossed the knife. It skittered across the floor.
“Keep watching,” he said, when my eyes darted to his face. The wound closed up, like magic. It reminded me of a time-lapse movie, where mountains collapsed into the sea.
I ached for him. My emotions were all tangled up. I wanted him and I wanted to comfort him. He was as alone as I was. He was living his own nightmare. I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Don’t, Scarlett.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care…”
He pulled me away from him and tilted my chin so I was forced to meet his black gaze. Behind him gold light slanted through the long windows.
“I want to make love,” I said.
“Make love?”
“Whatever you call it. Right now. Before you leave me.”
I’d seen his blood. He was real. He’d shown me his tragic secret and now he would leave. It was how the world worked. But I wanted our souls to entwine. Even if it was just this once.
There was a long, deafening quiet.
“What am I going to do with you?” he said.
* * *
He carried me to the bed and I clung to him like I was Scarlett O’Hara. He laid me on the rumpled covers and moved away. I heard him taking off his boots and my heart hammered. I was tense and waiting but for once my mind was quiet, emptied of everything except him.
He straddled me, lacing his fingers through mine. I thought he would kiss me but he looked into my eyes. I didn’t want him to look at me. I just wanted to feel him. I wanted the rest of the world to disappear.
“I know you’re a virgin,” he said, finally. “It’s going to hurt.”
“How do you know I’m a virgin?”
He smiled.
“I want it to hurt,” I said.
He got off me.
I sat up, confused, until he began to undress, peeling off his T-shirt and sliding his jeans down past his hips. His body was chiseled in the dusky light. My mouth went dry as my eyes crept below his waist. I was suddenly, completely terrified. “Should I undress too?”
“Come here,” he said.
I stood in front of him. My gaze landed on his chest. I’d never seen a naked man, though I’d seen Javier without his shirt a few times. Javier was hairy. Devon wasn’t. His skin was smooth, almost burnished.
I reached out and touched the muscles on his stomach. I sucked in my breath. A few dark hairs made a silky trail and my hand moved down.
Without warning, he grabbed the front of my bodice and yanked. My mother’s wedding dress slithered to the floor. Cool air rushed over my skin.
He laughed.
A giddy feeling rose up inside me.
“Now these,” he slipped a finger inside my panties. There was the sound of tearing. Blood pounded in my ears.
He was carrying me again, arranging me on the bed. I became aware of small details, the dampness on the sheets, the salty taste of his skin, my own slick sweat, the slow hard beat of his heart.
I stopped breathing.
His open mouth was on my throat. I felt his teeth scrape my skin. And then he was inside me. The pain was sharp.
His breath deepened. He slid out, back in. I swelled and tightened around him.
There was only his movement, his breath in my ear, the slow sweet friction, sweat pooling between my breasts. My body went slack.
His hair was on my lips, filling my mouth and I saw a red glow outside the window as the sun fell low in the sky.
Devon
She slept. Her bright hair spilled across the pillow. I dressed in the dark.
I was full of her energy and moved with stealth, searching the attic. This time, while fondling her things, I was on a mission. She’d discovered something about me and the clue was up here, somewhere.
I thought of the night I first saw her, the way she insisted I looked like Heathcliff, a vision created in her mind from the pages of a book. I thought of how later, she seemed obsessed by the idea we’d met before. She’d been angry, accusing me of remembering what she couldn’t, of keeping it from her.
Her suitcase had been left open in the middle of the floor. It contained clothes that told me nothing.
I sifted through items in a cedar chest. I thought it was what Scarlett had been doing before I heard her crying, before she went ballistic with the knife. Not that I blamed her.
It wasn’t enough to remember the night in Nicaragua and what led up to it. I needed to know what had happened to me. More importantly, I wanted to know who had done it to me… whatever it was, something dark and twisting I couldn’t quite comprehend, or maybe didn’t want to comprehend.
I pushed aside a table cloth and dug under linens. The chest contained heirlooms and housekeeping paraphernalia for a woman’s impending nuptials, I guessed. It was weirdly old-fashioned. I wondered if the things in the chest were for Scarlett.
None of it had to do with me. I closed the lid.
The attic was mostly bare. There was just the old screen, the bed that was draped in that incongruous mosquito net, the trunk… and Scarlett. I gazed at her. She seemed to be dreaming. Her eyelids fluttered.
I felt beneath the covers and ran my hand under the mattress.
I could always wake Scarlett and force her to tell me. But I didn’t want to hear the words spoken aloud. I didn’t want her to have to say them. I’d seen the look in her eyes when she held the knife. She was already too close to the edge.
I checked the pockets on the suitcase again. The clothes were so small, fit for a child. I frowned. Was there a secret compartment? When I emptied the case, I saw a gash in the lining. I ripped it open wider. The sound of tearing was loud to my ears but Scarlett stayed asleep.
It was such a small piece of paper, curled at the edges. I could hardly make sense of what it said. Devon Slaughter. So strange to see my name in faded print, as if I was old news, a forgotten relic.
I read the words over and over.
“Passed away in Managua… 27 years old. Passed away…”
* * *
She sat up in bed. Her gaze found my shadow. I saw her struggling to connect to her surroundings. She pulled up the sheet to cover herself. “Devon?” she was breathless.
I crushed the piece of paper in my palm and shoved my hands in my pockets.
Of course, she looked beautiful in a ‘stark raving’ kind of way with her electrifying hair against her pale skin. I was irresistibly drawn to her, the way her feelings spilled out, so messy. I had the urge to get under the covers with her but I held back, all too aware of the horror of my existence.
Her gaze landed on the suitcase. She frowned. “Did I tell you about that?”
I shook my head.
“That I was in the sanitarium for a while?” she said.
I wasn’t surprised. And I even thought so what? There were worse things in life. Here I was with my obituary in my pocket.
But then I felt a strange tenderness for her, an unusual swell of compassion. I sat on the edge of the bed. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “Did you find it?” she whispered.
The ache in my head came back with a vengeance, pulsing behind my eyes.
“Devon, I didn’t make you up. We have met before. You see?”
All at once my compassion turned bitter. I hated myself, whatever it was I’d become. “We didn’t meet, Scarlett. I was dead. I am dead.”
“You’re not, Devon. You’re not.” Her finge
rs tightened on my arm. And then her hand lifted to touch my chest. “You have a heart that beats. Don’t you believe there’s a reason you’re here. Like fate?”
“There’s no such thing as fate.”
Her eyes searched mine. “What happened to you?”
“I don’t know. Jesus, I don’t know,” my voice was rising. “You read my obituary. That’s what happened to me. I died…” I had to force my voice down. “Let’s talk about it later.” How surreal. We wouldn’t talk about it later, for God sake.
I started to get up but Scarlett grasped my shirt. “Devon, wait. Do you know her? Zadie?”
My pulse was racing like a fucking racehorse. “Who?” How in the hell did Scarlett know Zadie?
“Zadie,” she whispered.
Her heart beat too loud, pounding in my head. Only it was my own heartbeat. “Zadie…” my voice came from far away.
The pounding got louder.
“I met her,” Scarlett said. “In the sanitarium.”
“The what?”
“The psych ward, Devon.”
“Zadie? You—it’s not possible.” Fuck. “When?”
“Nine years ago. That’s when I was committed. After my mother died.”
“Not my Zadie…”
Scarlett’s eyes were huge, watching me. Her pulse quickened, licking at my veins. “Your Zadie?” she said.
A memory surged, like breaking through water, but it was nothing new; the beach again, in Nicaragua, stars shimmering in a black sky.
“I found your obituary in Zadie’s things,” Scarlett said. “After she left.”
“After she left?” Christ Jesus, what the—? “Zadie was in the sanitarium… the fucking psych ward?”
Scarlett hunched defensively and I thought there was no need to be cruel, to hurt her like this, but my mind was spinning and I felt on the verge of a dangerous kind of rage.
“Wh—where’d she go?”
“Did you love her?” Scarlett said.
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Scarlett, this important. Where did Zadie go?”
