The Female of the Species

by Mindy McGinnis

  It’s the sloppiest sneaking out I’ve ever done, but I don’t care. If Alex is standing in my yard in the middle of the night it means she thinks things were unsaid too, and maybe she couldn’t sleep either. Maybe she’s been lying on her bed staring at her ceiling thinking about me, and that’s exactly what I’ll tell Mom and Dad if they wake up.

  Some things are too important to wait.

  I’m outside, the snow tumbling over the sides of my shoes and slipping down against my bare skin because I didn’t take the time to put on socks. Alex comes toward me, hands out, and I take them, our freezing skin meeting.

  “Hey,” she says, her voice harsh and scratchy. Her face is streaked with frozen tears, her cheeks stretched and hard underneath them. Her eyelashes are stuck together, dark icicles framing red-rimmed eyes.

  “Alex, what are you doing?” I put my hands on her face, rubbing my thumbs over the salt left behind there. It chafes away, blowing into the breeze and leaving redness behind. Her whole face is stiff in my hands and I try to pull her into me for heat but she pushes away.

  “I need to talk to you,” she says, her voice dark and unfamiliar.

  I take a step back. I know this tone; I’ve seen these movements. Seen them in Mom when we lost Grandpa, in Park when he found out his little sister had cancer. Physical pain we reach for, protect, treat. Pain that comes from the inside we try to push out, working it free in little worrying movements of the hands, eyes that dart everywhere, as if expending all the energy inside will help mine down to the pain, expose it and drag it out into the open, out where someone else can see it and help kill it.

  Alex is in pain; it’s written everywhere. Every muscle she has is fluttering. She’s like a wild animal ready to bolt, but with nowhere to go. She knows the hurt is inside and running won’t help, but she came to me—to me—and there’s enough pride attached to that that I feel good. And that makes me feel terrible, because my girlfriend is having a breakdown.

  Alex takes a deep breath, lips working as she searches for words. Finally a calm settles, one that radiates from her eyes and flows outward from there until she’s not a panicked animal anymore. She’s a frozen statue of my girlfriend, and as she starts to talk, I’m the one who wants to run.

  “Jack,” she says calmly. “I have reactions to my environment that others wouldn’t understand. I follow through on them because I believe in instinct.”

  I hear a siren, a high-pitched wail as the ambulance comes screaming from town. It digs into my ears, the miles separating me from it turned into nothing by the cold winter air. The fire truck comes next, the one engine that the town owns ripping through the calm that I’d hated only a few minutes ago.

  “What are you saying?” I watch her intently, too scared to move, afraid she might bolt if I startle her.

  “The other night you asked me about college.”

  “You said it’s better if you don’t go.”

  “Better for other people, Jack,” she corrects me. “I feel too much.” Her face crumples a little, a thaw creeping in.

  “I shouldn’t be out,” she says, her voice breaking. “It’s not safe.”

  “Alex.” I say her name quietly, in between siren pulses. “Alex, what did you do?”

  She closes her eyes and exhales, the warmth of her breath pluming all around her. “If I don’t let my feelings guide me in my actions, it’s the same as not having them at all,” she says. Her eyes open and she’s scared again, the momentary calm shattered by the noise. “I might as well not exist.”

  “You exist,” I say, and she comes to me, fresh tears filling the tracks left behind by frozen ones. She’s in my arms in a moment, but pulls back for one second to lock eyes with me.

  “I love you, too,” she says.

  And my heart slams up into my throat at the same time that my stomach drops into my knees.

  Because Alex loves me.

  And she smells like smoke.

  43. PEEKAY

  Alex is broken, and it’s painful to see.

  We had this dog at the shelter once, an Irish wolfhound. Big-ass dog, gorgeous in her own way. We named her Brigit—a good Irish name—cleaned her up and put her on the shelter’s Facebook page while we waited to borrow the one scanner all the surrounding counties use to check strays for microchips.

  The response was immediate—everyone basically said What the hell is that?

  People around here have golden retrievers and German shepherds, dogs that make sense, practical pets that others can identify and congratulate you on. There was interest, don’t get me wrong. Lots of people stopped by just to see Brigit in the flesh, walk her out of the pity in their hearts and then plop her back in the cage and take home a beagle, saying, “I think we’re looking for something a little more . . . normal.”

  And Brigit, with her long face and distinctive bearing, would curl up in her cage, pride emanating from every muscle. But you could see in her eyes she was hurt. When our turn came to use the scanner I did Brigit myself, my heart skipping a beat when I got a beep and a phone number to call. Her family was from New York, which isn’t actually all that far from us if you think about it, but everyone around the shelter was so stunned they kept repeating it, as if we found out she was actually from Ireland.

  Her family came to get her, and not a day too late. Brigit’s head had begun to hang, her food dish not emptying at a healthy rate. When she heard their voices in the waiting room, I don’t think she believed it. I thought she might go ballistic, tear down the hall dragging me by the leash like a lot of dogs do when they find their people again. But Brigit just looked at me when I clipped her leash on and opened the door, like she suspected this was another opportunity to be dragged out into public to have someone look at her skeptically again.

  If that dog had middle fingers I guarantee you she would have flipped off this entire county as she headed home in her family’s Hummer.

  Someone finally got Alex. Someone finally realized that here amid all the regular people and normal lives there was a truly remarkable person, a girl who doesn’t look like everyone else or even think like us. Alex is a different breed altogether, but here we just want variations of the same. The safe. The known. Someone finally saw past all that.

  Unfortunately that someone was Jack Fisher, and he’s the type who takes all the dogs home for an overnight but never actually adopts any.

  It’s been two weeks since they stopped talking. Two weeks of snow and bitter cold, ice hanging from our windows and freezing up our cars. It’s dark when we wake up and getting dark when we head home from school. Some days it’s been so cold just going outside can almost kill you. When we do have school, the wind cuts right through us as we walk toward the building, me hunched against it, Alex standing tall, not seeming to care.

  Her eyes have been blank, her mouth forming the right words to constitute a response, but there’s nothing behind them, no feeling. I’ve had her over a few times, casually mentioned the names of some boys that I’ve caught checking her out (because let’s face it, once one person tries Irish wolfhound, the others get curious). But she shakes her head, says she’s not interested.

  She never misses her hours at the shelter and does all her homework, maintaining her path to valedictorian. She moves through all the scheduled events as if each day is a job, and anything more is considered overtime. I position myself in the right place at school, shielding her from Jack as he walks by, hoping my body blunts the chaotic knife of Branley’s laughter as she hangs from his arm. But if she’s laughing it’s not because he said something funny.

  Park says Jack doesn’t make jokes anymore. We’ve tried to ask questions, me to Alex, Park to Jack, our words chosen carefully, not like we’re digging to figure out why they broke up.

  The boys say it’s because she wouldn’t put out.

  The girls say it’s because Jack always gets bored eventually.

  They’re both utterly broken.

  And no one knows why.

  4
4. ALEX

  I didn’t know a living person could hurt you so badly.

  When the pain originates with someone who is gone, it’s your own memory that hurts you. Walking through the house, touching things they’ve touched, hearing sounds they heard, wondering what they would’ve thought of one thing or another. This is pain that I know, pain that I can handle, pain that is so much a part of me that if it were removed I would not be whole.

  But when it’s someone who’s alive who hurts you, the pain can’t be escaped. The things they’ve touched are still warm because they were just there, the sounds they hear reach your ears too—sometimes their own voice, and it’s excruciating to bear. I know what he thinks about this, that, or the other because I can hear him saying so. But not to me. He doesn’t talk to me anymore.

  I want to take it back.

  Not just the words I said in the dark, his face slowly closing against me as the smoke rose from my clothes and the sirens ripped the air. I want to go back further, back to the moment where I stood at my own door. I dream about walking through it instead of spinning and running into the dark. I dream about going to sleep that night to the smell of coconut shampoo, my phone screen glowing with whatever latest text came in from Jack.

  I want that instead of what happened, instead of the smoke that I still can’t get out of my pillowcase, the dark screen of my phone staring back at me whenever I glance at it. I don’t want the memories that I have. The smells and the sounds, and all the small things I did that rounded up to one big thing.

  One big thing that I can’t take back.

  45. JACK

  It took me a while to be able to go back.

  The clearing is frozen solid when I finally get the nerve to sneak up the hill in Dad’s truck, the chains on the tires the only thing stopping me from sliding back down. It’s been so damn cold nobody has been out in the woods. I can’t even find deer tracks. Every living thing is hunkered down, waiting for spring.

  I am too, in a way. Every night when I go to bed I’m thankful that there’s a streak of eight or nine hours of unconsciousness ahead of me, time in which I don’t have to think about Alex and what happened. Sleep is a kind of victory for me, because when I wake up it means there’s another day solidly behind, one more step away from that night. I want to pile time on top of itself, years upon years so that I can forget, or at least make what she did a hazy memory. I want to jump ahead a decade to when I’m out of this damn town, and the fresh grave in the cemetery has settled, and Alex is a name that doesn’t feel like a slash on my heart.

  I kill the engine and listen to it cooling, those small mechanical noises the only sounds out here as the sun sinks. It’s easier to think when I’m alone and my brain runs through it all again. Alex’s words, the smells that clung to her, the tears on her face and the news about Sara’s uncle that tore through the halls the next day. The thing is, I’ve always been good at logic puzzles, and the only answer that fits says that Alex murdered someone.

  It could’ve been an accident—that’s what the cops decided, anyway. It wouldn’t have been the first house fire this winter. We’ve all been freezing in our beds, the cold fingers of wind slipping through the tiny cracks to find us no matter where in the house we are.

  But it was the only fatal fire, and the only one where my girlfriend showed up in my driveway immediately afterward, having some kind of nervous breakdown and smelling like smoke. All those damning little things say a lot, and all the pressure that was trying to push the words I love you out of my mouth now wants me to scream that Alex is a killer, but I can’t do that. Not where people can hear, anyway.

  Park wants to know what’s wrong. Branley wants to know what’s wrong.

  Everybody thinks that Alex and I got into some big fight and broke up. I almost wish we had. I wish I’d told her she was crazy, pushed her away from me. But I didn’t. I held her and told her everything was going to be okay even as the ash started to drift in from the north, heavier than the snow and darker by far.

  What I did was worse. I abandoned her.

  It started when her ring tone made me want to vomit instead of answer, the guilt plunging deep into my belly and making me choke. I couldn’t read her texts and I couldn’t listen to her voice mails, scared of what she might say next. Scared of what she might do next. I even stared at the pic I’ve still got on my phone of Officer Nolan’s email and cell once or twice.

  But the thing is that I told her everything would be all right. I said that when this girl who I didn’t even think could bend was completely broken, sobbing against me and hating herself. And I’ve been there. I know exactly what it’s like to fuck up hard and not be able to fix it, so I couldn’t damn her even if what she did was so far above and beyond my own screw-ups we can’t even see each other across the gap.

  I let that logic have its way with me, and I’ve waited so long that if I rat her out now Nolan’s going to want to know why I covered for her. Even if I leave an anonymous tip I’m screwed because we—the oh-so-happy new couple—suddenly broke up right when the shit went down, and he’ll ask me questions. Questions that tear down the good-guy thing I’ve got going on and punch holes in any chances I have at a scholarship.

  Alex has faded away in the past couple of weeks. Branley is highest on my recent calls list, Alex’s number buried somewhere behind some sophomore girl who found the courage to call me in the bottom of a bottle. I couldn’t understand anything she said, but I kept the voice mail, hoping I might find it funny eventually.

  Branley has been doing her best to cheer me up but I haven’t touched her. She’s confused and pouty about it, and while I know she could distract me for an hour or two, it would still be Alex on my mind. Because fading or not, she still shines brighter than everyone else, and I have my nights when I want to call her up anyway. Fuck the fire and the smoke and the tears running down her face.

  “Goddammit,” I yell, punching the horn and sending some birds out of their nests, reprimanding me with harsh voices.

  I get out of the truck, snagging the garbage bag I brought along. It billows in the wind behind me like a dark sail. The tree looks like shit: the ribbons I tied on with freezing fingers in anticipation of telling Alex I loved her are ripped to shreds, the ends frayed and brittle. A few of the ornaments have blown off and I step on one accidentally. It breaks with hardly any resistance and a million silver shards scatter across the snow.

  I’ll never be able to get all the pieces. They’ll sink down into the ground with the winter melt, nonbiodegradable witnesses of my failed night that will never rot, just release whatever chemicals they’re painted with. I try to scoop everything up, but every time I think I’ve got it, the sun hits another piece, and soon my gloves are soaking wet, my fingers are painfully crooked, and I’ve spent a half hour trying to pick up one goddamn ornament and I am pissed.

  The part of me that’s held on to everything I know is swelling, a bitter anger that inflames my heart and sends my blood pushing through my veins too hard, shooting black spots across my vision as I head back to the truck. Dad’s ax is in the back, and it’s heavy in my hand as I take my first swing, the tree shuddering under the blow. Ornaments fall and are crushed under my boots but I keep swinging, the pressure in my chest lightening a little with each connection, the head of the ax sticky with sap.

  I regret it when I’m halfway through, but it’s too late. The tree leans heavily to one side, the red ribbons now faded to pink dragging on the ground. I stomp down hard on the trunk, right above the deep notch where I killed it, and the snap reverberates through the woods.

  It’s almost dark by the time I get home but I haul the tree out to the woodpile anyway, drag out Dad’s chainsaw, and start tearing in. Mom comes out, coat wrapped tight around her body, a question on her face. I wave her away, sawdust flying around me as I take off the limbs, one by one, needles carpeting the ground at my feet. Dad gets home and I see Mom talking to him through the kitchen window, hands moving, as alarmed as t
he birds in the woods.

  By the time Dad comes out the cutting is done. He helps me stack in silence, not commenting on the ornament hooks still clutching in some places, or the strands of wrecked ribbon mixed with the chips on the ground. We finish and he claps a hand on my shoulder.

  “Well, that’s done,” he says. As if cutting down a tree and stacking green wood we won’t be able to burn for a year was on the list of things to do today. “Come inside and get some supper.”

  I nod that I will and he goes without looking back, somehow knowing that the crazy thing I just did was healthier for me than all the normal shit I’ve been doing every day just to get by. My arms are like lead and my feet drag as I walk to the house. I’ll sleep well tonight, solidly. I’ll put today behind me, get through tonight.

  And maybe tomorrow I won’t think of Alex the moment I open my eyes.

  46. PEEKAY

  “I’m calling it,” I say.

  “What’s that?” Sara asks from the passenger seat.

  “It’s time for Emergency Girlfriend Pact.”

  She glances up from her phone. “For who?”

  “Alex.”

  She looks back down at her screen, thumbs flashing. “Hmmm.”

  I stop at a light, and reach over to knock the phone out of her hands. “Seriously.”

  Sara sighs. “Fine. But she’s your friend, not mine.”

  “As long as you’re in. I may need backup.”

  I drive to Alex’s house and we stand on the doorstep for a few minutes, listening to the knocker echo through the insides. Sara huddles against the cold, hands jammed in her pockets.

  “Nobody home,” she proclaims.

  “Just because nobody’s answering doesn’t mean nobody’s home in this house.” I take a chance, twist the knob, and shove my shoulder into the door. It pops open grudgingly and I tumble inside.

  “Seriously?” Sara says, but there might be a note of admiration in her voice.