“I’ve been on an honesty kick,” I told him.
“A good thing.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But if we’re taking things another step, if we’re taking things all the way to the end, then there can’t be any walking on eggshells anymore. I’m getting stuff out there. And I want you to do the same.”
He pulled out a hand and placed it on my knee. “Of course.”
“Right now,” I said, placing a hand on his hand. “I showed you my chest. Now I want you to get something off yours.”
He looked me in the eyes, then laughed awkwardly and replied, “Wait. This was your idea. I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at but—”
“The triplets,” I said, and the words spilled out of me. “They’re not yours. I don’t know if it’s blood tests, but there’s proof that you aren’t the father.”
“I . . . wait . . . how?”
I kissed him on the forehead, softly. Then the bridge of his nose. Then the cheek. Finally the lips. A whisper of a kiss.
“And that makes me so relieved,” I told him. “Because it means I have you all to myself. That’s a selfish thing to say, I know. And I realize you might not have wanted to know the truth. You might have wanted to live in some sort of paternal limbo or something. But I know the truth and I couldn’t keep it to myself. It’s better this way. Trust me.”
“Who told you?” he asked, not smiling, not crying, not doing much more than staring straight ahead.
“Jane,” I said, as I leaned in and wrapped my arms around him, placing my chin on his shoulder and closing my eyes. “And hey, if your brother is the father, and if he and Jane had some fling behind your back, well then fuck him and fuck her. If he did it as revenge for something you posted on his Facebook way back when you were a little kid, then fuck him even more. And fuck her even more. Fuck everyone. Because again, what it ultimately means is that you can be with me. Truly. Completely. Without strings. That is a great thing.”
All I could hear were Dylan’s quivering breaths. And then, “So we’re being honest?”
“We are now. And forever.”
“She was Warren’s girlfriend.”
“What?”
“She was with Warren first. Well, the whole time, actually. They had to date in secret, because he was twenty and she was sixteen. But if she was gonna be at our house all the time, then she needed a cover for her parents. I became her cover. I think I was a beard. Only I was a beard for a girl who was dating my brother.”
“Wait. You were never together?”
“We were and we weren’t. We started pretending we were together and then after a while, we sorta were.”
“And you slept with her? In the fields behind the silo?”
“We did . . . things.”
“Things?” I asked, making my fingers into male and female bits and pantomiming some hanky-panky.
He shook his head.
“You are aware of how babies are made, aren’t you?”
He nodded and said, “I didn’t lie to you. I mean it got to a point that could be considered something. And anything is possible, right? I mean, I never . . . what I’m trying to say is that Jane was always Warren’s girlfriend, even though certain things happened. Things I set into motion. It was supposed to be pretend, but I made it more than that. Because that’s what I selfishly wanted. So I’m the villain in all this. Have been since day one.”
Villain. I looked him square in the eyes, trying to see what he saw in himself, and I said, “Fuck ’em, anyway. So you’re a villain? There are worse things to be.”
“Like what?”
“Boring.”
The corner of his lip inched up, a wee bit. “True . . . ,” he said.
And I replied, “Lemme show you something else.”
all the feels
Lying on the bed, my head on Dylan’s chest, one of his arms wrapped around me, I said, “I’m going to embarrass myself now.”
“No. You could never do that.”
“Oh boy,” I replied, as I lifted my phone. “Just you wait. I’m going to read you something. All I want you to do is close your eyes and focus on the words.”
I couldn’t see if he followed my instructions because I was looking toward the foot of the bed. But I trusted him. Completely. Which was a good thing in theory, but revealing a secret side of myself—my artiste side, if you will—was now far too easy. Believe it or not, a girl can often benefit from being a little uncomfortable.
I opened a file on my phone. I hadn’t looked at it in months, but I’d read it so much in the past that I basically had it memorized. It was the beginnings of what, once upon a time, I thought would be my masterpiece.
“‘Xavier Rothman had more feelings than he knew what to do with,’” I said in my reading voice, which was a notch deeper than my speaking voice.
“Who’s Xavier Rothman?” Dylan asked.
“Shh!” I said. “It’s . . . this is something I wrote. Listen.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“‘Xavier Rothman had more feelings than he knew what to do with. He had his own feelings. Which were plenty. He was seventeen, after all. But he had other people’s feelings too. He had his grandmother’s feelings, God rest her soul. He had the feelings of Karen Vilner, God rest her soul too. He had the feelings of David Abrams, God rest his soul as well.’”
“That’s a lot of souls God is resting,” Dylan said.
“Shh!”
“Sorry.”
“‘Ever since his seventeenth birthday, Xavier had a power. Whenever he touched someone, he took all their feelings. He absorbed them, sopped them up like he was a paper towel and their feelings were a spilled beverage. Then the people died. Because you can’t live without any feelings. Xavier discovered his power before he did too much damage. It was a good thing he wasn’t exactly a huggy person. It was a bad thing that he was in love. With Veronique. And he could never touch the only person he wanted to touch in the first place.’”
I set the phone on Dylan’s stomach and took a deep breath. It was the only time that I’d shared that with anyone. I had a lingering suspicion that it was a steaming pile of terrible, but I was using it to prove a point.
“Is there more?” Dylan asked.
“Not much,” I said with a sigh. “And that’s all you need to hear.”
“It’s a short story?”
“A novel. The beginning of one. It’s called All the Feels. I never finished it.”
“Catchy title,” Dylan said, though I could tell he didn’t believe that.
“I read it to you because you said you’re a villain. Xavier thinks he’s a villain too. You know, on account of the whole touching-people-and-killing-them thing?”
“Yeah, that’d make a guy feel a tad guilty.”
“It’s a metaphor,” I said. “In case that wasn’t obvious. Or maybe it’s an allegory? Point is, Xavier is wrong. No one should feel guilty about having feelings. Especially the intense feelings inspired by other people. So you had feelings for Jane. You couldn’t help it, right?”
“Right.”
“And now you have feelings for me,” I stated. “Even stronger feelings. Feelings you will never, ever be able to help.”
Dylan paused, then said the words slowly, clearly. “I love you.”
Even though trusting him wasn’t an issue at this point, I felt the need to tell him to “say that again.”
“I love you,” he repeated. “I love you, Mara Carlyle. I love what you say. I love what you think. I love that you have opinions. I love that life happens when you’re around. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
I leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips. Of all our kisses, this one was the best. It made my body tingle and his tremble, and for a moment, I was sure that this would be the end. Because sometimes life is that cruel and
that poetic and that stunning.
But it wasn’t the end. It was something closer to a beginning. For exactly like Xavier stole people’s feelings, Dylan stole mine, drew them out of me like venom from a wound. For the first time ever, I said the words to someone other than my parents or Tess.
“I love you too.”
Then I fell back on the bed and opened my eyes.
what we did
We didn’t talk about what was going to happen next. We lay there for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling, listening, searching for an opening. When the sink upstairs had stopped running, and the house had fallen silent except for the gurgling of our tummies, I made another move, grabbing his hand and putting it under my shirt. The tips of my nerves were buzzing, sparking, firing. I flinched and I shivered.
Good God, did I want him.
“I’m on the pill,” I told him. “But there are condoms under the book on the nightstand and I still think we should use them.”
“You’re okay?” he asked, and he kissed me right between the eyes. “Now’s okay?”
“Is it okay for you?” I asked, which was a better question than “Are you ready to become a man tonight, young virgin?”
He was a virgin. That fact was just dawning on me. He said he’d only been with Jane, and if we were going to be technical about it, he hadn’t really been with her. Which isn’t a shocking thing on its own. Most kids I knew were virgins. It’s simply that I had assumed the contrary for so long that it was hard to picture him any other way.
Until, that is, his hand was on my stomach, and he was nodding his approval, looking so goddamn nervous. I kissed his neck below the patchy stubble. Three times. To calm him. To assure him. Then I guided his hand down to my waistband and tucked his fingers under the elastic. He reached the other hand over and fumbled with the lamp, almost knocking it to the floor before finding the switch and flicking it off. There would be no helicopters to interrupt us now, no phone calls from FBI agents, no soul-crushing headaches.
Only the lips, pecking, kissing, falling together. Only the pawing over the lumpy and the smooth. Only his stubble scraping at my cheek and my hair falling across his neck and face, tickling his nose and making him squirm. Only my tongue on his lobe, then in his ear, making him squirm even more. Only his hands—slightly cold, but nicely cold—peeling off my top and his fingers running over my breasts and down to the slightly smaller folds of flesh below my ribs. Only my nipples in his mouth and his nipples in my fingertips. Only the rolling away, the spines arching, and then easing back straight. Only the kicking down of covers. Only the struggling with his belt and laughing and me asking if it “required a key.” Only the tugging at the pants, the synchronized wiggle to free ourselves. Only his mouth, exploring my thighs, and that stubble again, now pressing against my hips. Only the draft across my hair as my panties shuffled into the tangle of sheets. Only his lips, exploring, and my fingers on his scalp, and me saying, “Just a little bit, not too much.” Only him taking a breath and asking, “How do you like it?” Only me thinking, “Who the hell knows, I don’t do this all that much myself,” and only me responding, “However feels natural.” Only the stopping, only him motioning with his chin toward the dresser, only me nodding. Only the crinkling of the condom wrapper and the smell of the condom, sharp and not unpleasant, but not anything like the smell of a person. Only me bending forward and kissing his stomach and him holding the condom up to the moonlight streaming through the window to determine the direction of the roll. Only cupping him and helping him slip it on. Only his hands on the pillow, only his arms straight, only the pause as he lingers above. Only my fingers repositioning him and me telling him, “Slow at first.” Only the tension. Only the easing in. Only a little, and then a little more. Only the opening up. Only the flood. Only the quickening. Only the teeth and the nails. Only the creak of the bedframe that wasn’t loud, necessarily, but still, was it too loud? Only me checking the door to make sure it was locked. Only me suddenly not caring about what’s loud and what’s locked. Only him saying, “Is that too much? Am I—?” Only me interrupting and assuring, “Keep going.” Only the slipping out. Only the rush to get back in. Only the slipping out again. Only the rush to get back in. Again! Only the clutching. Only the clenching. Only the held breath. Only the waves and the throbs and the squints and the puffs and the gasps and the gulps and the falling apart. Only the kisses on the neck. Only the knowing, the fearing, the loving that it could have all ended right then and there in gloriously messy fashion, but it didn’t, even if it nearly felt like it did. Only the giggling and the relief.
phew
Dylan left the next morning through the front door, picking up his skateboard on the way out and saying, “Thank you for letting me feel, you know, all the . . . you know.”
Oh, I knew, but no thanks were necessary. I was the one who should have been thanking him, for introducing a colorful diversion from our predicament, a predicament that became darker as soon as I sat down to breakfast.
My parents didn’t say a word about Dylan. Instead they informed me that authorities had captured my classmates Yuki Dolan and Cameron Quell as they were trying to leave town. Yuki was curled up in the trunk of her cousin’s Miata and Cameron was on foot, jogging through the woods with a backpack full of supplies. No dogs or helicopters were needed to track them down. Officers had simply predicted their movements and were waiting for them. It was eerie and telling, and made me want to hide in the house.
It was an instinct confirmed by Rosetti. Later that morning, she sent me a text:
Stay put. I’m coming over to talk.
Me: To me?
Rosetti: You can invite what’s-her-name too. I’m sure you tell her everything anyway.
She wasn’t wrong there. Between the two texts, I had already shot off a message to Tess:
Lady Nightshade Alert!
Because Paula had confiscated her keys for fear she’d blow up while driving, Tess arrived by bike half an hour later. Mom greeted her at the door with a hug. “You can’t believe how happy I am to see you, Tessy.”
“I’ve lucked out so far, haven’t I?” Tess said as she kissed Mom on the cheek.
When Rosetti rolled in a few minutes later, there was only a handshake and a quick explanation that she needed to “borrow the girls for a second or two” and then she’d be on her way. Mom saw no harm in that. Borrow away, as long as we were within yelling distance. So Tess and I wrapped ourselves in blankets, and we decamped to the back deck, where we watched the wind blow dead leaves into little tornadoes as Rosetti got, as she put it, “down to brass tacks.”
I had no idea where that term came from, but I imagined a corkboard full of photos of the victims and strings leading from each of the photos back to a series of brass tacks that were skewering an envelope emblazoned with a big black question mark. While we’d been in the tents, Rosetti had obviously been out there doing some serious detectiving, and now was the time for the big reveal, for her to take down that envelope, tear it open, and knock our socks right the fuck off.
“So what is it?” I asked. “GMOs? Aliens? Lay it out there.”
“It’s what I’ve feared since the beginning,” Rosetti responded. “And you deserve to know. You are victims of the most heinous violation of human rights I have ever seen perpetrated on this soil.”
“We’re what now?” I asked.
“You’re being monitored and tracked,” she explained. “Nanotechnology, injected and now embedded in your arteries. Most likely near your heart.”
“You’re kidding?” Tess said, placing a hand on her chest.
“You’ve been tagged like a wild animal and there is nothing you can do about it,” Rosetti explained. “That’s why the next thing I’m going to ask you is important. Since I’ve ruled out illicit substances as the delivery device, can either of you think of an instance when your entire class might have been subjected to inv
asive practices at the hands of government officials?”
“You mean besides what we just went through?” Tess asked. “You mean was there another time when we were sequestered for days in tents and given a full battery of batshittery?”
Rosetti smirked and said, “It would have been more subtle than that. A field trip to an army base, a—”
I shot a triumphant finger to the sky. “Washington, DC. Eighth grade. We all went to DC together.”
“Every eighth grader in the Northeast does that trip,” Tess said.
True but, nevertheless, the info raised Rosetti’s eyebrows. “I suspect you were all in the same buses and hotels?”
“Probably . . . definitely,” I said as realizations bloomed. Now this made sense. This wasn’t some blowhard jumping to conclusions. This was about collecting evidence and presenting a logical case that would stick. Brass tacks, my friends.
“Go on,” Rosetti said. “Give me details.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” I yelped. “We toured the Pentagon. We were all in this auditorium together and we listened to some military guy talk about national defense. I remember that.”
“Interesting,” Rosetti said. “Worrisome, but interesting.”
Maybe it seemed obvious to you from the beginning.
Well, duh, Mara, why’d you swim through that sea of red herrings when we all knew from the beginning that there are drones and war-machine shit out there that can vaporize a person from two continents away? Obviously.
A very good point, and one I would have completely brushed off unless it came from the mouth of Special Agent Carla Rosetti of the FBI. Her stellar record of sleuthing and bad-guy-catching was the single thing I needed to pull the veil from my eyes. Tess was tougher to convince.
“So you’re blaming the government?” Tess said. “Aren’t you the government?”
“Have you ever had a job?” Rosetti asked her.
“I used to work at Boston Market,” Tess said.
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