Cam Girl

by Leah Raeder

I called his name as I moved through the house. Too quiet. I peeked upstairs but there was no one. When I glanced out of Skylar’s bedroom window, I noticed something.

  The boat was gone.

  I raced downstairs and outside into the falling snow.

  The yacht floated in the water off a nearby pier. Max’s Jeep sat parked on gravel. I shouted for him and a frigid gust carried my voice away.

  My feet burned as I stumbled down the dock. Not good. Burning was a sign of frostbite.

  The closer I got to the boat, the clearer it became:

  A shadow perched on the pier, in the snow.

  A man.

  He sat there in nothing but jeans. Shoulders slumped, not even shivering. Snow flocked the hair on his bare chest.

  I stopped a few feet away, wondering if I was hallucinating.

  “Max,” I said.

  He tipped his head back, drained the last of a whiskey bottle, and pitched it into the ocean.

  Shit.

  I moved closer, careful not to startle him. “What are you doing out here? You’re going to get hypothermia.”

  His breath formed coils of steam that laureled his head. I crouched a few feet off, ignoring the burn in my wet feet, the throb in my bleeding hand. Ice flaked off my jeans.

  “I saw the photos. All of them.” My breath touched his face. “Skylar was your daughter.”

  At last he looked at me.

  “I know about denial,” I said. “I’ve been in denial a long time, too.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Put a shirt on, for one, before you die.”

  He looked back at the water. “I don’t feel anything.”

  “That’s not good, Max.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  I knew that desire well.

  “I get it,” I said. “What you were trying to show me about Ellis. All these years I saw it without really seeing it. It was right in front of my face, in my drawings, and I just . . . couldn’t name it. Neither could you. You didn’t out her, even though you were worried she’d hurt me.” And she did. And how could I resent her for that, if being Blue made her happy? My chest ached. “When did you know, with Skylar?”

  “I always knew.” Muscle twitched in his jaw. “I pushed it away. He asked for dolls and I bought him a baseball glove.”

  My mother, buying me dresses instead of paint.

  They hadn’t meant to hurt us. They thought we’d get hurt by being our true selves. And they were right, but that didn’t mean we were wrong.

  “What finally clicked?” I said.

  “I caught him. In makeup. In . . . drag.” Max exhaled through his teeth. “He took pictures, put them online. When I found out I said a lot of things I regret. But he didn’t understand. None of you do. You’re young and think you’re invincible. You don’t realize that you’re branding yourself. Once you show the world you’re different, you can never take it back.”

  “I do realize that. That’s why I’ve been terrified of being my real self.” Like Ellis. God, this whole time I’d been so self-righteous, thinking I was the only one struggling with my identity. “But if we’re not true to ourselves, we’ll never be happy.”

  “What’s better, being happy or alive?”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  “For people like that, they are.”

  I reached out and brushed his bicep. His skin was rubbery with cold. “I saw the autopsy. She was on hormone replacement therapy.” I thought of Ellis changing her name as soon as she turned eighteen. “When they start to transition, to become who they feel like inside, it gets better. It’s like pressure letting up. A bomb being defused.”

  “I caused that pressure.”

  “How?”

  Max grimaced. “When he was younger, he asked if he could be a girl when he grew up. And I told him that was wrong. I told him not to think that way. Boys grow up to be men.”

  Now he knew better.

  Sometimes boys grew up to be women. And girls grew up to be men.

  “You still have her boy pictures all over your house,” I said. “Who are those for? You think that’s how she’d want to be remembered?”

  “I want to remember him being happy.”

  “Max, being her real self made her happy.”

  He shook my hand off. Sloppy, uncoordinated. “You want me to put up photos of Skylar? To remember what a failure of a father I was? To remind me why my son committed suicide?”

  This is it. This is the moment, Vada. Own it.

  I touched him again, firmer. “You’re not the one to blame. If you want to blame someone, it should be me.”

  “Why?”

  Play the ace.

  All the truth in me gathered in my lungs, rose, and let itself loose into the world.

  “I lied to the police. I lied to Ellis. I lied to everyone. Even myself.”

  My voice was as soft as the snowflakes crashing against our lips and eyelashes. A hundred small impacts of crystallized sky on skin.

  “I was driving, Max. And I caused the accident. On purpose.”

  * * *

  The night of the crash, the sky was a clear black salted with stars. Our first winter in Maine. We spent most of it in bed watching Netflix and ravishing takeout seafood and each other. When a college friend invited me to a party down the coast, I spent hours cajoling Ellis.

  “Come on, hermit. It’ll be fun.” I pinned her to the mattress and tickled her ribs. “I’ll get drunk and table-dance. Then you can drive me home and tell your Tumblr friends how you saved a damsel from her own distress. Hashtag moral superiority.”

  “This is technically coercion,” she gasped, laughing.

  I tickled harder. “Tell me when it becomes torture.”

  “Vada. I can’t. Breathe.”

  I stopped tickling and kissed her. In a second the mood shifted and she pulled me close. One hand slid under my shirt. She raked her nails across my back and arched against me, her leg between mine. It was the kind of kiss that led to coming completely undone. I had to tear my mouth away.

  “We could stay in tonight,” she murmured.

  Tempting. Ever since we’d come to Maine, we’d been different. More intense. Like new lovers, shyer in some ways but bolder in others, pushing our boundaries farther. We didn’t know anyone here. We could be ourselves, or whoever we wanted to be. Blank canvases.

  I pecked her cheek and jumped off the bed. “I’m going stir-crazy. Let’s go out. Just for one night.”

  In the car I put on K.Flay and sang along. Ellis breathed on her window, tracing words in the steam. HELP ME. ABDUCTED BY BAD SINGER. Jokingly, I threatened to wreck the car. She rubbed out the words and breathed on the glass again. I YOU.

  “You big softie,” I said, but my pulse skipped. “I heart you, too.”

  The house sprawled along the shore, bordered by a cracked stone jetty. We walked the grounds for a while, misty scarves of breath trailing after us. Ellis needed to drink in the quiet as a reservoir for social interaction. My poor introvert. Inside, I introduced her to people from my master’s program. She smiled sweetly, tolerated our long obscure art convos without complaint. She even got into a discussion with some kids about re-creating famous works of art in Minecraft, made my friends laugh by coining the phrase “Yves Klein Blue Screen of Death.” She was charming and adorable and perfect. But when I came back from the bathroom I found her out on the deck, tucked into a fold of shadow, shivering. She stared forlornly at the beating waves.

  “What’s wrong?” I touched her shoulder. “Pajarito. You look so blue.”

  “Nothing.”

  She shrugged me off and took out the vaping pen, which was Ellis-speak for Go away.

  Prodding would only raise her hackles higher. I fiddled with the buttons on my coat. The clean air turned a spicy balsam, that forest essence that was so her.

  “Please talk to me,” I said finally.

  She looked at me askance, struggling not to cry. “Every single
person we met, you said, ‘This is my friend, Ellis.’ You introduced me as your friend.”

  Fuck. This again.

  “You are my friend, Elle.”

  “We’re way more than friends.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t have a good word for it. It’s complicated. And random strangers don’t need to know our personal business.”

  “Just admit you don’t want people to see you that way.”

  “What way?”

  “With me. As my girlfriend.”

  I grabbed the porch railing, glowering into the night. “Because of my internalized homophobia, right? Because I secretly hate the fact that I’m bi. Blah, blah, blah. So not having this argument again.”

  “You don’t hate it. But you want guys to see you as available.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “You were flirting with that guy. Nick.”

  I rolled my eyes. “God forbid I speak to a man, or I’m suddenly leaving you.”

  “Then why? If it’s serious, why don’t you take it seriously? Why don’t you tell people who I really am to you?”

  Ellis was too good at pushing my buttons. At getting me to spit out the nasty truth.

  “Because who the fuck are you to me? I don’t even know.” The wood creaked under my hands. I could’ve shredded the house into tinder. “I’m not fucking gay, okay? It’s not that simple for me. You know exactly who you are and what you want in life. I don’t.”

  “You know why you never tell anyone we’re together?” She looked madder than I’d ever seen her, which was rare enough. “Because it’s temporary for you. You’re just using me till you find your perfect Prince Charming. That’s all I am. Your surrogate boyfriend.”

  It hurt. I needed to strike back.

  “You’re not much of a boyfriend, are you?” I said.

  Ellis set the pen down on the railing. Then she turned and walked back into the house.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, picking the pen up. Still warm. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Me and my goddamn mouth.

  When I found her inside a while later, she held a red cup and stood in a group, laughing uproariously at a story some girl told with finger puppets.

  So it was like that, then. Fine.

  I could play Ellis Carraway tonight.

  I sulked in a corner, head down over a warm beer, radiating a black cloud of misanthropy. People avoided me. I stared daggers at anyone Ellis paid attention to. When she switched rooms, I followed. How does it feel? I thought. How do you like the jealous, insecure, clingy girlfriend act?

  A cute girl started talking to her, and they drifted apart from the others.

  My hand tightened on the beer bottle.

  It feels like shit, I answered myself. No one should be made to feel this way.

  I’d had one sip all night. Couldn’t drink. Something dark and poisonous bubbled in my chest.

  The other girl touched Ellis’s arm, smiling.

  I was on my feet before I realized it, slinging my arm around my best friend’s shoulders. My smile was hard.

  “Hi,” I said loudly to the stranger. “Nice to meet you. I’m Elle’s girlfriend. Life partner. Lover. We haven’t really settled on a word yet, have we, baby?”

  The other girl blinked. Ellis turned riot pink.

  “Excuse us, please.”

  She crossed the house and I followed. Ellis kept moving, making me feel like a hunter giving chase. When we passed an empty bathroom I yanked her inside and slammed the door.

  “What is your problem?” she said.

  Tequila, heavy on her breath.

  “You are my problem.” I wrapped my hand around her jaw. “What do you want, huh? Want me to go out there and declare it to the whole fucking party? Tell them we sleep in the same bed? That I fuck you in it every night?”

  I drove a leg between hers and held her against the door and she gasped, eyelashes fluttering.

  “Do I need to fuck you right here?” I growled.

  I kept her jaw in my hand. The other unbuttoned her jeans, tugged at the fly. When she fought me off I lurched back.

  What the hell were we doing?

  I went to the sink, flipped on the cold water. Ellis hurled herself at me.

  One hand snared in my hair, twisting. I cried out in pain. Her other palm clapped over my mouth. I stared at her in the mirror, shocked.

  “Like this?” she hissed. “Is this what you like? Is this what turns you on?”

  Now I fought her. She clung to me, our limbs tangling. We stumbled to the wall. Her eyes were glassy, whether from alcohol or tears I couldn’t tell.

  “This is what you want, right, baby? A girl to share your life with, but a guy to fuck you. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if I was a real boy?”

  In an acid voice I said, “Sometimes I wish you were.”

  We stared at each other with naked resentment. Then she kissed me, meanly, gashing my lip, and slid a hand inside my jeans. A moment later mine was in hers. I’d never hatefucked someone before. I didn’t think I had it in me. But there was no other word for what happened. It was crude and unlovely. Unloving. I came first, white heat knifing savagely up my belly. Then I turned tender like I always did afterward and stroked her cheek, but she grimaced and said, “Harder,” and I tried to oblige. She didn’t come. She pushed me away, cupped cold water to her face. Fumbled her clothes straight and staggered out.

  We each had a set of car keys. I caught her before she started the engine.

  “Elle, are you crazy? You’re drunk.”

  I wrestled her into the passenger seat. When I buckled her in I knelt on the curb, grasping her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know how to handle this. I’ve never really been serious with anyone. Guy or girl. This is a first for me.”

  Ellis stared through the windshield, mouth drawn. Tears or water or both ran down her face, silver threads glistening in the starlight.

  I kissed her knuckles. “Okay. Let’s just go home.”

  Somewhere northwest of us, a girl with hairline fractures in her sternum left another party and got behind the wheel of her Jeep. As I double-checked the seat belt, Skylar tipped her head back, a comet tail of cinnamon whiskey trickling behind the bruises on her throat.

  Ellis was eerily quiet as I drove. I glanced at her, my anxiety winding tighter. Fuck, she was crying, and it made me tear up, too. I could never watch her cry.

  “This doesn’t work,” she said. “We don’t work. We’re broken.”

  “We’re having an off night.”

  “Over and over and over.”

  I gripped the wheel like a vise. These were the last few minutes my right hand would be strong and whole.

  “Please don’t cry,” I said.

  Ellis took her phone out. Skylar took another slug.

  I pressed the gas, felt the tires spin loosely on ice. Careful. Calm down, Vada.

  But the one person who always calmed me down was the one making me unravel.

  “We’re not broken, Elle. We’re still figuring stuff out.”

  “It’s been four years. How long does it take?”

  I never had an answer for that except Not yet. Everything in my life was not yet.

  “You’re wrong.” She spoke in a small voice, facing her phone. “I don’t know who I am, but I know what I want. And we don’t want the same thing.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You. For the rest of my life.”

  My palms chafed on the cold leather wheel. I didn’t know how to respond.

  I’m not ready, I thought. I love you but I’m not ready for something this intense, this epic. I’m not ready for my life to start. What if I choose wrong? What if I commit to something I’m not serious about? What if I grow restless and unhappy like my father? I’m only twenty-two. Still a kid, really.

  Is this my fucking quarter-life crisis?

  Ellis tapped her phone.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

/>   “Buying a plane ticket.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Chicago.”

  Again I pumped the gas before I could stop myself. We slid over the center line, but the highway was deserted. Plenty of time to correct.

  Skylar started the ignition.

  “Elle, what the fuck?”

  “You don’t want me in your life.”

  “Are you nuts? You’re my fucking world.”

  She slapped her armrest. “You moved all the way here to get rid of me. You could’ve gone to grad school in Chicago.”

  “Stop with the paranoia. They rejected me.”

  “Did they, or did you withdraw your app? I don’t believe you. You moved here on purpose. You were hoping I’d stay behind.”

  My teeth ground so hard they felt like glass about to snap. No shit, I thought. Your mother promised to take care of you if I left. If I set you free. Let you find your own happiness, instead of always chasing me like a puppy. A puppy I keep kicking because I’m too scared to love it unashamedly.

  I didn’t hope you’d stay behind. I just wanted you to be happy. You deserve someone who puts you first.

  You deserve someone better than me.

  “Coming here was a mistake. And I’m going to fix it.” She tapped her screen decisively. “There. Booked.”

  I was doing fifty in a forty zone. The road began to curve. The slightest twitch would send us flying into the other lane.

  “Cancel the booking.”

  “No. I’m going home.”

  “Home is a few miles away. We’ll be there soon. Then we can talk about this.”

  “I’m done talking. I’m just done, Vada. With everything. With you.”

  Her words slurred. I felt the razor edge of teeth slicing into my lip.

  “You’re drunk and being dramatic.”

  “So what if I’m drunk? Maybe I have to be drunk to stand up to you. Ever think about that?”

  I winced. “What do you want, Elle? What will make you happy? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

  “Take me to the airport.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Then you’ll just keep making me miserable.”

  I could have screamed. “God, what do you want from me? I fucking love you. I’m sorry I don’t show it exactly the way you want, but I love you. What more is there?”