THE DIRTY ONES

by JA Huss

  Then she jumps up and walks over to the kitchen, puts on some black oven mitts, and pulls the cookie sheet out of the oven.

  I watch her get plates and forks. Study the way she carefully slides the spatula across the cookie sheet, scooping up the little bits of food, and then places them on the plates.

  I like what she’s wearing. Little fluffy shearling shorts that peek out from under her long creamy white t-shirt. She’s got on red, knee-high slipper socks with white snowflakes on them.

  She could be that girl back in school. She looks the part. Untouched by the years. Still very youthful in the face. Her too-pale eyes still tricking me into believing they’re blue, then green, then yellow.

  I asked her once what color they were and she just shrugged. Very much like the way she shrugged off the fact that she has no idea who her family estate actually belongs to.

  Kiera Bonnaire has never needed things. Not a big house or special eyes. She just accepts what the world offers. I always admired that about her. How detached she could be from everything around her. It’s a skill I never mastered. Probably never will, we’re just different like that.

  But I wish I was more like her and less like me. Have wished that since the day she ended up in the tower with the rest of us.

  “So,” she said, standing at the top of the stone stairs all those years ago. “What the hell are we doing here?”

  She didn’t look around. She didn’t take it all in the way Sofia did. She didn’t pull back from it like Camille, who thought the whole place was creepy and disgusting. She didn’t fall back against the stone walls like Emily, trying to disappear. She didn’t place her hands on the walls looking for secret passageways like Bennett, endlessly curious and desperate to solve riddles, or furiously try to open the shuttered windows like Hayes. Who is as subtle as a fucking bull.

  She just accepted that she was there and moved on.

  What are we doing here?

  Little did we know.

  “You lost in time or something?” she asks now.

  I blink the past away and stare up at her outstretched hand. Take the plate, fork, and napkin, then set it back down on the rickety white coffee table in front of the couch.

  “You’re not hungry?” she asks.

  “How can you be so calm about this?”

  “About what? Someone found our story and decided to make money off it. That’s all I see.”

  “That’s not what this is.”

  She forks one of her pizza rolls, blows on it, then pops it into her mouth, chewing fast like it’s too hot. “Who cares what it is?”

  “I care, Kiera. And so should you. They could be back.”

  “Why would they come back now?”

  “I already told you—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she says, popping another too-hot pizza roll into her mouth. She chews and swallows. “I get it. You’re Mr. Important these days. But come on, Connor. You’re not that important.”

  She tries to hide her smile. Because it’s a joke. An old one too. She was never impressed with us. She’s not into money, or power, or things.

  And we all kinda hated her for that. For a little while anyway. Soon enough it became clear we couldn’t afford to hate her. We needed her.

  And she did need us, even though she never admitted it. She did. We were a team. We were the Dirty Ones. The buddy system. And we were in this together.

  For nine whole months we were inseparable. Sometimes, in that last semester when class schedules all lined up and things were… comfortable, for lack of a better word, we’d all have lunch together. And we did things at night too. We’d all get together and drink. Hayes would be smoking pot, of course. Camille would dance in the middle of the room to the music only in her head and drag Bennett into her dream. And I’d read to them. Kiera and Sofia, but mostly it was to Kiera.

  What did I read them? What was that book?

  And then, after Camille was tired, and Bennett’s hands were wandering, and Kiera and Sofia had droopy eyes from listening to me read, and Hayes was good and stoned and spouting ridiculous theories about why this was happening—which always started and ended with Kiera for some reason—we’d… we’d turn into who we were that year. We’d turn into the Dirty Ones. It called us together like a siren song and we responded like sailors drunk and lost at sea.

  But I don’t want to think about it. Not that part. Not now, when I have her to myself. “None of you are that important,” I say, echoing her words from the past.

  “Nope,” she agrees. Still eating.

  “It was you who was important,” I say. Because I always had this nagging thought that the things that happened to us that year were about her. “It was you.”

  “Get out.” She laughs. “I was nobody then and I’m nobody now.”

  “You were the writer, Kiera. We were your… subjects.”

  “Those weren’t my words.”

  I nod my head slowly. “Yeah, they were.”

  I don’t even know how to explain that game we played senior year. It wasn’t a game, not really, because there were no winners. There was no prize on the line. If there was, it might make sense. Sure, we could lose. We all lost something, some several times over. Well, maybe not Hayes. Hayes just never got the memo that he was a victim. He’s a fighter and he fought his way through senior year like it was the last round of a championship boxing match.

  But it wasn’t a game. It certainly wasn’t fun.

  Liar, the little truth-telling voice in my head whispers. You’re a liar.

  Because some of it was.

  After the shock wore off and we—meaning everyone but Hayes—accepted what was happening, it did get fun. In the winter time it was fun. We’d had enough time to settle in. Understand how to play, so to speak. And some of us were OK with it.

  Me, for sure. Sofia, at times. Kiera, always. Because she was just the observer.

  I think that’s why Hayes hated her. Probably still does.

  She was our judge.

  Her words on the page made us into fictional characters. We lived a different life in her book. So weird.

  “Do you ever see Emily?”

  “Emily?” I ask. Like she’s some forgotten ghost that makes no sense.

  “Yeah. I mean, I know she left school—”

  “Left?” I ask, cutting her off. “She didn’t leave, Kiera.”

  “I know that,” she snaps, all attitude. “I was there, remember? I’m just trying to be delicate.”

  “Don’t bother.” I huff. “We all know what happened to Emily.”

  “I don’t. Which is why I asked.”

  “She never got out, you know that.”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from her in—”

  “You know that, Kiera. Don’t lie to me or yourself. We all know what happened to her.”

  “So she’s still there? In the hospital?”

  I nod, looking down at my plate of food on the coffee table, suddenly feeling sick. Because hospital isn’t quite the right word. Hospital implies she had a broken arm or a bad case of the flu. And that’s not the kind of place she was sent to.

  “Maybe she wrote the book?”

  “How the fuck could she? She didn’t even make it through one round.”

  Kiera shrugs. “Well, someone took that book. I went back the next day after the last page was filled up thinking I’d hold on to it if it was still there, but it wasn’t. So someone took it. Maybe they gave it to her? I dunno. I’m as in the dark about this as you are.”

  I search for the book, find it with my eyes, sitting on the kitchen counter, and then go get it and return to the couch. “We should read it.”

  “No,” Kiera says. “We should wait until we’re all together.”

  “Fuck.” I laugh. “I’m sure Bennett has read it three times through by now and is making little notes in the margins. There’s no point in waiting.”

  “I don’t want to read it.”

  I just stare at her for a few seconds
, trying to figure out if this is just typical Kiera defiance or if it’s something else.

  Fear, I decide. She’s afraid.

  And she has good reason to be. We all do.

  “We should go see Emily.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we owe her that much.”

  “I don’t owe her shit.” And I don’t know what gets into me, but I reach over, pull her t-shirt down to expose the bullet-hole scar, and say, “And neither do you.”

  Kiera shrugs me off and scoots away from me, pressing herself up against the arm of the couch.

  “She shot you,” I say. “And if that was all it was, I’d still be fine with never talking to her again. Letting her rot out her sentence in that fucking nuthouse. But that’s not all. Because she was aiming for me and you got in her way.”

  Kiera lifts an eyebrow.

  “Fine. You threw yourself in the way to save me. Which is why I love you and hate her.”

  She looks down, trying not to smile.

  “What? You’re surprised that I love you? Go fuck yourself, Kiera.”

  She laughs now and I laugh too. “Go fuck yourself right back, Con.”

  “God,” I say, smiling, but not feeling happy. “What the hell is happening?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that we’re stuck in a blizzard for a night with no phone, and no TV, and no way anyone or anything can get to us, even if they wanted to. So why do we have to think about this shit right now?”

  I don’t know if that’s an invitation or just rational thinking. But I choose the former. Because I reach over, take her hand, and pull her warm body up next to me. She folds herself into my embrace. Molds her body into the shape of mine like a missing puzzle piece.

  I feel it. That love I have for her. Was probably always there even before I knew she existed. Because that’s the kind of love it is. Has always been.

  She says, “I just want you all to myself for a little bit. Is that so wrong?”

  I get lost in the past again. Because that’s what she said near the end. She wrote it in her book, I know it. She had to have. Because the next week she got her wish.

  And I got mine too.

  “Pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow,” she goes on, “Sofia will be here, or we’ll be there, and you’ll be with her again. Not me. So that book can wait, Connor.”

  I smile again. And this time it’s different. “You’re forgetting something,” I say. “I was always with you, not her. Because you were always there with us.”

  “It wasn’t the same,” she says.

  “No, it wasn’t. It was definitely different.”

  “And there was a time when you had her and not me. So don’t lie about it.”

  CHAPTER SIX - KIERA

  The tower was empty that night. I showed up on the usual day, at the normal time, and there was no one home. The door was locked, no candlelight was seeping through the always-shut shutters, and I knew what was happening without being told.

  They were together without me.

  I was still, and always would be, just the impartial observer. The outsider looking in.

  Or maybe it was the insider looking out? I wonder if that perspective change matters?

  But the book was there. Sitting on the flat stone that announced the entrance to the tower. Propped up against the door like a headstone. I remember thinking that. It looked like a headstone.

  And when I opened it our pages were already filled out. In my handwriting, describing in full detail what Sofia and Connor were doing without me.

  Except… it couldn’t have happened yet. It was just a few minutes past eight. But there they were. Five handwritten pages that I never wrote.

  Later I’d learn that the details were wrong, but it didn’t matter. Whatever really happened with Sofia and Connor didn’t matter either. Because the book was the law.

  “I didn’t write that chapter, you know,” I say, feeling the urge to clarify this one more time. Because it happened a lot after that. Someone dictated our story. Made shit up and wrote it down. Like we were on the wrong path or something. And they, whoever they were, were trying to guide us back in the right direction. Those false words became real, even though the story was fake.

  And it makes sense, I guess. Because the stories I write aren’t real in my head, but the second I put the words on paper, they are. They become truth. And when people read them, that’s how they see it too. Doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. The story is the story and if I say it happened that way, then it happened that way.

  I am God when I write. Little Kiera Bonnaire, puppetmaster of the masses.

  “I know you didn’t write it,” Con says.

  “I was jealous,” I say. “But I’d never write that stuff.” It was some pretty kinky shit. That’s for sure. Dark too. Which is the part we were getting wrong, I think. We became friends. We started to enjoy it. Camille and Bennett dancing, Hayes drinking and smoking. Connor reading to Sofia and me.

  We had… fun. And fun was never the point of that year. Like, I don’t really know what the point was because the whole fucking thing was irrational from start to finish, I just know it had nothing to do with fun.

  He nods his head at my declaration of innocence, but it doesn’t feel like agreement. “But you’ve written some of that stuff since then, haven’t you?”

  It’s an accusation but for some reason I don’t take offense. “Yup,” I admit. “Lots of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the dark side of love intrigues people, Connor. Love makes you do weird things and sometimes you want to deny that. When things are going good, and all your expectations are being met, and there is nothing but bliss—people want to deny that dark side exists. But how many of us have a love life filled with bliss?”

  He draws in a deep breath.

  “Almost no one. And since love and betrayal are powerful feelings that come with an overwhelming sense of emotional irrationality, people who don’t normally like to vacation on the dark side still want to feel like they’re normal. So that’s what I write about. The tangled, messy, uncontrollable things we say, and do, and feel when the bliss is missing and the darkness comes from inside us, not them.”

  He thinks about this, his heart beating right next to my ear. It’s a steady beat. Not too fast, not too slow. He’s not tense and his arm is around me, his thumb doing this soft back-and-forth caress across my clavicle.

  “Do you think,” he says, then pauses. “Do you think you’d be writing this stuff if what happened to us never happened?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “So why do you do it? Why not just write thrillers, or mysteries, or poetry?”

  “Because what happened changed me, Con. Just like it changed you. And if I had a mass-market paperback thriller or mystery inside me, I’d at least give it a try. But I don’t. I have this shit inside me. These words, these stories, these characters. That’s what lives in my brain so that’s what comes out on the page. And you know what?” I ask, shifting my body so I can sit up a little.

  “What?”

  “I like it. It pays well, I never get writer’s block, and I have fans who look forward to the books. So why fight it? Why buck success and fight the natural progression of things?”

  “Because this isn’t you, Kiera.”

  “Like hell it’s not!” I laugh. “Look, if this wasn’t the real me, do you really think I could knock out six books a year? Do you really think I could find all these stories, and all these people, and all these words? No. It doesn’t happen that way. That’s just… not how writing works. People who fight the story inside them fail. I learned that a long time ago.”

  “Yeah,” he says, turning his head away from me. “I was there when you learned it, remember?”

  But he wasn’t. Not really. He was only there for part of it. The part that happened while I was with him and Sofia. That’s all he knew, that’s all he knows now.

  But there were other parts. The parts with Hayes a
nd Louise. The parts with Camille and Bennett. Parts I played and he didn’t.

  My eyes involuntarily find the book, still sitting on the counter, and I wonder how much truth is actually in there. How many missing pieces will he add to the puzzle when we turn that last page?

  “I’m tired,” he says. “It’s been a long day. For both of us. I’ll take the couch.”

  And there it is… the dismissal.

  You’d think I’d remember what that felt like because he did it a lot back in senior year, but his words tonight hurt me like a brand-new wound.

  “OK,” I say, untangling my body from his. The cold immediately rushes in with our separation. “I’ll get you some blankets and a pillow.”

  I feel more sad than I have in a very long time. Even though we’re together again, we were never meant to be. It was always him and Sofia. And do I really want to fight the outgoing tide when it’s so much easier to give in to the natural order of things and just… float?

  The hall closet contains blankets and pillows for the off-chance a guest shows up and wants to stay. I never use them, but it’s nice to be ready for guests who need my couch for a night. I grab them and walk back into the living room, placing them next to Connor, who hasn’t moved.

  “It’s cold in here,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sure is.”

  I turn the heat up a few degrees, but it won’t help much. The cottage is old and drafty, even with the new insulation I put in when I remodeled it after college. Things wear out, wear down, it’s just the inevitable decay that happens with time.

  So I light a fire as Connor sets up a makeshift bed on the couch.

  I didn’t have any grand dreams that we’d share a bed tonight. I didn’t. But I feel lonely just the same. And apprehensive about tomorrow. Because by tomorrow afternoon this storm will have passed, and the roads will be plowed, and we will be on our way to New York to face the others.

  He’s staring at me when I stand up from the fire and turn.

  “Good night, Kiera,” he says.

  I just nod and walk away.

  But then, just as I enter my room and disappear, he calls out, “Leave the door open.”