by Sara Wolf
“I have it.”
She chews her lip. “I still haven’t forgiven you. But I’ve found, through eighteen years of vigorous experimentation, that I’m much more willing to forgive people if they interact with me on this physical plane. Talk to me. Text me. With cute cat pictures or winky faces—”
“I don’t do winky faces.”
“Aha, but you do cat pictures!”
“No.”
“Yes,” she argues.
“No.”
“Ugh, look at us. Why can’t we just talk like normal people? About, like, concerts and cake and our deep personal beliefs and the color orange and stuff?”
I stare at her blankly. She nudges me.
“Orange. C’mon, try it. A conversation about orange.”
“It’s…orange.”
“Ding, ding, ding. Give the man a cigar. Orange is orange. Wow. This has been an excellent conversation. Your powers of observation are downright fearsome. Maybe we could work our way up to, like, purple next time. Except then you might disappear for years again—”
“It wasn’t years.”
“—and I would be lost and heartbroken, and then you would come back having spent fifty years thinking about purple, thinking, oh yes, now is my chance to impress Isis with my deep and thorough knowledge of the color purple, and you’d find me in a nursing home in a coma dreaming about hot men all vegetable-like, and you’d have to hurry to tell me about purple because one of my potential spawn might pull the plug on me. Maybe you’ll pull the plug on me. Note to self: ugh, don’t get old.”
“Too late.” I smirk.
She puffs out her cheeks and stands. “Anyway, I like you, but you’re ruining my life. Bye.”
Chapter Seven
3 Years, 47 Weeks, 2 Days
Everything happens all the time forever, and this would be a terrifying concept if I wasn’t so enlightened and in tune with the natural forces of the universe, which include but aren’t limited to: A) taco salad, B) taco salad, and C) my own glorious ass (glorioass). Which increases in size directly proportionate to how much taco salad is in the area. Science has come so far.
Regardless of how big my ass is, it won’t be big enough to crush Nameless’s huge fat head. Also, I would not touch him with any body part that is not spiked and/or doused in black mamba venom. Plus, he has the tape I’ve wanted to see for what feels like forever. I hate him, but he’s right—I want to see what happened that night more than anything. I want to understand the source of Sophia’s pain, of Jack’s regret, of Wren’s dismay. To do that, though, I have to stomach him. And I don’t know if I can do that.
Now that Nameless is going to my school and has that tape, I have to devise ways in which to rid myself of him sans homicide. Maybe, like, a fortuitous black hole.
But first, I have to throw a tantrum. It’s an area in which I have great experience.
“Do I even wanna know what you’re doing?” Yvette looks down as I attach myself to her leg the second she walks in the room. I whimper attractively.
“I’m taking the time to revisit your ‘drop out of college in the first year’ plan.”
“Oh, stop.” Yvette throws her laptop bag on her bed. She drags her feet to her desk. “While you’re down there, untie my shoes for me.”
“Like I was saying”—I untie with gusto—“I recently discovered someone that I really don’t like goes here.”
“That dude you were talking with the other night? Model McFartington?”
“Have I called him that? That sounds like something I would say.”
“You say it a lot. In your sleep.”
“Yvette!” I wail. “It’s not Model McFartington. There is another person on my shit list. Model McFartington is on the shit list also, but he is not number one, and also he’s got a bunch of red squiggly lines through his name, because sometimes I take him off the list and sometimes I add him back on.”
Yvette raises one studded eyebrow.
“It’s complicated,” I summarize. “Let’s drop out.”
“No,” she says simply.
“WhhHHHYY?” I inquire delicately.
“We gotta experience the whole nine yards of college agony before we drop out. We have to black out, drink a bunch, and swear off men forever and fail a bunch of classes and try cocaine. That’s at least seven months’ worth of work right there.”
“Says who?”
“Says every poignant coming-of-age movie ever.”
“Ugh!” I let go of her foot and roll under my bed. I see a moldy dick carved into the wood mattress slats and immediately roll back out. “Ugh.”
“Look, I’m sorry about this dude, okay? Or…two dudes, or whatever you have going on. Point them out to me and I’ll knock ’em out. But right now, I gotta finish this chem essay or I’m screwed. Metaphorically. I haven’t actually gotten screwed in a while.”
These are her famous last words, because when I go to get dinner and come back full of burrito and knock for her to let me in, there is groaning emanating from the door and I hear Yvette demand for something “harder.” I trip over a dust particle with alarming grace as I make my way to calmer waters. Jack opens his door with sleep-mussed hair and no shirt, and it’s then I realize these waters are about as calm as people who win free cars on Oprah.
“My roommate’s being gross, so I live here now,” I say as I push past him.
“You can’t,” he points out.
“They said that to Columbus, too, and look what happened there.” I flop onto his bed. I know it’s his because it’s perfectly made, the covers just a little wrinkly from sleep. His roommate’s bed is a mercifully empty nest of messy blankets. Jack pulls a shirt on and yawns, sitting beside me.
“You’ve got sleep boogers.” I point at his eyes. He rubs them vigorously.
“You can stay here if you want,” he says, still rubbing one eye. It is a drastically human, vulnerable motion I’ve never seen him do before. “But I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“You look like a little kid.” I laugh. “With eye problems.”
“Shut up,” he growls, and rubs harder. His cheeks are sleep-flushed, and his hair sticks up every which way.
“Still got a duck’s butt for a hairstyle, huh?”
“Still got the most infantile insults for a defense mechanism, huh?”
“At least it is not an animal’s backside.”
“The sounds are similar.”
I flip him off with both hands, and he retorts by leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. The dusk-rose sky looms outside the window, sunset slanting in and painting the white walls peach-striped.
“What do you want to know first?” Jack asks finally.
A thousand questions erupt, but I pick the least confrontational one. “Where are you going in fifteen minutes?”
“A friend invited my roommate to a barbecue. He’s dragging me along.”
“Who’s your roommate?”
“Charlie. An idiot, but a passionate idiot. I’ve heard that counts for something.”
“Uh, you are looking at living proof of that right here.” I point at my chest. Jack smirks and cracks his eyes open to look at me, the ice blue of them melted to faint purple by the red sun.
“You’re not an idiot, Isis.”
“I know. Duh.”
“You’re a moron,” he corrects, and closes his eyes again, falling to lie on his side. I debate the merits of pulling his fingers off one by one and decide they are much too pretty to be removed. For now.
I hug my knees and try to remember how to breathe right, like normal people do. People who aren’t chased by ghosts. Or in this case, chased by sadistic ex-boyfriends. And just as I start to spiral down into the darkness, where the monster lives and breathes and gnaws, Jack reaches up and pulls me down, and I squeak, and we’re lying on his soft bed, him behind me. His heat and weight almost press against my spine, the careful space still there, the smell of mint and honey surrounding me like a blanket. It�
�s the smell I longed for in the darkest nights alone, thinking about our war, and his hands, and what it would be like to kiss him, hard and for real and maybe more, because maybe, just maybe, he’s the one person in the world who might kiss my stretch marks instead of calling them ugly—
“Stop,” he mumbles just behind me.
“Stop what?”
“Stop looking so sad all the time.”
I scrunch my face up, and I’m suddenly hyperaware of his breath on my neck. He moves closer, and my stomach starts to burn, and Will’s voice is so clear and cold in my head.
But you’ll never feel all right here, will you? Not with me around.
My heart suddenly decides it’s an astronaut and attempts to do forty backflips in what feels like zero gravity. I immediately bolt off the bed. Jack sits up.
“Is something wrong?”
“I just—” I clench my shaking hands to still them. I don’t want him to see. I don’t want him to think he’s making me feel like this.
“Isis.” Jack gets up and moves toward me, but I hold out two hands.
“Stop. Just—just stay there.”
He does, but his brows knit deeply. “I will. Did I do something wrong?”
“No!” I suck in a breath to try to stop the crushing feeling on my chest. “It’s me. It’s always me. Or, it’s not all me. It’s him.”
It goes unsaid between us. Him. Will. Jack knows—I can see it in his ice eyes. Whenever Will comes up, those eyes turn to daggers, the anger in them not for me, but for him.
We stay quiet, and I rub my arms to work feeling back into them. The panic was so strong, so fast, I was taken by surprise. It’s been a while since it was that bad. Disappointment rages through me—I thought I was better than this. I thought I’d gotten better. Jack and I slept in the same bed at a hotel, for shit’s sake! I should be better now!
The truth seeps into me slowly, like a black cloud. How can one night make me magically better? It can’t. That’s the answer—it can’t and I’m still defunct, damaged, incapable of tolerating something as simple as lying next to someone. Was it the distance between Jack and me for half a year? Did my body forget who he is, how important he once was? Of course it did; I wrote him off for good. I did my best to black him out of my mind as a romantic option after Sophia’s death. And now it’s showing.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jack asks finally, carefully.
I make a huge exhale. “Let’s just talk. About something else. W-Why are you going here for school?”
“Work.”
The panic mutes itself, replaced with molasses and lead and spikes.
“Obviously. Frat boys just don’t cut it; college girls need a suave and experienced undertaker of the vajayjay to relieve stress, because everyone in the world is obsessed with sex, apparently—”
“I’m not an escort,” he says patiently. “I quit the Rose Club for good. I work for someone else now. Doing other things.”
“Wow. That’s so specific. I feel like I’ve gleaned a lot of valuable and specific information from this conversation.”
“Remember the guys who were in that forest? The guy in the tweed suit? The ones who chased you in the woods where Tallie’s buried?”
“Yeah, but—”
The door opens just then. Jack and I sit up hastily. In walks Tinyballs Mcsuitypants, he of the running-after-me-in-a-dark-Ohio-forest-because-his-boss-told-him-to. His black hair’s in spikes, skin amber. He freezes, dark eyes catching on me.
“You!” he squawks, and points.
“You!” I shout. “How are you still alive? I FIFA’d your balls!”
“What the hell is she doing here?” he snarls at Jack.
Jack sighs. “Isis Blake, meet Charlie Moriyama.”
“Already have,” Charlie and I say at the same time. I glare. He narrows his eyes even farther.
“Look, we don’t have time for this shit.” Charlie looks to Jack. “We were supposed to be there five minutes ago. Let’s not blow this, okay?”
Jack sighs and hefts himself off the bed, looking at me. “I’ll be back later. We’ll talk more then.”
“Sure, yeah, just work with the bad guys. See if I care.”
“Isis—”
“We’re going,” Charlie shouts, grabbing a towel off the end of his bed and slamming the door behind him. Jack frowns and follows reluctantly.
And I do the same. From at least five meters and two cars away. Charlie drives a white Nissan with a broken taillight. My mind runs circles around itself as they lead me down the highway and away from school. Why has Jack shacked up with Tweed-Jerk and Small Balls? Tweed talked about wanting to hire him, but I still don’t know for what. I guess he succeeded. Let’s be real, though—Jack let him succeed. Everything that happens to Jack is exactly because Jack lets it happen. Except me. But that’s a different story, full of illegality and joy.
Jack said he’s working, which means what? He’s at school, but on a job for Tweed? What job, stealing good grades for the poor-grade people? What could Tweed’s company possibly do for money, other than stand there and look dumb? It doesn’t make any sense, and it makes less sense when Charlie pulls into a huge white-stone plaza surrounded by a posh apartment building. A security booth lets cars in and out of the massive parking garage. Charlie’s Nissan disappears, and I pull up next. The security guard is a tan guy with a neat beard.
“Hey there, who are you here to see?” he asks.
“Um…” My brain scrabbles for a reason, and like all good brains, makes me blurt the first thing that comes to mind instead. “Jesus….? Christ.”
He squints, and just when I’m convinced he’ll launch a row of spikes under my car and into my tires, he smiles.
“Ah, yeah, you must be here for the North Presbyterian dinner.”
“Yeah! That’s right. Praise the Lord!”
He nods. “Go on in. Visitor parking is on the left.”
Either the rest of the world is exceedingly dumb today, or I’ve gotten smarter. Thanks, college. Wait, who am I kidding? College hasn’t taught me anything yet except how to have panic attacks and not pay attention to professors at all. Correction: thanks, National Geographic.
I park and walk slowly behind Jack and Charlie, who are waiting outside a fenced door that leads to the elevators. After minutes of silent agony in which I almost twist my ankle trying to hide behind a pillar when Charlie looks behind him, a redhead in a black bikini opens the door for them. She bats her eyelashes at Jack, and I pretend I did not see it, the same way I pretended not to see the end of Sixth Sense. Then again, she has titties up to her eyes and she has a wonderful smile, and if Jack’s taste in women has changed then he should by all means bed her, because she looks fairly fun and also cute, and who am I to get in the way of true love? Nobody. Nobody should get in the way of true love. Not even well-meaning Italian arch-nemesis families.
The three turn a corner and take the stairs, and as gracefully as an undercover ballet dancer, I make a mad dash to the door and manage to jam my pinkie finger in it just before it closes and locks me out.
“Banana shit-cake!” I whisper loudly, then nurse the tip of my finger in my mouth as I take the stairs. “What does a lady have to do to get a warm reception around here?”
“Stop her stalking habit, perhaps?”
I whirl around to see Jack leaning against the railing behind me. I look downstairs to my escape door, back to his calm yet irritated face, and then I peek over the railing.
“How many stories does it take before you break your knees? Medically? Asking for a friend.”
“Don’t you dare jump.”
Jump. Sophia jumped. I flinch, but Jack is a tower of ice, murky and rigid and unreadable. I draw myself up to my full intimidating five feet five inches of height.
“I am out,” I say with great dignity, “for a stroll. I wasn’t stalking you.”
“You were following Charlie and me. I saw your car.”
“Oh. In t
hat case, yes, I was stalking you.”
“You should leave,” he says without missing a beat. “Nameless might be here.”
I grit my teeth but manage words. “So? I don’t care about him. I want to know what you’re doing in Tweed’s company, and why. Is it dangerous? You said you wouldn’t join them, you said—”
“I said a lot of things”—Jack sighs and rubs his eyes—“before Sophia died that I ended up regretting.”
My stomach churns. Was saying he liked me one of them? I shake my head—selfish. Stop being so fucking selfish and focus.
“Since when is going to a barbecue ‘work’?” I hiss.
“Since the one throwing the party is our target.”
“Uh, hello? Earth to Zabadoobian Jack? This is reality, not Call of Duty. There are no ‘targets.’”
“In my line of work, there are,” he counters.
“And what, pray tell, is your line of work?”
Jack’s frigid eyes harden, becoming clear and sharp as he answers. “I’m a freelance bodyguard who just so happened to be slotted into gathering intelligence. Now get back to campus and leave this to me.”
I bluster about for ten seconds, squirreling my hands together. I say “sp” a lot but never quite manage to get the “y” out. Jack, ever sensitive to my plight, turns and leaves. I follow.
“S-Spy?” I choke. “What blind idiot died and made you a spy?”
“I’m not a spy. I’m a bodyguard who’s been posted here.”
“You’re like…you’re…what’s the word for the opposite of ‘subtle’?”
“Isis Blake,” Jack offers.
“Jack Hunter!” I correct. “Jack Hunter isn’t subtle.”
“I’m very subtle when a girl shouting ‘spy’ isn’t following me,” he argues.
“You’re a mobile, permafrost glacier with killer eyebrows and rapiers for eyes. People don’t forget Jack Hunter so easily.”
“I wish they would,” Jack murmurs. It sounds so hollow and weak, so unlike him. I slap him on the back.
“Nonsense! You can never be forgotten. If you were, the last major glacier on planet Earth would fade from existence, and global warming would become a very scary reality. Scarier than it already is. And closer. And hotter. In the temperature sense, not the let’s sex it up sense.”
