by Schow, Ryan
“Can’t leave my car out front,” Abby said to Netty, her voice hiccupping out the words. “Have Georgia there, too. Brayden can park.”
Netty tempered her tone at the sound of Abby’s voice.
“Are you okay?” she said.
“I am,” Abby replied, speaking up. Her red face glistened, and her body was suffering the rapid fire ticks of being burned alive inside. “But I’m scared.”
“What happened?”
“Someone tried to kill me.” She paused for a second, then said, “Again.”
Netty did her best to be a good friend, and it seemed to calm Abby. Brayden saw where Abby needed Brayden’s quick action and security, but he also knew Netty gave her something he couldn’t: compassion, female friendship. No one gets everything from just one person. That’s what Brayden’s father said when he left Brayden’s mother and married a younger woman. Apparently the statement wasn’t exclusive to matters of love, or love lost as it were.
When Netty was off the Bluetooth and they were nearly to her place, Brayden took Abby’s hand and it felt like home. She didn’t resist him, and for that he was grateful. When she looked at him, heavy eyes betrayed her pain, the nakedness of her fear. It was all there. Her emotions laid bare before him.
“You know,” he said, “at some point this shit has to end.”
She blinked twice, slow and weighted, then turned away from him and looked out the window.
Sweat pooled on her upper lip. It dripped down from her hairline to her temples, then to the tip of her chin. Her whole face had the kind of high gloss sheen you get from childbirth, a brutal two hour workout, or an hour in high humidity.
Brayden focused on the road, and a vision of the evening returned with nightmarish clarity. The bald kid—that wiry, efficient looking killer—he appeared from nowhere. When he gashed Abby’s neck open, he did so quickly, with the sort of violent efficiency you just don’t see in anything but really good martial arts movies.
The curved blade at the boy’s side caught the light just right, firing the reflective, starburst flare of one of the restaurant’s overhead lights into Brayden’s eyes. Brayden was blinded for a fraction of a second. That’s what drew his attention to the boy and his blade. He saw everything in slow motion: the skin flayed open, the geyser of blood fountaining everywhere, the look of horror and surprise on Abby’s face as her hand went to her neck to staunch the wound.
Nearly at Netty’s, his heart folded in two as a cold emptiness swept over him. Abby should be dead. She should have been dead many times now, and it made him wonder if that was how God meant her to be, if He was trying over and over again to correct these blasphemies of science.
He risked another glance at her, this time with fear in his eyes. The way in which the sweat was now drip-drip-dripping off her chin onto her stolen dress, she was like a leaky faucet.
Deep down, he became overwhelmingly terrified for her.
2
Georgia and Netty were waiting outside the lobby standing on the sidewalk, under the overhead lights, when Brayden screeched to a stop along the curb. The girls rushed the car even before Brayden had it in PARK. Netty pulled open the door and the chilly nighttime air flooded the S5’s cabin. Through the cold and darkness of night, his eyes found Georgia’s. The gravitational pull was otherworldly. He could not look away, not even for a moment. He was happy to see his friend, to know she was alright, but Georgia wasn’t Georgia. The new version of her was beautiful, gorgeous actually, but like Abby said, something about her felt…different. Something more than her new looks. It was the immediate feel of her.
She felt…off.
She was helping Netty pull Abby out of the car and everything was moving so quickly. Several times she glanced at him. He didn’t recognize her eyes or her expressions, or even the way she moved. It was as if something had switched souls with her. Making matters worse, she wasn’t saying anything to him. Not one word. The Georgia he didn’t know just kept looking up at him and not saying a thing. It was as if he felt everything for her and she felt absolutely nothing for him.
“Hi, Georgia,” he said.
She didn’t reply.
He knew she heard him, but she didn’t reply. There was something wrong indeed. Were parts of her brain damaged? She was gone for a long time, which meant things had definitely gone awry. But to this extent? To where she didn’t even acknowledge her own friends?
For a second there, she gave him the creeps.
Netty told him their address upstairs, then said to find the first open parking space on any of the surrounding blocks. He found a spot four blocks away. He ran all the way to Netty’s, not worrying at all about what might be lurking in the shadowy San Francisco night.
Even though he was in good shape, he never felt so out of breath in his life. It was the adrenaline drain, he knew. The thing about adrenaline was it could make you feel like you’ve had eighteen cups of coffee one minute, and the next minute you feel like you’re suffering from some superhuman hangover where your body is chilled and overheated and not able to function quite right.
That’s how it was now. He felt displaced. Like he was having the worst out of body experience ever.
Once in the building, he took the elevator upstairs, went straight to Netty’s door and knocked. She opened up and said, “Georgia’s helping her with the bath.”
“Good.”
“I could’ve helped her just fine,” Netty said, obviously scared but defiant.
“Yeah, well you don’t want to see the things Georgia’s going to see while she heals. It gets in your head and you can’t get it out.”
He flopped down on the couch, emotionally exhausted and said, “Other than your feelings being hurt about her wanting Georgia in there and not you, which I understand, how is she?”
“You tell me,” Netty said, hands on hips, her eyes boring into his. As if he had done something to her rather than for her. As if this was his fault. He shrugged his shoulders. Refused to look away.
He didn’t even have the energy to act offended, so he said nothing.
“What happened anyway?” she said, less accusatory. “Did someone try to poison her?”
He blew out a sigh, then sat up. “No, some bald-headed Moby-looking kid slit her throat wide open in the middle of a five star restaurant in front of her professor, whom she’s apparently fallen in love with, or something like that.”
There was a certain brittleness to his voice he didn’t try to hide. As far as he was concerned, Jake Teller could eat a sack of wet dicks then step into freeway traffic.
“Jake,” Netty said.
Brayden showed her his solemn, most irritated smile. The one that said Netty was right, but he was pissed off about it. Inside, he was jealous as hell of their teacher with his model good looks, his GQ clothes and his agreeable personality.
“Abby said you need to call him right away.”
“What in the name of God’s nuts would I do that for?” he asked. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to that inflamed butthole.
She shrugged her shoulders, then said, “Because she asked you to? I don’t know. Just do it or something.”
Netty handed him Abby’s phone with Jake’s number ready to go. He hit CALL and it rang through.
“Abby!” he said.
“No, Professor Teller, it’s Brayden.” After the awkward hello, he went on to lay out the details of a quickly concocted lie, talking about it being a prank and how he shouldn’t worry, blah-blah-blah.
“First of all, Brayden, you’re so full of shit I can smell it through the phone. Her blood, Jesus, it was everywhere. I saw her bleeding out. Her face turned blue, for Christ’s sake!”
“That was her being scared.”
“I want to talk to her,” he said. “Now.”
Brayden asked Netty, “Where is the bathroom?” Netty grabbed the phone from him, and they walked down the hall to the bathroom. When Netty opened the door, she turned and put her hand on Brayden’s ches
t, like he wasn’t allowed in.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” he said.
“Whatever,” Netty replied. “Just not tonight.”
Brayden heard Abby talk to him for a moment, then promise to call him in the morning, and that was that.
Back in the kitchen/living room, Netty sat at the table and threw her legs over one of the chairs. She was kind of hot for a skinny Russian girl, Brayden was thinking. Not that anything about the moment was even remotely sexualized.
Georgia appeared from the hallway, her eyes on Brayden the entire time. “You’re Brayden, right?” she said, and he was like, “You don’t already know that?”
“You look familiar,” she says. Her voice was slightly higher pitched than the old Georgia’s and her new facial features bore only minor signs of her formal self.
“I should look familiar, Georgia, we’re supposed to be friends.”
“Oh,” she said, momentarily flustered. He couldn’t get over how beautiful she was, and how empty. “I’m having a hard time remembering certain things.”
“We’ll have to talk about that when things aren’t so…hectic.”
Georgia stared at him for a moment, then said, “Abby wants to see you.”
“In the tub?”
Netty objected, but Georgia ignored her and said to Brayden, “She says you’ve been through this with her before.”
He stood, looked at Netty and said, “Yep.”
3
He walked into the bathroom and Abby lay naked in the tub, her legs crossed at her privates, her arms covering her breasts. Brayden’s breath caught in his throat and all the sudden he both loved and hated this situation.
“What?” she said. “You’ve seen me naked before.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” he said, his voice low with want. He felt blessed, tortured, horny and pissed off. This was the kind of teasing he hated.
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, seeing you, especially like this, it’s like seeing you the first time.”
“Sorry,” she said. Then with a grin: “Not sorry.”
“Screw you.”
She laughed, light and jovial, like an angel. Like the devil. Then it was back to the dark mood, the concern, a twitch of residual pain here and there.
“I must look like hell.”
“I think you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen,” he said. He couldn’t help himself. The hell with having game; there was something about her that made him think honesty was better than pretense.
“And I think you’re the sweetest boy ever. A great friend. The best.”
“Whatever,” he said, the reality of him being stuck in the friend-zone never more apparent than now. “Why am I here?” He looked away as he said this. He couldn’t see her. Couldn’t stand to look at all that beauty and not be able to caress it, to kiss it, to consume it.
“Who was that tonight?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He could see her in his peripheral vision, but he didn’t want to look directly at her. Even though he did.
“It has to be Heim,” Abby said. “He knows I’m not dead. I just can’t figure out if Arabelle told him or not. But why would she? She was the one who encouraged me to kill him.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. Then something occurred to him. “Wait, what about the murder at your old house? That family who was butchered? Wasn’t there an eye witness who saw some kid fleeing the scene? A boy?”
She sat up in the tub and he desperately wanted to see her body uncovered. He refused his eyes the pleasure of seeing her, though. There’s no way to survive this, he thought. No way to survive her.
“A bald boy, perhaps?” she said.
“I could pull up a copy of the police reports,” he offered. “I just need a computer.”
“Netty has one in her room, but don’t get caught.” She was one of only a few people who knew he was charged with cyber crimes and would have to work for the FBI after he graduated as part of his sentencing agreement. The other part of his sentencing agreement was that he could not use computers or anything attached to the internet. Which seemed impossible in this day and age.
“I won’t. Not that it matters. He’s out there, still alive, that’s all that matters.”
He finally looked up at her and she was indeed sitting up, her arm lazily covering her breasts. Peeking just above her forearm was the brown half circle of her left areola. His eyes fell from her gorgeous face to the exposed nipple. Unashamed, he let his gaze feast on the sight a bit longer than was polite, but she made no attempt to hide herself, so he took the liberty without an ounce of guilt.
“I like looking at you,” he admitted.
“I know.”
“I like that you let me,” he said, his eyes once again traveling up the flesh of her chest, to the soft hollow of her neck, and then up and over to meet those lovely, hypnotic eyes. “And I hate it.”
She raised her forearm to cover her nipple, then—her voice and her eyes lit with concern—she said, “Why do you hate it?”
He sat there for a minute, contemplating, trying to somehow put his insecurity into words, trying to organize the mess of emotion rattling around inside his head.
“Because I’m not a Damien, or a Jake Teller,” he finally said. “I’m just…me. And even the best version of me can’t compete with the kinds of men you want.”
“You have your qualities,” she said.
“But they aren’t enough.”
“Do you mind if I switch subjects for a second?”
He blew out a weighted sigh, resigned himself to the notion that if he was to be in Abby’s life, there would always be chaos, he would always want her, and he would never, ever have her.
“Fine,” he mumbled, “go.”
“We have to do something permanent to Dr. Heim.” With her forearms pressed firmly over her pinched tight nipples and her legs crossed to hide the flower pedals between them, she said, “We’ve got to end him.”
“What about the boy?”
“I’ve been thinking of him.”
“And?”
“We’ll find him, or he’ll find me. Either way, Dr. Heim has to go, and I need your help to do it.”
His head became a riot of imagery: Abby on the floor in Demetrius Giardino’s home, bloody and unconscious; Demetrius shot and killed by his wife, Bryn; the meaty, red spray of blood and brain that left Bryn Giardino’s head the minute she turned the gun on herself and squeezed the trigger.
A flood of emotion roared through him. Anxiety, sickness, fear, revulsion. The mixture of all of these memories left him so unsettled he couldn’t do anything but shake his head no.
“You can’t ask me to do that, Abby. I won’t do it again.”
“I’m not really asking, Brayden.”
“This isn’t my life,” he argued, as fresh images of Gerhard’s monster polluted his brain. He saw Abby (back when she was Savannah version 2.0) aiming the gun at the genetic beast’s head and pulling the trigger. He saw the monster fall, felt the relief, felt his heart being gulped into darkness. He never imagined he would witness a murder, much less three, but already he had seen things he could never un-see: genetic miracles and horrors, a murdered monster, a raped and suicided friend, a murder/suicide, and now this? How could she ask this of him?! He couldn’t continue building the inventory of horrors in his head. He just couldn’t.
“This is your life,” Abby said.
“No, it’s not,” he argued. “This is your life.”
“Are we friends?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“Of course we are, stupid. And friends stick together through thick and thin. This is the thick.” Just then Abby’s cell phone vibrated on the counter. Brayden grabbed it and looked at it.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Your mother.”
“Don’t answer it,” she said, but he needed a break in the tension, so he picked it up and watched as s
he mouthed the word asshole at him.
“Hello, Mrs. Van Duyn,” he said, cheery as ever. He waited a moment, listening to her and said, “Of course, she’s here. She right next to me in the bathtub.” Without waiting for a reply, he handed her the phone and pissed off, she took it. He saw the barest flash of her breasts as she took the phone.
“What do you want, Margaret?” she said, a little too harshly.
“Be nice,” Brayden whispered. She flipped him off as best as she could with the hand covering herself, then mouthed the words f-you, the uncensored version.
“Yes I’m in the bathtub and yes I’m covered up,” she said. Looking at Brayden, she rolled her eyes. Then her expression soured. “Are you kidding me right now?” Abby said. Rudely, she turned directly to Brayden and said, “She wants to know if we can ever have a good relationship! Ha!”
Brayden recoiled. He hadn’t seen this side of her before, nor could he imagine a child behaving like this to her parent.
Turning back to the phone, unconcerned with Brayden, Abby said, “First of all, your timing is too shitty for words. Second, I told you I was done with you, but then I gave you a second chance, but not so we can be BFF’s, but so you can be in my life. I did that for you. Not for me. And what do I get for my leniency but a weepy old woman begging for something she’ll never have, something she doesn’t deserve, and that’s the love of a daughter. No, wait…don’t interrupt me, you asked a question, so be polite enough to choke down the answer.”
She made a couple of false starts, but clearly her mother wasn’t letting her speak. Whatever she was saying, the reaction on Abby’s face told him it was unkind.
“No, Margaret, you ruined that a long time ago with your drugs and alcohol, and your constant criticism of my weight and my awful looks and my horrible, sad tits.”
Brayden watched his friend and the girl he didn’t want to be in love with rage on, and then he watched her start to sweat again, and then he watched her left and then right nostrils begin to leak a viscous, red fluid, like a meat sauce, except really dark.
