Volition

by Lily Paradis

  I still thought about Jesse, but my heart hardened quickly in his absence. I didn’t realize at the time that he was still nestled deep inside every fiber of my being.

  I didn’t see him for years after that. Not until I filled out an application for him to work as a groundskeeper at the Hale house when there was a vacancy. I still remembered the tattered clothes he wore in school.

  He took the job.

  After that, all I got from him were stolen glances and rocks piled on my windowsill.

  The rocks were our secret, but I didn’t understand them. I just kept them in a box in my closet because I didn’t want him to think I was rejecting him by putting them back outside.

  Nothing was the same as it had been before even though he was a little closer. It didn’t matter because we had different lives.

  I became a cliché.

  For high school, I got to go somewhere new.

  That was where I met Colin.

  On the first day of school, student guides led us in packs through the ancient hallowed hallways for a tour, and my group stopped to do some kind of bonding activity.

  “Hold hands with the person next to you, and try to solve your puzzle!” my group leader told us.

  We all looked around in horrified disbelief that we actually had to do it.

  I kept my arms crossed and watched as everyone else grabbed hands and worked on the giant puzzles on the floor in front of us. Why did we have to hold hands? How could we solve it that way? It seemed bizarre and unnecessary.

  Colin uncrossed my arms, grabbed my hand, and started doing our puzzle all without saying a word. I couldn’t tell if I was impressed, or insulted. He was doing it all wrong, so I reached down and easily rearranged the pieces.

  “Done,” I said nonchalantly, releasing his hand.

  He looked at me like I was insane. “How did you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I like puzzles.”

  “I like you,” he said simply.

  It was that moment we became best friends.

  The only problem was that Colin quickly dated all my friends. First, it was Kelly, then Jenna, and Marie after her. After they broke up, they all hated him and resented me for being friends with him.

  Colin was like the brother I never had, so I couldn’t give him up. He kept me from going too crazy because he was the only person I’d ever met that was more screwed-up than I was.

  I didn’t ask why, but I just knew.

  When you were dark and twisty inside, you learned to recognize those qualities in others. You came together, like magnets, because you couldn’t help it.

  Sometimes, Colin and I would drive around in his Bentley for hours. We’d just drive. Technically, we had a curfew at ten, but we didn’t care. The school didn’t have the heart to kick us out because they needed the names we provided on the admissions list for prospective students. Hale and Conrad were known in the South like Astor in the North, and we abused our privileges more than anyone.

  One night, Colin pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store.

  “Stay in the car,” he told me, looking around in the dark for predators.

  I sighed and looked around in his glove box out of boredom. He was always so protective.

  He came back with a pack of cigarettes. He rolled down the window and lit one.

  I reached for them, but he batted my hand away.

  “Smoking will kill you,” he said blankly.

  Silence wasn’t uncomfortable with Colin. We understood each other without having to try.

  He smoked four in a row and then shoved the rest into one of the compartments in his dashboard.

  We did this every night for a month.

  Soon after, Colin started dating Catherine. She was the most popular girl in school, and it was a wonder she wanted to associate with either of us. For a while, both of us marveled that she had jumped into our lives, but we didn’t question it. She brought light into the dark place that we existed in.

  We both reached for that light, but we could never quite absorb it. We could just bask in it while we were near her and hope it was enough to sustain us until the next time we would see her. I couldn’t help but think we were like the glow-in-the-dark stars that my mother plastered on my ceiling as a child that had to be charged during the day in order to work at night.

  Soon, we were all driving around like we were The Three Musketeers.

  When Catherine couldn’t come out with us because she was afraid of breaking curfew, Colin and I would go to the movies alone. We heard the rumors whispered that we had something going on behind her back, but we ignored it. Colin was the only person in the entire world that I knew I could never love like that because I loved him too much like a brother.

  But if I thought Colin was bad, his best friend was the Antichrist.

  “Tate,” Colin said to me one night while we were drunk at an off-campus party thrown by someone I didn’t know, “I’d like you to meet Casper.”

  Now

  THE NEXT DAY, Catherine leaves me alone in her apartment while she goes to work. Being alone in New York thrills me because I’m used to being able to drive myself wherever I need to go even though I hate cars. Here, I don’t have one. I don’t want to waste what money I have left on cabs, so I’ll be taking the subway—at least, until I find a decent job.

  I am a writer.

  I should be able to find something in New York City, right?

  I get out of bed and square my shoulders.

  I am going to be Carrie Bradshaw, like Tony said.

  I am going to fix my life and swear off men forever.

  It’s going to be great.

  There’s hardly anything in Catherine’s fridge because she eats everything in sight. The girl has always had the metabolism of a sixteen-year-old boy, and she can eat whatever she wants without gaining an ounce. If there’s anything around to eat, Catherine will eat it. She makes daily grocery store trips instead of weekly.

  I find some crackers in her cupboard and start to munch, contemplating my next step in life. My mind wanders to Hayden Rockefeller, and I bring my cracker hand up to my forehead in disgust. I am so stupid. Who drops a postcard in someone’s lap? I’m not sure who I think I am. Carmen Sandiego? That girl from Serendipity?

  Crunch.

  I’m frozen to the spot because I’ve stepped on something. I just stand there, holding the box of crackers in one hand. I stop chewing because that seems impossible right now.

  I’m afraid to move, but I’m also afraid to stay where I am because I have a pretty good idea what it is that I’ve stepped on.

  I dive toward Catherine’s bed and hope that it doesn’t stick to my foot. I turn around, and sure enough, I find a cockroach staring back at me. I throw the box of crackers, and I make a sound that I’m sure only cows make when they’re giving birth.

  I desperately want to spit the cracker out, except that I can’t. I’m frozen to this spot because if I move, it might run. If it runs, I will have no idea where to find it, and then I’ll have to leave. I can’t leave because I’m only in boxer shorts and a tank top, and that’s not really proper New York City attire.

  I run to Catherine’s bathroom while keeping an eye on the creature. It hasn’t moved, but I’m sure I haven’t killed it. Those things have exoskeletons like aliens, and I once heard that they could survive a nuclear holocaust.

  I arm myself with hair spray and the baby powder that Catherine uses as dry shampoo.

  I can’t squish it because I’ve also heard that if you crush them, all their eggs will come out, and you’ll have an infestation.

  I shudder at the thought and work up all the courage I can.

  I bend down and study the creature as closely as I dare.

  The antennae move, and I’m done.

  I spray the hairspray and yell a battle cry like this is Braveheart. It tries to scuttle away, but I am relentless. When I’m out of hairspray, I start dumping baby powder on it. It stops moving, and I breathe a sig
h of relief as I study the mountain of white powder in the middle of the floor. After a moment, I laugh at the ridiculousness of what’s just happened.

  Then, the mountain shifts, and I see legs crawling. I scream and cover it with a plastic cup. I jump up onto Catherine’s bed.

  Just then, she comes through the door with grocery bags in hand. “What on earth?”

  She looks at me, and I point to the floor.

  “What the fuck is that?” I ask, breathing hard. “Why won’t it die?”

  I laugh at the irony of the situation because I kind of feel bad for the cockroach. It wouldn’t die. I wouldn’t die. Fate hates both of us.

  “Poor little guy,” she says, looking at the mess I’ve made.

  I don’t move from her bed, but she calmly leaves the room.

  She’s leaving me here with this?

  She returns a minute later with a man.

  He’s tall, and he has an accent when he says hello to me.

  “Tate, this is Leo. He lives down the hall. He always gets these things for me.”

  Leo waves and walks over to the cockroach like he does this every day. I watch in horror as he picks up the cup, touches the cockroach as he places it inside, and walks over to the window.

  “Oh no! No, you are not doing this to me!” I squeal.

  I jump off the bed as he climbs on it. He opens the window and throws the little guy out. It lands on the ledge of the window, and I make him push it over the edge, so it doesn’t crawl back in at some point.

  “That probably just landed on someone,” Leo tells me.

  I know it’s meant to instill guilt, but I’m too busy shuddering to care.

  Leo leaves, and Catherine just stares at me.

  “You’re unreal. You’re all doom and gloom until a little bug gets in your way. I’ve seen you kill tons of things, but you can’t kill a cockroach?”

  She points to the would-be tomb of baby powder that’s glued together by hairspray.

  “You’re cleaning that up, you know.”

  Then

  CASPER VAN DAMME. He was my first love.

  He was everything I saw in myself and more. He wore black leather jackets and expensive Ray-Ban sunglasses, and he was always high on something.

  Sometimes he would get high on me, or so he would say.

  I liked that a little too much because I was sixteen and thought he was my end-all-and-be-all love that I had been waiting for.

  Ever since I saw my parents’ love, I was waiting for that one person who would make my soul sing. I loved Colin, and of course, I loved Catherine, but it wasn’t the same. I thought Casper was it.

  Instead of driving around with Colin and Catherine, I started going to parties with Casper. He would drape his arm around my shoulders like he possessed me, and he would walk into a room with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth like James Dean.

  He didn’t care about his grades.

  He defied authority.

  To me, his chaos was perfection.

  I knew I would never be normal. I would never be that light and airy girl that my sister was. I would never be Catherine either. I accepted myself as the princess of darkness, and Casper was my prince.

  He told me I should dye my hair black to match his, but I couldn’t. I said I was allergic to the dye when my hair was really the only thing that connected me to my mother. Margaret McKenna had the most beautiful, thick, long blonde hair anyone had ever seen, and mine was just like it. If I dyed it black, I would be losing a piece of her, and as much as I wanted to commit to my new identity, I couldn’t do it.

  One night, we were making out in his Porsche when he started pulling off my leather jacket. I snapped back. Boys were always moving faster than girls.

  “Casper?” I whispered, feeling uncertain.

  “What?” He slumped back in his seat and away from me, annoyed that I had stopped him.

  “Do you love me?” I asked, looking at the way the moon reflected off the dashboard instead of looking into his eyes.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “What is love?” he asked finally.

  Casper was always very philosophical—or so I thought.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “Is this love?”

  He leaned closer and started kissing me again. “This is whatever you want it to be, baby.”

  Inside, I cringed, but I tried to force that down because I didn’t want to think badly of him. I loved him. I knew that much. I wanted to be with him.

  I liked the danger that Casper put in my life, so I let him do whatever he wanted.

  I was constantly straddling a thin line. On one side, I knew I was being reckless, and my parents would not like reckless. On the other, I wanted to see how far I could go and still come out unscathed.

  As I went farther and farther down my dimly lit path, I realized unscathed was a relative term.

  Boys like Casper didn’t wait for anything too long. Everything was physical, and he hated talking. He said talking ruined the natural chemistry that we had.

  After a few months, part of me felt like Colin and I were rubbing off on Catherine, leeching some of the good out of her. There was no way to put it back, and I hated that for her. She deserved better than us.

  I started to see Colin less and less.

  I didn’t like any of it.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed adulthood.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed any of it.

  My parents would have hated who I had become, but I didn’t know how to come out of my downward spiral.

  Most nights, I curled up in my bed and cried silently, trying not to wake Catherine.

  Most nights, I had terrible nightmares about rushing water just barely dragging me under, and no one could hear my screams.

  Now

  CATHERINE SAYS SHE’S going to a Columbia party, and she begs me to join her.

  I ask her if it’s a fraternity party, and she tells me no. It’s for Columbia graduate students. I reluctantly agree to go because I haven’t been into sloppy parties since one fateful evening in college.

  “Good God,” she says, snapping me back to reality. “You need to forget about Casper. He was horrible.”

  “Catherine,” I tell her, “have some respect.”

  “Sorry,” she says.

  But I know she doesn’t mean it.

  She never did like him one bit, but he still holds a tiny piece of my heart. He deserved better than what he got.

  I roll my eyes and hang my head off the side of her bed so that my hair drapes all over the floor. Remembering the cockroach, I recoil and pull all my hair up.

  She laughs and throws a black dress at me. “Wear this.” She tosses me some black platform booties. “And these.”

  I know I don’t have a choice, so I groan and pull them on.

  Ten minutes later, she’s rimming my eyes with kohl.

  “I’m going to look like a panda,” I tell her, not wanting to look like the airplane stewardess.

  “Shut up,” she says.

  I realize she’s lost some of her sweetness through the years.

  “You look hot.”

  I look in the mirror and study her handiwork. She’s somehow managed to make it smoky without making it look like I’m Pete Wentz after a concert circa 2005.

  She makes me flip my head over and ruffles my hair around. “There. Now, you’re like a hotter version of Serena van der Woodsen, if that’s even possible.”

  We make our way to the subway in our five-inch heels, which is not an easy task. I need a new MetroCard, so we miss the first train while I’m fighting with one of the machines.

  We pop out from underground twenty minutes later, and then we have to walk.

  And walk.

  And walk.

  “How much farther is it?” I ask, feeling like there’s no way I’m going to last in these shoes for the rest of the night.

  At least it’s cooler now, not blazing hot like it is during the day
in New York City in June.

  “It’s just a few blocks.”

  “I hate blocks,” I groan.

  Catherine giggles at me. “You can’t hate blocks, Tate.”

  “I do,” I tell her. “I hate them. Why can’t you tell me in miles? Miles are so much easier.”

  “No,” she says, still laughing, “they’re not. With blocks, you can see them. Avenue blocks are just longer than street blocks.”

  “I hate the grid,” I tell her as we trudge our way to this godforsaken party.

  When we arrive, I have to use Catherine’s handkerchief to wipe my brow because of the humidity. It’s humid in Charleston, too, but this is a different kind.

  She nods in approval and leads me up two different stairways to an apartment she appears to know from memory.

  When the door opens, it’s nothing like what I expected. Instead of people dancing to loud beats, they’re swaying and standing, coupled-off in corners. The lighting is dim, and I smell incense.

  So, it’s this kind of party. I half expect to see James Franco doing a cheesy poetry reading while sitting on a chakra rug.

  Are chakra rugs a thing?

  Someone is offering me a drink, and I decline. Old Tate would have downed it in a second, but I’m not sure that I want to be completely disarmed here. On that plane, yes. Here, not so much. I want to have my wits about me.

  Catherine accepts the drink, and I wonder if this is The Twilight Zone.

  I’m immediately startled when someone touches my hand. I jump back, knocking Catherine’s drink and spilling it all over her.

  I can tell I’ve startled her, but she simply wipes it up and walks off.

  “McKenna comma Tate.”

  I feel his voice more than I hear it, and I have to take a deep breath.

  “Rockefeller comma Hayden.”

  I look him up and down, and when I look up, I really do have to look up. He’s much taller than me even though I’m in Catherine’s heels.

  “Are you stalking me?” A deep voice over my shoulder startles me.