by Lily Paradis
I gasp, and my hand flies to my heart in a gesture that means, You can take a girl out of the South, but not the South out of the girl. I immediately resent myself for it and shove my hand down to my side as if to chastise it.
“Am I stalking you?” I ask incredulously.
His eyes are much too green to be real. They remind me of the marble statues I learned about in my Roman Art class. Sculptors would put green stones where the eyes should be to make them look more lifelike.
He runs a finger up and down my arm like it’s something he does every day.
I feel my stomach tighten, and I’m not sure what to do. His presence is entirely disarming.
“Meet me,” he says, leaning in closer to my ear so that only I can hear his words.
“Where?” I say breathlessly, falling under his spell.
No, not falling. I’ve fallen. I hate myself.
“Your favorite place in New York.”
I pull back. “You know where that is?”
He nods.
I know he doesn’t know where that is, so I play along. “When?”
“A week from now. Sunset.”
He leans in closer and kisses my forehead, and my eyes close automatically.
My body won’t stop betraying me against my will.
I open my eyes, and he’s gone. Instead, he’s replaced by Catherine, who is clearly enjoying her bubbly.
“McKenna comma Tate,” she says, looking at the door. “I’m going to call you that from now on.”
Then
MY FIRST PROBLEM of the evening was that I couldn’t find Casper.
I couldn’t find Catherine either, so I went to Casper and Colin’s room, hoping to find one or both of them there. I didn’t bother to knock because they always kept the door cracked open.
I walked in and found Colin sitting on the couch in their living room in the dark. That was the thing about Colin and Casper’s room. It wasn’t just a room. It was an entire suite. They each had a bedroom off their main living area.
“Why are you sitting there in the dark, Colin?”
He just stared straight ahead. I spotted some cookies on the counter, so I took two out of the bag and plopped down next to him.
“What the fuck are these? They taste weird,” I told him.
He slowly turned his head and smiled at me.
“What?”
He was creeping me out.
“Am I a dog, Tate?”
I shook my head slowly and squinted my eyes at him. “What is wrong with you?”
He turned his head back, so he wasn’t looking at me anymore. “I’m sorry you ate those.”
He wasn’t very sorry. In fact, he was smiling mischievously like a child does when it has done something wrong but won’t tell you what it is.
I smacked his arm. “What’s in them? What did I just eat?”
He puts his face in his hands and leans back. “Peyote.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“What’s peyote, Colin?”
“You’re not saying it right. It rhymes with coyote.”
“I don’t really care what it rhymes with. I want to know what it is! Should I be trying to throw up right now?”
He shakes his head. “It’s kind of fun.”
“Fuck.”
Catherine walked into the room while Colin and I were sitting on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I was trying to figure out how many aliens had walked on this ceiling before. I couldn’t count their footprints because they just kept erasing them while I was counting. I needed to get up there to investigate because they were too far away. I didn’t know how to get to the ceiling though. It was too high. The aliens had done this on purpose. They didn’t want me up there.
“What are you guys doing?” Catherine asked us, clearly confused as to why we were sitting in the dark, staring at the ceiling in silence.
“It’s so beautiful, Catherine.”
“What’s so beautiful?” she asked nonchalantly. “Oh, cookies!”
I heard the bag unsnap and immediately shot up.
“No!” Colin and I both shouted at the same time.
“Don’t eat those,” I said a little more quietly.
“Why not? What did you guys do?” She was shouting now.
I didn’t like the shouting, and neither did Colin. He was slowly sinking into the couch cushions as if he could shield himself from the outside world.
“Colin,” I suggested seriously, “maybe you can become a cushion.”
He looked at me like I was a genius.
“I think I can. Here—wait a second.” He burrowed into the couch and sat there for a moment. “Can you still see me?”
“Yeah,” I said, going back to the aliens on the ceiling.
He sighed sadly. I could tell he really wanted to be a couch cushion, so I felt kind of bad for him.
“What did you guys eat?” Catherine was standing over us now, dangling the bag over our heads like some kind of piñata.
I smacked it just to watch it swing, but then I got scared that I could get trapped inside the bag. Tiny me would never survive inside. There was only so much air.
Colin was now sitting with his knees tucked up into his body. “We ate peyote, Catherine.” He started rocking.
“Where on earth did you get peyote?”
“Casper.”
“Where’s Casper?”
“We don’t know.”
“Casper!” I shouted loudly. I wanted my boyfriend, and I was bored. These stupid aliens were taunting me. “Go away,” I said to them.
She groaned and started throwing the cookies down the garbage disposal one at a time.
Colin and I both shuddered at the grinding sound when she flipped it on after each cookie, and I wondered if I could get sucked down the sink, too.
Then, the laughter set in. Colin started laughing, and even though I wasn’t seeing the same thing he was seeing, I couldn’t help but laugh, too. There was water pouring out of Colin’s eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether he was crying or laughing, but I just kept on going along with him.
“I hate you both,” Catherine told us. “Call me when you’re sober.” Then she stomped out of the room.
Four hours later, Catherine came back. “Seriously?” She stood in front of us with her hands on her hips.
We were still laughing.
“What is laughter?” Colin asked.
“What is time?” I really wanted to know.
“That’s it,” she said. “You guys have got to quit doing this.”
I wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to make us stop because I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just so funny. Everything was so funny, and the little aliens were tickling me, so there was no way I was going to be able to stop.
What we could never have seen coming was that Catherine brought half the boys from the rugby team into the room, and each of them were carrying large buckets of water—not just water, but freezing, ice-cold, chill-you-to-the-bone water.
They dragged us outside onto the balcony where they repeatedly tried to drown us in the water—or so it seemed. It was kind of like being in an arctic waterfall, and I couldn’t breathe.
I felt slightly less insane, but my heart was beating way too fast, and I started to cry.
Colin looked numb.
“Great,” Catherine said, dismissing the rugby players. “Just great. Now, you’re crying. You two are like children who don’t play well together. Next, Colin’s going to tell you to stick your finger into an electric socket.”
I burst out laughing while I was crying because Colin tried to do that last week.
But mostly, I was just crying. I was crying really hard.
“God, where is Casper? I’m going to kill him.”
Next, Colin started laughing. “Don’t kill him. Cath. Then, he’ll just turn into a ghost and haunt us.”
He made the stereotypical ghost noise, and I snorted because I w
as laughing, and there was water in my nose.
“Do you think he’ll be a friendly ghost?” I couldn’t help myself.
Catherine didn’t find it funny. Colin smirked and stared at me.
There was water everywhere. I was like SpongeBob SquarePants.
I started singing the theme song, and Colin joined in.
I could tell Catherine hated us, but she was just being a worrywart.
She couldn’t find Casper, and he never answered his cell phone, so she shoved the two couches in their living room together to make a bed.
First, she put me in the shower, so I could warm up and change into new clothes.
I was still singing SpongeBob, and Colin was doing the response phrases from outside the door.
When it was his turn, I was getting tired, so I went to lie down on our makeshift bed that really looked more like a bird’s nest to me. I wanted to be a bird.
I snuggled up in the blankets and waited. Catherine helped Colin get dressed, and she put him in the bed with me before climbing in herself.
“You guys suck,” she told us.
I knew she was actually angry with us and wasn’t just playing around.
“But we love, love, love you,” I told her, snuggling into her hair.
“I know,” she said as she patted my head. “I love you, too.”
Now
FOR THE NEXT six days, I couldn’t think of anything for too long without drifting back to what Hayden said about meeting me in my favorite place in New York at sunset.
“That’s so romantic!” Catherine tells me as she flops down on her bed. “Sunset is in an hour, so you’d better get going.”
She’s eating a lollipop, which annoys me to no end because I can hear her slurping on it from across the room.
“I’m not going,” I tell her, not bothering to look up from the thousands of tabs I have open on my computer.
“Yes,” she says, sliding off her bed, “you are.”
She stands in front of me with her arms crossed, and when I make no move to get up from where I’m sitting, she starts slurping incessantly.
“I’m going to keep doing this,” she says. “I’m going to keep doing this until you leave because you need to go meet Hayden Rockefeller at your favorite place at sunset.”
I move my eyes but not my head or my body.
“I think I can handle it until you’re done with that lollipop. So, no, I’m not going.”
I think I’ve won this argument until she traipses back over to one of her drawers near her tiny little kitchen.
“Oh,” she says from across the room, “I have hundreds of lollipops.”
She slides the drawer open for me to see and gives me a look to tell me that I am not going to win this argument in any capacity.
I slam my computer shut. “Fine.”
It takes me ten minutes to pull myself together and look presentable enough to go outside. I’m not really going to see Hayden Rockefeller, so it doesn’t matter. I’m simply taking a sunset walk by myself, but Catherine doesn’t need to know that.
“Have fun,” she says to me in a singsong voice like we’re in fifth grade.
I wave to her but roll my eyes as I slam her door shut.
I’m almost smug as I walk four blocks to the subway. There’s a breeze, and my hair keeps blowing around my face, which is making it difficult to see. I want to put it up, but I like using my hair to hide from people that I don’t want to deal with. I want to watch them, but I don’t want them watching me.
I walk down the steps, and immediately, I’m in another world.
I drop a dollar I’ve had crumpled into my hand for three blocks into a tin cup that a grimy homeless man is holding.
He calls out after me, “You stay beautiful, you hear?”
I can’t help but smile.
I get in line behind a mother and her child and swipe my MetroCard through the machine. It’s a cage, and I hate these. I’m always afraid I’ll get stuck in the middle, and I won’t be able to get out. The turnstiles are so much easier and less anxiety-ridden. I push through, and I’m on the other side. The little boy is watching me intently, and I wonder what it would have been like if I had grown up in this city.
Maybe my parents wouldn’t have been driving a car.
Then, they would have been in the subway.
Maybe the subway would have been bombed. Maybe my mother would have fallen over the tracks, and my father would have jumped down to help her.
You can’t cheat death.
You just can’t.
I’m pulled out of my dark reverie when the train arrives. It’s standing room only, but I don’t care. I don’t even wince anymore when I touch the disgusting poles that thousands of people have touched. I barely even need to hang on because my legs have learned how to balance the bouncing of the train. It’s just for comfort.
I’m on the green line uptown to 86th Street.
There’s a man walking through the subway cars, asking for money. I swallow, and my heart clenches because I want to give money to everyone who asks, but I know I have to save some for myself because I don’t have a justifiable future yet. Running away from the Hale family fortune isn’t reversible.
I almost miss my stop as I watch the man cross between the cars, and then he walks on the tiny platform that connects them. I hate it when people do that because I just imagine them falling off and under the train.
I hop off the train and follow the crowd up the stairway. This subway is not direct to where I want to go, so I brace myself for the heat as I walk the few blocks. As soon as I see greenery, I know I’m close. The winding paths of Central Park call to me, but I don’t have time to follow them.
People completely cover the steps, making it hard for me to climb up them. I brought only myself and what I can carry in my pockets, so there is no reason for security to check me.
The woman at admissions knows my tricks when I hand her a dollar. It’s much less than the suggested admission price, but only the seasoned New Yorkers know that you can truly donate any amount of money and get in.
I quickly run up the main staircase to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European paintings, and I wind around the walls to the gallery I know so well.
I bypass the Monet and the Van Gogh and go straight to my favorite. The room is empty other than myself—as it usually is. Not many people see the beauty that I see in this room.
I stand in front of it, taking in every brushstroke. I’m not entirely sure why I like it so much. I just do. I’ve always liked it. It was as if my eyes saw it, and my heart sent out strings into the very canvas of this painting, and the closer I am to it, the happier it is.
A museum employee comes to tell me that I’ll need to clear out in the next fifteen minutes, and I nod.
I stand there for what feels like hours as people trickle out, and their voices leave me in silence.
Someone else walks into the room, and I assume it is the woman telling me I need to leave.
“Sorry. I’ll just be a minute.” I half-turn, but the words die on my lips when I see who is standing a mere three feet away from me.
“Pissarro,” Hayden says. “Interesting choice.”
Then
I WAS ENTIRELY responsible for smashing Lara Hale’s most prized pair of vases from 1853.
I was forced to stay at the Hale Plantation the summer before my senior year because I had been barred from staying at school over holiday breaks after Casper crashed his car into the library. I was guilty by association.
I sat at the table with two strangers who supposedly brought my mother into the world. Ironically, neither of them bore any resemblance to her body or soul. I never contributed to dinnertime conversation even though I was required to physically be present if I wanted to eat at all.
“If only she hadn’t married that McKenna,” Lara said wistfully as she pushed her squash around on her plate.
The conversation almost always turned to placing blame
on my father.
Of course, it was my father’s fault that my mother was dead.
It was my father’s fault that I was in this world.
Or so Lara Hale believed.
My grandfather, Julian, shot his wife a warning look from across the table. Then, not so subtly, he shifted his gaze to me.
“I’m only saying, she shouldn’t have married him. I told her not to. I would have paid him anything he wanted in order to keep him away from her.”
It was after that comment that I snapped. I calmly stood up, reached out, and threw one of the vases against the floor as hard as I could. In what could have been slow motion, I felt some of the pieces of glass nick my feet, and I held back a smile. It was oddly satisfying to see that many shards of blue glass everywhere. It took away from the perfection that Lara couldn’t stand to have ruined.
“Tate Evaline McKenna! That was a matching set!” Lara was livid.
I would have had to be dumb not to hear the way she put a disappointed emphasis on my last name.
I raised an eyebrow and reached out for the other vase.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said in a calm voice that came from a part of me I wasn’t familiar with. I wasn’t sorry at all.
In seconds, more blue glass was scattered all around the floor, and the crunch beneath my feet as I walked out of the room brought a slight smile to my face.
Mae, the main housekeeper, rushed into the room, looking alarmed. She stopped short when she saw the mess I had made, and she turned her attention to Lara.
“No,” I told her, “I don’t want you to clean it up. It’s her house. She knows where the broom is.”
I glanced at Julian as I walked past Mae, but he seemed unconcerned by my behavior. He always was. It was as if he simply expected it. Lara started shouting, and Mae shut the doors to the dining room as she followed me out to the foyer.
“Begging your pardon, Miss McKenna, but I don’t think she could find the broom if her life depended on it,” Mae muttered under her breath.
I was sure she was right, but Lara could always start to learn. I was the biggest mess in her life, and I refused to let her clean me up. I wanted to be the black stain on her family tree.
