In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  I scowl. I want to be angry with you, but the hot feeling between my legs is there, and the head and the heart are not the same, and alcohol is not my friend. You brush the inside of my arm over and over again with your fingertips, then kiss my wrist. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you, right?”

  I grab your hand hard and you smile. “Let’s leave,” I say.

  “Sorry, I have plans.” A man stands over our table. He is dark and hot and dangerous-looking, probably a Boston University student, but when he opens his mouth to say “Let’s go, gorgeous,” he sounds a lot older.

  You rise and walk away, his hand on your waist, never looking back, and I am left, throbbing with want.

  * * *

  They found Zack Turpin shot at an ATM in Brighton. The estimated time of death was ten thirty p.m. I know it is only a coincidence that you stayed out with that random guy until past eleven. I know it is a notoriously dangerous ATM that gets held up all the time and Zack was the kind of guy who would never shrink from the dangerous-looking dude with his hand in his pocket who walks up to the ATM behind him because that would be jumping to conclusions and Zack takes a while to come to conclusions.

  I know now that when they finally come, those conclusions are right.

  Gerry seems to think Zack’s shooting is something we all have to worry about. That it means some greater threat to us. The Lovecrafts are upset in the way rich people get upset when bad things happen to people who serve them. Mr. Lovecraft talks of the dangers of being unaware while in an ATM, as though Zack did something foolish by taking out money. There is much discussion about what to send the fiancée, along the lines of food and flowers and even money, and these are not things Zack would have wanted. Zack would have wanted not to be dead, because he was promising and hopeful in ways I cannot imagine being and he did not do anything wrong.

  He did, however, warn me about you.

  But Zack is gone and Gerry is here and Gerry insists, in his quiet, respectful way, that we ought to consider Zack’s murder as an attack on the family and discuss our current security measures; tighten things up. He calls for a family meeting, which feels pretty ballsy, but Gerry has done ballsier things.

  Gerry explains in his oddly formal way why we need to assume lockdown mode.

  “Mr. Lovecraft. It has been my experience that enemies will reach people connected to your family as a message that they are able to get as close to you as they wish. A warning, if you will.” Gerry stands rigidly in his fatigues, always in fatigues, long sleeves covering his scarred arms no matter the weather. He and Wolf have scars in common, and my friends are for the most part scarred, and I have started thinking of Gerry as a friend. In Gerry’s mind, all of us are under constant threat of kidnapping by the person who kidnapped Vivi, and as a friend, I want to tell Gerry that is hilarious.

  Mr. Lovecraft sits in the parlor chair, cupping his knees. “See, Gerry, we appreciate your foresight. Our relationship with Vivi’s tutor was pretty tenuous. In fact, he was nearly done working for us. I really don’t think—”

  Mrs. Lovecraft interrupts. “I can’t see how a few more precautions could hurt. Boston is a city. Sometimes I think we forget that. There’s always a certain criminal element about, closer than you think.”

  Your lip curls at me. Mrs. Lovecraft did not mean that at me; she is not intentionally cruel. You, on the other hand.

  “Fine. What are you proposing exactly?” Mr. Lovecraft is ready for this to be over.

  Gerry blinks slowly; his lids stay down a second too long. When Gerry first came I did my research, and I know there are things that cannot be unseen, but that the people who abduct child soldiers make them see, and I wonder if this is how he kept from seeing all of it. “The girls. I should stay close to them always. Take them to school. Sleep outside their bedrooms on the third floor.”

  You roll your eyes. “Overkill,” you say, no doubt thinking about Gerry cramping your visits to your little dive bar, and overkill seems like an insensitive word to use around Gerry.

  “Well, September is months away yet, and we are going on vacation, of course,” Mrs. Lovecraft says, eyeing her daughter. “But I can see your point. Particularly if the press make a connection between Vivi and Zack Turpin.”

  “We appreciate your thinking ahead, Gerry. Being proactive and such. Now,” Mr. Lovecraft says, “if you’ll excuse me, I brought some work home with me.”

  “So are we done?” you say.

  Poor Gerry. He only wants to do his job well. He does not realize the only threat to Vivi Weir is in this room.

  Gerry turns robotically to face you. You actually look startled. “I am thinking of Vivienne. Vivienne is the one who needs my protection the most. Vivienne is the one who escaped.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft lean forward at the same time. “Of course!” they say in unison.

  * * *

  Part of going to the Parkman School in September involves shadowing another student for a day, and that student is not you. In fact, I barely see you during my day with Taylor Washington, who was chosen for her effervescence and love of all things Parkman, and who is shadowing me more than I am shadowing her. Taylor is the model private-school-girl tour guide: on scholarship, so, she is appreciative; ivy league–bound since birth, so, she is focused; and popular, so, she is happy. These things are clear as we move from classroom to classroom, through the hallways, and on to lunch. I, on the other hand, am the model one rumored about: orphaned, so, technically poor; missing since nine, so, uneducated; and maybe-abducted, so, interesting.

  The Parkman sweater they gave me to wear for the day itches.

  Taylor has the manners to act like I am the most normal girl in the world, even like she has to sell me on Parkman, like I have a choice whether or not to attend. I am vaguely grateful. I don’t sense that this is something she was warned to do: it comes naturally, as will all things requiring good judgment for the rest of her good life. Girls in private school do not bother with makeup and wear their hair in sloppy ponytails and buns; this is their privilege, and to look otherwise is suspect. I am glad I went with as little effort as possible. Taylor’s friends are kind, and they stop by to greet me and introduce themselves, and I’m slightly embarrassed because they make a big deal out of me. These are cool girls—Oona, Lila, and Ming-huá—and Taylor herself is pretty cool, her eyes a neat shade of amber and the most perfect skin, and all of these girls are shiny, but not in a way that is interesting to me. Like you.

  On cue, you glide across the dining hall, an airy space with marked Gluten Free and Vegan selections. Girls who are not seated with us whisper and stare but the stares are innocent and I get it. There is golden Temple Lovecraft, there is poor little Vivienne Weir! How do they deal, when so much has passed?

  If only they knew how much.

  You nod at them, all underclassmen and technically beneath you. Taylor stands, as do the rest, and says, “I’m going to run to the girls’ room,” and they are gone.

  “Looks like you’re a hit.” You say it so casually. You saw what a wreck I was this morning, when you scooted out early but I had to wait to go in with Mrs. Lovecraft and Gerry, God I’m so sick of Gerry, and it felt like you didn’t want to walk in together. I want to tell you the only reason I was looking forward to this was to see you in your element, and that has not been the case.

  Instead I say, “That might be overstating it. It’s nice. Taylor and her friends are nice. The teachers are nice. The classrooms are nice.”

  “You’re showing the strain of all this nice.”

  I lean in. “It’s not what I’m used to.”

  “You’re a con, Vivi.” You say this too loud, too carelessly. I check to see if anyone is near enough to hear. “What’s that your mother told you? Imagine yourself in another lifetime—a privileged private school student, for example—and become that person.”

  I cringe. That was one of too many weak moments in the last few weeks, when I told you Momma’s theory. I had tho
ught sharing Momma with you would bring her back in a small way. Instead you use it to make me feel like part of a failed carny act.

  This time, you lean in. “Not all of us can be intuits.”

  Taylor appears at my side and you say you’ll see me at home, and you thank Taylor for being “so cool about this,” as though she’s not getting credits or something. Even Taylor looks embarrassed, and relieved when the next stop is my introduction to “the guidance team,” a meeting she is allowed to skip. The team is a man named Brooks Willoughby and a woman named Vonnie Lee, and I am assigned to Vonnie, which is good, since Brooks is fondling his mustache, anticipating getting his hands on my brain. Vonnie closes her office door behind me, an office plastered with posters of small people in front of mountains and canyons and bike trails, suggesting that I Reach and Achieve and Dream. Vonnie has the enthusiasm of a woman just back to the workforce after raising four kids through to college, in her midfifties, grateful for her job, and slightly afraid of her computer. I can use this.

  Vonnie shimmies into the seat behind her desk. “Sooo. How is your day going?”

  Don’t say it, don’t say it. “Nice. Everything’s … nice.”

  “The Parkman School is a nice place! A welcoming place. A safe place. I am an alumna myself.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Now I won’t tell you the year, and do not guess!” she says, waggling her finger. Vonnie, you are shockingly uncool. “I’m sure your parents discussed this with you already, but it may take a while for us to determine the just-right classes for you.”

  Just-right means not hard: “I understand.”

  “And of course your 504 plan will reflect the special accommodations you require.”

  “Five-oh … special accommodations?”

  “An individual plan. For students like you.”

  “Students like me?”

  “We provide every girl an equal opportunity to excel.”

  “Oh. Huh.”

  “Let your parents know that I will be sending the draft 504 plan in an e-mail over the next few days. As soon as I figure out how to convert it to a pdf-thingy. No rush, we still have time, but I know they’ll want to review it with Dr. Silver.”

  Okay, so my plan has to do with Harvey Silver’s twelve-minute diagnosis. My amnesia. I’m okay with this. This makes sense.

  “I will. Um, thanks.”

  You are waiting against the wall when I leave the guidance office. When I ask where Taylor went, you shrug and say you were just trying to be helpful. I ask you what that means.

  “I pointed out to Taylor that she had done the majority of what she needed to do today to get to her ultimate goal—volunteer credit, which goes on her application to Princeton—and that doing any more would not help her case. That she was wasting approximately two hours that could be spent doing other work necessary to make her Princeton dream come true: i.e., attend the classics review before finals happening right now. Anyone can be made to do what you need them to do. You have to understand their greatest desire. Once you know it, you have power over them.”

  This is your gift, knowing which nerve to pluck.

  “Or maybe she was just sick of me,” I say.

  You smile. “Maybe.”

  Since I don’t know where Taylor is, I have nowhere else to go, and my day is over. You realized this, and already called me a car. As I am driven through the Fenway the driver hits a backup in Longwood and makes a turn that leads us all over the city trying to get near Kenmore Square. Boston is layer upon layer of life, parking lots and alleys and networks of underpasses and overpasses, rooftop gardens and filthy sidewalks. The driver grumbles, he does not know this city, has only been here a few days, and I tell him the Citgo sign is our beacon, and finally we turn onto Commonwealth Avenue. I feel the rush of the car more than I should. My world has shrunk, small enough to fit into a snow globe that you shake any time you’re in the mood to play.

  The spiky parts of you that I’ve known are there are multiplying, or becoming poisonous in their concentration. I’m not sure which. You prick and withdraw so quickly I’m never sure if it actually happened until I spot the blood. You like to remind me that you hold my perfect life under glass in the palm of your hand, in little ways, like when you sit at the kitchen island and ask in front of the cleaners, or Gerry, if the cops ever found my abductor. Or when you wonder out loud how your diamond earrings went missing but miraculously reappeared in the same spot.

  What’s most alarming is the way Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft ignore every one of your strange suggestions. I know that you do not like to be ignored.

  While you enjoy threatening me with expulsion, you also enjoy reminding me that I haven’t the freedom to leave if I choose. You like to suggest this boy and that boy you know as potential boyfriends under the guise of teasing, but the point is I will never be with Wolf again. You itemize and price the gifts I am given by your parents, cataloging my debt. When we are alone in your bedroom, doing the things we have advanced to doing, you give me side-eyed looks that used to excite me and now make me feel pathetic, as though I cannot help myself from helping myself to you, but you can. You are a table of desserts and I have no restraint. Your faint disgust does not stop me, because I am used to those looks from people on sheets underneath me, though it should.

  Not until you pointed it out did I realize how easy it is for some people to kill another person. A quick mental calculation of the danger you are in, of the worth of that life, and your chances for getting away with it. If those things add to the right sum, and you can do it without getting hurt yourself, it’s on. Except a person like you doesn’t make such calculations. You kill as an attempt to lose control, as an attempt to conjure an irrational state that does not exist inside you, to feel something.

  You claim we’re alike this way. But we are different, you and me. I am learning.

  * * *

  Though there are hints of the alarming, truthfully, life is magical these days. On your last day of school, we left Boston for the rest of June and most of July—the girls and Gerry, and Mr. Lovecraft flying back and forth for the weekends—and rented a house on Martha’s Vineyard. The Vineyard instead of the usual Nantucket, not because the Lovecrafts were being respectful of Vivi’s feelings, but because it would look, as I overheard Mrs. Lovecraft say, “wrongheaded.” For the first time in my life, I rode on a boat, which is weird for someone from Florida. The Last One failed on his promises to let me ride on the Everglades boat, same as he failed on his promises to Momma. I don’t think of Momma often these days, which is odd since all I have is time. In fact, we are downright lazy, you and I, and the season is passing fast. Though the ocean is still warm, here and there I find a leaf tinged yellow or orange. We do childish things: ride bikes around the island. Reach for the brass ring on the flying carousel at Oak Bluffs. Once, we set our alarms and rose early enough to see the Edgartown lighthouse turn pink at sunrise.

  It might have to do with the fact that I am surrounded by the ocean, but you seem less concerned that I am going to leave you and that makes your meannesses fewer and farther between. Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft are on some kind of circuit here on “the island,” with parties in Chappy or Squibby every night, and we are left mostly alone. The Lovecrafts had to reciprocate all those cocktails, and the one night the rented house was filled with people and the driveway got blocked and you and I escaped to the roof and watched the attendants below scrambling like ants and above I have never seen stars so bright.

  I sound more like Vivi these days. How Vivi would sound. I take the Lovecrafts’ words in my mouth and try them. See which ones I like. Reciprocate.

  So much remains of the old you that affection rushes me when I least expect it. The lope of your walk on the sand. The simple swish of your ponytail. The arc of your lower back when you rise and fall on the balls of your feet. The kooky idea that tickles me in its strangeness. These are enough to make me forgive the alarming things you do, the signs that you are getting d
angerous.

  I should have known it would all come crashing down. The computer at the island house is an expensive design that curves. The owners are a Silicon Valley couple, and they’ve rigged the house with sensors that play music and trip alarms and turn on the air-conditioning, a network that’s supposed to make things easier but causes Mrs. Lovecraft anxiety. The curved monitor is perched on a standing desk in the main room, and in the rare moments when you are not on it, like now, I touch the touchpad just to bring up the screen saver, happy dudes with glowing teeth standing in front of the Acropolis. This time it goes directly to Mrs. Lovecraft’s open e-mail, which means you were just reading it. This is how I spot Vonnie Lee’s message.

  At first I don’t want to open it, because you are nearby somewhere, but mostly because the thought of going to the Parkman School in September fills me with dread I can taste. I’ve barely thought of Parkman, except when we bumped into Lila on the beach and you pretended not to know who she was and things got awkward fast.

  But Jo would open it, because information is power, and the one thing I do think of these days is Jo.

  The e-mail starts with apologies for its lateness. I can’t say I think Mrs. Lovecraft was looking for it, since she rarely read her e-mails. You assumed there was no harm in showing it was read; I, too, doubt your mother would notice. I click on the attachment, which is For Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft’s review, and Edits are welcome!

  Draft 504 Plan in Accordance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act

  Vivienne Weir attends Parkman School and has a diagnosis of “bolting disorder.” She is susceptible to fleeing incidents, otherwise known as “wandering,” “elopement,” or “bolting” (see definition below).

  Vivienne is extremely interested in outside attractions, in particular streets and highways and bodies of water. She will wander off to get to these areas, and all measures must be taken to ensure her safety. Due to Vivienne’s wandering, her physician strongly urges close and constant one-on-one adult supervision.