by Alex Flinn
I glanced at Sloane. Her dress was black, which goes with everything, but probably, the corsage wasn’t expensive enough for her. Sloane probably needed an orchid fresh-picked today in Brazil and airlifted in for her pleasure. With a ribbon made of thousand-dollar bills.
“Since you put it that way.” I started to take it from him but, at the very last minute, he pulled it back. “Let me.”
And he pinned it on my ugly blouse. I let him. The gesture had more intimacy than I’d expected, the back of his hand brushing my neck as he pinned it on.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
“Enjoy it . . . Linda.” He smiled.
And for that second, it was like he and I were the only two people in the room. I inhaled deeply. Some roses, the ones you buy cheap from guys on the street, don’t have much scent, but this one did. I remembered my father, in one of his lucid moments, telling me that smell was the sense most associated with memory and that whenever he smelled a certain lemony-scented perfume, it reminded him of my mother (which made me want to either buy a lifetime supply of it or destroy every bottle). I know that, for as long as I live, I’ll associate the scent of roses with him, with Kyle. I was trying to think of something to say, something more than thanks, but he’d already moved away and was talking to, of all people, Kendra Hilferty, this emo girl from my chem class.
I inhaled again. Probably better to dream.
The rest of the night, I took tickets and picked up discarded cups and tried not to pay attention to Kyle laughing, Kyle talking, Kyle being crowned dance royalty. I mean, it’s too pathetic to be stalking the popular guy. But I enjoyed watching him. He was so opposite the way I was, so full of life and energy, and yet, I knew he and I were alike deep down. Deep down, we were both lonely. He was just better at hiding it.
I took the rose home and pressed it between the pages of Atlas Shrugged, which is the biggest book I own.
Hokey, I know, but I honestly believe that sometimes, there’s more to people than meets the eye.
May 31
He’s gone.
Kyle hasn’t been to school in over a week, not since the night of the dance.
The rumors are all over the place. He got mono. From Sloane. He got a modeling contract in France. He went to Florida to live with his mom. No, he’s in rehab. And then, he’s going to boarding school next year. Sloane is shockingly quiet on the subject. In fact, she’s dating someone else.
WHERE IS KYLE??????????
Though I’d rather believe he has mono, rehab is the most persistent rumor. It’s probably true. It’s typical, after all. There are no heroes in the world, only good-looking villains. People at school relish this gossip. On Kyle, drugs sound glamorous, I guess, like something rock stars do. But I only have to look at my father, emaciated, sick, shaking, willing to do anything for his next fix, to know that ADDICTION IS NOT SEXY!
I wish him in Florida with his mother instead, and at night, I look at his picture in the yearbook, or I open the pages of Atlas Shrugged, inhale the waning scent of the rose he gave me, and dream of what might have been.
Stupid, stupid girl.
June 13—A Year Later
I haven’t written in a while, over a year, actually. I guess that’s telling. It’s sad how often I used to write about Kyle Kingsbury, but what else in my life was, or is, interesting?
Still, I like the idea of a journal. It keeps my head straight. But the sad fact is, I have nothing to write about, nothing except my clichéd crush on a strung out pretty boy.
I suppose I should write about my everyday life—interesting. That’s what Samuel Pepys did. His journal (circa 1665) is filled with detailed and ultra-scintillating accounts of the wine he drank, the cloaks he wore. It’s considered an important primary source for information regarding life in 17th Century London.
But I doubt anyone will be researching 21st Century Brownsville or consult my diary if they are. Still, I’ll try to be better. I need to write. It makes the real world seem far less real.
July 13
In case I was worried about not having enough to write about, I shouldn’t have been. My father always provides material, sooner or later.
In this case, he’s completely insane!
Usually, I’m pretty good at ignoring noises in the night. This is an important skill for people who live in New York City and even more so for people whose fathers are engaged in low-grade criminal activity—particularly if those people need to study. I’ve slept through banging on the door, even gunshots.
But tonight, my father burst into the apartment. He was messed up, babbling about cops who were going to arrest him, drug dealers, a monster, a freak. His hands were shaking, and his eyes were wide. If he wasn’t high, he needed a fix.
I asked him to go sleep it off. Repeatedly, I asked him. Tell me in the morning. He wouldn’t leave.
Finally, I got the story (if any of it was even true) out of him.
He was bad in debt. His pusher, a mean mother named Hob, wasn’t taking no for an answer this time. He’d threatened to hunt me down, to kill me (me!), if Dad didn’t pay him.
“How much do you need?” I reached for my wallet, which I kept in my pocket at all times, figuring this was just another scam to get drug money from me and too tired to resist.
But he said, “Too much. You don’t have it.”
And then, he started to cry. He couldn’t pay. He was freaking out, but finally, he’d come up with a solution.
With surprising clarity, he told me about it. He’d called an old friend, a hitherto completely unknown-to-me friend who owed him a favor. I was surprised he had any favors to call in, but he actually had a lot of details. The friend lived in Brooklyn. He traveled a lot, but he had a son my age, a freakish kid who needed a companion. I could stay with him until it blew over and it was safe for me to come home.
A freak? Were there even freaks anymore? I asked my dad what he meant by freak, and that’s when the lucid moment ended. He started describing a creature more animal than man, a wolf-boy with fangs and claws, hair all over his body. “But he’ll protect you,” he promised.
Yeah, right.
I was pretty sure my dad was delusional or, let’s face it, stoned out of his mind. There’s no such thing as a wolf-boy. Well, not outside of the movies.
“Right. You want me to live with some stranger? What if he . . . attacks me?”
“There’s someone else living there, a housekeeper or something. It’s the only way. Please, Lindy. It’s the only way to save us, um, you.”
At this point, I couldn’t process any more of this, especially not on an hour’s sleep. I told him to go away. I’d talk to him in the morning.
I’ve been up ever since.
The obvious fact is, my father is kicking me out of the apartment and coming up with some lame story to hide it. I should probably be happy he even found me someplace else. Do I need my father? To live? Well, no. I’ve been making my own money since I was thirteen and got kids at Tuttle to pay me for “helping” them with papers. At worst, I’ll end up in foster care, which probably won’t be any worse than where I am now. I certainly don’t need him for emotional support, though I’d miss him. He is my dad.
But there could be real danger. My father’s friends aren’t exactly professors at Columbia. That’s for sure. We’ve been on the lam before. Once, when I was nine, we hid in Staten Island for almost a year with a friend of his, and my father never left the house.
My father is never concerned about me or my safety, only his own. And yet, he seemed so afraid just now that I wonder if he really could be, for once. When I was little, he used to hold my hand when I crossed the street. He used to kiss my knee when I fell. Maybe it’s like that again.
Doubtful. Would I be any safer with some “friend” my father could produce? Possibly. Once, before my mom died, my father was a respectable person. Maybe there’s someone from that previous life who still cares about him, who would take pity on him, take pity o
n me.
The teenage freak son is a strange detail, strange even for my father. Freak. An odd, obsolete, un-PC word, a lonely word that sounds like something from the Victorian era. There were news stories about the man in Indonesia whose skin looked like tree bark, the conjoined twins in Iran, joined at the head. Could he be like that?
It’s intriguing. I’ve always felt like a freak myself. When I went to school in the neighborhood, the kids would stare at me because I was reading, because I cared about school. Now, at Tuttle, I’m freakish for other reasons.
But what would it be like, to wear my freakishness on the outside, to have it be obvious to the world?
Or is it already?
In Jane Eyre, one of my favorite books, there is a point where Jane realizes that she will never have freedom (liberty, she calls it, since it’s a Victorian novel), because of her condition of poverty, plainness, and friendlessness. But at least she may have a different kind of servitude. This is what inspires her to leave her position as a teacher at the horrible Lowood Institution and, instead, become a governess. A new servitude, but one of her own choosing.
I don’t know if what my father says is true, or why my father wants me to go live with this wolf-boy, this freak, but suddenly, I know I won’t run away from it. I know that, like Jane, I will go.
I just have to get something from my father in return.
July 19
It’s happening. I’m going. Today. Maybe I’m crazy to go along with my father. Yet my life up until now has been so crazy that even craziness seems somehow sane.
I told my father I’d go on one condition. I will go if he goes to rehab.
He was surprisingly agreeable. He said that this experience showed him that he really needed to get help. He’d hit bottom. Still, I called my sister Sarah and got her to agree that she and her (big) boyfriend would pick him up and take him in. They promised not to take no for an answer.
I didn’t tell her why, that I was going to live with some stranger. She might try to talk me out of it, and I’m determined to go.
So I’m going.
Which, amazingly, probably isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
July 20
I’m here.
I don’t know what I was expecting, a dungeon, maybe, or a torture chamber, my captor in a hood or one of those medieval masks, invisible servants or clocks and candlesticks like in the Beauty and the Beast cartoon.
Maybe.
I got none of it. My new “home” is a normal brownstone in a neighborhood too nice for me to know. No wolf-boy in sight. Instead, when I got here, the door was opened by a man who said his name was Will. He said he was the tut
or. He’s blind.
I said, “My father has the crazy idea there’s a monster here.” I glanced over at him, and he looked down.
“No monster, miss,” Will said, “My employer is a young man of, I am told, unfortunate appearance. He doesn’t go outside because of it. That’s all.”
Man, he really was a freak.
I asked him if that meant I was free to leave if I changed my mind. Will nodded, but said, “Yes, but my employer struck a deal with your father, I believe—your presence here in exchange for his cooperation in not reporting certain criminal acts which were caught on tape. Which reminds me . . .” He reached into his pocket and took out a bag I knew all too well. “Your drugs, sir?”
WHAT??? I glared at my father. The liar. LIAR! He’d lied about everything. There was no danger, at least, no danger to me. He just wanted me to come here to keep his butt out of jail. LIAR.
Why was I surprised? Everything my father did was a lie.
“He caught me on tape,” my father admitted. “Breaking and entering.”
Of course.
“The drugs would result in a serious sentence, I believe,” Will said.
My father nodded. “Minimum mandatory—fifteen years to life.”
Un-freaking-real. “And you agree to this?” I demanded of Will. “My imprisonment?”
He said, “My employer will treat you well—better, probably, than . . .”
I laughed. It was blackmail, that’s what it was. And he was saying the blackmailer would treat me better? And yet, he might be right. I got it. Wolf-boy had seen my father. He knew he was a total scum. He was lonely and thought I’d be safer here than with him. He was probably right—even if he was a blackmailing scumbag. I should have left. But, in some little codependent place in my heart, I didn’t want my father to go to jail. I had to do this. I wanted my father to go to rehab.
A new servitude. I have to make the best of this. After all, what’s the worst that can happen? You can’t be held captive in the middle of New York City. If it got too bad, I could always scream and someone would come.
I hoped.
I gave my father a look that said he owed me, and he was gone. Gone without even saying good-bye. I wanted to cry, but I found I couldn’t.
Will, seeming to sense how deflated I felt, changed the subject.
“I can tell you’ve had a hard day, even though it’s only ten o’clock. Come. I’ll show you to your rooms.”
“Rooms? With an s?”
“Yes, miss. They’re beautiful rooms. Master Adrian—the young man I work for—wants you to be happy here.”
I laughed. Happy. Sure thing.
I noticed he locked the door with a key. The sound had a terrible finality. What had I done?
Still, I followed him upstairs. I thought I saw a shadow on the staircase, but it might have been my imagination. I didn’t want to see Will’s “employer,” the wolf-boy, my captor. Just because I was staying didn’t mean we were going to be friends.
He did, indeed, mean rooms.
When we reached my suite, the first thing I noticed were the words Lindy’s Room painted in gold on the door. Stalkerish much? The second, once I opened it, was the scent of roses that greeted my nose.
Roses. I thought of Kyle. Poor, stupid Kyle. But, of course, he wasn’t there. That night seems so long ago.
I have to admit, I gasped when I entered the room. I found that the scent came from a hundred roses, maybe more, all in vases on every surface.
Will must have sensed my confusion. “My employer grows roses,” he said.
“He grew these?”
“He thought you might like them.”
I nodded and entered.
I’ve never been a materialistic person. But then, I’ve never had much to be materialistic about. Is it wrong that I felt better about the place once I saw that my “rooms” were a whole floor of the house, that they had walls freshly painted a creamy yellow, my favorite color, and wooden floors and crown moldings? A madman wouldn’t create such a palace for someone he intended to rape and murder, would he?
But maybe this was his game, like this play I once saw, where this elderly couple kept inviting young girls back to their home using a ruse, when really, they intended to kill them.
But, even if that wasn’t it, did he think we were going to have some kind of ROMANCE, like he created this romantic hideaway for me, and I was going to fall in love with him when he’d basically kidnapped me?
What have I gotten myself into? I could always leave, if I don’t mind my father being thrown in jail. I shouldn’t mind, but sad to say, I do.
Will reassured me that Adrian meant me no harm, that he was just lonely. “Perhaps if you give it a chance, you won’t find it so terrible living here.”
I checked out the closets, looking for torture devices, handcuffs, ropes.
Instead, I found clothes, lots of them, what looked like the entire juniors department of Bloomingdale’s, all my size, too. How had he known my size? That sounded really stalkerish. And where was I going to wear this stuff? To entertain him? For this romantic fantasy he was having?
But in the next room, I found a surprise I did like. Books! Books from floor to ceiling, and not just any musty old books, but books by my favorite authors—by Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompso
n, and Jane Austen. The complete Shakespeare and the complete M. T. Anderson. Even some cool nonfiction titles. There were ladders to reach all the way to the top.
I was a prisoner, but the prison library was excellent.
On one table in the corner, I found an e-reader with a note that said, “In case I forgot anything.”
I don’t like to think I can be bought, but if I could, this guy definitely knew the currency. Roses and books—I could survive in these rooms forever.
I said, “When I was a kid, I used to like to go to the library, because it was safe there. That’s how I got to love reading so much.”
Will said, “You’re safe here.”
I laughed. “Safe?”
Will said, “Yes, safe. That story, whatever your father told you, is a lie, but you will be safe here. I wouldn’t go along with it if that wasn’t the case. Adrian only wants a companion. Live here a year. I’ll tutor you, and you can take the state tests, like the home-schooled kids do. At the end of the year, you’ll be alive, safe, and a year closer to graduation. Can you say the same if you stay with your father?”
I thought about it and said, “I think I need to be alone now.”
Will nodded and left. I walked around a bit more, examining, then I collapsed onto the bed and started to cry—not because I’m trapped here. I came here of my own accord. No, I was crying because I realized Will was probably right. I probably was better off here, here where I am warmer, cleaner, safer than anyplace I’ve ever been before. Here, there’s no risk of being evicted, no risk of evil men pounding my door at night. Some people never have to worry about those things, but I’m not so lucky.
After I finished crying, I spent the next two hours reading a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets, comfort food for my uncomfortable mind. At noon, there was a knock. I ignored it.
