Breathless

by Jessica Warman

  “Mazzie told me she’d come with me,” he says.

  “Mazzie?” I feel a rush of warmth that goes all the way to the tips of my toes. “You’re taking her?”

  Drew pauses. I can tell he’s really contemplating what to say next. “We’re just going as acquaintances, you know. She offered to come, and I couldn’t say no. It wouldn’t be—you know—Christian of me.”

  Mazzie is a Buddhist, and she thinks Drew is about the most annoying person on earth. She’s going with him as a joke; I’m certain I’ll be subjected to the highlights of her experience as soon as I get back to campus.

  But that’s not really why I’m surprised. Mazzie hadn’t told me she was staying on campus for winter break. Now that I think about it, she might have gone out of her way not to mention it. I feel like crying for her. I want to call her, but she’d only hang up on me for waking her.

  “Katie? You still there?”

  “Yes.” I pull my robe more tightly around my body. The air in the yard is damp and so cold that I can feel my core going numb.

  “I wanted to call you because . . . I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” Drew says. “I miss seeing you every day. I miss you a lot.”

  My cheeks burn as I beam. “I miss you, too.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “Soon,” I say, and I know it’s true as the word leaves my mouth. “As soon as I can.”

  Will is waiting for me in his doorway. “Come in,” he whispers, his tone urgent. He shuts the door behind him. “We need to talk.”

  It’s the first time I’ve seen him awake all day, and I’m horrified all over again by the way he looks.

  I sit on his bed as Will paces in a tight circle in front of me, smoking, his breath quick. “What were you doing on the phone?” he asks. He reminds me of a caged animal. His steps get faster and closer together. “Were you talking about me?”

  “Will, no. I was talking to a friend from school—”

  “Telling them what a loser I am? Telling them you can’t wait to get back to school so you never have to come home again and see your crazy loser of a brother?”

  “No!” Downstairs, our parents are still awake, I can hear their voices lilting up the stairs. With every circle, my brother inches a little closer to me.

  His voice gets louder. “I am your elder.” He points a bony finger in my face, the nail chewed down past the skin so that I’m staring at a bloody stub. “You respect me!” He’s almost shouting now. “What gives you the right to talk about me with your spoiled rich friends? You do not speak about me without my permission, do you understand? You think you’re better than me because you go to some fancy prep school for rich kids now? You probably tell them all about me, don’t you? You tell them you wish I’d died. You stood there and didn’t do anything, just like everyone else. Everyone was laughing, saying that loser Will would have been better off if he’d died, right? And you laughed too, didn’t you?”

  Where are our parents? “Will—no, I would never laugh at you. Will, I love you, please calm down, okay? Come here, just sit down and talk to me—look! Look at my leg.” I pull my robe apart and show him the deep gouge in my shin. “I was in such a hurry to reach you that I fell on the cinderblocks and cut myself, and I didn’t even care. I wanted to go with you, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  The Ghost appears in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard his footsteps on the stairs. It’s the first time in a long time that I can remember being grateful to see him. It’s the first time I’ve ever been scared to be alone with my brother.

  “Will,” the Ghost says, his voice soft but firm. “Kathryn.”

  Will stops, shifts his glare to the Ghost. “We’re just having a friendly conversation, man.”

  The Ghost puts a hand to his lips and carefully removes an almost invisible piece of tobacco from the corner of his mouth. “It’s too late for this,” he pronounces calmly. The corners of his mouth twitch into the slightest sarcastic smile, but his eyes don’t move. “Time for all the good boys and girls to go to bed.”

  But I can’t sleep. Once my parents go to bed, even though it’s almost the middle of the night, I creep downstairs and pick up the phone and dial my dorm room.

  Our answering machine picks up on the third ring. “Mazzie Moon . . . ,” I murmur. “Mazzie Moon, are you awake?”

  Beep. “Good God, Katie, what the hell do you want? You know it’s, like, two in the morning?”

  But I can tell from the sound of her voice that she wasn’t sleeping.

  “If I could see you, I’d smack you across your dumb face,” she says.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were staying for break?”

  She pauses. “Oh. You talked to Drew.” She adds, as an afterthought, “That loser.”

  “You’re the one who’s going to mass with him.”

  “Yeah, well, you know I’m always looking for a good laugh.”

  I close my eyes and smile, clutching the phone, wanting more than anything to be there with her, alone in our room, safe.

  “I’m going to come back early,” I tell her.

  She gives an exaggerated yawn. “Please don’t.”

  “Mazzie, what are you doing there? Why didn’t you go home?”

  “How’s your dead brother doing?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  She yawns again. “I’m very tired, Katie.”

  “You are wide-awake. You’re probably sitting at your desk studying calculus, aren’t you?”

  “. . . ”

  “Are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Okay. Chemistry, then.”

  “. . . ”

  “I’m right.”

  “I hate you, Katie. When are you coming back?”

  “As soon as I can.”

  There’s a long pause, her end of the line silent except for the grinding of her teeth, which she doesn’t realize she’s doing. “I can’t say I’m completely disappointed,” she says. And then, without so much as a good night, she hangs up on me.

  chapter 7

  The night before school starts after winter break, Mazzie and I are sitting beside each other in my bottom bunk, reading our shared copy of Crime and Punishment for English class, when Jill, our dorm assistant, pounds a fist against the door.

  “Kitrell,” she says, her lips pressed together in contempt. Jill is thickly built, a little too masculine to be pretty, and takes herself very seriously as an authority figure. Estella has recently started a rumor that Jill is a hermaphrodite. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  “But it’s—”

  “I know, it’s after lights-out. This is complete insubordination, and if it were up to me, you’d be on work details every weekend until you graduate.” She glares at me. “But Mrs. Martin says it’s okay. Just this once.” She takes a deep breath of resignation. “Supposedly it’s official swimming business, but you and I both know better than that. Don’t we?”

  Before I manage to throw my slippers on and grab a robe and take a quick look in the mirror, Jill has pushed her way into our room. When she sees that our reading light is on and that Mazzie is sitting atop the covers on my bed—that Mazzie isn’t even in her pajamas yet—Jill appears on the verge of rage. “Mazzie Moon!” she barks, her voice dipping so deep that I can see how she really, really could have a penis. “Get your butt in bed, now.” And as we’re leaving the room, Jill snaps off the reading lamp, leaving Mazzie fully dressed in the darkness.

  Drew is in the vestibule between the hallway and the common room. When he sees me, he lets out a deep breath. “Hi,” he says.

  “Hi.” Behind us, in the common room, I can hear the low murmur of giggly voices, the sound of a chair falling over.

  “Estella and Stetson,” he explains.

  “Oh. Sure.”

  The vestibule is almost dark. Outside it’s snowing; there are almost-melted snowflakes on Drew’s hair, on his face, and as he steps closer to me and takes my hands in his, I can f
eel that he’s chilled through. He isn’t wearing a coat or anything; I’m certain he and Stetson (who are roommates) snuck out their window to get here.

  “I hear you have some official swimming business to discuss with me,” I say, grinning.

  “Very official,” he says. His teeth are chattering a little bit, even though it’s warm in the vestibule.

  “Are you cold?” I put my hands on his shoulders, rubbing his arms.

  He shakes his head. “Maybe a little nervous.”

  There’s a sudden, conspicuous silence in the common room, which probably means Estella and Stetson are under a blanket on the sofa. She is the only person at Woodsdale who could ever get away with that kind of thing without facing expulsion. But facing any kind of punishment isn’t really an issue for her, since she’ll never get caught. There’s a part of me that would give anything to have what she has.

  “I was going to throw stones at your window,” Drew says, still shaking a little bit. “I thought it would be romantic.”

  Just knowing he had the idea makes me fall in love with him a little bit. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because it’s so cold. And I didn’t want Mazzie to yell at me.” He licks his lips. Our arms are around each other now, our noses almost touching. “Besides, there’s something I want to ask you, and I wanted to do it in private.”

  My heart starts to flutter. Please, please, please don’t ask me to go to church with you again.

  “I know we’ve been spending a lot of time together lately. I wanted to tell you that I’ve been having a great time.”

  “Me too.” I’m afraid I’ll start crying, staring at his clear blue eyes, so big and sincere and nervous.

  “So, I wanted to ask you if you wanted to be . . . ah . . . exclusive.”

  I am melting into a puddle of Katie-water. I don’t deserve him. How can he possibly want me?

  But he does. “I’m crazy about you, Katie,” he says. “Every time I’m away from you, you’re the only thing I can think about.”

  All I can do is gaze up at him and try to stay upright, clinging to his waist with my arms.

  “Katie? You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Oh, right. Well, duh, Drew. Yes!”

  He lets out a deep breath, which I didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Oh, wow. You have no idea how happy I am.”

  Then, for the first time, he kisses me on the mouth. It feels like I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life. I don’t have much to compare him to, but I can tell he’s a good kisser. We back against the wall, still kissing, and oh my God I can’t believe this is happening to me. On the other side of the door to the common room, I can hear Estella and Stetson again. I open my eyes and see the double doors cracked open slightly; they are staring at us, snickering, Estella biting her fist to suppress her giggles. But I don’t even care.

  After word spreads that Drew and I are an official couple, life seems almost perfect. Aside from shooting wicked glances in my direction whenever they see me, Grace Waugh and Leslie Carter pretty much leave me alone. Even Estella’s attitude toward me seems to soften, at least temporarily. Sometimes I don’t even remember what life felt like before Woodsdale.

  But there are inevitable reminders, things that happen to yank me out of the surreal life I’m living and put me back in my place.

  In the middle of the night, the phone rings from underneath a cashmere sweater draped specifically to muffle its noise. Mazzie hates having to climb out of bed, knowing that it takes a good thump to my face to wake me, and in my sleep I can sense her light feet padding across the carpet, the muffled barring of the phone, her swears gurgling out in a hissed whisper, warped by her mouth guard.

  She taps me on the face with the receiver. “It’s for you, dummy.” And she climbs back into bed and falls right back to sleep—at least I think she does—her jaw clicking faint vibrations into the mattress above me.

  “Yeah?” I can’t hear anyone. I’m holding the phone upside down. I turn it around, sitting up, trying to get my bearings.

  The voice is raspy and tired and almost unrecognizable. Almost. Immediately, I feel an ache in my chest that spreads to my belly and down my whole body. I feel lonely. I feel homesick. I feel scared.

  “Katie.” It’s him. His voice sounds far away, like he’s calling from someplace he’s visiting with a time machine. It isn’t the first time he’s called since winter break, but it’s the first time he’s managed to catch me in my room.

  I sit up, blinking to see better in the dark. “Hey, you. Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m at home.”

  “Oh.”

  “Was that your roommate that answered?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet she’s a rich girl, huh?”

  “. . . ”

  “So you like it up there?” His voice takes on a twinge of bitter sarcasm. “Up there at prep school?”

  “Yes.” I lean my head against the wall behind me, closing my eyes. There is an invisible thread connecting my brother and me, no matter how far apart we are—there always has been—but lately, whenever I sense its tug, it feels almost painful.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Sure I do. Sure I like it. Why wouldn’t I?”

  He snorts. “You got some high-class boyfriend?”

  “Cut it out. If you called me to be an asshole I’m going back to sleep.”

  “Come on . . . I’m just joking. Seriously, Mom tells me you got a boyfriend. What’s his name?”

  I hesitate. I only even mentioned Drew to my mom because she kept asking if I’d met any nice boys, and there was a part of me that couldn’t contain my excitement over Drew—not even with her. “His name is Paul.”

  “Paul what?”

  “Paul . . . my boyfriend Paul. Why do you want to know?” I imagine him calling directory assistance at three in the morning, hissing craziness over the line.

  “And you like him?”

  I sigh. “Of course I like him.”

  “You don’t want to tell me his last name?”

  “Hutton,” I lie.

  “Paul Hutton. Sounds like a rich boy.”

  “So?”

  “So is he? One of them rich boys?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You gonna marry him and live the high life? Eat bonbons and have babies and lie on your back for a living?”

  “I’m going now.” I start to hang up the phone, bringing it slowly away from my ear, waiting.

  “Come on, I was kidding. Don’t hang up on me, Katie.” His voice is pleading. “Come on, man. I don’t have anyone else to talk to.”

  “Well, it’s the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep?”

  I can hear him puffing on a cigarette. I picture him in his bedroom, the window open, his head sticking out. He’s on my parents’ ancient cordless phone—that explains the poor connection. “I can’t sleep here. It’s impossible. I haven’t slept in days.”

  “That’s great,” I murmur.

  “You know I could have gone there. I could have gone anywhere I wanted to. I’m just as smart as you.”

  “Okay.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  I sigh. “Well . . . you were always getting kicked out. Everywhere they sent you, you got kicked out.”

  “So?”

  “So, you and I are different people. What I’m doing doesn’t have anything to do with . . . what you’re doing.”

  For a long time he doesn’t say anything—at least it feels like a long time. I listen to Mazzie breathing in her sleep, her long, slow inhalations so calm that I can’t help but relax a little bit.

  Then he says, “Screw you, man. I didn’t call to have you treat me like shit.”

  “Why did you call me, then?”

  “I just wanted to talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about? It’s almost four in the morning. I have to get up in an hour.”

  “They don’t let you sleep late th
ere? They don’t come in and wake you up with feathers on your cheeks?”

  “I have to get up for swimming practice. I have to be in the pool by five thirty.”

  “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “. . . ”

  “. . . ”

  “You’ll get kicked out too.”

  “I won’t get kicked out, Will. I’m not stupid.”

  “Whatever. You think you’re so much better than me?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Fine. Hang up.”

  “Screw you, Will.”

  “Screw you too.”

  I lay the phone down and take a deep breath, trying to time my inhalations with Mazzie’s. There’s a pop as she slides her jaw back into place, and her face appears beside me, upside down, and before I know it she shimmies down her ladder and crawls into bed with me. She’s been awake the whole time, listening. “Was that your dead brother?”

  “Yes.”

  She slides down a little lower beside me, batting her eyelashes, seducing the truth right from my achy muscles. “Where’s he at now? Another mental ward?”

  “He’s home, I guess. Were you eavesdropping?”

  She pulls out her mouth guard, a thread of saliva stringing from her mouth, and lets it fall, wet, onto the rug. She is so quick—before I know it, she does a tiny, compact somersault onto the floor, pops upright, and arranges herself cross-legged on the carpet, rubbing her hands together with anticipation, ready to soak up my troubles. “What did he say? Is he going crazy again?”

  “Aw, Mazzie, I have to get up in an hour.”

  “Like you’ll get any sleep anyway.”

  “I’m serious, Mazzie.”