by Rowan Maness
“Tell me more about Believer.”
“I don’t know how he does it. I figured it was someone I’d chatted with. But now—it has to be someone I know, right? I thought maybe it was Shane, or even Mary-Kate. Then the coyote told me I was doing it all to myself, and that seemed to explain everything. It seemed right. It should have been me.”
“The coyote—the threatening figure you’ve described?”
“He’s not a threat.”
Never was.
“You have used the word ‘threat’ to describe it, multiple times.”
“I think at first I was conflating him with Believer, this person who is real and who really is trying to hurt me. They showed up at the same time. But I think the coyote was trying to warn me.”
“Is the coyote in this room right now?”
I didn’t want to admit he was.
There was a gentle knock at the door, and the receptionist poked her head in. I watched Dr. Judson’s face for its brief annoyed tic—she hated being interrupted.
The receptionist handed her a slip of paper—she read it quickly before handing it back.
“Joss, I want to let you know that your mother’s here and has been notified that you’re with me. We can continue.”
I felt a mixture of relief and agitation that made it hard to sit still. My mother had always been aware, in the abstract, of how deep my lies could get, but now she’d seen the evidence. She was probably fielding passive aggressive phone calls from Deb Mahoney and Brenda Tatum out in the waiting room.
“Did you tell her I was here?” I asked, watching as the coyote began to shrink to the size of a small mouse.
“No, I didn’t.”
There was no use trying to tell if Dr. Judson was lying—after seeing her every week for more than a year, I knew she wasn’t.
“And what about the ghost of Peter Caplin? Are you still seeing it?”
“No,” I said. “Why do you bring him up?”
“He broke into your world. Like this Believer.”
Dr. Judson’s first name is Gillian, which suits her. The oldest of Rhiannon’s sisters is named Gillian, too, but she pronounces it with a hard G, like Guinevere. I cycled through these facts in my head, things I knew to be true, objective points my jinxes had no effect on.
“When did you dissociate last? Was that Friday, on the mountain?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m always on the edge. The clock trick doesn’t work anymore. I watch for five minutes and know it’s five minutes, but it could feel like a second or an hour, and then that starts getting to me.”
“What starts getting to you?”
“If it’s possible for a moment to feel like forever, then what isn’t possible?”
We kept talking. I let Dr. Judson push the conversation as far as she wanted. The coyote was the one who ended it. He scurried over to my chair and climbed up, perching himself on the arm, mouse-size and alert.
I’m bored. I don’t like it here.
He started shrinking again. I held my palm flat and he walked onto it. Dr. Judson was asking questions.
“What do you feel like doing?”
“Making a fist.”
“What do you think will happen if you make a fist?”
“I’ll squish him, or he’ll disappear.”
“Is that what you want?”
Yes.
“He says it’s what he wants.”
I looked at him for the last time, and met his eyes, now tiny as pinpricks. When I closed my hand, he slipped across the seam. He didn’t feel like anything. I licked a salty tear from the corner of my mouth, felt its wet trail on my cheek. I was crying not because he was gone but because he existed in the first place. I banished the coyote to the astral plane. He could live there with my made-up women and my ghosts—I wouldn’t visit them anymore.
I had to live here, in the ugly, imperfect world where I was only one person and everyone knew my innermost secrets.
I had to face my mother. I had to look at her and understand that I’d collapsed her world like Believer collapsed mine. I had to repeat embarrassing things to her, my friends, the school administration, the police. There was nobody in the world in love with me anymore, no one holding on to promises I made, no one waiting for me to make them feel something.
• • •
Her face was like the calm eye of a hurricane. She hated me. Dr. Judson took her aside and they spoke while I waited in a chair and the receptionist watched me like I might start trashing the place.
Out in the parking lot, she led me to the car, walking fast so I had to hurry to keep up. I wanted her to hug me and tell me everything was going to be okay, but she wouldn’t. She kept putting space between us.
She hadn’t taken the time to find a shady spot like she usually did, and the car was too hot to sit in. She started it and ran the air-conditioning while we stood on the sidewalk and waited for the leather seats to cool. The car was straddling a white line, taking up two spots. I thought of her speeding to Dr. Judson’s office, mind racing with Tumblr images and their implications. I couldn’t bear it.
Something caught my eye from the covered parking on the other side of the office park. Mr. Lauren’s red Volvo. He’d waited after all. He was talking on the phone, distressed. He’d seen his name on the Tumblr.
When we drove past, he pulled his car out too. I didn’t turn around, but in the side-view mirror I saw his bandaged thumb. He stayed behind us as we headed west toward a neon sunset piled up in the sky like a slow explosion.
My mom waited to talk until we were almost home.
“How are you feeling?” she started out.
“Is that what you really want to say, or is that what Dr. Judson suggested you say?”
“It’s what I want to ask.”
“Are you asking that because you want to yell at me but you want to make sure I’m not suicidal first?”
She sighed and the car went faster.
“I’m asking how you’re feeling because I don’t know how you’re feeling. I don’t know how you’re feeling because you don’t tell me how you’re feeling. You don’t tell me anything. Ever. Maybe I stopped asking, and that’s why this is happening.”
She looked at me. “Answer the question, if you can.”
The “if you can” bothered me enough. I answered.
“I’m feeling a little blurry.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No,” I said.
“You must know.”
“I’m trying—”
Her voice was hoarse, on the edge of breaking. Her eyes were soft and red. Her hands gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing holding her to the ground.
“It’s not fair to you, Joss. I want you to understand I know it’s not fair, and actually it’s some kind of assault, and we will find out who did it and they’ll be held accountable. But I can’t be there for you right now, and I don’t particularly care if you’re upset about that.”
“I get it.”
“You give me nothing. I have nothing to give you at this moment. I am so deeply ashamed of myself.”
“Mom, it’s not your fault.”
“Just—” She choked up. Her face crumpled for a moment before she regained control, flexing her jaw, holding it still. I had to look away.
“Later. Later,” she managed to say, in a raspy whisper that made me feel as small as the disappearing coyote.
At home, I waited as she unlocked the garage door. I was suddenly scared, still not completely convinced I was in the correct dimension. I recited the necessary words, said the things I was afraid of so they wouldn’t happen.
The coyote is waiting in the kitchen.
The coyote is waiting in the kitchen with Believer.
Peter Caplin is back from the dead.
Believer is waiting in the kitchen.
• • •
The first thing she did was take my laptop and phone, tearing my room apart, grabbing my Kindle and
iPod, too, just for good measure.
She’d looked helpless, clutching them in her arms as she yelled at me.
“Why do you do this? Why do you put yourself in these situations?”
Dylan appeared. Some shared exasperation passed between them—they’d clearly already talked about everything. Dylan probably tried to calm Mom down, repeat the things she needed to hear. You’re a good mom. It’s within the realm of normal teen girl behavior. She’s safe.
My mom dumped the laptop and phone into Dylan’s arms and stormed out, footsteps heavy on the stairs. Cabinets slammed in the kitchen. Ice clinked in a glass. She poured herself a drink and stomped back upstairs. I saw her as she passed my door on the way to her room. Distraught, tight-mouthed Nina, her chest splotchy with hives.
“Dylan—” I started.
He was mad too.
“No way,” he said, shaking his head. He knew I was going to ask him to let me back on the laptop.
“But I have to figure out who’s doing this to me,” I begged. “I know if I could just look, I could find them. I’ve written to them. They want me to respond. Each time they give me little clues, clues I’ve missed—”
“What good would it do, if you knew who it was?”
“Come on. I need to know what people are saying, at least.”
“You don’t want to know,” Dylan said, more serious than I’d ever seen him. “The school took down the original post, but your pictures and”—he blushed—“videos—are all over. They’re hashtagged and searchable on Tumblr. No matter what happens, they’ll be out there forever.”
“I know.” I sat down on my bed.
“Not good,” Dylan said, shaking his head.
“I know,” I repeated. Then, indicating the laptop and phone, I asked, “What are you going to do with those?”
Dylan left without answering, and I imagined him tossing my devices into the swimming pool. I was defenseless, disconnected. How I would ever recover from this intrusion and public humiliation was beyond thought.
Maybe my mom would decide we had to move, to start fresh somewhere new. I could go by my middle name. Louisa Wyatt was pretty great. Totally different from Joss. I could be Lou, or Lulu. Once enough time passed, I would convince my mom to let me have a laptop again. I’d agree to some kind of keystroke-monitoring program. I’d let my mom check my history every day.
But at least I would be online. Maybe, if I swore I would be careful, I could even talk to people, as my new self. My mom always wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest. Louisa Wyatt, mysterious new girl from Arizona with shades of a traumatic past, arriving in Seattle, or Portland, or Vancouver.
I’d miss Mary-Kate and Rhiannon, but I could make new friends. I could leave behind the less savory aspects of my personality. As Louisa I would be open-minded, optimistic, sweet. I would force down my cynical side and shrink it like the coyote until it wasn’t a part of me anymore. All the things I hated about myself would be eliminated.
It was a physical severing. Like my hands had been cut off at the wrists. My eyes kept darting around the room, looking for some way to transport myself, to get out. The absence of my phone was particularly disorienting. I didn’t know where to look, what to do. Thoughts came and went every second. I felt like I was losing them. I needed to write them down, but there wasn’t an outlet.
I could hear muffled conversation from my mom’s room, phone calls made, her voice calm one moment, tremulous and nervy the next.
I watched the neighborhood through my window. Cars pulled into driveways, unloading batches of kids in sports gear and backpacks. Families went on evening walks, toddlers stopping to investigate every crack in the sidewalk. A large black poodle stopped at the gate in my yard, sniffing until his owner had to yank him away.
Do you smell the coyote?
The cat came and checked on the lizard, resting one paw on the shelf holding the cage. She hopped up, slinked between the cage and the wall, and fell asleep immediately in the warmth of the heat lamp.
The only clocks I had were on the laptop and phone. There was no way to know what time it was. It had been dark for a while when I found The Sirens of Titan in the stack of books on my desk. The absence of Shane’s voice in my life was a bigger gap than I expected. I’d almost called him to come get me when I was outside the 7-Eleven. He was the first one I thought to ask.
I read the whole book. Waltham Kittredge was a minor character, the name I’d seen when I flipped to a random page at Shane’s house. But the main character’s last name was Constant. Like James. Shane must have used it for him. Signs and portents. I’d seen what I wanted to see, just like the men I chatted with overlooked improbabilities in favor of prolonging a fantasy.
I’d been so mean. I understood that now. I could walk around the block and knock on Shane’s door. He’d be there.
In bed, a watery breeze drifted across my face from the hole in the window. Kit’s instructions on how to meditate floated through my brain.
Kit: Look up at the sky. Try to clear your mind
I laid an intention down.
Find Believer.
Somewhere in the neural network of my body there were things I’d known and forgotten. The names of thirty different dinosaurs. Facts about each one—carnivorous, upper Jurassic, duck-billed. Answers to pop quizzes. Moments passed with my dad. My whole life before age eight.
I wanted access to the full scope of my memories. I had questions, but the answers were well buried. I was so good at lying that I’d fooled myself first and best. Where did I go when I blacked out? What happened to the time I lost? Why did I do nothing to stop Believer? Why did I welcome him into my life?
Who drove me to Papago Park, to meet James?
CHAPTER 24
I woke suddenly. A dream vanished.
Slip ’N Slides. Drone attacks. Ghosts. The coyote in exile, tearing at the seam trying to get back in. Lyrics to a song: “Tonight I’m all alone in my room/ I’ll go insane.”
It was always going to end up like this. All the brains and hearts. I was always going to separate from them violently. It was always going to be a matter of deleting.
The air conditioner gave a cold zap and stopped working. The house creaked and settled unnaturally. The power was out, and the air was stagnant when I looked through the hole in my window. What I first thought were spaceships turned out to be bright slashes of lightning beyond the mountains.
I heard footsteps. They stopped outside my door, and I saw Dylan’s bare feet, lit blue with the light of his phone. He checked the thermostat and continued downstairs.
I sprang out of bed and crossed through the bathroom to Dylan’s room. Musty and lived-in now, no longer abandoned, it was darker than mine because his window faced the house next door directly. I searched quickly, looking for my phone in piles of clean laundry, underneath strewn records, at the bottom of his dresser drawers. Something caught my eye on the floor—a blue crayon, pointing under the bed. I pounced on it and reached my hand out—
My fingertips brushed against the familiar shape of my phone case. I grabbed it quickly and ran back to my room, diving beneath the covers.
I opened Facebook and logged in. I had a ton of new messages, mostly from Brophy boys wondering if there were any other videos. There was no way I was going back to school, so I knew I would never see them again, and I was able to read their words without letting shame or despair overtake me. It helped that the boys were so focused on my exposed body. They were distracted by its easy availability, so they didn’t care to put together the other clues on the Tumblr—clues about not only my secret online life, but my secret inner life, too.
There were no additional posts on the Tumblr, but all the entries had new notes on them—and Dylan was right, they weren’t just people from school. If I clicked on the time stamp on each entry, I could see the tags that Believer used to make the videos and photos widely searchable—there was “NSFW,” “nude girl,” “porn,” and “girl masturbating.” Believ
er had gotten a little creative with them, too, and perversely, I found some amusing—“teen tits,” “stupid blonde bitch,” and “Arizona schoolgirl.”
The video and photo gallery posts were reblogged more than two hundred times each. I followed those links to new pages—most were random collections of porn GIFs, but there were weird personal blogs, too. On one, run by some guy in Russia named VladymyrXO, my naked breasts were sandwiched between a pencil drawing of Bart Simpson and a revolving, three-dimensional animation of a yin-yang.
When I couldn’t look any more, I opened my text messages. Mary-Kate, from right after I left school—
MK: Are you ok?
Then there were two from around dinnertime—
MK: I called your mom and asked if I could come by but she said no
MK: I can’t believe this
Rhiannon sent a slew of incomprehensible texts. Hours later she sent more explaining she’d stayed home from school that morning because she’d gotten all her wisdom teeth taken out and was high on painkillers.
Rhiannon: wtf wtf wtf Joss I don’t know what to say
Rhiannon: I’m sorry for being mad at u
Rhiannon: What do you need boo
Rhiannon: I’m telling everyone u were hacked and it’s all fake
It was stifling hot under the covers without the air conditioner running. I came out and sat by the window, opening it fully, shivering a bit in the cool draft. I was listening for something, and realized the reliable click of the motion-detector light in the driveway wasn’t working. I craned my neck and checked: Other houses on the block still had electricity—but the only light in ours was from the curved line of solar-powered lights lining a path through the front yard.
My bedroom door creaked open. I shoved the phone into the track of the window frame and turned, using my body to hide it.
“Dylan—”
He was holding two pints of ice cream and a box of Popsicles.
“Electricity’s out.”
“I know,” I said.
“These are going to melt, if you want one.”
