I Am Grey

by Washington, Jane

  I shook my head, refusing it. “I’m not thirsty.”

  He shrugged, taking it off me and handing it to Smith instead. Smith grinned at me, grateful, as though he wasn’t usually allowed to drink, but because of me, he could. I placed my plant on the table as Duke led us all outside again, where a ring of chairs had been set up beneath an awning. He had an armful of beers, and he tipped them into a cooler before sinking into one of the chairs. He set his beer down to strip off his shirt, and then he was drinking again, ignoring the rest of us.

  Marcus was chatting, asking about a geometry test.

  “I think I was away for that.” I made my excuses, managing to look apologetic.

  Marcus had a mean appearance, but he seemed harmless. He wanted to be friends. He was almost desperate for it. Maybe his appearance scared most people off. Marcus and Smith didn’t sit in any of the seats. They spread a blanket on the ground and pulled out a battered monopoly box. I found it strange that they skipped school to drink beer and play monopoly, but when Marcus patted the blanket beside him, I decided that it would be a good distraction.

  “Everyone’s talking about you at school,” Smith chirped, as he counted out play money.

  “Cut it out,” Duke growled, indicating that he was listening to our conversation, even though he had made an effort to separate himself from us.

  Smith fell quiet, but perked up again as the game began. Marcus offered me his beer three times, and on the third, I accepted it. We drank seven beers between the three of us, with Smith nursing his one drink for three hours. When Marcus finally won the game, I was feeling buzzed, so I went inside the trailer to find a bathroom. Duke was at the counter making sandwiches. He had given up watching us only minutes before and he now had the TV on. It rambled almost mutedly about drone strikes and traffic disruptions, and I found the sudden switch of topics to be strange. When did society become so numb to tragedy?

  “You don’t talk much; I’ve been watching you.” Duke had turned around and was examining me as I contemplated the TV.

  “You don’t either,” I said.

  He smiled a small smile, devoid of any real humour. “You’re right.”

  He walked toward me, his eyes dropping from my face to the hem of my dress. It had become crinkled, since I had been sitting on the ground as we played monopoly. I didn’t know what he found so fascinating about it—a simple summer dress, white, with thin straps. It ended a few inches above my knee.

  “Talking isn’t my thing.” The simple statement had sounded like a warning of some sort. “I like that it isn’t your thing either.”

  His hand threaded into my hair, cupping the back of my head, and then he was kissing me. I supposed that the warning had been a warning after all. That had been his way of asking for permission. I had never been kissed before—not because I was shy, or unsure. I had been very sure, once upon a time. Sure that it needed to be special, that it needed to be love.

  I no longer believed in special, or love.

  It seemed as good a time as any to have my first kiss. Duke took my lack of resistance as an invitation, his free hand tugging on my hip, bringing our bodies closer, tucking me against him. His tongue was inside my mouth, his fingers flexing on the back of my head.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” he murmured, pulling back an inch. “It was all I could think about with you sitting there in your little dress, all silent and tortured …”

  The sound of the door opening broke him away from me, and he returned to his sandwiches, leaving me standing there, apathetic. I still needed to pee. I told him so. He pointed out the bathroom, which was behind the main bedroom. His eyes were darker than they had initially appeared. Marcus snatched one of the sandwiches; he was oblivious to the looks his brother shot me, because he was too busy watching the headlines scroll across the bottom of the TV. I read something about a superstar found dead in a hotel room, with a heroin needle still stuck in her vein, and I escaped into the bathroom.

  Inside, the mirror seemed to be accusing me of something. My hair was tangled, my dress even more crinkled than before. My cheeks were flushed from alcohol, and my lips were rubbed red. I wanted to feel guilty, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. No curiosity, no spark. No guilt, shame, or disgust.

  I didn’t like him.

  He was nothing to me.

  Maybe I would let him kiss me again, but my apathy was melting into exhaustion. I left the trailer without saying goodbye, as they all gathered in Duke’s kitchen to eat.

  3

  Reverberation

  He wasn’t there: not that day, and not the next. Apparently, Nicholai Fell only worked at the school three days a week. I didn’t even have his plant anymore, I had left it at Duke’s trailer. I needed to go and get it. I needed his presence around me so that I could keep my food down again. So that I could hate myself just that little bit less.

  I made my way to Duke’s early in the morning, but nobody answered the door. I rapped on the kitchen window and then peered inside, trying to catch a glimpse of the plant. Instead, I saw a naked man with a tattoo coiling from his thigh to his stomach. The window framed his midsection. I thought it was a snake—but that was only because of the way it opened up when it neared the groin, maws widening, fangs visible. There was some part of my brain that found it ironic. Almost hilarious.

  The figure bent down, and Duke’s face replaced my view of the snake, reminding me that he had another snake tattoo on his neck. He arched a brow at me, motioning to the front door. I met him there and was glad that he had put on pants before he opened it.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “I need my plant.” I peered around him, pointing to the little bonsai on the table. It was entirely untouched, and so was the table. I suspected that he didn’t often eat meals there.

  “Oh.” He scratched his short hair before running his hand over his jaw. “I was wondering where that came from.”

  “Where what came from?” a girl asked, appearing beside him.

  She had red hair and cute freckles, but there was a sour look on her face. I didn’t have to wonder why. She was in her underwear, and I was at the door.

  “Never mind.” Duke stepped in front of her, reaching over to the table for the plant. “Give us a minute, Angie. Go back to sleep.”

  I had no idea whether the girl obeyed him or not, because Duke was quick to shut the door behind himself as he stepped out, forcing me to step backwards.

  I tipped my head toward the bedroom window. “That your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” He was rubbing his jaw again. “Why?”

  “No reason.” I took the plant from him. “Thanks. See you.”

  “Wait.” He grabbed my arm before I could walk off.

  I turned, and our eyes met. He wanted something; it was obvious by the way he waited. I didn’t say anything. His grip on my arm tightened, and then he was drawing me away from the window. He had moved so suddenly that my sandals became tangled, tripping me up. He caught me by the arms, lifting me free of the shoes. He turned, releasing me once I was caged against the outside of the trailer. I looked down at our feet in the dirt, needing to peer around the leaves of the bonsai. I couldn’t drudge up any fear, or even any excitement to feel wanted again.

  There was nothing.

  “Why do you keep wearing these dresses around me?” he asked, his hand digging into the curve of my waist. “I see you walking past every morning, every afternoon. Are you doing it deliberately?”

  He was pressing against the porcelain pot that the bonsai had been planted in. It seemed like a flimsy barrier.

  “No,” I answered. “The path goes past your plot. I live here too.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth before he was kissing me again. This time it was gentle and persuasive. It thrilled him, I could tell. The suspense. The mystery. Who was I? Would we get caught? When he broke away, he was breathing roughly. I remained the same. I glance
d down, realising that he had somehow knocked the plant out of my arms. The pot was in pieces, the soil spilling in a pile.

  “Duke? Where the hell did you go?” The girl was calling out to him.

  It sounded as though she was leaning out of the door, or maybe she had her face against one of the windows. Duke swore quietly, disappearing without a backward glance. I could hear him talking to her, ushering her back into the trailer, giving her excuses. I fell to my knees, the silent tears tumbling over my chin. I wasn’t crying because of the kiss, but because of the plant.

  I was devastated. Furious. It felt like a sign. I would never be one of Nicholai’s immaculate plants; he would never be able to tame the hurricane of memories that twisted at my mind and filled my chest with cement. I punched the side of the trailer in my fury, and the sound seemed to raise a new torrent of questions from the girl inside, which Duke worked to quieten.

  “Is that who you were with last night?” she screamed, her fury gradually raising to match my own.

  Apparently, Duke had a problem.

  But I had participated.

  Did that mean that I had a problem too?

  I gathered the plant up, holding my dress out and scooping the soil into it. I left the pot, because it sounded as though Duke was holding the girl back from barging out and confronting me. I ran the rest of the way to my RV and locked myself inside. I didn't know what to do with the plant, so I dumped the soil into a cracked bucket that had been hiding in the cupboard beneath the sink. I re-planted it and gave it a cup of water. And that brought me to eleven o'clock in the morning. I wasn’t even halfway through the day. That stung.

  I ended up walking to the train tracks by the time afternoon crawled around, as though I would go to school, even though it was a Saturday. I told myself that I wasn’t lost, and then I turned in the opposite direction to the school in an attempt to prove it. An hour later, I found myself at the library. I had been there before, of course—I was eighteen, and I had lived in this town my entire life. I didn’t have many friends anymore, but that was because they didn’t know what to do with me, just like my teachers and Shel.

  Some of my friends had visited me, before I had been put into the institution. I didn’t remember the visits, but Shel told me about them. She told me that I snapped, that I screamed obscene things and frightened my friends away. That’s why they weren’t my friends anymore. It was a year ago, but they had not forgotten. I had left my mark on these people, somehow. A year of space, of silence, and they were still afraid of me. Time had only festered the rumours, building up my infamy into a Frankenstein’s monster, piece by fetid piece. I could only assume that the carcass of my reputation was why nobody wanted me to go to class anymore. My friends—or Shel—had told the school about my obscene shouting. Everyone knew about how unstable I was.

  Maybe they knew other things, too.

  I signed out one of the library laptops and tucked myself away in the Young Adult section. It was always empty because the librarians considered the Young Adults to be children, evidenced by the toddler-safe, plastic table and chairs pushed up against the window. The Young Adults wouldn’t be caught dead in there. I typed homicide victims into the search bar and then immediately backspaced over the words, replacing them with why do people kill? Before I could hit Enter, another question began forming beneath my fingertips. It formed by way of me backspacing the letters that I had carelessly typed out. One by one, I stripped them away, until only the first word remained, garnished with a question mark.

  Why?

  I stared at the word for a long time. It was hosting an audition in my mind, casting the leading question of my life. Each option seemed more dramatic than the last, until the final combination clicked into place.

  Why me?

  I snorted, rolling my eyes. So melodramatic. It was easy to delete my question, and then there only seemed to be one thing left to search. One thing that would spur me to actually click the button.

  Nicholai Fell.

  His face appeared instantly; square-jawed, bright-eyed, intense and arresting. It was incongruous, even in the search results of his own name. I suspected that the image he presented was jarring no matter where he went or where his face appeared. I clicked on the icon, and then navigated to the associated article. It was his profile at Stanford, because he had just finished his PhD and had already been awarded a part-time position as research professor in the school of psychiatry. In a short section beneath the main profile, it was noted that Doctor Nicholai Fell was leading a new study in teenage deviance. I supposed it explained why he was slumming it at a public school several hours outside of Palo Alto, if nothing else. He was doing research on small-town deviants. The best kind of deviants. I pulled a piece of scrap paper from the pile on the plastic table and grabbed one of the colouring crayons that had been tipped neatly into a cup beside the paper, noting down Nicholai’s email address. I navigated to a new tab and typed in a new search.

  Teenage deviance.

  Drugs. Pregnancy. Cyber-attacks. Rape. Alcoholism. It was his pamphlet shelf in digital form. I exited the search and logged into my email account, drafting up an email before I could stop myself or think twice about it—not that I thought twice about many things anymore.

  Were you a teenage deviant?

  I sent the email, and then stared at the screen—specifically, at the return email address. It stated my name clearly. Nicholai would know that I had researched him. Maybe this was wrong. Unethical. I didn’t really think that he would mind, though. He wanted to help me, probably more than he usually wanted to help the constant stream of kids that dragged themselves into his office. I had seen it in his face.

  He had chosen me.

  How long would it be until he started to regret his choice?

  I packed up my things, returned the laptop, and walked until my legs began to ache. It was nearing sunset, but I had the lighthouse in my sights, and I didn’t want to stop until I reached my goal, because it felt good to have a goal. See? I knew where I was going this whole time. I was going to the lighthouse.

  The area was empty of people, probably because the wind had kicked up a notch. It bit at my cheeks and whipped my dress against my legs. It was fall, but the beach anticipated the winter. I could feel winter in the harsh, dry air; in the way the waves chopped up and down, licking at the air the way only icy water seemed to be capable of. Perhaps there was a storm brewing.

  I walked along the beach until the cold wind numbed my aching body, and then I started for the strip, ignoring the shocked looks that were tossed at me by the people I passed. I didn’t know why they were staring. Eventually, the pain in my legs grew to be too much, and I sat down on a bench outside one of the stores. Most of the places had closed for the night, but this one remained open. The dull, generic music that floated out of the open door was the perfect way to numb my mind.

  A couple walked past me, the woman giggling softly. Her coat flapped open, one of the buttons brushing against my knee. She cast me a quick look—as though to apologise—but I wasn’t paying any attention, because Nicholai Fell was standing there, staring at me.

  “Jen, go on to the car.” He was speaking to the woman beside him with the flapping coat, though he never took his eyes from me.

  “A patient of yours?” she whispered.

  I thought it was rude of her. I was right there.

  “Go on,” Nicholai urged, watching as she nodded and started away, before he sat down beside me.

  He pulled out his phone, dialled a number and waited for a few seconds before muttering an address. When he said, “Now, please.” I assumed that he was calling me a cab. Somehow, he had known not to call Shel. Maybe the school had been informed that I lived on my own now. He tucked the phone into his pocket and then stood briefly, shrugging out of his jacket. I felt it settle around my shoulders, and then he had my chin in his hand. He stared into my face, wordless. His eyes seemed darker—more mysterious—out there in the cold. Out of his office.
Out of the light of day. His jaw was tense.

  “Do I need to be worried about you, Mika?”

  What an odd question.

  “Would you be worried?” I laughed as I said it. I sounded a little unhinged.

  “Did you follow me here?”

  I drew back, and his hand dropped to his lap. His eyes stayed intent on mine, emotion swirling just below the murky depths. Everything about him seemed so clear, so clean, so transparent. It was a lie. His eyes promised a vastness to rival the sea; a ripple of sky-blue colour to mask every cloudy thought that lurked below. It was a lie. I was sure of it.

  “No.” I turned away from him. “Do people really do that to you?”

  “It has happened. Where are your shoes?”

  I glanced down, swallowing a wince. My feet were a mess. Had I left the RV without my shoes? I must have.

  “Someone grabbed me. I tripped. He lifted me out of my sandals.”

  “Why did he grab you?”

  “I suppose he wanted to kiss me.”

  There was a brief silence, and then he settled back, his arm stretching along the back of the bench. I could feel the heat of his body; he was only a few inches away. He seemed to be relaxing … but I paid more attention to Nicholai Fell than I did to any other human being these days, and I knew that he was great at pretending. He was even better at pretending than I was.

  “Did you want to be kissed?” he asked.

  I whipped my head toward him, an image of his shelf of pamphlets scrolling through my mind.

  “It isn’t as simple as that.” I didn’t want him fitting me into one of his topics on teenage deviance. He wasn’t allowed to push my experiences into a box, to categorise my feelings like an online survey on social anxiety.