Alive

by Chandler Baker

  But he’d taken pains to talk my parents through the selection of a doctor and a surgery center. It was he who’d gotten me in with Dr. Belkin, who, despite his chilling bedside manner, is still one of the best doctors in the country.

  “Not exactly,” I say. Though my life has gotten complicated, that’s for sure. “It’s just a transition.” This is my canned response, the one I give to any adult who asks. A transition. A transition to what? Into insanity?

  He nods, shifting his feet out to shoulder-width. “That’s what I tell all my patients. People think you can have a major surgery and—poof!—they’ll be shooting baskets the next day. But that’s not realistic. The body has its own timeline and its own matters to attend to. You just need time to heal.” I don’t argue with him on that front. My heart certainly does seem to have a mind of its own.

  “Is Henry here?” I ask after an awkward pause.

  “Ah, right. Sorry to keep you. It’s just such a pleasant surprise.” I blush. “Henry’s downstairs in the basement. You know the way.”

  I usher myself down the carpeted hallway. Henry’s mother has never met a scented candle she doesn’t enjoy, and the house usually smells fragrant with spiced pumpkin or apple cider. Today I detect something candied and appetizing.

  The door to the basement is closed and I knock lightly before opening it. At the bottom of the stairs, I find Henry sprawled out on the couch. He straightens, pushing a pillow back into place, when he sees me.

  “Don’t look so alarmed,” I say, plopping down next to him. A flood of memories rushes to meet me. I’ve spent hours on this couch devouring grainy episodes of The Twilight Zone or tuning the AM radio dial to just the right frequency to catch Lunatic Outpost. But it’s been months and the basement’s been cleared of all of our strewn-about books and posters and empty popcorn containers.

  “I’m not. I just thought under cover of darkness in the middle of the night was more your style.”

  It’s been a while since I smiled, and my lips feel tight and chapped when I try. “I’m sorry, Henry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not believing you about Levi.” He glances away, suddenly interested in the large projection screen where nothing is playing. “Something’s not right about him.”

  He huffs. “No, really?”

  I roll my eyes and scoot closer. I dig my phone out of my pocket. “I found this.” I hand him the cell, with the article pulled up on-screen.

  He looks at me and then at the phone. Carefully, he takes it. I watch as he silently forms the words. I can read his lips and know when he reaches the end, but he returns to the beginning, just like I did. When he’s finished, he taps the screen off and hands it back to me.

  “Christ, Stella. When did you find this?”

  “Yesterday. You’re right, though. He’s following me. Watching me like I’m a mouse and he’s waiting for his moment to pounce. I swear he was outside my window last night.” When I say this to Henry, it comes across as nonchalant, easy to talk about when someone else is in the room with me…but when I’m alone, the thought makes my insides shake.

  Henry rakes a hand through his hair and lets out a deep breath he’s been holding. “Jesus. We have to tell someone.”

  “Tell them what? That a guy who goes to my school is following me? What proof do I have?” I’m not sure how much to tell him about Tess.

  “You’re a pretty seventeen-year-old girl, Stella. He’s your ex-boyfriend. People will believe you.”

  I brush aside his compliment. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Henry, but I don’t exactly have the best track record for, you know, stability.” In the past few weeks alone I’ve had screaming fits, fainted, and chopped off all my hair. Inventing a stalker would be the cherry on top.

  “Still—”

  I hold up one finger. “Wait. That’s not all.” I gulp. “But if I tell you, I need to tell you everything. And you have to promise not to have me committed on the spot. Swear?” I hold out my pinky finger. He stares down his nose at it.

  “I know you sometimes conveniently forget, but I’m a guy. Guys don’t pinky-swear, Stel.”

  “Swear,” I insist, shoving my pinky in his direction.

  He sighs and loops his finger into mine. “You better not be messing with me.”

  “I wish I were.” I hesitate on the brink, knowing that once it’s said, it can’t be unsaid. “You know how I’ve had a few episodes recently?” I curl my fingers into air quotes. He tilts inward, listening. “Well, they’ve been a little more than just passing out, headaches, routine medical stuff….”

  Henry plays with the brim of his hat while I talk. He doesn’t interrupt me. Not when I tell him about the anatomy-class hallucination or the splitting pain every day at five oh eight or the fact that I saw Tess dead at school only days before she died. I come clean and tell him that I saw Tess with Levi just before she disappeared and that I looked for them in the woods behind Mitchell’s house and worse, that I have absolutely no alibi. Plus, who knows what incriminating evidence I may have left in the forest? I have to hope that Henry will trust me, despite all the heaping mounds of proof edging him to the contrary. He has the same ability as his father to make me feel as if what I have to say is vitally important, so I find myself going on longer than I’d intended, telling him details that I wish I’d forgotten.

  When I stop, he just stares at the opposite wall. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” His voice is broken, hurt.

  “Because I’ve had everything they could think of tested and there’s nothing physically wrong with me. It’s in my head, Henry. All of it. In my head.” I take a moment to let that sink in. “I can’t go back to the hospital. You don’t get it. I’m so sick of being sick. I just thought if I could convince everyone else that things were normal, then maybe they would be. Now, if I tell people about Levi, who knows what they’ll think? I’ll need a psych evaluation or treatment or, I don’t know, some other type of poking around.”

  He slides one of his big hands down his face. “Okay, so if we don’t go to the police, then what do we do?”

  “Those two other boys. Daniel James and Stefan Ashbury. I think we need to track them down. The Levi we know must have stolen the identity of their dead friend. But I have no idea why. I don’t even have a solid guess. Did our Levi know the other one? The problem is, I can’t get in touch with either of them. I tried friending them, but neither of them will accept.”

  “From your regular profile?” Henry asks.

  “Yeah.”

  Henry holds out his palms to me like stop signs. “As soon as I say this, you’re totally going to take it the wrong way, but I think we need to go—how do I say this—hotter.”

  My eyes bug out. “Henry!” I chuck a sofa cushion at his head. My face burns up at his comment. It’s not like I’ve ever thought of myself as supermodel material—especially with the scar—but hearing it from Henry puts a puncture hole in my self-esteem.

  “Wait, Stella. Ugh, I knew you were going to take this personally.”

  “Is there another way to take it?”

  “You’re beautiful, Stel. Beautiful.” There’s the dimple again, just below the freckle under his left eye. I soften. “But I think we need someone a bit more obvious as bait. You know what I mean?”

  I fold my arms over my chest and slump down, unsure if I want to be considered beautiful by Henry if I’m not also hot.

  His mouth twists into a half smile. “You’re hot. Just…hold on, you’ll see.”

  I wait while Henry runs upstairs to get his laptop. When he returns he sits next to me. Our hips butt up against each other and I catch the comfortable whiff of Dove soap. He navigates through several Web pages in quick succession and then suddenly a series of images are on-screen.

  Henry clears his throat. “One of these,” he says. Each picture is a variation of the same look: Fake tan, highlighted streaks, bare midriff, copious cleavage, and a sexy pose in front of the mirror with the camera held o
ut.

  “This”—I touch the screen—“is what you want me to look like?” I defensively think of my scar and the way it looks, pink and bulbous in the mirror.

  He snaps the computer shut. “No!” His cheeks turn red. “I want you to look like you.”

  I stare hard at him. “But—”

  “But do you have a better plan?”

  “No,” I mumble, miserable. “You pick.”

  He shakes his head, opens the computer back up, turns the screen slightly away from me, and—not that I’m counting the seconds or anything—spends way too long selecting our lure. When he’s finished, I check out the beginning of the profile he’s created. I swallow a smile when I notice that, if I tilt my head just right, the girl looks like a sexed-up Russian version of me.

  “Name?” he asks, hands hovering over the keyboard.

  I stare up at the ceiling, thinking. “Tatiana,” I say. “Name one Tatiana who’s not triple-T hottt.”

  “Name one Tatiana, period,” he says, typing.

  I crane my neck to see the screen. “What are you doing over there now?”

  “Searching for Russian last names.”

  I lean back into the cushions. “There’s an equal chance they’ll think this girl is either irresistible or a Soviet spy.”

  The tap-tap-tapping pauses. “Hopefully both.” I shove him playfully. “And…voilà.” He spins the computer around to show me Tatiana Petrov, hottie extraordinaire.

  “Let me guess, she likes yoga, singing in the rain, and long walks on the beach.”

  He smirks. “Close. She enjoys football, heavy metal, and raunchy comedians.”

  I toss my head back. “That girl doesn’t exist!”

  He turns the screen back to face him. “Yeah. That’s kind of the point.” More typing. “Just a few finishing touches and…” He punches the return key with a flourish. “Done!”

  “And what, exactly, makes you think this will work?”

  He looks up at the ceiling and then crosses himself from his forehead to his chest and across both shoulders like he’s saying a Hail Mary. “Nothing, except for a hope and a prayer and a little bit of testosterone.”

  We pass the time comfortably enough. I’m grateful for the distraction. Henry snags us soft drinks and a container of packaged cookies. We listen to a recording of an old episode of Lunatic Outpost.

  The host, Quentin, lectures emphatically about the existence of the Babylonian Brotherhood. One of my and Henry’s favorite conspiracy theories, it claims that the world is run by a collection of lizard people who manifest themselves here on Earth as politicians and other famous, influential people. We thought this was a joke Quentin made up until we researched and found that the contingency of people who believe in the brotherhood is actually quite large. Callers dial in to posit their guesses about which famous people are lizard people in disguise.

  “Howard Stern,” says one woman with a raspy, smoker’s voice.

  “Kim Kardashian,” says another.

  Henry and I make our own list that consists primarily of legendary boy-banders.

  I’m conscious as an hour slips into two. There are diversions from my ailing chest, but the feeling never goes away. It remains a constant, throbbing force pulsating for attention at the back of my mind.

  As it gets closer to five o’clock, I consider leaving. My palms are already soaked. My muscles are as tense as bowstrings. But for the first time I recognize that I don’t have to hide it. He knows and, again, I feel a small burden lift.

  Henry senses it, too, though. The ticking of the clock. I see him check his watch every minute. I’m embarrassed to stay, but I don’t want to be alone either.

  At five oh eight I half expect Henry to have the same effect as Levi and for the pain to evaporate before it can touch me. But the moment the clock changes it’s as if an iron spear stabs me through the back and comes out my chest. I gasp. Desperate. I try to stay upright. I can’t see Henry, but I feel his presence there. He moves closer.

  I curl into the fetal position, tears beginning to pour down over my knees. I wipe the snot on my pant leg. My brain ruptures. I go blind with agony. The smallest twitch hurts, but I can hardly sit still as the pain moves in waves from the top of my head through my spine. I rock back and forth, teeth dug into my hand.

  Distantly, I feel Henry’s arms wrap around me. He hums and rocks with me, hugging tightly so that the scent of soap breaks through my haze. This is the thing I cling to as the pain crashes around me, beating against me like a stormy ocean pounds against the seawall.

  In increments so tiny they are almost immeasurable, the anguish slips, replaced by the sense of being hollowed out and bone-tired, filled with elusive tears that, despite my being shattered, can’t find the space or the effort to leak through.

  I burrow my face into Henry’s T-shirt as he strokes the ridges of my back, and I’m just drifting off to sleep when we hear the hopeful ding of a message on his computer.

  Henry looks out of place as we clomp down the concrete stairs into the crowd of brassy punk rockers. His long-sleeved polo and pressed jeans are at odds with the sea of greasy hair and ripped, acid-washed denim. I have the guilty unease of wanting to distance myself from him in this place, like a kid embarrassed of her parents. Who, that guy? No, I’m not with him. Never met him before in my life.

  With my choppy hair, thick eyeliner, and fishnet stockings, I slip into the swarm of people. A heavy clubgoer with bearded jowls scowls at us as we pass.

  I glance back at Henry. “Put that away!” I snatch the flyer from his hands:

  SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE CROCODILE! LIVE UNDERGROUND! DRINK SPECIALS ALL NIGHT!

  “Why do you care so much what other people think?” He frowns, gazing around at the unpainted walls plastered with posters and graffiti. “Especially what these people think. This place is kind of a dump, huh?”

  “It’s not a dump, it’s a dive. And I don’t care what people think, I just don’t want you to get your face bashed in. Fair?” The truth is, I like this place already.

  Henry shrugs. “Sure, whatever.”

  I lead him farther into the mess of people. The band onstage, who had paused to take swigs of liquor out of shot glasses, pick their instruments back up and strum a few noisy notes.

  Red lights flash over the audience. Disorienting and surreal. Henry and I reach an impasse near the center of the teeming club, where the sweaty bodies become so thick and pressed together it’s impossible to shove through without getting separated.

  “I don’t know about you,” Henry shouts into my ear, “but this is exactly how I imagine the apocalypse.”

  Elbows and shoulders ram into us. We’re jostled several steps to the left and then back to the right. It’s like trying to walk in a fun house. I clutch Henry’s arm for balance. The lights flash faster between redness and dark. Henry’s face flickers in and out of focus.

  “So what now?” he asks.

  Henry, of course, had been right. It’d been Daniel James who responded to the elusive Tatiana’s request and it was through his profile that we’d been led here, to the Crocodile club.

  This wasn’t one of the venues I’d frequented with Levi, but it felt significant that the friends of the dead boy Levi is impersonating share the same interests as the one that I know.

  I stare up at the stage. I’m surprised to find that alone, without Levi’s encouragement, I still find that the blaring music and throbbing energy turns my heart punchy with excitement. The lead singer is a pointy-faced girl with a confrontational chin, and for a moment I’m mesmerized by the way she throws the microphone stand between her hands and stomps her foot on the ground like she’s gunning to incite a riot.

  It’s only when someone steps hard on my own toe that I’m able to cut my gaze away. “Gosh darnit!” I yell, hopping on one foot.

  Henry catches me by the shoulders. “‘Gosh darnit’? Wow, a rebel on the outside and in.” He clucks his tongue, clearly teasing me.

 
I scowl. “I figure at this point there’s got to be somewhere in between.”

  We both find ourselves looking over our shoulders, trying to make sense out of the throng of hardcore fans.

  “We should split up,” I say decisively. Henry starts to open his mouth. “I’ll be fine. We’ll both be in here. It’s no big deal. Otherwise, it’s a madhouse. We may miss him.”

  Henry digs his teeth into his lip. “Fine. But meet back at the front door in twenty minutes if you haven’t found him.” With a smug look, he extends his pinky finger. “Okay?”

  I take it. “Okay.” With one final glance, I start to slip into the crowd. The drumbeat bounces around inside my lungs. Bodies slam into me. I can just make out Henry watching me go. He holds his hand up to his ear, hooked into the universal sign of a telephone—Call me. I nod, and then I’m swallowed whole.

  By now the band has found its momentum. At the front of the stage the guitarist thrashes his long, unkempt mane. Nimble fingers perform complicated riffs. The thrum of the guitar and the wild beat of the drums vibrate through my hollow pit of a chest, mixing with the persistent ache to form a musical cacophony both stimulating and unsettling, like abstract art.

  Each time the red lights flash overhead, a different face is illuminated, revealing expressions frozen in time. The strobe effect throws me off-kilter and I stop and start. Several times I stumble and grab onto the nearest limb for balance.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. I check the faces in the crowd, sometimes squinting to try and make out the features of Daniel James. “Do you know a guy named Daniel James?” I ask at intervals, but invariably the people questioned shake their heads, and I can’t decipher whether they didn’t hear me or they actually don’t know the boy I’m asking about.

  I press through the heart of the crowd, where the bodies are densest. On the other side, the flailing mob begins to thin and I find concertgoers nursing their drinks or leaning in for conversation.

  I ask a couple with matching dreadlocks if they’ve seen Daniel. They’ve never heard of him. My shoulders sag. What if he didn’t come after all? A change of plans. He got sick.