Another Jekyll, Another Hyde

by Daniel Nayeri

  In the dream, the memory was perfectly clear for the first time. Images of laughter morphed into scenes of horror.

  He was sitting on the couch, Victoria and Valentin goading him. Then Madame Vileroy lunged at him, and her face was twisted like a gargoyle’s. Her black coat flapped like wings.

  Then he was lying on the couch, unable to move. Victoria was scraping around in his brain, and some part of him could still feel it — like a patient waking in the middle of surgery. He was paralyzed. His mind was slowly ripping.

  Thomas sat up in his bed. The searing light of morning burned his eyes. A wave of nausea. His head spun. He was panting, or dry heaving — he couldn’t tell. He put his face in his hands and suppressed a sob. Were the scenes that he saw part of a nightmare or another hallucination? How long does W stay in your system?

  Thomas had never taken an unknown party drug like W before. Was it always like this? He felt like a dozen people had spit in his mouth. His eyes ached to the beat of his heart. His ears were still ringing. He had no idea what he had done or who he’d done it with. He needed to find Connor, who was probably passed out in some gutter. As bad as Thomas was last night, Connor had completely gone off the map. It took all of Thomas’s strength not to lie back down. He pushed the blanket aside. He was still wearing the tux from the wedding. He smelled his shirt. Bad idea. It smelled like sweat, perfume, booze, and five kinds of smoke.

  His bedroom door opened. The sound of heels on the wood floor was uncomfortably loud. “Good morning, Thomas,” said Madame Vileroy. Thomas flinched at the sight of her. The image from his nightmare, of her twisted face, was still fresh.

  Thomas moaned. “Good morning, Nicola.” He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. She was wearing a simple blue dress, holding a glass of fruit smoothie. Her blond hair was pulled up. She crossed the room. The clack clack clack of her heels felt like a nail hammering into his temples.

  “Did you sleep well?” she said. Thomas didn’t answer. Was she always so cloying? She sat beside him on the bed.

  “I thought you two were flying to some island this morning.”

  “With everything that happened,” said Madame Vileroy, “your father thought it might be best to postpone the honeymoon.”

  “Oh, suddenly the old man cares that I went to jail? Where the hell was he last night?”

  Madame Vileroy clicked her tongue: tsk-tsk. Thomas risked opening his eyes and caught her reproachful look. “That isn’t appropriate language, now, is it?”

  Was she playing the 1950s mom just to piss him off? She had become his stepmom about twelve hours ago. Could she at least ease into it a little?

  “Is that for me?” said Thomas, and she handed him the smoothie.

  “Your father wanted to rush right out to get you,” said Madame Vileroy. “I told him it would be best to wait a bit . . . to let you think things over.” She smiled at him. It resembled a sneer. Suddenly, the motherly tone had been replaced with a matter-of-fact governess. “He listens to my advice, you know. It’s very important that you understand just how inseparable we are.”

  Thomas wished he could stand so he could run out, but Nicola continued. “Your father and I are married now, Thomas. But you, you seem . . . split about the idea. Did you have a nightmare about Belle again?”

  Thomas decided to risk it. He got up. He never really reached a standing position. His legs gave out before he could put any weight on them. The smoothie spilled onto his shirt. Thomas cursed and fell back on the bed, sitting up this time, with his back against the headboard. Madame Vileroy seemed amused.

  Finally, Thomas caught his breath. He looked Nicola in the eyes and asked, “What did you do to me that night?”

  He expected her to say, What night? or at least pretend to be caught off guard. Instead, her quartered left blue eye seemed to twinkle — a knowing wink. Was he still feeling the symptoms of the W? For a second, her face was as twisted as his new memories.

  “I think you know what happened, Thomas.” As she spoke, Thomas felt the breath leaving him, because even before she could finish, he knew that she was admitting to it all. “Belle betrayed you that night. She didn’t want you anymore. It just took you much longer to understand.”

  That was a lie. It had to be. Thomas closed his eyes. Nicola’s face was still there. He couldn’t escape her. He wished he could sit under a scalding shower for a long, long time. “Go away,” he said.

  Footsteps came up the stairs and across the hallway toward Thomas’s bedroom. Mr. Goodman-Brown’s voice preceded him. “Honey, are you in here? Oh, Thomas, you’re awake.” True to form, Charles Goodman-Brown was dressed in a three-piece suit, even on the morning after his wedding. He was holding a fruit smoothie. It was the exact same color as the one on Thomas’s shirt.

  “Good morning, darling,” said Nicola as she got up from the bed and walked across the room to kiss her new husband.

  Mr. Goodman-Brown said, “I brought your favorite breakfast.”

  “Thanks,” said Thomas, trying for a cautious tone. “So did Nicola.”

  “Isn’t she great?” said Mr. Goodman-Brown.

  “Yeah,” said Thomas. “She’s a dream.”

  Thomas couldn’t stomach any more. He took another stab at standing up. This time, his legs did their job. As Thomas held on to a dresser to let the dizziness pass, his father said, “You want to tell me what happened last night?”

  “Yeah, I got carted off to jail for something I didn’t do, and you decided to stick around here with your latest piece of social climbing a —”

  “Thomas!” roared Mr. Goodman-Brown.

  “What?” said Thomas. “You’re mad I broke curfew? Who is this person in our house? How long have you even known her? Do you have any idea who she is?”

  “She’s your new stepmother,” said Mr. Goodman-Brown. That was a low blow, thought Thomas.

  “No, she isn’t. And don’t ever say that again,” he said. “Have we forgotten that she shipped off her own kids to Switzerland? Did you even know that she attacked me at her house? She’s a liar.”

  His dad peered at him in disbelief. “Thomas, are you still drunk?”

  “Just ask her,” said Thomas. “She drugged me or something.”

  “I don’t think you need her help for that!” said his father.

  Thomas stormed toward the door, but his dad grabbed him by the arm. They had never been in a physical fight before. Thomas tried to wrench his arm away, but his dad tightened his grip. Thomas winced. For a second, he saw his dad’s glare soften.

  “Thomas, you smell like an opium den. What do you expect me to think?”

  Thomas sighed. His dad would never believe him. He didn’t even believe that the drugs in his tux jacket weren’t his. Why should he?

  “Apologize to Nicola . . . now,” said his father.

  And if he wouldn’t believe Thomas about the drugs, he would never believe that his new wife had attacked Thomas that night — so long ago, it seemed. Thomas glanced at Nicola, who was watching him over his dad’s shoulder. She had won.

  “I’m sorry,” Thomas said, and pulled away again.

  His dad loosened his grip. He whispered, “We’ll talk about it later. Maybe when we meet the rest of the family.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Thomas.

  “Oh, we meant to tell you earlier, darling,” said Nicola. “But with all the fuss around the wedding . . . Anyway, it’s time for you to meet my son. Your new brother.”

  Thomas touched his temple again. “I’ve met them already —” he said reluctantly, thinking of Valentin and Christian, whom he had befriended last year.

  “Oh, no, dear,” said Nicola, her voice calm even as she delivered the final blow. “I don’t mean the children in my care. I mean my natural son.”

  “I . . .” Thomas squinted at his father, who nodded as though he already knew. Instinctively Thomas put his hands in his pockets, as if the answer could be found there. Nikki’s bottle of W rolled into his palm
like a cylinder of ice. He clutched it, momentarily surging with an addict’s panic for his low supply. Then he let it drop again.

  “He’s around your age,” said Mr. Goodman-Brown. “His name is Edward . . . Edward Vileroy.”

  “Not Vileroy,” said Nicola in her pretty French accent. “He prefers Hyde.”

  Journal entry #9

  A son? She has a son and she didn’t tell us, and somehow I’m the only one who thinks this is suspicious. Dad doesn’t listen to anything I say anymore, and OK, maybe I deserve it a little after last night. But look, I have things under control . . . no failed classes, no missed debate rounds. I’m handling it. Doesn’t he see that? He should know that I wouldn’t lie about the important stuff. Maybe I lied once or twice about going out or things I did, but does he really think I’d make up some garbage to try to ruin his marriage? Shows how much he pays attention around here. I don’t know — maybe I’m losing it. . . . How do you tell if you have something rattling around up in your brain? Do crazy people know they’re crazy? The school shrink must think I am, or she wouldn’t make me come in once a week. She’s worried about the nightmares. I saw her notes. After I told her about the one with Belle’s face melting and changing into someone else’s, she wrote down, “Worrisome and bizarre.” She thought I didn’t see. . . . I guess I can’t show her this entry now. . . . I’ll have to do another one tomorrow.

  But I swear on every sacrament — or whatever you’re supposed to swear on — that last night, all that stuff with Nicola was real. When I told her about my memories of the night with Belle and Victoria back at their apartment, she knew what I was talking about. She admitted that I wasn’t dreaming.

  I can’t sleep. I may be crazy, but Nicola’s something worse. Wish I could prove it.

  In the morning, Thomas pushed through the Marlowe hallways, forcing his legs to take every excruciating step. He could feel his knees bending, his thighs stretching, all the individual pores in his skin. Every bone in his feet felt like an anchor weighing him down. OK, maybe it was stupid to take a random party pill he’d never heard of before. It didn’t even come up on Google. He tried to pick up his pace, to seem natural, but he had a feeling that his gait was suspiciously slow — a ragged, bloodshot kid walking through what felt like a roomful of mashed potatoes.

  He already knew that he would try W again.

  He didn’t bother to think too much about beautiful Nikki and her catsuit, or why she had given him the entire bottle. The one or two times her voice rang in his ear, urging him not to share the pills, he shuddered with the bizarreness of it and tried to think of something else — the wonderful, powerful, exhilarating feeling of the red pills.

  He decided to skip first period and find Cornrow and the other boarding-school boys. Connor would be in class. No use trying to find him — Connor Wirth would go to class in a body cast if it meant being eligible to play in a game. So the boarding-school kids would have to do for some distraction. A few weeks ago, Thomas would have felt guilty hanging out with them, since their leader, the RA, had stolen Connor’s girl. But that guy was fired now, and Thomas liked Cornrow. The boarding boys usually didn’t show up for early morning classes. It was a luxury of living on campus. They could show up for before-school required assemblies or detention or whatever else was too conspicuous to miss, then go back and sleep through first hour and show up unrepentant and unshowered for second or third period. Thomas thought that maybe he should move to campus. But he knew his dad would never go for it.

  He had just pushed through the double doors when he heard someone calling his name. Not today, he thought, please, not today. It was Annie Longborn. He usually just avoided her on his bad days. Thomas wasn’t dating Annie. But Annie was definitely dating Thomas.

  “What’s up, Annie?” he said, and didn’t wait for her to respond. “Listen, I have class.” Then he turned toward the door leading out to the grounds. He was usually good at hiding the aftereffects of his partying, but today, after the W, he didn’t think he could pull it off. He ignored the mock whispers of Annie’s best friend, Roger.

  “I told you he’s stoned or drunk again,” Roger breathed. He adjusted his square frames self-consciously on his skinny face, just below that two-hundred-dollar wool hat he always wore to school, even on warm days. The guy was a fidgeter and a world-class gossip. Plus, Thomas was pretty sure he was after Annie, despite the fact that they were best friends. It was that whole romantic comedy routine — wake up, ladies, your misfit best friend hit puberty, looked to his left, and fell in love. Roger clearly hated Thomas.

  “Thomas,” Annie called after him, her voice closer now. He stopped and turned because it would be rude to ignore her. She had her long brown hair in a loose bun today, like the kind you see on sexy cartoon librarians right before they pull two pencils out of it and it all tumbles down. Annie’s hair pencils were the special art-school kind for sketching. She was pale, skinny, and short, but so full of energy that she was sometimes a little scary — like a teeny-tiny, hands-on-hips enforcer of justice. She stepped closer, as if she was inspecting him. She hadn’t washed her hair — he could tell by the smell of old hair spray and sleep, which he liked. She had probably been up all night helping with her mother’s handbag website or updating her blog with illustrations and designs, which, he had to admit, were very good. None of her mother’s thousands of loyal customers would guess that a teenager was behind the amazing interactive handbag über-site.

  Now the hair spray was making him dizzy. Was it the W that was making his sense of smell so strong? That morning he thought he could smell the neighbor’s breakfast. Was he dreaming? Now Annie was smiling her big, toothy smile, trying to cover her worry. “I called you last night.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I was busy.”

  “What were you doing?” She looked hurt. He hated it when she looked hurt, because the guilt always caused him to take inventory of everything he had said. But he was too tired to think of a good lie just now.

  “Went out with Connor,” he said, remembering Nikki and feeling a whole new kind of guilt — though, to be fair, Annie wasn’t technically his girlfriend. “New club.”

  The last time he had gone out with Annie and a reluctant Roger, Thomas had promised to show Annie around the city. Her family wasn’t from New York. They’d moved to town from Minnesota a few years ago, and she had never really gotten to know the city like a native. She wasn’t the type to dig around for dives and hidden back rooms. She still liked going to Times Square and the rink in Central Park. She read Zagat’s and had been to the Statue of Liberty twice. When he was dating Belle, he used to joke about taking her to see the Statue of Liberty. The old Thomas would have done that on a date, just to make the girl happy. But now he thought it was lame . . . automatic disqualification from being a true New Yorker. Last time they hung out, he told Annie he would take her clubbing one night — on a date. They had never had a real date. . . . Roger was always hanging around or meeting up with them halfway.

  “Hey, look,” said Thomas, reading the disappointment in Annie’s face. “It was a guy’s night. Some grimy place. Nothing you’d like.”

  “How do you know I wouldn’t like it?” she mumbled.

  Thomas glanced over at Roger, who was looking uncomfortable and smug, as always. “Hey, bud,” he said over Annie’s shoulder. Roger moved his hand once, in a short, stiff wave, as if he was wiping a windshield. There was a tight little smile on his lips that told Thomas that Roger was afraid of him and that he hated being the third wheel all the time. Somehow, this made Thomas like him a little. “You should have come out with us, Rog,” he said, trying to bring back his old charming self — the Thomas Goodman-Brown that everyone loved. “Next time.”

  “Yeah, next time.” Roger smiled for half a second. “I was gonna go to this new place tonight . . .” He trailed off, probably realizing that Thomas didn’t care.

  As he was about to make another excuse and leave, Thomas saw his debate coach approaching. T
his was turning out to be one crap morning. In the old days, a lot of teachers would have stopped to talk to him. He wouldn’t have minded. He was popular with the staff. That was the old days — before Belle left, before that dinner from hell at her apartment . . . before the nightmares.

  “Thomas,” said the coach, scratching his salt-and-pepper sideburns and looking at some papers in his hand. “I wanted to talk to you about — hey, you don’t look well,” he said. “Maybe you should go to the school nurse.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that,” said Thomas.

  “Come to think of it,” said the coach as he glanced down the hall, “you can’t do that. The school nurse seems to have disappeared. Probably got sick of the job. . . . Maybe you should go home.”

  “Maybe,” Thomas said, and started to walk away.

  “Before you go,” said the coach, waving his stack of papers in front of Thomas. “This evidence you found is all wack. I can’t make any sense of it.” Wack? Did the guy think he sounded cool? Thomas wondered how old the coach was. Thirty-five? Forty-five?

  “Sorry, Coach,” Thomas said. “I’ll take care of it.” He took the papers. Then he turned back to Roger and Annie and said something about lunch, just to get the coach to realize that their conversation was over. Thomas watched his teacher walk away and wondered why everyone wanted a piece of him. Maybe he had given them all a little too much in the past few years. Maybe that’s why they all thought they owned him. Still, Thomas was too smart to just say “Screw it” to people. Success at Marlowe was the only way his dad would stay off his back.

  “Great!” said Annie.

  Thomas snapped back to the present. “Huh?”

  “About lunch,” said Annie. “Sounds great.”