I Am Grey

by Jane Washington

  “My teachers complain that I’m a Moreno,” she replied. I cast her a confused look, and she shook her head wryly. “That’s my last name.”

  “Is it a bad thing?”

  “It’s not a good thing. You know my brother’s kind of a bad guy, right?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one you’re fucking.”

  I didn’t bother to correct her. It didn’t insult me, because she hadn’t meant it to be an insulting statement. She shrugged her shoulders a little, stepping onto the tracks, facing the direction I walked to get to school. She seemed very small to me. She stood there, adrift, and I wanted to stand next to her. I wanted to understand, which was more than I had wanted for a long time.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She glanced to the side, seeing that I had moved to watch the tracks with her, examining the curve of metal as it crawled into the distance, disappearing into darkness.

  “Nothing.” She blinked, surprised at my question, but then she paused and her eyes narrowed on mine. She took a deep breath, and then another. “Everything.”

  “Yeah.” I kicked at a rock by my feet, looking away. “Me too.”

  “Hey!” Marcus called out to us, appearing some way down the path that lead back into the trailer park. “I was wondering where you went.”

  I didn’t know which one of us he was talking to, but I replied anyway. “Hey.”

  He stopped by the edges of the track, his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes shifting between us.

  “Bored of the party already?” he asked.

  Jean made an almost-silent scoffing sound. “That wasn’t a party, Marc. That was a chance for people to kiss Duke’s ass.”

  Marcus shrugged, but the expression on his face was troubled. “Yeah, well, anyway … I’m hungry, want to get some food?”

  “Yeah.” Jean stepped off the tracks, pulling her dark hair into a ponytail. They started to walk off together, but they both paused after a few steps, turning back to me.

  “Are you coming?” Jean asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer. I was uncertain, all of a sudden. I couldn’t label the emotions that stole the words from my tongue. Insecurity, maybe; or guilt. They didn’t deserve a friend like me. I didn’t deserve another friend like all of the friends that had come before them. I realised that they were forcing me to make a decision—and I had been avoiding decisions of all kinds for over a month now.

  “Come on,” Marcus coaxed, his hand extended. “I know where to get the best pizza around here. Seriously, you’ll die.”

  Jean tilted her head to the side, her eyes seeing straight through me. “It’s just food, Grey.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled, stepping from the tracks to follow them.

  Marcus and Jean weren’t anything like their elder brother, I learned. Jean might have had his eyes, and Marcus might have shared his build, but they were as different on the inside as they were similar on the outside. Jean didn’t actually eat any of the pizza that Marcus paid for; she simply sat there, her eyes always wandering to the window, only occasionally contributing to the conversation. Marcus acted as though his sister’s strange attitude was nothing out of the ordinary, prompting me to do the same. He spoke about how Smith wanted to become an engineer—the first of the family to try for a degree. Marcus himself wanted to work in his dad’s fast food shop, because he liked food.

  “No.” Marcus shook his head, a wry smile twisting his lips as he answered something I had said. “I don’t just like food, Grey. I’m good at food. Great at food. I’m going to turn dad’s place into a chain.” He tapped the side of his head, winking at me. “I’ll go to night school after working the day. I have it all planned out.”

  “What are you going to do?” Jean asked, eyeing me over the table.

  This was the moment. I’d had a similar moment a while ago, with a girl from my class. She had visited me at the institution, sitting down at my small, shared study space, her hands wrapped around a takeaway cup of coffee—she had only brought one, so I sat there with a styrofoam cup of tea. She had spoken about an upcoming test, and I had told her that I didn’t care. I hadn’t been deliberately acting rude, I just hadn’t seen any point in lying to her. She changed the subject, but I didn’t care about whatever the next topic was.

  I didn’t care about the future.

  Period.

  “I don’t want to look that far ahead,” I eventually admitted, my eyes on my fingers as I gripped the edge of the table.

  Marcus and Jean were sitting opposite me in the booth. We were in the only all-night diner in town, which Marcus had been surprisingly right about; they really did know how to make pizza. The booth seats were faded and red, a worn-thin leather that edged into the corners of my vision, reminding me.

  The red wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  “You don’t want to go to college?” Marcus asked, curious. “You don’t have any … I don't know … interests?”

  “I like walking.” God, I sounded like an idiot.

  “How come you’re not on the track team?” Jean asked.

  “Because she likes walking, idiot, not running.” Marcus was rolling his eyes.

  “You should join the track team,” Jean insisted, ignoring her brother. She still wore the same expression, but there was a touch of concern in her features now. She tried to mask it, tried to sound casual. “I’m on it, too. I could talk to the captain, if you want. Kells—you probably already know her.”

  Did I want that? “Sure.”

  “Great!” Jean whipped her phone out, sending off a text right then and there, before shoving Marcus’s shoulder to get him to move from the booth. “Let’s go, Smith is looking for us.”

  “Smith was at the party?” I asked, sliding out from the booth to follow her. “I didn’t see him.”

  “He was probably hiding.” Marcus appeared behind me, herding us toward the rusted yellow sedan parked outside the diner. “Those guys aren’t the sort of people you want paying attention to you. And yeah, that’s supposed to be a warning.”

  “Duke’s your brother,” I replied evenly, sliding into the backseat.

  Jean snorted. “That doesn’t make him a good guy.”

  “If you care about yourself at all, Grey-girl, you won’t get mixed up with him.” Marcus swallowed, shook his head briefly, and started the car.

  The engine turned over nosily, eliminating the need to reply. It was better that way. They didn’t need to hear my answer. I stayed silent as we returned to Summer Estate, and they fell into a matching silence as we approached Duke’s trailer. The number of people had dwindled, but Duke was in the same place, on the same chair. There was a girl on his lap, sitting the same way I had been sitting, probably drinking from the same cup that I had been drinking from. She glared at me as I walked past, following Jean.

  Duke grabbed my arm, halting my progress. Jean turned around, her dark eyes landing on her brother’s hand for a moment, before flicking up to my face. She sighed, continuing on without me.

  “Where’d you go?” Duke asked me.

  “Probably back to mommy and daddy,” the girl in his lap sneered. “Did you sneak out tonight, princess?”

  I blinked, deciding to ignore them both. Duke wasn’t being mean to me, but I didn’t need to deal with a jealous girl right now. I gently tugged my arm, prompting him to release me, and I started after Jean again. He stood, setting the other girl on her feet and grabbing the back of my jacket. He stepped up to me, his hands sliding around to my stomach, his chin lowering to my shoulder.

  “Ignore her, Grey-girl.”

  The name didn’t sound the same, coming from him. With Marcus and Jean, it had sounded like a nickname, casual and meaningless. With Duke, it held meaning. It was what he liked about me. The fact that I was grey, emotionless, reaction-less.

  “Should I ignore you too?” I asked.

  He chuckled, pulling me further back against him. “If you want. Let’s go for a walk.”
>
  “I just went for a walk.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “Why?”

  An older guy stopped directly in front of me, his eyes drifting over my shoulder to Duke. “Dude.” His attention snapped back to me for a moment, before re-focussing. “We gotta talk.”

  Duke jostled me to one side, slinging his arm around my neck roughly. “She doesn’t matter, you can talk.”

  The other guy narrowed his eyes on me again, but then shrugged. “I just got a text from Cassidy—we need to drop off a package.”

  “I can’t fucking drive right now,” Duke growled. “Go get my brother. Tell him I’ll pay him.”

  “He left already.”

  Duke released me, swearing again. He grabbed the guy and dragged him away, muttering quietly to him. I decided that it was time for me to leave. I walked back to my RV and grabbed my bathroom bag, making my way to the amenities block. After my shower, I slept on the couch again. It was not an easy sleep. I woke with a splitting headache, which lasted the next two days, forcing me to finish up the school week in a state of pain. Nicholai didn’t work on Thursdays and Fridays, and I tried to tell myself that the pain had nothing to do with him, but my head wasn’t willing to listen.

  For some inexplicable reason, I needed to see him.

  6

  Stalker

  By Saturday morning, I was back in the library. I checked out a laptop, sat at the little plastic table, and logged into my email account. I wasn’t expecting to see anything, so the bold notification of a reply from nicfell@stanford.edu shocked me into a paralysed state. I sat there, staring at the words for several minutes before working up the courage to click open the message.

  Yes.

  That was all. A single word. No ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ or even a standard email signature. I scrolled down to the email I had written to him almost a month ago.

  Were you a teenage deviant?

  Why had he decided to reply after so much time? I sat back in the little plastic seat, the pad of my thumb pushed between my teeth as I considered what to do. Eventually, I snapped the laptop shut and took it back to the counter, dragging myself out of the library. I didn’t want to do something that I would regret. With him, it mattered. It didn’t matter with anyone else … but they weren’t Nicholai. Everyone else was flawed, with demons in their eyes, and the weight of a society on their backs.

  Nicholai was something else.

  I set off toward the beach again, picking up the pace until I was jogging. The fall wind was cold, cutting through the barrier of my clothing. It pushed me to move faster and faster just so that I could feel the whip of cold against my skin, the prickling of perspiration along my forehead. I was wearing shoes this time, and I felt that I could go further. I could pass by all the restaurants, leave the scattering of people behind and continue on down the highway toward Pescadero. I could run alongside the trucks and pickups, pretending that I had somewhere to be as well. Something important to do. I could visit the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, like I used to do with my parents.

  Or …

  Or I could just stop.

  Stop running.

  Stop trying.

  Stop pretending.

  The sudden decision loomed over me, forcing my feet to slow and my eyes to blur. I knew it was coming; I was powerless to stop it.

  I collapsed against the side of one of the buildings, my chest heaving with sobs, my hands flattening against the brick. I was somewhere in the centre of town, in the middle of the day, but I was more alone than I ever had been before. A woman paused behind me, her soft exclamation of shock reaching my ears before her hand was on my shoulder. I thought I recognised her, but it wasn’t until she gave up trying to ask if I was okay that I realised who she was.

  She had pulled out her phone and turned to face the other pedestrians passing by us—unlike her, they were pretending not to notice my breakdown. As she turned, her coat flapped out.

  It was her. The woman Nicholai had been with.

  “Nic?” She whispered. “Are you busy? It’s that girl—your patient. The one—yeah, that one. No … I don’t know. Right outside of Sloan’s coffee house. Okay, sure.”

  She hung up, turning to face me again. “Sweetheart? I’ve called Doctor Fell, he’ll be here soon, okay? Why don’t we go inside?”

  She was turning this into something bigger than it was, and I wanted to say as much, but the rush of emotion was already fading away, leaving me numb and full of fear. I had been so close. So close to cracking myself open, to remembering, to feeling. I wanted to pull away from the woman—Nicholai’s woman—and start running again. I wanted to go faster, further, until the physical pain took over the mental pain. It was a form of destructive self-soothing: a trade-off. Real pain for imagined pain. It was worth it, because imagined pain had no bounds. It never ended, and there was every possibility that it would never heal or diminish. Physical pain, however, could reach an end. It had the potential of driving itself into numbness, or nothingness.

  “That’s a good girl,” the woman muttered, taking my arm and leading me into the café. Half of the patrons were staring.

  She sat me down at one of the small tables. A waitress appeared a moment later, pushing a glass of water at me. She had a sympathetic expression, but she didn’t linger.

  “Drink,” Nicholai’s woman coaxed, nodding toward the glass. “It’ll make you feel better.”

  I picked up the glass, but didn’t drink from it, setting it down a second later. Eventually, the woman sighed, shifting on her seat uncomfortably, turning her legs to face toward the other patrons. She wanted them to know that she was one of them. Separate to me. It made me wonder why she had bothered to stop in the first place. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-four or five, but she was acting as though she had decades on me. Or maybe she was acting as though I was a mentally unstable, teenage deviant.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, trying to stop her from shifting around.

  “Jennifer,” she quickly replied, her eyes widening a little at the calm tone of my voice. “Ah … what’s your name?”

  I considered her for a moment, taking in the brightness of her hair, the blue reflected in her eyes. Her lips were painted a pretty shade of pink, her nails polished to a navy blue, darker than her eyes. She was every shade imaginable; cool and sweet, bright and deep. She was perfect for him.

  “Grey,” I muttered. “I’m Grey.”

  We sat in silence while Jennifer pitied me, and I stared out of the window. I could see the lighthouse again, smaller than the one I used to visit with my parents; more beaten, with wind-ravaged paint and a coat of salty sea-spray. A bunch of kids my own age stood beneath it, taking selfies. I wanted to run over there and toss their smartphones into the ocean, to force them to see the harsh beauty that surrounded them at every turn: the churning of the ocean, the flecked paint marking the base of the lighthouse, and the weather-beaten shops that lined the strip. They were beautiful because they were temporary, and they were harsh because they were beautiful. The fewer witnesses, the more temporary those things became: gone in a blink, wasted on a backdrop. But there was no use in thinking about change. I knew that, because I had been one of those kids not so long ago. I knew what it was like to be blind to the world around you; to the beauty and to the danger.

  Jennifer checked her watch after five minutes, her forehead lined with anxiety. Nicholai must have been in the area, because she seemed impatient, and he walked through the door only a minute later. Washed-out jeans rode low on his hips, making his legs appear more muscular than they did in the business suits that I usually saw him in. His casual, white button-down was half hidden behind a black sports jacket. His hair was mussed, his intense eyes blank. Now that I paid attention, everything about him in that moment was blank. His posture was guarded, his expression free of warmth or familiarity, the emotion in his eyes hiding behind a neutrality that seemed carefully constructed. It dribbled trepidation down my spine.<
br />
  “Thanks, Jen,” he muttered, as she jumped up to greet him. He turned his eyes from her almost immediately, sitting down in the seat that she had vacated.

  It only occurred to me in that moment that Jennifer had called me a patient. She didn’t realise that I was one of the students at the high school.

  She stood there for a moment, wringing her hands, and he glanced at her once more. He didn’t dismiss her out loud, but she seemed to get the hint, moving her head in a semblance of a nod as she cast a half-hearted smile my way and hurried to the door of the coffee shop. Some of the patrons watched her go, before subtly turning their attention my way again, their conversation stalling. They seemed even more intrigued in me now, with the appearance of Nicholai. I couldn’t blame them. He looked as out-of-place as ever. He looked like one of the Palo Alto tech-brats that sometimes migrated to the coast in the fall months, channelling their parents’ money into a holiday wasted on the beach, where the changing weather was mild. But that wasn’t quite right. He was too precise to be wasteful.

  And he was staring at me.

  Waiting for me to speak.

  I tipped the glass of water to my lips, draining half of it in a bid to buy myself some more time. I turned to the window, watching as Jennifer slipped into a cherry-red hatchback, pulling onto the road and driving away faster than was really necessary. I watched as a father walked past, his daughter basically tearing his ear off with whatever she was spitting at him. He winced and shook his head, mumbling something that looked like a refusal.

  “Mika.”

  I closed my eyes, sucking in a short breath.

  “Mika,” Nicholai repeated, softer his time. I felt the table dip, and knew that he was leaning forward. His shoe bumped against mine beneath the table. “Open your eyes.”

  I shook my head, and his shoe nudged against mine again, but this time it seemed purposeful. I could feel the sides of the hard canvas material of his shoes either side of mine, barely touching, but hovering. He was closing in around me, no matter how hard I tried to shut him out.