I Am Grey

by Jane Washington

  He pulled back, grabbing the package and disappearing through the plastic curtain. I should have felt something, just like I should have felt something when Duke kissed me, but I didn’t. I was disappointed; disappointed that Trip had smiled, that he hadn’t shouted at me to get out of the shop, that he had spoken so easily to me. He had looked meaner than Duke, but I was just a cynic betting on flaws, bound to be let down by some kind of opposing murphy’s law. It was the world’s way of making an impact, I was sure. It would give me nothing bad while I expected nothing good, until I became lulled by the pattern, and then suddenly everything would change, and I would be caught in a storm, unequipped for the sudden reality of human nature.

  “I’ve only got half,” he said, reappearing and slapping a stack of bills onto the counter. “You’ll have to come back to pick up the rest.”

  I glanced down, my eyes bugging for a moment. That was a lot of money for a tiny package.

  “What’s in that?” I asked, jerking my head toward the plastic curtain. He had left the package in the back room.

  “He didn’t tell you?” Trip arched a brow, apparently surprised. “Sounds like Dick is holding back.”

  “I’m assuming Dick is—”

  “You assume correctly. And before you ask, it’s not a tribute to his assets. It’s a lament.”

  “A lament?” I couldn’t help but laugh, even though I didn’t feel like it. “That’s a fancy word for a butcher-boy.”

  “You can thank the school we both go to for that.”

  I pulled back, taking a step away from the counter. “When I came in here, you had no idea who I was.”

  “I wasn’t looking closely. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Shouldn’t you be at school right now, then?”

  “I take Mondays off. I’m guessing that’s why Dick brought you here.”

  “He said he was banned from the shop.”

  Trip laughed, and the sound carried a hint of derision. “Yeah, I bet he did.”

  “Whatever.” I turned on my heel, making for the doorway.

  “Pup?”

  I paused, glancing over my shoulder. He was holding the stack of cash.

  I returned to the counter with a grimace and took it off him, stuffing the entire wad into the back pocket of my jeans. A big man pushed through the plastic curtain behind Trip, boasting a blood-stained apron and a curious scowl. I didn’t want to linger, so I only nodded to him, pulling my sweatshirt back over my head as I exited the store. I tugged the hem down over the bulge of cash and jogged back to where Duke was waiting in his truck.

  “He only had half of it,” I said, pulling myself up into the passenger seat. “He said you’d have to come back for the rest.”

  “What the fuck?” Duke rolled his eyes, but there was a tinge of red in his cheeks. He was pissed.

  I lifted my hips up from the seat, reaching behind me for the stack of money and dropping it into his lap. I briefly entertained the idea of asking about the package again, but then I realised that I didn’t care. My brief curiosity had filtered away, dissolving like sad smoke—inhaled and then exhaled, cast into the breeze.

  “Can I go home now?” I asked, though I didn’t direct my question toward Duke.

  I was too busy staring at the side-mirror, my eyes captured by the lighthouse that was barely visible in the distance, its tip rising above the roofs of a few ocean-front shops.

  “Soon,” Duke mumbled, half of his attention reserved for the passing cars as he attempted to pull out of his parking space and into the lane of traffic again. “You need to deliver a few more packages first.”

  8

  Burn

  I glanced up from the vision of my sneakers hitting the sand-speckled pavement just as Jean pulled up beside me.

  “Pick up the speed,” she grunted, her dark curls whipping out behind her.

  There was a layer of sweat working its way over both of us. I could feel it soaking my neck and see it sticking my tank to my skin. My sneakers were muddy, my legs splattered with rain and dirt.

  I loved it.

  “That’s it!” A brief smile was peeking through Jean’s exhaustion. “Keep going like this, Grey, and you’ll get kicked off the team.”

  My step faltered, barely, and she pulled ahead.

  “What?” I managed, regaining my momentum.

  She increased her speed, keeping herself in front of me, but I could see the wobble in her step. She was faltering. I felt that I could go on for hours.

  “Kells will kick you off because you’ll be better than her!” Jean called over her shoulder, before veering to the side and heading in the direction of the beach.

  As soon as her feet hit the sand, she collapsed, her laugh lifting into the air. “Crap,” she moaned, rolling onto her back and pulling one of her legs to her chest, “that burns.”

  I flopped down beside her, my legs buzzing with the need to push further, to feel the kind of burn that she was feeling.

  “You should have stretched for longer first,” I told her.

  “And the student becomes the master,” she returned, her tone sarcastic, her eyes glimmering with humour.

  “Thanks, sensei.”

  “Speaking of sensei, did you hear about what happened to Mrs. Dunn’s shop?”

  “Mrs. Dunn?” I frowned, recalling the economics teacher who always wore flowery dresses to school. I hadn’t had her as a teacher, but I knew that Jean did.

  Jean was a year below me, and still didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life. I suspected that she was avoiding having to take any kind of decisive action: there were signs in her that I recognised in myself. She never spoke about her future. She didn’t even seem to think that she had one.

  “Well it wasn’t her shop. It was her husband’s shop; he owns the butcher down Main—”

  “Dunn’s Meats,” I supplied, my eyebrows drawing together.

  “You’d think an economics teacher would be able to come up with a name that wasn’t so bad for business, right? Anyway, it burned down over the weekend.”

  “Was anyone inside?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, but Trip—their kid—wasn’t at school today.”

  “I met him. I went into that shop last Monday.”

  “Duke hates him. They have some intense rivalry thing going on.”

  “Seemed like it.”

  Jean let her head fall back to the sand, her eyes scanning the sky. “What the hell are you doing with my brother, Grey?”

  I glanced up to the sky, too, but the afternoon sun was too bright, forcing me to lower my head again.

  “Killing time,” I answered, standing and yanking off my tank to reveal the sky-blue bikini top beneath.

  “There are better ways,” she pointed out, struggling to her feet as well and fighting her way out of her own workout clothes.

  She had turned up to Duke’s trailer the Monday I skipped school, wondering where I was. I was surprised to learn that she and Marcus had sought me out at school, but not as surprised as I was when she lied to Duke, telling him that she had come to pick me up, because we had made plans to go running that afternoon. I was aware that she just wanted to get me away from her brother, but I didn’t mind. After only a week, my apathy had turned to anticipation. I lived for our afternoon training sessions; I lived to chase that elusive burn.

  We left our clothes in a pile on the beach, racing toward the water. It was licking the sweat off my skin in no time as I stood waist-deep, letting the warm waves soothe me while Jean dived in head-first and swam out, getting closer to a few guys who were paddling out on surfboards. I turned my back on the expanse of ocean, ignoring the way the sunlight glinted off the cold blue colour of the water. The colour made me think of Nicholai, and I didn’t want to think about him in that moment. I had managed to avoid him all week, but I couldn’t run from the thoughts.

  His words had been ringing inside my skull, my mind warping the memory until I was sure that it had been a halluci
nation. I wanted to stay angry at him, but it soon became clear to me that he actually knew what he was doing, in a messed-up kind of way. My mind had been so preoccupied with the things that he had said and the way his eyes had burned into me that I hadn’t once blacked out. My mind wouldn’t allow it anymore.

  I’m going to push your limits, break you down, make you cry, and in the end … I’ll save you.

  I growled as the memory tried to force its way back into my consciousness, ducking down to let the water flow over my head. It was too tempting to think about him when I was there, the water licking at my thighs, the turquoise ripple of colour merging into a memory of the way his eyes burned. I started back toward the shore, finally feeling that fire in my legs as I pulled through the water. There were a few runners on the sand—light joggers, social exercisers—normal people who weren’t trying to outrun their demons like Jean and I seemed to be doing. One of them had stopped, his arm raised to shield his gaze from the sunlight reflecting from the water. It was setting with a ferocity; I could feel the intense heat of it prickling along my front.

  I averted my eyes, not wanting to stare at him, but he wasn’t moving … and he was directly in my path. I was about to cut to the side, out of his way, when the tattoo caught my attention. His entire raised arm was inked, from a few inches above the wrist to past the sleeve of his shirt. He was wearing exercise clothes, but the shirt stuck to his chest, patches of sweat barely visible behind the dark navy colour. My heart started to beat faster, thumping viciously against the barrier of my ribcage. It tugged me toward him—recognising him before my eyes even had the chance to travel up to his face.

  “Nicholai,” I muttered, finding myself in front of him.

  His eyes were flashing, fixed on my face. His breaths were heavy; he must have only just stopped running.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

  I waited, expecting his gaze to drag lower, as Duke’s always did … but it didn’t. He was fixed to my face.

  “Yeah.”

  I wasn’t even paying attention anymore, because I had caught sight of his other arm. Both of them were covered in musical notation. Line after line that wrapped right around his biceps and scrawled down to his wrists. As though reacting to my gaze, his fingers curled into fists, causing veins to appear along his forearms, giving the notes the illusion of movement.

  He chuckled, the sound lacking emotion. “Yeah … so I take it you’re not spending your lunchtimes sitting alone on the fence by the parking lot every day? I take it you’ve decided to get back out there and re-join the world again? Got a bunch of new friends, have you, Mika?”

  “The new you is a dick—you know that?”

  “It’s not the new me. It’s the real me. See you tomorrow at lunch.” His eyes slipped over my shoulder for a moment, and something ticked in his expression, but he was quick to wipe it away. “Tomorrow,” he repeated, spinning on his heel and continuing on his way.

  “Um …” I could hear Jean behind me, her voice shaking. I spun around, taking in the wary emotion on her face. She was staring after Nicholai with her mouth just barely unhinged. “Am I imagining shit, or did you just tell the guidance councillor—who’s way too hot to be giving anyone advice, by the way—that he’s a dick?”

  “You’re imagining shit,” I muttered, stepping onto the sand and making my way back to our pile of clothing.

  “I wasn’t imagining the way he was staring at you.”

  “Like he wanted to hold my head under?”

  She chuckled, neither confirming my question or not.

  I paused in the tiny waiting room outside of Nicholai’s office, my eyes drawn to the guy sitting in one of the upholstered chairs pushed up against the wall. It took me a moment to figure out where I had seen his collar-tattoo before, but I knew who it was when he raised his head, running a hand through his dirty-blonde hair and fixing his grey eyes on me.

  “Trip.” I sat next to him, tilting my head to the side. “Sorry about your dad’s shop.”

  He surged to his feet, a storm rolling over his face. “Was it him?” he seethed quietly.

  “What?”

  His hand whipped out, fingers curling around my neck, pressing my head into the back of the chair.

  “Are you fucking deaf? Did your boyfriend set my dad’s shop on fire?”

  “No idea,” I rasped. “We only discuss arson on Thursdays.”

  He scoffed, bending so that his eyes were level with mine. “Be careful, Grey. If he took something of mine, I’ll take something of his.”

  “Trip.” A familiar voice called, tone sharp. “Get your hands off her.”

  We both glanced toward the door of the office, where Nicholai now stood. He was wearing his ‘teacher’ persona again; his face guarded and his eyes cool. He seemed unaffected, but the order had been delivered with enough force that Trip released me, turning and falling into the chair beside mine.

  “Just getting acquainted, Mr. Fell,” he muttered.

  “Mika. Come on in.” Nicholai disappeared, leaving the door open.

  I stood, but Trip grabbed my wrist, stopping me from going any further. “Relay my message to our mutual friend, won’t you, pup?” He squeezed once, and then pushed me toward the door.

  I moved into the office, the sound of the door closing behind me sharp against my ears. Nicholai was sitting behind his desk, tapping a pen against the surface. There was a form of some kind pushed to the side, half filled-in. Nicholai was a stickler for order; the fact that the form wasn’t lined up perfectly with the edges of the desk meant that he was upset.

  “What’s Trip doing here?” I asked, sitting in the chair facing his desk.

  “That doesn’t matter.” He stood, dropping the ‘teacher’ façade. “What matters is that you need to stay the hell away from him.”

  His mouth was pulled into a scowl as he tossed the pen to the desk. I watched it slide over to the side and teeter, on the edge of falling off. Nicholai rounded the desk and leaned against it, directly in front of me.

  “Because you know all about deviant teenage boys?” I goaded. “Wasn’t that long ago for you, was it?”

  Nicholai watched me for a moment before his mouth lifted into a smirk. “Don’t get confused, Mika. I’m not what you’re used to. I’m not a high school bad boy with daddy issues and a drug problem.”

  “You’ve got a problem; I just don’t know what it is. And …” I glanced at one of his arms, where the tattoos were hidden.

  He reached behind him for his laptop, opening it on his lap and typing something in, before turning it around so that I could see the screen.

  I blinked at the YouTube video, which wasn’t showing a video at all: it was a still painting of a woman sitting cross-legged amid a heap of blankets, her head so far lowered that her hair tumbled over her face to the ground, her arms bent and limp in her lap. I flicked a look to the video description, which said Nuvole Bianche – Ludovico Einaudi … and then I realised that he wasn’t showing me a video; he was showing me a song.

  I stood on shaky legs, taking the step forward needed to bring me closer to his laptop. He seemed to stiffen, but I kept myself focussed, quickly clicking the button to restart the song. It started off slow, the notes of a piano building to something that swelled with sadness and lingered with more. I kept waiting for it to mean something, to get better, to fill me with an epiphany, but it never happened. It grew, it billowed, it festered … and all the while, I was acutely aware of Nicholai. I could see the whiteness of his knuckles as he clutched the base of the laptop. I could see the tension in his thighs beneath the dark material of his pants, and I could feel his eyes on me the entire time—heavier than usual, weighed with inspection.

  “Is this the song on your arms?” I asked, once it was over, glancing up at him.

  Another song had begun to play automatically, but he didn’t stop it. We were locked into a stare, a secret, and the sad music seemed to be the perfect background for it all.

&n
bsp; “One of them,” he finally replied. “And now you know. I’m not like them. Don’t get mixed up with them just because they look like me.”

  “That’s not why.”

  He snapped the laptop shut, setting it on the table behind him and standing. The office became silent again, the spell between us broken. I didn’t want to back down, but I couldn’t bear to be so close to him, so I quickly re-took my seat.

  “No?” He leaned over, his hands on the arms of my chair. “I’ve seen the one who picks you up from school sometimes.”

  I didn’t think that Duke looked anything like Nicholai, but now that he had mentioned it, there were a few similarities. Both of them had tattoos, both of them were tall and fit, with dark hair … and Trip shared those same similarities, only with lighter hair.

  “I …” I trailed off, my brow creasing with indecision. Was that why I stayed with Duke? Because he looked like Nicholai?

  “Don’t get confused,” Nicholai repeated, backing away and returning to his seat behind the desk. “Don’t assume that you know me. It’s my place to know everything about you, but it doesn’t need to go both ways.”

  And with those words, it suddenly became obvious to me that I had no idea who this man was. I had been studying his smallest idiosyncrasies for months, but I still didn’t know anything about him. I knew that there was a woman named Jennifer who he sometimes saw, but I didn’t know the nature of their relationship. I knew that his appearance and his surroundings were kept clean, controlled, and uncluttered … but I didn’t know whether that was out of simple preference, or rather a compulsion of some kind. I knew that he was different with me, but I didn’t know what had brought about the change, or what his reasons for being different were. I knew that he would have had to work himself to the bone for years and years of study to be finishing his doctorate so young, and I knew that he was smart, but I had no idea what had driven him to work so hard. I knew so many basic facts about him, and I didn’t have a single explanation for any of them.