Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 21

by Kelly Link Gavin Grant

  I laughed.

  She went on. “There are bombs can smash everything. They don't distinguish between different types of things,” Magda said, running her fingers dreamily along the forever-outdated encyclopedias, flicking dust everywhere. “But there are also bombs that only destroy living things. They leave the buildings. The buildings are all the same but they're poisoned. And finally, what most people don't know about is the bombs that only destroy certain kinds of people."

  "I don't believe that,” I said.

  "About the buildings or the people?"

  I sighed. She could be pedantic. “The people."

  Magda stepped closer to me, examining my eyes and hair and skin. I smelled her rose-scented lip balm, and felt her mind send a tendril out to caress my cheek. She said, “You don't need to read up on all this bad stuff anymore. You won't get sick. You won't crumble. It won't happen to you. I promise you."

  "Thanks,” I said. There was a lull. During it Magda wobbled back and forth, between touching me and standing still. I could see myself reflected in her eyes, a wavy little candle flame.

  "Hey,” Magda said too loudly. I jumped. It was like a firecracker had exploded next to my ear. “You should start a blog. I would link you. I would. We're friends."

  * * * *

  In public. At school, we called it the hold me feeling—that apocalyptic feeling that all of us were infected by. When I was bored in class I thought about sex. It hummed inside my teeth as though wires were conducting through my gums, it poured all of the heat in my body between my legs, and my wrists ached from the rapid, indelicate transfer of blood.

  The boy I liked would never make a move. He was asleep. So I knew what I had to do. I visited Sam in the cafeteria kitchen. No one else was there, but I was nervous and almost turned around and left. Sam's square hands, how they rubbed the dishes clean and squeaky, how his forearms were wet to the elbows with grey froth, those changed my mind.

  I told Sam I would wash the dishes with him. When my arms were wet too, I leaned over and kissed him. He moaned and stopped rinsing the cutlery. We started kissing for real then, but I saw that he was still dreaming other dreams, as though the dreams were a nictitating membrane pulled over his eyes. I threw dishtowels, still hot and frayed from the dryer, onto a cafeteria table, and then I pulled Sam by the belt buckle on the table with me.

  Sam was grabbing me, and the harder he grabbed the more his fingertips slipped. I had rubbed lotion all over my body in anticipation of this event. He licked the corner of my mouth, and for one moment, I believed that he was truly awake. Somewhere near the end I came so hard that it felt as though something in myself was throwing itself against a prison door, a thick wall. I was lucky—I don't usually come just like that, especially not with some strange boy. But I knew it would happen this time. I started at the brink. It wasn't just how it felt, fucking Sam on the cafeteria table, it was also the sliding press of his fingertips against my hips, hamstrings, glutes, the way I felt every whorl and wrinkle as Sam identified himself, and then again, again.

  Afterwards, Sam smiled sort of absently, his eyes drifting off in different directions, like lily pads on a pond. He walked back to the huge industrial sink and started washing dishes again. I stood behind him for a while. I felt as though I had tricked Sam into something, and to apologize, I patted his hair and said my name into his neck. I wanted to think that he let me touch him that way, have sex with him. Perhaps my name would begin to infect his dreams. Someday, Sam might recognize me and pull me into his dream.

  His dream might be a nice place to be. I might rather be there than here. But only if I got some say in what the dream was about. It was bad enough listening to people describe their dreams, imagine being trapped in someone else's dream. Anything could be done to you.

  * * * *

  Promises. And after that, still damp all over with fragrant lotion, like the manufactured sweat of an android, I went to wake Bart up for the thousandth time, to spoon Nutella into his mouth. Sitting up in the dark, Bart spoke to me.

  "Thank you,” Bart said. “If you ever need waking up, you know who to ask. I really owe you.” His words were muffled by the thick, chocolate paste, which had climbed between his teeth like dirt in the mouth of a corpse.

  He stood, zipped up his dirty hoodie, and we ran to English class.

  * * * *

  Day Class. My roommate Jillian hated the daytime students. I used to hang out with them all the time, I mean during the day. It was the nature of my condition, hanging out with everybody. After the Night students fell asleep, withdrawing into beds piled high with goose-down comforters, or coffins, or closets, or sleeping bags, I waited for a few hours during the dead-time when no one was awake, except for Bart, and then ate breakfast with the Day students. At first I felt grateful, but then I began to realize that I was letting them hang out with me. It was easy to feel superior to people when you had been awake for much longer than they had. I felt experienced and world-weary when they were still wiping their eyes and finger-combing their hair.

  The Day Class was college admissions crazy, and they were also obsessed with the war. It was an odd and terrible combination. They spent tons of time cultivating athletic, intellectual, sassy establishmentarian personas, so that their teachers would write recommendations accordingly. They tried to start ridiculous clubs at school so they could say they did so on their applications, clubs with names that combined easy hobbies with political causes. Scrapbooking for Darfur. Adding Friends on MySpace for Friends of Falun Gong. They skimmed all of their books. They worked on their tans while they studied for the Chemistry AP exam, sprawled out on bath towels and pointedly ignoring the chemical reactions of their skin cells squirming and toasting under the sun.

  But sometimes they became overwhelmed by the news reports and SAT prep, simultaneously, and the Day class would give it all up and smoke chronic in the woods by the dorms. They ate Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. They no longer ignored the chemical workings of their bodies, and discussed the finer points of radiation poisoning long into the morning. They felt a weird pleasure in acknowledging the loss of hope that had occurred long ago (who knew when).

  The next morning, however, they would always start up again as normal. I worried for them—I felt protective of them, even though the rest of the night class never was, even though I didn't do anything to help them. I didn't know what I could do, because I no longer worried about the same things that they did. What did they need?

  One day, halfway through the semester, the Day students stopped letting me hang out with them. A prickly heat climbed up into my throat as they pushed their backpacks over and said, “This seat is taken.” I caught Dean's eye and mouthed, “What happened"?

  "You fucked Sam,” Dean said. “You fucked a fucking sleepwalker.” Padma, sitting next to him, started laughing.

  I left the cafeteria and tried not to cry. The feeling passed. Yes, Dean, Padma, yes. I have changed. I have transformed. It was finished. We were enemies now, but what did that matter? I was on the right side—the side that threw a better party. The side that knew how to cope without embarrassing themselves. Day could go fuck itself. The sky was too bright without being vivid. The early morning was full of wimpy watercolor shades—the petal pink and gray and white sky, the yellow light filtered through the trees. I kept my eyes shaded with my hands all the way back to the Night dorm.

  * * * *

  The Wild Party. The playlist for the party contained, among others, songs by Gang of Four, Pere Ubu, Nena, Prince, PiL, The Postal Service, Bowie, Public Enemy, The Futureheads, Kraftwerk, The Smiths, The Talking Heads, Electric Six, Sun Ra. These bands all mention the bombs. That was the only thing we felt like dancing about. It was a wonderful party.

  I liked the distraction. I knew that they wouldn't be in touch very often, but jesus christ my parents had stopped calling me after my first week here. I knew what happened. My parents had coalesced into a different kind of unit. They were a two. If they lived,
they would wander a sandblasted landscape and scrounge for food together, beating the mutant lizards away with croquet mallets and tire irons. I wish I could say that I grew more okay with this, day after day, but sometimes I thought of my parents clicking together so neatly, with no room for myself, and then I felt weepy and overwhelmed, as though someone had tried to force an entire apple down my throat. Never mind that.

  The party was in the Night dorm lounge, all of the sofas and coffee tables pushed to the side of the room. Someone had strung chili lights up on the walls. From Hamish's speakers, David Bowie began to moan—an aaagh that grew high and unhinged, like an adolescent dog. Hamish DJed with one finger on the space bar of his laptop.

  Any day now, said Bowie. Then Bowie was overlaid with something else, a desperate, mumbly club hit from about a month ago. Both songs fought for space, for breath, while we danced.

  There are always two or more conversations going on at once, but at the party, the buried conversations made themselves clearer.

  "Man, remember Christmas break? I don't remember it,” said Bart. “Was I awake for any of it?"

  But what he was really saying was: “It was you who kept me alive. You are a good friend. I love you? I do love you. Thank you."

  "You're really clean, did you know that? You keep the room so clean. I'm such a slob. I'm such a bum,” said Jillian. She draped her arm over my shoulder. We were both drunk and it felt good for our skin to stick together.

  What she was really saying was: “I'm sorry I'm mean sometimes. I'm sorry I'm selfish. But I'm fun for you, aren't I? I'm glad we're roommates. We would have never been friends otherwise."

  Yes! Indeed I was happy! Oh, I was so happy that I escaped my home and arrived at this strange place, where the dances were events where people actually did dance—you could bop around in front of someone, partner up and eel from side to side in impossible synchronicity, and then move on to the next person—and the punch was spiked with more than just alcohol and there was a little placard next to the punch listing what it had been spiked with, would anyone in normal high school have ever been so thoughtful? We had been transported to another land, really. We had left the day class far behind us and were safely ensconced in the future, where the bombs would never hurt us.

  I almost forgot to mention. The Day class was having a party too, in the dorms across the courtyard. They played pretty much the same music. Ours was louder. They could never approach our levels of fun, and their numbers were few. A little less than half of the class had gone back home to their families—and for one moment I was so jealous that my scalp prickled and itched—but then it was over.

  After Hamish packed up the speakers, Jillian and Bart and I left the party, our shirts sticking to our backs, as moist as fungus. Still drunk, I thought let us stay drunk. Let this last and last. But soon enough Jillian had to retire into our dorm room with the heavy velvet drapes yanked shut, Bart washed a Provigil down with some sticky Singaporean energy drink and went to the main office for work, and I was alone for the day.

  * * * *

  Television. We watched TV shows that were saved from earlier times of the day. All of the news was old. We laughed when we heard news flashes that were hours old, already lame and nonsensical.

  We watched a TV show about a high school girl detective. We loved her. She knew how to use the internet better than any of us. Except Magda, who scoffed to herself about the Google search terms that the girl detective used.

  We watched a TV show about a terrorist who had no cell, no political or national or philosophical alignments with anyone, no home. This terrorist stayed in Super 8s and La Quintas and Hiltons and wandered around various cities of the world with a wheeled suitcase containing a bomb containing in ever smaller packages within it nuclear waste, nails, glass, explosives. The same shot of a finger, wavering above a button, repeated over and over again. DO IT, we'd shout. DON'T DO IT, we'd shout.

  We watched a TV show that was just us, looking back at the TV. We found this show on a channel that had been dead only a few days ago. Although Jillian and Bart searched the room and examined the TV, we couldn't figure out how the show was being made.

  Sometimes, during commercials, I got up and pressed my nose to the window. If you accepted night and kept the lights off inside, you could see everything outside. But if the lights were on, it felt as though a wall had been bricked over your face. But everything outside, all of the night creatures and their huge-pupilled, staring eyes, they could see you.

  There was something going on outside. I squinted. A thing, dancing and flickering and yellow, pinwheeled towards me. I jumped away from the window, throwing myself to the side. There was a splintering sound, the roar of fire.

  That was what you call a Molotov cocktail. A Molotov cocktail. I stared at it, wide-eyed, trying to reconcile the glamorous name, the badassy revolution feeling, with the oily fire that was now spreading across the dorm lounge carpet.

  * * * *

  Day's opening strike. They had begun their attack. They opened by hacking into our school email accounts and sent emails full of dirty words to our parents and they spray-painted the front door of the Night dorms. Then they tried to set fire to us.

  Jillian tore the fire extinguisher from its holder and put out the fire. Foam exploded into the air and soaked smelly chemical circles into our shirts. When we peered outside of the broken window, we saw that the gym was on fire too. Kids were running around, their bodies indistinct shades against the fire.

  Jillian turned, her neck long and swivelly like a ferret's, and I glimpsed a gorgeous panic in her eyes, although the vampire part of her brain kept her calm, and mean.

  "Oh my god, guys,” Jillian said, “let's go fuck their shit up!"

  I wanted to kiss her, she was so lovely and scary and un-snotty right then—so different from the usual Jillian. Vampires are made to wear clothing well and to whale on people. Jillian was in her element.

  We ran out and loped across the field to the gym. I felt like I was on the moon, where I would only have to push off the ground a little bit to fly in slo-mo across the sky. There were no Day students to be seen anywhere, and we stood there, confused, as the air crackled and seethed. The earth began to rumble underneath our feet, and huge doors in the ground opened outwards, toppling many of us over. Day students poured out of the bomb shelter and then we began to fight.

  I tackled Dean, because he was just standing there, looking around for someone to beat up, and because he didn't want to be my friend anymore. First his back bent under my weight, then his knees gave out, like a toppling tower of Jenga blocks. I fell with him. When I rubbed his face in the dirt, Dean twisted and fought back. My lip crunched against my front tooth and it immediately went fat and numb. I was feeling like a mayhem specialist, I mean really really good, my blood wanted to pound right out of my throat. I screamed in Dean's face.

  "I hate you,” I said.

  "You're a monster,” said Dean. “So I don't care. It doesn't matter."

  "You didn't have to treat me like that."

  "You guys think we're just shit,” Dean said. “You blamed us for being scared, even though that's the only way to be. It's the only way that makes sense."

  "No, that's not it. You can only see one way,” I said. “That's why you're all fucking idiots."

  But my anger was leaving me. I wanted it back already. My hands began to lose the shape of fists. Dean was losing it too. He sighed and let his body relax. His head slumped backwards, and I grabbed his shirt more tightly.

  Dean's eyes looked even bluer against the dirt and blood and grass smeared on his face. They stared up at the sky and I thought I could see something reflected in them, something tiny and round. I leaned in closer to see. What was it? A dot, a wavering dot. Then Dean screamed and I jerked backwards.

  "The bombs,” Dean cried. “I can see them. They're up, there, there.” He started to cry, ugly sobs that pooled tears into his eyes, in flat shiny circles.

  What did
I see reflected in Dean's eyes? I looked up. Sirens were blaring inside our heads—our brain implants were telling us to GO INSIDE DUCK AND COVER GO INSIDE DUCK but all of us ignored them. I saw nothing. When I looked back down at Dean, he was gone. I still felt the rough material of his T-shirt in my hands, and I had to flex and open and close them to convince myself that there was nothing there.

  Around me, people were rolling over or punching air or looking around. All of the Day students had disappeared. I saw Magda roll over. Her hair was thick with dirt and leaves that rained down to her shoulders when she sat up. She began to shout.

  "I was right, I was right, I was right..."

  Bells clanged. It meant assembly. I looked at Jillian, and she looked at me, but we didn't know what to do. So we all got up and limped over to the main auditorium. The gym fire had gone out.

  * * * *

  One last assembly. The auditorium blazed; they had hung giant chandeliers made of plastic costume jewelry—red and yellow and green traffic light colors. It was as though a nighttime cityscape had been tilted upside down and stuck on the ceiling. I stood in the back of the hall with Bart and Jillian. The ground was slippery with confetti.

  Headmistress Furness already had her laptop ready, with her Powerpoint presentation all cued up and projected on the screen behind her. The first slide said, WE ARE ALIVE AND THEY ARE DEAD. After we seated ourselves and the teachers had finished shushing us, Furness began.

  She said, “I have gone back and forth concerning the existence of ghosts. When I was a child, my aunt was killed in a car accident. She was putting on her eyeliner—a rich, cobalt blue studded with silver flecks—and we were blindsided by a drunk driver. I say drunk driver, but the driver was actually high on angel dust, a nearly fatal dose of it. But I never liked answering all those questions. So I say drunk. You don't feel any pain on PCP. I resented that, for then the whole share of the pain was allotted to my aunt. I was in the car with her. I had a concussion and they tell me that I don't actually remember this, but I remember her lifting her head shakily, chest caved in by the steering column, the eyeliner stuck into her eyeball, right in the center of her pupil, and if any of you laugh, I'll kill you myself. Children: my horror story only sounds funny because you're not used to anything like it. To this day, when I walk by the L'Oreal makeup section of the drugstore, a powerful haunted feeling passes over me. I have written to the L'Oreal company many times in order to get them to discontinue this color, but they have never written me back. I have never believed in ghosts, but I did believe in that cobalt shade of eye pencil."