by Ryan Schow
During second period Politics, Julie stalks up to me with blackness and persistence in her hard, brown eyes, but I hold up my hand and say, “I’m documenting everything you say to me for the complaint I’m filing with the FBI, and your name is all over the place, so you better think very carefully about what you say.”
She drops two f-bombs, sprinkles in some other coarse language for good measure then tells me I’m lucky she doesn’t spit in my dog-ugly face.
I say, “You’ll be lucky if you aren’t dragged into court and slapped with a felony by the time I’m done with you, you cancerous wretch.” She starts to retort, but I interrupt her instead. “Should I tell Headmistress Klein you haven’t fixed my SUV yet? Because that’s where this is going if one more shitty thing comes out of that butthole of a mouth of yours.”
When she stomps off, I rack up yet another victory. Good God, how can this day get any better? Deep down, however, I know it won’t last.
Just before starting fifth period PE, before I can even change clothes, there’s a note on the locker room door from Miss Hunnicut telling me to report to Gerhard’s office right away.
I stuff the note in my back pocket, then with a pounding heart, I head to Gerhard’s office. The lovely, mechanical Nurse Arabelle tells me to go on inside, that the doctor is expecting me. Sitting on her desk is a different romance novel, open and lying face-down.
Gerhard is sitting at his desk, and in the stand is a new needle, filled with a brilliant pink serum. I say, “Is that what I hope it is?”
He smiles. “It is.”
“Good. I want it.”
He gives me the shot, tells me my birthmark should fade, but if it doesn’t over the next few days, then we’ll have to postpone for further testing. He looks completely depleted as he says this. Like the sheer exhaustion of fixing this genetic error erased years from his life, and vital energy from his being.
Before leaving, I do something stupid. Something really, really stupid.
“Dr. Gerhard—”
“Yes?”
“I’m doing a report for my Investigative Journalism class. It’s our only assignment this semester, so it’s important I do well. We are supposed to write a biography based on a random headstone we picked in the local cemetery. Apparently this is Professor Rhonimus’s idea of a good time. Anyway, the name I chose—and this wasn’t on purpose—was Kaitlyn Whitaker’s name. Damien Rhodes’s sister.”
I stop for dramatic pause and there is drama indeed. As I watch, the stress of the question sucks two more years from Gerhard’s life.
“Step-sister,” he whispers.
“That’s why I asked about her earlier on. When I visited her parents’ home, sitting in a framed photo on their mantle was a portrait of her. She is identical to Georgia Quick, Victoria Galloway and Bridget Montgomery.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, this smart mouth that’s become so bold and reckless, I feel the tactlessness of my approach grating against Gerhard’s already frayed nerves.
I want to take it all back.
“You’d do best to mind your own treatments, and to choose a new name, and a different dead person to study.”
In my head, in that moment, I’m thinking this isn’t only about a dead girl, this is about a crime perpetrated on the subject of a multi-million dollar illegal human experiment. Gerhard’s experiment. What if he helped her vanish? Or worse, had her killed for discussing details of her treatment? What if something went wrong with the shots?
Suddenly the spirited part of me, the part of me responsible for kicking open Pandora’s box, she goes into hiding, leaving only me behind: the girl with limited courage. The ugly girl who only wanted to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be better looking than she was.
“I understand, Dr. Gerhard. Like I said, it’s for a school project.”
“And like I said, pick a different subject.”
“Okay,” I whisper, unable to look at him.
“Go now,” he says. “I need rest.”
His office, which has never known the warmth of natural light, is now steeped in shadow. Even Gerhard himself seems to be drowning in the putrid air of an ominous darkness, the burden of exhaustion now compounding by fears of my discovery. I leave quickly, deciding right then I must stop investigating Kaitlyn Whitaker, that there’s no way in hell I’m stealing his keys to get to the bottom of this mystery. This is one hornet’s nest I refuse to kick.
At least, that’s what I try telling myself.
3
At dinner all we talk about is the day’s drama, the Facebook meltdown, the division of people and who have come to Team Savannah versus those who went to Team Julie Satan and the Diabolical Three. Or Diabolical Two, maybe. The jury’s still out on Maggie.
Speaking of Maggie, I looked up her YouTube videos, and the girl is an incredible singer who will probably one day get signed. If only she could socialize with others.
I almost want to talk to her. If only I were more courageous.
I say, “I think we should change the name to Julie Satan and the Diabolical Two, Plus Maggie.”
“Really?” Victoria says.
“Maggie’s never done anything mean to me.”
“Except continue to hang out with your tormentors,” Georgia says. “With all the terrible things Julie, Cameron and Theresa have done, the fact that she’s still over there eating lunch with them is how the notion of ‘guilt by association’ becomes justified.”
“I don’t get her,” I say.
“Yeah, well screw her,” Bridget says, “I don’t trust her. Even if she acts like mute most of the time.”
“She’s cute, though,” Brayden says, eliciting a groan from Bridget.
“You think everyone’s cute,” Bridget says.
“Well, yeah. Look around already. With the exception of my ex-friends and myself, the least attractive girl at this school would be the most attractive girl at any other school. Hell, the same can be said about the guys.”
“Whatever,” Bridget says. “Guys are dumb.”
“It’s how we’re wired,” Brayden says, getting heated. “I’ve been eating with you guys for weeks now and it seems what you want most is an emotional guy who looks like Enrique Iglesias or Justin freaking Bieber and is kind and sensitive and wants only to massage your innermost feelings. Let me tell you, that guy doesn’t exist. I mean, if the dude is gay, yeah—for sure—but it isn’t like that with most straight guys.”
“It’s possible,” Victoria says. Of all the non-triplets, Victoria likes Brayden the most.
“You’re dreaming impossible dreams.”
In my heart I believe Brayden’s right. We’re all dreaming impossible dreams. I won’t admit it, but yeah, he’s spot on. Not that it matters for guys like Brayden, because someone as gorgeous as Maggie would never date someone as trollish as him. Ever.
Scabs
1
That night, as the pain starts shooting through my face and the fire ants begin their march, I lay chilled in a cold bathtub thinking of Brayden, of the things he says and how he feels. For the hundredth time I have to admit to myself that even though he is the perfect boy inside, his outer appearance is the stumbling block I can’t stop tripping over.
Oh how I want to like him more than I do!
Gritting back the agony, I close my eyes, try finding my happy place, the place where the pain isn’t so brutal and the dream of one day being beautiful burns so very, very bright. So deep am I in my meditation I don’t hear my bathroom door open, and I don’t see the gigantic man who now stands above me.
It’s when I feel something more than just me in the room that I open my eyes. The sight of him standing there causes me to jolt and spasm so hard I nearly break my back. Instinctively my hands cover my breasts and vagina. I can’t even breathe.
The man, he’s huge!
He’s maybe seven feet tall the way his head is almost to the ceiling. And he’s stacked with muscle. Words like rape and murder blaze through my
mind. The realization that I will be dead before nightfall, well that’s the dominant thought that’s got my small intestine loosening into the tub.
He looks down, most likely to the light yellow clouding the water, then back at me. What does he want? Why isn’t he speaking? That’s when I see what he’s doing and it stills me. He’s just standing there, itching the skin on his massive, exposed forearm. He’s scratching himself so slowly and methodically, it’s almost like an involuntary reaction to…what? Craziness?
“What…do you…want?” My voice is quaking with fear, and I hate how feeble it makes me sound, but I don’t care because at this point, I’m freaking terrified!
“To talk to you,” he says, his voice deep, almost as gritty as the texture of crushed gravel.
“You could have called,” I say. It sounds crass, but the fear charging through me is wrecking whatever discretion I might’ve once possessed.
“You have aspirations to be a reporter?” I guess this is his way of asking questions.
“No.”
“Then this should be easy. Find a new subject to study. Write another biography.”
“Gerhard,” I whisper. The man’s face flinches. The name? No. He’s possessed by his arm. After a moment I realize he’s not scratching fresh skin but several scabs on his forearm.
“You want to know about Kaitlyn?” he says. I can hardly stomach the tenor of his voice, how it’s both stoic and menacing, how it seems poised on the edge of violence.
I have to think about what I’m going to say. He hasn’t hurt me yet, maybe he won’t hurt me at all if I’m smart enough, cooperative enough. Before logic and common sense can kick in, or even caution, the word tumbles out of my mouth: “Yes.”
“No.”
“Wait, what?”
“You want to know about Kaitlyn, and I’m saying you don’t. This isn’t a question.” He stops scratching at his arm. Now he’s picking it. He has a fingernail under one particularly long scab and he’s working it loose.
“Is that why you’re here? Are you the one who took her?”
He grunts. A laugh? He’s peeling back the brownish scab. It’s the size and length of an earthworm. The look on his face, it changes from passive emptiness to ecstasy.
“That’s disgusting,” I hear myself say.
“Feels good,” he says. The scab is maybe five inches long, and a half an inch wide. A line of blood rolls down his arm, thick, so red it’s almost black. Looking at the bulge of muscle, I can’t help thinking about the strength in his arms. I wonder what will happen if he turns all that strength on me. He finally detaches the scab, sending thicker streams of blood trailing down his arm.
Even though I’m terrified, I know I should be more scared than I am. My fear feels dull, not as pointed or as radiant as my anger. Perhaps Gerhard’s serum is expanding my confidence, or inflating my courage. Of course, it could also be the realization that I’m not cute enough to rape that’s keeping me from sliding down that long, dark tunnel of panic.
Pinching the brownish-red scab between two fingers, he looks from his bloody arm down at me and says, “I don’t want to come back here.” His eyes are lifeless, like a corpse. He drops the scab in my bathwater. It floats near me like a smooshed worm, crusty and hard, reddish pink seeping off it in faint, cloud-like waves.
Mesmerized by it, transfixed with the stream of red drizzling down his arm, he says, “I like to cut things. I like the way a knife makes the skin separate.”
From his boot, he pulls out his knife. The huge, serrated blade has me thinking all of this false bravado is a silly teenage girl’s ruse, an immature deception put forth by a child who never felt the touch of violence upon her. I realize I don’t know how fragile the human body is, that he could show me if he wanted. Suddenly I feel naïve, horrified. Awake.
“I especially like skin like yours,” he says, his voice low, like he is considering things I can’t let myself think about. “It’s beautiful before it’s cut. It’s so beautiful during the cutting.”
The scab floats closer to me. He slides his thumb over the blade’s edge, opening a fresh wound, all the while he can’t stop watching the floating scab. Finally his eyes clear and he puts the knife back in its sheath. Leaning his massive body toward me, me scooting away from him as far as I can in a tub this small, he reaches out.
A whimper escapes me.
I’m dead.
That’s when I realize he’s not reaching for me, he’s reaching for the scab. He picks it up, studies it, then pops it in his mouth and chews on it a bit. His square face is handsome, but laced with cruelty. The crunching of the scab between his molars has my stomach lurching, but I can’t look away. With short hair and the shadow of a beard, he looks like an enemy action figure, the one that scares the absolute poop out of the good guys. And right now, he’s scaring the absolute poop out of me.
“Christians devour the body of Christ every Sunday. They drink his blood.” He puts his bleeding thumb in his mouth and gives it a suck. “Is it such a dreadful thing to devour your own body? To drink your own blood?” He takes a tissue and wipes the tile floor where blood spilled from his arm. He studies the tissue, transfixed, then he puts it in his mouth, sucks it for a minute, then swallows.
“My message isn’t a complicated one,” he says. “Let me know you understand.”
“I understand,” I say, my voice breaking, tears now gathering in my eyes.
He turns and leaves the bathroom, and just like that he’s gone. I don’t hear the door open or close. Judging by the weight of the air in my dorm room, though, I know he’s gone.
Oh, how I pray he’s gone.
2
So I’m officially freaking out. Like crawling out of my skin, trembling, bawling, calling Georgia freaking out. She’s over in minutes. Holding me. The fire ants are marching, their torches hot AF, their timing so very, very bad. Then the bones in my face start to ache. Not like a headache, but like a truck is parked on my face. Like my bones are splintering, repositioning, mending and healing themselves. I don’t waste my time trying to be strong because the pain is ridiculous. It’s monumental. I can’t take the pills fast enough.
Georgia sweeps strands of damp hair back from my face. Whatever is happening to my face, I feel myself pulling back from my body, trying to hide inside my mind. If I could have a multiple personality take over from here, to suffer this agony for me, I would. She can have my breaking bones. She can have the shifting beneath my skin that itches and aches and has me all together squeamish. She can have me. I’ll come back when I look right, when the pain is over.
But I’m not so lucky. I’m just one girl, meant to suffer, forced to endure all this trauma. Four pills aren’t enough.
Add to the senselessness—to the physical persecution—the stress of my online fight with Cameron, the subsequent division of the school, and the horrible scab-eating monster and I don’t know how my mind hasn’t already shut down.
Maybe because of Georgia.
The drugs start to work, slowing the gyrations of my tilting room. Georgia is illuminated. My angel. Until now, I couldn’t understand the value of friendship, how moments like these can transform a relationship, deepen it to levels untold. Until now, I didn’t comprehend the notion of unconditional love. But Georgia is always here when I need her most. She’s changed me, saved me, been kind to me when no one else would. When I so desperately needed her, her arms were around me, comforting me. As I’m going under, into what I’m praying is a drug induced coma, I whisper these thoughts to her, incomplete, but real.
“You love me,” I say. She will never know how my soul begs to know the truth behind these words, or exactly what she means to me, but right now she’s my everything.
“I do.”
“Georgia,” I say, my words sounding syrupy, distant. “I need a gun.”
I feel the heat of her palm touching my face, her warmth against my uncertainty, my fear. Her love against my need. And then the blackness takes hold, suc
king me into a liquid embrace, swallowing me down in the murk and fog of my drug-addled brain.
I wake and Georgia is in the bathroom showering. The door is closed, but I’m glad she stayed. I couldn’t have been alone last night. She steps from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hair damp, a warm smile on her face, the question in her eyes. How do I feel? Much better my expression says.
“I was worried about you,” she says.
“I was worried about me, too. Then you got here and I felt better. I felt safe.”
Memories of the hulking man leave me feeling unsettled. “I was serious about the gun,” I say. My voice sounds confident, but then I wonder if I’m over-reacting.
My memories say otherwise.
In my mind I see that flat scab floating in the water beside me, the meaty hands reaching in my bathwater to pick it up, the mouth opened wide to eat it. The shiver hits me uncontrolled. Yes, I most definitely need a gun.
“Do you think you could shoot him?” Georgia asks. “If he came back?”
“Yes.”
“Then we better talk to Brayden.”
“Why Brayden?”
“Duh, ’cause he’s a boy.” I can’t imagine what I would say, or if he knows someone who knows someone. I think that’s how it works. Then Georgia says, “You’d better shower or we’re going to be late. And go heavy on the makeup.”
“What—why?” She points to my forehead, flicks a nod at the bathroom mirror.
I hurry in there, push my hair out of my face and see the split skin. Like the top layers were split and melded back together, except the whole seam didn’t take and there is still a faint, severed line. “Holy balls, will that heal?”
“Probably within a few hours. You’re going to need some concealer. Try hiding it with your hair, if you can.”
That’s when I see my face and, holy balls times two, things are different. I have beautiful cheekbones, definition in my jaw, tighter skin. It’s like I had a facelift over night! Even the very structure of my eyes, once droopy at the outside, are evening out. Georgia stands next to me and I look at her, then at me, then at her. I see similarities, but differences, too.
