PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  Monday morning I awoke and lay in bed, silently debating with the ceiling as to whether I should go to school or not. Could I do it? Of course not. It would be horrible. But every ninety-seven seconds or so, a rush of bravery coursed through me, and I’d momentarily entertain the idea.

  It’d been bad enough on Friday when the kids thought I’d been lying about Ryan attacking me. There was no telling what would happen to me if they thought I killed him. I wanted to move, change schools, or do something else that was the equivalent of escape.

  When I threw the covers back to get out of bed, Rigel sauntered out of my closet. He bounded up atop my covers and turned around to look at me, his head cocked to the side like a curious bird.

  “You are up late,” he said as he settled on his haunches. “You are going to be late for school, unless you planned not to shower. I do hope that is not the case. You have an unpleasant odor on those days you forego bathing.”

  “You mean those days when I am recovering from injuries and am high on pain meds?” I said with a shake of my head before tossing a shoe at him. “Stay off my bed. You’re shedding white fur all over my stuff.”

  He ducked, but did not move. “Yes, those days. Are you going to bathe?”

  “Eventually,” I said, then headed to the bathroom as I said over my shoulder, “But I’m not going to school today. I’m in no mood to deal with people’s shit.”

  I closed the door for a modicum of privacy as I did my morning business, and Rigel had learned to leave me alone when I went to do it. Granted, it took a couple times of yelling and swatting at him with my feet as I sat on the toilet, but he eventually understood I wasn’t the sort of person who liked to talk and pee at the same time.

  When I emerged, Rigel said, “So, what are we going to do today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. My robe hung over my desk chair and I pulled it on. “Why don’t you go prevent that tragedy of yours, then skedaddle. You sure as hell haven’t bothered to prevent any of the tragedies happening in my life.”

  “You do not know that,” Rigel said primly. “For all you know, I averted a great disaster and saved your life.”

  “Something worse than what I’ve already been through?” I said, my brows furrowed almost painfully together. “I doubt it. If you had, you’re the sort of bloke who’d crow about it.”

  “I am a bloke?” Rigel said, and I was sure his little skunk mouth managed a smile.

  “You know what I mean,” I said with a dismissive wave. “And your stupid accent brought out the British in me. It’s what I get for watching the BBC channel.” Particularly anything that contained Stephen Fry.

  “You have not been watching television,” Rigel said.

  “Yeah, well lately I’ve been a bit busy and temporarily grounded, remember?” I said. “Look, I’m going downstairs. Don’t follow me. I don’t know who’s up or even home.”

  My father waited for me downstairs, nursing a cup of coffee and looking like he’d hardly slept. Our tattered phone book lay on the table near his mug. I didn’t know where to begin or what to say to him. I vaguely noted this was often par for norm for us. My usual topic was Mom’s insanity, and his usual reaction was to defend her in his self-delusional way. But that day I didn’t feel like complaining about Mom. I wanted to know where she was. I also wanted to know where I came from.

  “I’m staying home today,” I said. I tilted my chin slightly, not with defiance but conviction of my decision. I felt confident enough to state it instead of ask permission. The chair across from him welcomed my sturdy behind. I wanted breakfast, but I knew there was no cereal and didn’t feel ambitious enough to cook. Hopefully Karen would whenever she made it downstairs.

  Dad’s eyes remained on his coffee mug and his lip trembled in a way that made his chin shake as he tried to keep it in check with his teeth. I was certain he was about to cry, and it had nothing to do with the prospect of spending the day with his smart-mouthed daughter. Watching him struggle made my heart drop into my stomach, but I could think of no words of consolation.

  “Your mama’s car was found,” Dad said, not lifting his eyes to meet mine. “At the grocery parking lot. They reviewed security tapes and it shows her leaving the car to go inside, but she never went back to it. They said there’s no sign of her leaving the store, but she had to, right? I mean, it’s not like she’s still in there.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I knew he was being rhetorical, but I had to say something.

  “The cameras inside show her going into the bathroom, but not coming out,” Dad said. “There’s no other way for her to get out of there. I don’t get it. She didn’t just walk through a wall or fall into a hole.”

  I wanted to offer that she might have flushed herself, but I doubted he was in the mood for my brand of humor. I agreed with him, though. That was really weird. It was selfish to think it, but I was relieved it meant I wasn’t a suspect anymore. The cameras would have seen me.

  “You have a friend that works there, don’t you?” Dad said, his brown eyes finally lifting to look at me.

  “Yeah, Aka does,” I said. “He’s a night stocker. Not to be confused with night stalker.” I gave Dad a small smile, but he did not return one.

  “So maybe he saw something and doesn’t know it,” Dad said, then sat up straighter in his chair. “It was Wednesday night when she was there. Did he work Wednesday?”

  “I don’t know his schedule, Dad,” I said, leaning back. “But if he saw her or anything weird, he’d have told me about it.”

  “You should ask him anyway,” Dad said, an anxious edge to his voice.

  I had an overwhelming urge to bury my face in my hands and just groan. Dad was grasping for answers, and I got that, but Aka knew what was going on in my life, and I trusted him to be smart enough to tell me if he knew anything.

  “I will,” I said. By ‘I will’ I only meant that I might tell Aka Mom was last seen at the store, but I wasn’t about to ask him if he was being forgetful or deliberately withholding information since that would be pretty rude, no matter how much Dad might be trying to imply that just now.

  “I suppose from your comments in the hospital Friday afternoon, your mama told you about your biological mother,” Dad said.

  It blindsided me that he wanted to talk about that now. Sure, I did, but I didn’t have the heart to bring it up, especially since it would seem disrespectful to Mom if I did. It was okay for him to do it, though.

  I nodded my head, not yet trusting my voice. Mom had told me, and it was the last conversation we had. I hadn’t worked out how I felt about it yet. At first it’d been numb shock, and really that had not gone away. Idly, I began to pick at imaginary lint on my robe.

  Perhaps I had dwelled on it too much. Perhaps I had not thought on it enough. For whatever reason, I had been meandering through the past days in a fog of confusion whenever I turned my mind to the idea of some other woman in the world being responsible for my existence. Presumably a woman who wanted me in her life even less than Mom did. It was confusing, heartbreaking, and relieving all at the same time, and when I tried to think on it too much, my head began to pound furiously.

  “So . . .” I regretted speaking immediately, for I had nothing to follow up with that didn’t sound utterly ridiculous or selfish under the circumstances.

  Dad’s hand trembled as he fiddled with the knappy-paged phonebook, his thumb worrying a tear at the edge of the pages as he rubbed it back and forth in an anxious fidget. My uncertainty again took over, and being that was my most common condition of late, I was really getting tired of never having a frickin’ clue of what I should do.

  “What’s her name? Do you know where she is?” I said at last, since that was more important to me than anything else. I didn’t care about their courtship or divorce or what went wrong with them. I wanted to know where she was.

  “We haven’t spoken in almost fifteen years, honey,” Dad said. “Her name is Anna. I have no idea where she is. We div
orced before you were a year old. Then I met your mama, and when we married we raised you and Karen as sisters. Your biological mother was . . . not a responsible woman. She signed away her rights to you, and your mama chose your new name while I adopted Karen and gave her my last name. So we could be a happy, well-adjusted family.”

  I snorted. Well-adjusted, my ass. Then my thoughts skidded to a halt. “This is quite the surrealization, Dad. My new name? You mean I used to have a different one?”

  “Yeah, she’d named you Diamond, after that Pink Floyd song ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ since she loved it so much.”

  My mouth dropped open and I felt a whole new kinship to Aka in that moment. “What is it with you old people and that band? They’re just people, jeez.” Thank goodness Mom changed my name. She’d managed to do at least one thing right in my life. My life would have taken on a whole new level of craptacular had I been forced to endure the name Diamond instead of Kathleen. Granted, it was also stupid to be saddled with a name chosen merely for the first initial. Dad was Kevin, Mom was Katelyn, and then there was me and Karen. I’d never do that to my kids if I bothered to have any.

  “What do you mean?” Dad said, his brows crinkling. “And I’m not that old, thanks.”

  “Aka’s parents did that to him, too,” I said. “His middle name is Pink and his last is Floyd. Why don’t people care about how hard their kids’ lives are when they give them stupid names? I think it borders on child abuse.”

  He smiled faintly and shrugged. “I just let her have her way. I didn’t think it was important enough to argue over.”

  “You never think anything is important enough to argue over,” I said, crossing my arms against my chest. “You never stick up for me or yourself. It’s pretty pathetic, Dad. Like you ran out of fucks to give, and didn’t have all that many to begin with.”

  His eyes narrowed. Sure I was being disrespectful as hell, but I didn’t care. I was sick to death of him being the way he was. It was like he got married and said farewell to masculinity.

  “I’ve just always understood that blood is thicker than water,” Dad said.

  I arched a brow. How did that have anything to do with . . . well, anything? Especially this. That little gem meant family was more important than friends and the like, but it didn’t mean “husbands should never argue with their wives” or else where’s the fun in being married? I’d hate to be married to a guy who never spoke his mind or had an opinion on anything.

  “So what?” I said after I’d finished my brief inner-dialogue. “Llamas are bigger than bedbugs. Roses smell better than farts. What’s your point?”

  “A peaceful family is a happy family,” Dad said.

  Peaceful? He thought my life was peaceful?

  “Yeah, well so is a medicated one,” I shot back, then stood up.

  Dad remained a mystery to me, and I figured he always would be. How he could honestly believe our family was happy when Mom’s greatest pleasure in life seemed to be making me suffer, I had no idea. Didn’t he think for a second that maybe—just maybe—life would’ve been more peaceful if he had stood up for me? But years of dealing with his self-imposed version of reality taught me something important: everyone has reasons, just not always reason.

  21: Windows Versus Doors

  I sat on my bed in my silent room, contemplating the weight of the world and absolutely nothing at the same time. I tried writing in my journal. I had so many things to work out in my head and I thought that maybe if I simply put them down in black and white then I could make sense of it all. It didn’t help.

  Rigel was gone. He claimed he had some errand to go on, and said it didn’t concern me, as usual. I was glad of his absence so didn’t care at all what he was up to.

  A moment alone. That was all I needed. The last several days had just been one thing after another. No doubt about it, I was having a really rough go of everything. I should have been handling it better than I was. I was being incredibly weak and far too emotional. If Erin was in my place, she probably would have rolled everything off with a joke.

  Every once in a while, Karen checked on me, and I appreciated it. I wasn’t good company, and she never stayed long. She couldn’t understand. Her life had always been so much easier than mine.

  My phone rang after four o’clock. It was Josh. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, either. Of all the people in the world, the only person I wanted to talk to was Aka, but I hadn’t heard from him since the night before. He had not called as he’d promised.

  “You didn’t come to school today,” Josh said.

  I hunkered down into my pillows. “I noticed that, too.”

  “You doing okay?” Josh said. “You’re not sick or anything?”

  “Sick of school. Sick of life, of people, of the Greenhouse Effect and canned meat products being sold as edible wares, but no, I’m not ill.”

  “Life, school, and people, huh?” Josh said. “That includes just about everything. Not feeling suicidal, are you?”

  “If only I had that kind of ambition,” I said with a faux sigh. “Alas, I am too indolent for such things. I’d rather just lay here and pray for a magic genie to fix everything.”

  “What’s indolent?”

  “Means lazy.”

  “Ah,” Josh said.

  “So, how’s Macey?” I said, glad he couldn’t see my eyes roll.

  “No idea. I don’t . . . well, I don’t really like her.”

  “Then why’d you have me write that stupid letter?”

  He was silent for a moment, then said, “Promise not to get angry?”

  “No. I can’t predict my reaction to something without knowing what it is.”

  “Promise to try to not be angry?”

  “Fine. I promise to hesitate before yelling at you.”

  “Okay, close enough,” Josh said. “I wasn’t ever going to give it to her.”

  “Why would that make me angry? I don’t care what you were going to do with it.”

  That wasn’t really true. I cared that words I wrote would get the boy laid, but that had more to do with my seducing an unsuspecting girl than Josh’s sex life.

  “Really? Um, okay,” Josh said, and he sounded far too pleased by that. “I used it to show Ryan I could get you to do favors for people. To show you aren’t as bitchy as he said you were.”

  “What?” I said. “You mean, like a bet?”

  “Sort of, I guess,” Josh said slowly. “But I did it to help you. Since you guys were fighting all the time. I was sick of it.”

  “I didn’t need your help,” I said. “I never really cared what he thought of me. I was fine to avoid him. And I don’t appreciate being the subject of a bet, Josh. Especially since you still owe me ten bucks. Remember you paid me, so it wasn’t a favor anyway. I was pretty clear about that, actually.” I was sort of kidding, although I would have liked to be ten dollars richer. I probably should have been angry or at least bothered by the whole thing, but I couldn’t care less. There were other things in my life going on that were way more mind-bending.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to pay you. I just sort of forgot, you know?”

  I understood. What was a ten dollar debt compared to dealing with the murder of his best friend in his own backyard?

  We talked for a while, and I was beginning to wonder at the fact he hadn’t annoyed me yet. Perhaps he was just lonely now that Ryan was gone, but I thought it was pretty strange he’d latched onto me as a replacement.

  “Wait a second,” I said, interrupting him as he droned on about a song he had tried to write. Something on the other end of the line sounded suspiciously like rapid, quiet clapping. “What’s that noise?”

  The strange sound stopped.

  “What noise?” Josh said.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer right away, then said, “Nothing.”

  “Oh, my God!” I said. I got up and closed my curtains, just in case he was using more than jus
t his ears to arouse himself. “You’re . . . being gross, aren’t you? I’m not talking to you while you’re doing that, Josh Colby. Or maybe ever again. Nasty.” I hung up and tossed my phone towards the end of my bed, staring at it in disgust. Boys could be so revolting.

  ***

  Aka slipped in my window around five o’clock. Maybe I should get a ladder and make a little porch if that was the way people were going to keep coming into my room. It seemed far more unsafe to brave the architecture than it would be to just knock on the door and take the stairs.

  “You didn’t call me,” I said over my shoulder. I sat at my desk to surf the web for any news from the outside world. I was swiftly distracted by watching videos of clumsy animals and babies who had destroyed a room while their parents napped.

  “Battery died,” Aka said, taking a seat behind me on my bed. “Forgot it on the charger this morning. Just thought I’d come over.”

  “How was school?”

  “The same.”

  “Got work tonight?”

  “Nope.”

  My stomach did flip-flops beneath his beautiful gaze. And since when had I noticed? I had the strangest compulsion to flee, but it was my room.

  “They found Mom’s car at your work,” I said. “She vanished in the bathroom Wednesday night according to the security cameras. I don’t suppose anyone’s reported toilet goblins or anything lately?” I tried to make light of it so it didn’t feel like an interrogation. Aka always hated people asking him too many questions. Another of his weird quirks.

  I turned around when he didn’t say anything, rocking in my black computer desk chair. He was giving me a very strange look. “I take it that’s a no?”