by Kate Moretti
She didn’t look real.
“Are you eating?” he asked, knowing immediately it was a mistake.
“What the fuck do you care?” She asked not even looking over at him, her voice wobbling high.
“Jesus, Alecia. I care. Okay? You kicked me out.” His palms itched, his scalp, his nose. His skin felt tight and hot.
“You slept with your student.” Her voice was firm, resolute. She still wouldn’t look at him, her hair falling in her face, hiding her like a shield.
Nate picked up his duffel bag—he didn’t come over here to fight about this, about any of it. “So you believe it now? Before, you weren’t sure but now you are?”
She whipped around to face him. “I went through your phone, you know. A few weeks ago. You liked a picture of hers. That girl with the white hair and the boobs out to here”—she pushed her hands out in front of her chest, her palms shaking—“I saw it. You liked this slutty red lingerie picture.”
Nate felt his face pale, the blood drain, and his fingertips tingle. He’d forgotten about that.
It had been an accident. Truly. It was months ago.
He’d woken up at night, three, four in the morning. It was a long-standing habit. He’d picked up his phone, scrolled through his Facebook, his Twitter, Instagram. He remembered the picture, the angle, the eyes looking into the camera, they looked so scared. Like someone was making her do it. That was his initial thought, she was being forced to dress up like that, her breasts pushed up almost to her chin, a red satiny V where her legs met, in a blur at the bottom corner that he couldn’t seem to stop looking at. He paused, his thumb on the picture. It had been posted an hour prior. She’d been awake at 2 a.m. on a school day. He pictured her, dressing in her room, for herself or someone else? He had no way of knowing. Later, it was all he could think about: Did someone make her take that picture? He pictured a gun against her back, a knife against her throat. For what reason? It seemed irrational. The next morning, he felt stupid for the thought. It had hardly made any sense. But still. Those eyes.
In the moment, though, his thumb caught, tangled up in the fear in her eyes, beneath the wisp of hair across her face. He pinched his fingers together, then apart on the picture, trying to blow it up, and realized that it wasn’t possible. Instead, he took a screenshot, the dull vibration of the picture saved to his file. The favorite heart was illuminated red, and underneath, his username appeared. He panicked, his tongue sticky and dry, and without thinking, he double tapped again. The heart changed back to white, his name was gone. He thought. He was sure of it, wasn’t he?
In his photo gallery, he opened the screenshot, blew it up. Right at her collarbone, next to the ornate lace of her bra strap, was a circular red dot, covered with makeup, the skin an angry pink bubble.
A cigarette burn.
He’d unliked the picture. Right?
Would she still get notified? He didn’t know.
A week later, he’d been standing at the door as the kids filed out. He wore a red polo. She’d touched his sleeve. You like red? Her fingernails traced a feather touch against his forearm, making all the hair stand up. Her smile was so coy, so obtuse, he jerked his arm away. He stumbled back, knocking over the small metal trash can.
He couldn’t deny that she’d gotten under his skin, that girl.
He worried about it for days, the bright bloom of the red heart under his thumb. When nothing came of it, he forgot.
But Alecia knew? How? He realized, a second too late. The screenshot. He’d never deleted it. Initially, he saved it to show her, to ask her about the burn, maybe even to ask her about the picture itself, didn’t it look like someone made her do it? But the idea unsettled something in him, a feeling of wrongness, too many lines crossed, and he’d let it go. Even if it was Lenny. Even if the burn was abuse. But he’d never deleted the screenshot. So many stupid decisions, it was almost astounding.
“It was an accident,” he said lamely. Jesus Christ, he didn’t even believe himself anymore. He heard all his excuses and half lies, piled up on top of each other like playing cards. The only thing he had control over was how he told the truth. “Seriously. It was an accident. She’d told me about her brother, burning her with a cigarette. I saw a mark on her collarbone and I tried to blow the picture up, but Instagram doesn’t work that way. I accidentally ‘liked’ it. I didn’t even realize it at first. I was trying to see the mark on her. Her brother . . . You don’t have to believe me, but it’s the truth.”
She laughed, her hair covering her face, and she pitched forward, her hands on her knees. The remote clattered to the wood floor and she laughed again, covering her mouth with her palm. When she finally stood up straight, her face was splotched red and white at the same time, her hands on her cheeks, shaking her head back and forth, fast like a seizure.
“You must think I’m so stupid, Nate.” Voice high and hysterical.
“Alecia.” Nate reached out to touch her but she recoiled and shook a finger at him.
“Don’t. Just, leave. Leave us.” She pushed past him, back into the kitchen, back to Gabe and her dinner and Nate did as she asked. He left.
He could have begged her. He had half a mind to. The thing was, though, why should he have to? She didn’t believe him, no matter what he said. He could have gotten down on his knees and fucking begged. Said he loved her until he ran out of breath. He shouldn’t have to do that. Even if she had doubts—hell who wouldn’t?—she should at least believe him a little bit. At least about the biggest part: he didn’t sleep with her.
He stopped at the Quarry Bar, a place a guy could get a drink without any hassle. Without any questions or stares. Plus, no one he knew ever went there. The bar smelled like dank basement. Sweat and beer and sex and spit. He drank two tumblers of scotch (neat, cold), fast, like a teenager, and then sat at the bar spinning his empty glass between his palms, waiting for the liquor to take hold and calm his nerves. Then he waited for it to leech out, his vision to clear so he could drive. Nobody said a word to him, which worked out just fine.
He drove home in the dark, on the winding stretch of Route Six, the rain pelting his car, reducing his visibility to nothing. Until he’d seen her, white and gleaming, her head like an eagle, stark against the black trees. Her bare legs flanking the white line, the smirk that accompanied her middle finger. That red mouth. All of it was a big fuck you.
Now he struggled into a sitting position on the couch, rubbing his face, running his hands through his hair. The back of his eyelids scratched from lack of sleep. What time had he gotten in last night? Two? Three? Maybe later.
He checked his phone; a text from Tripp blinked. He looked around the living room. No Tripp, probably at work.
Where r u? Tried to call.
Then another. And another.
Hey, something weird is going on, call my cell.
Did you see Lucia last night? I’m hearing things. Pick up your phone.
Nate’s stomach knotted, taking the breath from his lungs.
She’d pressed her body against his window, so thin and frail, chattering in her clothes. He should have helped her. I don’t belong anywhere.
She was right, though, that was the thing.
After she’d run into the woods, he’d edged the car along the guardrail and flipped the flashers. He sat, rethinking, second-guessing himself. Then he’d gotten out, the rain stinging his face, his shoulders, soaking his jeans and his boots in a matter of seconds. He leaned over the guardrail and called her name into the inky blackness.
He thought about it, those woods. A million and a half acres of state game lands all in total, much of it wild, dense. Thick brush, few footpaths. He stopped, almost didn’t do it.
He’d yelled until his head swam and he felt the veins in his neck pop. Lucia! Over and over, his voice swallowed whole by the rain. He hitched one leg over the metal rail, then the other, sliding almost immediately down the muddy embankment, his body somersaulting feet over head halfway. At the bottom, th
e red blinking of his car looked like miles away. He stood; his bones ached and he stretched his legs, his shoulders. He hadn’t fallen like that in years; it seemed to be a skill honed in childhood and left to deteriorate with age.
He might have walked for five minutes into the woods, half running, half walking, calling for her before he realized it was hopeless. Stupid, he was so stupid. She didn’t really want his help. She didn’t want someone to save her. She preferred victimhood. It got her out a myriad of troubles, from late class assignments to skipping work, to getting drunk at parties and sleeping with men. Boys. Except, except. Nate’s mind skittered around. He had to go back.
Get back to his car, get to Tripp’s, change his clothes, call the police. Maybe go to the station. Tripp was working a double, he could ask for help. Advice.
When he turned around, his car was gone. All he could see in any direction was the black outline of trees against a slightly less black sky, his eyes blurred with the rain. He spun one way, then the other, and then looked up, the air wet, and he gurgled, sputtered, choked until his vision exploded with stars. He took ten steps back the way he’d come, nothing in front of him or behind but gnarled brush.
Something scratched at his arm and he jumped.
In his pocket, he fished out his key chain, a small carabineer, with a mini-LED flashlight. He pressed it on, swung it one way, then the other, illuminating mere feet in front of him, and wondered how long it would last. The rain was rhythmic, falling hard, then soft, a pulse that matched the racing of his heart. Nate pushed forward, in the direction he thought he’d come, walking far longer back than he’d been walking in, and that’s when he realized he’d gotten himself lost. He stepped over a fallen log that he was sure he hadn’t stepped over to get here.
He stood with a hand on his hips and brought the other hand to his head in a long-standing habit of men everywhere: lift his baseball cap, scratch his head, put it back. He realized then that his hat was gone, presumably when he’d fallen, tumbled down the hill, caught in the mud.
His Mt. Oanoke Raiders hat, the burgundy coach on the back. He’d had it since the first year he’d started coaching. Oh well, if he found the embankment, he’d likely find the hat.
He pushed on through the brush and wondered if he was in fact walking away from the road. There was a rustle to his right and he called, Lucia! Not expecting an answer.
If he was lost, she was likely lost hundreds of feet ahead of him. He pivoted, walking the opposite direction, figuring he’d have to do it for at least twice as long before he hit the road. If he hit the road.
He could just keep doing this, quartering off his walk. He was a math teacher but he grew up in the outdoors. If he walked ten minutes in one direction, he should be able to turn and walk twenty in the opposite and maybe hit something. Turn ninety degrees, repeat. If he kept going this way, he’d eventually have to find the road he started from. Eventually.
So this is what he did, periodically flicking on the flashlight to swing in front of him, but keep his feet planted in the direction he was walking, keeping his orientation. The rain let up. The steady falling of his sneakers against the brush, in the mud, sticks poking at his calves, scratching at his arms, his neck. The skin piercing open with a warm flood. It was almost a comfort, the pain. Like Lucia, those dotted patches of scabby skin along her scalp. He could see it now, the relief that came from physical pain. It drowned out the noise in his head.
When he finally saw it, the tall muddy tower of the embankment, the lights of his car still blinking hypnotically, but faintly, draining the battery on the old Honda, he almost whooped. The relief felt like a high.
He clawed in the squelchy mud, coming up a hundred feet down the road from his car. He scampered over the guardrail and jogged back, his energy renewed. In the car, the engine sputtered and turned over and he flipped on the heat as high as it would go. The hot air blew in his face, his eyes red, his neck burning. His skin doughy and pale, like a dead fish.
He looked at the dash clock, which blinked 2:17 a.m.
He’d been lost for three hours.
CHAPTER 21
Lucia, forever ago
It’s hard to figure when everything changed. Lucia spent a lot of time thinking about this.
See the thing is, they all used to be friends in pairs: Taylor and Lucia. Kelsey and Riana. Josh and Porter. But then there was Andrew, who didn’t need anyone.
Sometimes Taylor said Andrew was stupid, and although Lucia didn’t agree, Taylor was far from the only one. He fooled a lot of people with his eyes half lidded and his deepening voice, that sleepy “what?” that was always followed by a laugh. Everyone else always laughed, but Lucia, she saw him. It was an act.
The mill closed when they were all ten, still kids, riding their bikes to Tibb’s shoving their pockets full of penny candy and riding back to Taylor’s. Before Mr. Lawson left, Taylor’s house was the newest, not the biggest, but the friendliest: plush, plaid couches and lit candles, hot cookies and big, sunny windows. You could forget, for a second, you were in Mt. Oanoke in that house; it smelled like a scratch-and-sniff sticker.
Mrs. Lawson would fuss and fidget and do all the things that Lucia never knew a mother should do: cooked them dinner, poured their milk, and once even sliding a pair of flip-flops into Lucia’s backpack because she noticed her heels hanging off the backs of her old ones, her ankles dusty from the summer dirt. When Taylor found them later, digging through Lucia’s bag for a pen, all she said was fucking Jesus.
Then somehow, eighth grade happened, and that was the beginning of the end. Kelsey went from a little bit fat to curvy in the right places, earlier than everyone else, with this long wavy blond hair like in the magazines that Lucia found in Lenny’s room. Kelsey and Josh started hooking up, sneaking off alone, leaving Riana the odd girl out. Near as Lucia can tell, this was the tipping point. When Taylor finally realized Lucia wasn’t so great, after all, and Riana was there. It was only a matter of time, really.
They all joined track and that first year, in ninth, Mrs. Lawson paid for Lucia to join, too. Bought her track outfit: blue-and-white little shorts and a tank top, running pants that buttoned down the legs and a nice pair of sneakers. Then the year between ninth and tenth, Mr. Lawson lost all their money and left town and Mrs. Lawson never said another word about it. By then Taylor and Riana were already showing up late to practice, smelling like cigarettes and gum, hairspray and perfume from Riana’s mother’s bathroom.
Lucia wasn’t too upset when Mrs. Lawson didn’t sign her up again. She wasn’t a distance runner and was the slowest sprinter on the team. Coach Blue hardly looked up from her stopwatch, her mouth curled up and her eyes closed, when Lucia crossed the finish line.
She started going with Andrew and Porter, almost accidentally, while Taylor and Riana were at track. They’d invited her off the cuff—you coming?—in the hall, as Taylor and Riana ran for the locker rooms. Then every day after, Lucia wondered when it would end. She hung around too long, waiting for Andrew’s voice, you coming? Terrified for the day it wouldn’t come.
They’d end up in Andrew’s bedroom, his parents still at work, his house nothing like Taylor’s or Josh’s, in the smaller development from the eighties, but still warm with plush carpet you could curl your toes into. Andrew and Porter smoked pot, the smoke sweet and thick, listened to something old, Nirvana or Radiohead from Andrew’s iPod. Andrew always said that music from after 2000 was beat, shitty. Ate the freshly baked oatmeal raisin cookies Andrew’s mom left out for them.
Until the day Porter was sick with strep throat.
Lucia ended up in Andrew’s room, alone, and she felt the pulse of her heart in her neck, a steady thrumming over which she could hardly hear. His big hands, they seemed bigger than only a week ago, flicking through the songs, looking for the perfect one as she sat cross-legged on his beanbag chair, then stretched her legs out, too skinny in ratty jeans that she stole from the Goodwill, where she’d just started to work shifts in
the back room, sorting through other people’s smelly, unwashed underwear.
She watched Andrew find something, from a band called Screaming Trees, and watched him talk about grunge and how they all missed the greatest musical decade ever, by mere years. How if he could go anywhere he’d go back to 1993 in Seattle. She watched his mouth form the words, slow and easy, and his eyes blink his lazy, measured way and felt something pull, quick and tight low in her belly. She watched him and he smiled at her as he talked, and she felt the room tilt just a little, which was a feeling she’d never had before.
Lucia felt her breath coming then quick and shallow, like she was afraid to breathe, afraid to move to break the spell.
From then on, she was just a little bit in love with Andrew Evans. In hindsight, she should have been a little less obvious about it, but the next day Porter was back, and even with him hanging around, she watched Andrew’s mouth, wondering later, at night, what it would feel like on her mouth. Her neck. Her body.
She could feel the buzz, just under her skin, when she accidentally on purpose sat next to him in the cafeteria. He waited once, by her locker, handed her a pen with a slow, sideways smile and those half-open eyes, and said, “You forgot this in my room yesterday.” Amy Pinter—the girl whose locker was next to Lucia’s—opened her eyes wide and nudged her friend, and for once, Lucia felt like she wasn’t merely tagging along.
It could have been her imagination, but she felt the buzz coming back from Andrew, too. That gaze held a little too long, the way he sometimes walked too slow into the cafeteria, like he was orchestrating their seats, and when they ended up next to each other, he’d give her a little nudge and say, “You again?” but he never did that to anyone else.
