Monsters Among Us

by Monica Rodden

  She remembered seeing those bruises for the first time in the hall bathroom two days ago, a pulsing sort of heartbeat under the color. Her hands had gone to touch them, then had slid away, her feet moving almost of their own accord, to the showers. She’d stood under the water in her dress until she couldn’t feel her skin anymore, then took the dress off, her hands shaking on the zipper at her throat, her fingers slipping on the slick fabric. When she was done, she took the soaking dress and shoved it in the trash can, just as her RA, Cordelia, came in, wearing sweat pants and an irritable expression. She took one look at Catherine and rolled her eyes.

  “You know you can’t throw away your own trash in here.” She pointed to the sign on the wall. “See? No nonbathroom trash. It’s already too full.”

  Catherine said nothing.

  Cordelia sighed. “Look, just take it outside to the dumpster if—”

  “I’m not going outside.”

  Raised eyebrows. “Suit yourself then.” And to Catherine’s disbelief, Cordelia started to take the dress herself, picking it up with her fingers like it was something gross.

  “This is soaking. Holy crap. What did you do, go swimming in it?” Her eyes, suddenly searching, caused a dull foreboding to prick at the back of Catherine’s neck. She dropped the dress back into the trash. “Catherine? Catherine? Are you okay?”

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the memory, telling herself she wasn’t there, that she was home and safe and fine. She tried to think of how to pass the time. She didn’t think she could sleep any more, and the idea of scrolling through her Netflix recommendations made her twitch. It seemed to take her brain a long time to come up with something, but then she remembered with a little jolt that in two days, it would be Christmas Eve.

  She wrapped herself in sweats and a bathrobe and tied her dirty hair in a low ponytail. The hardwood of the stairs was cold under her feet, the kitchen air chilled. Outside the window, the night was dark, but the porch light was on, and she could see that her father had been right: it was snowing. Light, drifting. She sat at the kitchen table and looked at the two gifts she’d brought down: a book for her dad, a paint set for her mother. She’d gotten the paints on Etsy, had paid extra to make sure the set shipped to the university before she left. She remembered getting a notice that she had a package, the day before the night it had happened.

  Her parents still kept the scissors and tape in that long, narrow drawer to the left of the oven. She slid the scissors through the wrapping paper. It made a sound like a snake and she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was someone outside the kitchen window.

  She could just make him out by the glow of the porch light on his blond hair. He was walking a chocolate Lab that was sniffing a tree in Catherine’s front yard. The boy seemed to sense somebody watching him, because he turned slowly, head tilted a little, and met her eyes. He raised a hand in greeting and after a moment, Catherine waved back. They looked at each other for another moment and the dog began to wag its tail madly, straining at the leash; unable to help herself, she got up and went to the door. When she opened it, the dog barked and jerked the boy forward with its enthusiasm to get to Catherine.

  She knelt down and stroked the dog’s head. “Hey, Molly,” she said. The dog was somehow cold and warm at the same time, her muzzle grayer than Catherine had ever seen it. Catherine stood up and half smiled at the boy in the doorway.

  “Henry,” she said. “You need a hat.”

  He ran a hand through his short hair with a grimace. “No one told me about the snow.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She took a step back, letting both him and the dog inside, and closed the door. She leaned against it, arms crossed, looking at him a little wonderingly.

  They’d been seven years old the summer he moved in down the street. Both of them blond-haired, blue-eyed children who blistered in the rare Washington sun. It had been hotter than usual, but they discovered a shared love of the outdoors: running wild through tall, damp grass; coming home for dinner with cuts and grime up and down their bare, skinny calves; Henry pulling splinters from her palms when she’d tried to do a handstand on his deck. Children. Inseparable until they weren’t. Until she’d gone away the summer before high school, and when she came back, something had shifted between them. Suddenly they were teenagers instead of children, in a high school so large that they’d only had one class together the whole four years. This naturally led to different friends, different everything. She dated boys from the soccer team and went to midnight movie premieres and once attended a party across state lines in Portland. Then she went away to college, and he didn’t, but by that point they were so distant from each other he was just a wry memory to her. There and then not. Hers and then not.

  At prom, she had run into him outside the hotel and they’d hugged with that why-not agreeableness that came with the end of senior year. She’d smiled up at him, handsome and navy-eyed under the stars, her long green dress sweeping the sidewalk. It had felt like a reprieve to see him smile back at her that night, to talk for just a few minutes, to say each other’s names. She hadn’t even realized until then, the guilt she felt about how she’d let him go.

  I put you away, she thought, looking at him now. Like a toy I’d outgrown. Outside, snowflakes stuck to the window in jagged circles.

  “Catherine Ellers,” he said. “Catherine Luana Ellers.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’d hoped you had forgotten that part.”

  “Never.”

  “Well, it’s not my fault my parents honeymooned in Hawaii. It means happy, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but you never seemed too happy about it.”

  “Whereas Durand is such a charming middle name.”

  “It means enduring, Luana.”

  “Also stubborn, Durand.”

  They were both speaking softly, aware of her parents asleep upstairs, and there was something communal and conspiratorial in how they grinned at each other. She realized in that moment that he had no idea what had happened to her. There was a rushing feeling of relief in that; she didn’t have to pretend. He was the first person she’d talked to in days who had no idea what she’d been through, or that she’d been through something at all. To Henry, she was just a girl in her kitchen two nights before Christmas Eve, wrapping presents while it snowed outside.

  So, when he asked her how she was, she walked to the kitchen table and finished taping the snowman wrapping paper around her father’s book.

  “Shitty,” she said.

  “Language,” he said, bending down to cover Molly’s ears.

  Catherine’s lips twitched. “How old is she now?”

  “Nine.”

  “No way.” As soon as Catherine looked at Molly, the dog padded over to her, panting happily. Catherine stroked her fur slowly, frowning. “Time flies. Kind of late for a walk, isn’t it?”

  Henry grinned. “You, uh, don’t really have a choice when it comes to a dog. And it wasn’t like my parents would take her. Not that I mind,” he added.

  She knew he didn’t mind. Molly had been his idea, she remembered. He’d begged and begged his parents for a dog and they had finally relented under the agreement that Henry would take care of it entirely. Unlike most children, he had lived up to his word. Even now, nine years later, Molly still looked up at him in silent devotion.

  “You’ve always been good to her,” Catherine said with a smile, then the smile fell a little. Henry Brisbois was in her kitchen. It was the strangest thing. She felt a pang of guilt looking at him, the same feeling she’d had talking to him at prom. She glanced at the staircase, then back at the door. “Well, I don’t want to keep you—”

  “Right.” He picked up Molly’s leash from the floor, and she trotted back to him, panting happily. “Thanks for the break from the cold.”

  “No problem,” she said as Henry made for the doo
r.

  “And, uh, sorry you’re feeling shitty.”

  She jerked her head toward Molly. “Careful.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t care. She’s got a horrible mouth herself. Mostly because she’s a dog.”

  Catherine gave him a look she knew was too long. This kept happening to her lately, a thousand-yard stare she couldn’t quite shake, as though her eyes were taking longer to see things. Henry didn’t look away.

  “Sorry.” She cleared her throat and looked back at the presents. “I just realized I forgot the jars.”

  “Jars.”

  “Cookie jars,” she said unhelpfully, then added, motioning with her hands, “You know, layers of everything. Flour and sugar and stuff. I was going to make some for my parents. Different kinds of cookies.”

  “Cookie jars,” Henry said again.

  “They’re good gifts.”

  “Yeah, but so are actual cookies.”

  She walked to a nearby cabinet. “I was going to do chocolate chip, and then this cranberry one and then a third, maybe peanut butter, but I don’t know if that’ll work in a jar.”

  Henry came up behind her, looking into the cabinet as well. “And you’re using your parents’ ingredients for their own gifts?”

  “Flour, brown sugar—shut up, Henry—powdered sugar, baking soda,” she mused, pushing aside various jars and bags. “Yeah, everything’s here except baking powder and white sugar. And chocolate chips.”

  “They have brown sugar but not white sugar?” Henry asked, surprised.

  “When I’m at school I think my parents live off expired eggs and white bread. Actually, some of this stuff might be expired too. Can flour go bad?” she said, carefully turning over the bag to search for a date.

  “Maybe you should come home more often,” Henry suggested. “Or get them one of those pet-feeder things off Amazon.”

  Catherine turned from the cabinet to look at Henry, flour bag still in hand. “Molly’s sick, isn’t she?”

  “Nothing gets past you, Catherine.” He shifted where he stood. “She’s got time, we think. She can still go on walks.”

  Catherine tried not to look at the dog. “She’s all skinny. She was always fat before. And on her neck, I felt stitches.”

  “Labs, you know, they tend to get—”

  “Cancer.” A short silence. Catherine swallowed, hard. “I had a shit time at college.”

  Henry didn’t say anything for a moment; then he glanced back at the cabinet behind her. “Those pet-feeder things on Amazon are really expensive, and they don’t do those cookie jar things you want to make. I’m pretty sure Safeway has sugar, though.”

  “Safeway?”

  He frowned, then seemed to understand. “Oh, you weren’t here. Yeah, the Albertsons is totally gone. There’s a Safeway now. It’s massive.”

  “Will they even be open?”

  Henry glanced at the oven clock. “Now? No, they close at ten. But you could try tomorrow.”

  “They’re open this close to Christmas?”

  “Probably be riots if they weren’t. I’m going tomorrow too, actually. Have to pick up some last-minute things for my mom. Bread crumbs or something. We can go together if you want.”

  She considered this for a moment, not quite believing the invitation but feeling strangely comforted by it all the same. She glanced down at Molly, who met her eyes and began to wag her tail. Catherine smiled. “Can I buy her, like, a steak or something, while we’re there?”

  * * *

  —

  Henry said he’d come back in the morning, around nine. Once he left, Molly in tow, Catherine finished wrapping the two presents and then placed them carefully under the tree in the living room. The tree was slender but beautiful, with silver and gold ribbons, and ornaments that caught the light on the edge of their circumference. The tree’s lights suddenly reminded her of Henry’s backyard. Fourteen years old, the tail end of a summer party: distant, adult chatter; a kernel of corn wedged in her back teeth; the stinging haze of smoke from the grill whenever she walked by. The grass had been damp under her bare feet, the backyard glowing from the string of pastel garden lights draped across the deck. Henry’s face had been very close to hers, a weird mirror image. But then he’d kissed her, and it felt so normal, so natural, like he’d kissed her before, more than once, a hundred times in fact, and would kiss her again. But he never had the chance.

  She’d left the very next day: six weeks at summer camp. By the time she’d come back, things had changed somehow. She looked at Henry and it was as though she couldn’t remember all the different pieces of him, not even the kiss. Like the kiss hadn’t happened, or it had happened a million years ago, or it had happened to another girl entirely.

  So, maybe they hadn’t just drifted apart. At least, not in equal amounts, if she was being honest with herself. Whatever their ending had been exactly, she had started it. She had pushed him away for no reason and hurt him and never given him an explanation. Because there wasn’t a good one, was there? She put a hand to her chest. It was happening again, that pressure out of nowhere, like someone was crushing her lungs into her back, her spine. Through her tears, the lights of the Christmas tree wavered, gold and glimmering.

  It was almost Christmas. Tomorrow she would go to the store to get white sugar. She would pour it in layers with flour and chocolate and wrap the whole jar in a ribbon and put it under the tree.

  And there was that word again: tree. Trees everywhere. Inside and outside, draped in lights and snow and sniffed at by kind, dying dogs.

  I don’t want to die.

  She thought it to herself like a mantra.

  I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.

  And by the time Henry knocked on her front door the next morning, Molly waiting in his parked car with a happy expectancy, she told herself it was almost true.

  Henry was right; the Safeway was massive. A guy in an apron yawned behind a sushi display as they passed to browse the deli section. Molly sniffed the air eagerly. Catherine watched her for a moment, then glanced around, wondering if someone would say something. But it was early, and she saw no one besides the Starbucks girl, now stacking coffee lids with a morose air.

  “I’ll say she’s a service dog,” Henry said to her unasked question. “Not that I think they’ll care, to be honest.”

  “But she doesn’t have a harness.”

  “Doesn’t need one. Federal law,” he added at her expression.

  “You’re kidding.” She put down the overpriced block of Muenster cheese she’d been examining.

  “I’m not. I work at a library. Anyone brings in an animal, you can only ask them two questions: Is it a service or therapy animal, and what service or therapy does it provide?”

  “But what if they lie?” Catherine asked, casting a glance at Molly, who was eyeing the discarded cheese with abject disappointment.

  “Then they lie.”

  Catherine frowned at this, then said, “I didn’t know you worked at a library.”

  “At Falls College. Yes, I do go to college, Cath.”

  “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  She broke off. “Falls College isn’t bad.”

  “People call it Fails College.”

  She said nothing.

  Toward the end of her senior year of high school, the yearbook staff put together a list of the graduating students and what colleges they’d chosen. It was common knowledge that a lot of people going to the local community college would put “undecided” instead. She distinctly remembered calling it Fails College a few times with her girlfriends. Now it gave her a sick, swooping feeling in her stomach, like a sudden nausea.

  Henry was watching her and Molly was whining at the cheese and the guy in the apron was stacking black containers, and without wa
rning her head was full of the sound of a cup falling to a dorm room floor, rolling away with a grinding sound.

  She didn’t know who gave her that cup of water. She’d stumbled out too quickly, still half drunk, too stupid to look at the room number as she ducked down the hall, head bowed, stumbling into someone who asked if she was okay—and she was so not okay that she got halfway across campus before she remembered her dress was on backward, the tag still scratching thinly at her throat, and her arms and legs bare.

  But she knew how the cup sounded when it fell, how his breath smelled like beer and toothpaste when he told her to go, remembered with perfect clarity the weight of her dress as she wrenched it off under the water.

  “Catherine?”

  She turned her head, the hard lights of the grocery store coming slowly back into focus. She realized she’d gone quiet again. “Falls College,” she said after a moment, brain working frantically to recall the conversation.

  “Yes, I like to call it that, too. Instead of Fails College.”

  “Which is mean,” she said, getting her feet under her now. They were walking again.

  Henry shrugged. “But sort of true. I mean, I get it. It’s not a four-year school.”

  “Yeah, well. Do you like it at least?”

  Another shrug. “It’s something. A stepping-stone, my parents call it.”

  Catherine felt a ghost of a grin on her face and clung to it. Normalcy. Parental vocabulary, as though they’d all read the same handbook. “What did you get them for Christmas?” she asked as they turned down the baking aisle and she scanned the shelves, bare in spots from the pre-Christmas rush. It looked like the pumpkin puree was sold out, but there was still sugar on the bottom shelves. She picked up a bag and straightened up, realizing Henry hadn’t answered her question. “Your parents,” she repeated, then caught sight of his face.

  He was staring past her, down the aisle, his features a mixture of surprise and…fear? Catherine spun around. A few yards away, by the frosting and cake mixes, was a slight girl about her own age with long blond hair, her face gray-white with shock. She was staring back at Henry, her hand still in the air, clutching something small, and then she wasn’t.