Monsters Among Us

by Monica Rodden

  “So, you had fun?” her mother asked her, passing her a bowl of yellow rice. Catherine spooned some onto her plate. The plate was beige, and the color of the rice seemed to bleed into it.

  “Yeah,” Catherine said. She turned to her dad. “Have you talked to Evan Porter?”

  Her father looked a little surprised, his fork pausing halfway to his mouth, a piece of lemon chicken speared on the end. “No,” he said. “No, I haven’t. Not exactly. He’s not up to…Well, anyway. I’m not sure what I would say to him, to be frank.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Catherine shrugged. “Just wondering.”

  He ate his piece of chicken thoughtfully, then swallowed. “Every parent’s worst nightmare, what they’re going through.”

  Catherine said nothing. Her mother, she saw out of the corner of her eye, was staring down at her own plate as though it was a complete mystery to her.

  “Do you remember when you got lost on the beach?” her father said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “We lost you,” he said. “You were maybe four or five. First time at the beach. God, you were fast then. We thought about those child leashes a few times, remember, Susan?”

  Her mother nodded, and then, as though it was a struggle, ate a bite of rice. “My mother thought it was abusive. Grandma Nelly,” she added, as though Catherine needed the reminder.

  “Alki Beach, just after one in the afternoon, I think it was,” her father continued. “A woman near us started feeding the gulls and of course it got out of hand. People running, ducking, trying to hide their food, the birds screeching, and I suppose your mother and I were distracted—and when I turned back, you weren’t there.” He paused. “I kept looking at your towel. Barbie something or other, this pink-and-yellow little thing, but you weren’t there and…”

  “It was like the earth stopped,” her mother finished softly. “Time and the ocean. Nothing moving at all.” She shook her head. “Don’t look too alarmed. Fear like that…it stretches things, makes it seem so much longer than it was. In reality it was only a minute. You were a few yards away. A family near us had a Great Dane and you thought it was a pony and wanted to ride it. But I remember fear. The…horror. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, and I can’t imagine it not ending, getting worse, and that’s what Jennifer—” She stood up, her voice cracking. “I’m sorry, excuse me.” She hurried from the kitchen, up the stairs. Catherine watched her go, her heart sinking.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning back to her dad. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. He seemed to not want to look at her again. “It’s hard. For everyone. What happened.”

  “Yes.”

  A beat of silence.

  “That movie,” he said finally. “It’s on DVD now. It’s not playing in the theaters.”

  She said nothing.

  “I like Henry,” he added. “And that other boy seemed fine, the little I talked to him. You dating either of them?”

  “No.”

  “Both of them?”

  She choked back a laugh. “No.”

  He got up from the table, taking both their plates. He walked to the sink. She almost missed the next thing he said, his face in profile, but she managed to just make it out over the sound of the running water.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I don’t know what happened, exactly. With what your mother told me…” He still wasn’t looking at her, his arms damp to the elbows under rolled-up sleeves. “But I want to know you’re okay.”

  “I am.”

  “And you’d tell me if you weren’t.”

  “Sure.”

  He turned to her at that. “You know, it’s not true that George Washington said he could never tell a lie. His first biographer, a minister called Mason Weems, came up with that. He wanted people to think good things about Washington after Washington’s death, and invented the whole story.”

  Catherine considered this. “So, no cherry tree?”

  “Likely not.” He turned off the water. “But I take away two things from that—one, no one always tells the truth, and two, sometimes people lie for good reasons.” He dried his hands on a towel hanging from the dishwasher. “Whatever your reason, be careful, Catherine. You’re the only one we have.”

  * * *

  —

  Henry’s mother had made roasted quail with a balsamic-pomegranate glaze and he found it ridiculous. It wasn’t how it tasted; it was good actually, tangy and juicy, but he found most things about his mother ridiculous. He suspected his father felt the same way, though he hid it well. Better than Henry did, anyway. Especially lately. Now that Catherine was back in town, his mother was even colder than usual, her lips thin and her eyes watchful, as though any moment Henry and Catherine might elope and run away to Europe or something and she’d have the unenviable task of altering the will.

  Henry stabbed at a quail leg. His mother raised her eyebrows.

  “Are you coming with us to the cabin for New Year’s?” she asked, referring to their condo in the Cascade Mountains. Cold. Snow. He hated skiing.

  “No,” he said. “I have schoolwork.”

  “Between semesters?”

  “There’s a final project for European studies that we have until January tenth for.”

  A lie, but the idea of staying in the condo with his parents—watching them pull on slim layers of skiwear and afterward sip espressos in tiny expensive mugs by the electric fire—made him almost wish for his fictional schoolwork to be real.

  Plus, he couldn’t leave Catherine alone. Not as long as Andrew was in town.

  Henry took a bite of the quail, wondering for what felt like the hundredth time what that kid was hiding.

  “Does Catherine have work as well?” his mother asked.

  Henry looked up at her. She had a piece of asparagus on her fork. As he watched, she chewed it slowly, then took a sip of red wine before placing the glass back on the table. It was a rustic table, with carefully distressed wood, and one side had a bench instead of chairs; Henry had never once seen anyone use the bench, let alone his mother. The entire room was an extension, added on a year ago because, as far as Henry was concerned, his mother had been bored. He imagined she must have seen the room in a magazine and copied it entirely from a single picture.

  No wonder she got along so well with Pechman.

  “No,” he said. He took a sip of his water. He could hear Molly just behind the French doors; she wasn’t allowed in this room and was whining softly in the kitchen. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?” She cut another piece of asparagus. He could hear the knife grind across the bone china.

  “No,” he said again. He tipped his glass more, draining it. “I don’t think so.”

  “And here I thought that when it came to Catherine Ellers, you knew all.”

  Henry reached across the table. He plucked the wine bottle from the center and poured a measure into his now-empty water glass.

  His mother looked sternly at him. “You know I don’t approve of that.”

  “It’s fine, Celia,” his father said. He sounded almost bored.

  His mother barely spared him a glance before turning back to Henry. “Do I have to say it?”

  “Say what?” Henry asked, setting the wine down.

  “You know I don’t like you spending time with that girl.”

  Henry restrained himself from rolling his eyes with great difficulty. “No,” he said. “Had no idea.”

  His mother took back the wine and topped off her own glass. “I just don’t want history repeating itself.”

  “Celia,” his father said.

  �
��No.” She shot Henry a dark look, as though he’d been the one to protest. “Believe me, I am well aware I am the only one in this family who acknowledges what happened between you two.”

  “Nothing happened,” Henry said.

  His mother shook her head. Her neck, he noticed, was flushed, though her carefully made-up face was still composed and bone white.

  “You were so upset about her. So distressed. For her to just—just do something like that—”

  “She didn’t do anything,” Henry said, but his hands tightened on a slat under the table. How ridiculous, to make wood look old when it was so new, so expensive, a plate in the center of it holding stupid small birds that cost four times as much as an actual chicken.

  “She sent you to the hospital,” his mother said. “I don’t call that nothing.”

  Henry did roll his eyes at that, his hands releasing the table. That incident had happened four months ago and she’d never let him forget it.

  He drank some more wine, if only to infuriate her further. “It was hot. I went on a hike. Ran out of water.”

  “Thank God that other hiker found you—”

  “I wouldn’t call it God,” Henry muttered. “More like peak hiking season.”

  “—but that was the same week she went away to college. Don’t think I don’t know.”

  “It was also,” Henry said, trying to keep his voice calm, “my last week before college. I wanted to hike the trails one last time before I got busy with homework and exams and everything. I was stupid and forgot to refill my canteen before I left. It didn’t have anything to do with Catherine. I’d barely talked to her in years by that point.”

  “You were so ill you had to have an IV—”

  “For, like, an hour,” Henry protested. He turned to his father. “You know. Tell her.”

  His father sighed. He’d long ago finished his meal, his plate clean. He always ate quickly but neatly, like an unfailingly polite victim of starvation. “Let’s not go through this again, Celia. I know you’ve never been fond of the girl after she and Henry had that falling-out, but I don’t think it’s fair to blame her for that incident. It was likely distraction, not distress, that caused him to pack so irresponsibly.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Henry said wryly, leaning back in his chair. His eyes found his mother’s again. “You know it could have been the exact opposite, and you’d still blame her? Like, instead of running out of water I could have drowned and you’d have been like, Well, Catherine’s always liked water, hasn’t she?”

  His father chuckled at that, and his mother shot him a fierce glare until he coughed and subsided.

  “Do not joke about that, Henry,” she said. “And I’ll thank you, Charles, not to encourage him.” She took a steadying breath. “I’ll admit, this is not about Catherine. At least, not just about her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means,” she said slowly, returning to her food, “you choose poorly when it comes to girls, Henry. It’s proved troublesome. After Leyna—”

  Henry felt his face grow hot. “I don’t want to talk about Leyna.”

  His mother raised her eyebrows. “How fortunate. Neither do I. She didn’t give us much of a choice, though, did she? Ridiculous girl.” Her voice became biting for a moment, then smothered itself back to calmness. And there was something else in her expression, something so fleeting it was gone before he could register it fully—affection?

  “Mom—” he began.

  But she shook her head. “You’re a good boy. Trouble is, you never meet girls good enough for you. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother. I’m saying that because I’ve seen the way they treat you.”

  She took another sip of wine, then looked out the window that spanned almost the entire wall. “The mountains will be nice,” she mused. “See some real snow. It’s too green here. I’m rather sick of it. You sure you won’t join us, Henry?”

  “I’m good,” he said, a statement so far from the truth he waited for his mother to protest again. Instead she merely finished her meal in silence, leaving black-red streaks on the white china, a single bone off to the side like something unearthed from an excavation, or a grave.

  “You’ll miss the funeral,” he told her. “If you go on the first.”

  “We’ll leave on the second, right after,” she said, and rose from the table. “I find death ceremonies rather distressing and would rather not linger.” Outside the window, Henry barely saw any snow. He hoped the mountains were green for her on Thursday. Green as emeralds, or ivy.

  The next day or so passed in lurches and stops, the hours dragging but the nights arriving abruptly, so that Catherine found herself settling into bed with surprise, as though she’d expected each day to continue on indefinitely. But they didn’t. The sun rose gray-yellow and set in amber to reveal the moon above the trees. Fog pressed against the windows, settled on the ground, and the air developed a strange, acidic tang from the rain mixing with car exhaust before soaking into the asphalt.

  Catherine, like most in west Washington in winter, spent her days indoors, watching shows on her laptop and finally answering a few text messages from her high school friends—including Hania—who wanted to hang out catch up how are you what are you doing for New Year’s let’s go out omg is college not the craziest thing ever I have to tell you—

  Shared lockers and AP classes, drowsily copying each other’s homework before first period. Passing stupid notes about stupid boys and asking why MAC makeup was so expensive and would it be the worst to steal just once from Sephora when they already shopped there, like, all the time?

  Catherine texted back vague excuses. Most, like Luiza and Julia, were understanding, but Hania was more persistent and eventually Catherine stopped responding, a dull sadness warring with her frustration. She was being unfair, she knew it. They had promised they wouldn’t grow apart after high school, swearing it over last summer’s Firefly and lemonade—Hania’s drink just the latter—their shoulders tanned under thin white straps, their shorts dark and denim and a little too expensive for so little fabric.

  We’ll never change.

  Never forget.

  Like some tragedy had happened or something. Even then, toasting with a plastic cup on Hania’s deck, laughing and day drunk and feeling actually beautiful, Catherine had thought distantly, We don’t mean it.

  Amber was better; she and Catherine messaged on and off, though Catherine couldn’t help but feel that Amber was checking up on her. She half wished she hadn’t told Amber anything, but it was too late to undo that now.

  Catherine put down her phone. She was lying on her stomach on her bed, her laptop open to HBO. It was Tuesday afternoon. The last day of the year—New Year’s Eve. Tonight she’d probably stay up until midnight with her parents, feeling decidedly lame watching the ball drop and people kiss in the freezing cold on the other side of the country.

  Outside her bedroom window, the light was weak and fading, even though it was barely four-thirty, and the fog was back, the cold crystallizing on the window where, just nights ago, the Amy from her dream had made her bleed.

  Catherine shut her laptop with a snap and grabbed her bag from beside her nightstand.

  She had to get out. At least for a little while.

  * * *

  —

  She went to Starbucks. Not the most creative of places, but it wasn’t a grimy bedroom or a church, and there was a familiarity to it that made her think of high school again. Had it really been less than a year ago that she’d been studying for her AP exams? Applying to colleges? She remembered being so stupid-happy getting her acceptance letter, almost crushing it in her hand before sprinting around the kitchen, finally banging her hip into the granite countertop. But even then, she’d laughed as her eyes watered, a happiness so intense it was like a drug.

&n
bsp; Catherine ordered a latte and opened her laptop. She’d work on her essay, that’s what she’d do. If she was really going back to college in a matter of weeks, she might as well act like it. At the very least, she had to respond to her professor’s email.

  She read the message over, scanned her essay—minor revisions, very doable—and felt her fingertips tapping against the keys but not typing. Finally, she began:

  Dear Professor Graham,

  Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate your help with this and am glad you liked the essay.

  But no. Liked wasn’t the right word. She was glad her professor had…found the essay to be…satisfactory? Good? Contest-worthy?

  “Catherine?”

  She looked up. A girl with brown hair just slightly darker than her skin tone met Catherine’s eyes.

  “Hania,” Catherine said, her heart suddenly hammering in the back of her throat. But she got up and hugged her friend all the same.

  “I thought you said you were sick?” Hania’s lipstick was red-purple, her eyes sparkling as Catherine pulled away. She was like Amber—a little softer maybe—but still had that straightforward conversation style, with no interest in gossip or rumors or small talk. Catherine had found Hania refreshing during high school but felt a thrill of dread facing her now. Hania was like a human lie detector sometimes.

  “I am,” Catherine said, and was gratified to hear she did actually sound pretty bad. “But I had some work to do and wanted coffee.”

  Hania nodded and took a sip of her own drink, her eyes still on Catherine, who suddenly remembered the bruise at her neck and hastily pulled her hair forward.

  “Bummer,” Hania said. “Well, Abbey and I are going to try to get everyone together before we all have to leave again. We’re thinking Six Seven, that place in Seattle. A fancy dinner, maybe next week? When does West Washington start up?”

  “The twenty-first.”

  “Lucky. We go back the week before.”