The Shape of Desire

by Sharon Shinn

  Little did I know that making that promise would ensure I turned into one of the world’s best liars.

  Oddly, there wasn’t much fallout from that stoned and drunken night of revelations. I never heard Gary or the girls question Dante about his amazing claim, none of us reported Gary to the school board for cheating, and no one turned me over to the cops for aiding a fugitive. No one much cared about Janine’s confession, so the woman who instigated the whole event didn’t have much to worry about.

  I did try to talk to Rochelle once about her painful admission. We were in the cafeteria and ended up being the only two people seated at a small table during lunch. To my discredit, the first couple of times I’d seen her after the party, I had quickly turned the other way or pretended to be absorbed in another conversation. I wasn’t able to cope with the knowledge I’d gained about her; it had changed her so much I was almost afraid of her—or maybe I was afraid of how awful I would feel if I learned more details. This was way worse than the beatings Karen had suffered, and until that point, Karen’s father had been my standard for awfulness.

  “So,” I said as we sat there spooning up our mac and cheese, “have you written your paper for Russian lit yet?”

  “I haven’t even finished Solzhenitsyn yet,” she said glumly. “Thanks for asking.”

  I mentally took a deep breath and shook my shoulders back. “Hey, I wanted to say something,” I said, trying to pitch my voice exactly right between sympathy and admiration. “I thought you were really brave the other night at the party. Saying what you said.”

  I would never have thought such soft blue eyes could muster such a cold stare. “I was drunk,” she said sharply.

  I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. I was drunk, which is the only time I’d ever want to talk about such a thing. Or drunk, which means I can’t remember what I said. Or drunk, so I made shit up. “Yeah, we all were,” I said. “But it was still pretty powerful. And I just wanted to tell you—”

  She hunched a shoulder. “Don’t.”

  “If you wanted to talk about it—”

  “I don’t.”

  “I mean, I’ll listen, if you want, but maybe you should find a therapist, a professional. Something that traumatic can stick with you—”

  “Jesus, Maria, what does it mean when someone tells you they don’t want to talk about something?”

  “Well, I think it might be important that you do,” I finished. “As your friend, I just thought I should say that.”

  “Great. As my friend, just finish your lunch.”

  I held up my hands, palms out, conceding defeat. “Okay. I have the study guide for The First Circle if you want to borrow it.”

  She nodded but didn’t look up. All of her attention was focused on her macaroni and cheese. “Yeah, that’d be great. I’ll be down in the study lounge tonight.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring it by.”

  We labored through another fifteen minutes of conversation before Rochelle declared herself done with lunch and carried her tray away. I sat there by myself ten minutes more, worried that I had said too much, worried that I hadn’t said enough. When do you trust people to solve their own problems, when do you force them to take your help? When can you trust yourself to have a clearer view of their pain, their danger, than they can from inside the maelstrom? And why would you ever believe you have the power to reach out your hand and stop the bitter winds from their poisonous swirl?

  I hadn’t wrestled with those questions often and I couldn’t come up with satisfactory answers. I would discover, over the years, that I never could. I never believed that excused me from the obligation of trying.

  There was one unexpected and monumental side effect of the party held on the night of the blizzard. Dante asked me out.

  Snow was still on the ground a week after the storm, and I was getting pretty tired of wearing boots everywhere, not to mention gloves and the ugliest hat in the history of winter. I always found it so hard to look cute in cold weather. My eyes would tear up, my face would splotch with red, and I would swath myself in so many sweaters and scarves and socks that I looked like one of those children stuffed into a snowsuit and sent out to the backyard to play. Even more than I did in summer, I resented beautiful girls who seemed to float effortlessly through the season. They wore chic-heeled leather boots and white parkas with a fluff of fur that framed their faces, and their skin took on a healthy rosy glow. I trudged. I coughed. I blew my nose. I fell on the ice. I spent three months feeling clumsy and oafish and monstrous.

  Dante didn’t seem to notice either my unattractive attire or my grumpy expression when he came across me sitting just inside the front door of the dorm, trying to repair a broken bootlace by knotting the frayed ends together. “Hey,” he said. “On your way to or from?”

  I glanced up at him, so startled he actually noticed me that for a moment my hands lay lax on my laces. “Uh, to. I have a three o’clock Ancient Egypt lecture.”

  “I’ll walk over with you,” he said casually.

  He would? Really? Dante? “Great,” I said, my voice just as casual. I finished the knot, tied a sloppy bow in the shortened laces, and grabbed my backpack as I stood up. “I haven’t been out yet,” I said. “Still as cold as yesterday?”

  He didn’t exactly hold the door for me, but he pushed it open and made sure I’d stepped out behind him before he let it go. I squealed as the frigid air hit my face, and he laughed. “Maybe colder,” he said.

  “I keep looking for the forsythia,” I said with a sigh.

  He glanced down at me in amusement. I was tall for a girl, not quite five-nine, and my boots added another inch and a half. But I was still an inch or two shorter than Dante. “You’ll have to explain that to me.”

  “Forsythia,” I said, waving a gloved hand. “It’s one of the very first signs of spring. You see it in mid-March. Sometimes it blooms and there’s another snow, so you have these bright yellow flowers in a patch of ice. But at least you know winter is almost over.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind winter that much. I like to ski and snowmobile, and I like to hike in the woods. It’s a totally different experience on a winter day. You hear different things. You see animals you don’t notice in spring.” He pointed to the thin, interlaced branches of a bare oak looking like a crosshatched woodcut against the ancient vellum of the overcast sky. “You see bird nests left behind—things you’d never see on a summer day.”

  True, in this particular tree there were three dark clumps of coiled leaves and twigs that might have been home to robins or sparrows on warmer days, though I couldn’t say the ability to locate them gave me any greater appreciation for the dreary weather. “Well, I guess you get points for seeing the beauty in the season,” I said, trying to be fair, “but I still hate winter. I always have.”

  “What’s your favorite season?”

  “Autumn,” I answered without hesitation. “And October is my favorite month.”

  “Let me guess. Your birthday is in October.”

  “No, it’s in the spring. I just like the colors. And the weather. Cool enough to wear a light jacket, but not so cold that you have to take ten minutes to put on all your extra layers before you step out the door.”

  “I like autumn, too,” he said.

  I noticed he hadn’t asked me exactly when my birthday was. He wasn’t really investigating me; he was just making small talk as we walked together along a common path. “And I like Halloween,” I added.

  He was silent a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to think up a reply or if he was sorry he’d initiated this conversation because I was turning out to be the dullest woman he’d ever encountered. I tried to come up with a new topic but my mind was as blank as a field of freshly fallen snow.

  When he spoke, he surprised me. His deep voice was slow and serious; he seemed to be sharing a thought he hadn’t put into words until this moment. “I like Halloween, too,” he said. “It’s the one day I don’t feel so much like a
freak.”

  “A freak?” I repeated reflexively. What?

  He nodded. “This whole shape-changing business. It makes me weird. But on Halloween, everyone dresses up. Everyone tries to be someone or something they’re not. I feel a little more like I belong.”

  I couldn’t decide if this was sad or endearing. I certainly didn’t know how to answer. So I just said, “I don’t think you’re a freak.”

  We had reached the semicircular patch of sidewalk that formed a sort of landing pad right outside the building where my history class was held. I was sorry to realize my conversation with Dante was almost over, but really excited I would soon be in a warm place, out of the wind. I shivered a little as he came to a halt and seemed to expect me to pause alongside him.

  “What do you think I am?” he asked.

  When in doubt, go with the truth. “A really cute guy who dates a lot of hot women.”

  A smile brushed his full lips and was gone. “Just because they’re hot doesn’t mean they’re nice.”

  “Yeah, guys always say things like that, but I’ve noticed they still like the beautiful girls.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, though,” he said. My confusion must have showed on my face because he clarified. “When I asked you what you think I am. If you don’t think I’m a freak.”

  Fighting back another shiver, I regarded him for a moment, trying to figure out what was behind the question. What did he want from me? “I don’t know you that well,” I said slowly. “You always seemed like someone who was sure of himself, not too worried about what happened around you. Maybe not too connected to other people, but not afraid of them, either. Just living your own life without being bound by what other people thought. But I don’t really have any idea.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “Too connected to other people, I mean. You got that right.”

  “You have friends, though, don’t you? I mean, you seem to get along with Gary just fine.”

  “Yeah, Gary’s cool. He takes people for what they are and doesn’t get too worked up about things. But in general—” He shrugged. “I’m not always sure what other people are thinking. I’m not always sure what to say to them. I don’t know if it’s okay to ask them questions.”

  Was that what this was all about? “You can ask me questions,” I said.

  His dark eyes darkened even more with some passing thought; his eyebrows drew together as if he was working through a puzzle. “Did you really hide your friend in the gas station and never tell anyone where she was?”

  I stared up at him. I could no longer feel my toes and my cheeks stung from cold, but I knew we had to finish this conversation—and we had to finish it outside, where no one was close enough to overhear. “I really did,” I said.

  “She knew she could trust you with her life,” he said.

  “She was my best friend.”

  He lifted a hand and for a moment I thought he was going to touch my face. He wasn’t wearing gloves; I imagined his fingers would feel like icicles tapping the frozen surface of my skin. “I have a feeling most people know they can trust you,” he said. “Even if they’re not one of your best friends.”

  That sounded embarrassingly melodramatic, but I was pretty sure he was sincere, so I just said, “I hope so.”

  “I’ve seen you around the dorm,” he said. “You’re usually talking to someone, like you’re in some deep, serious conversation. Except, you’re always the one listening. The other person is always the one talking.”

  I opened my mouth, shut it, tried again. “Yeah, well, that’s just girls, you know? We always think everything’s a big dramatic event in our lives, and we have to tell someone else about it. I do my share of talking, too.”

  “I just have this feeling about you,” he said. “Like I’d be safe with you.”

  Everything else fell away from me—the cold, my various physical discomforts, my ongoing wonder at the notion that Dante Romano was bothering to have a conversation with me at all. “That’s kind of a weird thing to say,” I replied in a quiet voice. “Why don’t you feel safe with other people?”

  He was staring back at me with those intense eyes, dark as a collie’s. For a moment I flashed on the notion that he was some highly intelligent alien creature attempting desperately to communicate, attempting to will knowledge and understanding into my head since he was unable to formulate the words. “I think a lot of people would try to hurt me if they knew,” he said. “I think people would like to experiment on me, or lock me up and see what happens when I take different shapes. Maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m paranoid, but I just feel like, if people knew, they would put me away somewhere.”

  “That’s what happened to the Dionne kids,” I said.

  My digression wholly confused him. “What?”

  “They were the first set of quintuplets that survived birth, and they were put on display so people could walk by and stare at them. Like zoo animals.”

  A corner of his mouth twisted into a half-smile. I could tell that my comment had derailed him a little, but that he didn’t entirely mind. He thought I was kind of funny, and not in a bad way. “Right. Just like that. I don’t want people turning me into a tourist attraction. Or worse. And I’ve always thought that if I wasn’t really careful, it could happen.” He blew out his breath on a sigh of exasperation. “And I can’t believe I was so drunk the other night that I told four people the truth about me.”

  I was backhanded by a curiously strong slap of disappointment. “Oh. Are you making a point of talking to each of us separately and asking us to keep your secret?”

  His eyes were fixed on my face again. “No. I’m hoping everyone thought I was just making up stories. I mean, that’s what Gary said to me the next day when we woke up—hungover as hell, I might add. He said, ‘You just invented all that shape-shifting crap on the spot, didn’t you?’ I said yes.”

  I cheered up instantly. “That’s probably what Janine and Rochelle thought, too.”

  “But you didn’t,” he said.

  Again, my first answer died on my lips. For a long moment of silence, I met his gaze squarely. I was searching his eyes, searching his face, looking for truth; I was opening up my own soul to him, hoping he could read it through the medium of expression. I was asking and answering with one long stare. Will you promise never to lie to me? Will you promise to share all your secrets with me, all your heartaches, all your fears and all your sorrows? In return, I will believe in you, I will support you; I will be your safe haven and your source of strength. If you trust me, I swear that your trust will never be broken.

  “I didn’t,” I said at last. “I thought you were telling the truth.”

  “It didn’t make you afraid,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “It didn’t make you—excited—like, in a creepy way,” he added.

  I couldn’t help a giggle. “No.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought, ‘No wonder Dante is so interesting.’”

  He reared back a little, as if that wasn’t the answer he was expecting and he wasn’t sure he liked it, but then his face relaxed. “Right,” he said. “You just figured it’s what makes me me.”

  “Part of what makes you you,” I corrected. “There’s got to be a lot more to you than changing shapes two or three days a month.”

  He wore an arrested expression. “I guess so,” he said. “But mostly that’s what I figure controls my life.”

  “If you let it, I suppose. But—what about the other twenty-eight or twenty-nine days? I mean, you’re taking classes, you’re holding down jobs, you’re dating girls, you’re seeing movies and reading books and skiing and hiking and living. You’re not just the person who changes into an animal now and then. You’re a person who does a lot of other stuff.”

  He was smiling broadly. I wasn’t sure why he thought my comments were so funny. “That’s right,” he said. “So can I date you? While I’m doing all this other stuff?”

>   I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Are you asking me out?”

  “Well, duh.”

  “I don’t seem like your type.”

  Now he laughed out loud. “You’re kind of in-your-face honest, aren’t you?”

  “When I’m not keeping secrets,” I amended dryly. “Yes.”

  “So will you? Go out with me, I mean?”

  Suddenly I felt fluttery and nervous. “Sure. If you, you know, have a specific thing in mind you’d like to do.”

  He laughed again. “How about dinner? How about tonight?”

  Now my frozen toes felt like they were floating several inches off the unfriendly ground. “That sounds great.”

  “What kind of food do you like? Pizza? Burgers? Seafood?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll come by your room around six thirty, does that sound good?”

  “Yes.”

  He bent down to peer at me in exaggerated concern. “Are you going to be able to say anything but ‘yes’ during the whole meal?”

  My mouth shaped the word again and he shook his head warningly. I laughed. “Depends on what you ask me,” I substituted.

  “I’ll see if I can come up with some interesting topics,” he said. “See you later.”

  He nodded and took off, striding back toward the dorm. Cold as I was, dumbfounded as I was, I just stood there staring after him. It was hard to determine which part of our conversation I had found most astonishing.

  The fact that he asked me out, I decided at last. As if in a trance, I turned slowly toward the door and finally stepped into the heated air. But it was as if I no longer cared or noticed that my toes were frozen, or that my hands were blocks of ice. Like Dante himself, I had transmogrified into some magical nonhuman state where common concerns of the flesh ceased to matter. I thought it was likely that I would never feel ordinary again.

  The truth is, I never have.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The rest of the week stumbles by like a drunk on a bender, but most of us manage to get a little work done. I have a series of end-of-the-month reports to finalize, and they take a clear head and reasonable concentration, so I am forced to shut down the buzzing in my brain in order to get them finished. I contribute to the fund-raiser held on Kathleen’s behalf, dutifully ask Ellen and Marquez if they have any news, and shake my head like everyone else when it turns out the police still haven’t identified the animal that attacked Ritchie in the park.