Allison (A Kane Novel)
Read Allison (A Kane Novel) Online
Authors: Steve Gannon
Allison
Steve Gannon
A
KANE
NOVEL
Allison
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2012 by Steve Gannon
Allison
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Summertime” lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin; Songwriter George Gershwin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gannon, Steve.
Kane / Steve Gannon.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9849881-4-3
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Susan,
my Solfagnano muse
And as always, for Dex
Life is what happens to you
While you’re busy making other plans
~ John Lennon
Contents
1
Friday, July seventh, on the fourth anniversary of my rape, I awoke feeling unsettled and depressed. Rolling over in bed, I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, plagued by a vague sense of disaster that always accompanied my unwilling observance of that day four years past.
Until the summer I turned sixteen and my brother Tom died and I was attacked and everything changed, I always believed I was more than the things that had
happened
to me, or that I had done, or that I hoped to do. Deep down, I believed I was more than that. I believed an essential part of me, a core part of me, was immune to the forces of life. I believed that the part of me that was truly
me
would remain forever unchanged, no matter what. Looking back, I realize now how naïve I was.
Years ago, in the telling of one of her stories, my mother tried to impart to me something about life. Her tale involved a group of people who were offered a magical gift: They were given the opportunity to rid themselves of their most painful, heartrending memory. Gladly accepting the offer, everyone piled his or her greatest sorrow in the center of the room. Newly unburdened, each person was then told to select a sorrow from the pile. In the end, without exception, everyone there once more embraced their own heartbreak.
At odd moments since, I’ve thought about my mother’s story. I’m not certain I would want to forget what happened that summer. Once rid of the memory, however, I don’t know whether I would have the courage to pick it up again. One thing is certain: I was forever altered by losing my brother Tommy and by my sexual assault and by the other things that happened that year. I was changed, essentially and indelibly. Until then I had been living a dream—a careless, carefree dream in which I thought that nothing and no one could touch me. Afterward, it was as if a veil had been lifted. I had crossed a threshold from which there was no turning back. No matter how much it hurt, I had joined the human race.
Outside my dorm window, the first fingers of dawn were beginning to light the sky over UCLA. Resolving to think of something else, I eased up on one elbow and squinted at the clock on my nightstand: 5:25 AM. Reaching over, I flipped on a lamp and swung my legs from beneath the covers. Time to get up.
Though reluctant to admit it, I knew that rising early was a trait I had picked up from my police detective father, along with my powder-keg flashes of temper, disregard for authority, and a near obsessive resolve to succeed at whatever I attempted. Despite hating to leave a warm bed, I also conceded that if nothing else, rising early gave me time to write before getting caught up in the distractions of the day.
After slipping my feet into a worn pair of slippers, I stumbled to the adjoining bathroom, used the toilet, splashed cold water on my face, and brushed my teeth. During my freshman and sophomore years at UCLA, I had always had a roommate. Most of the girls with whom I’d lived in the defunct Delta Zeta sorority house—a sorority row structure that had eventually been converted to a private boarding facility when the Delta Zetas moved off campus—were gone for the summer. My most recent roommate, a petite, bright, messy young Asian named Janice, had left as well. In her absence, my customarily crowded living quarters seemed almost spacious, especially the bathroom.
My reasons for deciding to remain at school for the summer, rather than returning to my parents’ beach house in Malibu, had been threefold: First, I would be transferring to the USC School of Journalism in the fall, and taking one last upper-division literature class was necessary to complete my transfer credits. Second, staying at school for summer quarter provided me a final opportunity to enjoy the atmosphere of exploration and freedom that I had enjoyed at UCLA over the past two years. And third, and possibly most important, it gave me an excuse not to move home.
Gathering my hair in a ponytail and securing it with an elastic band, I inspected myself in the mirror. In the image peering back I saw startling hints of my mother, Catheryn—a strong chin, high cheekbones, and large, inquisitive green eyes—qualities that in Mom appeared refined and beautiful, but that in myself, at least to my eye, seemed subtly coarsened by my father’s Irish lineage. True, my long reddish hair—a genetic gift from my father that as a child I’d despised—had ultimately mellowed to a deeper auburn similar to my mother’s. Around the same time, a rash of freckles across the bridge of my nose and cheeks had faded as well, but my body, spare and lanky over the course of several explosive teenaged growth spurts, had continued to grow, and at nearly five-foot-eleven in my bare feet, I stood inches taller than my mother and almost every other woman I knew.
Ruefully, I turned from the mirror and marched back to my bedroom, trying to recall where I had left my running shoes. In the wake of Janice’s departure, I had spread out in the cramped room—my clothes, books, and other personal items expanding into the vacuum of my roommate’s absence. My eyes traveled the small space, taking in my rumpled bed, an oak dresser I had brought from home, a pair of Churchill swim fins, and a bodysurfing wetsuit heaped by the door. Beside the room’s single window, a small TV and a DVD player sat on a bookcase I had also brought from the beach house, along with a maple table that doubled as a desk. Atop my makeshift workstation was a Mac laptop, HP printer, and a full-sized ergonomic keyboard—a refurbished computer setup that my father had given me several years back. Nearby lay stacks of writing projects in various states of completion. Guiltily, I remembered that I still hadn’t finished an article I was writing for the
Daily Bruin
, the UCLA school paper. The deadline was Tuesday. Promising myself to work on the piece as soon as I returned from my run, I continued my search, at last spotting my Nikes beneath Janice’s bed.
Kneeling, I retrieved my running shoes, kicked off my slippers, and shrugged out of the oversized tee shirt I had worn to bed. The room was chilly and I dressed quickly, pulling on underwear and shorts, a nylon windbreaker with yellow UCLA letters blazed across the back, and my shoes. Next I checked my jacket pockets. My fingers closed on the comforting cylinder of pepper spray I always carried when I ran. The campus was relatively safe, but in early morning when almost no one was around, it didn’t hurt to take precautions.
Moving quietly so as not to wake any of the other girls living in the house—or worse, Mrs. Random, our resident housemother—I grabbed my cell phone, locked my room, and descended the staircase to the main floor. After easing out the front door, I made my way down a flight of tiled steps to Hilgard Avenue. There I paused on the sidewalk, breathing in the crisp morning air. Across the deserted street, in the cactus section of the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden, the shadowy arms of forty-foot-high euphorbia, stands of aloes, and acres of spine-covered succulents rose in thorny thickets into the dawn skyline. I stood a moment enjoying the view, then started off at a brisk clip. After crossing Hilgard, I cut left onto a walkway bordering the garden. Another turn brought me past the botany and plant physiology buildings and onto UCLA’s main campus. Upon reaching the Health Sciences Center, I turned right.
I routinely varied the routes of my morning jogs, not only for safety, but also because I liked visiting different parts of the university’s lush campus. After passing the inverted fountain near Franz Hall, where water spilled down a huge central hole, I proceeded north to Dixon Plaza, skirting its sprawling sycamores and stately fig trees. Briefly I contemplated circling the Murphy Sculpture Garden as well, then decided against it. I had taken that route yesterday. Besides, going that way would lengthen my run, and I had things to do before my 10 AM literature class.
Increasing my pace, I turned west past a procession of older, ornately bricked buildings and descended to the athletic fields flanking Sunset Boulevard. After passing Pauley Pavilion, I continued west to the student recreation center and the encircling dorms that comprised UCLA’s western border. Until then I had seen almost no one. Fighting an encroaching sense of unease, I remained alert as I headed back past the tennis courts and made another circuit around the athletic fields. As always, my eyes and ears took in everything around me. Since my assault, caution had become second nature: parking in well-lit spaces, approaching my car with my keys out, wearing sensible shoes in case I had to flee, and carrying pepper spray when alone. I hated living in fear of another attack. On the other hand, I was determined it would never happen again.