Charm & Strange (10 page)

Lex watches me closely. “More,” he says, so I drink more. But something goes wrong. It’s too much or too strong or I swallow too much air. Before I know what’s happening, I throw up on the ground.

People around us clap and cheer, as if my throwing up means they’re having a good time. My cheeks burn, but I’m uncomfortable more than embarrassed because it still feels like there’s a bubble stuck in my windpipe. I’m afraid if I try to belch it out, I’ll just end up retching again.

Lex should be the one laughing the loudest and cracking jokes. That’s what he’s always done. That’s who he’s always been. But instead he’s putting his hand on my back, keeping me balanced, asking, “You okay, man?”

I wave a hand. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“You really don’t drink. I always forget. I’m sorry.”

Those last two words stun me. I lift my head, expecting to see him smirking or holding his camera up. He looks totally serious, though. No hint of humor. Just genuine concern.

I make a fist and pound my chest to clear my throat.

“I’m fine,” I repeat.

“Let’s go in there.” Lex points and starts walking. I follow his line of sight. He’s gesturing to one of the tents. I kick dirt over the puke, then jog after him, still holding on to my empty cup.

“I’m not having sex with you,” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “Dream on, Winters. Look, I’m wasted. If I don’t sit and chill, I’m gonna do something stupid like teabag Donald Trump or hit on your girlfriend again.” Donald Trump’s what the whole school calls Cal Beckett, our resident young Republican and capitalist cheerleader.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say.

“Whatever. Your processing chip is shorting out again. Your capacity to detect my, admittedly lame, humor has been seriously compromised.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re an idiot for how smart you are.”

“I’m leaving,” I say firmly, veering off-path from the tent.

“No!” barks Lex, lunging at me, tackling me around my neck so that he practically drags me to the dirt. “God, you’re touchy, too. Just hang with me for a few minutes. Okay? I don’t want to, you know, pass out”—he runs his hand through his hair—“or something.”

This, this, what I’m feeling right now, the racing pulse, the sweating palms, the burrowing dread,
this
is anxiety. And unlike Teddy’s, it’s well earned. It’s not a true flashback. I have plenty of those, so I know the difference. No, this is a mere memory, brief but vivid. I awake in the middle of the night. It’s April of our sophomore year, just six months earlier, and a late snow falls outside, a soft dusting to cover the icy mantle beneath. The radiator blasts. The air is filled with the hiss and thump of steam rising through metal. My clothes stick to me and there’s so much sweat I feel feverish. I roll over and remember what I’ve done and how I’ve betrayed Lex. Somewhere inside I ought to feel guilt or shame for my actions, but instead I’m numb.

My eyes adjust to darkness and I see the shape on the floor, near my desk. It’s indistinct at first, but then I know it’s him. Lex was way drunk when I went to sleep, and now he’s passed out. This is typical. There’s an awful stench in the air like puke or worse, and I swear, if he’s pissed his bed again, I’m moving out for good. I switch on the light and the horror of what I see strikes me all at once, but it can’t truly cut through the numbness. Nothing can. I force myself to leap from bed and nudge him, but his body just flops in a weird way. His whole face is slack. His breath is shallow, almost nonexistent. And then it’s happening again. It’s like when they pulled my family from the water and tried to revive the dead, and now this, this part
is
a flashback. The way my teeth chatter and my eyes roll back and I can’t keep the words, the horror, from slipping from my lips
ohgodohgod ohsiobhan notyou pleasepleaseplease
but I can’t stop and lose my mind, not even for a second, because while they’re dead and gone, Lex isn’t. Not yet. Not if I can save him.

My ears roar again and now I’m a goddamn time traveler because I’m back here, on a Vermont mountaintop, with a high school party raging on around me, but I can’t remember if I’m in the present or the past.

I’m split. I’m torn.

I am both ever evolving and ever decaying.

Finally, I decide I’m in the present because that’s the easiest answer, but it’s not like there’s any real way to tell. Present me walks in the tall grass with Lex Emil, full of my usual self-assurance and swagger. I’m lean, tall, and bathed in the warm caress of moonlight, but when I look around, I can see that I’m also in the past.

Past me stands off to the side, and I am not all there. I am transparent, undefined, and charged with constant pain. I know what Lex wants to talk about. I know why he’s being nice all of a sudden. It’s so obvious. It’s a trap. But past Win can only watch. He cannot be seen. He cannot talk to present Win because that would disrupt things. That would have meaningful consequences for the future.

Lex holds the tent flap open. He nods at present Win.

“Hurry up,” he calls.

chapter

twenty

antimatter

I was already in a foul mood the morning my father showed up. Keith and Charlie had snuck away the previous evening and taken the train into Boston without telling me. Phoebe was the one who let me know where they’d gone when I called over to her house looking for him. Keith slunk back in after midnight with his hair all rumpled and promptly kicked me out of his bed, where I’d finally fallen asleep. I tried asking him about our parents, about what Phoebe had said to me the night of the carnival, but he just told me to shut it. Then he turned his back on me.

But I knew something was up the moment I pulled on my tennis clothes and court shoes and skipped down the back stairs to the kitchen. Instead of encountering a quiet, darkened room, flipping on the overhead light, and scrounging for something to eat, I padded into a kitchen where two figures stood talking.

I balked. The lack of sunlight draped the room with a frigid atmosphere, and deep shadows stretched from every corner. But I knew those voices.

“Dad,” I said meekly. He stood beside my grandfather. I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Yet nothing had changed.

“Drew.” His long fingers drummed against the bottom of his coffee mug. An ominous tattoo. A tropic storm of unease gathered inside of me. I began to sweat.

“I d-didn’t know you were coming,” I said.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

My voice didn’t sound right. My mouth felt cottony with sleep. I walked to the refrigerator to get some orange juice. My father stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

“We’re going to be taking a trip in a little while.”

“A trip?”

“To New Hampshire,” said my grandfather, standing there in one of his ridiculous dresses. He referred to them as “sleeping gowns,” but they were definitely dresses. “We’ve got a cabin in the White Mountains. Half mile from Crater Lake. Beautiful spot. Whole family stays up there every summer.”

“New Hampshire?” I squeaked.

Two generations of restrained Winters males stared at me in silence. From the corner of my eye, I made out my Phenergan prescription sitting on the countertop, and the storm inside my head took on strength. My mind flooded with a wild blackness. I hated that they had been talking about me, planning how to get me to Crater Lake. And now no one was going to let me have breakfast. I knew it. Something snapped within me, some internal racket string that’d been wound far too tight, for far too long.

“I’m not going.”

“What?”

I said it louder. “I’m
not
going!”

My grandfather gave a low laugh. A
you don’t know anything
laugh.

Cheeks flushed hot, I stormed from the kitchen to the living room, where I threw myself onto an antique love seat that creaked beneath my weight. I buried my face in the musty seat cushions like an ostrich.

They followed me. Even worse, my grandmother thudded down the stairs to join them. I heard her ask my father in one of those hushed tones she usually reserved for finding out the neighbors were gay or had garden gnomes or spoke English as a second language, “Winston, what on
earth
is going on?”

When I looked up, they’d crowded around me. Waves of their displeasure and impatience washed over me. I had no room to breathe. I had no room to think. They closed in tighter, trapping me with their claustrophobic contempt. I saw my grandfather stretch out an arm to reach for me, and I knew he had the Phenergan in his other hand. In one frenzied motion I sprang from the couch, cracking the top of my head against my grandmother’s chin as I did so. She reeled backward with a bleat of horror. I darted to the right, scrambling into the formal dining room and diving beneath the table onto all fours.

“Drew!” my father bellowed, his fury, humiliation, and utter confusion embedded in that one word. He thundered after me, hot on my heels, reaching under the table and grabbing for my legs. Too late. With a panicked cry, I came out the other side and launched straight for my grandmother’s cherrywood hutch. My body crashed against the cabinet with a thud. The whole thing shook and rocked forward. Pieces of crystal and china rained down on top of me. I slip-crawled across piles of broken glass as wild, gasping sobs poured from deep inside my body, then I wedged myself beneath an antique secretary resting against the far wall. When I looked down, a long, crescent-shaped shard of glass was grasped between the fingers of my right hand. I brought my arm up. Pulled the shard across my own throat. Then I reached up to do it again.

“Stop!” Something grabbed hold of my arm. “Stop that!”

I shrieked and bucked backward but had nowhere to go. My left shoulder drove into the wall and I writhed like a creature in a petri dish.

“Drew, Drew,” said a voice. “What are you doing?”

I blinked and looked into Keith’s frightened eyes. My sides heaved. I released a strange moan of anguish, the cry of a wounded animal.

His soft words coaxed me out from under the secretary. I dropped the glass and flopped forward onto the Oriental rug like a dead fish. Keith rolled me over and pressed a napkin to my throat, which felt very warm and sticky. Then he put both arms around me and held me in his lap. I shut my eyes. His heart thumped through his T-shirt. He smelled ripe with sweat and fear, but everything, all of him, soothed me until I ached to be absorbed into his body, like one of those vanishing twins. At last, Keith said, “They’re all gone, okay? I told them to leave you alone. Why don’t we sit down? I’ll get a bandage for the cut.”

I followed him to the living room on shaky legs, surveying the mess in the dining room as I walked. What had I done? What would happen to me? This wasn’t like the carnival parking lot. I had no means of escape. I moaned again. Keith settled me onto the love seat, flipped on a floor lamp, and examined my neck. His shirt was streaked with blood.

“The cuts aren’t too deep. I’ll be right back,” he said. “Do you need anything?”

I sniffled. “Some—some orange juice.”

He nodded. When he returned, he had a first aid kit and the glass of juice.

“Lean back into the light,” he said, and I did. The Bactine he put on stung, but I stayed very still. A funny feeling came over me as he cleaned me and positioned the bandage and tape. The feeling started at the top of my head and worked its way down, a gauzy tingling that spread across my face and stitched up the holes in my heart, my arms, my belly. It felt good. A radiating warmth born from his touch. His concern.

At last Keith sat back. He pulled me to sitting. “They’re barely more than scratches. Nothing bad. You’re lucky.”

I nodded. Relief flooded into his eyes, I saw it, but with the funny warm feeling gone, I felt nothing. Keith sat beside me and touched my hand and asked me what was wrong. That did it. The floodgates opened. Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. I told him everything, a great endless rush of complaints. I told him about my misery, how I was lonely, how I was jealous of Charlie, how I knew people didn’t like me, how
I
didn’t like me, no, no, not one bit. After a while, my head began to swim, a slippery sliding in and out of reality. I looked at the empty juice glass, then back at Keith. This was not a new feeling. I forced my mouth to move. “Phenergan?”

His face drooped with guilt. “Xanax, too, okay, so don’t be scared. You won’t remember anything.”

Drugs hit me hard. Always. I started to drool and shake. Keith wrapped me in his arms again, very tight, and whispered, “I had to. I’m sorry. I told them it wouldn’t be as bad if I did it. Please forgive me.”

chapter

twenty-one

matter

“I know what you’re waiting for.” Lex lies on his left side with his elbow digging into the tent’s nylon floor. His other hand plays with a pack of Marlboros, but he doesn’t light up. He knows I hate cigarettes. A camping lantern hanging from a plastic hook shoots a clammy glow across his face, but above us both the tent ceiling has a cutaway that opens to the sky. I sit cross-legged and stare out at the stars. The moon hides. It’s crab-crawled around the side of the mountain and I’d have to step back outside to see it.

“Yes,” I say. I don’t have the strength to lie or play games.

“Why tonight?” he asks.

“The moon is full.”

“Yeah. I
get
that. But you—it, it hasn’t happened before, has it?”

I hesitate. “N-no.”

“No? Or you don’t know.”

“No,” I say. “I haven’t changed.” My voice is firm and Lex nods, seeming to take my response at face value, but in truth, I’m not really all that sure. I mean, there’s that guy who was killed in the woods. I still haven’t heard any update on the autopsy report. If it turns out he died during the last full moon, well, maybe
I
did that instead of this unknown wild animal. Maybe I just don’t remember. That’s the problem with being estranged from my family, practically disowned. No one can answer my questions or tell me what to expect. I’m alone and I don’t understand myself. My throat tightens. I wish I had my older brother. I wish I could talk to him, but I have to push that away. Wishes like that are selfish.