Charm & Strange (17 page)

The pounding of my head made me unsteady. I sat back and winced.
Whoosh.
It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. All at once. Colored dots danced before my eyes. I thought I might faint.

Something in my breathing alarmed Anna. Before I knew what was happening, she moved right beside me, gripping me tightly. She was very strong. I didn’t fight her this time. I couldn’t. I crumpled in her arms and my face felt wet. I ran a hand beneath my nose. Ribbons of snot flew everywhere. Was I crying, too?

“Anna,” I squeaked. “Anna, I—”

“Hush,” she said, and a sour waft of her breath came at me, like something familiar and recent. She held me close.

The slurred words she panted in my ear were familiar, too.

“It’s okay, Drew. I promise. This, tonight, we’ll just keep everything between us, all right? I know you like me. You don’t want to get me in trouble. So you and I, let’s both forget that any of this ever happened.”

chapter

thirty-one

matter

I’ve reached the highest point I can. I’m at the peak, a craggy cliff that looks down onto the smoldering bonfire and smoldering party and out over the woods, toward the sleeping school, the sleeping town, the sleeping state.

I stand on all fours. I open my throat to howl.

Nothing comes out.

I try again. I consciously will my body to give rise to my voice. To let me sing with every need, every desire, every lament that writhes and simmers within my molecules, every bond that holds me together and every action that tears me apart.

No howl. Instead I hear breathing, my own. And I hear the scrabbling and fear in the steps and voices of the two who have followed me. I don’t get why they’re here. I want them to leave. If I change, I won’t know who they are. I won’t be able to discriminate their goodness from my badness.

I will hurt them.

“A w-wolf?” I hear Jordan say from the shadows beneath me, at the base of the rock, and I know Lex has told her what I shared with him last spring in that miserable hospital room. We never talked about it after that. Lex was put on probation and moved to a freshman dorm, where the rules were stricter. I was left alone.

“What does that mean?” she asks.

“Well, hmm, given the current situation, it means he’s really fucked up. He thinks … he thinks he’s going to change into one.”

“He really believes that?”

“Well, what the hell do you think? That he’s just up there naked on that rock for shits and giggles?”

“No, I, I, it’s just so…”

“So what?”

“It’s so sad.”

Lex makes a funny sound. Like he’s being strangled.

“We should help him,” Jordan says. “Get help for him.”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“That’s his choice. To get help. You can’t force somebody to do that.”

“What if he hurts himself?”

“We can’t stop him.”

“What if he hurts someone else?”

“He won’t.”

“He already has,” she insists.

“That was dumb. I told you, he thought Penn was going to rape you or something. And maybe he was. He was coming after you, you know.”

“Has Win gotten into fights before?”

There’s a long pause. I’m sure Lex is thinking about how I attacked him in the biology lab.

“Just once,” he says. “That I know of.”

“When?”

“Last year.”

My knees quake. Of course I know what he’s talking about. It’s just so not what I expected him to say. He wasn’t there.

Lex speaks: “You know Win plays tennis, right? He’s like a prep legend.”

“He told me he doesn’t play anymore.”

“He really said that?”

“Yup.”

“Crazy,” Lex mutters, sounding stunned.

“What happened?” Jordan asks.

“He beat the crap out of the assistant coach.”

“He did?”

“Yup. Broke his wrist, I think. Maybe a rib, too. Guy didn’t come back after that. I didn’t see it, but everyone said that one minute they were just talking to each other and the next Win went after him. No warning or anything.”

“Wouldn’t that get him kicked out of school?”

“No. I told you. He’s like a god when it comes to tennis. He never loses. Never. And so no one gives a fuck what Win Winters does.”

I shift my weight around. That’s not really true. A lot of people give a fuck. But it was right after the deal with Lex, and when I told the headmaster what the coach had said to me, he understood why I’d been mad. He understood why I couldn’t control my anger.

So it was your roommate this time, Winters? I know who you are. You’re not fooling me. You’re like the touch of death, aren’t you? There’s something about you that just makes people wish they were dead.…

“Lex,” Jordan starts.

“I’m not snitching on him, so shut up about that. You can do what you want, but I’m going to stay here and be with him. He’ll be different when the sun comes up. I know he will. I’ll be able to talk to him then.”

“I’ll stay with you,” she says quickly.

“Why? You don’t have to.”

“I will. I’m not leaving you guys here. It’s like two hours until morning, right?”

Two hours. Urgency and longing pulse through me. I lift my head higher. I try to howl one more time.

Nothing.

I lay my chest against the rock.

I wait.

chapter

thirty-two

antimatter

I returned to Charlottesville at the end of the summer. Two months later, I won our club’s Fall Classic tourney with ease. My parents cheered for me. Everyone did. I had no competition. I was peerless.

That same year, Keith withered while I flourished.

High school stole his confidence. His friends. His happiness. He spent days in bed, not talking, not eating. Just sleeping or staring at the ceiling.

Lee came over a couple of times, but Keith would lock his door and turn his music up very loud. He kept listening to that depressing Australian band and their song about thieving birds over and over. I hated it.

“Get out of here,” Lee said to me one afternoon. He’d caught me spying on him from the back stairwell.

“You’re fat,” I replied.

“Is that supposed to be an insult?”

“Well, you are.”

“Yeah, big fucking deal. You think this is my first time at the fat boy rodeo? If you want to hurt me, you’re gonna have to try harder, kid.”

“Leave Keith alone. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Lee walked down the hall toward me. He had khaki-colored parachute pants on and they made a swishing sound when he moved.

“You need to stay out of things that aren’t any of your business,” he snapped.

“My brother is my business.”

“God, you’re a pinhead. Don’t you get it? I actually care about him. He’s going to fail out of school if I don’t help him.”

“I’ll kill you,” I said, arching my back and creeping forward on my hands and knees. I curled my fingernails into the hardwood floor deep enough to leave marks. “If you don’t leave him alone, I’ll rip your head off. I’ll cut your fat body into fat little pieces. I’ll—”

“Drew!”

We both started. Keith stood in the hallway. His shoulders drooped. His eyes were very red and his cheeks were very hollow.

Lee trotted toward him. Swish, swish, swish, went his pants. They went into his room and closed the door.

*   *   *

I tossed and turned in my bed. Pilot curled at my feet as always.

A soft voice called my name.

I tossed more.

In my mind, the moon was full and I dreamed of wolves. I dreamed of power I would someday have.

“Drew…” The voice came again, pulling me into wakefulness.

“Go away,” I muttered, waving my arm.

“Can I sleep with you? I had a nightmare.”

My eyes fluttered open. Siobhan, sweet Siobhan, stood beside my bed, wearing a flowered nightgown and with her honey hair all rumpled. Her soft face held a flat expression, like she had no feelings, no depth, inside of her.

I sat up. I knew that look. I’d seen it in the mirror myself ever since that dark summer night. Not in New Hampshire, but another night, a year earlier, here, in my very own room. A night when I was not alone and not safe. A night when a monster had first prowled in, too familiar to resist.

A night
before.

Before I hit Soren.

Before I became
bad.

“Drew,” Siobhan whimpered. “Please. I’m scared.”

“Yeah, fine,” I mumbled, thinking of all the times Keith had comforted me up in Concord when Pilot wasn’t around. The way I’d needed him to feel protected. The bed creaked as my sister crawled beneath the sheets. I rolled onto my side. She curled against me.

*   *   *

“I need to talk to you,” I told Keith. My legs trembled.

He sat on the edge of the flagstone patio. The leaves had all fallen. The forecast called for a rare December snow. Something bright and glossy fluttered in his hands.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing.

Keith held it out to me. It was a brochure from the wildlife preserve we’d visited over a year ago. Semper Liberi, the place that kept animals too damaged to live on their own.

“I thought I wanted to work there,” he said listlessly. “Someday.”

“But now?”

“Now I don’t want to anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because sometimes trying to make a difference is worse than not trying at all.”

“Oh.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

“Siobhan.”

Keith blinked at me. Those coppery eyes.

“What about Siobhan?” he asked.

I told him how she had come to my room. How I let her sleep in my bed. The things she’d tried to do to me. Her hot tears on my back and small hands on my body, all over,
everywhere,
becoming more desperate the more I pulled away. Until I felt like my rejection was hurting her. Until I didn’t know what the right thing to do was anymore.

Keith turned very pale. Then he got up and ran inside the house.

Should I not have told him? I followed Keith. I found him locked in the downstairs bathroom. He stayed in there a long time. The noises he made meant he was either really sick or really sad. Or both.

He wouldn’t look at me when he came out.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said. “I’m so sorry.”

chapter

thirty-three

the sea

Jordan climbs up onto the rock first. I don’t look, but I know it’s her. The clues are there. She’s quiet, contained, so different from Lex and his blundering movements. And she must have seen more of my charm than my strangeness tonight, because she’s kind. She’s gentle. Jordan touches my arm. My back. The bruise around my eye. I let her. It’s okay. I’m lying down now, so it’s not like she sees too much of me.

My panting increases in her presence. I guess that’s why she’s touching. She wants me to stay calm. But she keeps saying,
Win, Win,
and that’s what makes me shake and pant more. She doesn’t know I hate my name, that every time I hear it, I’m reminded of what I’ve lost. My family. My identity. My innocence.

I’m reminded of
him.

She keeps talking, a sad little soliloquy. She tells me she’s from California and that she doesn’t fit in here. She tells me she’s never really fit in anywhere, but that the money and elitism at our school intimidates her. She says this embarrasses her in ways she doesn’t understand. She tells me about life in California, about public school and kids who ride the bus and who hang out at strip malls or in front of liquor stores. She tells me about doing too many drugs and making too many bad decisions and deciding to come here so that she could be in a place where her past didn’t have to define her. She says earning a scholarship made her proud until she got here and realized it was something to be ashamed of. She tells me about her mother and visiting family in Guadalajara at Christmastime. She talks about something called Las Posadas, a Catholic tradition in Mexico where families walk door to door, pretending to be Mary and Joseph looking for a place to stay before Jesus is born. And she sings to me in Spanish, sweet, lilting words I cannot understand. She does not talk about her father.

I don’t answer. I can’t and I don’t want to. The moon is leaving, very quickly, a pale shadow slipping behind the neighboring mountains. Has it taken part of me with it? I haven’t changed, and so yes, I think, yes, it has.

Eventually Lex scrambles up, too. He sits on the other side of me. He smells of cigarettes but doesn’t light up. He says nothing, which I appreciate.

Together we wait for the sun.

after

We do not say that
possibly
a dog talks to itself. Is that because we are so minutely acquainted with its soul?

—Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations

chapter

thirty-four

half-life

The night is gone.

Extinguished.

Extinct.

The sun is barely visible, but the ripe colors of the sky blossom, bright and welcoming. The memories rip through me, along with that nostalgic pang of mourning, the kind that marks both a beginning and an end. I do not move. I remain on the rock, on my stomach, and I do not move. I can’t.

Jordan and Lex both leave the summit. They have to pee, they tell me, which I don’t doubt, but they’re gone such a long time that I’m pretty sure their motives are multiple.

What do I do? I creep to the edge of the boulder, past the scrub brush and a hive of carpenter ants, almost to the point of no return. I’ve failed again. I’ve failed like I’ve always failed. The disappointment and self-loathing push me ever closer to the drop. Spite makes everything easier, and in this moment I feel like I could do it. I could take this leap of faith that I failed to take all those years ago.

But the wolf won’t let me.

Come out, then,
I plead with it.
Show yourself. Don’t hide.

I can feel it inside of me. It is feral. Hungry. But it doesn’t come out. Instead, the wolf inside me turns around three times, tamping down hope and healing and grace like soft meadow grass. Then it lies down. It tucks its tail. It closes its eyes.