Feather Bound (13 page)

I was starting to forget what their touches had felt like. And Hyde… Hyde was looking at me so earnestly. And when the lights flickered across his face, when his lips curved into that honest smile, he looked more beautiful than he ever had before.

“I know at this point you probably see me as more of a stalker than friend-material and… I'm sorry, Dee. I really am. If you want me gone for good, then I'll–”

I kissed him. I didn't care. I let my lips part his, let my body sink into him. I let myself forget the memories crawling over my skin – no. Soon I wouldn't even feel them anymore. The more I kissed him, the more they faded to a faint whisper.

He was shocked, but only for a few seconds; then his arms enveloped me. I needed more. The memories were starting to fade. I pulled him up onto his feet, not caring who was watching. I pushed him against the handrail, grabbed the back of his neck, lifted his head to mine and sank deeper into the kiss, his breath heating the roof of my mouth. What could he be thinking right now? Maybe he wasn't thinking at all.

That was the point.

As if something came over him, he twisted me around and pinned me against the banister, the twisted metal biting my skin. I arched and twisted my body until I could feel the contours of his through my clothes. Chest, stomach, hips and legs. I wanted to feel all of him, as much of him as I could get out here in the dead of night, enough to smother the rest of the memories into nothing. Hyde crushed me to him as if he were doing the same. Maybe he was.

Anton was right. Hyde did want me. But Hyde also had no one. I was probably the only person left in the world who could betray him.

“Hyde,” I whispered into his ear after forcing us apart. “Owning the company. Is it that important to you?” I tried hard not to let any of my desperation slip into my voice. The question was strange enough as it was. I didn't want to give myself away.

“What?”

“I just need to know because I don't understand.” I let my finger play over the wetness of his lips. His eyes lost focus. “Why is the company that important to you? All those people hating you, waiting for you to screw up. Why put yourself through it?”

Hyde's hands slipped all the way down to the small of my back. I almost flinched. Why didn't I? His hands should have terrified me. Actually, they did a little, but my body just didn't react the way I thought it would. I'd authorized his touch, after all. Me. I'd sanctioned it. That alone loosened the knots in my chest.

“If the company isn't mine, then it's his.”

“Your uncle?”

“I can't let that happen.”

“Why?” I let my hands rest on his shoulders, feeling the muscles tense beneath my fingers. “What does it matter if he's in control or not?”

“He wants it. I won't let him have it. I won't let him have anything.”

Hyde said nothing else. I knew he wouldn't. His face had hardened with resolve. He was serious. He'd never give the company over to Anton's dad. Not if I asked him to. But maybe he didn't have to.

Just tell him, I told myself. Tell him what happened. Telling him would solve everything.

I opened my mouth. My hands shook against his shoulders.

It's not like anyone was watching us. It's not like Anton had eyes everywhere. He wasn't a god. He wasn't Big Brother or whatever the hell.

“Hyde,” I said, and stopped, because I remembered the way Anton's lips had twitched as he casually threatened my life.

The whole thing was a scare tactic. I couldn't let myself fall for it. I had to be brave. Anton couldn't do anything to me. Nothing.

Hyde was staring at me. “Deanna? Are you shaking?”

No. I couldn't be scared. I couldn't let some jackass waltz into my life and scare me into doing whatever he wanted. Then when would it end? Anton couldn't do anything to me.

But what if he could?

No. Telling Hyde would solve everything.

But what if it didn't?

What was I willing to risk to find out?

I'd never been the bravest of girls. My mom had three daughters, and among the three, I was the one most likely to chafe at the thought of taking a risk. But I wasn't a coward. I could stand up for myself, if I needed to. It was what my mom had taught me. I didn't want to let her down.

I didn't
want
to.

And yet, when I closed my eyes, flocks of swangirls smiled vacantly back at me.

“Deanna?”

“It's OK,” I whispered. “It's OK.” And I kissed him again.

He buried his secrets as if it was a learned skill, but Ralph Hedley's son couldn't quite hide how desperate he was for love. And maybe he mattered to me. But my life mattered more. So I decided: I would give Hyde exactly what he needed. I'd take his heart and then everything else until he had nothing left. I'd give him love. And then I'd ruin him with it.

There was no other way out.

A TALE

 

12

MARK

 

Before Ralph Hedley's funeral, Hyde was my dead childhood friend. Before Stylo, Hyde was my dead childhood friend who was actually quite alive enough to annoy me.

Now he was my mark.

I'd resolved to take him down. Anton's brilliant idea depended on the media's insatiable appetite for public humiliation – and of course, you can't suffer public humiliation unless you're in the public eye. So the next day, I called Hyde and asked him out.

“A date?” he'd said with an eagerness that was almost heartbreakingly cute.

Yes, a date. I had a job to do after all. If I was going to get out of this mess, I'd have to do it right.

Coney Island in the summertime was packed. Lots of witnesses. Plenty of opportunities for a scandal. Except I still couldn't figure out how to hurt him. And the more Hyde tried to dazzle me with his proficiency at super lame carnival games, the less I wanted to.

“Wow, thanks,” I said when Hyde dumped a giant panda in my arms. “I'm in awe of your skill, but now I can't help but feel slightly inadequate. I need to get in on this – oh, how about that?”

I slinked up behind a pair of tweens trying to bludgeon the Whack-a-Mole booth, chuckling giddily because the kid playing sucked, and was clearly starting to lose the last vestiges of his sanity as clowns, cartoon cavemen, and I think a former president ducked out of harm's way, always at the very last second.

It took a good clean look at the “moles”, though, for the grin to fall off my face. My hand almost snatched the mallet out of the kid's hand about a second after he hit a beaked girl on the head. But Hyde was right next to me. I couldn't give myself away. Not to him.

“Actually, let's just keep moving,” I muttered.

I remember learning about it in school last term: in Early Modern Europe, a woman with a beak was a literary and visual emblem of swans – but it was more than that. It was a metaphor. As far as they were concerned, the swan, with her feathers, stood in that liminal space between human and animal.

I learned a lot that term. I learned that feathers made good dowries. I learned that in pre-colonial Upstate New York, swans were respected as counsels and mothers of generations. I learned that up until the eighteenth century, English families would rather smother their sons than admit that they were the parents of a boy with feathers. Half a year of historical facts that never seemed to matter, never seemed to have anything to do with my life…

Hyde took the abandoned mallet and swung it around. “You sure you wanna go?”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

“All right…” I could have applauded him for keeping that smile plastered on his face. Couldn't have been easy. “Let's try the rides instead. The Cyclone looks pretty bad ass.”

We were keeping secrets from each other, Hyde and I. It didn't stop him from trying to get close to me. Buying me funnel cake, telling me bad jokes to subtly distract me from his hand brushing mine. But when he finally grabbed my hand, my breath hitched nonetheless.

It's 3 o'clock. I should probably get around to ruining his life.

The thought was sobering.

We walked to the aquarium. As we stood on the crowded walkway cocooned by a glass dome separating us from coral reefs and homeless fish, I watched Hyde. He was silent for a long time, the movements of jelly fish casting shadows over his face. Silent. Eerily so. What was he searching for, I wondered, behind the glass?

“It's kind of terrifying, isn't it?” I sat down on the bench next to a little girl with a dripping ice cream cone. “That glass is the one thing keeping us from being crushed under metric tons of water and sting rays.”

“Must be more terrifying for them.” I could see Hyde's eyes following a jelly fish until it disappeared behind a forest of reefs. “Trapped like animals up there.”

“They
are
animals.”

That made Hyde smile. “Guess so. Still sucks, I bet.”

I remembered Stylo's cage, remembered Anton's threat, remembered why I was sitting here beneath a ceiling of sea, and nodded in agreement. Then, I buried my face in the fat, fluffy neck of my giant panda.

“Come on. You said you wanted to see the whales, right?” Hyde extended a hand to me with an inviting smile, wordlessly enticing, waiting for mine, itching for touch. I finally had to admit to myself that this had long stopped being an “operation”. It was a date. A regular date. A nice one.

I took his hand and wondered what it would cost me.

 

That evening, after Hyde had dropped me off, I resolved to do better. I resolved to do whatever it took. But Sunday passed. Then Monday.

Hyde didn't have a lot of free time, but when he did, he tried to spend it with me. Movie on Friday. Karaoke on Saturday. He was partial to Sinatra. He had a real taste for jazz. He had Charlie Parker albums on his iPod, and the purest of hatred for sea food.

I started to notice things about him; things I hadn't before. I was getting to know him. I was dating him.

I was screwing up.

Tuesday evening, Hyde took me out. I'd left my house while Ade and Dad were watching some gross-out comedy on TV, Chinese take-out strewn about the coffee table. He'd come right after the dinner he'd had with one of his lawyers – John Roan, the man who'd been with him at Hedley's funeral reception – so he was still in a suit when he met me at Grand Army Plaza.

My heart was pounding as we walked into the woods, but not because of Hyde – though admittedly he did look quite good in a three-piece suit. Anton hadn't contacted me at all since that night at Stylo, but I was sure that he was keeping tabs on me. The thought alone was enough to give me what I hoped wasn't a permanent twitch.

But getting close to Hyde was part of the plan, wasn't it? I was still on track. I had to believe it.

“Tell me what happened to you, Deanna,” Hyde asked.

I knew what he wanted: the life I'd lived during the years he'd been away.

It wasn't something I liked to open up about. Or maybe I just never really had an opportunity to. I looked up at Hyde, at his gentle gaze. I couldn't help it. “Dad fell off the wagon hard after Mom died. Ericka was too busy dreaming of freedom and Ade too busy avoiding responsibility, so I was the one stuck trying to keep everything from falling apart.”

Hyde listened intently.

“I kept writing for a while,” I told him. “You know, like those little stories I used to let you read when we were kids. But eventually I just... stopped. It didn't seem like it really mattered anymore, you know? But I dealt with everything anyway. By myself. It's just what I do.”

His eyes lost focus, dimmed. It was as if he were seeing something other than me, as if the reality around him ceased to exist, abandoning him to a different place and time entirely. He didn't even realize when I'd stopped talking until I nudged him – almost half a minute later.

“Sorry,” he said in a tone so quiet and pained it stilled my pulse. It wasn't the kind of apology one gave when spacing out was the only crime committed. “I'm really sorry. If only I'd…”

“If only you'd what?”

Silence. “If only I'd been there.” He left it at that.

“Hey,” I said, as I stepped out of his limo in front of his townhouse – a century old neoclassical beauty on 74th.

“Yeah?”

“Are you OK?”

“What?” Narrowing his eyes, he shrugged. “No less than usual. Why do you ask?”