Savage Delight (17 page)

This is a bluff. My underwear are blue and three years old. We both know I am not That Girl.

“Sit. Down. Ms. Blake.”

I cross my arms and flop in my chair with considerable grumpy pizazz.

***

For the first time in nearly five years, Wren walks up to me. He peeks into study hall, finds my table, and walks over, looking me in the eye as he does it, too.

This is my first indication that something has gone very wrong. He’s cowardly. He’s hesitant. And he’s carrying years of guilt on his shoulders towards me. He would never approach me this boldly unless something dire was happening.

He slides a paper across the table. It’s a print out of a picture, of a very familiar bloody baseball bat, and my hand, and a dark shape in the background I know all too well. I see it each night my brain decides to grant me a nightmare.

“Isis had this,” Wren says, voice strong but low. My lungs splinter with ice at her name, but I quell the pain and quirk a brow.

“And?”

“You know what it’s from,” he hisses. “Someone sent that to her in an email.”

“Did she say what the address was?”

“[email protected]. All in lower case.”

The letters are simple to memorize. I sit back in my chair and struggle to look casual. “Sounds like a trash-byte spammer.”

Wren leans in, now closer to me physically than we’ve ever been in five years. His green eyes are dark behind his glasses.

“I know you know more about computers than I do, or anyone in this school.”

“Correct.”

“And I know, god - the whole school knows - you like Isis.”

I have to force the chuckle, and it comes out bitter. “Really? Fascinating. I love hearing fresh gossip.”

“It’s not gossip, Jack, and it’s sure as hell not new - it’s the goddamn old truth and you and I both know it.”

He’s breathing heavily, his face flushed. He’s frustrated and flustered, not angry. Wren never gets truly angry. I give him my best glare. 

“Didn’t you see her in the cafeteria? I don’t exist to her. She clearly has no concern for me. Why should I care who she’s emailing?”

“She’ll find out the truth about you!”

“It’s about time someone other than us did.”

“This person –” He splutters and jabs his finger at the photo. “This person is dangerous. And they’re talking to Isis. What if they hurt her?”

There’s a long silence. I scoff and look him up and down.

“I’m sorry, am I supposed to care?”

Wren’s face falls like someone’s slapped him. He grits his teeth and grabs the paper back.

“I thought you did. I guess I was wrong.”

“Yes. Now, if you could turn around and march back the way you came in, I would be exceedingly grateful.”

“I care about her!” Wren shouts suddenly. Study hall goes quiet. The librarian looks up, but Wren doesn’t seem to notice. His hair comes undone from its gel, and his glasses skew minutely. “I care about Isis! She’s done more for me than anyone, and if she gets hurt again, I swear to you –”

“You’ll what?” I laugh. “Slap me with a ruler? Sic your student council grubs on me? Oh wait, I know – you’ll call in some favors and have my pudding privileges revoked.”

And then he snaps. Wren, the coward behind the camera and my mild-mannered ex-friend of ten years,
snaps
.

Before I can move he’s grabbed my shirt and shoved me against a bookshelf. The librarian frantically dials security and girls shriek and boys start to clamber around us in an encouraging, scattered circle.

“Come on,” I smirk. “Punch me. Do it.”

Wren’s green eyes blaze, his muscles taut for someone who isn’t in any sports clubs. I eye his fist, and just as I see it pull back, he drops me and snarls.

“No. That’s exactly what you want. Someone’s already ground you into pulp by the looks of it, and now you want me to do it more because you’re a self-absorbed, masochistic asshole.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I laugh. Wren nods, fast and hard.

“Yeah.
I don’t. I just know that before her, you were dead inside and out, walking around like a zombie. Anybody could see that. And then she came, and you lit up like a fucking candle. And we could all see that, too. Even Sophia.”

“Shut your mouth,” I growl.

“Is that why Isis ignores you now?” Wren laughs. “Because she realized Sophia means so much to you, and you were out here fooling around with her?”

“I never – no one ever -”

“You did!” Wren shouts. “You fucking did, Jack! She’s been through more shit than any girl should go through and
you got her hopes up
! And then she met Sophia and you fucking
crushed
them!”

“You have no –”

“How could she compete, you moron?”
Wren’s voice gets louder. “Just use that huge fucking brain of yours for two seconds; you’ve given up everything for Sophia. You send her letters. You’ve been with her since middle school. You had Tallie, and she fucking knows about that, too –”

My mind goes white, a horrible keening noise starting in the back of my skull.

“She
what
?”

“She knows! She saw it! She went out and found it herself because she’s Isis and that’s what she does!”

Something in me plummets.

“What do we do?” I whisper, my own voice surprising me by how hoarse it is. Wren’s eyes grow brighter.

“You tell her the truth. Before this emailer does, and gets her involved deeper.”

“You forget she doesn’t acknowledge my presence anymore.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Wren says. “Just promise me you’ll tell her when I give you the opening.”

“You’ve become quite the little dictator,” I sneer.

“I’ve had it,” he clenches his fist. “With running away. Every time I do, someone’s gotten hurt. But not this time. I won’t run this time.”

He turns and leaves before I can verbally cut him down to size.

I watch Isis from the parking lot, feeling every bit the stalker, but bent on studying her face in a new light. She knows what I did that night. That’s why she’s ignoring me. She’s too smart not to put two and two together. And she knows about Tallie.

My biggest secrets are in her hands, now. Just as I’ve known hers for months. I’ve had her number for months. But I’ve never texted or called. Until now. My thumbs fly over the keyboard.

‘
We’re even’
.  

I see her stop and pull her phone out, Kayla chatting aimlessly at her. She looks up and scans the parking lot, and our eyes meet for the briefest moment. For one second, the warm amber engulfs me, and I let it.

And then I let it go, and turn away.

***

Tonight is the last night.

This woman is the last woman.

She’s older – the trophy wife of a lawyer, confined to a house and left to treadmill and Martha Stewart her way into being ignored by her husband, who has enough hookers and blow to far outlast a wife. They have no children. She is miserable and in shape and anxious, and the hotel room is nicer than normal, and when she’s satisfied and exhausted, she starts crying.

“Thank you.”

I pull on my jeans and nod cordially.

“How – how old are you? I know I asked that in the lobby, but really, you can’t be twenty-three–”

I flash her a smile. “Over eighteen. You’re safe.”

She covers her eyes with her arm. “Oh Jesus. I practically cradle robbed.”

I think of all the women who came before her, who were deceived by the fact I’d looked twenty-one since I was fifteen. She has no idea. I grew up fast, and she has no idea. 

“This is my last night,” I say as I button my shirt. “Of this job.”

“Oh? That’s good. Someone as nice as you doesn’t need to stay in this field. It ruins good people.”

And yet you still use our services. I curl my lip where she can’t see it. She showers and dresses, and I take my laptop out and sit on the bed, taking advantage of the free wifi.

“The room is yours for the night,” she says when she comes out, now in a pressed pink suit and perfectly styled red hair.

“Thanks,” I grunt. The woman – I forget her name – leans over my shoulder.

“Ooh, what are you doing? It looks fascinating –”

“I’m running seventy-two targeting executables for a free-roam IP trace.”

She gives me a blank look. I sigh.

“I’m trying to find someone.”  

“Oh! Girlfriend? Ex-girlfriend?”

Tiresome.
Women always jump straight to romance. I roll my eyes.

“An anonymous email sender.”

She laughs nervously. “Right, well, I’ll leave you to it. Thank you again.”

“It was a pleasure doing business with you.” I nod. It was no pleasure at all. The last time I felt honest pleasure - not sickly release - from sex was the last time Sophia and I slept together. And that was nearly a year and a half ago.

I wait until the door clicks shut behind the woman to pull up the trace results. I parse them down twice – once using the email address name, and once using Isis’ email address. Which I also happen to have. She didn’t exactly hide it when she put up posters around the school asking for people to contact her with dirty information bits about me. 

‘She knows about Tallie.’

I shake Wren’s words out of my head and work quickly. I’m by no means gifted at computer hacking – if you could even call it that – but I know my way around a program or two. Ruby and C++ are far easier languages than any drivel humans speak.

After fifteen minutes of process parsing, I’m left with a hundred and thirty-seven possible IP addresses the email could have originated from. I could go through them all one by one, but there has to be some connecting factor. And that factor is no doubt Isis. Why her? I check Maryland, and Washington D.C. There are two IPs there, but none of them from the federal bureau where the investigators have the tape. The tape Wren gave to them behind my back.

I’m not mad about it. I was at first. But then I learned the tape was badly damaged, and video imaging technology back then wasn’t the best. And with no physical evidence, the police declared Joseph Hernandez missing. The other three were conveniently paid off by Avery’s parents, and never spoke a word of what happened.

That reminds me - Belina will be needing the check sometime soon. I’d give it to Wren, but this was the last lump sum I’d have for a while. Of course, I’d invested a small amount in a hedge fund so she wouldn’t be completely cut off when I went off to college, but she’d quickly run out in a year or two. Hopefully, by my second year, I’ll have an internship that pays well. No, I have to have one. It’s the only option.

By then, Sophia’s surgery will be over.

And she will either be dead or alive.

I press my fingers to my temple and try to focus. The majority of the IP address near-matches are located in Florida. I narrow my eyes. Florida is where Isis used to live. That can’t be a coincidence.

But there’s one IP address that bucks the norm, way out in Dubai. The rest are in America. Whoever this person is, they clearly know how to access information that isn’t theirs. They’re good. Rerouting their IP through proxy servers to Dubai would throw anyone looking for an American off the trail. Unless they kept their IP in Florida, purposefully, knowing something like Dubai would stick out like a sore thumb. Basically, every one of these dots is suspect.

I sigh and pick up the phone to order room service. It’s going to be a long night.

Between coffee and eggrolls at one a.m, I get a text. From someone in my phone I’ve labeled ‘Never’. I ignore the palpitation in my lungs at the sight of that name on my phone.

‘What would you do if everyone hated you?’

 I pause and consider my answer carefully. Everyone has hated me at some point. Women, because I turn them down. Men, because I turn the women they love down.

‘I would ignore them.’

I try not to stare at my phone, waiting. I have work to do. But I slog through it reluctantly until her answer comes, ten minutes later.

‘That’s what I’m doing. But I don’t like it much.’

‘Then stop doing it. Do what you like, not what you don’t.’

‘But what I like hurts people. I get in the way. I mess things up.’

‘Sometimes people need to be messed up. It reminds them life is short.’

There’s a long silence. Just as I start regretting what I said, my phone lights up again.

‘
She would have been a very pretty baby.’

My eyes sting.
The cold numbness of the woman I’d fucked earlier and the single-minded focus on finding the mystery emailer melts. Just like that; with a single sentence.

‘Thank you.’   

-9-

3 Years

29 Weeks

6 Days

The dark trees loom like massive sticks of cinnamon. Lake Galonagah at midnight looks like a sheet of glazed black sugar. The moon resembles a perfectly white round of brie cheese.  

I am lost as hell. Also, hungry. But that’s nothing new. I am hungry approximately 364 days of the year. The one day I am not hungry is Hitler’s birthday. And also the day after Thanksgiving. Thankfully these two days are not on top of each other, otherwise we would’ve named it ‘ThankgodHitlerkickedthebucketbackinthe40’s’ and that assuredly does not carry the same ring capitalist America likes so much for their holidays.

In my vast and strenuous consideration of the importance of holiday cheer, I manage to get myself even more lost. Contrary to popular belief, flashlights don’t contribute all that much to awesomeness other than being a cool thing you can use to put on a makeshift rave. I rave alone for two whole seconds and since it is horrible and quiet I give up immediately and sit down. On a skunk’s home. The great brute is understandably displeased, and pokes his butt out just in time for my ankle to get completely soaked by hellacious spray.