The Female of the Species (17 page)

It shouldn't be this easy.

There are laws in place that stop us from doing things. This is what we tell ourselves. In truth we stop ourselves; the law is a guideline for how to punish someone who is caught.

Claire's dad likes to say that everything happens for a reason. He must say it a lot because I've been at her house only a handful of times and have heard the phrase at least twice. And if he's right then maybe I'm
supposed
to hear him.

Maybe Claire was supposed to get that text from Sara tonight when I would see her face. Maybe she was supposed to have too much to drink and cry in the car, sharing memories of the times she'd been with Sara at
her uncle's house. Maybe she was supposed to point it out as I drove past, choking on words so harsh she can't say them even with beers slicking her throat.
Guess I was lucky
, she says.

I live in a world where not being molested as a child is considered luck.

A fire has been lit inside of me, and if everything happens for a reason, then the kindling has been laid for years, piled nicely as it waited for a spark. And tonight was steel on flint, a heat pulsing within that keeps me warm even in the cold.

Even as I stand outside his home in the dead of night.

After I dropped Claire off, I tried to do the right thing, tried to be normal. I checked my phone for texts. I walked to the side door. I reached for the doorknob and then I was running, my feet punching through snow and leaving a dark path behind me. Now it's his door in front of me, not my own. People don't lock up here. They call it trust but I say it's arrogance, an assumption that nothing bad will happen.

Not to them.

I let myself in.

He's asleep on the couch. The lamp on the side table illuminates his half-eaten dinner, now decorated with a fat winter fly bogged down in the mashed potatoes. It's
still struggling a little, threadlike legs pushing against gravy.

He fell asleep with the TV on, the colors flickering across his face as I watch him. The steady rise and fall of his chest, his bare feet on the floor, nails that need to be clipped. The awkward angle of his neck, head resting to the side.

He'll have a crick in the morning. Maybe.

I could leave now. There are reasons why I should. There are reasons to stay, too. I take my time, touching things, moving through the small rooms of his life to see what he keeps. And he does keep things. Things no one should have. I go through pictures, grainy but with enough detail to know what I'm looking at.

Now I can't leave.

He burns wood for warmth, the iron stove in the center room emitting heat like a wall that I move through as I walk toward it. There's a small shovel for cleaning out ash, leaning against the stove, cocked toward me as if in invitation.

It really shouldn't be this easy.

When I dump the embers in his lap, his clothing ignites. His eyes fly open, but he does not see me. There is only confusion, a lack of comprehension so great that it trumps even the pain. The elasticized band of his underwear liquefies and runs across his skin, the
tiny hairs on his belly flaming for a brief fiery moment before becoming ash.

His hands go immediately to the pain, wanting to cup it and cover the hurt, but there is no comfort in the movement. Blisters open and break in a moment and his sleeves catch, fire creeping up his arms as he staggers to his feet. He wants to run now—the second instinctive reaction to pain—but he doesn't know where to go and the coffee table is in his way, cracking against his shins hard enough to break skin, but even that does not stop him as he bolts.

He heads for the bedroom, liquid flame lighting the carpet in his wake as parts of his sweater drip to the floor. That room calls to him even as he burns, a black hole that he flies toward, his melting hands providing mutual destruction for the pictures I laid out on the bed. I don't follow, because I don't need to see.

I can hear.

Animals die in the woods all the time. I've heard their screams, startlingly human as they fight something stronger, faster, bigger. But there's a final moment when they know the battle is lost, when the prey goes still and accepts fate, a passive agreement with the predator that they have been bested.

That silence follows the smoke down the hallway, and I know it's over. The small fires that dropped around
him have grown, licking up the carpet fibers and now searching for more.

They creep toward me and I've spent too much time watching. I head for the door, my eyes watering against the smoke and my throat tightening against the fumes of the smoldering carpet. Yet I can't move fast because there's an unfamiliar weight in my stomach and I fight against it as I hit the cold, clear air, my feet finally picking up speed as I run down the driveway, to the road, past the woods, places I can't leave footprints.

What was his home is now a pillar of smoke, bits of ash falling from the sky, all that's left of any number of horrific acts. But that's not what puts me on my knees. That's not what makes me vomit, the steam from it rising back up in my face as I retch again and again.

The weight in my gut is gone, leaving behind a dark pit and strained muscles. I lie back in the snow, my body quivering. I don't know what to do, for the first time in a long time. I don't know what I think.

Because that empty space inside me, it feels like guilt.

Sound travels when the air is freezing. Even with the storm windows I can hear a train, though the tracks are so far away I can't see the lights. Its thrum supersedes the constant sound of the breeze moving through the pines near the house, the low grunt of a deer that had been passing through the yard as it sees something it doesn't like. I hear it bolt, hooves breaking through the frozen snow as it flees.

I can't sleep, and it's got nothing to do with noises. I've been hearing these things my whole life, same as I've been staring at this crack in the ceiling my whole life. For some people the constant things are reassurance; they find comfort in the fact that nothing ever changes. But I'm not like that, and right now I hate the crack in
my ceiling, I hate the train for existing, and I especially hate the wind for moving the pines outside and reminding me that I'm going to have to go back to the clearing and get all the stupid fucking decorations off that tree.

I curl my fist under my head, fighting the urge to punch the wall. I told Alex that I love her, right after explaining about Sara's uncle. Her eyes did the right thing, lit up as bright as the snow all around us. But her mouth was all wrong, still fused shut with an inexpressible anger. She actually said
thank you
, which was worse than saying nothing at all. We stared at each other for a few seconds after that, another awkward silence like the one after she attacked Ray Parsons descending around us.

I hate not knowing what to say to Alex, and of course here in my bed I've come up with all kinds of great things, words that would've smoothed over my bad timing and loosened some of the muscles around her lips. But those things didn't come to me when I needed them, so we walked back to the church, Alex with her hands in her pockets, eyes on the ground and her face as cold as the wind. Peekay'd had too much to drink and Alex drove her home, giving me a halfhearted wave as she got into the car.

The train is gone, taking its vibrant hum with it. I'm left with the wind and the crack on my ceiling and all the
things I could've done differently tonight when there's a tap on my window. I ignore it, focused on the crack, wondering if there's any old caulk out in the garage, and if I can sneak out and get it without my parents wondering what the hell I'm doing fixing my ceiling at four in the morning.

The sound comes again, followed quickly by another, more insistent. I roll over and push the curtain aside to see Alex standing in the driveway, arm pulled back to throw another stone. I wave to her and she drops it, motioning for me.

I know how to dress quickly and quietly, know which spots on the stairs creak loudly, and how to open the screen door just right without making a sound. But I don't know how to do any of these things with my heart beating so hard I can see it in my chest, or with my blood rushing so fast there are dark corners in my vision.

It's the sloppiest sneaking out I've ever done, but I don't care. If Alex is standing in my yard in the middle of the night it means she thinks things were unsaid too, and maybe she couldn't sleep either. Maybe she's been lying on her bed staring at her ceiling thinking about me, and that's exactly what I'll tell Mom and Dad if they wake up.

Some things are too important to wait.

I'm outside, the snow tumbling over the sides of my
shoes and slipping down against my bare skin because I didn't take the time to put on socks. Alex comes toward me, hands out, and I take them, our freezing skin meeting.

“Hey,” she says, her voice harsh and scratchy. Her face is streaked with frozen tears, her cheeks stretched and hard underneath them. Her eyelashes are stuck together, dark icicles framing red-rimmed eyes.

“Alex, what are you doing?” I put my hands on her face, rubbing my thumbs over the salt left behind there. It chafes away, blowing into the breeze and leaving redness behind. Her whole face is stiff in my hands and I try to pull her into me for heat but she pushes away.

“I need to talk to you,” she says, her voice dark and unfamiliar.

I take a step back. I know this tone; I've seen these movements. Seen them in Mom when we lost Grandpa, in Park when he found out his little sister had cancer. Physical pain we reach for, protect, treat. Pain that comes from the inside we try to push out, working it free in little worrying movements of the hands, eyes that dart everywhere, as if expending all the energy inside will help mine down to the pain, expose it and drag it out into the open, out where someone else can see it and help kill it.

Alex is in pain; it's written everywhere. Every muscle
she has is fluttering. She's like a wild animal ready to bolt, but with nowhere to go. She knows the hurt is inside and running won't help, but she came to me—
to me
—and there's enough pride attached to that that I feel
good
. And that makes me feel terrible, because my girlfriend is having a breakdown.

Alex takes a deep breath, lips working as she searches for words. Finally a calm settles, one that radiates from her eyes and flows outward from there until she's not a panicked animal anymore. She's a frozen statue of my girlfriend, and as she starts to talk, I'm the one who wants to run.

“Jack,” she says calmly. “I have reactions to my environment that others wouldn't understand. I follow through on them because I believe in instinct.”

I hear a siren, a high-pitched wail as the ambulance comes screaming from town. It digs into my ears, the miles separating me from it turned into nothing by the cold winter air. The fire truck comes next, the one engine that the town owns ripping through the calm that I'd hated only a few minutes ago.

“What are you saying?” I watch her intently, too scared to move, afraid she might bolt if I startle her.

“The other night you asked me about college.”

“You said it's better if you don't go.”

“Better for
other people
, Jack,” she corrects me. “I feel
too much.” Her face crumples a little, a thaw creeping in.

“I shouldn't be out,” she says, her voice breaking. “It's not safe.”

“Alex.” I say her name quietly, in between siren pulses. “Alex, what did you do?”

She closes her eyes and exhales, the warmth of her breath pluming all around her. “If I don't let my feelings guide me in my actions, it's the same as not having them at all,” she says. Her eyes open and she's scared again, the momentary calm shattered by the noise. “I might as well not exist.”

“You exist,” I say, and she comes to me, fresh tears filling the tracks left behind by frozen ones. She's in my arms in a moment, but pulls back for one second to lock eyes with me.

“I love you, too,” she says.

And my heart slams up into my throat at the same time that my stomach drops into my knees.

Because Alex loves me.

And she smells like smoke.

Alex is broken, and it's painful to see.

We had this dog at the shelter once, an Irish wolfhound. Big-ass dog, gorgeous in her own way. We named her Brigit—a good Irish name—cleaned her up and put her on the shelter's Facebook page while we waited to borrow the one scanner all the surrounding counties use to check strays for microchips.

The response was immediate—everyone basically said
What the hell is that?

People around here have golden retrievers and German shepherds, dogs that make sense, practical pets that others can identify and congratulate you on. There was interest, don't get me wrong. Lots of people stopped by just to see Brigit in the flesh, walk her out of the pity
in their hearts and then plop her back in the cage and take home a beagle, saying, “I think we're looking for something a little more . . . normal.”

And Brigit, with her long face and distinctive bearing, would curl up in her cage, pride emanating from every muscle. But you could see in her eyes she was hurt. When our turn came to use the scanner I did Brigit myself, my heart skipping a beat when I got a
beep
and a phone number to call. Her family was from New York, which isn't actually all that far from us if you think about it, but everyone around the shelter was so stunned they kept repeating it, as if we found out she was actually
from
Ireland.

Her family came to get her, and not a day too late. Brigit's head had begun to hang, her food dish not emptying at a healthy rate. When she heard their voices in the waiting room, I don't think she believed it. I thought she might go ballistic, tear down the hall dragging me by the leash like a lot of dogs do when they find their people again. But Brigit just looked at me when I clipped her leash on and opened the door, like she suspected this was another opportunity to be dragged out into public to have someone look at her skeptically again.

If that dog had middle fingers I guarantee you she would have flipped off this entire county as she headed home in her family's Hummer.

Someone finally
got
Alex. Someone finally realized that here amid all the regular people and normal lives there was a truly remarkable person, a girl who doesn't look like everyone else or even think like us. Alex is a different breed altogether, but here we just want variations of the same. The safe. The known. Someone finally saw past all that.

Unfortunately that someone was Jack Fisher, and he's the type who takes all the dogs home for an overnight but never actually adopts any.

It's been two weeks since they stopped talking. Two weeks of snow and bitter cold, ice hanging from our windows and freezing up our cars. It's dark when we wake up and getting dark when we head home from school. Some days it's been so cold just going outside can almost kill you. When we do have school, the wind cuts right through us as we walk toward the building, me hunched against it, Alex standing tall, not seeming to care.

Her eyes have been blank, her mouth forming the right words to constitute a response, but there's nothing behind them, no feeling. I've had her over a few times, casually mentioned the names of some boys that I've caught checking her out (because let's face it, once one person tries Irish wolfhound, the others get curious). But she shakes her head, says she's not interested.

She never misses her hours at the shelter and does all her homework, maintaining her path to valedictorian. She moves through all the scheduled events as if each day is a job, and anything more is considered overtime. I position myself in the right place at school, shielding her from Jack as he walks by, hoping my body blunts the chaotic knife of Branley's laughter as she hangs from his arm. But if she's laughing it's not because he said something funny.

Park says Jack doesn't make jokes anymore. We've tried to ask questions, me to Alex, Park to Jack, our words chosen carefully, not like we're digging to figure out why they broke up.

The boys say it's because she wouldn't put out.

The girls say it's because Jack always gets bored eventually.

They're both utterly broken.

And no one knows why.