Never-Contented Things

by Sarah Porter

  All I saw was the yellow siding, the tan drapes. A twitch at the fabric’s hem.

  It wasn’t Josh watching me, but something was. Panic hit me with a metallic snap and I bolted, my feet pounding for three blocks before I thought that if I had a reason to be afraid, then it wasn’t safe for Josh either. I wheeled to a stop and stood there gasping, my hand clutching a lamppost.

  Unless it was safe for him. He’d seemed perfectly secure and confident. When the imp-thing had fanned up out of the glass flowers, he hadn’t flinched. Still, I thought of going back for him. I thought of telling him we had to run away. Even if that meant we wound up sleeping in a cardboard box under a freeway off-ramp.

  I imagined myself saying all that to him, and also being him as he listened to me. I could hear how ridiculous I sounded in his ears, how he felt somewhere between bemused and impatient. Kezzer, I thought I’d explained things to you? There’s nothing to worry about. Now, go buy my damned champagne.

  It felt like a mistake—and everything, everything I did felt like an even bigger mistake than whatever I’d done just before, my failures endlessly inflating and swallowing one another—but I went on. Walking toward downtown. The streets were still unnervingly empty, no cars went by, but at last I saw a few people—children playing in a yard, a man weeding—though always in the distance. I couldn’t hear my phone anymore, that part was good.

  Downtown consisted of two blandly cute streets at right angles to each other, over by the college. Full of bars and cafés for the students, mostly, though townies like us went to them too. An art-house theater, a ratty gallery full of smeary, huge-titted nudes hanging over a window display of bongs, a Thai restaurant. The usual, for a town with a big state university like this. And the bookstore, right on Grand Street.

  Which was dark, its front door locked. I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was, but since the bookstore had a sign saying it was open seven days, that shouldn’t matter anyway. I stood with my back to its window for a moment, wondering what to do next. A small group of college kids sauntered past, oversized backpacks sagging from their shoulders. They struck me as exceptionally ugly people, their faces weirdly elongated, or much too big, or flat in unexpected places. One of them fixed me with a sidelong look, his eyes skidding deeper into their corners to stay on my face. He grinned.

  Something in his backpack was squirming. The canvas bulged and jumped.

  I told myself that he was smuggling a puppy into his dorm room. Doing something fairly innocuous. Though he should at least leave the bag unzipped. Let it breathe.

  Once they were gone—which took much too long—I walked over to the liquor store. I had a fake ID, but it was too crappy to work if anyone looked closely. And besides, the owner knew me by sight; his son had been in my year at school.

  So I’d try to brazen it out. The worst he’d do was laugh at me.

  The lights were on, the door chimed as I stepped through. But there was no one behind the counter. I waited—maybe the owner was in back?—until time seemed to sway in my head. The bottles gleamed in their long rows, the overhead lamps reflecting again and again, and I began to imagine that those rebounding lights were tiny, shining people swarming over everything.

  Then I snapped out of it, and the lights were just lights again. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there, but it felt like a while, and still no one had appeared.

  When I was younger—thirteen, fourteen—I’d shoplifted routinely. I was good at it and never got caught, but it upset Josh so much—What if someone sees you, Kezzer, what if the clerk has to pay for whatever you’ve stolen, what if Mitch and Emma find out and send you away?—that I’d stopped completely. Now, though, lifting a bottle of champagne seemed like the obvious thing to do. If I left the twenty to pay for it, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  The bottle I chose was marked $17.99. I was even allowing for sales tax, so Josh couldn’t possibly get angry. I tucked the money under the register and helped myself to a shopping bag. Turned to go.

  The boy in the white jacket was watching me through the window. The one from the grove, the same one who’d led Josh away. The one I’d mentally rehearsed murdering, in lavish detail. He didn’t have his entourage with him this time, and he looked much less handsome by daylight: sickly pale, even faintly gray. There was something off about the angles of his face, as if the bones were slightly out of joint. He still had great hair, I’d give him that, mahogany brown and as thick as plumage. He was stylish enough too, with the big jacket and the same black leather leggings he’d been wearing that night.

  Josh had been clear in his instructions: I was supposed to be very, very polite to this scumbag. I thought of smashing the end off my bottle of champagne and seeing how polite I could be with the part that was left. My legs trembled with the kick of adrenaline. The boy in the white jacket smiled at me: a patient curling of his lips, as if he could see his blood frothing in my thoughts. As if the image was thoroughly charming.

  I went to meet him, bells jangling at my back.

  “The lovely Ksenia Adderley!” he said. “Now that I see you again, it’s clear how absurd it was to take you for a young man. It’s a fetching hat, that one, but it threw me. I hope you’re settling in all right?”

  I grimaced at hearing my name; he wasn’t supposed to know it. But then it came to me that Josh must have told him at some point during his three days of captivity. Must have let it slip in a drugged stupor. It wasn’t his fault.

  “Josh has a bad habit of standing up for shitheads like you,” I said. “Who’ve hurt him, or molested him, or whatever the hell you did. He won’t take it the right way, if I get arrested for your murder.”

  The champagne was still in the bag, but I realized I was holding the bottle by its neck, so tightly I was surprised it didn’t shatter. One vicious swing, down on the top of his head: that might do it, with any luck. It would be twenty bucks well spent.

  “It’s the thought that counts, Ksenia,” he said. In that repulsively courtly tone I’d noticed when we first met. His voice was high for a man, reedy; a syrupy whine. “So we can both take my murder as already accomplished, the blood long since swallowed by the earth, roses bursting on the spot. And we can say you’ve served out your long years in prison, and at last been freed, and now we’ve met again.”

  I’d thought at first that he might be in high school or college. A freshman at most. Then I’d thought, no, older than that. But now I got the sense that both those guesses were way off. In the light his skin had an ashy, faceted look, not youthful at all. One of those forty-five-year-olds who can sometimes pass? Up close I could see that his eyes were an unnaturally bright, pale green, as sour as stomach acid.

  “Who are you, anyway?”

  “That’s all behind us, now. We can meet as old friends, and recall the time I stole your brother from you, albeit temporarily, and how you gouged out my eyes with a broken bottle to avenge him. We can laugh about it together, remembering how your hands were gloved in gore up to the elbows. Wax nostalgic as the hours wear on; oh, Ksenia, what a little savage you once were! And now that that’s established, may I accompany you on your walk?”

  The awful thing was that I almost said yes. It was like his words had seeped inside me, coated my thoughts in grease. “Like hell. Who are you?”

  He shrugged, his white jacket lifting in a cloudlike puff with the gesture. The question didn’t interest him. His nose was long and bony, his cheekbones too prominent.

  “Another time, then. I’ll show you the sights.”

  He bent in and kissed me on the cheek, and somehow I lacked the presence of mind to break his jaw. I just stood there and took it, from this kidnapper, this filth, this almost-certainly rapist. Exactly like when I’d been eleven, I was paralyzed and stupid, speechless as a rock. The boy-slim man in the white jacket turned to walk off.

  The feeling of his lips stayed with me. A cool, dry hush, hush on skin that shrieked and burned.

  because we weren’t re
ally home before

  I wasn’t supposed to go back yet. As far as I could tell without my phone, it hadn’t been the few hours that Josh said he needed. My cheeks still raged with heat, my limbs jerked when I moved. There was no chance that I could sit calmly in a café somewhere. He’d seemed so self-satisfied, that creep in the jacket. Like he’d put one over on me, duped me somehow, and he was stopping by to gloat. My heart was still hammering, minutes after he’d disappeared from view.

  I stormed back the way I’d come, through the residential streets, with no idea of what I would do. Anything at all except behave myself. Anything but follow instructions, even if they came from Josh. I wished I’d swung that bottle; the longing to have done just what I didn’t do jumped inside me like a giant pulse. I even wished I was handcuffed, my black penny loafers tracking stinking blood all over the patrol car. That kiss lingered, branding me with my failure to act while I’d had the perfect chance. Now that I thought about it, there hadn’t even been witnesses.

  I wasn’t looking where I was going. A pair of little girls, crouched low, loomed almost under my shoes. My knee knocked one of them in the head as I swerved, stumbling onto the grass. The bag with the champagne whacked my thigh, hard enough to bruise. What were they doing, blocking the sidewalk like that?

  Okay. They had their chalks out and they were drawing on the pavement. Bloated psychedelic flowers, a lumpy, leering mermaid. They turned to gawk at me with wide, vacant eyes. There was something idiotic about them. Empty as corpses. Or maybe it was just my foul mood telling me that.

  “Sorry,” I made myself say. “I didn’t see you.”

  “Olivia, let’s draw a dragon next!” It was the blond girl who’d spoken, to her darker friend. But she was still staring at me, just as expressionlessly as before. “Olivia, you like dragons, don’t you? Let’s make it purple.”

  “I said I was sorry,” I snapped. “Even though I didn’t feel like it. Now it’s your turn to say, That’s okay.”

  “I think it should be red,” Olivia said. Her two fat braids fidgeted in midair as if they were sending out signals. Then, tentatively: “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Not yet,” her friend admonished. “That’s for later.”

  I started to step around them. I might give their drawing a few hard scuffs on my way. Olivia reached out and grabbed my hand, her expression suddenly moon-eyed and piteous. “I don’t want to die,” she said. Clearly to me, this time.

  Her hand looked as tender and doughy as any five-year-old’s would. Silky, pale brown skin, tiny dimples, chubby fingers. So the sensation of her fingers pressing mine came as a shock: her skin felt like crumbling bark. Her flesh gave the airy, hollow impression of dry-rotted wood. I yanked my hand back.

  “You look fine,” I babbled. “Don’t be silly.”

  I’d lunged out of range, but Olivia was still reaching for me. “I know I’m not whole-me,” she said. “But I’m enough-me. Enough that I don’t want to die! Don’t let them take me.”

  I looked at the blond girl, even though all I wanted was to get the hell away from them. “Are you two in some kind of trouble?”

  “She’s just playing,” the blonde said hastily. “It’s part of our game.”

  “If somebody’s threatening to hurt you,” I said, “I can call the police. And I’ll wait with you until they get here, and make sure you’re safe.” Though I couldn’t, I realized. I’d flung my phone on the lawn, to punish it for screaming at me.

  “No, no,” the blonde said. Olivia’s plump little hand still waved vaguely in my direction, her fingers grasping and releasing nothing. “We are having lots of fun, playing our game. About the dragon. And how it’s going to eat her. Olivia, say how much fun it is! If you say it, we can make the dragon red. Like you want.”

  Olivia looked at her, and then back at me. “It’s so much fun!” she said hesitantly. “It’s all about a dragon.”

  “Well, the princess is going to come and save you, right?” I said. “And slay the dragon, in the nick of time? Spill its guts. Then the two of you can dance on its inert body.” Josh should be proud of me. I was making such a stupendous effort to be kind, when that was the last thing I wanted to be. My heart still hadn’t settled down and there was a jarring, kinetic urgency running through my limbs.

  “I’m not sure,” Olivia said. She looked concerned.

  “It’s going to eat her,” the blonde pronounced with finality. “Goodbye! Have a nice evening!”

  “Goodbye,” I said. Though I was aware that the wrongness that had begun by infesting our house had moved on, spreading first through the whole town, and now it had reached these two kids. They weren’t quite how children are supposed to be. Healthy, well-adjusted kids don’t feel like dead logs, for one thing. But I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. They’d said they were fine.

  I wasn’t feeling all that together either. On consideration. I might be as off and as wrong as everything else.

  When I got back to our house my phone was still where I’d thrown it, nestled in the glaring grass. The phone was silent now, its screen gone dark. I sat down beside it and stroked the plastic, wondering who it was that had been shrieking out of it—begging me, I was almost sure, for help. If I hit the Power button, would it start screaming all over again? I wasn’t sure I could face it. In my memory its timbre was girlish and thin and frantic. And possibly familiar.

  Another voice mingled with it. Josh had flung open the windows and he was singing—such a fantastic voice, all dusk and velvet. I wasn’t the only one who thought he could go pro. Knocking pots around. I could hear what was probably the electric eggbeater.

  It made me sick with longing for when we’d both been kids, somehow. We’d gotten into the habit of hiding together, clutching each other, in closets or behind furniture. I’d tell Josh stories about my life and he’d make them into rambling, improvised songs, just for me—except that in the songs everything was different, I was always victorious in the end, and it was easy for people to love me. Like, if I told him that my mom had left me alone in the car for hours, he’d have the car start flying, and I’d rescue a boy who’d fallen off a cliff or something.

  I knew we were just daydreaming, but it made life feel a tiny bit more possible than it had before.

  Once the sun was streaking sidelong, and the air had gone golden, I walked up to the door. Josh must have heard me coming because he was instantly there, pouncing on me with a puff of the flour that covered his shirt. He squeezed me and rubbed his cheek on me and said, “Oh, Kezzer, you’re home! I was just getting worried, you’ve been gone so long, and you didn’t answer my texts or anything! Your dinner is so totally ready!”

  “I didn’t have my phone with me,” I said. “But I did get the champagne.”

  Even though what I’d meant to say was, Josh, what have you done?

  “Well, that’s something.” Josh pouted. And in fact the world didn’t feel nearly so unbalanced now that he was with me, and my long afternoon didn’t seem as crazy anymore. Maybe I was overreacting. I do have a problem with doing that. “I’ll pop it in the freezer for a little bit. Oh, Kezzer, you’re a mess. There’s flour all over you! You get changed and I’ll start serving.”

  Somehow I did what he said. In my own room, I stared at my shepherdess for a moment, her baby-blue lips smiling through a tangled rain of costume jewelry. She was exactly the same as ever, with shiny black hair and a lace dress painted with pink and blue blotches. The clothes spilled out of my drawers the same way. Lexi’s framed photo of Josh and me laughing by the gorge, our faces topaz with candlelight, still hung on the wall, with the same inscription in gold ink: To the coolest friends in the world. Heart U both! Lexi.

  Another photo, of my dad—except that he’d turned out not to be—in uniform. Josh hated it, that I wouldn’t throw out that picture. He once drew an X across it, from corner to corner, in scarlet lipstick on the glass. I could still see the red smudge left under the frame’s edge after I’d cleaned it.
That hadn’t changed, either.

  And what had happened today, really? So my phone was broken. So the bookstore had been closed. So I hadn’t actually killed anyone, just wanted to—like that was new. Some kids had acted screwy. Children’s brain chemistry is weird. They’re all basically on drugs all the time anyway.

  I shucked my T-shirt—oversized, gray—knocking my hat onto the bed in the process. Slipped on a man’s tuxedo vest as a shirt, which was a look I knew Josh liked, and put on fresh jeans. Took a quick look in the mirror, to make sure I was the same as usual. Tall, bony, blond, with hair like poisonous spines. Fine. Except that I needed my bowler hat.

  Sennie, sweetheart, don’t cry. Who cares what the darn test says? You’ll always be my little duckling. Now, say quack, quack, quack. That’s how ducklings say “Goodbye, Daddy.”

  The one time Lexi had called me by that name, I’d been ready to give her a black eye. Not that she’d had any idea why it got to me.

  I walked over to the bed, keeping my eyes averted from the photos, and leaned in for the hat. It had fallen brim up, and it looked like something wet and glossy had gotten stuck in the bottom of it. A black plastic bag, wadded up? How had that happened, when I’d kept my hat on all day? I bent closer.

  The object was black and bright acid green. Softly domed, glassy, and circular, big enough that it perfectly fitted the hole where my head should be. Tiny pleats of variegated color, olive and ochre, running through the wide green rim that surrounded a core of midnight.

  Iris and pupil. A giant eye was nesting in the bottom of my fucking hat, and it was watching me. I screamed. The pupil dilated, like it could hear me.

  My room was the nearest one to the kitchen. Josh came running, leaped down the stairs, slammed back my door. And it was there, in that triangle of space pinned between us, me and Josh and my spying hat, that the force of what had happened came to me. Billowing up and down, huffing alien air in my face. The truth, or what I could sense of it, was a charged zone beating in our midst and holding us apart.