Never-Contented Things

by Sarah Porter

  I’ve heard more than I can stand, no matter how soul sick she is. “What Josh said in my dream was that you didn’t love him. He said if anyone couldn’t love Ksenia too, then it didn’t count.”

  She gapes at me with her tired green eyes and her shears veer up to point straight at me. I take a step backward, toward my car.

  “No one could have loved that girl,” she says. “It wasn’t possible. What Josh thought he felt for her—that just showed how badly he needed our help. Imagining he was in love with that cold, ruthless, cunning little—”

  “I loved her,” I interrupt. “I’d say that proves it could be done. And she never hurt anyone, especially not him. Mrs. Delbo, Ksenia was a beautiful, caring person; if you couldn’t see it, then that’s on you, not her.”

  And I turn to go home, because no matter how disturbing, how dangerous Josh and Ksenia’s new nowhere is, I’d actually rather be there than here, talking to this woman who can’t seem to muster the smallest compassion for a girl she once called her daughter.

  I notice the strangest sensation as I slide back into the car—as if something silky, crisp, and barely there were clinging to my leg.

  now we’re all living under a spell

  I had enough sense to hide Ksenia’s sweater in the trunk of my car right after that phone call with my mom, and to smuggle it up to my room later; now I put it on, feeling the infinite softness of the cashmere spilling past my fingertips. The fabric is still covered in bits of bark and dried leaves, but I don’t pick them off, just like I’ll never try to mend that rip in the sleeve. The dirt, the tear: all those things are parts of the truth, and all of them recall Ksenia’s voice in my ear. How she warned me to run, how she told me to consider her dead and never return.

  It’s difficult for me to think about my own part in this disaster, and about that conversation over nine months ago that might have been its origin; that is, I know what happened, and what was said, but I prefer to let my thoughts glance off the memory, to avoid dwelling on the specifics. But since everyone but me believes Ksenia is dead, since I’ve been to a nowhere that should not exist at all, shying away from that conversation feels too cowardly. I let the memory rise up, let it take over my mind.

  Tonight I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed; at the time, I was sitting on Josh’s. Xand sometimes got jealous of how close Josh and I were, but we had an understanding: that even if Josh fooled around with some of his other friends, he was absolutely not allowed to lay a finger on me. I told Xand that his only two choices were to trust me, or leave, and after some complaining he had the sense to go with the first option.

  Even if I’d been single, I never would have kissed a guy who loved someone else, and it was no secret who filled Josh’s heart. Sometimes it seemed as if half of our friendship was me listening to Josh obsessing over his foster sister: the usual When she said X, do you think she meant Y? routine that people perform when they aren’t getting what they want from someone. Because even if Ksenia gave more of herself to Josh than she did to anyone else, she still held a lot in reserve, and he would worry over every nuance of her speech, hoping for some sign that she was finally coming around.

  It got old.

  I suppose I started to feel impatient with the whole thing, and why shouldn’t I? But what I should have said, of course, was Talk to her. If you don’t know how she feels then ask her, and just make sure you’re really listening when she answers. And that wasn’t what I did.

  “Josh,” I said that night, “think about it. Ksenia always refers to you as her brother, and I don’t think I’ve heard you call her your sister once.”

  “Because she’s not my sister, Lexi! To me she’s just Kezzer. She could never be—just one thing in my life, like a sister or a friend. What we have is way bigger than that.” He was leaning sideways against his bedroom wall, a chaos of unfolded laundry all around him, and his hair was platinum layered over deep brown, with garnet-red bangs. Because this conversation occurred just two weeks before he disappeared, because it was the damage done, the unbearable revelation from which Josh decided to escape.

  “So why don’t you say something to her? The next time she calls you her brother, why don’t you let her know that you don’t see it that way?” I pulled my legs in and sat with my arms around my knees; it was a warm June night, that much I remember, with the windows open and a subtle stir of wind getting into everything. We had just finished finals.

  “Lexi! I could never do that to her. I’m the only family she has in the whole world. Her real mom hasn’t even remembered her birthday in, like, three years.” His eyes were wide with outrage.

  “Well, I don’t think you can be both,” I said. “I mean, her brother and her lover. I think that when she keeps calling you her brother, she’s giving you a message, and you’re just not hearing it.” I paused; I knew my opinions were going to upset him, but I didn’t yet grasp how seriously. “If you’re her only family, then it seems pretty harsh to expect her to put that at risk. What if the two of you get together, and then it doesn’t work out? She’d be losing way too much.”

  “Kezzer can’t lose me,” Josh said. He was sitting straight now, his knuckles paper white. “That is not a possible thing that could happen. We need to stay together forever. Everything else in the world keeps falling apart, and this is the one thing we can both count on!”

  After his parents died, I knew, he’d gone through five homes in four years before the Delbos took him in. Even his own grandparents gave him up after a few months, saying that they were too sick to cope with a child. So I could see a bit of where he was coming from, but I have to admit, now, that I didn’t see it clearly enough.

  “She’s going to have to move across the state,” I pointed out. “She’ll probably start college, at least part-time. What if she falls in love with someone else, like somebody she meets in school? Can you promise that she wouldn’t lose you then?”

  The shocking whiteness had spread from his knuckles to his face, and he was biting his lip. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Kezzer can’t fall in love with anyone else! It’s always been about me and her, ever since we were kids! I’m the only person in the universe she could ever love that way.”

  I guessed even then that he wouldn’t be delivering those words with so much vehemence if he truly believed them. While I’d seen Ksenia kiss both boys and girls at parties, there was something kind of going-through-the-motions about it. I wasn’t sure whom she actually felt attracted to, if anyone, and I wondered if that had crossed Josh’s mind as well.

  “I’m not sure that’s true. Josh, think about it: Ksenia can’t afford to be honest with you—maybe not even with herself—because she knows how you feel and she’s terrified of losing you if she doesn’t give you what you want. Why don’t you try backing off, and let her come to you, if that’s what she decides? Because maybe you don’t mean it that way, but right now you’re basically taking advantage of how vulnerable she is.”

  In retrospect, what I said sounds rough and blunt, but at the time I was proud of my restraint: because I didn’t say, You know Ksenia was raped, and now the absolute last thing she needs is to have some guy pressuring her again. Especially you.

  “You’re saying she’s never going to be in love with me.” It was the closest I’d ever seen Josh come to snarling; his face was seething, its white abruptly flooded with scarlet, and there was something in his look that made me pull back. “Did Kezzer say something to you?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “You know Ksenia doesn’t exactly go around baring her soul to me. I’m just—reading between the lines.”

  “Then you’re just wrong! And it’s a good thing you’re wrong, Lexi, because if I believed anything you’ve been saying—I’d disappear forever. I’d jump right off the edge of the planet!”

  Even in the moment, I was pretty upset; I’d never seen such rage, such menace in Josh’s face before. I didn’t entirely dismiss what he was saying, but I mostly put it down
as dramatics, as an outburst of passion that would subside once he thought about it.

  I was able to go on telling myself that Josh would calm down; that is, until he vanished, and then I understood how big my mistake had been: that I’d been treating Ksenia like a child by speaking on her behalf, without ever asking if she wanted me to do that. The fact that I felt protective of her was no excuse. Ksenia was old enough to find her own truth, and to voice it. I thought that Josh had made good his threat by running off with the strangers from the gorge, and that, if I’d only kept my mouth shut, he wouldn’t have been so reckless.

  I thought maybe the strangers had murdered him, and I was the one who’d set it in motion. When I saw Ksenia during the search, shame weighed down my eyes; I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what I’d done.

  And when she died, or when that very convincing illusion of Ksenia died, it seemed clear enough that I had killed her.

  The story is different now; that’s how it goes. You think you have a good hold on the thread, you think you can follow it, but then it twists and winds and knots in your hands and suddenly you’re on a path you never even knew existed. But there’s one thing that’s still the same: by saying what I said to Josh, I had a lot to do with everything that’s happened.

  Josh jumped off the edge of the planet, just as he warned me he would. And he pulled Ksenia along with him, and some other people too, and maybe he thought it was only fair to make me share their fate, since I’d been there in his room that night, and I’d forced him to hear a truth he couldn’t tolerate.

  I was the one who said the magic words, and now we’re all living under a spell.

  * * *

  All this time I’ve been sitting in the darkness; I’m in no mood for light tonight. Only shadows are tender enough that I can bear their touch against my skin, against my raw and throbbing heart. My calf still aches where that dead animal raked me with its teeth, even though the wound has been salved with antibiotics and painkillers and wrapped in soft bandages. I’ve been so lost in my memories that I almost forgot the pain, but now I’m returning to myself, to the glowing mist cast by distant streetlamps and the sweep of passing headlights on my sky-blue walls.

  I’m returning to a sound, and I can’t say how long it’s been going on before I noticed it. A kind of crisp rustling, maybe like the whisper of a taffeta ball gown, maybe like an autumn leaf learning how to speak. What is it? It’s a bit of a cool night and I closed the windows hours ago; that noise can’t be the result of wind.

  I reach to switch on my bedside lamp—and catch a blur of motion. Something darts to hide behind my nightstand before light blossoms in the room, but I saw enough to know that it’s perhaps two feet tall, pale and spindly and strangely flat.

  Something, I’m sure at once, from there. My heart is in my mouth as I stare at the spot where I saw it brush past. The apricot-gold glow of the lamp hovers in a cloudy sphere, dreamy and serene, and I clench my fists and breathe as deeply as I can.

  Once you’ve been to nowhere, who can say what might follow you home?

  “I saw you,” I say softly. “You might as well come out. Do you have something you’d like to say to me?”

  A tiny pale hand—human in shape, but so small, so frail—folds around the edge of the nightstand. And then a delicate, pitiful, broken-looking thing edges out into the light; even with my heart racing and my breath stilled, I can feel its shyness, and see the mixture of dread and quivering hope in its single, dirty gray eye. A miniature, fractured Ksenia; it would be completely naked, apart from its tiny black shoes, if it hadn’t swathed itself in a washcloth. It has ruby blood trickling down its knees and not a trace of my friend’s attitude.

  “Sennie,” it pipes at me, in a thin, shrill, barely audible voice that sends shivers creeping across my eardrums. “You know Sennie?”

  “I do,” I say, as well as I can with no breath. And after a moment’s silence: “I think I know her really well, in fact.”

  The poor little thing nods gravely, with its head that sometimes seems as flat as a paper doll, and sometimes more complex, more dimensional. “You—maybe you help Sennie?”

  Longing sends its voice even higher, into a squeak that I feel more than hear, but I know what it said.

  “Yes,” I tell it. “Help Sennie. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  I think Marissa has some old doll clothes she was going to throw out. I’ll find this little Ksenia-beast an outfit in the morning. In the meantime, I reach down my hand, palm-up so it won’t feel threatened.

  “Your knees are hurt,” I tell it. “Come sit on the bed, and we’ll get you cleaned and bandaged, okay?”

  Part Three

  joshua korensky

  Where the wave of moonlight glosses

  The dim gray sands with light,

  Far off by furthest Rosses

  We foot it all the night,

  Weaving olden dances

  Mingling hands and mingling glances

  Till the moon has taken flight;

  To and fro we leap

  And chase the frothy bubbles,

  While the world is full of troubles

  And anxious in its sleep.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  W. B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

  the only way to break them open

  You are just you, Kezzer. That’s the most important thing of all to understand, but nobody besides me ever realized it. It isn’t just that you’re not a girl and not a boy, though that’s obviously part of it. It’s bigger than that. You’re also not a tree and not a horse and not a doorway. You are not anything that ever existed before you, because when you were born it created a totally new phenomenon. The past snapped off and fell away in crumbs. I knew it the first time I saw you, like you were a fundamental shift in what was even possible, and with you I’d be able to walk straight up the walls, and my footprints would scorch the paint.

  Okay, so maybe sometimes other people sensed how new you are. They got it a tiny bit, in their half-assed way, but only enough to want to hurt you. And I’m worried that maybe that’s what you don’t see: that never would have stopped. I told you someone would murder me because I didn’t want to scare you. But in reality it would have been you, someone would have killed you, back where we were before. You don’t do it on purpose, but just by existing you make normal people obsolete. You screw with their whole reality. You make it so they don’t count anymore, and they can’t stand that.

  This is all true. These are the true, the truer-than-true things I couldn’t say because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You don’t know what you are either, Kezzer, is the problem? Like, they’ve all trained you to hate yourself so hard that you can’t see yourself any better than they can.

  Or, okay, so you’re a person at the same time. A person, but also something not and something beyond and something that needs a whole new world to live in, just so it won’t die. And what do you know, I got you one. A new world. It’s a present, and it was seriously expensive, because another true thing is that they don’t just sell new, impossible worlds on the sale racks at Target.

  I’m the only one who ever understood any of this, and that proves I’m the only person who could ever deserve you.

  I had to get you out of there, Kezz. I had to. Like, if you’d heard everything Lexi told me, about how you might fall in love with someone new, maybe you would have thought I was just jealous. But it wasn’t like that at all. While Lexi was talking to me all the vague dread I’d been living with sucked into these hard, sharp lines, and I could see it. How vulnerable you would be once you left. How you would basically set yourself up to get murdered, by trusting the wrong people. Maybe even by duping yourself into thinking you loved them.

  Everybody goes around saying they do what they have to do, but they seriously hav
e no idea. Because our new world, that dazzling, crazy, magnificent world where we’re creating our future together? I’m still paying for it.

  I know, I know, Kezz: you wouldn’t understand. Do you think it doesn’t hurt me, knowing how you’d look at me if you realized what work I’m doing for them?

  The dizziness is starting. Not bad, not yet, but I still hurry and eat one of the berries Prince gave me. They hold off the world-sickness long enough that I can do my job here.

  “Hey, Luke!” I call. At the edge of the park, and he’s just unlocking his bike to go home. Which is a miserable place to be going, and I know all about it from Derrick, and no little kid should ever have to deal with that kind of garbage, not ever again. “Luke, you remember me, right?” He looks up, red-haired and confused.

  Okay, so their parents maybe don’t haul off and punch Luke and Derrick right in the face, and they don’t fling them into dungeons full of gibbering spiders, but no one ever hugs them or talks to them except to be cruel. Their dad’s entire vocabulary is literally Shut up and Stop whining and Nobody cares what you want, from what I’ve seen, so if you think about it, part of my mission is educational. Maybe he’ll learn how to say some new things, thanks to me.

  “Josh?” Wide blue eyes. “But you were gone!”

  “I’m back now, though. Want to come find Derrick with me? I’m on my way to meet him.”

  Luke is seven, and this is what his whole life has been: waiting for someone to ask him to come too, instead of scowling at him for tagging along. “Derrick will get mad if I come. He always yells at me.”

  “Oh, I know that, Luke. It’s horrible that he has to act that way. The thing is, this is such a sick world that the sickness burrows into people, and then they do crap like that. Like yell at the kids they should really be keeping as safe and happy as they possibly can.”