Never-Contented Things

by Sarah Porter

  “I can walk,” I say, to make her pay attention to me again. She comes back and slides her arm around me, biting her lip, and helps me up. Maybe I hang on her a little more heavily than I technically need to. “Where did you go, Kezz?”

  “Just for a walk. I was—” Oh, now she’s not looking at me. “I needed to get out for a minute.”

  She gets me to the bathroom, sits me on the toilet’s lid and carefully peels my clothes off, and wipes me down with peroxide while I yelp. I have so many minuscule wounds that there’s no realistic way to bandage all of them, but she gauzes up the two big ones where those vile munchkins actually chomped my skin off. She keeps her eyes fixed on what she’s doing and doesn’t meet my gaze much, or talk, and it’s starting to bug me.

  But then she kisses my forehead, and it feels like it always does: like another wound, but the best kind of wound, full of rustling softness instead of pain.

  Just like the first time I saw her. Just like the first time I took her hand, and felt how the glow of her lit my whole body, opened up my guts. I didn’t care that she wasn’t talking, because I knew right away that, no matter how messed up everyone else was, we could stay in that glow forever.

  “Kezzer?”

  “Let’s hope those cuts don’t get infected. What the hell do we do if you need a real doctor?” She’s still looking away, and all at once I get it: she’s been crying this whole time. She doesn’t trust me enough to let me see that?

  “Kezzer?” I’m so, so sorry, I almost say. I’ve done something horrible. Where is that coming from? Somewhere deep, the words gagging up just when I don’t expect them. I swallow them back down. “Um, we still have to go out tonight.”

  Kezzer grimaces and I get a nanosecond glance from her before she slumps down to kneel on the bathmat and leans her head on the tile wall. “One of those stinking parties? You’re not in any shape for that.”

  “We have to though! You know how touchy they get when we don’t show up.” If we stay in, the house will be surrounded by midnight. They’ll bang on the walls, make hideous noises. Every window will be full of their faces, and they’ll distort and ripple their heads in the freakiest ways you can imagine, chittering at us. “It’s seriously better if we just go. You, um, you kind of need a shower.” Kezzer just stares at the floor. “I’ll help with your outfit.”

  “Fine,” Kezzer says at last, but harshly. “We’ll party our asses off.” She gives a sick laugh, then finally looks up at me. She’s still freaking out about what I did to the stairs, I can tell. Tears smear her flushed cheeks. Her accusation prods me right in the eyeballs, even without her saying a damn thing, and my vision turns sparkly and warped. I almost get mad again, but then something inside me sticks out a foot and trips my anger before it can get going.

  Because I really don’t want to blame Kezzer. I don’t want to look at her like there’s something gumming up my eyes and I barely recognize her anymore. I just want to love her and not worry about anything, not ever again, and dance with her and belong to her where no one can ruin what we have together. And I want her to relax and trust me enough that we can finally be lovers for real, because she still doesn’t; her muscles seize up every time I touch her. Why does it have to be so hard, just to be happy?

  “Kezzer? You know how much I love you?” Why do I sound like I’m begging?

  “I love you too, Josh,” Kezzer says—but, God, her hard-ass stare is saying something different. “If you’re still in there.”

  I think it’s best if I try to ignore that last part. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

  what is a grave, if not a doorway?

  So she’s not paying much attention, and she lets me wash her hair and choose clothes for her in this numb, withdrawn way. Still, by the time I’m done, Kezzer looks phenomenal, absolutely as unique and gorgeous as anyone in Prince’s retinue. She looks like one of them, all the way. It just goes to show how totally she belongs here, even if she hasn’t completely accepted that yet.

  I dressed her in a white tuxedo shirt, with a hem that I sliced into dangling ribbons as high up as her rib cage, and over that a black satin jacket I cropped two inches below her arms, and black glittery shorts that show off how long her legs are. Then she has pointy black boots that would have cost a fortune if we’d actually had to pay for them, instead of just snagging them from a storeroom in the abandoned mall. She even let me make her up with thick cat’s-eye swoops that cover her entire eyelids. I kind of swirled up her hair with some gel. And maybe I’m biased and everything, but I swear she could walk in anywhere, into any club in Paris or New York or Tokyo, and the doorman would gasp, and step out of her way, and not even ask to see ID.

  No hat, not when I’ve spent so much time getting her hair right. Besides, I’ve noticed that her bowler hat makes Prince and them kind of skittish, like even they don’t trust it much.

  I just wish Kezz would notice—and hey, maybe appreciate—how outrageously cool and striking and dangerous I’ve made her look. Like, okay, it was dumb of me to stab the stairs, I get it, but maybe now it’s time to stop obsessing and at least try to enjoy our lives? But when Kezzer is dressed she just flops onto the bed and stares at the ceiling while she waits for me to get ready, and she never even checks the mirror.

  I pull off a look for myself that’s pretty good, but not as good as hers—pajama bottoms with spaceships on them and a big vintage old-lady sweater with sequin planets and crescent moons. My skin is still stinging everywhere, so I have to stick to soft, loose clothes. I haul Kezzer to her feet, and that’s when she finally sees her reflection in the mirror hanging on her closet door.

  “Gawd.” She stares for a second, and the look on her face could stand some improvement. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Kezzer! What do you mean?”

  “I look like such a poser. I mean, whatever. But still!”

  It’s hard not to get hurt. Over and over again, until sometimes it starts to seem like that’s all I do these days: drive Kezzer’s words away, push them off, before they can sink their teeth in me the way her nasty hobbit-things did. Besides, we’ve already had one fight today, and it seems too awful to start another one.

  “You look amazing, Kezzer. It’s, like, a deconstructed Marlene Dietrich thing? You could totally pass for a rock star.”

  I guess she hears the pang in my voice because she turns to hug me—lightly, because I’m so cut up—and it feels like my skin is jumping to get even closer to her arms, which is how it always feels. Even if there are moments when I think she’s being insensitive, or even sometimes moments when I really, really wish I didn’t have to love her so much, the reality is that this is who I am: my whole body is made out of love for Ksenia Adderley, and it’s not like I can change that.

  “You’re the one who could have been a rock star, Josh. I mean, for real. You’re the one with the voice. I’ve never heard anybody who can sound—as moving as you do.” She’s gazing at me now—wistfully, maybe?—and stroking my hair.

  “So, I’ll sing tonight,” I tell her. That might cheer her up, I hope. “Any songs you want. Prince always likes that too.”

  “Yeah,” Kezzer says. “But I mean—where it would count.”

  “Oh, Kezzer, don’t start that again! Please? It counts here. It counts even more than it would if I was singing for a bunch of jerks who don’t deserve it.”

  “You still could,” Kezzer says. “Run like hell, next time you’re out. And I’d be happy, knowing you could be—really yourself again. In a lot of ways, they’ve shut down your heart.”

  I don’t want to bitch her out for saying this stuff, even though I actually would like that—bitching her out, I mean. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay,” Kezzer says, but she doesn’t mean it. I have to catch her hand and drag her to the door, and out into the night.

  The funny thing is that, even though they never tell us where their parties are going to be, we can always feel it as soon as we step outside.
Like all the surfaces are slippery, curving to funnel us where we need to go, though the streets look as flat as ever. We roll with it, and it’s like we’re rolling with the whole planet, letting it spin us through a slow, sparkling trance—how can Kezzer not love it here?—until we touch down behind the middle school. It’s the big back building, where the swimming pool is, and the fire door is propped open.

  We can hear them inside. Singing, and laughing, and there’s that quality the voices here have; it’s like they echo all the way to infinity, and pick up scraps and radio waves and twinkling bells on the way back. That’s another thing Kezzer doesn’t see, like what an honor it is that they even want me to sing for them, when their music is so super magical. I pull back the door and we walk in.

  I mean, they aren’t human. That’s not something Kezz and I talk about, but we both know it. And when they want to, they can make their beauty flare up to such an extreme that you get kind of wobbly, just looking at them. They’re putting it on hard, tonight, and there are more of them than I’ve ever seen in one place before. But I still swear that Kezzer is the prettiest one here, and that is something.

  They’re clustered all around the pool’s brink, dancing through veils of minuscule lights like floating stars. The air is this pale blue-violet, like it’s been tinted with some kind of glassy mist. We’re not close enough to see down into the pool, but even the glow coming off the water is lilacy. As we step deeper in the humidity goes up my nose and bogs all over my skin; there isn’t the usual chlorine pool stink, more like rotting flowers and salt.

  I guess I should be used to Prince’s crew by now, but I still gawk; some of them are riding ghostly horses that must be made of the swirling mist rising off the pool. The horses go prancing in circles around the high ceiling, hooves clapping on the tiles, and their manes streak the shadows with long blurs of iridescence. Other guests are waltzing, like a dream version of a Victorian ball, except of course that their outfits are crazier and the drifting lights catch in their hair, lights that burn peach and white and blue through the softly purple atmosphere. Some grow their legs so long that they look like built-in stilts, and sway above us; they sprout feathers and bird faces and wade through the pool that way, like huge half-human flamingoes in shiny top hats. The music is a babble of broken whispers and little trails of melody and soft bells, and it seems to come out of invisible speakers that flit around the room, always changing location. Okay, so maybe Prince can be jerky sometimes, but he knows how to throw a party.

  I don’t get to keep staring, though, because Prince is on us pretty much instantly, clapping his arm around my shoulder, chucking Kezzer under the chin. “Joshua! Ksenia! The fairest of all my company. Welcome!”

  The whole huge space pops and quivers with echoes; Prince’s words hammer in from all sides. Kezzer stares straight over his shoulder and doesn’t react at all—but I know he thinks that’s adorable too. He loves how rigid she goes when he grabs her, and how she’d obviously claw his throat out if she only believed it would change anything. One thing I’m sure of: Kezz would be thrilled to die if she could take Prince with her, she hates him that much, and he knows it too. It’s part of her charm.

  “Heya, Prince,” I say—and I see his hand curl on her wrist, and her effort to keep her face blank while she’s obviously screaming silently inside her own skin. I can’t help it, I’m still in the habit of trying to protect her, so I say the first thing I can to distract him. “Um, you know Kezzer heard some stranger walking around in our house earlier? We might need help getting them out.”

  I’m not about to mention what I heard, that totally repulsive conversation I had while Kezzer was out on her walk. I’m worried that she might think too much about the stuff the intruder said to me, maybe even take it seriously. But Prince probably already knows, and all at once I’m worried he’ll blab it all out in front of her.

  Prince grimaces. “Ugh. They’re such vermin, really. We do what we can to seal the cracks, but they still worm their way back here, now and then. It’s thoroughly distasteful.”

  That gets her attention. Her eyes snap to him. “You know who it is, then?”

  “Why, Ksenia!” Prince says, and strokes her jaw. I really, really wish he’d keep his hands away from her. She looks sick. “It was you, darling. That is, it was your poppet, the brainless simulacrum of you that was buried with such wailing and free-flowing grief. The one that died, as you’re so fond of observing, except of course that its death didn’t take. They’re ever so much harder to kill than you might think. Still, they fret continually about dying, in the most tiresome way you can imagine. I suppose it’s all they know.”

  That’s enough to send a jerk through her whole body. “Lexi said they hacked that other Ksenia to pieces.”

  Prince smiles. “A thing like that? Its organs were purely for show. The doctors seem to expect them.”

  I don’t like where this is going. Kezzer’s eyes are way too wide, too glittering and frantic. And, um, really? That’s what I was talking to earlier?

  “That fake Kezzer was buried, though,” I say. Quickly. “Nailed up in a coffin! Prince—I know this is your idea of being funny—but there’s no way it could get here.”

  “Ah, Joshua. What is a grave, if not a doorway?” Unselle comes up behind him and it’s like her whole lace dress is alive, frothing and hissing like the sea. She plucks at Prince’s sleeve, her head leaning over sideways and her mouth in this twisty red ribbon. She’s beautiful and everything, but all the surfaces of her face look so off-kilter and unnatural. “And now, if you’ll excuse me? There are myriad steps to pour into the dance.”

  Kezzer is breathing hard. “Is he lying, Josh? Would you even tell me?”

  “Lying about what?”

  “The one Lexi saw die—or she thought she saw die—it was the copy?”

  Oh, right. She’s been hung up on this fantasy that she’s not the real Kezzer.

  “I’ve told you a million times, Kezz! Of course you’re the real you! So what got chopped up—it was just like a decoy Prince sent back. So everybody wouldn’t stress too much over what happened to you.”

  She stares. “And you knew that? Since when?”

  And it’s still upstairs in our house; I mean, according to Prince, anyway. What the hell does it want with us? Why can’t anybody leave us alone?

  Everyone is watching us, peering through fans made of giant dragonfly wings and twisting their heads around the way owls do, so they can keep gawking while they dance. I see Unselle looking over her shoulder, leering in this way that I swear bends her mouth until it’s almost vertical, like a grasshopper’s. There’s a lot of half-stifled giggling.

  I’m not even going to try to explain things to Kezzer, not when she’s giving off such accusing vibes. I grab her wrist and tow her out into the dance, and for a while we’re caught in the current, our minds giving in to the music the way ice yields under your shoes in spring. It’s the kind of thing you have to roll with here. The world tumbles and sets you in motion, and your legs go by themselves, and your head feels like it’s bobbing on the sea. And you go with it, because every movement is bigger and wilder than you are.

  Kezzer and I swirl toward the pool, clutching each other for balance, while a pair of stork-people teeter overhead. They’re doing this awkward high-stepping dance, bending their knees in all kinds of weird directions, and it looks like they’re trying to keep from tripping over things down in the water. One of them curls a wing over her face and grins at us coyly through pearly feathers, and except for the beak her face looks pretty much human. She’s laughing, fluttering to beckon us closer. I’m not even trying to head that way, but still I stumble along in Kezzer’s embrace, until we’re right on the blue-tiled brink.

  And then I see what’s in there, down under the water. As fast as I can, I spin Kezzer so she’s facing the other way, because after what happened earlier she really, really does not need to get upset again. But I guess she realizes what I’m doing because sh
e twists to look over her shoulder—and God, there it is again, her crazy stubbornness, like why won’t she just let me protect her?

  But she won’t, even though it would be so much better for her if she’d just leave it up to me to deal with the hard parts. She sees what I’m seeing, and she lets out this terrible, slow moan.

  please don’t think this is me

  Okay, so there are a lot of them, just kind of fidgeting around under the surface, rolled in the fetal position at the shallow end and standing or leaning where the water is deep enough to cover their heads. And they’re not just kids, though there are plenty of those; one of the first faces I pick out is Lexi’s little sister, Marissa, cradled in their mom’s arms, with her dad standing beside them. But I also see tons of teenagers we both know, like Xand and Derrick and that horrible, catty girl, Lila, and adults too: sweet old Mrs. Hixson from next door, and our friend Hadley from the bookstore, and a couple of cops who look vaguely familiar. I mean, it’s not the whole population of our old town, obviously, because they’d never fit in one swimming pool. Just the college has maybe ten thousand students. But it’s enough that they don’t have a lot of personal space, like maybe two hundred people or something, and most of them seem to be people we’ve met.

  Except that they’re not people, of course. Fakes. Living decoys, like the fake Kezzer that died in front of Lexi and then came here and wriggled through our house. They’re all completely submerged in the lavender water, just gaping around or looking up at the ceiling with their eyes reflecting the fluorescent beams overhead. Random scribbles of liquid light dance around on their skin. Kezzer is shaking and I wish she’d calm down, because it’s not like anyone is drowning.