by Mona Awad
“Yeah,” I nod. Nodding is a strange thing when you think about it. How your head just bobs and bobs on your neck.
“What is up with you, Smackie?”
“Nothing’s up with me. What could be up with me?”
“You’re being. I don’t know. Weird.”
“Weird? I’m not weird.” I shake my head. Not weird at all. Not me. “I’m just . . . you know, concerned.” I can’t even look at her when I say this. Instead, I look at the raccoon priests who obviously want me to speak up. Because you should just tell her, Samantha, they pronounce. Because he’s obviously not what he says he is, right? She should know. But would she even believe me? Would anyone?
“Concerned,” she repeats, like it’s a highly suspect word. Which it is. But I plow ahead anyway.
“He just seems kind of . . . intense.”
She smiles suddenly like I’ve just conjured him before her on the roof.
“I like that,” she says. “He’s . . .”
“What?” I prompt. Try not to sound too eager.
She looks around like there’s glitter in the air, all around us that I can’t see. That I’ll never be able to see because I don’t have those kinds of eyes. But it’s fucking there.
“What?”
“Sexy,” she says at last, letting out a shapeless cloud of smoke. I watch it rise and disappear among the treetops.
“Ava, I have to tell you something.”
“Tell me.”
Don’t tell her. You’ll fucking lose her forever if you tell her.
Ava looks at me a long time. She kisses me on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Smackie. I still love you most of all.”
* * *
—
The room upstairs is where he lives now apparently. I enter, telling myself I’m not snooping. This did used to be my room after all. Anyway, he left the door open. Sort of. Not locked, anyway. Basically inviting me. Come in, Samantha. Come see.
I scan the room now . . . looking for . . . I don’t know what I’m looking for. Everything is pretty much as I left it. A few new things. A stack of small, white Chinese take-out cartons. Empty. A cheap rainbow speaker that twirls and changes color as it plays “Bring On the Dancing Horses” by Echo & the Bunnymen. Apart from these, no real evidence that anyone has ever lived here but me. No real evidence that anyone has lived here at all. The bed looks like it’s never been slept in. The books I left here still climb the walls, untouched. I walk over to the worn, black writing desk sitting in the corner by the window that was a present from Ava. A room of one’s own, all that jazz. She even carved an S into the corner with her knife. So that it knew it was mine. Still, most days we just ended up working across from one another at her kitchen table. She was working. I was picking at my own damage, just shark-circling the thin black notebook, looking for a way in. A notebook like this one, in fact. Just like this one sitting right here in the middle of the desk.
Like it wants to be found. It wants to be picked up. Opened.
My heart sinks when I see my own handwriting. A few pages of seething observations and sad scrawl. Some random quotes not worth remembering. Lists. So many lists. The words I don’t know surrounded by tangled vines and lidless eyes. I hate my handwriting. The barely legible, fevered script slanting so severely it looks like it could keel over any minute, then veering off the line entirely and tumbling into the margins in little suicidal clusters. So many words scratched out. Whole paragraphs with x’s through them. Even the lists look dogged by uncertainty. But as I flip back now, I see there’s something new on the first page. Beneath a long tender quote about loneliness I must have copied out from somewhere a while back that means nothing to me now. Some new text in shimmering black ink. A list. Written in a different hand. That is my hand and is not my hand. More erect. Cocksure. Not ever wondering Is this right? Am I wrong?
I stare at this list.
[email protected] praisexenu
[email protected] Iluvcorgies
[email protected] Unicornsplease
[email protected] bloodmilkforgogol
[email protected] ledaswanned
[email protected] 7SeAwiTcH7
Alan_Reid @warren.edu fleshmarketclose
Heat creeps up my neck. I drop the notebook as though it bit me. Jesus fucking Christ. My breath stops. I look down at the S carved into the desk corner, my heart pounding in my ears. Try opening the desk drawer. Locked. Locked? Did these drawers lock before?
A buzzing sound makes me jump.
On the bed is a phone I didn’t see. I pick it up. The screen is covered with unread texts from various numbers.
Icarus, you burn me.
Byron, oops! That hatching duck emoji was for someone else.
Hope I’m not distracting you from your work ☺ Just haven’t seen you in a bit so . . .
Text back when you can ☺
I miss our tete-a-tetes ☺
A LOT ☹
PS. The scars look so pretty now I’d love to show you xoxo
(it’s Caroline btw. )
Tristan! Not sure if you’re getting these???
My phone’s been SO weird lately ☹
Pls help I’m lost in a thick, thick wood and I’m afraid that I am not afraid of wolves!
Hud. u make me hot. cum over
This last one is followed by a picture of her naked torso, reclined on a bearskin rug. Her blue-white body cut off at the neck like—
“—the archetypal persecuted heroine. But you can just picture the half smile, half frown on her face?”
I scream. He’s standing in front of me. Right in front of me. Close. So close I can smell both the forest and the animal. Leaning casually against the wall, casually cornering me at the same time.
“You found my phone,” he says.
Smoky gaze betraying nothing. Inscrutable smile.
“Oh, I don’t know about inscrutable, Samantha,” he says, taking the phone easily from my open palm. Almost like I handed it to him. Dark electricity when his fingers brush against my hand. Rib cage opening the way it does, I’ve learned, whenever he touches me. But I will not be manipulated or distracted or manipulated. Instead, I look up, right into his eyes whose many swimmy colors drown me (Is it me drowning you, Samantha, or did you wade in here of your own free will, your pockets full of black stones?), and I say: “What the fuck is going on?”
Now his lovely brow furrows. His smoky gaze clears into innocent surprise. “Going on?”
“Those texts!”
“What about them?”
“What about them? What about them?” I say, like where do I even fucking begin. But then I find I can’t begin, I can’t put into words what I want to know. Which is so much.
He smiles at me like I’m sweet. My sputtering mouth, open and ready to accuse him, endears me to him in ways I don’t understand.
“Samantha,” he says and reaches out and tenderly musses my hair cloud. He places his cool forest palms on either side of my burning face. It feels so wonderful a sigh escapes my lips and I can’t take it back even though I want to, I want answers.
Instead he asks me a question: “Shouldn’t you be heading off to school now?”
“School? What are you talking about?”
He lets go of my face. Reaches into his pocket. I brace myself for a knife, a spiked club of some sort. But it’s only my own cracked phone in its cheap purple case. “Must have taken yours by mistake.” An obvious lie. “Here.”
I just stand there. Staring at it.
“Go on,” he says, waggling it at me the way he waggled the flask that night on the bus.
I see the screen is open to my school in-box. To an email.
Dear All,
Please arrive at the Cave at 5:00 pm today for an Emergency Mandatory Work
shop as discussed. Please be prompt. Please arrive with your ears and eyes open. Please be prepared to Tap the Wound.
Blessings,
Ursula
“Whoa,” he says, reading over my shoulder, looking fake surprised. “Sounds serious. Guess you’d better be off.”
He musses my hair again, letting the bitch curtain fall so that once again I can only see the world with one eye. “You know, the Wound isn’t going to Tap itself, Samantha.”
33.
No idea. I have no idea what I’m going to encounter in the Cave. I enter the room, holding my breath. Bracing myself for the sight of them after so long. Playing their texts over and over in my head, but not daring to imagine what they might mean, what the hell is going on. I open the door, readying myself for any and all possibilities, readying myself for—
The usual square of tables, empty for now. Fosco smiling at me in her iridescent smock. Not one scarf out of place.
“Samantha,” she calls from inside the dark of the Cave. Looking actually genuinely pleased to see me. “There’s no need to run. Relax. Breathe. You’re not just on time, you’re actually a little early.” For once says her smile.
She puts her hand on mine. Whispers even though we’re alone. “I really appreciated your email, by the way.”
“My email?” I recall her email address and password, scrawled on the page in his confident hand.
“Samantha, there’s no shame in transparency. In a cry for help. Other teachers might have found it . . . oh . . . weak, I suppose. I thought it was candid. Brave. And so did your wonderful peers, who are eager to help. Such a wonderful group, so supportive of each other.”
She squeezes my hand very tightly.
“We think we are alone. We think we are so special. We are deeply mistaken. Now as per your email, I know you don’t have any work to share with us today. Not to worry. It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. For you, today will just be about listening. About watching and perhaps offering some feedback. If you feel so compelled. How does that sound?”
She’s looking at me with such magnanimous triumph that I’m tempted to undo his lie, tell her that actually I do have work for once, lots of work I could share. Instead, I nod.
“Great. Thank you for . . . understanding.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, Samantha? You’re trembling.”
I’m about to mumble something about maybe having caught a chill on the way over, when behind us, I hear a noise. The patter of steps approaching. I hold my breath. Prepare myself by force of habit for the onslaught of grassy perfume, high sugary voices, the verbal and physical affection so intense that it borders on violence. But I smell nothing. I hear nothing apart from soft, clicking steps.
Then I see Caroline emerging from the dark. By herself. Smiling.
“Hello, Ursula. Hello, Samantha.”
Pale lavender dress. White cardigan. Clutching a small white box fiercely with both hands. The kind you get for Chinese takeout. The kind you find in his room.
My heart begins to pound in my ears as she sits down in the chair facing me. Staring at me. Mistily. Her expression soft and dreamy like a heroine in a black-and-white film, the camera lens smeared thickly with Vaseline.
“Samantha, it’s so good to see you,” she says. Her voice sounds very far away. Like it’s dreaming elsewhere. Floating amid smiling clouds. I notice that her white cardigan has anthropomorphic cupcakes for buttons. Have I seen her in it before? With her cardigan and lavender dress and her freshly bobbed hair, dyed what looks in the dark to be a very pale blond, she has never looked more like her namesake. Or a child of the corn.
“I like your hair,” I say.
She touches it dreamily as if she isn’t sure it’s still there. Then smiles at me in a way that makes my skin shiver. “Thank you. I’m still getting used to it.”
“An interesting side effect of the Process,” Fosco observes. She recounts how these sorts of transformations are common during the final thesis semester. When we all leave the maternal embrace of the Cave and retreat to our own individual dark spaces—to spin the pain and fear and shame that lives there into so much literary gold. Genitals get impaled with pins. Hair gets chopped off with hacksaws, sometimes ripped from the root. Genders become fluid, orientations shift, white people suddenly discover other races in their lineage. And then, of course, some take it too far. One poor young man chopped off an ear. That was . . . unfortunate, but also indicative. Of the deeper Transformation required by the Work. The Work does not come without Cost.
Caroline just sits there, humming to herself, a warped version of “Summertime,” ignoring Fosco’s dog jumping on her shins until it gives up and skulks away. I see now that her hair is actually dyed a very pale shade of purple.
“I’m surprised to see you here alone,” Fosco says to Caroline. “Normally you all arrive in one big group.”
Caroline smiles politely but says nothing. She stares down at her white box. Nods as though it’s telling her a secret. Then looks up at me. “Samantha, I overheard you saying you had a chill.”
Did I say that out loud?
“Perhaps you’d like my cardigan?” she continues. She begins to take it off. That’s when I see the words EAT ME carved all over her chest and arms with a razor. The scars look fresh, blood barely congealed in the Ms and Es. And yet she is smiling as she shakes her little white cupcake cardigan at me. I don’t want it? Am I sure? All right, well. If I change my mind. She hangs it on the back of the chair. Then gazes back at me, pleased. The look on my face is its own reward.
“Do you like it?” As though she’s asking me about a treat she baked, a scarf she knitted. “It’s part of a performance piece I’m working on. A collaboration. I thought I’d involve the Body more viscerally.”
“Lovely,” Fosco says, looking completely unphased, like she’s praising a child’s drawing of a cat or a rainbow. “Isn’t that lovely, Samantha?”
“Lovely.”
“I knew you’d appreciate it, Samantha.” Her misty smile makes my skin crawl right out of the room. She lowers her gaze to the white box she’s clutching so fiercely I think it’s going to break apart in her hands, then back up at me again. Mistier still.
“Samantha, I sent you some texts. . . .”
Bunny this isn’t funny.
“Did you?”
You’ve fucking disappeared.
“Yes, a number of times.”
“Sorry. My phone is—”
“I see.” But I can tell by her face she knows I’m lying. “Well. I’m just glad you’re all right. I was worried.” The mist thickens, the clouds in her voice darken. The red scars on her white skin wink and shimmer. “Maybe we could go for coffee or something,” she continues. “Catch up sometime. . . .”
The corner of her lip jerks up into a little ticking smile. I realize now she’s wearing lipstick, a very pale shade of rose, and not her usual colorless balm. Lipstick is for whores, Bunny.
“Sure,” I lie.
She smiles, looking so relieved I almost feel sorry for her.
“When?” she presses. “When are you—”
But there’s the sound of footsteps again and she falls silent. Stares at her box. Ignoring the heels heading toward us. Stridently announcing themselves with each step. Not a diminutive click but a resounding clack. Until she’s here. Kira. Also alone. Kira who is never alone. Kira who is always clutching the forearm of some person like she is lost in a fairy-tale forest. Kira who is wearing a dark red velvet babydoll dress with its own red velvet hood. Kira who is also clutching a white box. Kira who does not scream with joy at the sight of her dear friend, Caroline, who is looking at Kira’s exposed, shapely legs in their spiderwebby tights like they’re a pair of snakes. Kira who does not envelop her friend Caroline in an organ-crushing hug or even sit by her. Who instead looks at Caroline’s fresh torso
scars and rolls her eyes, then takes the seat beside me.
“Sam,” she says in a voice that is not babyishly high or breathy but deep. Fathoms deep. Her true voice. She places a hand on mine and smiles at me with her blue-black lips. “Long time no see.”
Completely ignoring Caroline. Caroline completely ignoring her. Both of them completely ignoring Fosco’s dog, who is turning mad, frothing circles in the center of the room, desperate to get their attention.
“So, Sam, tell me,” Kira says, rubbing my hand. Voice deeper still, a well with no bottom. “How are you?”
She’s wonderful, by the way, she says. The Work (secret smile) has been going so well.
Something else about her is different. No cat ears. Her long, loose red hair is that of a witchy-princess wandering the mists of Avalon.
I glance at Caroline, who is staring at me now with what I can only describe as quiet desperation. What the hell has happened to you bitches? Why aren’t you hugging? Why aren’t you collectively cooing around someone’s memory of a cat?
“Samantha,” Kira says, her tiger eyes boring into my skull. She asks where I’ve been hiding these days. She says she sent me some texts.
Bunny r u dead?
I open my mouth to say something and instead I gasp. We all do. Because in stomps Victoria, her hair looking spectacularly unbrushed, her red lipstick a diagonal slash across her face. She is dressed in a soiled wifebeater and a dirty crinoline, like a jewelry box ballerina come to life and gone off the rails. Her sour garbage smell takes our breath away as she drops loudly into a chair. In her soiled lap sits, of course, a white box, smudged with gray fingerprints. Beyond a soft hi to Fosco and a not unkind smile at me, she says nothing to anyone. Just hums softly to herself, while Fosco’s dog whines at her foot. Stroking the box provocatively with her fingers, caked in dirt like she’s spent all morning clawing at mud. Her whole face is a grinning fuck you to no one in particular.