by James, Ella
I rub her back as she shivers. I can feel her chest pump, as if she can’t get enough air.
“Hey…” I rub some circles on her back. “Just take some slow breaths. Do it with me, sweetheart.”
I inhale, pushing my chest out so she feels it. I feel her ribcage expand on a breath. Then she exhales with her cheek pressed to my shirt.
“That’s right.” I stroke her soft hair, drawing my fingertip along her pig-tail part. “You’re okay.” I hold her tighter.
“I pushed him.” It’s hissed against my chest. “It was supposed to be…the two of us…but he came along at the last moment.” She starts to really shake, and I wrap her tighter against me. “They were fighting, and he held her head into the water. So I shoved him. I didn’t know he’d go in. Mum went after him, trying to save him.” Her body is shaking so hard now that it almost scares me. I hold onto her, and she inhales, a little gasp. “She was wearing…this halo. Flower halo, from my party. I can see it…floating away.” Her shoulders shake as she weeps. “I did that.”
She wrenches out of my arms and dashes off the rock, her boots smacking the dirt of the trail as she lands on it. I’m on her heels, ready to run after her…except she doesn’t run. She leans over with her hands braced on her knees as I touch her back.
“Siren…” I run my hands over her shoulder blades, then think what I’d want if I was losing my shit and scoop her up. I carry her to another rock, a smaller one on the other side of the path, and sit down with Finley curled in my lap. I lock an arm around her, and she turns her face into my shoulder and sobs.
Fuck. Oh fuck.
I close my eyes, squeezing her as tightly as I can without hurting. Her whole body quakes as high-pitched, broken sounds come out of her.
“You’re okay, Siren. I’ve got you.”
I focus on my arms and then my hands, rubbing big circles on her back the way I liked when I was little. When her crying doesn’t let up and my chest is tight with feeling helpless, I shift our position on the stone a little bit and kind of rock her.
“I’ve got you, baby.” I trace down her spine and then back up, holding her by the shoulders, pressing my cheek against her head.
I keep on whispering and holding her real close like that. And slowly, her sobs turn to little gasps. Her body quivers with those little crying aftershocks, and I realize this one spot on my chest feels kind of damp.
I hear her sniff and feel her forehead press against my fleece’s collar. She exhales, this little whimpering sound that makes my throat knot up. I run my hand along her spine again, slow up and down, until I feel her body stiffen, and she leans away, looking up at me with swollen eyes and a soft mouth.
Little strands of hair have come free from her braids and become pasted to her damp cheeks. I stroke the hair back off her face, and she blinks at me.
I don’t know why—I kiss her forehead, then her cheeks…and then her lips. She tastes like salt and feels just like the whole damn universe right here where I can nibble at her throat and wipe her eyes and breathe her breath until I’m dizzy.
She returns the onslaught with her hot mouth and her grasping hands, until we have to break away to breathe.
Her molten eyes are wide and slightly dazed. In a voice that cracks, she says, “I shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?”
Anything she says, I’ll honor. I don’t want to hurt her. But she doesn’t speak. Tears pool in her eyes and spill down her cheeks, and I kiss them off because I just…can’t not. I’ve never felt this way before. Like all my moves are played out for me. I can only follow.
“Let me tell you something.” I frame her face with my hands, looking into her eyes for a second before pressing my cheek next to hers. “Before I left…back in November…we had this field trip group at headquarters.” I run my hand over one of her braids and feel her chest move as she leans against me.
“Bunch of first graders that came to tour the place where we train. So we do all this stuff with them, right? Show them the locker rooms, give them all T-shirts and shit. And then it’s time for them to eat. And corporate’s got these little cracker bags and juice boxes. Like one in ten of them could open up the bag and get the straw into the juice box.” I lean back a little bit, so I can look down at her. “Right when it was time for them to go, I heard one of the little fuckers got lost in a stairwell. Pissed himself. One of my buddies had to donate boxer shorts to this kid. Seven years old.
“You see where I’m going with this? These little dudes—they were from a Catholic school, all boys—they weren’t real ‘with it.’ Didn’t strike me as a bunch of masterminds. And I thought—seven. I was at Carogue at seven. Doing my own laundry. But that’s little. Seven’s just a little kid, Siren. Seven-year-olds never hurt anybody.”
She nods as more tears fall. I kiss her eyes, her cheeks and chin, and she kisses my mouth. Her tongue is warm and soft, her hand cool on my hot cheek. When I push my tongue into her mouth, I think of her pussy and wish I could be there. Pretty soon, my dick is hard, and I’m gritting my teeth.
She laughs, a soft, unsteady sound, and, to my surprise, pets it. “Quite opportunistic.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” She looks up and down the trail and then back at me. Her face is splotchy, but her mouth is bent into this dirty little smile.
* * *
Finley
I look up and down the path once more, and then down at the bit of it below us that’s within my range of vision. When I feel reasonably confident we’re in the clear, I lay my hand over his bulge and squeeze a bit.
“You came here uninvited, didn’t you?”
He laughs, but it comes out a groan. “Finley…” His hand circles my wrist, but still I pet him, smoothing fingertips over the outline of his long, stiff sex until it’s straining at his pants.
“You came here of your own accord, and I tried to dislike you, remember?” I catch his head in my fingers and rub my palm against it. “I didn’t want to be your friend. I didn’t want to be your lover, either, but we were trapped, and you were very, very easy on the eyes and quite a bit too kind for me to freeze out, weren’t you?”
I can see him try to focus on me as I speak, but I’m making it difficult for him with my hand.
“Then we arrived back at the village, and the choices were impossible for me.”
His chest pumps as I work his sex with my hands. His head is leaned a bit back, so I can see him swallow. Even his neck is a thing of beauty.
“I felt that I should tend to you. I wanted to be near you quite against my will, you see. I tried to stay away, but that’s not how it went, and now I’m telling you my secrets—all the things I sought to lock away and just…forget. And you’re touching my hair as if we’re lovers. Making me feel as if we’re lovers.”
I look around again before unfastening the button of his pants. I delve inside until I find him, hard and hot and ready, and I begin stroking.
“I don’t know how you know that women adore having their hair touched, but I’ve got a fair idea, Carnegie. I don’t think you realize it’s pure torture being near you.” I clasp my hand about the base of him and tug my way back up his thick sex, loving how he looks in this moment, with his eyes narrowed in confusion and his head tilted back.
He looks like a fallen demigod upon the rock, and that thought fuels my raging heart.
“I’d like you better if you were a bit less handsome or a bit more mean, but you’re neither, and it’s too much for me. It’s too much for someone like me. Because you’re leaving, see?” I work the head of him until he groans. “And I’ll be here without you. And I know how that works out, you see. It doesn’t work out pretty.”
Suddenly, I want to slap his face—for teasing me this way. For dangling himself in front of me like a carrot I can’t help but bite, except the carrot is his warmth and kindness. It’s his hands and that hot mouth that makes me shiver, makes my lose my sanity.
I stimulate him as b
est as I know how—which likely isn’t very well, in fact—but I give it my all, and I assault him with my words and hands until he seems quite lost, until he’s at my behest.
I can tell he wants to speak—he puts his hand over mine to halt me so he can—but I won’t let up. As my fury builds, my hands feel smarter and more skilled. I’m a bit rough, perhaps, but he’s so hard he could cut marble, and he’s wet there at the tip, as if he’s very close to losing control. So I suppose I’m doing something correctly.
I ease up a bit, and when he opens his eyes, I look into them. I try to tell him the things I cannot say. I try to say them with my eyes, because now that we’re here, and I’ve said that, and he’s kissed my tears, I realize I can’t speak to him—ever again.
As he moans, I work him faster. I drink up his moans, his lovely grunts…the way he stiffens further, groaning. Then the moment comes when his hips jerk and his warmth overspills my hand.
I cried in his arms…but he spent in my hands.
I want to wipe it up and laugh and lay my cheek against his chest. I want to feel his fingers pushed where I feel soft and wet. But I can’t.
“I can’t do this with you.”
I jump up and grab my bag and race off down the path toward the village. Where I live. And suddenly I understand my mother more.
Part II
“If you want a happy ending, that depends on where you stop the story.”
—Orson Welles
One
Declan
June 20, 2008
“Happy seventeenth, mofo.” We’re in the junior common room, a big square at the center of the Carogue campus high school boys’ apartments, shoving New York-style pizza into our pie holes, when I reach into my bag and lift out a handle of Saloon Moonshine.
“Well, dammit. I don’t think it’s big enough.” Alf’s dark brows jut into his mop of hair as Farhad swipes the bottle from me.
Nate reaches across the table, grabbing hi `s birthday gift. He turns the bottle around, checking out the label before giving me a funny grin. “What the fuck is this?”
“Came from Texas, cowboy.”
“How the fuck did you get moonshine here from Texas?”
“I’ve got my ways.”
And my dad has a jet he and my cousin Bryant flew here on back in December. Avoided customs and all that. I can see the wheels turn in Nate’s fat head.
“Bryant?” he asks, catching on.
I laugh.
“You were planning birthday shit for Cowboy in December?” Makis gives me bug-eyes, and I roll my own.
Nate turns the bottle around again. “A hundred and eighty percent.” He gives a low whistle, shaking his head. “You must wanna kill me.”
Alf snorts.
“I think you’ve got the monopoly there,” Farhad mutters.
Nate doesn’t even blink at Farhad’s jab as he shoves his chair back. “Hands off, ladies.” He pushes the bottle to the center of the table and stands, nodding toward the hall behind the table as Alf makes some wise-ass crack about the two of us and “swordplay.”
I get up and follow Nate, because I’m not worried about that dumb shit. Last night, I fucked Ms. Keller, the new ninth-grade history instructor—but if I wanted swords, I wouldn’t let a bunch of fools like Alf and Farhad make me feel bad for it.
Nate strolls down the hall and steps into the laundry room.
“Check this out.” He grins darkly as he reaches into his shorts pocket, pulling out a bag of…oh fuck, that’s a lot of pills.
“Knock-off Xannies?” My throat damn near closes off.
“Oxy.”
“Fuck, dude. Where’d you get it?” That Ziploc must be stuffed with a hundred of the little oval-shaped pills.
He laughs. “I don’t wanna tell you that now, brother.”
I’ve got half a second—maybe more like a quarter-second—to decide how to play this. I’m afraid I know exactly where he got them, but I don’t want to spook Nate. He’s been skittish as fuck since last summer, starting on his birthday, actually, when he got too coked up and Makis found him razor-blading his wrist in the shower. Had to call a goddamn ambulance.
“If it’s who I think it is—” I’ll play it low key— “you should be careful.”
He snorts. “Says the kettle to the pot, man.” Something crosses his face—some kind of look that wants to be aloof but falls short. His thick eyebrows narrow. “You think you’ve got the monopoly on Laurent?”
Hearing his name makes my stomach knot up. “What does that mean?”
He laughs, shaking his red hair like a mane. He shakes the bag in front of me. “It means your days of having to share Xanny with your boy are over.”
“How’d you get him to do it?”
It’s there on his face. The way he smirks, and how his freckled cheeks round on a smile that’s unmistakably smug.
“How did you?” he asks.
My body goes cold as the air leaves my lungs. “What do you mean?” The words echo through me, hollow and surreal.
“Laurent told me.”
“Told you what?”
Nate laughs, a low rasp, and the floor tilts under my feet.
“What did he tell you?” I don’t realize that I’ve grabbed his shirt till Nate steps back. He holds both hands out.
“Calm down, bro. Laurent is…like a mentor to a lot of us.” He can barely get the words out without snickering.
“He’s not your mentor.”
“No.” His face cements into a serious expression as he stuffs the baggie back in his pocket.
“For how long?” I rasp.
“Long time, brother.”
“Did he—”
He holds his hand up, shakes his head. Don’t ask.
I’m so stunned, I don’t feel anger.
Nate. Holy fucking shit, how did I not see?
“So you’re saying—”
He chuckles. “Since Caitlin.”
Jesus Christ. I can’t draw a breath as Nate claps my shoulder and leaves the room. It’s my fault. Holy fuck, it’s my fault that this happened. Holy fuck.
Somehow, I say bye to my buddies, still eating their pizza. Nate is opening the moonshine. In years to come, I’ll remember how he looked as he took off the top. How his eyes held mine for just a second too long, asking if I was upset. Asking, maybe, how I felt about him being gay.
I rip my gaze away from his and mutter, “Happy birthday, fucker.”
Then I’m down the stairs and out into the breezy night. I find the old man in his place across campus, watching 30 Rock with subtitles and wearing a black bathrobe. When he opens the door, I break his fucking face—for the second time in five years. I unleash the threat I’ve never had to make; instead, I blackmailed him, promising to keep quiet about what he did to me if he kept me stocked with the pills I needed.
“I don’t give a fuck about that now, you fucking piece of shit!” His blood splatters the rug. My knuckle splits as I knock one of his teeth out. I kick him so hard he can’t walk for days, I later find out. Then I kick him again.
“You fucking pedophile. You fucking freak!”
When he tries to tell me Nate came onto him, I kick him harder. Caitlin was three years ago. This piece of fucking shit has fucked my friend up for three fucking years. I think about the razorblade stuff, and I want to kill him. Then I think of Nate. I think of me and what I’d have to fucking say if someone calls the cops, and I get out of there.
I’ve got his blood all over me, so I can’t go to my room; Nate and I share a bathroom. I spend that night at Ms. Keller’s place, letting her suck my dick and patch up my knuckles.
She’s young—just a few years older than me, and likely years younger in experience. She never notices something is off with me. When I fuck her from behind, wrapping my arm around her neck, she giggles and she gasps and sighs like it’s a game. I’m glad it’s a game for her. She isn’t scared like I was. I get off pretending she is.
I fuck her three times
that way, each a little rougher than the one before. After the last time, I lie down facing away from her, and she touches my back. I lose my shit and fucking yell at her, then say I’m sorry and let her pick out the movie. Some royal shit about King Henry.
Nate won’t answer any of my texts. I figure he’s fucked up or maybe mad at me for Laurent—that is, if he’s heard already.
I stay up all night, paranoid as shit that I’ll get found out for Laurent and sent to fucking jail or something. I can’t sleep. I can’t breathe, and I dropped the Xanax that was in my pocket, maybe at Laurent’s place.
That’s why I walk back to my room at five-fifteen in the morning. I leave Ms. Keller a note, calling her Rachel and saying I’m sorry for the yelling.
Walking across campus to my place, I realize what they told me last year at that two-week program Dad forced me into was right. There’s something wrong with me. I can’t use Xanax or, fuck it, anything, without becoming like this. No way Laurent keeps getting me stuff after last night, and maybe that’s a good thing.
I feel just a little better as I open up my dorm-room door. My hands are shaking, but it’s no big deal. Now that I know there’s a problem with the Xanax, I can stop it—easy.
Something’s off about my room, but I can’t figure out what. Maybe it’s just me. I get the baggie from inside one of my boots and take a Xanax, laughing. What a fucking addict. Then I strip my bloody clothes off, open up the bathroom door to bury them at the bottom of my hamper.
That’s how I find Nate. He’s slumped over on the padded bench that lines the bathroom’s back wall with a belt around his arm and all those pills swimming around his cold, bare feet.
Two
Finley
Doctor has a wardrobe full of yellows, greens, and reds. I stand in the closet adjoining the master bedroom in the clinic residence, and I thumb through his shirts. I suppose he’d never be caught wearing gray or black or dark blue.