by Callie Hart
NOW
The house smells like mothballs. I haven’t been here in over ten years, not since my mother passed, and while I’ve had a cleaner come in once a month to dust and make sure nothing is deteriorating too badly, you can tell as soon as you walk through the door that no one lives here. It’s a shell. A ghost-filled mausoleum. I wanted to sell a while back, but it only sat on the market for three weeks before I freaked out and had the real estate agent pull it from their listings. It felt like…like a betrayal somehow. I knew that as long as Malcolm Taylor was alive, Coralie was never going to come home, but I don’t know. My head would play out these scenes where she came back one day and knocked on the door, finally wanting to see me, and she was faced with a stranger. That wasn’t something I could tolerate. Even from within the vast embrace of a city like New York, it played on my mind that she was out there somewhere, and she may need to use the spare key again to run away and hide in my old bedroom, the same way she did for years when we were teenagers.
There’s a cold, snake-like thing that lives inside me now. It never used to be there. Not back then, when I was with her. No, the frigid, cold, empty thing that lives inside me showed up the day after my mother died. It told me it was pointless to care about people. It told me it was useless to consider what they think or feel or desire out of life. It insisted that other people’s feelings were nothing more than an inconvenience that would hinder my own happiness. It told me to forget all about Coralie. I railed against it for the longest time, but slowly, gradually, I resigned myself to the fact that it was right. Right about everything. I stopped caring about other people’s feelings. I shut myself off from the world and gave them the persona of the great Callan Cross instead. I did everything it wanted me to. Everything bar the last thing. I could never forget about Coralie, the girl next door, no matter how hard I tried. Moreover, I didn’t want to. She is still the one part of my past that I haven’t jettisoned from my life. She’s either a shard of glass under my skin or the only thing that’s keeping me from losing my shit altogether, depending on the day and the time and the place.
Right now, she’s the glass.
The day my father left, I was fourteen years old. As I walk into my old house, the first memory I’m hit with is my mother on her hands and knees in the hallway, sobbing uncontrollably with a pair of scissors in her right hand. Her left hand was bleeding all over the freshly buffed floorboards, and her mascara was running down her face in black rivers. I didn’t need to ask her what had happened; they’d been arguing for weeks. Even two stories up, I could hear my father screaming that he didn’t love her anymore. Didn’t want to be with her anymore. Didn’t want me anymore. He never hurt her. Not with his fists. His words did enough damage all by themselves.
As I walk through the other rooms of the house, more memories fly at me, casting me back in time. My mother teaching me how to play chess at the kitchen table. My father swearing when he burned himself trying to ignite the pilot light on the water heater. Me, prizing up the floorboards by the fireplace in the lounge, hiding money and canisters of undeveloped film there. My father, angry over something and nothing, throwing the first photographs I ever developed by myself into the trashcan. Shoving them right down to the bottom, and then telling me he’d take a belt to my behind if I even thought about pulling them out again.
The memories of Coralie don’t start until I get to the second floor of the house and I’m standing outside my mother’s old room. My mother was bedridden the last time I saw Coralie. I was standing outside her room. Mom was sleeping, and Coralie was standing in the hallway, right where I’m standing now, staring at me. I had never nor have I seen since such pain in a person’s eyes.
I’d wanted to get up, to go to her, take her in my arms, tell her how sorry I was, but it was too late for that. Coralie had a bag in her hand, and I knew she was leaving. She shook her head at me and that was it. I knew The End Of Callan Cross’s Life: Part One was beginning. It took two years for Part Two to come along and crush me once and for all.
Every single stick of furniture inside the house is covered with dustsheets, making oddly shaped poltergeists out of sofas, tables, bookcases and the grandfather clock downstairs. I don’t remove any of them. I won’t be staying long enough to warrant stripping the furniture, after all. The only room I do bother unveiling is my old bedroom. Band posters still hang everywhere. Mom let me glue cork to one of the walls, which is still plastered with ticket stubs from trips to the movies, concerts, art shows, museums…anything I ever went to or saw. My bed is neatly made, sporting the same sheet set I had when I was a teenager—dark blue and simple, though a little faded now. My old football and basketball trophies still clutter up the space on top of my chest of drawers. I’m betting all of my old clothes are still inside there, now probably a little tattered from where the silver fish have gotten in and feasted.
I don’t see any of these details, though. Not really. I’m too distracted by the photographs. They are everywhere. Photographs that came from the same Leica I’ve brought back with me to Port Royal. Photographs of everything I ever saw that made me think something or question something, or feel something. Mostly, the photographs are of Coralie, because for the longest time she was all I saw, thought, questioned or felt.
She looks so young goddamn young. Beautiful. Innocent.
I turn and storm out of my room. My phone starts ringing in my pocket. I pull it out as I head straight for the room Mom always used as a walk-in closet at the end of the hallway. Her clothes are all still here, wrapped in garment bags and hanging anonymously in rows from the railings inside. Angela Rickers: R&F flashes up on my cellphone screen I pick up one of the many shoeboxes stacked beneath the garment bags and I rip open the lid, dumping the black high heels inside onto the floor. I then storm back into my bedroom with the shoebox in my hand, ignoring the ringtone that’s still blaring out of my cellphone speakers. Angela is one of the editors for Rise & Fall Magazine—she probably wants me to take on a job and I’m not in any fucking frame of mind to be talking to her about that right now.
My heart feels like it’s beating outrageously fast as I tear down the photos of Coralie and pile them one on top of another inside the shoebox. I can’t look at them. I can’t see them. I can’t see her.
Coming back here was a terrible fucking idea. I should have known better. I could be licking Rae’s uncomplicated pussy, covered in her sweet sweat right now, and instead I’m back here in this hellhole, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I was wrong before. The house doesn’t just smell like mothballs.
It smells like death, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
CORALIE
Point Of View
THEN
When people say they hate high school, I always wanna roll my eyes. Going to school is pretty much the best part of my day. It means I’m not at home. It means I’m relatively safe. If I were smart enough, I would be enrolled as an AP tutor and I’d be staying back for hours every night, helping people bump their grades. Sadly, I’m not smart enough. I’m an average student. I’m not the brightest shining star in the sky, but neither am I the dullest. I get by. That means I have to hide out in the library and do my work before I go home, otherwise my father will be on my back and I won’t get a second to myself. I’d live in the library if I could.
I’m hiding in the fiction section, my English Lit assignment half finished on my knee in front of me, when I hear about the party.
“Don’t worry, man. It’s going to be tight. They already have two kegs hidden in the basement. Alcohol won’t be a problem. Girls, on the other hand…” I recognize the voice. It’s Darren Weathers, the basketball team captain, and he sounds excited. He always does. He’s the epitome of Port Royal High cheer.
“I’m not drinking, dude. We have a game tomorrow night. Have you never tried to run up and down a court with a hangover?” This voice I’m not so sure about. It’s deep, which means it should be easily recognizable, but it’s not. H
e carries on speaking, and I still come up blank. “Can’t they push it back until the weekend? A Thursday isn’t exactly the best night for a rager.”
“Damn it, Cross, don’t be such a mom. You’re fifteen years old. You’re supposed to want to drink and fuck high school girls, not get eight hours’ sleep and hide behind your damn camera lens every single waking moment of the day. You’re a part of the team. You need to contribute.”
“All right, all right. What the fuck do you want me to do?”
Callan Cross. His name is Callan Cross. It’s amazing that I didn’t recognize his voice sooner, considering the fact that the guy has lived next door to me my entire life. He’s borderline popular, though. He always seems to have his head down, looking at the ground. I’m fairly sure he doesn’t even know I’m his neighbor. I hear a slapping sound, followed by Darren’s obnoxious hyena laugh.
“That’s the spirit. All you gotta do is find five girls to bring to this party. We all have to do it. Otherwise it’s going to be a major sausage fest, and I’m already sick to death of catching glimpses of your dick in the changing room as it is. You feel me?”
Cross laughs now too. “You’re just jealous, asshole. Not my fault I was blessed with seven inches and you were cursed with three. Have you seen those weird suction cup things in the back of porn magazines? That might help some. Ahh, fucker! Get…off!”
Darren obviously doesn’t appreciate Cross’s comments. It sounds like he’s trying to get him in a headlock or something. I cower back, trying to avoid the books that topple from the shelves overhead, raining down on me as the boys in the next aisle roughhouse. I don’t make a sound. For some reason, it seems like a very bad idea that they know I’m here. Eventually they stop.
“Your mom knows just how big my dick is, Callan. Why don’t you ask her about it.”
Callan groans. “Seriously, dude? A mom swipe? Lame.”
“Whatever. I’m sure she’ll confirm that I’m a gentle lover if you ask. Hey, call me when you get back to your place. I might need to ask a favor.”
“What kind?”
“The I-need-you-to-drive-me-somewhere kind.” Callan makes a pissed off sound, but then I catch sight of them doing some sort of weird bro handshake through the gap created by the fallen books, and it seems as though this is all just part of male teenage bonding. “Later, man.” Darren slaps Callan on the shoulder and then disappears out of sight, leaving my dark-haired neighbor behind.
What follows next is weird. Callan stands there, perfectly still, and he appears to be staring at the floor. I see his face in profile—the proud, strong line of his nose, the equally strong line of his jaw, the way his forehead is furrowed as he apparently thinks very deeply about something.
He blows out a long, unhappy sounding breath down his nose and then he ducks down out of sight. Books start appearing on the shelf, blocking up the gap into the next aisle. Seems like books must have been knocked to the ground on his side, too. Most guys would have left them, probably. Not cared about making a mess in a high school library, but not Callan.
My heart nearly climbs up out of my throat and runs away when he’s suddenly standing there at the entrance to my aisle, wearing a surprised look on his face. “Oh,” he says. For a while it seems like that’s all he’s going to say, but then he says, “Are you concussed? Any of those land on your head?” He points to the books scattered all around me.
“No. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Well, I am.”
“It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know.”
“I wasn’t. I—I was here first. I couldn’t help overhearing.”
Callan angles his head over to the left a little, narrowing his eyes at me. The beginnings of a smile forms on his lips. “About my seven inch cock?” he asks.
My cheeks might as well burst into flames. They’re instantly red and on fire. Fuck this guy if he thinks he can embarrass me, though. “I doubt very much that you have a seven-inch cock, Callan Cross.” I try to sound bored, but the truth is that I’ve ever said the word cock out loud before, and I nearly choke on it. Oh, god. Now I’m thinking about choking on his cock. Callan looks away, his smile taking over his features. Seems as though he’s trying not to laugh.
“You’re my neighbor,” he says. “Malcolm Taylor’s daughter?”
“Yeah.” My father is notorious around Port Royal. It’s no surprise that Callan knows who he is. My father used to be in the military but he got injured, honorable discharge with a huge compensation payout. All he does these days is drink around town, criticizing the locals and generally causing trouble. But me? Yeah, I’m surprised he knows who I am.
Callan looks back at me, still huddled under a pile of books on the floor and he nods. “We have no classes together. Do you realize that?”
“I do—I do know that,” I reply.
“Your name is Coral.”
“Coralie.”
“That’s right. Coralie. You have an interesting face, Coralie.”
I pull myself upright, picking up a book and setting it down beside me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I like your face. It’s not perfectly symmetrical. People are drawn to other people with perfectly symmetrical faces. It’s what’s termed ‘classically beautiful.’ You, Coralie Taylor, are not classically beautiful.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
Callan shrugs off the fact that he’s offended me. “Your mouth is slightly fuller on one side. Have you ever noticed that?”
“I do look in the mirror. So yeah. I’ve noticed.” There was a time when the right hand side of my mouth was exactly the same shape and size as the left hand side, but not anymore. I have scar tissue on the inside of my lip that makes one side look different.
Callan frowns at me. I’m not used to boys frowning at me. They normally don’t see me at all. He drops his bag at his feet, and then he crouches down five feet away, still picking me apart with his eyes. “You have dark spot in your eye. It looks like…like that massive storm that’s always raging on Jupiter.”
“I can’t say that anyone’s ever compared it to that before, but okay.”
“And your nose—”
I suddenly want to throw a book at him. “Why are you doing this? Why are you pointing out all of my imperfections and making fun of them?”
Callan sits up straight on his heels, balancing on the balls of his feet. He nearly falls sideways but manages to right himself. “They’re not imperfections, Coralie. They’re differences between you and the rest of the herd. They make you interesting. I like interesting. I’m definitely not making fun of them.”
“Then what were you going to say about my nose?”
He wrinkles his own. “I was going to say that it’s slightly turned up at the end.”
“Oh god.” I cover my face with my hands.
“It is! You have a very cute button nose. That’s all I was going to say.”
“Well, stop. You’re freaking me out.”
Callan grins, showing off an imperfection of his own—a slightly skewed front tooth, just angled ever so slightly sideways. It’s strange that he’s not wearing braces. People seem entirely too preoccupied with having knife-edge straight teeth, and it’s not as though his mother can’t afford the dental work. She’s a doctor; living in that big old house next to ours must mean they don’t do too badly for themselves. Callan notices me noticing and closes his mouth. “Would you let me take a picture of you sometime?” he asks.
“What kind of picture?”
“Just a portrait. Of your head. Nothing weird.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’d need to think about it.”
This seems to please him. Callan rubs one hand over the back of the other, nodding his head. “Good. Then just let me know, I suppose. You know where you can find me.”
“I do.”
He gets to his feet, and then collects a fallen book from on top of my legs, placing it back onto the shelf next to hi
m. It’s the closest he’s gotten to me since we started our strange conversation, and I really, really notice the proximity. Looking down at me, Callan offers me his hand, presumably so he can help me up. I don’t take it. “I’m actually…I’m working down here,” I tell him.
“Fair enough. I’ll see you around then, Coralie Taylor.”
Picking up his bag, Callan slides his arms through the straps and is about to walk away. I don’t know what possesses me, but I call out to him. “Callan?”
“Mmm?” He presses his knuckles into the corner edge of the bookshelf.
“What makes you different from the rest of the herd?”
He winks at me. “My seven inch cock, of course.”
My cheeks burn again. Callan must notice, because he grins. His expression alters suddenly, though, as if he’s just thought of something. “Hey, Coralie Taylor. What would you say to coming to a party tonight?”
******
I’ve never drunk alcohol before. Over the years, my father has drunk enough to drown the entire U.S. Navy, but I have never touched a drop. I don’t know why I agreed to go to the party, but Callan was looking at me with mischief in his eyes, and he was so strange and weird, and I suppose I was intrigued. He gave me the address where I should turn up and then disappeared, and I was left with a number of questions.
1)Did I have the courage to show up at a high school gathering of my peers?
2)Did I have the courage to show up alone?
3)What the hell was I going to wear if I did?
4)How was I going to explain where I was going to my father?
Questions one and two were tricky. I went home and Dad was out, still at the bar probably. I decided to gauge my courage levels based on how good I felt in whatever I found to wear, so I went about addressing question three. I searched through my own wardrobe, feeling less and less confident—I’ve always been a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. Party clothes have never been my scene, and besides, it’s not as though Dad would ever buy me anything fancy. There was no way I was going anywhere if I had to wear my own clothes.