Calico

by Callie Hart

  Overhead, the light fitting above the mirror sways, throwing crazed shadows up the walls as my father steps closer to the bath. He looms over me, his face obscured by the blazing light behind his head, and I realize that he could easily kill me. It would be so, so easy for him to end my life right now. He’s in such a dark place; he probably would regret it later, but now, here, with so much alcohol flooding his body, he wouldn’t think twice.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry. I—I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, with you.”

  He just stands there, and I still can’t see his face, so it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. My vision is blurred, and the outline of his body seems fuzzy and distorted. He seems to flicker, like a ghost in a bad horror movie. I’d be less afraid of a ghost, though. After a dragged out minute, he slowly, slowly turns away. My heart is in my throat as he silently leaves the bathroom and closes the door behind him.

  I cry without making a sound. I lay in the bathtub, my arms and legs tangled up, ears ringing, back in so much pain I can hardly move, and I cry for what feels like a lifetime.

  I stay there for hours. Only when I hear the low grumble of the television kick in downstairs do I cautiously climb out of the tub, body aching, and creep back into my bedroom.

  It seems strange that only a few hours ago I was trying on my mother’s dress and thinking about a boy. Now, Callan Cross is the furthest thing from my mind. Maybe if my life was a movie, he’d somehow know I was hurt and sad and he would climb up some conveniently placed tree outside my bedroom window. He’d tap on the glass and climb into my bedroom, and he’d somehow make all of this miraculously better. That’s not what happens, though. Callan doesn’t show up at my window, and I don’t go to the party. I drag my duvet off my mattress, and I slide myself underneath my bed, and I stare at the shining silver weave of wires three inches from my face, and I see how long I can go without drawing a breath.

  I heard once that it’s impossible to kill yourself by holding your breath. It really is.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CALLAN

  Shane

  NOW

  I wake up and my dick is throbbing like crazy. It’s not normal morning wood. It’s an insistent, painful demand, courtesy of the fucked up sex dream I was just having. Coralie was on her hands and knees, looking up at me from behind tousled, dark bangs—I know for a fact that she doesn’t have bangs anymore, but in my dreams her hair is exactly as it was when we were seventeen—and she was whimpering, making soft, urgent sounds as she crawled across the hardwood flooring of my apartment in New York. Funny how my brain blends the Coralie from my past so seamlessly into my present. I dream about her often. All the time, in fact. There have been times over the years when it’s almost driven me insane. Seeing her so vividly every night when I closed my eyes, smelling her hair, feeling her skin on mine, then waking and not finding her next to me? That has been pure torture.

  Lying in bed with the morning sun flooding through my bedroom windows, it’s even more torturous that I know she must be here by now. Wild horses couldn’t drag her back into the house next door, but she must be close. Maybe she’s staying with Friday. Maybe at a motel on the outskirts of town. Wherever she is, it’s as though I can feel her presence, like my body is a tuning fork and I’ve been struck, every molecule in my body ringing with electricity at the prospect of seeing her.

  I lay in the bed I slept in since I was a child, barely awake, my hand squeezing my dick, and I think about what I’ll do when I do finally lay eyes on Coralie. It will be such a bittersweet moment. For those first three seconds, as our eyes lock onto one another, she’s going to be processing her shock. I’m going to be drinking her in, savoring every last inch of her before she turns angry and runs away from me.

  My thoughts drift. I doze, and a part of my brain thinks I’m awake and my mother is calling me from down the hallway, asking for water. That’s all she ever seemed to do at the end. All she ever wanted. Water. Ice chips when she couldn’t really swallow properly anymore. No matter how sick she got, she never stopped laughing, though. Every day, I would hear her laughing about something.

  Outside, someone starts up a chain saw, and all thoughts of my mother and Coralie vanish like smoke. I’m pulled out of my dream state and back into reality, and I realize I have to piss like a goddamn racehorse. As I pad naked to the bathroom and take care of that, I think about the things I need to do today.

  Visit Shane. Visit Mom. Buy groceries. Go pay my respects to Friday. Go to the funeral home and lurk like a creepy motherfucker until I see Coralie. If I’m honest, I’d drive over there right now and sit in the parking lot until she showed up. Wouldn’t matter how much of the day I missed. It’s a supremely bad idea, though. Seeing her for the first time shouldn’t take place as she’s making arrangements for her father’s burial. It should be later, at a far sexier time of day. Right after I’ve been on an eight-mile run and I’m covered in sweat, for instance.

  Shane was my best friend in high school. I find him at the hardware store his family has owned for the past thirty years, and the fucker looks like he’s gained twenty pounds. His face is obscured by the most ridiculous looking beard, too. Before I shaved mine, it was trimmed and neatly groomed, more hipster than Wildman. Shane looks like he’s fucking homeless.

  I haven’t told him I’m back purely so I could swing by and surprise the shit out of him, and from the stunned look on his face as I walk toward him, I’ve succeeded in my goal.

  “Are you frickin’ kidding me!” he yells, slamming a pricing gun down onto the counter top in front of him.

  An old man standing a few feet away from Shane looking at Command Strips with his back to me clutches a hand to his chest, making a choking sound. “Jesus Christ, Shane Willoughby, what in god’s name is wrong with you? I have a pacemaker, damn it!” He turns and I see that it’s Mr. Harrison, my biology teacher from high school. He was old as dirt when I was enrolled at Port Royal High, and now he looks like he has one foot in the grave, poor bastard.

  He claps eyes on me and he immediately starts shaking his head like he’s seen a ghost. “Well. I never thought I’d see the day,” he says.

  “You mean you hoped you wouldn’t,” I reply, offering out my hand for him to shake. Mr. Harrison pumps my arm up and down, squinting at me through his inch thick horn-rimmed glasses.

  “You look older,” he advises me. “Probably drinking too much.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Smoking too much.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  He casts a cloudy eye down at my crotch, one bushy gray eyebrow rising slowly. “Sleeping with too many women, I’ll bet, too.”

  I love that he’s looking at my dick like it’s about to pop out of my pants and try to defend itself. “One hundred percent true,” I say, laughing. “I just can’t help myself.”

  “That was always your problem, Cross. You never could.” Mr. Harrison’s head rocks back and he laughs, deep and throaty, clutching at his side with his free hand. “Never mind me. I’m just jealous I didn’t have as much fun as you boys when I wore a younger man’s clothes.”

  He bids me farewell and leaves the store, and Shane stands there with his arms folded across his chest, glaring at me.

  “Can I get a number one Phillips head and a pack of those screws, please?” I grin from ear to ear, trying not to laugh.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I fight earnestly to sober up my expression until I look more serious. “No. Not at all. You know how I like a good screw.”

  Shane picks up the pricing gun and throws it at me. He was aiming for my head, but I catch it out of the air and hold it up like a regular gun, aiming it directly at his face. “Well, you don’t seem all that happy to see me,” I say. “I was expecting more fanfare. A tickertape parade. A cold beer and a handshake in the very least.”

  “You aren’t drinking any of my beer, asshole. You’re lucky I didn’t throw a hatchet just now instead of that
price gun.” He looks genuinely pissed off, which is definitely not a good thing.

  “I’m sorry man, okay?”

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word.” Shane steps out from behind the counter and snatches the price gun from my hands. “You were meant to be my best man, fuck head. Best men don’t bail one month before a wedding and leave their friends to find a stand-in at such short notice. I had to ask Tina’s brother, man. That was such a dick move.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. That was three years ago, though, Shane. I thought you’d be over that by now.” I really did think that. I didn’t for a second think he would still be pissy over the fact that I got called away for work at the last minute before his wedding. Weddings are such non-events. I’m always surprised when guys seem to enjoy them. I always assume people bear them because social etiquette demands they must. It seems Shane isn’t of the same mind as me.

  “It was the day I promised to love and protect my wife forever. How can you think I’m over it by now? I need at least another three years. And you should probably buy me a Tesla or some shit as well. That might help.”

  “If buying you a Tesla will make you feel better, I’ll make it happen.”

  “You can’t afford a Tesla, you son of a bitch. You get paid peanuts. You and I both know it.”

  I do get paid peanuts. When Mom died, I’d been completely stunned by the fact that she’d left me a chunk of money. A very sizeable chunk of money. Without it, I’d never have been able to live the life I do now. A photographer’s wage is pretty pathetic, even when they’re at the very top of the food chain. Unless you’re David Bailey or Ansel Adams, you can pretty much forget about making six figures. Even high five figures is impressive.

  “I’ll make it happen,” I say, grinning. “You know me.”

  “Yeah. I do. That’s what I’m worried about.”

  I cuff him on the shoulder, pulling a face. “Fuck you, man. Come on. Give me a hug. You know you want to.”

  Shane can’t stay mad at me for long. Try though he might, once we’re face-to-face, he’s never managed more than five minutes, max. He groans, opening up his arms, giving me a tired eye roll as I step in and embrace him, clapping him on the back.

  “You smell like turps, Shane.”

  “You smell like women’s perfume. What d’you do? Take a bath in that shit?”

  “It’s not women’s perfume. It’s very expensive, manly cologne. It says homme on the bottle and everything.”

  “You wore that shit in high school and you’d have gotten the shit beaten out of you.”

  Shane tries to pull away—I’m surprised he hasn’t already—but I hold onto him tight. “Have you forgiven me yet?”

  “No. Get the fuck off me, man.”

  “Not until you forgive me.”

  He jabs me in the side. “And here I was thinking you were a male in his late twenties, and it turns out you’re a twelve-year-old girl after all. I’m feeling pretty foolish right now, Cross. You should be, too.”

  “Say it. Say it and I’ll let you go.”

  “Urgh, all right! I forgive you. I shouldn’t, but I do. Tina’s gonna kick you in the balls if she sees you in town, man. I hope you can still run fast, because she’s nowhere near as lenient as me.”

  I let Shane go, slapping him on the back. “I know, I know. I still have a scar from when she threw that lava lamp at me back in freshman year.” Tina and Shane have been together for approximately forever. I can’t remember a time when they weren’t a couple. She was permanently mad at me all throughout high school for leading Shane astray. On one particular occasion, he got so high he started tripping out and she had to leave her orchestra recital to come and get him before his parents drove by and saw him passed out on the verge of Main Street with his jeans around his ankles. I’d helped her carry him inside his place and gotten him up the stairs to his bed, which is where she’d grabbed hold of the offending lava lamp and tossed it at my head. Missed, thank god, but the shattering glass had rained down on me and left a few marks that I still carry to this day.

  Shane picks up a box beside the counter and jerks his head toward the back, motioning that I should follow him. As we make our way out back, I’m hit with a succession of memories—memories of long, sweaty, hot summers working here with Shane in order to make some extra money for new lenses and disposable cameras. The smell of the place drags me back in time, to days of getting up at five am and hauling lumber, days of getting home at eight to find my mother on the floor of the bathroom, no one there to help her up.

  And countless days of Coralie.

  Summer with Coralie was always so much magic and glory, and pain and fear.

  “Have you seen her yet?” Shane asks, dropping the box with a thud at his feet. He points to a stack of fresh cut pine, and I take off my shirt, falling easily into our routine from so many years ago. Lift, measure, saw, stack. Over and over.

  “Seen who?” I feign ignorance. I like to think I’m not that predictable. In New York, the women I fuck undoubtedly think I’m deliciously mysterious and strange, but sadly that’s not the case back in Port Royal and with Shane. Shane knows how to read me like he knows how to read the odds at any racetrack or betting hole. He’s a goddamn professional.

  He gives me a look that threatens violence. “You’re pathetic,” he tells me.

  “No. No, I haven’t seen her. Not yet.”

  “And?” He passes me a two by four and I take it from him.

  “And I’m thinking about it. I don’t know yet.” Don’t know where I’ll see her. Don’t know what I’ll say. Don’t know if running away back to New York would be for the better or for the worse. “There are a lot of factors at play, here.” I buzz the plank of wood in half, holding the two together to make sure they’re even, and then I place both of them on the huge stack by the open double door leading out onto the loading dock. Shane is staring at me like I’m a space alien when I turn around. “What?”

  “You’ve had over ten years to figure this shit out, Cross. You should know exactly what’s up by now. You were in love with her back then. You’re in love with her now. Simple.”

  I hate that word. It makes me break out in hives and Shane knows it. “It’s not that simple. You know how she feels about me. It’s not like I can go hunt her down, give her a high five, ask her what’s up and all will be forgiven.”

  “I know how she felt about you twelve years ago,” Shane says. “And yeah, she was mad at you. But she still loved you. You can’t just turn that shit off. You should never have let her leave.”

  I stop milling the piece of wood in my hands, grinding my teeth together. I don’t get mad about many things, but the situation with Coralie…That’s one of the only things that will make my blood boil. Shane’s a friend, a fantastic, awesome, kick ass friend who’s put up with my shit far longer than he ever should have had to, but he has no idea what he’s talking about right now. I want to chew him out and give him hell, but like I said: he’s already put up with an unreasonable amount of shit from me. I need to bite my tongue. Behind me, he sighs.

  “Okay. I’m going to assume from your complete and utter silence that you wanna tear me a new asshole right now, but haven’t you thought about it, Cal? Haven’t you thought about what your life would be like right now if you hadn’t let her leave that night?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “And? Wouldn’t it have been worth the extra fight?”

  I stay silent, thinking about how much fight it would have taken to get her to stay. It would have been awful. It would have been brutal. I would have had to crawl on hand and knee, apologize until I ran out of breath, I would have needed to swallow my pride and begged. Eventually she would have changed her mind. She would have stayed. Shane doesn’t know anything about what happened that night, though. And he has no idea what it would have been like for the both of us if Coralie had remained behind in Port Royal. It wouldn’t have been sweet smelling roses and happily ever after,
that’s for sure.

  I take a deep breath, throwing aside more wood. “There was nothing to be done, man. It went how it was supposed to go. I fucked up, and she got out. The end.”

  He says nothing, but I’m sure he disagrees with me. We continue to work in silence, and after a couple of minutes Shane begins to hum. This is a peace offering from him, an apology in a way. The song is Journey, Don’t Stop Believing—the song we would blast out of our car speakers, belt out at the top of our lungs whenever we were driving anywhere. He gets through the first verse and the chorus before I give in and join him.

  Eventually our humming turns to lyrics, and then we’re belting out the song together, screaming our way through the final chorus and playing air guitar for absolutely no reason. Once we reach the end of the song, Shane tosses my shirt at me, laughing.

  “Get dressed, you asshole. I’m sick of staring at your washboard abs. How the fuck does a photographer even look like that anyway?”

  “It’s called working out, my friend. You should try it sometime.”

  “I haul wood and build shit all day. I should be ripped if that’s your argument.”

  I grunt, conceding. “Maybe you should stop eating double cheeseburgers every single meal then. And subbing out some of the six pack you drink every night with water would undoubtedly be a wise move, as well.”