by Susan Juby
That said, there was no way I could make myself forget what Keira had told me about her teacher. Why would a happily married gay man rape her? I know sexual assault is an act of violence rather than lust, but he didn’t sound like a violent guy. What about the picture she’d drawn of him falling? I felt sick at the thought of what that might mean.
The last time I felt that awful was the morning five years ago when I saw the first panel that featured Diana’s sister, Flounder. The illustration of the girl who was me but not me. I’d rushed to the bathroom mirror and stared at myself. And just as quickly looked away, because the Flounder’s main character trait is that she stares all the time.112 If you’ve read the Chronicles, images of Flounder staring, fish-eyed, in close-up will be etched into your mind. Reflected in her dull, wet gaze is all manner of unpleasant refracted reality. Were my eyes really that bulgy? Did they really look like they’d migrated from elsewhere on my head? Was my affect that flat? Could I seriously not protect myself from people who meant me harm, even if they were 100 percent overt about their terrible intentions?
In the first Chronicle, Diana describes Flounder as being “like the worst pet imaginable.” Adjectives used include “dim-witted,” “charmless,” and “barely house-trained.” Diana tells the reader that Flounder has no redeeming qualities of wit or talent or personality. She’s just this annoyance that everyone else has to stop themselves from kicking at when she drags herself under-foot.
Worse, the secrets that I’d shared with my sister were all there in the first Chronicle. Betrayals by peers. Fears. The boy I thought was cute who didn’t notice me. Small things. Precious things. They all looked ridiculous on the page. It was the worst betrayal possible. And no one said anything—not even my parents, who should have. But, as I said, it’s hard to explain all this to a non-Pale.
I am lucky enough to live in a small island town and go to an art school where everyone is too busy doing their own art to worry about how I’m represented in someone else’s. The odd student has tried to do some meta-type stuff: i.e., use me in their art, but it never went anywhere. My guess is that Dusk fixed their wagons.
But in the larger world, I will always have a taint of the Flounder about me. My parents and I will continue to be profiled against our will on fan sites. My relationship with the truth will always be, as Holden Caulfield might have put it, “touchy as hell.”113
Who knows how long I would have stared at my computer screen, absorbed in these thoughts, if the phone hadn’t jangled loudly.
“Is this Normandy?” I recognized Brian’s voice.
“Yes.”
“You might want to check out the new row houses on Fitzwilliam. Near Prideaux. I think we found it. I talked to a guy.”
“Is this Brian?”
“Meet you there.”
The phone went dead.
I called Neil, who called Dusk. They pulled up twenty minutes later, and Dusk gave me a hug when she got out. She pushed the Mazda’s passenger seat forward in order to get in the back.
“No, you don’t need to do that,” I said lamely. “Your legs are longer.” But I got in the front seat anyway.
I felt like my voice was being projected from above, and that the light around us was being manufactured by a team of technicians to make it as unreal as possible.
“You okay?” asked Neil, and his voice seemed to be making its way across a great distance.
“Go to Fitzwilliam. Near Prideaux,” I said.
The sense of manufactured reality persisted until we turned onto Fitzwilliam and I saw it: a row of smart, two-story town houses with a high-end contemporary feel, thanks to red corrugated-tin siding and large windows and clean lines.
I knew instinctively we were in the right place. The other buildings on the short block were older heritage homes, Craftsman-style bungalows, and the like. My sister’s taste for old things begins and ends with vehicles and barns and bikes. She’s never been a big fan of old houses.
Neil sensed it, too. He slowed down and pulled over.
“I’ll go check for her car,” said Dusk.
I sat rigid in the front seat and leaned forward to let her out.
“It’s okay,” said Neil, taking my hand.
We watched Dusk trot down the sidewalk and behind the six connected houses, where the off-street parking was located. She was back almost immediately.
“She’s here. At least, her car is.”
Silence for a long beat.
“Norm? What do you want to do?” asked Neil.
Oceanic noises roared in my ears.
My friends waited.
Then things snapped into focus, the roaring stopped, and I came back to myself.
“We’ll watch until she leaves. Then we’ll go inside and see what she’s been up to.”
Tuesday, October 23
Each of My Nerves Is Having Its Own Nervous Breakdown
We waited until 1:00 in the morning. Then Neil’s dad and Dusk’s parents insisted they get home. Aimee Danes showed up in her BMW and I got in. Brian Forbes was in the backseat.
He handed forward a bag of sour Jujubes without a word.
Aimee Danes and Brian Forbes were good company. They did a little light bantering, but didn’t get annoying or pushy. Clearly, they were each used to pulling all-nighters.
“This stressing you out?” Aimee asked.
I shrugged. “Numb” was the best description for how I felt.
“Each of my nerves is having its own nervous breakdown,” said Brian. “But that’s standard.”
Dusk came back a couple of hours before dawn.114 Neil sat beside her. We’d texted throughout the night, so I knew they’d been awake almost as long as us, but they looked much better than I felt. I was nearly cross-eyed with exhaustion.
Dusk was standing at the driver’s-side door trying to convince me to go home and sleep for a few hours when the noise of a car starting in the parking lot made us all turn to look.
My sister’s Crown Vic makes a distinctive growling sound.
“That’s her,” I whispered.
Dusk crouched down out of sight.
I put my hood up and stared through slitted eyes at the white Crown Victoria as it moved slowly out of the back parking lot along the side of the building. Keira’s curly head was barely visible over the steering wheel.
All this effort for someone who only weighs a hundred pounds, I thought nonsensically.
I knew Keira wouldn’t recognize my friends’ cars. I doubted she’d recognize their faces, either, especially if she’d been up all night writing and drawing.
When the car’s taillights had disappeared around the corner, Dusk stood. Outside, the veil of night was fading almost imperceptibly.
“So?” she said.
“I’m going to check it out,” I told them.
Number Six
Each of the units had a front entrance with a tiny street-level patio in front, and each had a back exit. The trick was to figure out which of the six row houses was my sister’s. Lights had shone behind the blinds in three of the units during the night.
I walked past the tiny patios and assessed the furnishings and décor. One had neatly trimmed boxwoods in matching fake antique pots. One had a bentwood loveseat and prettily faded cushions. A plaque hung on Number Three’s front door. It read: I LOVE MY BOSTON TERRIER. Number Four had a small wrought-iron table set out front with an ashtray on it. Number Five, which had lights visible behind the blinds, had a patio empty of decoration and furniture. That one was a possibility. Number Six, whose lights were also on, had nothing on the little patio, but there was a strange shape beside the front door.
I looked around to make sure no one was watching, opened the latch to Number Six’s front gate, and let myself in. The knee-height object was a small statue of a semi-naked woman with branching horns like bony wings
coming out of her head. Her hair looked like snakes and she was scaly and also beautiful.
I tried to move her but couldn’t. She was too heavy.
This was my sister’s unit.
It was 5:30 a.m. and I was about to do my first-ever break and enter.
I hurried back to the street, and my friends poured out of their cars.
“We have to get in,” I said.
While the rest of us kept watch, Brian examined the lock.
“I hope there’s no alarm,” I said.
“Me too,” he muttered. “That would do wonders for my relationship with my probation officer.” He took a thin piece of metal from his pocket and got to work. I could hear our collective breathing fall into a rhythm.
After the door clicked open, he stood back to let me do the honors.
I grasped the handle and tried to collect myself.
“This is freaking me out,” said Dusk.
She wasn’t alone. The thought that my closet-dwelling sister had a second existence in a fancy new town house made a certain amount of sense. After all, she was into alternate universes.
“What if we walk right in on some strange family?” asked Neil.
“We’ll tell them we’re doing a school project,” said Aimee blithely. “Art kids get up to the damnedest things.”
“Like breaking into houses,” said Neil.
“How’d you learn to do this?” I asked Brian, who’d picked the lock in under three minutes.
“Metal shop. I was doing these metal installations. Got interested in locking mechanisms. My final project was going to be an exploded-view lock and directions for picking it. I might still do that. If I’m not in jail for breaking into this place.”
Aimee punched him lightly in the shoulder.
I blew out a long breath and turned the handle.
No alarm sounded.
“Are we in the right place?” asked Neil.
I looked around. There was nothing in the main room. No furniture. No rugs. It was bone white and completely empty.
We were in the right place.
Double Avenger
Plain roll blinds covered the floor-to-ceiling windows and the interior lights were on. At the back of the main room was a kitchen lined with gleaming brushed-steel appliances. There was a granite countertop, a butcher-block island, and wooden cupboards. It was the kind of kitchen found in my friends’ houses, only more expensive, artier. The counters were bare, except for a single plastic tub of vegan protein powder beside the double sink, next to an unopened bag of chia seeds and two empty kombucha bottles, proving that my sister wasn’t original in all things. There were also two pill bottles. One was half full of gelatin capsules: ADDERALL. The other bottle was labeled DESOXYN. Next to them was a small plastic baggie with some brightly colored pills in it.
Brian looked over my shoulder. Pointed at the bottle of Desoxyn and whistled.
“That shit is seriously hard to get,” he said.
I put the pills down.
We went quietly upstairs.
Other than art supplies, a couple of tall drafting chairs and storyboards leaning against the walls, and three large drafting tables with pages scattered across them, the top floor was empty.
I walked over to check out the art. Drawings and stories: enough for another book, by the look of it. My eyes were drawn immediately to a panel featuring a close-up view of the bugged-out eyes of the Flounder. The sister character who was me and not me was crying. Her face was bruised, her lip cut, the damage rendered in my sister’s distinctive and confident hand. I began to read. At first, my mind pushed back against the story, then it seemed to crumple in on itself.
The story was called Diana: Double Avenger. In it, the Earth version of Flounder is seduced by an unscrupulous art teacher who, in an effort to get close to Diana, tells the Flounder she’s much more talented than she really is. In Vermeer, poor slug-like Flounder is brutally assaulted by a drawing master who coaxes her out into the garden maze. I couldn’t quite figure out what the drawing master’s motivation was. Money, presumably. Revenge on behalf of a competing family. Sheer wrong-mindedness. The plots of my sister’s stories are always a little murky. The worst part was that the assault on the Flounder, which I suppose I should start calling by its proper name—rape—was clearly depicted. Very clearly.
You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen several panels showing a misshapen fun-house version of yourself being sexually assaulted in multiple universes in illustrations destined to be seen by countless people.
I followed the panels, skipping quickly past the ones that tracked Diana’s thoughts and feelings until I came to the ones in which she began to exact her revenge on Flounder’s behalf. The story was so overblown and gothic that it was almost laughable—until I came to the panel that showed Diana pushing the Earth art teacher off a ladder on which he’s standing in order to get something out of a cupboard. He sustains two sprained ankles. In Vermeer, Diana invites the drawing master to walk with her to the top of the palace. When they reach the highest point of the overwrought edifice, she pushes him over the side. He tumbles to his death. The drawing of his screaming face before he hits the battlements below was a masterpiece of perspective.
For the longest moment, I couldn’t catch my breath.
The villainous art teacher didn’t look like Jackson Reid, at least not the same way my parents and I looked like the thinly disguised versions of ourselves. My sister had that much sense of self-preservation. Only something about the man’s eyes was similar.
I found myself wheezing. Sudden-onset asthma. Bron-chial shutdown.
Behind me, Neil asked if I was okay.
“Stay out!” I said. No one could see these drawings. Read this story.
I couldn’t quite process it or understand how the story laid out on the desks fit with the story she’d told me. She’d always drawn our real lives and blown them up to super-sad-sack proportions. She’d been merciless about depicting my bad birthday party. She’d been unsparing about my dad’s ouster as the president of the Diorama Club and my mom’s various and frequent non-coping moments. This story was different. It had nothing to do with our lives. It was fiction all the way through.
But people would think my rape was true, even though I’ve never even had sex.
I backed away from the pages, vision blurry.
I backed away until I reached Neil’s arms.
“You can look,” I told my friends.
Silently, they spread out to read the panels.
There were sharp intakes of breath and dismayed mutters.
When they were done, they came back to stand around me. Dusk was crying, which was almost as alarming as the art around us.
“What is this?” she said. “Did something happen to you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Neil pulled me closer.
“How can she do this?” asked Aimee. “It’s so sick.”
“I don’t know what’s going on. But I’m going to find out,” I told them.
Then the five of us backed out of the room as if its contents were toxic. We went down the stairs and out the front door in stunned silence.
Of Unreliable Narrators
“We’ll wait,” said Neil when he put the car in park.
I knew it would upset Keira to see a strange car in the driveway if she happened to look outside and was going to ask them to park down the street.
Then I realized that I no longer cared what upset my sister.
I got out of the passenger seat, and Dusk got out of the back. She gave me one of her strong, skinny-girl hugs. Then, on lead soldier legs, I walked to our front door. All the vehicles were home. The entire Pale family waited inside.
When I entered the house, I saw my parents get up from the kitchen table at the same time.
“Normandy!” cried my mother. I realized I’d forgotten to tell her I’d be out all night. She wore her very worst track pants, and her hands were raw and red. If Keira got a look at her hands or her pants, they were sure to be featured in a close-up drawing.
“Norm,” said my father, worry straining his studied jauntiness to the breaking point.
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot to call.”
“Were you doing something for school?” said my mother, her voice filled with hope.
Before I could get bogged down in a conversation with my parents, I headed for my room and looked into the closet. Keira wasn’t inside.
I turned and walked the short distance down the hall to Keira’s room. The door was shut.
“She’s sleeping,” whispered my mom, coming up behind me. “She just got home. It’s probably best to let her be. You know how tired she gets when she’s working.”
I didn’t respond.
Instead, I tried the knob. Locked.
I rapped my knuckles, which felt like they belonged to someone else, against the hollow-core door.
“Normandy!” said my mother, shocked.
“I think you might both be overtired,” said my father.
I knocked again, this time with the back of my fist.
“Keira,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Really, Normandy!” My mother’s normally wan voice was fierce.
“I have to talk to her.”
She and my father said something about Keira’s schedule, about her need to have flexible hours. I ignored them again and went back to my room. I went through the closet and into Keira’s room. It was the first time I’d ever done that. It had always seemed like a door that only opened one way.