The Feminine Touch

by V. J. Chambers

  “Uh, maybe?” said Nash. Maybe that was why Siobhan said his name made her think of classic rock…

  “Far out,” said Pike’s dad, and hobbled off into the house.

  Pike and Nash stared at each other. It was awkward. They didn’t really hang out much. Okay, at all. They didn’t travel in similar circles.

  “So, you have a thing with Siobhan?” said Pike.

  “No,” said Nash. “Do you?”

  Pike shrugged. “I don’t know yet.” He put a finger in Nash’s face. “Don’t step on my toes, okay?”

  Nash nodded.

  They didn’t have much to talk about after that, so they hung out together watching TV until some more people showed up. Within an hour or two, there were a lot of people in the house, and the party was under full swing. Nash didn’t know half of the people. He didn’t think they all went to his high school. Some of them seemed older. Lots of them were smoking cigarettes and lots of them were drinking beer out of cans.

  None of them were Siobhan.

  None of them were talking to Nash.

  He felt stupid and left out and alone. It was like sitting alone at a lunch table somewhere only worse.

  And then Siobhan arrived. She came in with Farrah Nelson, and the two were giggling together as they wandered around the room. They talked to a few people and then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Nash decided to go after them.

  The kitchen looked like it had been decorated in the seventies. The wallpaper was this horrible army green print of apples or squash or something.

  Farrah had her face inside the refrigerator. “What do you think this is?” She yanked out a Coke bottle that had the label torn off. Instead there was a homemade label reading Drink at Your Own Risk. The liquid inside was bright red. “You guys want some?” She included Nash in this statement.

  Robin Martinez, Daisy Clark, and Arthur Robinson tumbled into the kitchen, all laughing. Arthur was on the football team, but he still hung out with Pike. The two girls weren’t exactly what you’d call popular, but they were fairly nice kids. They were in the band. Daisy played the trombone.

  Robin smiled at him. “Hey, Nash. What are you doing here?”

  Farrah held up the Coke bottle. “Drinking this shit, right, Nash?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Nash. “I guess so.” He raised his eyebrows as Siobhan. “I’ll drink it if she drinks it.”

  Siobhan’s face split into a wide grin. “Classic Rock. It’s you.”

  Farrah took the lid off the bottle and took a big swig. She handed the bottle to Nash. He took a drink too. It tasted like Kool-Aid.

  Siobhan snatched the bottle from him. “What is it?”

  “Kool-Aid,” said Nash, making a face.

  “It’s got to be spiked with something,” said Siobhan, taking a drink.

  “It doesn’t taste alcoholic,” said Farrah, reaching for it back.

  “Let me have that,” said Arthur. “If it’s got alcohol in it, I’m going to know.” He drank some. “No, it doesn’t taste alcoholic.”

  He passed the bottle to Robin. Robin passed it to Daisy. Daisy gave it back to Farrah, who took another big swig.

  “Shit!” said Pike.

  They all turned to see him bursting into the kitchen. He snatched the bottle away from Farrah. “What the fuck are you doing? Can’t you read?”

  “Um, yeah,” she said. “It’s just Kool-Aid or something.”

  “It’s my dad’s stash of acid,” said Pike, screwing the lid back on.

  “Acid?” said Arthur. “You mean…”

  Pike shook his head at them. “You guys are all going to be tripping balls in an hour or so.”

  Farrah put her fingers to her lips. “Seriously? We just accidentally took drugs?” She ran out of the kitchen towards the bathroom. That was the last time Nash ever saw her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Freshly showered and dressed, Nash knocked on the door of the Martin house. He was supposed to meet Billie there today for another interview. This one, he hoped, could give some humanity and depth to her father with some personal stories from the past.

  He waited, but no one came to the door.

  There was a thing he’d realized, thinking everything over. Farrah had come to the party, the one she’d disappeared from, with Siobhan. Why had they come together? They weren’t friends.

  He checked his watch. Should he knock again? He’d wait a minute, then he’d knock again.

  I mean, it wasn’t as if they weren’t friendly, he supposed, but they didn’t hang out together or anything. He’d never seen them together before that night. But they’d arrived together, and they’d seemed awfully chummy. He didn’t know why that was, but it was suspicious.

  A minute had passed. He knocked again.

  He waited.

  Maybe he’d gotten this wrong somehow? He called up his conversation with Billie via text message and reread it. Nope, it was right there. She’d agreed to meet him here, today, at this time.

  Squinting at the phone, he decided to text her now. He typed. Hey, we still on for today? He hit send.

  Then he waited again.

  Outside, it was shaping up to be a nice day. It was springtime, and the trees around the house were coming out with white blossoms. The air smelled sweet and there was a warm breeze blowing in over the lake.

  His phone made its notification noise.

  A text from Billie. No, today’s bad, actually. Sorry.

  Okay, he texted. All day’s bad?

  Yes.

  Maybe tomorrow?

  She didn’t text back right away. Then another message appeared. Adam and I may need to reconsider doing the podcast.

  What? What the hell? This was not a conversation that could be conducted via text anymore. She was backing out? She’d contacted him in the first place, wanting his help with this unsolved case. He’d never had a person back out of the podcast before.

  Man, he wasn’t sure how that would work. He had audio recorded of their voices. Could he still use that if they said they didn’t want him to?

  Maybe not, but he could still run this story, even without their involvement. The news was the news, and they didn’t have a monopoly on the story of Sibel or Siobhan. He’d found about all of this, and he wasn’t letting it go. Billie would need to understand that backing out wouldn’t mean that he would stop reporting the truth.

  He called her.

  It rang. And rang.

  Man, wasn’t she going to pick up?

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hey, Billie, it’s Nash,” he said. “Can you talk to me about what’s going on?”

  “Are you recording this?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  “Because, on your show, sometimes you record phone conversations with people.”

  “I’m not recording this. I swear.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, look, the police called Adam and me in to talk today, and we’ve found some things out, and we’re just not sure we really need to continue with this podcast.” Her voice sounded raw, as if she’d been crying.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What did you find out?”

  “I… um, I think I’d rather not say.”

  “Oh,” he said, inwardly cursing. He had to know what she could have possibly found out that would make her want to back out of the podcast. “Is it to do with your father?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want all this to go away.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well… I don’t know if that’s possible anymore.”

  “What?” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “Now that I know that your father’s ex-wife is a woman that I went to high school with, and now that I know all the surrounding details, I can’t very well let it all go. I need to know what’s going on here. So, I’m probably going to be doing a story about this, with or without you. I don’t know what’s goi
ng on, and you sound upset, so I’m sorry to drop this on you now, but you might want to think about whether or not you want this to go on the air without your side of the story.”

  Billie made a strangled gasping noise. “You bastard.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “You fucking bastard. How dare you threaten me?”

  “It wasn’t meant to be a threat, I only want you to know what’s going on with me.”

  But she didn’t say anything else.

  Apparently, she’d hung up on him.

  Damn it.

  THE PAST

  Nash had never been drunk before, let alone done any kind of illegal drugs, so when he found out that he had dosed himself with LSD, he was terrified. They all were, in fact.

  Pike was freaking out. He ushered them all into a bedroom off the kitchen.

  “Where’s Farrah?” Siobhan asked pointedly.

  “I’ll get her,” said Pike. “Stay in here. Don’t leave.”

  The room was small. There was a queen-sized bed in one corner, and it practically took up the whole room. There was barely room for the dresser against the other wall. The closet doors were completely covered in mirrors, though, which gave the illusion of a little more space.

  Fact was, though, there was nowhere to sit except on the bed. So, they didn’t sit down. They all stood there around the bed and talked about whatever they knew about LSD, which did nothing to calm Nash’s nerves.

  He didn’t know anything about drugs, not really. He had a vague idea that marijuana wasn’t as bad as it had been made out to be when he was in elementary school, but as far as he knew, he’d just been dosed with something that was an equivalent of heroin. He was worried that he was going to die. He’d heard of people dying from doing drugs at parties.

  But he was too embarrassed to give voice to his fears. He was in a socially awkward situation here, and he didn’t want to look like a dumb kid.

  Luckily, Robin and Daisy had no such inhibitions, and they voiced all of their fears plus more.

  “We’re not going to die,” said Arthur. “It doesn’t kill you.”

  “How do you know?” said Robin.

  “It makes you hallucinate, that’s all,” said Arthur. “You see stuff. I have friends who’ve done it. It’s not a big deal.”

  Nash wasn’t sure if this made him feel better or not.

  Pike returned some time later. Nash wasn’t sure how long. He only knew that he was starting to feel a little bit antsy, as if there was something he was supposed to be doing, but that he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Pike turned off the light in the room and plugged in a night light for them. “You guys aren’t going to want the brightness soon. Trust me.”

  “Why do we have to stay in this room?” said Robin.

  “Because I don’t want everyone else in the party to know that there’s acid here,” said Pike. “That’s my dad’s stash, and if he finds out I was giving it to my friends, he’ll freak out. He might not notice that you guys drank some, but if everyone has to have some, then he’ll totally notice, and he’ll kill me. So just stay in here until everyone else leaves, and then you guys can hang out in the living room or something.” He set an iPod and some speakers on the dresser. “If you want some music, feel free to put something on.”

  “Wait a second,” said Daisy. “Stay here until everyone leaves? I can’t do that. I have a curfew.”

  Nash spoke up. “Uh, yeah, me too.”

  “This stuff takes a good twelve hours before it wears off completely,” said Pike. “You’re not going to want to go home, trust me. Figure out a lie and call your parents.”

  Twelve hours? Nash’s insides turned over.

  But they all did what Pike had suggested. Everyone got out their cell phones and called their parents to come up with some reason that they weren’t going home. Most of the girls said they were staying at a fictional girl named Kerry’s house, and Arthur even got on the phone to pretend to be Kerry’s dad and assure the parents everything was going to be fine and that he’d look after the girls.

  Nash and Arthur had already told their parents they were going to Pike’s house, so they just said they were staying overnight. Nash’s parents weren’t as concerned about it as he’d worried they might be.

  His mother yawned into the phone. “Okay, sweetie, well, have fun, then.” And that was all she had to say about it.

  And then the acid kicked in.

  Pretty much right after Nash had hung up his phone, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look, and there was nothing there.

  But he noticed that the night light was really bright all of the sudden, and that it had a rainbow halo around it. It was actually pretty. He smiled. He felt… good. Loose. There was a sort of warmth in his stomach that was spreading to his limbs.

  He sat down on the bed.

  Siobhan sat down next to him. She leaned close. “Do you feel anything?” she whispered.

  “I think so,” he said. “I think… I think I like it.”

  She started to giggle.

  Feeling bold suddenly, he reached down and took her hand. He laced his fingers around hers. Her skin was warm and soft.

  She smiled at him, and she squeezed his fingers with her own.

  They gazed into each other’s eyes.

  “I think I like it too,” she murmured.

  But then everyone was piling onto the bed, and they had to make room and their hands got dislodged from each other.

  “Whoa,” said Arthur. “Look at the ceiling, guys.”

  They all lay back on the bed, all five of them. Their bodies all touched, but it didn’t matter now. Nash had the sensation that something inside him—some part of him that kept him separate from everything else—was liquefying and seeping out of his ears and his nose, and it was mingling with everyone else. He was still himself, but there were no barriers.

  It was incredibly nice.

  When Nash looked at the ceiling, the light from the night light was pulsing across it, making bright rainbow geometric patterns. They were throbbing with the beat of the music from the iPod, and they were pretty.

  Hours passed.

  Hours and hours. At some point, Pike came in and told them that they could leave the bedroom, but no one wanted to. Pike climbed on the bed with them at that point.

  Things between them all had shifted. At first, when the drug came over them, they all simply were awed with the colors and brightness of the hallucinations, which weren’t the way that Pike had thought hallucinations would be on a drug. It wasn’t as if he saw things that weren’t there, it was just that the things that he saw looked weird. There were twisting patterns overlaid on them or they seemed to undulate and pulse. Also, he never was confused as to what was a hallucination and what wasn’t. If he blinked hard enough, concentrated enough, the hallucination was gone, anyway, and he could only see what was beneath.

  After a while, though, they all began to talk, and they didn’t talk about stupid things like whether or not they were going to the Homecoming Dance or whether they wanted to buy tickets to some concert. Instead, they talked about their lives, their emotions.

  And as the night wore on, they weren’t just talking about their own experiences, but about their thoughts about the way the world itself worked. They had a long, joint conversation about how the universe worked, about how there were probably aliens out in other solar systems and during all of it, Nash closed his eyes and saw the expanse of space in bright purples and greens and blues—comets and stars whirling behind his eyelids. Beautiful. Amazing.

  They were all caught up in their shared experience. It didn’t seem like a drug to him. Instead, it seemed like… like church. The way church could be sometimes, when you got past all the nonsense about how you shouldn’t do this or that and got to the part where you were in awe and wonder.

  Except it wasn’t awe and wonder of God, or not exactly. It was awe and wonder of everything.<
br />
  Which, Nash thought, was kind of like awe and wonder with God, anyway, because God made everything. Everything came from God, so in a way, everything was a piece of God. He was a piece of God, and the bed was a piece of God, and the stars were, and Siobhan was, and…

  He said that out loud to everyone. He didn’t have a filter anymore. None of them did.

  And they all loved it.

  “That’s so awesome, man,” breathed Arthur.

  “Yeah,” echoed the girls.

  No one even thought to ask what had become of Farrah.

  Not even Siobhan.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Hey,” said Nash into the phone. “What’s up?”

  “I’m your intern now,” Zoe’s voice replied. “I was calling to see if you needed anything.”

  “I don’t know. I’m probably leaving to try to pursue other leads because I pissed Billie off, and the police won’t tell me anything.”

  “How’d you piss Billie off?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but I did.” He was getting out of his car at the hotel, and he had to admit he was at a loss as to where to go next. He’d checked his Facebook messages this morning, and none of the others had seen or talked to Siobhan since graduation. She was an unknown entity. He was going to have to figure out some other way to track her down, and he wasn’t sure what that would be. “Something happened. Billie found out something from the police, and now she doesn’t want to even be part of the podcast. I told her to reconsider because I was going to report on this story with or without her, and she called me names and hung up on me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Zoe. “Well, that was a little brusque of you, but I think it was probably more to do with what the police told her and Adam.”

  “You know what the police said to them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, I overheard her talking about it when I was there cleaning. They found out last night.”

  “What did they find out?”

  “I guess it’s pretty likely that Bart Martin was the Blue Lake Stalker.”

  Nash had been walking toward the hotel, but now he stopped in the middle of the parking lot. “Their dad was the serial killer? What?”