by Vera Kurian
I led Will to the guesthouse that was closer to the water and farther from the house. He peered in the window. “It’s a little house!” he exclaimed.
Charles had said the guesthouses would be unlocked for us to use. I turned on the lights, but then used the dimmer to take them down. The guesthouse had a small open kitchen, which led out to a living room. A half wall divided the living room from the bedroom. Just to the right of the TV was a fireplace.
“Sit down,” I said, gesturing to the fluffy sheepskin rug that lay on the ground between the fireplace and a leather couch. “I’ll fix us some drinks.” I heard him flop down heavily as I headed to the kitchen. I set the cups on the counter, then carefully poured out the entire contents of one vial. “Drink up!” I said, walking back into the room and handing him the glass. He was lounging on the sheepskin rug.
I stood over him, watching as he tipped up the cup into his mouth, and I couldn’t help a shiver of excitement. Everything was going according to plan. The drug would take effect soon. Will was right within my grasp. He smiled at me with his dumb mouth. “Why don’t you sit down?”
“Hold on, I need to use the girls’ room.” I left him there, heading to the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom. I didn’t really have to go to the bathroom, but rearranged my hair, plucked a stray eyelash from my cheek and tugged my dress up. I peered behind my bangle to look at my smartwatch. The drug needed a couple minutes to work.
I sat next to Will and examined him. His eyes looked glazed and his face was flushed, his lower lip looking wet. He was sitting far too close to me. The coffee table had a book about caverns on it, topped with an agate geode. I picked it up, looking at the layers of bright blue agate that had been formed by the earth. “Where’s your phone?” I asked. “Let’s take a selfie!”
He cringed. “I don’t have it. I dropped it and it’s getting fixed.” Will put his hand on my knee and squeezed, then ran his hand up a few inches. “You’re really hot—anyone ever tell you that.” He blinked slowly.
I put my hand over his. I realized he hadn’t finished the drink and propelled the cup toward his mouth. He took a sloppy sip, but there was still some left. He leaned forward to kiss me, his mouth open. I deterred him with two fingers to the forehead. “Not so fast.” The push, even with just my fingers, had an outsize effect. If he wanted to, if he were fully sober, he could have easily overpowered that push. “Let’s have a chat first.”
“A chat?” Even with no S, somehow he slurred the word. He fell back on his elbows, his head lolling, nearly spilling the drink, which I saved.
“I just wanted to ask you some questions,” I said, waving the cup around enticingly.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” he said suddenly.
I froze. “What?”
He pulled himself back up to an upright position. “You don’t... We used to know each other. I thought maybe you didn’t—don’t you recognize me?”
“Recognize you from where?”
“New Jersey,” he said with some urgency, or at least as much urgency as you can gather while on Rohypnol and alcohol. Had I been wrong? Had he recognized me the second he saw me at the SAE house? I had kept telling myself that I looked so different, that puberty had hit me hard, that changing my name to Chloe would probably be enough to fool someone as dull as Will. He looked at me with wide eyes, his pupils hugely dilated. The look on his face was almost vulnerable. “You know...about what happened that night.”
I was stunned, which immediately made me angry. He had flipped the tables on me and I had to be the one in control. “Will, do you have the video?”
“Things got out of hand that night...they got out of hand and they shouldn’t have.”
“Where is the video? Who else has it?”
“But you liked me though, I know you did.”
“I did like you.”
“You liked me,” he said, louder this time. He was drooling a little.
“I liked you. I drew your name in bubble letters because I was twelve, and you raped me.”
“Whoa—wait,” he said very slowly, leaning toward me. “You liked me.”
I blinked, pressing my fingers against the jagged outside of the geode I was holding; it felt cold in my hands, one side perfectly smooth and polished, the rest of it rough. I studied his face, my heart beating evenly: his pale eyebrows, the beginnings of stubble starting to push out of his face. “You held me down and Brett Miller filmed it with your phone and I was twelve. Where is the phone? Where is the video?” Phase Three was Get the Video. I had to have it.
He stared at me—I couldn’t tell if his face was in shock, or if the drugs had washed any sensible expression off him. I watched with disbelief as his eyes filled with tears. “Michelle... I’m sorry.”
I lashed out with the geode, cracking him in the forehead. Blood burst out and he gave a scream of surprise and pain as he fell to the ground, then lay still. How dare he. How dare he say my name. Try to apologize. After what he did. After humiliating me.
When the heat faded, I realized what I had just done and, dismayed, I watched as blood began to matt the pristine whiteness of the sheepskin rug.
Shit!
Goddammit, Chloe, why can’t you control yourself! I popped up on my knees, holding my hands over the lower half of my face, thinking at a thousand miles per hour. He was lying perfectly still—how hurt was he? The grand irony: I needed to kill Will, but not now. Not before I had that video.
Shit, shit, shit. I went over to him and turned his head. I couldn’t tell how bad the wound was, because head wounds tend to bleed so freely. Soon his blood got all over my hands. I sat back on my haunches, thinking.
But then I heard something that made me freeze. A step. From the entrance of the guesthouse. I turned.
Charles stood just inside the doorway, his face pale, his mouth open in shock. His eyes moved across the living room, taking in Will’s body and the bright red blood that marred the snowy rug. No. Not Charles. The absolute last person I wanted to see this.
“He attacked me!” I sobbed. “Oh God, call 911. I don’t know what happened.” I buried my face in my hands, smearing blood onto my cheek, and wailed hysterically. I had the vague sense that Charles was coming over to help me. “He hit me. Oh God, I thought he was going to kill me. Call the police!” I chanced to look up, tears streaming down my face.
Charles was crouched beside me, his mouth now closed. His expression was devoid of emotion and the look in his eyes was stern, seeming to say, Stop. I stopped crying, for the second time tonight uncertain what was happening, or what to do. Charles reached for his pocket square slowly and pulled it out. He snapped his wrist to unfold it, then used it to wipe the blood and tears from my face. “My, my, what a mess you’ve made,” he said mildly.
12
I stared at him, wide-eyed.
He reached out and gripped my wrist, pushing down the black bangle to reveal my watch. I was stunned, mesmerized by the look in his eyes, which had a blank hardness to it mixed with something like amusement. He reached under his shirt—the top two buttons were undone—and pulled out something small and back. His own smartwatch, the wristband removed.
“You’re...” I couldn’t even articulate my surprise.
Charles let go of my wrist. “I would have never guessed about you,” he said.
Just then, Will emitted a low moan, and I felt relief rush over my body. He brought his hands up to his head. He was alive. Okay, I hadn’t ruined everything. The only thing was—
I turned and realized that Charles was staring at me, not his injured friend. “What exactly were you doing here?” he asked in the smooth tone of a teacher who had walked in on students divvying up stolen goods.
“We were just talking.”
“About what?”
His eyes were on me, steady. I said nothing—I had no idea how much he had overh
eard. There was something crafty about how his pretty eyes slipped from me to Will’s body. “Well, I guess we should get him to the hospital,” he said.
“No!” He looked at me, an eyebrow raised. I understood he was threatening me, in a way. “We can’t go to a hospital. I drugged him,” I admitted.
“With what?”
“Rohypnol.”
“I hardly think you need any such aid for male company,” he said, smiling.
I pretended I thought he was flattering me and blushed. “He’ll be fine, but the last thing we need is someone finding out—”
“We?”
I looked at him beseechingly, with big eyes. You can argue with men but it’s far more powerful to appeal to their most basic instincts. Latch on to that part of their Y chromosome that likes explaining things to women, the part of them that likes to help because it makes them feel bigger. “He’s fine, Charles. I think he just needs to lie down and sleep it off.”
“He could have a serious brain injury.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t exactly sure how much trouble I was in.
Charles sighed, giving me a look like I was being mischievous. He dropped the pocket square and stood up, surveying the now-messy guesthouse. He walked over to Will and crouched in front of his body. “Will? You awake?” Will moaned. “My dad has guys,” Charles said, turning to me, “like bodyguards. One of them was in the military and probably knows some serious first aid. He’s helped me before.”
“With what?”
“I’ve never brained anyone with a geode if that’s what you’re asking, but I’ve crashed a car or two and wanted to hide it from my dad. I’ll give him a call and we can make sure Will’s okay. You go back to the house,” he said, gesturing with his head in that direction. “Take the first car you can out of here in the morning and I’ll keep an eye on Will.”
“I don’t know if he’ll remember anything—he didn’t finish the drink.”
“I guess you’ll find out,” he said unsympathetically.
I hesitated. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because I’m not calling the police when I could have. Go wash up—you have blood all over your dress.”
I padded to the bathroom silently, my mind racing with the strange turn of events. I was furious with myself for losing control at the worst possible time—it was something I talked about with Dr. Wyman about wanting to improve. But also, even though this new situation was perilous, being around Charles excited me. Suddenly he was not just a cute boy whose relationship I was planning on destroying: he was so much more. He was dangerous. And I knew exactly why he was helping me: it gave him power over me. The only question was what he planned to do with that power.
When I looked at myself in the mirror I groaned. There was blood smeared all over my beautiful dress. I wriggled out of it, then washed my face. It wasn’t the sort of dress you could wear a bra or underwear with, so I wrapped myself in a fluffy white towel, then picked up the soiled dress and stuffed it into the clean trash bag. I didn’t want to leave any evidence behind.
Charles was finishing a quiet phone call when I went back into the living area. “He’s coming—let’s go.”
“In a towel?” I teased. “People will wonder what you were doing with me.”
He sighed, then took off his jacket, resting it on the back of the couch. He unbuttoned his white dress shirt, pulling it off, revealing a plain white T-shirt. He handed me the dress shirt, then turned his back to me. I took the towel off and put on the shirt. It was soft and warm and smelled like him.
He turned around and for a split second looked at me. He had never really looked at me that way before, his eyes flicking below my face to my body. His shirt came to midthigh on me.
Charles poked his head out the door of the guesthouse, then edged around to the front. I followed him, my bare feet sinking into the cool grass. Back at the house, the kitchen lights were still on, but the upper half of the house was dark.
“I can’t see,” I whispered. I felt his hand grasp mine. It was warm and his fingers seemed elegant. He led us back to the double doors where we had been partying. “Go up,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of everything else and call you after I talk to Will.” He slid open one of the glass doors.
“If you plan on blackmailing me, you should know that I’m piss poor.”
“Do I look like I need money?” he asked quietly. That hint of darkness in his eyes—a reminder that there would be some kind of price to pay. “Get back in your room without anyone seeing you. Give me your phone number.” I recited it. Maybe I had fantasized Charles putting my phone number into his cell, but not like this.
As he closed the door my mind flew through contingency scenarios, stories I could make up to cover my tracks. I had never gotten the sense that Charles had a particular liking for Will—just because they were frat brothers doesn’t mean they were friends. And there was something boorish about Will that made me think they wouldn’t be close. More like Charles tolerated him as a beta-level orbiter.
I snuck back to my room, feeling my way through the dark. I shoved one of the Kappa girls nearly off the bed and wriggled under the covers. I brought Charles’s shirt up to my nose and inhaled, already sleepy. It had been a long night. The geode and Charles had complicated my Will plan, but once the sun was up I would do what I had always done—adapt, regroup, and make my next move.
13
Kristen was pulling her blond hair into a ponytail and was left defenseless when Charles buried his face in the tickly part of her neck. She cringed, laughing. “It’s a tax on being too slow,” he said.
“Charlie Bear, I’m going to tell your mother,” she crooned, and they laughed at the awful nickname. Somehow, miraculously, Kristen understood his family. The sunlight streamed through the windows of his bedroom, hitting her hair in a way that made it seem to float like golden strands. To any casual observer they would look like a normal, handsome young couple. He hugged her from behind, looking at their reflection in his mirror. Moments like these were times where his darkness should have felt stark in contrast to everything about Kristen that was airy and carefree, but something about their relationship made him feel like he could be just like her. When she smiled, she always smiled with her eyes.
He leaned forward and kissed her. He wanted to kiss her more but there wasn’t time for that. “Can you head downstairs and oversee breakfast? I want to make sure Will’s alive,” he said.
“Did he get too wild last night?”
“He fell and cracked his head against the stone steps. I just want to make sure he’s okay. Save me a bear claw.”
Kristen kissed his cheek, then left the room, moving with the posture of someone entirely at home in her own body, something he had always liked about her. But with her absence it was almost like he could hear something click: the slight easing in his mind that occurred when Kristen wasn’t around, like a tiny, subtle muscle that had been almost involuntarily flexed finally getting to relax.
Charles had put Will in the bedroom next to his own—the one his brother, Eric, used when he visited. He figured that if Will was going to throw up in anyone’s room, it should be Eric’s.
Charles knocked on the door and let himself in. Will was just beginning to stir from under a tangle of sheets. He groaned and held his head. Mercer, his father’s bodyguard and jack-of-all-trades, had dutifully examined Will, stayed with him for several hours and then vanished like a ghost, leaving behind nothing but a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. Like many of the men who worked for his father, he did as he was told without asking questions. “You feeling all right?” He affected the tone one uses when making fun of people the night after they had acted a fool.
“My head is killing me.” Will managed to sit up, wincing, then seemed surprised when he touched his forehead and found a bandage.
Charles crouched to his level and stud
ied his face. “You remember anything from last night?”
Will frowned, looking down. “I remember we were doing shots...” He reached for the Advil and dry swallowed a few. “Mmm... I don’t know after that.”
“You got plastered and fell and smacked your head on the stone steps outside.”
“Ughhh.”
“Come downstairs and have a Bloody Mary,” Charles said loudly.
Will cringed. “I’m never drinking again.”
“Famous last words. Why don’t you sleep it off for a while, then?”
“No,” Will said quickly. “I’m gonna take off actually. I’ve got stuff for lacrosse.”
Good. He didn’t want Will and Chloe to cross paths.
Charles waited until Will had gathered his things and followed him into the foyer to watch the door shut behind him. Only then did he feel it was okay to join the group, who were moaning through their own hangovers as they picked over a spread of pastries and cheese soufflé. As he filled his plate he could tell that Chloe was trying to make eye contact with him, but he avoided her. At least until Kristen left the room to bring down her overnight bag. He flicked his eyes to Chloe’s, silently saying: Everything’s fine so far.
What a strange convergence of events! He hadn’t even noticed the girl before—just one of the flock of never-ending coeds. Charles thought himself good at reading people. Dr. Wyman said that for a psychopath he was above average at recognizing emotions in others. If a person was smart, Wyman had once said, one could use the ability to read and understand others to their advantage, to make their way through a confusing world, to make a successful life. On the other hand, they could also use this same ability to manipulate others and get in trouble.
What exactly had he walked in on? Funny that Chloe had immediately thought he would blackmail her. He wasn’t sure what he would do with the information but he knew one thing: it was at least something novel and intriguing in a world filled with so few novel and intriguing things.