by Dan Chaon
“Oh,” I said. What else do you say? “Well.” And his arm seemed to grow tighter and heavier as it settled around my shoulders.
“The thing is,” Amy said, “everybody’s like so hung up on like fangs and blood and I don’t even like want to go into that bullshit. Blood is just a metaphor, right? If I’m going to feed on you, I’m like dipping into your aura, I’m like draining a little of your life force into my own life force.
“See?” he said. “I just drank a little of your stuff. Did you feel it?”
I doubted very highly whether this guy even believed his own bullshit; it just seemed like a line, a performance, though at the same time his arm felt hot and heavy and my own body felt little—of a skinnier and frailer species—and, yes, I did cringe, and my voice was hoarse.
“Listen,” I croaked. “I was hoping you might be able to hook me up.”
“Of course, brother!” Amy said. And he still didn’t take his arm off me. “But you didn’t answer my question. I was like, do you feel me drinking your aura?”
It was the worst sensation. That arm, you can feel the prickle of forearm hair on your neck, you can feel the fingers casually blanching your biceps and a kind of vibration.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I feel it.”
“Do you like it?” he asked, and I shrugged beneath his heavy arm.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not really.”
30
I WATCHED AS Xzavious/Amy took out his kit, and it scared me because I suddenly felt a great rush of friendliness toward him, not unlike a dog would feel toward a person opening a can of meat.
The heroin was beautiful. It could be #4, I thought, China White.
Not sure if it was really #4 or maybe just cut and fentanyl? #4 didn’t have the vinegar smell, did it? Or any smell?
He had a really cool double snorter, stainless steel, which he offered to me the way a prince might offer a magical dagger to an adventurer.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s clean. I use alcohol wipes after every use, right?”
Of course, I couldn’t have cared less. I inserted the snorter into my nostrils and bent over the CD jewel case he’d used to lay out the lines. “You’re going to be so happy,” Amy said.
And it hit so sweet. I pictured those old cartoons, when you get banged over the head and a bump rises like a hill and things whirl in a halo around your head: stars, chirping birds emitting wobbly eighth notes, waffles with butter, smiling suns wearing sunglasses.
Amy felt up my deltoid. “It’s special, right?” he said.
“Ah,” I said, and then my mind disconnected from my body and joined the bluebirds and waffles in their airy circling. A French woman from the 1960s began singing “Do Re Me, Do Re Me.” My dick tingled.
And when I lifted my head after the black-hole untime had begun to dissipate, I saw that he was holding something out to me.
“Rabbit’s phone,” he said. And we traded. I gave him back the silver snorter, and he put the thin little brick of electronics into my palm.
“I figure you’ll probably see him before I do,” Xzavious Reinbolt said.
31
A PERIOD OF lost time.
Snorting in your bedroom, sleeping, not even watching TV, not even listening to music.
Blank.
Blank.
Blank.
And then a text from Amy with an Internet link to a news item about Rabbit’s death. Early January, maybe? One and a half paragraphs in a corner of The Plain Dealer.
Found under the Hope Bridge. Facedown, frozen in the ice. Only his legs sticking out.
Discovered by some people who were giving coats and blankets to the homeless.
Drowned.
THE GIRLS DID not want to go to Yellowstone. They were seventeen, it was the summer before their senior year in high school, and the last thing they wanted was to spend two weeks camping with their parents and their aunt and uncle and their younger cousin, Dustin. Kate, in particular, thought it was outrageous. Wave was more resigned.
Kate and Wave—that was what they called themselves. Katelynn and Waverna Tillman.
They were twins, and they lived in a little town on the edge of Nebraska not far from the Colorado border. Things might have turned out differently if they’d been born in a nicer place.
But this was all they had been offered. Wave woke up in the old camper trailer that was parked in the driveway outside her uncle Dave and aunt Colleen’s house, and fat flies were vibrating against the windows near her head. In the bunk below, her sister let off a soft, protesting noise in her sleep, a kind of anxious animal whine that made Wave unnerved to hear it.
Wave was having a lot of uncomfortable thoughts lately.
—
They’d been doing bad things. Not evil, Wave thought. Not criminal. Just the sort of things that seemed “crazy” and “hilarious” and “punk” and then you woke up the next day feeling dirty and depressed.
Like, for example, giving a blowjob to the same guy on the same night.
Like, driving drunk and sideswiping a parked car and then just driving away. And laughing.
Like, riding on the hood of some guy’s car and feeling him speed up, knowing that he was going to brake suddenly and you’d be thrown. Like this was a silly kid’s game. Like nothing could ever hurt you.
Like, talking sexual things about Uncle Dave, how his ass looked in those tight cutoff jean shorts, and what would a beard feel like if he ate your pussy, and what would he be like as a lover, and could they seduce him if they wanted?
Like, playing cards with their thirteen-year-old cousin, Dustin, and doing these exaggeratedly sexy gestures. Kate opened her mouth and put her thumb on her tongue like she was licking a bit of sauce and she whispered “oooh,” and then Wave scratched her calf with her bare toe, canting her shoulders and murmuring “mmm,” and giving her ass a little squirm like scratching felt really great. And they were almost peeing themselves, watching poor Dustin silently freak.
And now Dustin was in a sleeping bag on the bunk where the kitchen table folded down into a bed, and Wave couldn’t help but think that was so fucked up. Asleep, Dustin’s face had too much child in it, and Wave turned away from him and opened the door to the camper. She sat down on the steps and took out a slender, girlish cigarette. It must have been about 7:00 A.M.
Sometimes the two of them pretended that Kate was the instigator. And Wave was the (slightly) nicer one. The conscience. Not true, really, except that Wave was the one who was more bothered on hungover mornings like these.
Using her big toe and her long toe as pincers, Wave picked up a rock from the gravel driveway and was semi-successful at tossing it, but it didn’t land anywhere near where she was aiming. She ran her fingers through the tangles at the end of her ponytail, and she liked the sharp tug as the tiny knots stretched and resisted and broke apart. Took another drag of her cigarette.
When she was little, her parents told her that smoking was bad, a filthy habit; she should never smoke, they said, though they both did. But when she and Kate had taken it up a couple of years ago, Vicki and Lucky had not complained or scolded. It was almost like they were relieved—now they didn’t have to feel judged anymore. The girls could walk up to their dad and ask to bum a cigarette and he would just hand them one without a word.
—
They were bad parents, Vicki and Lucky. She’d known that, vaguely, for years now. They were not like parents on TV, or even the parents of classmates that she had seen, who were mostly normal, sweet, aging drudges.
For one thing, they partied a lot—Vicki and Lucky, Dave and Colleen. They got shit-faced drunk maybe four or five times a week, and she had recently begun to understand that such habits were not only unusual but kind of sick. Once she’d had a few of her own hangovers, she realized that normal people couldn’t function if they got drunk nearly every night. She saw now that they were actual alcoholics.
And she had never really understood how cr
eepy it was that Vicki and Colleen were sisters and Dave and Lucky were brothers. Wave remembered this girl in middle school; she’d thought they were friends. “Wait,” the girl said, wrinkling her nose. “Doesn’t that mean that you and Kate are sisters and cousins at the same time?”
“No!” Wave had said, greatly offended, and later, during lunch period, she and Kate had both walked past the girl and spit gum into her hair and then they wrote threatening notes and left them in the crack of her locker door.
But now she saw that the girl had actually been very perceptive. There was something perverted about it. It was gross and kind of incest-y.
And then there was the other thing. The thing that Rusty had told her about. He said that they were swingers. They all had sex together, the four of them. She realized now that he was bullshitting her, trying to be funny—but for a while she’d almost believed him.
—
She was thinking of this when Uncle Dave came out of the house. He was in his underwear—white briefs—and she gripped a rock between her toes as he trudged barefoot across the grass and planted himself in front of the lilac bush and took out his dick and peed.
From her vantage point she couldn’t see his penis. But she was aware that it was there. He was close enough that she could hear the thick patter of water.
And then he looked over his shoulder and saw her sitting there, watching.
“God damn it!” he yelled. And tucked his cock back into his Jockeys in a flash. “Wave! Shit! I’m sorry. I had to pee. You got your mother and your aunt in there, and they are occupying that bathroom like the fuckin’ Soviet Army. I couldn’t wait any longer.”
Of the four adults, Wave thought, Uncle Dave was the most human. He was the one you would trust to tell you the truth, and probably the one who would save you if there was an emergency. He was a short man—five foot six inches, maybe?—but with a broad-shouldered, muscular body, hairy on the chest and stomach and even shoulders, with a thick beard and a ponytail, a grin that showed all his teeth. He had been in Vietnam, and then when he got back from the war he had lost the lower part of his right arm in a construction accident, and she supposed that gave him a good excuse for being honest.
He lifted his stump. He wasn’t wearing his prosthetic hook, but maybe the ghost of his hand was making a gesture. He shrugged apologetically.
“Sorry you had to witness my biological functions,” he said.
“No problem,” Wave said. She stubbed her cigarette against the side of the trailer. How old was he? Late thirties? Wearing Jockey underpants like an eight-year-old—sheepish, but not overly perturbed. He scratched the back of his neck. He had decided to pretend that being caught in his skivvies was more or less normal.
“What’re you doing up so early, Wave?” he called cheerfully. “I heard you kids up giggling and carrying on way past one in the morning! Thought you’d still be stuck to your pillow!”
She rolled her eyes. “Dunno,” she said, and dug in her pack for another cigarette. “It’s hard to sleep once the sun comes up.”
“If you say so.” Uncle Dave grinned.
And Wave watched as he turned and ambled back into the house.
“I’d probably fuck him,” Kate had said once. “He has a hot ass.” And Wave had made a grossed-out face.
But now, with Uncle Dave’s back to her, Wave considered the ass. It was hot, actually.
—
Not that they would ever do anything. Not really.
At some point, not that long ago, Kate and Wave had discovered that it was fun to think really dirty thoughts and say the filthiest things that came into their heads. They took turns trying to shock each other.
And, yes, they were a little wild, but not in the kind of way that would screw up their future. They weren’t going to get pregnant and marry some oaf who wanted to stay in St. Bonaventure his whole life. They weren’t going to get arrested, or have a drug overdose, and they would graduate in the top ten percent of their class, enough to get them into a decent state college.
But their mother had a low opinion of them. There was the scrape on the side of the car that they had been driving drunk, for example. There was the discovery of condoms in their purses. Also that they didn’t tell her that they’d stopped working at the movie theater after a week; they let her believe that they were working from seven to midnight when in fact they were partying.
For these crimes and others, they were sentenced to go to Yellowstone.
—
For a while, they tried to fight their way out of it.
“We’re not going,” Kate had screamed. “That’s final.” And their mom, who Kate now called “Vicki,” had folded her fat, wobbly arms and made a face that she thought was sarcasm.
“After these past months, you think I’d leave the two of you home alone for two weeks?”
“But we’re not going,” Kate said. “You can’t make us.”
There were going to be so many parties this summer. They were going to have the time of their lives. Rusty was one of the best drug dealers in town, and they had a personal connection to him. He could get pot, uppers, downers, cocaine, mescaline, even possibly angel dust.
Plus, if they had the house to themselves for two weeks, it would be like owning a nightclub. Everyone would come.
“You wouldn’t sass your dad like that,” Vicki was saying now. “Why don’t you say that to him? Go tell him, Can’t make me, and see how far that gets you.”
Kate gave Vicki a killing look. But whenever Vicki tried to stare her down, Kate broke eye contact and made a bored face, which was a way she could stab Vicki repeatedly.
“I wouldn’t leave you girls alone in this house for a million dollars,” Vicki said.
“You can’t make us,” Kate said. “We’ll hitchhike back home when you stop at a rest area.”
“Try it,” Vicki said. “I’ll call the police and have you both registered as runaways.”
Kate snorted. “I don’t know why you don’t ever trust us,” she grumbled. “I’m so sick of being watched every minute with a fine-tooth comb.”
And Vicki waved her hand and blew a dismissive plume of smoke from her cigarette and left the kitchen in a triumphant huff.
“I hope she gets cancer,” said Kate under her breath, which shocked Wave a little, though she kept her face neutral.
Still, it was clear that they were not going to resist anymore. They had only two days before they left for Yellowstone.
—
Wave had been sitting outside the trailer for a little over an hour, drinking halfheartedly from a can of Tab soda, staring down the long dirt road that led toward the highway. Why are we even here? Kate kept asking. Just to keep us prisoner?
It was a weird arrangement. Kate and Wave and their family lived in town—in St. Bonaventure—while Rusty and Dustin and Uncle Dave and Aunt Colleen lived in an old farmhouse about ten miles out in the country. It had been decided that they’d spend the weekend at Uncle Dave’s house before they left. Vicki and Lucky would occupy Dustin’s bedroom, and Dustin, Wave, and Kate would stay in the camper. Rusty had his own room, which wasn’t up for discussion.
“It’s moronic,” Kate said. “But I can tell you exactly the reason. It’s so they can party more before we have to descend into camping. Lucky and Vicki just don’t want to have to drive back to St. Bonaventure when they’re juiced.” She shrugged grimly. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “The summer’s ruined anyways. But Rusty said he’s going to hang out with us on Saturday night, so…at least we’ll have some decent pot to take with us.”
—
Of course, Rusty wasn’t going to Yellowstone. He had graduated from high school the year before, and now he worked as a truck driver for the 7Up bottling plant and couldn’t get time off.
“That’s the life of a working man!” Uncle Dave had said. “You have to wait till you get your arm chopped off before you can take a vacation.”
<
br /> This was on the first morning of the sleepover, and they’d been in the kitchen eating breakfast. They watched as Uncle Dave lifted his prosthetic hand and did a little hip wiggle that made Kate raise her eyebrows with exaggerated alarm. It was an expression that Kate wanted Rusty to see, but Rusty didn’t lift his head from the cereal he was rapidly spooning into his mouth. He made his distinctive laugh. “Fuh-huh-huh,” he said, as if he’d started to say Fuck! and then it dissolved into sheepish, dumb-boy chuckles.
“Just stick your hand into something sharp,” Uncle Dave said. “I’ll bet you 7Up will give you a better settlement than Johnson Controls gave me.”
“Fuh-huh-huh,” Rusty said. He gave his mouth a quick wipe with the back of his knuckles and lifted his eyes for a brief moment, first to Wave, then to Kate. They both saw his sharp dog-brown eyes glint with hilarity.
“I’ll take that under advisement, Dad,” Rusty said, and slid his chair back from the table. That grin: sunny and yet vaguely malevolent.
—
Later, she would remember these moments so vividly. The days before the murders: The way the flies on the camper windowpane woke her up. Uncle Dave peeing in the lilac bush.
The sound of Kate getting out of bed, the transistor radio turned on: David Bowie, “Let’s Dance.”
Those last two days, when she still called herself “Wave,” when she still had ideas about possibly going to college, becoming a talent agent, possibly someday getting married, having children, even, after she was done with her wild times.
She would remember thinking those things, and later, at forty-seven, she’d cringe to think what her old self would think of her. How had she turned into a middle-aged hippie woman? She’d never even liked hippies, but here she was. She wore homemade smocks and mostly went barefoot, and her hair had been in a long braid down her back until she decided to cut it so short that people thought she was getting chemotherapy. She ground her own flour and raised goats and made cheese from their milk. She had never owned a cell phone or had an email address and had only glanced a few times at the Internet, when she stopped at the library on her weekly trips to town. Like most people she associated with, she was afraid of the government, and she imagined that they might be watching.