The Frenzy

by Francesca Lia Block

  I said it didn’t change anything between us. I had kind of known already, anyway. The only thing that worried me about it was that I knew most people in our town wouldn’t understand. They rejected me for being weird and hairy, which I understood, but they would also reject handsome, social, athletic, “normal”-seeming Pace for this if they found out. It would be harder for him than for me, I thought. Under his strong exterior Pace was more sensitive than I was. And the cruelest kids might do something worse than just reject him.

  But that night Pace seemed relieved to have told me. He gave me a shirt and jeans to wear and walked me home. I snuck into the house and crawled into bed and slept for a day. We never spoke about what had happened to me after that night but we talked about Pace’s situation a lot.

  “I think that’s a good sign,” Pace was saying—four years later—about the wolf sighting. “Maybe things are changing for us, Skirt.”

  In a way I hoped he was right. But there was something about this guy, Michael, about our wolf and even about that word—change—that worried me.

  Joe

  In the morning I rode my bike downtown to the ice cream parlor where I work. My mom and dad know the owner, of course—they know everybody; people jokingly call my mom the mayor—and I figured a summer job there was something to do to keep my parents off my back until I started school at the local college in the fall. It was also a distraction from the fact that Corey and I wouldn’t be together then; he was going to school in New York.

  It was ninety-three degrees by ten o’clock, with high humidity. Kids were playing in the gray stone fountain already, the way I used to do when I was little. I was jealous of the freedom they had. My mom used to let me run half naked through the water. I remember how she looked at me, then, with the softness in her eyes that hasn’t been there for years.

  In keeping with the weird Gothic architecture of the town, small severed heads decorated each of the points surrounding the top of the fountain and the water spurted from the mouths of angry-looking water gods. Baskets of purple flowers hung from the old-fashioned streetlamps. The streets around the square were cobbled. It looked quaint and charming unless you knew what was really going on, like most places, I guess. I suppose the fountain gargoyles kind of gave away what was underneath.

  I passed some boys from school sitting on a wrought-iron bench.

  “Hey, it’s hairy teets,” one of them said. It was Carl Olaf.

  I’d been hoping that after I’d graduated he would leave me alone. But I knew that Carl could have associated me with the news of his father’s death and with the fact that my father, the police chief, had never found the killer so I’d become more and more withdrawn and on edge around Carl and his friends, always expecting something like this.

  “What did you drink to put that hair on your chest, girl?” said another boy. Nick McCain.

  “You could use some of it, whatever it is.” Carl Olaf shoved him affectionately.

  I flipped them off with my long middle finger and rode faster up to the door of the ice cream parlor. It was a relief to be inside, away from them. I served milkshakes and ice cream cones all day in the strawberry pink room with the black-and-white checkerboard floor, the shiny chrome counter. Since the owner wasn’t around, I played the Metric song Corey had made for me. “Help, I’m alive.”

  Corey kept texting me all day from the veterinarian’s office where he worked.

  when can i c u? i miss u.

  that wolf still in my mind. liv i love

  I got kind of distracted, I guess. At one point a guy came over to me and showed me his dish of melted ice cream. He didn’t say anything, just tapped his spoon on the side of his dish.

  “May I help you?” I asked.

  “This was supposed to be a banana split. Operative word: banana. Do you see a banana?”

  “No sir. Did you eat it?”

  “You forgot it.”

  “Sorry, sir.” I went to make him another one.

  “You Cindy Thorne’s kid?”

  I nodded.

  “You’d never know you’re related,” he said, and leaned back against the wall with his meaty arms folded on his chest, waiting for his banana split. “And you don’t look nothing like your dad either.”

  I’d heard that, too. A lot. Both my parents have dark hair and blue eyes. My dad is tall and broad and my mom is small and curvy. There isn’t a sign of red hair, green eyes or wiry bodies in the whole extended family as far as I know.

  After work, I rode home down the cobbled street past a row of small brick buildings with pointed leaded-glass windows. There was an antique store that smelled of mothballs and was filled with carved wooden angels, leather-bound trunks, mismatched china and old lace dresses. There was a shoe repair shop, a dusty bookstore, a small market, a drugstore and a beauty salon. I came to Joe Ranger’s prosthetics shop.

  About twenty years ago this town was all about the steel mill that my grandfather once owned; it now sits abandoned at the outskirts of town—a big brick building with two metal towers. Corey and Pace and I go there sometimes because it’s said to be haunted, and you’d believe it by the way it looks and because of how many people died there in blasts of white heat or bone-crushing slams of metal. Once we thought we heard someone screaming.

  Joe Ranger’s father’s prosthetics shop used to do a lot of local business from all the steel mill accidents but things have slowed since the mill closed. The prosthetics have gotten much more high-tech than the ones Joe makes. He works construction to pay the bills. It’s a shame he has to use his genius hands that way, if you ask me, but “You gotta do what you gotta do,” as Joe says.

  In spite of the economy and the shutting of the steel mill, Joe kept the store open part-time. He seemed to like making the limbs and some people sought him out specially because he’s what they call a genuine genius craftsman. The limbs hung on the walls of the dim shop; they were so lifelike they disturbed me. There were body parts of all different shapes and sizes, even some tiny ones for children. I tried to imagine what it was like to be missing a body part like that, to have to strap on an arm and a leg, how it must hurt and how strong you had to be, physically to get around and mentally not to want to die. It was hard enough for me being alive with a fear of my own anger.

  Joe was standing out in front, smoking a cigarette. His yellow dog, Cooper, was panting in the shade. When Joe saw me he tossed his ciggy to the sidewalk and put it out with the toe of his work boot.

  “Hey, darlin’. How’s my little digitigrade?”

  “Shut up,” I said in my sweetest voice. Joe liked to tease me about how I walked on my toes—a digitigrade. I sat down on the ground next to Cooper and took his large, adorable yellow face in my hands, looked into his downward-sloping brown eyes as we put our noses together and he licked me. I knew it was risky relaxing with them like this—my parents had told me not to hang around Joe Ranger—but after seeing Carl Olaf, I needed Joe’s company.

  Joe hadn’t shaved and his reddish whiskers covered his cheeks. He watched me with his fiercely green eyes.

  “Everything cool with you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m not convinced,” said Joe, scanning my face.

  I felt like telling Joe about the boys calling me names but I decided against it. I trusted him but you never knew what Joe Ranger would do to anyone who hurt me. There was something a little off about him.

  For some reason he’d taken a liking to me and had always been kind of protective. I liked him, too. He knew a lot about animals. There were always stray dogs coming into his shop, cats, too. I tended to trust people who animals liked that way. Joe was the only adult in town who seemed to just get me, without judging or even asking any questions. But I couldn’t spend as much time with him as I’d have liked because of my parents. When I asked why they didn’t want me over there, they wouldn’t answer. Just mumbled something about bad news. My dad told me I better stay away but I still managed to get i
n a quick chat every once in a while and I’d never gotten busted.

  “Hey, I gotta go,” I said, giving Cooper’s ears a last scratch.

  “You let me know if you need anything,” Joe said as I hurried away.

  To get to the vet’s office where Corey worked I had to ride across the deserted campus of the liberal arts college, with its American Gothic architecture of high-pointed, cross-gabled roofs, towers, pavilions and sharp arches. I’d never liked the style; it gave me the creeps. So did the deserted houses surrounding the campus. About half the town population is students who go away in the summer, leaving the old wooden houses near campus empty and moldering in the wet, hot heat.

  By the time I got to Corey’s work I was sticky with sweat. He came out wearing his green scrubs and leading three dachshunds. They panted in the humidity and strained at the leash when they saw me but he spoke softly to them and they sat down. Dogs listen to Corey like that. I scratched the head of the littlest one and he poked his nose up at me.

  “Who are these guys?”

  “Mugs, Snugs and the Weiner.”

  “Seriously? The Weiner? People are so weird. How would they like to be called ‘the Dumb Human’?”

  “Or Penis Head,” said Corey. We laughed and I playfully pushed his shoulder but it reminded me of Carl shoving his friend Nick and I stopped smiling.

  “I’m almost off. I just got to let these guys pee and then they’re going home with old Penis Head,” Corey said.

  He finished up, changed his clothes and came out to me. We headed straight for the woods.

  Corey threw his arm around my shoulders and led me into the trees. “You okay?” he asked. “You’re way quiet.”

  I didn’t know why I felt so weird. Maybe it was the hairy comment, but I didn’t want to tell Corey about that.

  “It’s so hot,” I said. “I’ve been feeling spaced all day.”

  Corey buried his face in my hair. As soon as we were under the cover of the trees our bodies just naturally drew together like that. “You smell like sugar,” he said.

  “I know. It’s gross.”

  “Not as bad as sick cat.” Corey sniffed his arm. “Poor Mewriel.”

  “Mewriel? Will she be okay?”

  “Leukemia.”

  We held a spontaneous moment of silence for Mewriel.

  “I want to take a bath,” I said softly, wishing I could rinse off sadness and shame that easy.

  “Well, come on, girl.”

  We found the stream, trickling among the trees, shallow water reflecting the evening sun in silver fish slivers. I took off the red-and-white-striped shirt I had to wear to work and my white jeans that were soiled from sitting on the sidewalk, but I kept my bra and underwear on. Corey stripped down to his boxers and waded into the deepest part of the water, began to splash himself off. I did the same. We lay on our bellies in the muddy streambed, feeling the gentle current pass over us. Corey’s skin gleamed with a thin film of bright water. I wondered how much longer we would be able to wait.

  Corey and I had decided not to make love yet. It was crazy in a way, considering how much we loved each other, how much we wanted to. But I was afraid for some reason, and Corey was patient with me. I didn’t understand why I was hesitating. All I knew was that my fear was connected to the thing about me that I didn’t understand—the thing that had happened four years ago. There was too much mystery around that time. I wanted to know who I was before I gave a part of myself away.

  At the same time, I wondered if my decision was the right one. Corey and I were going to be separated in just a couple of months. Even though we’d made plans to visit each other, I knew it wouldn’t be the same. And I worried that if we didn’t make love soon it might be even harder for us to stay together after the separation.

  I closed my eyes, watching the play of light and shadow through my eyelids as Corey pressed his mouth to mine and kissed me softly.

  “It’s hard for me to wait,” he whispered when we finally broke apart.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s hard for me, too. I’m sorry, Corey.”

  He rolled off of me and looked away among the trees, looked right toward the place where we’d seen the gray wolf. I held my hand out, wanting to stroke his back, but hesitating so that my fingers lingered in the air a few inches from his skin. What if my touch made it all worse?

  “When we met,” he said, “I felt like such a freak, like no one got me except for you. I couldn’t even talk to people.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I only have you and Pace.”

  “I’m lucky that I know you, Liv. I tell myself that every day.”

  “I’m lucky, too.” I wanted him to feel better so I grasped for something to say but it wasn’t exactly the truth even though I wanted it to be. “You’re my twin.”

  Corey picked up a pebble and tossed it lightly into the brush. “We’re very different, baby.”

  “We’re not.” I paused. “If I were a boy, I’d be you.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  He was right in a way; we were different but I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted us to be the same but we weren’t. Corey didn’t get angry much. Sometimes I wished he did so that I didn’t feel like the only one struggling to control myself all the time.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “First of all, you don’t understand what it’s like to live in this town with this color skin.” He said it kindly but it stung anyway.

  “I understand about being different,” I said softly.

  “And it’s not just that,” said Corey. “I don’t know if I’m enough for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I finally let my hand rest on his back.

  “I feel like such a fucking wimp sometimes.”

  “Don’t say that! Don’t be so mean to yourself!”

  He shrugged. “It’s just the truth. But I’ll change someday. I hope you can wait for me.”

  “I don’t want you to change at all,” I said, and he smiled back at me but it was a sad smile, only with his mouth and not his eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe me.

  “And I’m going to wait for you,” Corey told me. “As long as it takes. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The Pack

  On Sundays I cleaned the cages at the pound. Every time it was so hard to leave without a dog, but my mom and Scoot wouldn’t tolerate any other pets. That Sunday there was a black-and-white beagle mix that was beating her tail so hard against the concrete floor that it had started to bleed. I cleaned her up and bandaged her. She licked my face and stared at me with a miserable cockeyed gaze that made my heart feel like her bleeding tail. There was a huge Great Dane mix that hardly fit in the cage. He was a prince; he shouldn’t have been there at all. He should have been roaming the primeval forest beside his royal oak-leaf-crowned owner, like something right out of a fairy tale. There was a tiny terrier with one eye. No one would take him home. He seemed to know it, too. He hardly moved from the floor, his cracked, dry nose pressed down between his paws.

  So far I’d been able to handle the work, the sad-eyed dogs, the smell in the cages—the defecation and the sickness and the sorrow. I told myself it was more important to take care of the animals than to let my feelings get in the way. But that Sunday the smell seemed to have gotten inside of me so that it was hard to breathe, and with each breath I thought of all those animals that would be lethally injected because they were taking up too much space on the planet.

  When I left the pound I was near tears. Everything over the past few days had been building up, making me more sensitive. I couldn’t get the dogs’ faces out of my mind. I didn’t want to be alone with the image of their mournful eyes; I needed my pack.

  I texted Corey and Pace and told them to meet me downtown.

  freaking out need my guys

  We could get free food at the café where Pace worked so we went there. All the old ladies stared at us from their needlepoint chairs. Pace smiled and said hell
o and then they contentedly went back to their soup. He had one of those smiles, so white and shiny you forgot everything else. We ordered burgers—mine was a veggie—and iced tea from Carolyn Carter, the pretty blond waitress who had a crush on Pace. She didn’t like me at all because she thought we were going out (Why would he go out with her? I could feel her thinking), so I tried to be extra nice but it was hard to talk.

  “What’s wrong, Skirt?” Pace asked.

  “I just couldn’t take the pound today.”

  “It’s rough, huh?” Corey took a bite of his burger.

  “I sometimes think you shouldn’t do it.”

  “It’s better than not doing it. Somebody has to.”

  He put his arm around me and kissed my ear. I moved away slightly, aware of Carolyn. Pace and I still needed to keep our cover.

  “Not if it messes with you. It’s not worth it,” Corey said.

  “There was a beautiful Great Dane. Or part. Want him?”

  “My mom would kill me. I can’t bring any more males into that house.” Corey had two brothers.

  “I want him,” Pace said. He lowered his voice. “I heard cute dogs are real guy magnets.”

  “Really? You’d take him!” I grabbed Pace’s hand across the table. Corey looked at our interlaced fingers.

  “Yeah. My mom said we could get a dog. She thinks it would be good for me to have something to take care of.”

  “I love you!” I squealed. “Can you go tomorrow?”

  Pace said sure. He could make decisions like that without asking his parents; they always said yes to him about that type of thing. When they first suspected he was gay they sent him to a therapist who then hospitalized him for a while. He had never quite gotten over the experience. That was one reason he’d agreed to be my pretend boyfriend; it kept him safe, too.

  When we left the restaurant I flung my arms around Corey and kissed his cheek. I could tell he felt bad that I had to pretend we weren’t together in front of Carolyn. He pouted for a second—it was so brief no one would have caught it except for me—then kissed me back. Pace got what had happened, too.