by Amy Ross
Jek comes to sit down next to me.
“Lu,” he says, fidgeting a little with a ripped seam in the cushion, “I’m sorry. About this morning. Or...last night.”
I let out a sour laugh. “Which?”
He looks up, surprised. “Which?” he repeats. “Oh. I guess...this morning. I’m not sorry about last night. That is, if you’re not.” He leans in a little, his expression tentative. “Are you?”
“Hmm,” I say. “Well, I was. I was really fucking sorry when I woke up. Sorry enough to never want to speak to you again.”
Jek gives a sharp, guilty nod and looks away. I take a deep breath.
“But you apologizing for this morning,” I continue, “helps. Helps me not...regret what came before.”
He shifts closer to me on the couch. “Good,” he says quietly. He smiles a little and leans toward me, but I stop him with a hand on his chest.
“Wait, Jek...there’s just one more thing I have to know.” I look deep into his warm, shining eyes. “This morning, when you left, was it because of Hyde?”
“No,” he says firmly, not looking away. “I swear, that’s not it. I didn’t know anything about Carew when I left. I just...” he trails off.
“Panicked?” I fill in.
He nods gratefully. “I’m sorry.”
“So you really don’t know where he is? Please tell me you haven’t been stupid enough to help—”
“All I know is that he’s gone,” says Jek quickly. “Gone for good, this time.”
“And that’s enough for you? You don’t want to see him brought to justice? He’s a murderer, Jek.”
Jek sits back against the couch with a huff. “What’s the point in being vindictive? It won’t bring Carew back.”
“It’s not about retribution,” I say, hardly believing Jek’s reaction. “Hyde is dangerous! What if he does something else like this?”
“He won’t,” Jek says with feeling. “I can swear to it. Hyde will never do anything like this again.”
“Seriously?” I draw away from him in shock. “After all this, you’re still willing to defend him?”
Jek hesitates a moment, chewing on his lower lip. I can tell there’s something else he wants to say, but he won’t let himself.
“Jek,” I say more gently. “I know you were close. That he meant something to you, and it’s hard to forget about that, no matter what he’s done.” I look down, mentally tracing a pattern in the carpet as I collect my thoughts. “I understand,” I tell him at last. “When I saw that phone at Hyde’s place and realized it might implicate you...” I take a deep breath. “I didn’t even care whether you were guilty or not. I hardly gave a second thought before I took it. I just wanted to protect you.”
Jek reaches out and takes my hand. “Hyde meant something to you, too, didn’t he?” he says, and it’s more statement than question. “You liked him.”
I stare down at our hands together. “A part of me, maybe,” I admit. “He was...magnetic, in a way. But when I saw what he did to Carew...” I shake my head. “The person who did that was a monster. I don’t have any sympathy to spare for him.” Jek looks away and nods. I squeeze his hand more tightly. “Jek,” I say, “you have to be honest with me. You’re not protecting him, are you?”
He shakes his head slowly. “Not this time. Lu, whatever appeal he once had, he’s far too dangerous now. You’re right.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Well,” I say, “he probably won’t be back around here. Not with a murder rap on him.”
Jek nods his agreement. I relax back onto the couch and feel my muscles melt. I don’t think I realized how much tension I’ve been carrying around, but thanks to finally having an honest explanation for Jek’s relationship with Hyde, plus knowing Hyde is almost certainly gone for good, I suddenly feel pounds lighter. Like I can breathe properly for the first time in weeks. I put out a hand and tug Jek toward me.
“What about you?” I ask gently. “Are you going to be okay? I mean...without Hyde’s drugs. Is there any kind of withdrawal, or...?”
Jek takes a breath. “Yeah,” he says. “There might be some rough patches.”
I play with his fingers, thinking about what happened to Lane. “What about rehab? It could help.”
Jek shakes his head. “I’d rather not have that on my record. Hyde is gone, and so is my supply, so there’s no risk I’ll break down and start using again. It’s just a question of toughing it out until the chemicals are out of my system.”
“Jek, why didn’t you just tell me? If you were having a problem, I could have helped. You know I would always want to help you.”
“I thought I could handle it,” he says roughly. “And...I didn’t want help, honestly. I wasn’t ready to give it up, I was getting too much from it, and I knew there were downsides, but it seemed worth it. I told myself I was in control, but it was a delusion. Besides, you...” He squeezes my hand, just a little. “You’ve always believed the best of me. I didn’t want to screw up the image you had. I didn’t want you to know I was a fuckup.”
“Oh, Jek,” I say, a dull pain in my chest. I put a hand to his cheek. “It’s sweet of you,” I tell him, “but you have to understand that I could never think less of you for having a human weakness. Okay?” I look at him seriously. “I promise, you can tell me anything. There’s nothing you could say that could make me stop caring about you.”
Jek pulls me close and kisses me fiercely, then breaks off and rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed, his breath coming fast and shallow. “Lu,” he says. “Please, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t—just...don’t tempt me like that.”
I smile and nudge gently against his nose.
“Oh, yeah? What if I don’t mind this time?”
I move in for another kiss, but he turns his head. I pull back a little.
“You don’t want to?” I say softly, a little hurt.
“No,” he insists, “I do. But it might...” Jek stops and swallows hard. “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. Maybe we should put this—” he gestures between the two of us “—on hold for a while. Until I’m feeling myself again.”
“You mean until you’re past the withdrawal symptoms?”
Jek grimaces and nods.
“Is that really necessary? I mean,” I say, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, “whatever you’re going through...maybe I could distract you.”
He catches my hand, kisses it and places it back in my lap. “Please,” he says. “Not now. It feels dangerous.”
I reach for him again, press my lips to his throat. “So?” I whisper into his skin. “I like a little danger.”
“I know,” he says, pulling away from me. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
CHAPTER 19
A few weeks pass as the local news has a field day digging up everything they can about Hyde. London is a small, quiet town for the most part, and there hasn’t been a murder here in twelve years, which means Danvers Carew’s death is on its way to becoming the news story of the year, if not the decade. There’s something irresistible in the mystery of it, as the police have hardly turned up a single lead on Hyde: no family members have stepped forward to acknowledge him, no associates from earlier in his life and no one has been able to produce a single photo. And although many people in London claim to know him, they all have so much trouble giving a precise description of his face that the police sketch artist is at a loss. The only thing they all agree on is that there was something strange about it, some mark or abnormality that escaped their conscious notice, but left a deep impression on their imagination.
Without any real progress in the case, all the reporters can do is sift through the town gossip. Every night, there’s something else on the news about Hyde’s various act
ivities since he arrived in London. Some of the stories I know to be true, because they happened right in front of me. Other reported horrors seem so outlandish that I think they must be invented. But then, who knows? By all accounts, Hyde seems to have been a genius of cruelty and perversity—conscience-free and devoted to torture and depravity the way some people pursue stamp collecting.
Even some of the Chicago TV stations have come by to do stories on the mystery of Hyde’s savage crime and subsequent disappearance. Mostly, they describe him as a con artist who probably worked under multiple aliases, manipulating people into paying for things to keep himself untraceable. I worry sometimes about the effect these stories have on Jek. All I want is for both of us to be able to put everything about Hyde behind us, but even with Hyde long gone, somehow he seems to haunt our every move.
It’s bad enough that Jek is still struggling with the withdrawal from Hyde’s drug, but now some of the reporters are identifying him as one of Hyde’s “marks.” I expect Jek to be embarrassed when these stories surface, but he tells me he doesn’t mind. In fact, the publicity seems to have had an unexpectedly good influence on him: out of the blue last week, he started volunteering as a chemistry tutor at school, and bringing meals and medicine to local farm laborers who have gotten too sick to work. He’s even started passing out flyers with those crazy protesters in front of the London Chem buildings. Jek has always been thoughtlessly generous with his possessions, but this is a side of him I’ve never seen before.
I’m happy that he’s found a positive way to deal with the mess Hyde left, but there are times when I wonder if all these good works are born out of true altruism. There’s a look I catch in Jek’s eyes sometimes, so fleeting I’m not sure if I’m just seeing things. It looks less like goodwill, and more like grim terror. It always disappears in a flash, but for brief moments it’s like he’s figuring all his actions on some invisible scoreboard, his mind working feverishly to make the reckoning come out in his favor.
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it makes me wonder if I really have the full story from Jek, even now. I knew it was going to take time and work to rebuild the trust we once had, but even though he has explained everything to me, I still feel like there’s some invisible wall between us.
It doesn’t exactly help that our relationship is still on hiatus—I know I agreed to give him some space until the effects of the drug wore off, but I didn’t realize how long it would take. The withdrawal is hitting him harder than either of us expected, and it seems to be getting worse: his face is drawn and shadowed like he hasn’t been sleeping well, and he’s developed a tremor in his hands. I try to talk to him about rehab or some kind of medical supervision, but he says it’s pointless. The drug is unknown to modern medicine, and the world’s leading expert on its mechanism and effects is Jek himself.
At least I know that as long as Hyde is gone, Jek can’t give in to temptation anymore. Recovery will just take time.
* * *
One Saturday, I join Hailee on a trip to Chicago to visit Lane—it’s the first time I’ve seen him since he was picked up by the cops. For the past few weeks, he’s been in a locked ward at the hospital, but Hailee says he’s improved a lot recently, and that’s why he’s been transferred to this new facility. It’s got a bit more freedom, and it’s supposed to be top-ranked for mental health treatments.
From the outside, the building is a dark and imposing tower—a sleek, modern structure of steel and black glass. I shudder at the idea of being locked up in it, but when the elevator doors open onto Lane’s floor, the impression couldn’t be more different. From the inside, the space is bright and airy, the floor-to-ceiling windows giving gorgeous views out over the lake. The artworks on the walls of the waiting room all conform to the same, soothing color palette, and when a nurse shows us in, the setup is more like a college dorm than an insane asylum.
We find Lane in a large, sunny room, deeply engrossed in a board game with another patient, while a few others watch and toss in suggestions. I feel almost dizzy with relief at the normality of the scene. After hearing Camila’s version of what happened, I was worried I’d find Lane crazed or catatonic, but here he is, acting like his old self.
After a moment, he looks up and notices us, and his face breaks open into a wide smile.
“Hailee! Lulu. You guys came.”
He jumps up and squeezes us together in a massive hug that almost sweeps me off my feet.
“It’s good to see you, Lane,” I say.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you my room.”
We follow him into a decent-size room with pale blue walls, two comfy chairs and a big TV—nothing like the padded cell I’d been picturing. Lane sits cross-legged on the bed and nods to us to take the chairs. Hailee asks him what he’s been up to, and he laughs about how much reading and TV he’s caught up on lately. We talk for a while about a few favorite shows, and it all feels reassuringly normal. Really the only thing that feels weird is the unspoken question hanging over the conversation: What is Lane doing here? He seems fine.
Apparently I’m not the only one wondering, because next time there’s a lull in conversation, Hailee asks when he thinks he’ll come home.
“Oh,” says Lane, fidgeting with his pillow. “I don’t know. It depends on...on how things go.”
“You know you can leave anytime, right?” she says. “You’re here voluntarily.”
Lane looks out the window and nods his head.
“Don’t you want to be back home?” she prods him, a little desperately. “Go back to school, see all your old friends?”
At this suggestion, a sudden change comes over him, and for the first time since I’ve been here he looks like someone who is seriously unwell. His expression is flat and emotionless, but his eyes are wide with terror, as if he is watching some gruesome scene visible only to him.
“No,” he says, shaking his head vigorously and inching back along the mattress. “No, no, no, no.”
“Lane,” Hailee says, soft but firm. “What happened that day? Tell us what happened that morning at the grain elevator.”
Lane continues backing away from us until he is plastered up against the headboard, saying “no” all the while until it becomes indistinct and turns into a series of inarticulate moans.
“Lane,” says Hailee once more, this time sharp and loud, and she rises from her chair. Lane skitters off the bed, crab-like, and when he reaches the corner of the room, he crouches down with his arms around his knees and his face toward the wall. He is rocking and babbling quietly to himself, the sounds coming so fast that I can’t make sense of them. I can only pick out a word here and there—drug is one, and face, maybe—but the rest is nonsense.
Watching the change come over him is almost worse than if he had seemed crazy from the beginning. It’s like his very humanity has fallen away.
I’m so fixated on him, I hardly notice when a nurse comes in and ushers us out the door.
“You’ve upset him,” he says, shooting us a stern look. “He’ll need to be sedated now. You better leave.”
On the train home, Hailee and I are mostly silent, lost in our thoughts. It’s only when the first houses of London come into view that I find my voice.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her sincerely. “I should have done something, said something, but I had no idea how serious things had gotten with Lane’s drug use.”
Hailee turns to me, her eyes narrowed.
“What are you talking about?”
“That day...the day of Lane’s breakdown? Camila told me the police found a syringe at the scene. I had no idea he’d gotten into stuff like that.”
Hailee shakes her head. “It wasn’t that. Yeah, that’s what the cops said at first, because it seemed like the most obvious answer, but they did a tox screen and nothing came up.”
I stare at
her for a long moment as our train pulls into the station.
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I say as she gets to her feet. “If it wasn’t drugs, then what could possibly—”
“I don’t know,” she says sharply. “But it wasn’t. Lane was clean.”
* * *
I can’t understand it. I want to talk to Jek, because Jek would know—Jek would be able to figure it out. No one knows more about drugs and drug reactions than he does. And he probably knew Lane better than almost anyone, too. He’d know what chemicals Lane had been ingesting, if any—maybe something the tox screens aren’t set up to discover? Or maybe, like Jek, Lane was struggling with the symptoms of withdrawal. That might explain his odd behavior, despite not having any chemicals in his bloodstream. But then, why isn’t he getting better? Surely enough time has passed that there should be some improvement.
And if not...what does that say about Jek? I’m not sure if they’d been using the same substance, but it seems likely. And yet, their reactions are very different. Is Jek going to wind up like Lane, babbling madly in a psych ward? Or is the drug affecting him in some other unpredictable way?
I wish I could sort it out, but no matter how much I think about it, I lack Jek’s expertise, his brilliance, for seeing the ways chemistry interacts with biology. I mean to ask him about it in school, but he’s been out for two days in a row, so I go to find him at his house. I haven’t been over since we agreed to take our break, but Puloma nonetheless welcomes me warmly at the door and ushers me down toward Jek’s apartment. She explains that he hasn’t been feeling well.
“I think it really shook him up when that boy was killed,” she says, chatting quietly with me on the stairs. “He started doing all that charity work, plus he was working twice as hard as usual on his experiments. He sometimes locks himself up in there for hours on end. I know he’s used to pushing himself, but I don’t think he realized how affected he was by such violence, so close to home.” She wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “All of us were. I know I don’t sleep as well, knowing that monster is still out there.” She stares at nothing for a moment, before remembering herself and shaking it off. “Anyway,” she continues, “Jayesh wore himself out, and well, school’s always been a bit superfluous for him. It seemed silly for him to be exhausting himself for it. Officially, I’m homeschooling him, but...” Puloma shrugs and smiles. She doesn’t have to say any more. We both know that Jek is perfectly capable of educating himself, and neither his high school teachers nor his mother have much they can teach him.