Suddenly she was free and in a stumbling run toward the living room.
She turned to face the dining room as someone turned on the lights. Chuck sprawled on the floor beneath the upended cooler. Chuck and the dining room floor were drenched with gallons worth of melted ice and broken beer bottles. His left hand still held the remains of her costume’s tail, as well as about two square feet of her leotard.
She felt a breeze behind her, and her face began to heat up.
She backed away from the scene, grateful that Chuck was the center of attention. She kept backing until she bumped into Macy descending the stairs.
“What the hell happened?” Macy asked.
They were out of sight of the dining room now, but she could hear Chuck yelling, David yelling, everyone else laughing. Her cheeks burned hotter, and she realized that she was crying uncontrollably.
Allison took her jacket from Macy and wrapped it around her waist to cover the hole in the rear of her leotard.
“Allie?”
Allison wiped her eyes and said, “I want to go home.”
TWO
EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Sunday October 17, 1999
03:12 AM
Chuck Wilson felt like shit. He was drunk, damp, and clutching a paper bag containing a forty ounce bottle of Colt 45 whose origins were lost in the fog of his memory. Worst of all, his head was throbbing again and the beer was barely able to keep the pain at bay.
He’d been wandering the empty streets of Euclid Heights since he’d left that geek, David Greenbaum’s party. David fucking Greenbaum. The guy was a high-pitched squealing twip who wouldn’t be worth the effort to grind into the pavement—
If it wasn’t for the fact he was Allison Boyle’s boyfriend.
“What a match.”
Chuck shook his head, and the gesture ignited the pain behind his temples. He raised the bottle to his lips and found it empty.
“Fuck!”
He threw the bottle, paper bag and all, at a stop sign. The bottle shattered. Foamy glass flew everywhere, one splinter biting his cheek.
Belatedly, as the sign’s gong echoed into the darkness, he looked around for cops. Fortunately, now that the bars were closed, the streets were vacant. No witnesses except for an idling van far down the street from him.
He exhaled in relief and wiped his cheek. His fingers came away beaded with blood.
No cops was good. A tangle with the Euclid Heights Gestapo was something he didn’t need. He already had one DUI this year, and had managed to get his car impounded and his license suspended. The cops in this town were really into harassing him.
Now that he was eighteen, once one of the local Nazis got a hold of him he’d be in serious trouble.
“Ah, never happen.”
He took a step and bumped into the stop sign.
“Boy am I fucked up,” he said to no one in particular.
He staggered back, holding on to the pole. A sliver of glass ground into his middle finger.
“Shit.”
He got back on to the sidewalk, sucking the wound.
As he stumbled down the darkened street he wondered when, exactly, his life started going to shit. It was a drunk question and it didn’t really have an answer. Life and shit had been equivalent terms for as long as he could remember…
The headaches and what they brought had only confirmed Chuck’s opinion of the universe.
In fact, if there was a God, the only break He’d given Chuck was a girl named Allison Boyle. And, like usual, that had gone balls-up with everything else. He knew four girls who’d go down on him if he just said the word— or at least bought enough beer— and the one turned out to be some uptight ice bitch.
Chuck thought about the cooler upending and it was almost funny.
Why her?
Chuck stumbled out into the middle of the empty street and yelled at the sky, “Why her, you bastard! Haven’t you fucked enough with my head?” His words drifted skyward on a wisp of fog. Above him, a single stoplight flashed on and off, rocking gently on the wind.
I’m asking to get busted, ain’t I?
Chuck looked around for cops again. All he saw was empty houses and empty streets. No cars were parked on the street. Euclid Heights ticketed them after three in the morning.
As he glanced around, one of the streetlights fractured into concentric rainbows. He felt a spike drive into his forebrain—
«breathing. heavy, rapid breathing.»
Chuck grabbed his temples to try and force the thoughts back.
«warmth. sheets damp with sweat and fresh semen.»
“I don’t want to know,” he whispered.
«gut hanging over milk-white thighs. slack penis in a bony hand. sense of exhaustion. magazine slipping from left hand. the picture is of two young men giving each other blow jobs.»
Chuck wanted to throw up.
The beer was a refuge, but sometimes it played traitor, making it hard to push such alien thoughts back. Even as he managed to push the other mind out of his own, he knew where it came from. It was a lit window, shades drawn, across the street from him.
Before he’d gathered the pieces of his brain back together, a pickup, the back filled with kids, blared its horn and swerved around him, barely slowing. Chuck jumped back as someone tossed an empty can at him.
He gave the finger to its shrinking taillights. “Shit eating fuckheads!”
Chuck wanted to gut one of the motherfuckers. Cut one of those fuckheads bad—
He realized that the middle-aged fag was out of his head. Chuck breathed a sigh of relief. That had been a bad one. It left a sour taste in his mouth. He found himself rubbing his hands on his pants, as if he could wipe away the memory of…
“Ignore it,” he mumbled. “Forget it. Go home. Sleep it off.”
Chuck stumbled off, down the street. He had long ago figured he had gone a little nuts. Voices in your head? That was a sure sign you were psycho. The voices had been in Chuck’s skull ever since he was thirteen— nasty, ugly, voices.
Worse than the voices was the fact they were always right. And anyone who thought he could see into someone else’s melon was a candidate for the nut factory. He’d been trying to shut out the images for years now, and the effort was turning him into a drunk and a half-assed junkie.
In all the time since other minds had begun forcing their way into his own, he had found only one reliable way to shut them out. Somehow, for some reason, when he hung around Allison Boyle, the voices shut up.
And she had to be a stuck up bitch—
Well, she wasn’t going to be rid of him that easily.
Chuck staggered home. He was too drunk to notice the van following him.
04:17 AM
Allison raced to get to school. She was horrendously late for Mr. Counter’s class and she desperately needed to deliver this history paper. When she got there, she discovered that somehow she had missed the rest of the semester and it was time for finals. She pushed into the classroom and took her seat in front of the class.
Behind the desk sat Chuck Wilson. He wore Counter’s white sideburns and tweed coat, but the stare was Chuck’s. Allison felt panic when she realized that she’d been so rushed to get to school that she only wore a bra and panties.
“No talking during the exam,” Chuck said, gaze fixed on her chest. “If I see anyone peeking, I’ll kick you out. Turn your paper over when I tell you, not before.”
Allison realized she was the only other one in the room. Even though the voice was Mr. Counter’s, the leer was all Chuck’s.
“Begin,” Chuck/Counter said.
The phone rang.
Allison stirred at the sound, thankful for being drawn out of the dream. She’d reached over and grabbed the phone off the night stand even before she was fully awake.
She raised the handset to her ear and said a muffled, “Hello?” She was talking into her pillow. She rubbed her eyes and untangled herself from her comforter. In the process she dropped the phone
. She had to hunt down the handset in the dark.
Who’s calling at this hour?
All she could think of was that it had to be for Mom, and after dropping the handset she’d probably made them hang up.
She saw a green glow peeking out of a wrinkle in her comforter and she fished under it until she uncovered the handset with its glowing buttons.
What’d you expect? she thought at the caller as she looked at her alarm clock. It’s four in the morning in bright red glowing numbers.
Allison expected a dial tone by now, but instead, as she raised the phone to her ear, she heard her mother saying, “— dare you call me here!”
It was for Mom.
The man on the other end said something like, “They’re looking for a teak out there now—“
Allison felt torn between a desire for sleep and a morbid curiosity.
“I don’t care what they’re doing at the Institute. That’s been over for a long time. You have no right calling me here.”
“Damn it. You mentioned headaches. Don’t you think—“
“Good bye,” Allison heard the phone click as the phone slammed downstairs. After a pause, a dial tone began to sound through her phone. She unfroze and scrambled to get it back on the cradle before the line began beeping.
When she heard her mother pound up the steps, she pulled the comforter over herself. She shouldn’t be listening on other people’s phone calls, especially Mom’s.
However, with the mention of headaches, she had a sneaking suspicion that she had eavesdropped on a conversation about her. Allison couldn’t make heads or tails of the possibility— other than it had ticked off her mother— and eventually she fell back to sleep.
THREE
EUCLID HEIGHTS, OH: Friday October 22, 1999
03:45 PM
By the end of the week Allison had, for the most part, recovered from the party. All the whispering she’d overheard had been about Chuck’s header into the beer cooler. No one seemed to be talking about her part in the episode. Even so, her gaze kept scanning the school yard as she walked home with Macy. It was a paranoid reaction, but she couldn’t help it.
And— in response to her paranoia— there he was, leaning against the wall of the South Gym. As she and Macy rounded the football field, Allison couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Chuck’s eyes held hers like a magnet.
“Stop looking,” Macy said with a resigned tone. “You’ll only encourage him.”
Allison yanked her gaze away from the side of the gym and hugged the backpack in her arms closer to her chest.
“He still scares me.” She whispered the words as if Chuck could hear her from across the football field.
She knew that Chuck Wilson had been watching her— no, he’d been staring at her— since she’d walked outside. Had he been loitering there, all last period? She wondered. Just for me?
“Allie, look out!”
Allison turned toward Macy just in time to realize she’d strayed off the sidewalk. She pulled herself short just too late to avoid colliding with a tree. She didn’t fall, but she dropped her backpack and her books went everywhere.
She staggered back and looked at her history textbook. It had spilled from her backpack and was spread open before her, flapping its pages in the wind.
Allison looked from the textbook to Macy’s face. The concerned look in her best friend’s eyes made Allison mutter, “I’m fine.” She bent to retrieve her backpack and her history textbook. The book closed against the wind as she reached for it, but a twinge behind her temples kept her from noticing.
“No you’re not, girl.” Macy glanced back, over her shoulder. The gym now hid behind the bleachers flanking the football field. No Chuck in sight. “He still hasn’t done nothing. Has he?”
She shook her head and tried to let go of the paranoia clutching at her. “No, not since the party,” Allison said, slipping most of her books back into her backpack and slinging the pack over her shoulder. Her history text she hugged to her chest.
“Then he’s off of it, right?”
Allison nodded vigorously and started down the sidewalk, forcing herself to watch ahead of her feet.
Macy matched her stride easily. “This is really freaking you. Maybe you should tell someone—”
“No.”
“You could talk to your mother—”
“No!” Allison winced at the sound of her own voice. “I just have a morbid imagination, that’s all. Can we change the subject?”
Macy grunted her dissatisfaction. “Okay.” After a few moments, she asked, “You have the paper for Mr. Counter yet?”
“Ugh!” Allison said. “Don’t remind me.”
“What? You trying to flunk history, girl? He don’t like your attendance already—”
“I’ll get it done.”
“Ten pages by Monday? He’ll dock you a letter just for your attitude.”
Allison sighed. “So what?”
They crossed the intersection behind the high school and walked down Grant.
Euclid Heights High was mired in a suburban commercial district like a fly in amber. A few houses congregated in the gaps between the intersections, but the areas around the major streets were hives of commerce. Some— mostly fast food places— served the high school students. Others— mostly the bars— served the college students that overran the eastern suburbs this close to John Carroll and Case Western Reserve University. The rest of the shops— like the BMW dealership and the Thai restaurant Allison and Macy were passing— served the middle-class population that lived further east of the city.
For some reason it all depressed Allison.
As they passed the BMW lot, the sun gleamed so intensely off the accumulated windshields that Allison thought she should see circling buzzards in the reflection.
“Ahem,” said Macy.
Allison turned around and saw Macy standing a few steps behind her, tapping her foot. Allison felt guilty again. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Macy turned her head up at the sky as if to say, “What am I going to do with you, girl?” Instead she asked, “Have you at least done the reading?”
“Ah…”
“Counter’s going to spaz.” Macy stepped up and hugged Allison’s shoulder. “You’ve got guts if you even show up on Monday.”
Allison shrugged. What was done, was done. “I’ll do what I can over the weekend.”
“That’s half the class. I’d forget about it and sneak an extra lunch period the rest of the semester.”
As they walked down Grant, Allison shook her head. “It hasn’t been my fault. I won’t give up like that.”
“Counter’ll look at the attendance sheet and flunk you anyway.”
“I don’t care.”
Macy shrugged. “I don’t understand you.”
They walked a block and a half in silence, passing a convenience store. Sometimes Allison didn’t understand herself. What Macy said was tempting. With her godawful attendance, it would seem a lot simpler to give up and count the semester a loss.
She ran flat out, and she still lost ground. What was the point of it? She knew, already, that she’d be lucky to pull a passing GPA this semester. For sure she’d be going to summer school. She’d be lucky to graduate on time the way things were going.
If she relaxed and stopped pushing, the picture would only be slightly worse.
But it would be giving in.
Fortunately, the headaches had diminished. Since the party she hadn’t had any bad ones. This had been her first week of perfect attendance this year.
The fact that her skull was ceasing its unexplained throbbing should have buoyed her through anything. But she found herself depressed, under siege from a load of neglected homework and eviscerated academic prospects.
Not to mention Chuck.
“Hey,” Macy said. “Cheer up.”
Allison looked her friend in the eye and asked, “Why?”
“I tell you they left me back sixth grade?”<
br />
“Huh?”
“End of the world girl! They pinned a note to my sweater, big red letters. Mama cried. Dad creamed me. Six kids and none of them, not even Russell, had been left back in grade school.”
Macy spread her hands and looked down at Allison. “Today, does it matter? See my point?”
“Yeah, I suppose I do.”
“Good.” They’d reached the intersection where they usually parted ways. Macy squeezed Allison’s shoulder and started down her own street. “Don’t kill yourself,” she called back.
“I don’t plan to.” Allison said.
◆◆◆
As Allison walked home, her morbid introspection began to diminish.
It was Friday. She was free of Euclid Heights High for the rest of the weekend, and that thought helped her get over her funk. It was a beautiful day, the sky blue, the sun shining, and the air so cool and clean that it crinkled at the edges. After a while she was kicking her way through mounds of raked leaves, humming an Indigo Girls tune and surprising herself with exactly how good she did feel the farther she walked from school.
She still couldn’t help thinking about her history project as she walked down the hill. Ten pages comparing the French and American Revolutions. Ten pages in a single weekend.
Once she thought past the oppressiveness of Counter’s history class, she admitted she could do it. Half the job was making the paper literate, and no matter how many classes she’d missed, she had her classmates beat in that area. Over the summer she had managed to write ten chapters of a romance novel— a horrible romance novel that embarrassed her deeply— but against those hundred pages or so, ten seemed no big obstacle, especially when half the grade was spelling and punctuation.
It was close to four when she got home. By now she was smiling and had almost convinced herself to dig the novel out of the closet and make an attempt to finish it. She had decided against it because there was no way she could do anything on top of Counter’s paper this weekend, and— more important— she had stopped writing in the middle of a steamy sex-scene that she had never finished.
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