by Leah Raeder
“No.”
“You look fucking beautiful right now.”
My dumb heart went wacky at this. “You want a show, baby?” I said, mocking.
“I want to do one for you.”
He leaned back, the leather seat squawking. His abs furrowed. One arm dragged over the cushion, slowly, a sine wave snaking through the muscle beneath his skin.
“Dane,” I said, all mockery gone.
He put a hand on his fly. His eyes were half-shut, sleepy with desire. “Let me do this for you.”
I stared wordlessly at the screen.
My cam boy opened his fly, bit his lip as if it pained him to release the pressure. One hand slipped inside and squeezed. My legs pressed together in response.
“Take off your pants,” I said, surprising myself.
He flashed that satyr grin. Stood, kicked his jeans off. His wiry body shone in the dim light. Those boxer-briefs did practically nothing to hide his erection.
“Touch your belly.”
His hand brushed over his ribs, his abs. He stroked the clean V lines running inside the waistband of his Calvin Kleins. Against the fluorescent white cotton, his skin was the color of sand dollars.
“You look fucking beautiful right now,” I said.
Dane laughed.
“Sit down. Take off your underwear.”
He obeyed, and as he stripped he maintained eye contact with the webcam. I’d seen his cock before. I’d seen him jerk off. But my breath caught, because this time he was going to do it for me.
“Stroke it.”
Dane took himself in one hand, his lips parting slightly at his own touch. Every muscle in him tensed, every gnarl and knot swelling against his skin, his mouth so red it looked lipsticked and his eyelashes thick and long, and I thought, absently, of how I found myself drawn to androgyny in the human form. People who blurred the lines. He ran his fist up and down his cock, steady and slow.
“How does it feel?” I said.
“Wish you’d come here and tell me.”
I nestled into my pillows. “Squeeze your balls.”
His lips quirked. Dutifully he cradled them and squeezed. His cock was flush with blood, a drop of opal fluid beading on the tip. As he worked himself he kept glancing up at me, sometimes holding for several strokes, and I wondered how he was imagining fucking me. If I dominated him in his mind the way I dominated him now.
“Faster,” I said.
Dane’s fist pumped, jerking harder with each upstroke. Tension spread through him, deeper cuts of definition carving into his muscle, all his power radiating inward, toward the core of himself. You don’t cam for anyone else. On a whim I placed my thumb over my webcam lens, blocking my video transmission.
Dane didn’t notice for a few seconds. When he did and faltered I said, “Don’t stop.”
He shot another glance or two at the screen and then focused on his dick. Instead of the intimate ricochet of eye contact he seemed determined to finish quickly, get it over with.
“Slow down,” I said. “Don’t come yet.”
I could tell it jarred him. He’d been jerking off to me but now the image was gone. It was like any ordinary private show.
My free hand slid between my legs.
Is it you? I thought as I ran a finger against myself, and a coruscating heat bloomed in my thighs, kindled the fine web of nerves threading up my spine. Could you actually be the man I’ve been talking to, only letting your true self free when you type? When I can’t see you?
I stared at the hands working his dick. Slender fingers, almost elegant.
“Come for me,” I said.
His strokes grew short and rough. He gritted his teeth, not the dreamy pretty-boy face he usually got when he came on cam but something pained, almost resentful. For a moment before climax he didn’t look like he was in the middle of a sex act but an act of violence, of self-annihilation.
“Fuck,” he said suddenly, and his head lolled back, his body shuddering, pearly come spilling over his fist and onto his stomach, a sticky mess of spider silk. He lay slack and listless for half a minute, then grabbed a tissue from off cam. Even though my feed was black he avoided looking at the screen.
My hand stilled. My body was taut as a tripwire. I barely breathed.
“Well,” he said finally, “enjoy the show?”
“Yes.”
Dane laughed, huskily. “Maybe next time you’ll keep your cam on.”
“Next time, huh?”
Is it you, Dane?
He looked dead into the lens. “That’s right, baby. Next time it’s your turn.”
He gave me a small, knowing smile, and logged off.
—8—
VADA: are you awake?
ELLIS: Yes. Hi.
VADA: hi
VADA: sorry about freaking out earlier
ELLIS: No, I’m sorry for barging in. I feel like an idiot.
VADA: don’t
VADA: it was an unplanned private chat
VADA: not your fault
ELLIS: Can I still feel like an idiot?
VADA: okay, but only if I can feel like one too
ELLIS: Why are you still up?
VADA: having a weird ass night
VADA: why are you still up?
ELLIS: Having a weird-ass night.
ELLIS: Plus, you know me. Every time I make a faux pas, I analyze it to death.
VADA: you make the best faux pas
VADA: remember when you got drunk at Umbra
VADA: and went behind the bar and tried to “help” the bartender
VADA: and they kicked us out
VADA: and threatened to call the cops
ELLIS: Oh my god.
ELLIS: How do you remember that?
VADA: I wasn’t as drunk as you
ELLIS: You passed out in the taxi!
VADA: that was just a power nap
VADA: and do you remember when we went to the cat shelter
VADA: and you kept asking how many cats you could legally adopt
VADA: in this really quiet, intense voice
VADA: and they escorted us from the building because they thought you were going to experiment on them or something
ELLIS: If you’re trying to make me feel better, this is the opposite of that.
VADA: #sorrynotsorry
ELLIS: I wanted to adopt them all because they were going to be put down.
VADA: I know
VADA: you big softie
ELLIS: Big psycho, apparently.
VADA: you’re too good for this earth
VADA: we should send you back to Krypton
VADA: with the other supermen
ELLIS: Ha, ha.
VADA: Elle?
ELLIS: Yeah?
VADA: did you mean it, about not moving on?
ELLIS: Why do you ask?
VADA: I don’t know
VADA: curiosity, jealousy, confusion, loneliness
VADA: take your pick
ELLIS: Remember when we threw the key into the ocean?
ELLIS: I meant what I said.
ELLIS: Now please tell me what you were doing at my house.
VADA: trying to figure out who Brandt Zoeller is
VADA: Elle?
VADA: hey
VADA: come on, don’t just ignore me
VADA: I thought you wanted us to talk things through
ELLIS: Did you talk to him?
VADA: who is he?
ELLIS: I can’t believe you’re going behind my back.
VADA: I can’t believe you’re hiding shit from me
ELLIS: Really? You can’t?
ELLIS: After you hid our relationship from everyone?
ELLIS: Made me feel like some kind of dirty secret?
VADA: that’s not fair
VADA: I hooked up with girls before and everyone knew
ELLIS: Oh, so I’m special.
ELLIS: I’m the only one you felt compelled to hide.
VADA: fuck, what d
o you want me to say?
ELLIS: Something real.
VADA: it wasn’t easy for me, okay?
VADA: my entire life revolved around you
VADA: and one night you decided to just walk out of it
ELLIS: It wasn’t one night. It was every night.
ELLIS: Every night you dangled me on a string while you waited for someone better to come along.
VADA: oh, my bad
VADA: so I was supposed to know exactly who I was at age 22
VADA: and exactly who I wanted to be for the rest of my life
ELLIS: No.
ELLIS: But when someone lays their heart at your feet, you could at least have the decency to say you don’t want it.
VADA: I didn’t fucking know what I wanted
VADA: aside from not losing my best friend
ELLIS: Well, that happened anyway.
VADA: because you put all the pressure on me
VADA: you left me to decide our entire future
VADA: do you get that?
VADA: how you made it all or nothing?
VADA: either you wanted me entirely or not at all
VADA: that was an impossible choice, Elle
VADA: one I wasn’t ready to make
ELLIS: Brandt is my cousin.
ELLIS: He has health issues and needed a place where he could recover.
ELLIS: My aunt offered to pay all our bills if I took him.
ELLIS: Happy?
VADA: why couldn’t you just tell me that?
ELLIS: Why should I?
ELLIS: You won’t tell me the truth about that night.
VADA: you weren’t driving
ELLIS: I know you want to protect me.
ELLIS: But protecting me from the truth isn’t a good thing.
VADA: Ellis, I promise
VADA: I didn’t lie about that
VADA: and no one will lay a finger on you
VADA: they’ll have to get past me first
ELLIS: I wish I could believe you.
VADA: want a selfie where I look all Xena Warrior Princess?
ELLIS: God.
VADA: you laughed
ELLIS: Vada?
VADA: yeah?
ELLIS: Have you moved on?
VADA: interesting question
VADA: let’s examine the evidence
VADA: exhibit a: I have your pics over my bed
VADA: exhibit b: I’ve paid a small fortune to redheaded cam girls who look vaguely like you
ELLIS: Wait, seriously?
VADA: quiet in the court
VADA: exhibit c: my cammer name is Morgan
VADA: your honor, clearly I have hang-ups about my former BFF/life partner/soulmate
VADA: the prosecution rests
ELLIS: You’re such a dork.
ELLIS: Do you really have hang-ups about me?
VADA: si, mi pajarito rojo
VADA: I really do
ELLIS: Good.
ELLIS: Because I have them about you, too.
* * *
The next day we sat in her kitchen, poring over data from the cloned drive. Ryan Vandermeer’s life read like a checklist of the All-American bro:
• Varsity baseball.
• ACT score: 20 (51st percentile).
• No college applications.
• Two arrests for alcohol possession as a minor.
• Application to United States Marine Corps (rejected).
“Huh,” I said. “Weird. Max told me Ryan signed up for the Marines, but not that he was rejected. Wonder why.”
“They’ll reject you for anything. It could’ve been something like asthma.”
“Yeah, but the rest? Cutting, arrests, shitty test scores? Something heavy was going on.”
Ellis took a nervous hit off her vaping pen. “Those are symptoms. We don’t know the cause.”
“Or do we?” I tapped my fingers on the counter. “On Tumblr he said he looked like a stranger to himself. He felt like there was a bomb inside him.”
She took another hit. She’d been going at it nonstop since I showed up with food: fresh prawns for asopao de camarones—Puerto Rican shrimp soup—and plantains to mash up for mofongo. Now I pulled ingredients from paper bags, and brand-new copper pots, shiny as mint pennies, and a bottle of wine.
“What is all of this?” she said.
“Happy housewarming.”
Her face softened. “Why are you so sweet to me?”
Our little phrase.
I looked away. My chest felt like an atrium full of small, ecstatic birds whirling around madly, smashing in puffs of bright feathers, no regard for glass or each other.
Her cheer didn’t last. She got up to pace, trailing a ghost ribbon of steam.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Max is digging into my life, looking for—I don’t even know. We’re both under the microscope. How can you be so calm?”
“Low blood pressure, little bit of weed.”
“I’m serious, Vada.”
In that case:
Guilt.
Fatalism.
Fatigue.
I knew what Max would find out about me. In a way I looked forward to it, letting that weight roll off my back. Letting go and seeing if I’d sink or float.
There’s a bit of a self-destructive streak in me. Nero fiddled while he watched his city burn. I pressed harder on the gas pedal.
People who create have to do a little destroying to stay sane.
“What about this Skylar person?” I said. “The other log-in on the laptop.”
“Dead end.”
Skylar had deleted her data shortly before Ryan’s death, and Elle couldn’t recover it. This girl knew how to hide her tracks.
“What if she knows stuff? Like why Ryan was so fucked-up, and why he hurt himself?”
“Those are some big what-ifs.”
“Got a better idea?”
Elle shrugged.
“She’s our best lead,” I insisted. “She was important enough to have an account on his computer.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘she’? ‘Skylar’ is gender-neutral.”
“Her log-in icon is a high heel.”
“Which proves what?”
“I’m not gender stereotyping. I’m making an educated guess based on statistical probabilities, Professor.”
She frowned. “What if the name was Ellis? What would you assume?”
“I’d assume it was you.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Just you.”
Elle exhaled, her eyes focused on something far off. This was my chance, I realized. To ask about Emily.
“It’s weird,” I said. “Your parents never struck me as the type who like gender-neutral names.”
“They’re not.”
“I guess people are full of surprises, huh?”
“They are.”
She’d never introduced us. Her parents were toxic, pretty much convinced their gay atheist daughter was the Antichrist. “But don’t pity me,” she’d said. “I don’t fear them anymore. I feel sad for them.”
I met her mother once. But I never told Ellis.
Me and my secrets.
There was no way I could prod more without setting off alarms.
“Put the wand down, Hermione,” I said. “We’re making lunch.”
She was better with sharp things and I was better with fire, so she cut and I cooked. I started the broth and peeled prawns, clumsy but determined; threw in minced garlic and cilantro; swept chilies from the cutting board while Elle was still chopping; and she grinned to herself and I knew she was remembering things, as I was. All those nights back in Chicago when we’d cook by candlelight and invite our friends over. Blythe and Armin from school, Hector from the ink parlor. Blythe joked that we were like an old married couple, and Elle blushed, and later Elle and Blythe hooked up and I joked to myself that old married couples were essentially platonic anyway, and besides, it wasn’t like I knew what
the fuck I wanted.
I still didn’t.
We set the coffee table with tin camping plates, poured Chablis into jelly jars. Laughed at how fucking rustic it was. City people out here on a rocky shard of earth floating in a cold ocean. It felt more like home than anything had in a very long time.
We raised our wine and paused, fumbling for a toast.
“To good friends?” Ellis said finally.
“To good friends.”
Clink.
The cabin was heady with the scent of shrimp and spicy-sweet herbs. A water curtain of light moved across the table, gold and green spilling over us, pooling, running off. She’d taken the floor this time and left me the couch. I watched her hands, silver twirling through her fingers.
“Are you okay?” she said.
I should have burned my sketchbooks. Keeping them was sick. Like keeping the bones and teeth of a child, fragments of a precious thing, lost before it could reach its potential.
“I’m fine.” I ate a spoonful of something red and tasted only the metal.
Elle got up and fetched the wine bottle and topped me off without a word. I touched her wrist as she poured and the ribbon of pear-gold silk twisted, broke into ragged threads. The splatter on the table looked like drops of liquid sun.
My touch could still do that. Make her tremble.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she said, sitting beside me on the sofa.
“Not really.”
“When has bottling it up ever not backfired and exploded in your face?”
“I’m not bottling it up,” I said, literally stuffing the cork back into the wine bottle.
She tried not to laugh. “Come on. You’re supposed to be the one who’s in touch with her feelings.”
“I’m in touch with feeling stupid and whiny. Other people have it worse.”
“It’s not whiny, Vada. It’s life-altering. You’re allowed to freak out.”
“Freaking out means accepting that I’m a freak. I’m still in denial, and I like it here.”
“What are you afraid of?”
I made a fist with my bad hand and a razor thread pulled at my spine. “I’m not afraid. I’m resigned. This is it, Elle. It’s not going to heal more.”
“Are you taking pain meds?”
“I don’t need them.”
“I’ve seen you grit your teeth when you think I’m not looking.”
“I don’t fucking need them.” I picked up my spoon and tried to hold it level. After a second my hand spasmed and drooped. “This is the problem. Not the pain. This.” I tossed the spoon onto the table. “It’s fucking gone. I’m as weak as a baby and I’ll be like this the rest of my life. I can’t draw, I can’t do shit. All I have left is jerking off for random creeps on the Internet, like the loser I am.”