by Leah Raeder
She watched me awhile. At one point she grazed my bare arm, made me shiver violently. Then she stood.
“Let’s do an experiment.”
“This isn’t the time. We haven’t finished eating.”
“It can wait. This is exactly the time, Vada. Trust me.”
I sulked as she moved around the cabin, searching. Finally she returned with a pillowcase and placed it in my hands.
“Blindfold me.”
“What happened to romance?”
“Just do it.”
She took her glasses off and I tied a loose knot. My pulse skittered.
This was not the first time I’d tied a blindfold on her.
“Okay,” she said, tilting her head this way and that. “Here are the rules: Lead me to the ocean. You may only speak in colors.”
“What?”
“That’s a pronoun, not a color.”
I gawked.
“I can feel that look.” She reached out, found my elbow. “Come on. You can do this.”
“I don’t even know what you want me to—”
Her hand traveled up to my jaw. She pressed her palm gently against my lips.
Her skin was so soft.
“Take me to the ocean. With your eyes.”
Pajarito loco, I mouthed, and swiveled her toward the door. “Um . . . green?”
She stepped forward, and I followed. I darted ahead and flung the door open.
“Red. Red. Okay, green. Green, green, green . . . red.”
Elle took halting steps onto the log stairs.
Jesus. This was going to end with a hospital visit.
Getting her to ground level nearly killed me. Traffic colors worked, to an extent: green for go, red for stop, yellow for caution. But when we reached the forest floor and the thick tangle of exposed roots that she needed to climb over, I blanked.
“Uh, you need to—”
“Vada.”
“Goddammit. What are you trying to teach me, how to break your neck?”
Her cool glare radiated through the blindfold.
“Fine,” I said. “Be a masochist. Green.”
Her foot caught in the tree roots. I grabbed her before she fell.
How the fuck could I communicate how to climb?
Two squirrels scuttled up a tree, shredding bark. The air was alive with birdsong, trills and whistles and tweets, mutters, musings, a hundred voices spiraling into the sky. A trail of red ants boiled over the leathery tendrils at our feet.
“Red,” I blurted. “Fire-ant red.” What else crawled? “Caterpillar yellow. Spider black.”
Ellis toed the roots, crouched, and picked her way over on hands and knees.
I laughed triumphantly, and she smiled in my direction.
“You’re still insane,” I said.
“You’re corrupting the experiment.”
“Green. Emerald City green.”
The trail was mostly green, with patches of yellow and red where I had to drag branches out of her path. I ran through all the basic greens—kelly, shamrock, clover, grass—but that got boring fast so I mixed it up: watermelon rind, Mountain Dew, zombie skin, envy. The Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day. Then we reached a rock ledge, and I parked her with a cherry red and began hauling branches to make a ramp.
I was in the middle of this when a fox pranced into the path, a limp dove dangling from its jaws.
“Ellis,” I murmured, but if she removed the blindfold she’d probably spook it.
I had to show her.
“Red. Harvest red. A jacket of russet, and sienna, and umber.” She didn’t object to extra words, so I went on, “Soot-black socks. A vest of pure snow. And amber . . . buttons. Old, wise amber that holds the sun, and carries it into the darkness, like tiny lamps.”
“Is it a fox?” she whispered.
The fox arrowed into the underbrush, leaves shimmering with light in its wake.
I smiled and touched her arm. “Verde musgo.”
“What’s that?”
“The color of your eyes.”
I walked her through the woods, taking time now not just to guide but to describe things around us—the arresting scarlet of a tanager, pulsing like a plush heart, and a cache of violets rich as twilight that I plucked and wove into her hair, and the bronze of my skin in the shadows, like a cast sculpture. The trees thinned and we crossed a silty beach and I made Elle sit on an outcropping. Sky and sea fused into blue haze.
“Azúl,” I said, kneeling behind her. “Azúl infinito.”
I untied the blindfold and let it fall.
Ellis squinted at the water, then up at me. Her smile was big and guileless. “My hypothesis was correct.”
“What was it?”
“That you’re still an artist. No one can ever take that from you.”
Something was trembling in my chest, like a cupped leaf full of rain, tipping, starting to spill.
I touched her shoulder. Then I threw my arms around her and didn’t let go because I was pretty sure I was crying. “I get it. You trust me. And I trust you too, Elle.” Yep, that was a sniffle. “More than anyone in the world.”
“Vada—”
“You’ve always been there for me. You’re my prince, my—”
“Vada, I can’t breathe.”
I released. And hugged her again immediately, gentler, and she laughed but I spied tears in her eyes, too.
“Still think I’m crazy?” she said.
“In the very sanest way.”
I pulled back to look at her.
Come clean, I thought. Start small.
“I want you to know everything. I want to be that close again. I’ve been talking to someone online, Elle.”
“Who?”
“He calls himself Blue.”
And I told her all about him.
As I spoke she angled away from me, frowning. Coiled her bangs around a finger and tugged till the violets fell out. That little frown wouldn’t unknit itself.
Finally she said, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Guys have sugar-daddied me before. It’s not that weird.”
“He gave you a ton of money and you told him a ton of personal stuff. Like a paid informant.”
“It’s not like that.”
She scratched a nail on the rock. “What does he know?”
“Not enough to track me down.”
Elle’s frown deepened.
“What?” I said.
“For all you know, it’s Max.”
“It’s not Max. He’s too young. He’s like us.”
“Right, because Max wouldn’t act our age to get info.”
That was not a pleasant line of speculation.
“Why did you tell him about me?”
“You’re my best friend, Elle.”
She kicked her foot irascibly. “I hate that you call me Red.”
“Why?”
“Like I’m the opposite of him.”
And then it clicked: she was jealous.
The epiphany shot a jet of helium into my heart. I leaned into her, and we looked out at the ocean. Water lapped the rocks and left a skim of foam, seaweed and wet lime mixing with Elle’s autumn scent. For a moment I forgot myself, forgot the rules and our history and thought about pushing her flat against the stone. Holding her body down with mine so I could feel her breathe, feel her bones creak, her blood slow. So I could show her how I felt about her. How much she was a part of me.
My love is savage and rapacious. It isn’t content to touch. It wants to be inside, crawl into the marrow, caress each vein until the cells are all mixed up and there is no you and me anymore, no secrets or shadows sliding between our skin. Only this endless devouring of each other. The ouroboros we call us.
Ellis shrugged me off. “Let’s head back.”
I trailed behind, spinning one of the violets between my fingers. She loves me, I thought, plucking a petal. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not.
She loves me.
* * *
We were drinking wine as the sun fell when we saw it. I almost spit and dropped my glass. Elle jerked back from the keyboard as if it had bitten her.
After hundreds and hundreds of Ryan’s pics, we’d grown complacent. Selfies. Alt takes of photos I’d already seen on his Tumblr. Bad shots, blurry, overexposed, a newbie learning his camera. Even the cutting pics weren’t shocking anymore.
This one was.
Ryan had a baby face, sleepy-eyed and pouty, skin smooth as cream. But it was barely visible beneath the bruises and cuts. One cheek swelled up fat and purple as eggplant. One eye was black, bruised shut. Puffy lips, cut and cracked in a dozen places.
Ellis tapped a key.
Pic after pic, all showing the same brutality: his face, wrecked.
“What’s the date on these?” I said.
“Day before the accident.”
“That’s it.” I clapped my bad fist into my good palm. “That’s what made him drink.”
Elle peered up at me. “That’s speculation.”
“Look at his face.” I butted in and flicked through the other photos. Couple more bruise pics, then nothing. “Someone beat the shit out of him, then he tried to kill himself.”
“You almost sound happy about it.”
I wheeled away, paced a circle. “Things are finally starting to make sense. It’s a relief.”
The relief of blaming someone else for what happened.
“It’s sick to feel glad that someone got hurt.”
“I’m not glad, Elle. But he’s a stranger to us. I can look at it objectively. We never knew him.”
“We still killed him.”
“Did we?” I pointed at the screen. “Or did the person who did this kill him? Because this is what made him drink, not us.”
She poked glumly at the keyboard.
I sat beside her, laid a hand on her knee. “You don’t seem surprised.”
Shrug.
“You already saw these, didn’t you?”
“I glanced through while I was copying files.”
“And didn’t tell me.”
She hung her head, hair shading her eyes. “I just don’t like where this is leading. We’re going deeper down this rabbit hole without getting closer to understanding. It’s only getting darker and darker.”
But don’t you see? I thought. If we’re not the reason he died, then everything’s okay. We can heal. Go on with our lives.
Forget all of this like it never even happened.
“I need closure, Ellis.” Her leg tensed beneath my curling fingers. “I need to know why Ryan did this so I can put it behind me.”
“We already know. He was depressed and his life was falling apart, so he drank.”
“That’s how it happened. Not why.”
“You’re looking for meaning in something meaningless. He was just in pain.”
I flung my hands up. “My whole fucking life changed that night. I lost myself, and you, and my entire future. If I can’t find meaning in that, how can I survive?”
“Is that really why you want closure?”
I didn’t answer that. Instead I said, “Don’t you want it to mean something, too?”
“I don’t know what I want anymore.”
My arm slipped around her. She was shaking. About to cry.
“Elle.” I stroked the back of her head, the fine short hair there. It still smelled like violets. “Why are you acting like this?”
“It makes me sad.”
“What does?”
“That someone hurt him for being the way he is.”
I touched her cheek. “Is this reminding you of your parents?”
The glint in her eyes was answer enough.
“It’s okay, baby. That’s all over.” I tucked her head beneath my chin. “You don’t have to be afraid of them anymore.”
“I’m not.”
“Then what?”
Her arms wrapped around my back.
This whole thing was freaking her out. Her nervousness earlier, the white lie about the photos. That comment about the rabbit hole. Still convinced she was behind the wheel.
I couldn’t blame her for being scared. But I had to know more, for both of us.
“Hey.” I swabbed her tears dry. “No being sad. It’s not allowed today. You know what today is?”
“What?”
“The best day I’ve had all year, because of you.”
She finally smiled. Sweet and small, unassuming. I slid her glasses off and brushed the wet glaze from her lashes. I couldn’t take my hands from her face.
“Stay the night,” she whispered.
Electricity arced from my spine to my fingertips and collected there, buzzing. I was sure she could feel the static I trailed across her skin. I ran my thumb over her lower lip, and when her mouth opened and she exhaled into my palm I felt suddenly weightless, no bones or heaviness inside me, just a shimmering mist of nerves. I thought of Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres. A girl made entirely of translucent bubbles containing sea, skin, sky.
“What are we doing?” I said.
“Falling in love again.”
Heat flashed in my belly, lightning white. “I thought we were trying to be friends.”
“We’ve never just been friends, Vada.” Ellis circled her hands around the back of my neck. “Let’s not pretend anymore.”
She was irresistible like this, all tousle-haired and unraveled. So rare to see her careless, overcome with want. With loneliness.
“This isn’t a good idea,” I said, stroking her cheek. “Rushing back into things.”
“You like rushing.”
“I know. It’s weird being the voice of reason, for once.” I grinned. “You are so pretty right now. All I want to do is kiss you. But I don’t want to fuck this up again. I want my best friend back, Elle.”
“You don’t want me.”
“Of course I do.”
“No. You want your sugar daddy.”
Sucker punch.
It’s not that I wanted him instead. But Blue was going to drop another grand tonight to keep me off cam. While I was here, with her. It felt wrong. I knew it was mainly social conditioning—girls are taught that our bodies are currency, that we owe them to men for being nice to us, for giving unasked gifts to us, for not assaulting and raping us—and if Blue wanted to pay me to fuck my ex and further complicate our It’s Complicated–ship, that was his kink. Thank God for low-maintenance clients.
But I also thought: It’s not fair to him. He can’t touch me like this. All he has are his words.
And his words make me feel something that I want more of.
Ellis saw my hesitation. Hurt blossomed in her face. She wrenched away, left the room.
“Elle—”
“It’s fine. Go see him.”
Ask me again, I thought, and I’ll stay.
Ask me. Please.
But she didn’t say another word.
* * *
“Hi.”
SoBlue: hi.
I sat cross-legged on my bed, swishing a bottle of beer. Silence for a minute. “Bad day?”
SoBlue: no.
SoBlue: just feeling more ruminative than talkative.
A knot loosened in my gut. “Me too.”
SoBlue is typing . . .
Then nothing. Erased.
“Can I make a request?”
SoBlue: shoot.
“Press Enter instead of Delete. Before you second-guess yourself.”
SoBlue: ha.
SoBlue: deal. but you too. no self-censoring.
“I couldn’t censor myself to save my life. It’s a legit problem.” I sipped golden ale that tasted like malted passion fruit. From my window the sunset clouds looked oil-painted, a soft scumble of cobalt and coral. A gentle Monet sky. I wondered if Ryan had ever sat in his window and watched the paint melt off the troposphere and trickle into the ocean. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. I keep getting into s
ituations where I have to make some life-defining choice. When does that end?”
SoBlue: when life ends.
Shiver.
“Something really bad happened to me once, Blue. I almost died. Someone else did instead. And I keep feeling like God made a mistake, that he let the wrong person live. The person who’s too afraid to even commit to her own life.” I took a swig. “There. No self-censoring.”
SoBlue: that can happen even when you think you know what you want.
SoBlue: someone i know used to be a star athlete.
SoBlue: golden boy. bright future.
SoBlue: but he had an accident and became disabled.
SoBlue: no more sports. whole life uprooted.
SoBlue: now he feels adrift, like you.
“Is he depressed?”
SoBlue: very.
“What keeps him going?”
SoBlue: pet projects, diversions, amusements.
SoBlue: but nothing truly fulfills him.
SoBlue: he’s hollow.
Is he you? I wondered.
SoBlue: point is, nobody knows what to do with this life.
SoBlue: and the second you think you do, your life will flip upside down
SoBlue: like this:
SoBlue:
I laughed. “Emoji zen, huh?”
SoBlue: some of my most profound thoughts are emoji.
“We are such Millennials.”
In the back of my mind I thought:
Or you’re really good at faking it.
SoBlue: i feel ancient tonight.
SoBlue: like a . . .
SoBlue: redwood tree. or something.
“Are you trying to say you’ve got some massive wood?”
SoBlue: maybe i am.
SoBlue: maybe you should take your shirt off.
I set the beer bottle on the windowsill. My thighs tensed and a pull started low in my belly. We’d never done anything sexual before. I was still amped from Elle, my blood fizzing. I checked myself in the cam: hair tucked into a lazy chignon, my body draped with shadow. This wasn’t my pro setup with floodlights and calibrated colors. But if he wanted that, he could’ve asked.
I grasped the hem of my tank and held eye contact with the lens until I pulled the shirt over my head.