Swansong

by Rose Christo

  My hand drops at my side. I push the front door closed with a click. Here comes the gravity again, trying to pull me down.

  Kory's face fluctuates with concern. "That pretty singer girl; she's really..."

  "Yeah."

  "And your hair. It's so short. You look like a cancer patient."

  I try a smile. "That's what I said."

  Kory looks around. "Can I have some coffee?"

  I head into the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker. Minutes later I join Kory in the sitting room while he admires the paint splashes on the wall. I hand him his cup and he blows on the surface. He peers at me carefully, like he's a scientist and I'm a quark.

  "What is it?" I ask, trying to be polite. I sit on the floor.

  "I think I feel sorry for you," Kory says. "It's strange... I've never felt sorry for anyone before."

  I know what comes next: He starts quoting Camus.

  He doesn't quote Camus. "People will ask questions, you know. Curiosity, that's the nature of the beast."

  "Yeah..." I grip my knees.

  "Are you ready for that?"

  "I don't..." I don't know. I can't even paint. How can I go to school? How can I face those questioning stares?

  Kory nods, as if I've confirmed his suspicions. "Then I'll have to provide you with my services."

  "Uh..." I draw a blank.

  Kory sips his coffee. "I do consider myself a Good Samaritan, you know. Human beings are so frivolous, but if we don't safeguard those frivolities, the propagation of our entire race is at stake. This coffee is disgusting, by the way," he tells me cheerfully.

  There's a sociopath in my sitting room, asking to be my bodyguard.

  "That's it exactly," Kory replies. But I haven't said anything for him to reply to. "I'll deflect the attention off of you and onto me. Personally, I like attention. I don't know why. Another frivolity, I suppose."

  "Y-Yeah." Sociopath. Why?

  "So, then," Kory says. He puts down his drained coffee cup. "Anything I can do for you in the meantime?"

  "Actually--" Well, he's here, isn't he? "I can't find my paintbrush."

  "Come again?"

  "My badger brush? It's..." This is a little silly. "It's fan-shaped. I was painting--" No, I wasn't. "--and then the headache, and then I...misplaced it, I guess..."

  "You don't have another brush?"

  "I do." A sable brush. "But--" This really is silly. "Different brushes have different effects."

  "Hrm," Kory says. "Let's look for it, then."

  He doesn't sound enthused. I can't blame him.

  We turn the apartment upside-down looking for my badger brush. The only place we don't search is Judas' room, because I'd like to give my brother at least a little privacy. It's like the brush disappeared. It's not wedged between my mattress and box spring; it's not stuffed inside my Neon City schoolbag; it's not in the cupboards, it's not in the freezer, and it's definitely not in Judas' booze cabinet, because the cabinet's been locked for the past three days. Kory raids the pantry. It's not there, either.

  "Buy a new one," Kory suggests, his mouth full with potato chips.

  "But how can it have disappeared?"

  Kory shrugs. "There's always a logical explanation for these phenomena."

  Judas walks in through the front door. He looks tired and windswept, his eyes bruised with dark circles. He squints in our direction, the pair of us kneeling on the sitting room floor with our hands under the sofa.

  "I'm not gonna ask," Judas announces. He trudges into his bedroom.

  I pull my hands out. I wrap my arms around my knees. Kory studies me carefully.

  "It'll turn up," Kory says wistfully. "One of these days."

  I feel like I could start crying again. I don't think it has anything to do with the brush.

  * * * * *

  Judas takes me for a checkup before the school term begins. The hospital is in the south of The Spit, taller than it is wide, top-heavy. Navigating its interior is like maneuvering through a maze: There are staircases where there shouldn't be, desks standing in the middle of the floor.

  The physician's name is Dr. Moritz. He seems more interested in his clipboard than my head. He asks me vague questions and starts writing even before I've answered them. In the end he prescribes me yet another medication, which makes for a total of seven.

  "I don't like this," I mutter.

  I follow Judas out of the exam room. We leave the hub through big, gauzy glass doors, following the marble hallway to mahogany elevators. The hallway slants diagonally, then juts out into a random Z-shape.

  "Statins are good for you," Judas says. "Keep you from having another stroke."

  "Another?" I ask, stunned.

  He presses the button beside the gigantic elevator. "You had one when you were in your coma."

  I feel like Frankenstein's Monster, held together by scars and stitches and a plethora of drugs. I feel ugly, and ungainly, and like I shouldn't be walking this world.

  The elevator doors slide open. A boy brushes past us. I catch a sideways glimpse of brown curls.

  I don't know why, but I shiver.

  * * * * *

  Later that night I pack for school: my books, my brushes, my oil paints, my cell phone. I never did find the badger brush. I don't bother with the canvases. The teachers usually provide those.

  "I don't know," Judas says, lingering in my room.

  "You don't know what?" I ask him.

  "You could take a year off," Judas says. "Scholarship money's yours. They'll freeze it until you get better."

  I don't think I'm going to get better. I don't think brain damage is something you get better from.

  "It's okay." I muster up a smile for him. "I've even got a bodyguard now. I'll be fine."

  He quirks his eyebrows, but says nothing. He leaves me to my packing--and my thoughts.

  I never realized how insignificant my life was until it changed. Something devastating happens, and you expect the world to hold still with you; but it doesn't. The world is busy with plans of its own. Where do we as human beings fall on those schematics? Are we just the afterthought? It seems needlessly cruel to me that the world keeps spinning on its axis, as though it doesn't realize it's a few precious people lighter. But then, who were they precious to? To me. To Jocelyn's parents. Maybe that's not enough. Maybe this is the world's way of telling us our feelings are inconsequential.

  I can't believe in a world so cruel. I don't want to. So I won't.

  I pick up the pen and the post-it pad sitting on my bedtable. Call Jocelyn's parents, I write down. The three of us were left behind. That doesn't mean we're alone.

  * * * * *

  The alarm wakes me at six the next morning. I shut it off with the smack of my hand. I bolt out of bed, confused.

  School, reads the blue post-it note to my left. It's sticking to the edge of a glossy white calendar. September, the calendar reads.

  One by one, I take my pills, a bottle of water as my alleviant. I mark the date on the wall with their names. I shuffle out of bed, dress, and shunt outside, stuffing the post-it pad in my jacket's woolen pocket.

  It's dark in the apartment, which makes me think Judas must be sleeping in, which makes me think he hasn't found a job yet. I can't imagine picking up the pieces of your life after your life's been cordoned off for ten whole years. When I think about it, maybe Judas and I are alike, in that regard. I can't say that I've been suffering anywhere near as long as he has--or that he hasn't done anything to deserve his sentence--but the both of us are broken, unrecognizable shells, maybe past repair.

  Why did I have to lose my parents to gain my brother? I think I would have liked all three of them at once. Beggars can't be choosers. I've got to remember that.

  I fry eggs at the stove. I cover them and leave Judas a note with instructions for the warmer. I can't remember whether the microwave's working; something in this kitchen is broken, that's all I know for sure. Rebelliously, I drink cold orange soda. Mom's not
here to yell at me to drink milk. It doesn't have the same effect.

  The apartment lobby is as brown as coffee grounds. The carpet is stained. Kory Cohen leans against the mailboxes, waiting for me. He waves impassively when I descend the stairs.

  "I don't have to sit with the sociopaths, do I?" I ask cautiously.

  We step out the doors. "I've outgrown them," Kory declares. "I would be insulting myself if I tried to limit my capacity to their standards."

  Blustery gray winds chap my face. The cars are noisy when they race down the asphalt, traffic lights obscenely colorful amidst their plastic white prison. I follow Kory north through the urban labyrinth. From there we snake west, under the grime-encrusted overpass, under the faded banners strung limply between crumbling, abandoned apartment complexes and a 24/7 laundromat. Kory rambles to me about state-of-the-art energy, and how everything is meaningless anyway, because the universe is slowly dying a heat death, or a particle death, or whatever, but it's not going to be here indefinitely, don't you know. He tells me he's been sculpting something top secret, nobody's supposed to see it, but maybe he'll let me see it, but it's going to change the course of human history whether I see it or not. These aren't the conversations I used to have with Joss before the school day, that's for sure. I'm so busy nodding and trying to act interested, I almost don't notice it when the school towers before us. But there it is.

  Cavalieri School of Performing and Visual Arts strives to look every bit as pompous as it sounds. It's a matchbook fortress as delicate as the Eiffel Tower, as sharp as the Burj Khalifa, panes of glass stitched together like an unwieldy trellis, the whole sorry expanse reaching for the smoke and the grit that call themselves a sky. It doesn't belong in The Spit. Or maybe it does. This city feeds off of the lives of the humans that enter it. Cavalieri's the same, in a way: It devours you with its coursework, its competition, its echoes of You can do better than that, a glass oven disguised as your future.

  We step through the front doors. A water fountain rages in the lobby. The students are louder: They sit on the bronze basin, chatting, laughing, one girl screaming while the boy nearest her eats ketchup straight out of the package. Spindly staircases wind like toothpicks up the glass walls. They look about a thousand times less sturdy than the glass walls do. The crystalline elevators are their competition, jutting proudly out of the reflective floor tiles.

  "Do you want to get a coffee?" Kory asks. To the left of the lifts is a glass tunnel; beyond that, one very hedonistic canteen.

  "You can go without me," I tell him. I smile nervously. Am I imagining the inquisitive glances thrown my way?

  In the end he follows me to the elevator. We climb on board with a loud girl in braids and a slew of upperclassmen. We rise through the glass spire at a leisurely drift. I watch the cold city outside descending beneath us, white buildings on gray streets, gray buildings on gray ruins.

  It feels a little like I’m falling.

  "Do you know where you're supposed to go?" Kory whispers to me.

  "I--yeah. Why are you whispering?"

  "So we can pretend we're Secret Agent Men."

  "I can barely hear you, though." And I'm not a man.

  "That's no fault of mine."

  We get out on the seventh floor. The floors look gilded, almost, but I don't think even this school is pretentious enough to walk on gold. We navigate the brick hallway to a steel door that might look more at home in a bomb shelter. The door's already open; we step inside.

  The classroom is half as big as a football field, and twice as drafty, but windowless. Warm yellow lamps hang dangerously from exposed iron ceiling joists. The walls are brick and cold. One long, titanic blackboard runs the whole length of the room. Instead of desks, we have tables and benches, the wood distressed and archaic. One hundred eleventh graders fill the room from corner to corner, loud and laughing and carefree. This time I know I'm not imagining it: The laughter nearest me hushes down when I follow Kory to the back of the room. We sit on the bench farthest from the door. I duck my head. My stomach churning, my scalp tingling, it occurs to me that maybe Judas was right all along; maybe I should have taken the year off.

  "Remember," Kory says. He unzips his Wooper Looper backpack. Isn't he a little old for--? "All unwanted personnel will answer to me." His face scrunches sternly, passionately. "This is my good deed for the year."

  "Thank you," I tell him, floored. I don't understand it. I don't understand him. He's so bizarre--and he's not Joss. And it's not as if he can distract me from the fact that Joss should be here right now...but that he's trying is unbelievably kind.

  Our homeroom teacher, a beefy, middle-aged man, walks through the door and, with a great amount of difficulty, heaves it shut behind him. Like most of the faculty around here, he's a real artsy type, by which I mean his hair hasn't been cut in years and his wardrobe looks like he lifted it off of a mime. A thin little goatee curls around his mouth. He grabs the lectern at the front of the room. His name is Mr. Reiner. I've had him before for English/Composition. I guess he'll be teaching the same class this semester.

  "Aw, look," Kory whispers to me. "Martin's trying to woo me back over to the dark side."

  A couple of benches ahead of us, an annoyed-looking boy with unfortunate fringe sits turned around in his seat, gesturing and glaring at Kory. Kory ignores his attempts. I look around the classroom and realize just how visible the disparity between students really is. The girth between each clique is practically tangible. Nearest the door sit the Starving Refugees. Joss gave them that name two years ago because they all look hungry and paranoid. Over by the busted filing cabinet sit the Happy Vegans. I don't know whether they're really vegans, but if you're protesting fur coats, or your dog just died, they'll be there. Smack dab in the center of the classroom are the Edgy Kids, with their dyed hair and their piercings and their ripped fishnets. In any other school they'd be the Misfits; but this is Cavalieri, so the Loud Boys, the Thespians, and the Lipliner Girls all sit crowded around them like fascinated satellites. The Sociopaths cluster toward the back of the room, because they hate everybody. The Conspiracy Theorists stick close to the shadows, because everybody hates them. And then there are the Space Cadets--only they're not so much a clique as two really weird girls no one wants to talk to. Sarah Ayello and Monica Tandy have been best friends since freshman year. Kind of like Joss and...

  "And I wrote for the Critical Observer for eleven years," Mr. Reiner brags. I've heard this speech before. "During that time I was nominated for three, yes, three Cutting Edge Journalism Awards--"

  "This class is always a cakewalk," Kory says to me. He's not whispering anymore. He doesn't have to. The room is so big, Mr. Reiner has to throw his voice just to be heard.

  "You've never talked to me before this year." I might as well answer him. Mr. Reiner isn't paying attention to any of us. "How come?" Even when I strain my memory, Kory doesn't stand out. Even when I try to remember him, I can't. A quiet part of me can't help wondering, sinkingly, whether that's the brain damage.

  "Well," says Kory, "you were never in a fatal car wreck before this year, were you?" Kory's face pales. "I don't mean that as a commentary," he says quickly. "I just--"

  "It's okay." I'm not sure that it is. I don't want him worrying, though.

  "I'm not good with normal people. Mom says I don't understand social cues."

  Smart mom. "That's okay," I tell him. "That just makes you more interesting."

  He looks relieved.

  "You're really nice," I tell him. "Thank you."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I was afraid to be alone." I miss Joss. I miss Mom and Dad. "When you're alone, people look at you. When they look at you, they start talking..."

  "You don't like the attention?"

  He wasn't kidding about the social cues. "There are better ways to earn it." Better than losing everyone you love. "But no," I add. "I don't like attention." And I'm supposed to be a painter. I don't think I make much sense.

  "
You don't make much sense."

  Coming from a boy like Kory Cohen, that might just be the final nail in the coffin.

  * * * * *

  I'm scheduled for Studio on the thirteenth floor. Kory isn't. Kory takes a different Studio class from me. Sculptors and painters don't mix.

  "If anyone gives you hell in there," Kory says, "write his name down. I'll take care of it."

  Secretly, I don't think Kory's equipped to "take care of" anyone--he's so skinny, a good uppercut would probably knock him out. Then again, I'm skinny, too. I can't believe how much weight I've lost this summer.

  We part ways by the elevators. I wave goodbye after Kory, but I'm not sure he sees. I slip my hand in the pocket of my thin, woolen jacket. The post-it pad's still there. I have to take twice as many notes as I used to if I'm going to stay on top of the curriculum.

  The Studio on the thirteenth floor is airy and light, the walls, floor, and ceiling all reinforced glass. It's silly; I used to worry that someone on the twelfth floor would peer right through the ceiling and see up my skirt. Now my concerns are of a different nature. I stare through the flimsy sheet of glass comprising the wall at my side. The cars and civilians down below are pinpricks on the city streets. The sky is as gray as dirty snow. It wraps around me like a shroud. My head spins and my stomach turns. I feel as if I'm falling. I've never felt this skittish before.

  Miss Rappaport is the kindly art teacher, her auburn hair streaked with gray. I swallow, reminded of Mom. She hands out fresh canvases and covers to some thirty of us. I choose an easel far from the outer wall and set up my oil paints. Normally I don't like this--standing in the middle of so many people--but I can't hug the wall today. I'll throw up if I do.

  "And remember," Miss Rappaport says, "don't be afraid to get dirty!"

  Our assignment is "First Impressions of the New School Year." The students nearest me shoot conspicuous glances my way. I hook my palette onto my arm. I falter, gazing at the empty canvas. The truth is, I don't think I have any first impressions. I feel as if I'm walking around half in a haze, half in a nightmare. Half of me recognizes that I survived something very few people do, that the event I walked away from claimed three irreplaceable lives. That's the half of me that's terrified. The other half of me still can't reconcile how something so earth-shattering could have happened to my parents; to my best friend. Because these things don't happen to my parents; to my best friend. And if it's earth-shattering, why is the earth still solid? Why is the world around me unchanged? Why does it strike me as unfair?