ARC: Feather Bound

by Sarah Raughley

  5

  REMINISCENCE

  I’d planned to get to the thrift store at least fifteen minutes late, but who was I kidding? I checked my watch. Nine o’clock on the dot.

  The night’s chill sent a violent shiver down my back, still sore despite all the aloe I’d been rubbing on it. I bet it was my damn mattress’ fault.

  I glanced up and down the modestly busy streets, absently tugging on my sweatshirt. No Hyde. Not yet. There was a guy scratching his privates at the hotdog stand, though. Very classy. The vendor grimaced too.

  Even after wrapping my arms around my chest, which usually gave me a false but comforting sense of security, I felt oddly exposed. I still wasn’t entirely sure that this was a good idea, so I decided to stay out of the thrift store’s light, which beamed out of overlarge display windows. Instead, I kept to the shadow of the alley next to it. At least that way I’d be able to see Hyde coming before he saw me. If I got cold feet I could sneak off without him noticing me. And of course, if he didn’t show up, at least I wouldn’t look like a jackass standing around in the cold.

  I shuffled over to the alley, but the second I rounded the corner, I rounded back just as quickly. I pressed my back against the thrift store’s dirty bricks.

  There were two boys at the other end of the alley, behind a dumpster. Obscured, but not nearly obscured enough. By the sound of their voices they were fairly young – probably my age. But then there’s only so much you can garner from moaning alone. It sounded heavy too.

  Damn it, Hyde, this is on you. I hated PDA with a fiery passion, if only because it reminded me of my own pathetic, non-existent love life.

  “Stop!” one boy suddenly cried out, sharply enough for me to hear him.

  “Come on, you said you’d show me.” From the sound of it, the older boy was not only older, but sly enough to pretend he was also wiser. I turned the corner again, making sure to keep hidden. He was taller too, broad and lean. He perfectly filled out the black jeans hugging his hips, though without more light, I couldn’t tell much more.

  Taking the younger boy’s hand, he began to pull him away from the dumpster into the alley. For a second I could see the younger boy’s hair, black bangs matted against his forehead, and his thin frame – deathly thin, clad in a beat up shirt that pooled around his waist. For a second, the younger boy seemed mesmerized, unable to resist the siren song calling to him. But at the last moment, he pulled back.

  “No. I changed my mind, Jack. It’ll hurt too much.”

  Even from here I could see the older boy’s body go rigid. “So what, Devon? Don’t you trust me?” I wouldn’t. The hard edge in Jack’s voice didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  What am I doing? This wasn’t any of my business. I boosted off the brick wall.

  And heard a crash. It was the dumpster – or more precisely, a body smashing into it. I looked around. Some people walking by had obviously heard but decided it wasn’t any of their business either. Or maybe they thought it was a cat. I swiveled back around the wall. Both boys had disappeared from sight, behind the dumpster, but every once in a while I could see the bodies thrashing. And I could hear muffled yells – muffled by a hand.

  “Just let me see them,” Jack whispered. “Come on, you promised.”

  First one feather. Then two. They fluttered to the ground.

  “You said I can have you.”

  Even with his voice muffled I could tell Devon was whimpering.

  What do I do? Every bone in my body told me to rush in and knock the other guy out, as if I could – but I had to at least try.

  A surprise attack. I could sneak in and hit him in the back of the head or kick him in the nads. Something, anything. It’s what Ade would do. But my body froze. I could hear Devon scraping against brick, but my feet wouldn’t move.

  I should have moved. Why wouldn’t I move?

  I felt it. Something deep and primal that grew heavier with each of Devon’s feathers that fell to the ground. Something pulling at me from the pit of my stomach. Self-preservation. Fear. The instinct to protect myself. Against what? What was I afraid of?

  My fingers pressed against the brick. I considered calling for help, but then that would mean exposing Devon. How could I know who was walking by and how they’d react when face to face with a young, vulnerable swan? The person who saved him could just as easily pick up where Jack left off.

  “You can have mine too.” Jack’s voice thickened with a kind of lust that shriveled me up from the inside. “Just like we promised.”

  I was thinking too much. I needed to act.

  I shut my eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Dee,” Hyde whispered beside me. He gave my shoulder a delicate squeeze, his fingers smooth against the crook of my neck. With a sharp breath, I jerked back, but before I could even see him properly, he walked into the alleyway.

  “Hey,” Hyde said, and paused as if thinking of what to say next. “Stop that.”

  The struggling indeed stopped. Jack practically leapt away from Devon, standing in the middle of the alley like a spooked stray cat, his hair bristling, his eyes wide, his body poised to attack. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Hyde,” Hyde answered.

  Really, Hyde?

  But somehow, his almost cartoonish confidence made it easier for me to follow suit. Not with the confidence thing, of course, that wasn’t going to happen. But at the very least I made my presence known.

  “So what the hell is this? What are you guys, the fucking police?” Jack puffed out his chest, his false bravado clearly meant to sell his alpha-male façade.

  Hyde didn’t take the bait. “Do you happen to see any uniforms?”

  “Well, douche bag, we were having a private conversation, so how about you screw off before I really get pissed.” As if heeding a wordless commandment, Devon slinked up to his side, or started to, but each step dragged. He never quite got within Jack’s reach. But at least now I could see him clearly: fresh faced and ashamed.

  Hyde moved ever closer to the pair with a sinister kind of sway. “First: private conversations work better in private places,” he said. He stopped right in front of Jack, who took a step back despite his not-too menacing glare. “Second–”

  Hyde punched him – one hard hit to the jaw that launched Jack to the asphalt.

  “Hyde!” I ran up to him while Devon rushed out of the way. “What are you–?” I stopped. One look at the quiet, stifling fury seething in Hyde’s eyes and I stopped.

  “Now, I just got here, so maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but for a second there it looked as though you were about to do something people generally should never do. Ever.” Hyde loomed over the boy who rubbed his face and squirmed beneath him. Then, kneeling down, he grabbed Jack by his collar and pulled his face close. “I might punch you again,” Hyde said. “I’m mulling it over.”

  “Don’t!” It was Devon this time. Another feather slipped from underneath his shirt and got stuck in his shoe. His face flushed as he squeezed his hands into fists. “Did I ask for your help? God, j-just…” He pulled his shirt, scrunching the fabric in his hand so that it pressed against his back – maybe to keep more feathers from falling out. He stared at Jack, his lips trembling, struggling to find the words. “Just forget it!”

  And he ran off. As soon as Hyde released Jack from his grip, the boy stumbled to his feet and fled too, though in the opposite direction. That was comforting at least.

  Hyde stood up and dusted himself off. “Huh. Well, he’ll thank me one day.”

  I stared down the alleyway, my hand at my mouth. I’d never seen… I mean, people generally didn’t do that sort of thing out in the open, if at all. I mean, it may have started out as consensual, but… tearing out someone’s feathers in an alleyway… I mean wasn’t that against the law or something? I was sure it was.

  Hyde faced me. “Dee. You OK?”

  Dee. He’d said it so casually. Like the last nine years, nine seconds hadn’t happened. I couldn’t eve
n answer.

  Any anger I’d seen etched in his face had already vanished as quickly as a whisper. His smile was soft, shy. He gazed at me as if studying every pore on my face – and there were many. Then, as if suddenly noticing that I could see him too, he turned, shifting on his feet. “Sorry I’m a little late. I had to go visit someone at the…” He cleared his throat. “Well anyway, I’m glad you came. Honestly, I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure I should have.” Understatement. “I’m still not sure.”

  “I understand. No, I completely understand. Man you’ve gotten taller. How old are you now? What, eighteen?”

  “Seven… Wait, what? Just like that, you expect me to–”

  But his eager smile was just too sincere. Everything about him was. The fidgeting; the avoiding eye-contact. It was the joy and excitement and nervousness of seeing an old friend again.

  Maybe he really did just want to see me. Maybe not. I stayed silent.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he suggested, straightening out the sleeves on his jacket. “We… we can catch up. Right?”

  “And you can tell me all about the wacky adventures you’ve been having while me and everyone else who cared about you thought you were dead.”

  He flinched. Oh, so he felt the sting? Good. Being alive meant feeling pain. It was his choice to rise from the dead. It was high time he got reacquainted with it again.

  Hyde recovered quickly. Walking up to me, he offered me his arm. I didn’t take it. “All right then.” He smoothed his hair instead. “But about the whole ‘everyone else who cared about me’ thing? If I remember correctly, I’m pretty sure it was just you, Dee.”

  I kept my eyes on the street.

  Once the silence between us had become so unbearable I considered making a run for it down the intersection, Hyde decided to tell me why he wanted us to meet at Underhill. As if I didn’t already know: Prospect Park. I guess the place still had meaning for him. I guess he remembered the times when we’d gone there, me with my bushy brows, him with his orthopedic shoes and that offensively lame bow tie he loved to wear because he thought it made him look cool. Ade and I would always mock him mercilessly on sight.

  “Something funny? You’re smiling.”

  When I looked up at him, he flashed me a toothy grin, perfect white, just adorable enough for me to stop silently resenting him for about a second.

  Seconds passed.

  “Nope.”

  “Really? Not even a little? Or maybe you smile at random intervals to confuse and thus emotionally manipulate your dates?”

  Dates? I gave him an incredulous look. “I guess I just have zero control over the motor muscles in the lower half of my face,” I said flatly. “Which is one thing we apparently have in common. Or is there another reason why you’d call whatever the hell this is a date?”

  At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “OK, I’ll give you that.” And yet, while we’d been weaving through people at a comfortable distance apart, he seemed to take our exchange as a cue to slide closer to me.

  Oh God. I shoved my hands into my sweatshirt pocket and stared at the traffic. “So, Hyde, are you actually going to tell me where you’ve been all these years or are we just going to exchange witty banter for a while and then call it a night? Curfew, remember?”

  “France.”

  I stopped. An angry-looking guy in a newsboy cap knocked into my left shoulder as he brushed by, but I barely noticed. “What?”

  “Well, Paris, technically, though I did spend some time in Monaco every so often since it’s close enough a drive–”

  “You were in Europe?”

  “Well…” He paused. “Kinda, yeah.”

  My fingers twitched inside my sweatshirt. Funny. I didn’t exactly know what I’d expected, and yet now all I could picture was him drinking champagne in some obnoxiously trendy nightclub surrounded by a troupe of gorgeous, scrawny French models hanging on his every word as he fed them olives and laughed it up. All while I was alone and depressed at home, trying valiantly to get over my dead best friend.

  “Are you shitting me?” I’d yelled it loud enough to spook some poor child as she climbed into a parked car by the side of the road. The mother shot me a withering glare. I lowered my voice a little. “Don’t give me that crap, Hyde. Your dad said you were dead. It was in the papers. Why would he say you were dead if you were living it up in France?”

  “Paris,” he corrected, though the way his face pinched and cheeks flushed made it clear that he knew how stupidly unnecessary that was. “Look, can we sit down somewhere? Hey, Grand Army Plaza’s right over there.” He let out a nervous half-chuckle. “Man, Army Plaza. Remember how we used to–”

  I crossed the street and stopped, directly in front of Bailey fountain, and turned to face him, folding my arms. “Well?”

  Hyde gazed at the water shooting up from the ridges, showering the stone bodies in an endless stream. Wearily, he sat down on a nearby bench. “Ralph Hedley.” He let the name linger for a moment, waited for all the breath to drift out of him and rise into the air as a quiet offering to the dead. “He was a lot of things. ‘Truthful’ wasn’t one of them.”

  “Well I guess one shouldn’t expect honesty from a man who could enslave his wife and still show his face at many a social event.”

  “I guess not,” Hyde said.

  I blinked, shocked at Hyde’s honesty for a moment. “Why would he lie? What would make Ralph Hedley tell the world his one and only adopted son was dead?”

  Hyde traced his finger along the bench. “I don’t know. That’s a good question. Maybe he was ashamed of me? I did like to go to girls’ birthday parties after all.” Grinning at me, he added, “Or maybe he just got tired of me. It happened after Mom died, and he’d already gotten his deal. Maybe he just didn’t need me anymore.” He leaned over, his arms on his knees. “Then again, his company was going through a bit of financial trouble at the time. Maybe he just needed to cut back on his expenses? Really, Deanna, who knows…”

  “Stop it.”

  He was lying. He had to be. Hyde had that way about him. He’d told me he’d dined with a prince of England once and waited to see if I bought it. He’d offer me lies wrapped in pretty ribbons and laugh when I swallowed them whole. A trickster. A jack ass, now. It was fun, he’d told me once, only because I always fell for it. But that was nine years ago.

  “Hyde? Tell me the truth; this doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What’s there to tell? Sometimes life gets dicey and your dad fakes your death.”

  True or not true. I couldn’t tell. I thought I could scrutinize his every movement, break him down to his micro-expressions and figure it out. Nothing.

  “Your dad faked your death because… life got ‘dicey’?”

  “Yes. Death threats, ransoms and all.”

  Death threats? Why would anyone threaten Hyde? To get to Ralph?

  “And you, what, lived as a meagre shepherd boy these past nine years until you could reclaim your rightful place on the throne?”

  “Or some variation of that. But with fewer musical numbers.”

  “Are you telling me the truth or aren’t you?” Even to my own ears, I sounded desperate. It was embarrassing. Just a minute ago I was sure I’d figured him out.

  Hyde was still looking at me when he answered. “Maybe. There’s nothing I can tell you that you’d believe anyway. None of it makes sense because none of it is supposed to. But I’m here. I’m alive. That’s the truth. Isn’t that enough?”

  Anger crashed down on me. “I’ll tell you everything,” he’d said. He’d promised me he’d tell me everything, but it was just a ruse to get me here, wasn’t it? I could have laughed. He was a coward. No amount of faux-existentialist drivel would change that.

  Hyde looked up at me, almost broken; his arms stretched over his knees at odd angles, his body folded, his eyes empty. If there were something he wasn’t telling me, there was a reason. At least that much I c
ould see.

  He could keep it. I didn’t care anymore.

  As the fountain rippled behind me, filling the silence, I finally let the last few days settle like dust. Once they did, I could see Hyde clearly. No longer the chubby little boy who’d followed me around Brooklyn. He was older, leaner. A better liar and a worse liar all at the same time. He was arrogant. And he was tired. I could see that too, as clear as day. Worn down as if laden with battle scars. He couldn’t hide it, as hard as he tried.

  “You’ve changed, Hyde,” was all I said.

  “Oh?” He crossed his legs and gazed up at me. “But isn’t that my line?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He examined me, not seductively, but clinically, like he was taking stock of the inventory and comparing it against past data. “I’ve been thinking about it since the funeral. But you do look a little… worn.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He stood up and approached me with calm, even steps. I stepped back. “I don’t know. The last time I saw you, when we were kids I mean, you were much brighter. It was like you were bursting with life. What happened?”

  He looked a little sad. A little, but a little was enough to nearly send me into a rage. How dare he? How dare this asshole, who lied and lied about everything, make me feel like a child being scolded by her parents because she didn’t run fast enough to win the sprint?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and clearly, neither do you.”

  I thought of the sheen on my mother’s coffin when the light from the stained glass windows hit it at just the right angle. I thought of my dad, that same night, passed out on the couch. I thought of myself, picking up the bottles and staring at the peeling paint on walls I could have sworn were closing in.

  “You used to tell me that you were going to write the next Sound of Music. You wrote little stories about us all the time.” Hyde gave me a sidelong glance. “Did that change too?”

  “Everything changes.”

  He looked as if he wanted to reach out to me so I turned, quickly, and checked my watch. “It’s almost half-past ten. I need to get home.”