He’s woken by his phone. It’s a message from Blake, and just says talk to me. Jay ignores it. He gets another one on his way to school, and another as the bell rings for homeroom. Both are the same text as the first. So is the fourth message that comes twenty minutes later, and the one twenty minutes after that.
Jay doesn’t know if Blake’s set up a program on his computer to send the repeated messages, or if the guy is just really persistent and has a crazily long attention span. Either is possible. By lunch break Jay gives up, and switches his phone off. It’s not like Tommy or Michelle needs to message him while they’re all sitting together eating, after all.
After school Jay goes and does four really boring hours of waiter work at a corporate function. At least at dinner parties people wear interesting clothes. A whole lot of middle-managers in suits carrying clipboards and pens does not make for a fascinating afternoon.
Work finally done, he catches the bus back to his apartment. He doesn’t turn his phone back on, knowing that the pestering, repetitive messages must have reached critical mass in his poor battered electronic inbox. He’ll leave off dealing with Blake until after he’s got some sleep.
Blake’s waiting by the door to Jay’s apartment. Jay doesn’t say hello, opting instead to greet this visit with one coolly cocked eyebrow.
“You’re out early. It’s barely dark yet.”
“Timothy is demonstrating a heretofore undiscovered talent for extreme moping. It’s a great motivator for quick exits,” Blake replies. Jay sighs, feeling guilty.
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just needed a… I just want to do ordinary things for a little while. Like, buy some clothes or hang out in a food court and watch people, or put on a DVD and lie around on the couch,” Jay says helplessly. “I know that shit probably all sounds completely tedious and stupid to you, but it’s what I’m used to. Sometimes I like to remind myself of my predictable, boring life.”
Blake gives Jay an appraising look. “A boy like you doesn’t come to be out of a predictable sort of life. I don’t believe it for a moment.”
Jay shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. The fact remains that I need a normal night tonight… I want to spend it with you,” he says, realizing it’s the truth. He misses having Blake near him. “But I need to feel like a person. Doing person things. Do you understand?”
Jay knows this is a hopeless request, but that doesn’t stop him wanting it. He hates the idea that to love Blake he’ll have to give up all the rest.
“All right,” Blake says, smiling a smile that doesn’t look particularly comforting. “A night out in the throng of humanity it is, then. The first order of business you suggested was clothes, wasn’t it?”
“That doesn’t mean you take me to get measured for a hand-made bespoke suit from a master tailor, either,” Jay warns. Blake sighs theatrically.
“Compromise is the mark of maturity, you know. All right, all right. No measurements tonight, you have my word.”
Jay does compromise a little in the end, just enough to let Blake buy him three well-cut white shirts off the rack at a high-end menswear store. Jay takes heart in the fact that it’s not like he’ll be the only student at school wearing couture as part of the uniform. He’s always thought spending that much money on a few bits of clothes is stupid, but it’s not his credit card doing the spending, and Blake seems pleased that Jay is letting him take control.
“You’ve just spent more than two months’ rent of my apartment on shirts,” Jay points out, as they walk through the evening crowds, under the colorful lamplight of traffic signs and store windows. He likes this time of day, when sunset isn’t so long ago that the dark has properly set in, the warm winds of summer stirring litter up into little dances in the gutters.
“You wouldn’t have to pay rent at all if you moved into the townhouse,” remarks Blake in an arch voice. Jay knows better than to think it’s just an offhand remark. He shakes his head.
“Let’s see if we can manage a night out before we make any longer-term plans, ok?” he says. “Come on, I want a Frappuccino.”
They sit in the coffee shop, and agree that the emotionless jazz-lite being piped over the speaker system is absolutely horrible, and argue about whether the simple pop of the early Beatles is as musically significant as their later, more experimental work (Jay thinks it is; Blake disagrees), and discuss what directions music styles might take in the next few years.
It’s really nice.
That is, until a heavily pregnant woman with soft red hair and a scattering of peach-colored freckles on her face walks past, and Blake gets this look on his face that Jay knows far too well.
Jay scowls down into his drink, stirring the icy liquid with his straw and scowling. “Could you not?”
Blake gives him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What?”
“Look at people like you’re daydreaming about what their insides taste like. It’s…” Jay shakes his head, putting his drink down on the table between them. “I don’t know if I can do this. I feel like I’ve gotta pick either you and Timothy and Alexander, or being a part of this.” He waves his hand, hoping the gesture adequately encompasses the coffee shop, the street, the city, the human race, the way he means it to. “I. I just can’t. I can’t be one of you, and I can’t be in the middle anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Jason —” Blake protests, but Jay doesn’t turn around as he walks toward the door, and Blake doesn’t try to stop him.
The air is still warm and light outside as Jay walks toward the bus stop, which feels unpoetic, unfitting. After all he’s just given up, there should be storm clouds and gale-force winds around him. But there’s not, there’s just late summer heat and the empty bench of the bus shelter.
The next bus isn’t due for ages, of course, because that’s just the kind of awesome luck Jay’s having lately. He swears under his breath and sits on the end of the bench, propping his back against the brick side of the shelter.
After a few minutes, the pregnant lady from the coffee shop joins him. She’s holding a frothy-looking frozen chocolate drink, and gives him the blandly polite sort of smile which kind people give strangers at bus stops. Jay doesn’t smile back. He’s not a kind person, he knows that much about himself. It’s hard enough for him to stop himself from outright glaring at her, for making him acknowledge a part of Blake that he already knew existed.
They sit quietly, waiting at opposite ends of the bench for a bus that’s not due for another fifteen minutes. The woman takes a cell phone out of her purse and hits a speed-dial button.
“Hey, Paul, it’s Linda. I’m on my way home early. I decided to skip the movie, because I’ve got some abdominal pain. It’s probably nothing. I guess you’re not in yet. See you when I see you. Love you. Bye,” she says, in the bright talking-to-a-machine tone everyone gets when they have to leave a message after the beep.
Jay watches the traffic pass, the white headlights and red tail lights blurring into blotches of glow if he shuts his eyes almost all the way. The pregnant lady—Linda—leans over her belly a little, shifting uncomfortably on the bench. After a while the pain seems to pass and she lets out an exhausted breath, reaching for her phone again.
“Paul, Linda here again. If you’re there, grab the phone, will you? … okay, I guess you’re not. When you get in, call me. I think I might go back to the doctor tomorrow. She said I might need bed rest for the last month, and we’re almost there now. Think you can stand to wait on me for four weeks?” She gasps, interrupting her joking tone as she winces and curls over her belly again. “Love you. Bye.” Once the call is ended, she gives another gasp, this one sounding more like a sob. “Fuck.”
Suddenly, Jay can smell blood in the air. Linda’s shoulders are shaking as she stays as curled as her belly allows and rocks back and forth a little.
“I think you should get an ambulance,” Jay says, getting up off the bench and stepping over to crouch in front of her. “I’ll make the call i
f you want.”
“No, that’s —” Linda cries out softly, knuckles clenched white in the loose fabric of her shirt. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.” She hands over her phone.
Jay makes the call and gives the operator the location of the bus shelter, grateful for the calm efficiency phone emergency workers have. Then he sits down beside Linda and holds her hand, not caring that she’s squeezing his fingers tight enough to hurt. The blood-smell is getting stronger.
The ambulance arrives before there’s any sign of the bus, and Linda is lifted onto a stretcher in the back. Jay rides up the front with the driver, watching the road and the half-curious half-fearful expressions on the people in the cars around them as they drive. Everyone always wants to see drama, and everyone’s always afraid that the drama’s happening to someone they care about.
At the emergency room they wheel Linda away before Jay gets a chance to say anything to her. He sits out in the waiting area on a wholly uncomfortable chair, her phone still held in his hand. He redials the last number in her call list.
“You’ve reached Linda and Paul. We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number we’ll call you back. Here comes the tone!”
“Uh,” Jay says, as the beep trills shrilly in his ear. “Paul, Linda has been brought to the emergency room. She was having pains and there was some blood. So. Uh. Get here when you can, I guess. Okay. I have to turn this off now, there’s a sign on the wall that says phones can’t be on in the hospital, but I’ll call if I hear anything new.”
The coffee from the emergency room machine is terrible. There’s a teenage girl sobbing because it hurts to breathe, and her mother comforts her ineffectually and with a look of great distress in one corner. The high-set television on the wall is playing an infomercial for a wrinkle-reduction cream. Jay sits, and lets the competent bustle of the hospital go on around him. He feels very tired.
Three slow hours pass, and then an anxious-looking Japanese man in a slightly rumpled suit comes through the front doors, walking up to the admissions desk.
“My name’s Paul Kobayashi. I was told that my wife, Linda O’Carroll, was brought here? She’s eight months pregnant.”
Jay stands up and approaches Paul, as the nurse behind the desk nods and says “I’ll find that out for you, if you’ll wait a minute.”
“I came in the ambulance with Linda,” Jay says, handing Paul her phone.
“Thank you for staying,” Paul says, sounding amazed that Jay has spent three hours in an emergency room waiting area for someone he doesn’t know. Jay shakes his head.
“Nobody should have to be alone at a hospital,” he explains.
Then it’s two of them, sitting and waiting. Eventually, the nurse returns, a smile on his face.
“Mother and baby are both resting comfortably. I can take you through now if you want.”
Paul’s eyes go wide. “Um. Yes. Right, right. That would be fantastic. Yes.”
The nurse and Jay exchange a momentary grin at Paul’s flustered babbling. “Are you family as well?” The nurse asks Jay.
“You should come,” Paul nods. “Come on.”
Which is how Jay ends up in a private hospital room, an exhausted-looking Linda sitting up in bed with a tiny bundle in her arms. There’s a vacant clear-plastic crib next to the bed. The best word Jay can think of for the expression on her face is beatific, as she looks down at her child and then up at Paul. It makes Jay feel almost immeasurably sad and alone, but he doesn’t want to ever look away.
Later, after Paul and Linda have thanked him a dozen times—as if he did anything, all he did was call the ambulance and sit around in an uncomfortable chair for a while—and he’s held the baby for a moment and looked down at her scrunched, placid face as if he expects to find secret answers to anything there, Jay walks out into the midnight air outside the hospital and turns his phone on.
He ignores the dozens and dozens and dozens of new messages in his inbox, instead dialing Blake’s number.
“Jay.”
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you come pick me up? I’m at the hospital. There’s nothing wrong with me,” Jay says, even though that’s a lie. There’s something terribly, horribly wrong with him.
“Of course,” Blake says. Jay ends the call and crosses his arms over his chest. It’s still very warm out, despite the late hour, but he’s almost shivering.
The elegant, almost predatory-looking black Maybach that pulls up beside him a little while later is pretty much exactly the sort of car Jay expects the inhabitants of the townhouse to have access to. Alexander is behind the wheel, wearing a pair of driving gloves made of soft-looking calfskin. Blake is in the back, and Jay slides in next to him.
“I should have known you wouldn’t be driving,” Jay observes as they slip back onto the road.
“On the contrary, I enjoy driving very much,” Blake replies.
“He’s not allowed,” explains Alexander, meeting Jay’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Even he can’t charm his way out of that volume of traffic tickets.”
Jay smirks. Blake is looking at him with an expression that, on anyone else, Jay would call worried. He doesn’t know what it means on Blake’s face.
At the townhouse, Jay walks through the ground floor to the staircase and then up to the top level without pause. He’s never felt less like interacting with strange vampires, and a number of members of the gang whom he’s never met before are at home tonight.
He heads into Blake’s room and sits down on the center of the bed, feeling grimy and exhausted in the clothes he’s had on since he finished work at the conference hours and hours ago. Blake comes in and shuts the door, leaning against the wood and looking at Jay, waiting for Jay to speak.
“If I ask you seriously and sincerely not to be a complete… a complete you, while I talk, will you make an effort?” Jay asks flatly, his best disdainful expression on his face. He’s expecting Blake to come back with a quippy remark and one of those mean, mocking, self-important smiles that Jay hates. He hates them largely because those smiles always send a sharp shiver down Jay’s spine. He hates that it’s a giant pop-culture joke that hormones make teenagers crazy and screwed up, because cliché comedy reduces it all and makes it cheap, when what Jay is feeling is real and awful and amazing. Even when he’s pissed off at Blake, and weary, and everything, he looks at Blake and feels dizzy, stupid, like he’s drugged.
Jay thought at first he should be suspicious of that, that maybe Blake was doing a vampire mind-control thing on him, but Alexander said that Timothy was the only one of them who could do anything like that in a significant way, and anyway Jay knows that the truth is far simpler: he’s a teenager with stupid chemicals doing stupid things to his brain, a teenager who’s fallen hard for a guy he wants so, so badly even when the guy is being an asshole.
Blake doesn’t smile, though. He looks like he wants to, but mostly damps down on the expression and just nods. Jay takes what he can get.
“You think I’m apathetic,” Jay starts. “Pretty much everyone does, except my friends. Me and Michelle and Tommy get each other. We all know that… some kids go through stuff. Stuff that teaches them things. Not even just sad stuff. Kids can lose their parents or live in a war zone or be poor and somehow still manage to stay kids. But other kids go through something that makes them see how the… I guess it just depends who the kid was before the bad thing. Some kids stay kids after. Some don’t. Tommy was in hospital when he was young. He got better, but a year later the doctor who treated him was arrested. He’d murdered six patients. One of them was this little girl in the same ward as Tommy. The doctor had been the one to tell Tommy when she died. Tommy cried, and the doctor was the one who held and comforted him. Michelle…” Jay blinks and shakes his head, uncrossing and recrossing his legs underneath him on the bed. “Anyway. My point is that we’re not apathetic. I’m not apathetic. I’ve just learned how the world works and I’m trying all the time to hang on and love everything anyway. It’
s… it’s hard.”
Jay looks down at his hands. He can’t tell this story if he looks at Blake. He won’t be able to get it out. He wants to get it out. He’s been holding on to it for so long. Even Michelle and Tommy don’t know all of it, but he can tell it to Blake because Blake already knows that monsters are real not just in the sense of true evil but in the sense of claws and fangs.
“I don’t remember a whole lot about my early childhood,” says Jay, keeping his voice even and toneless. “There were eight or nine of us usually. When one of us died we might have someone new come, but not right away. The new kids were babies usually. I don’t know if I’d been a baby when I got there. I don’t know if any of the others were my brothers or sisters. I don’t know who my parents were, even if I can guess easily enough what happened to them.
“We were taken care of. Kept healthy. The… the…” Jay bites his lip. “They called me Jason. I guess that was my name when I got there. They didn’t bother with names for some of the babies. The very small ones. I don’t know. I don’t remember anything before those rooms.
“They drained blood out of us through hypodermics. It was a schedule, so we never got too weak. They always used the hypodermics. They told us that kids who got bitten too often always died from it. Always. No matter how careful they were about not taking a lot of blood. I used to wonder how often was too often but I never asked. Asking questions was dangerous. They only bit the older ones. They wanted the older ones to die. That’s what always happened.
“When I was five the oldest was Sofie. She was nine. She had long, blonde hair. She was beautiful. I had never loved anything before her. I loved her. I remember how she’d fight and scream whenever they came near her, or me. She could remember her life before. She’d had an older brother, but he was too old. They didn’t keep him. Maybe that’s why she decided to love me. She took me with her when she ran away. I was the only boy there.
“She started planning in earnest how to run away as soon as they started biting her. She must have known she was running out of time. Facing down her own death. All she said to me was that the bites hurt more than the needles and she wanted a holiday.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 11