Breathless

by Jessica Warman

  Mazzie hesitates for only a second. “Sure.”

  “You’re kind of a mystery—just like Katie!” Lindsey continues, oblivious to the delicacy of the situation. “Where did you come from? I mean, it’s weird for students to transfer here after their freshman year, so we’ve just been wondering why—”

  “Her old school closed,” I supply.

  Lindsey blinks at me. “Really?” She switches her gaze to Mazzie. “It did?”

  Beside me, I can sense Mazzie relaxing a bit more. “They didn’t have enough funding,” she says. “Low enrollment. That kind of thing.”

  “That happens sometimes with private schools,” Estella says. “My father says—”

  “Your stepfather,” Lindsey murmurs.

  “Whatever.” She points her fork at Mazzie. “If your last school closed, I’m sure there was a good reason. You’re very lucky to be here.”

  Mazzie nods. I can only imagine what she’ll say about this conversation later. “I know I am.”

  “Look at us!” Lindsey says, pleased. “We’re a foursome now.” When she reaches across the table to close her hand over Mazzie’s, I see Mazzie flinch, almost imperceptibly. “I can tell we’re all going to be good friends,” she says. She claps her hands together. “Oh, this is great! Isn’t it great, Katie?”

  For the first time, I find myself wishing I could be alone with Mazzie. Things might still be raw with her, but at least we can be honest with each other.

  Lindsey might have a point, though. Everybody needs friends, and now I’ve got them. And if Mazzie is with us, then at least I’ve got one person who knows the truth about me and is willing to put up with me anyway.

  The first party I go to is at Lindsey’s house, just before winter break. Even though Mazzie has been eating lunch with us for weeks now, it’s the first time I can convince her to come off campus.

  The four of us—me, Lindsey, Estella, and Mazzie—are supposed to meet up early in the evening to help Lindsey decorate. When Mazzie and I get to her yard—the house is close enough to campus that we can walk in just a few minutes—Mazzie stops me, closing her hand over mine. “Katie. What is she doing?”

  We both peer through the branches of the maple tree in Lindsey’s front yard. Behind the tree, there’s an expanse of well-maintained lawn, the grass littered with only a few stray leaves since the gardener’s last visit. The house stands beyond the lawn, huge and dark except for several strands of Christmas lights strung across a trio of sliding glass doors that lead to the indoor pool. Estella stands on the patio outside the doors, dressed in a tiny yellow bikini and a threadbare gray cardigan, white flip-flops on her feet. She’s smoking what I think at first is just a cigarette, but then I smell it: that familiar, heavy sweetness that colors so many of my memories from summers with Will.

  “Oh my God. Is that . . . marijuana?” Mazzie asks as we keep walking. By now we’re close enough for Estella to hear.

  “Shh.” I nod.

  Mazzie grips my arm more tightly, her fingernails digging into me. Her voice is a whisper. She’s scared. “I don’t want to go. Let’s go home. Okay?”

  Home. She means back to the dorm. Part of me wants to go with her, but it’s too late. We’ve been spotted. Besides, tonight is supposed to be a big night for me.

  Estella peers at us. “Mazzie, I can hear you. Would you relax? Her parents aren’t home, you know.”

  “Why are you in your bathing suit?” Despite her ability to bring Estella down a peg or two, Mazzie still doesn’t like her much. “It’s forty degrees out here. You look stupid.”

  “You look stupid.” Estella takes one last hit of the joint before kneeling over to put it out on the cement patio. She drops the remaining half into the pocket of her cardigan. She looks past us, shading her gaze against the sunset. “Where are Drew and Stetson?”

  It’s been weeks since our art class encounter, and Drew and I are only starting to spend more time together outside of swimming practice—although we have been sitting together in art, to Grace and Leslie’s horror. Since Drew is so beloved by the faculty, he actually convinced Mrs. Averly to change the seating chart for him.

  Tonight, though, I’m told things are supposed to change. As we sit beside the indoor pool, our feet dangling in the water, Estella says to me, “Drew is only coming tonight because he wants to see you.”

  I smile, trying to be coy. “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” Lindsey says from behind the bar. The pool at Lindsey’s house is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before: aside from the pool, there’s an entire wall lined with shelves of liquor and a full-length oak bar. On the opposite wall, a spiral staircase leads to a balcony with a pool table and exercise equipment. “You know otherwise Drew doesn’t want to be in the same room as Estella,” she yells.

  I nod. “So I’ve heard. Why is that?”

  Estella shakes her head. “No good reason. He thinks I’m going to”—she leans in closer, lowers her voice in a mock whisper—“hell.”

  “You are going to hell.” It’s Mazzie.

  Estella shrugs. “What can I say? He doesn’t like me. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, you don’t?” Lindsey is mixing vodka and cherry pop together in a glass. “Last year,” she tells us, making a face as she takes a sip of her drink, “Estella and Drew went out on a date. One date. It was right after his sixteenth birthday and he’d just gotten a Land Rover. Estella asked him to go to Michelle DellaCorte-McCarthy’s birthday party with her. And once they got there—”

  “Drew was completely boring and I knew I wasn’t going to have any fun with him, and we never went out again, and that’s the whole—”

  “No, it isn’t!” Lindsey takes another sip of her drink—it’s like she’s getting braver with every swig. “Estella got really, really drunk. Like, so drunk that Drew had to leave early and take her home because she was acting stupid. And on the way home—”

  “She threw up all over my car.”

  We all look toward the sliding glass doors. Drew and Stetson are standing side by side. Drew has a smile for everyone, including Estella, but I can tell it’s forced. When he looks at me, though, he seems to relax.

  Estella stands up, peeling off her cardigan to expose her bikini as she approaches Stetson. “It’s okay, Drew,” she says. “Stetson is more my type.”

  Stetson grins at all of us. “Lucky me.”

  Outside it’s cool and growing colder. By the time everyone arrives, it’s probably in the thirties. But inside there’s steam rising off the pool, the heat turned on in the rest of the house and spilling into the room even though we don’t need it. Everybody is sweating.

  After midnight sometime, I’m surprised to see Drew leaning over the bar, talking animatedly with Stetson, both of them drinking beer, passing a joint back and forth. Drew has told me before that he doesn’t drink or smoke. In fact, his exact words were that he tries to live by “God’s Law.” At the time, it seemed obvious he was serious. Watching him now, I feel a twinge of confusion. Doesn’t what he’s doing now make him kind of a hypocrite?

  I’m pretty sure the only person at the whole party who isn’t drinking or smoking or doing something like that is Mazzie. She’s in the pool with a bunch of other people, playing volleyball, and she looks like she’s having a perfectly good time. She’s even smiling.

  I make my way to the bar, stepping over half a dozen warm bodies on beach towels.

  Just be coy. Be aggressive—like a tiger! Boys like that. But not too aggressive. “I thought you didn’t do things like this,” I say, putting my arm around Drew like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  I have a cigarette in one hand, and a vodka and Cherry Coke in the other. With every mouthful of my drink, I have to stifle a gag.

  “It’s a party, honey,” Stetson says. “Right, Drew?” Stetson has never—not once—called me by my first name. I think this is the first time all year he’s spoken to me directly.

  Drew looks around at the
rest of the party. He suddenly seems annoyed. “Can we go outside?”

  I look around the room. The air is getting so thick with smoke that I can barely make out faces anymore. What are Lindsey’s parents going to say about this? Are they even going to care? They’re at a conference this weekend for—get this—research scientists who have written science fiction novels dealing directly with the theory of relativity and its questionability.

  It’s freezing outside, and I’m in my wet bathing suit. I start shivering the moment we step out the door. Drew, who is clumsy and drunk and sweet all at once, gives me his puffy Gore-Tex coat to wear. It covers only my upper half, but I pretend not to mind the cold as we stand outside, huddled close together on the patio. The noise from inside is just a background din of voices now.

  Drew takes a step closer to me and says, “Be warm,” putting his hands on my cheeks. My teeth are chattering a little; I can feel my wet hair going quickly brittle in the cold, goose bumps rising up and down my bare legs.

  “Katie,” Drew says. I can tell he isn’t used to drinking. “Katie, Katie, Katie.”

  Chatter, chatter, chatter. “Hmmm?” I smile. “There are, like, thirty rooms inside with heat. Do you want to go in and talk—”

  “No.” He takes a deep breath. “This will be quick.” His hands are still on my face, and I can feel them shaking a little. “I really like you,” he says.

  As quickly as the cold came over me, it disappears. There is warmth everywhere. I knew it might be coming tonight, sure, but now that it’s actually happening and I’m standing here with him—so cute and tall and liked by everyone, including me more than ever, whether he’s a hypocrite or not—before I can stop myself, I ask him, “Why?”

  He steps closer, so that our bodies would be touching if it weren’t for the very thick layer of Gore-Tex between us. “Why not?”

  I imagine how Mazzie might respond: How much time do you have?

  As excited as I am, I’m confused. Why me? I’m not as pretty as half of the other girls in school, I’m not rich the way everyone else is. The only things that are special about me are that I’m a fast swimmer and a big liar.

  “You’re talented and innocent and sweet and . . . you seem kind of lost, Katie.” He brings his face closer, so that our cold noses are touching. “Do you ever feel lost?”

  I nod. “Sometimes.”

  “I want to help you. Can I help you?”

  “Yes.”

  He kisses the tip of my nose. I close my eyes. I hope people can see us from inside, especially Grace. He kisses my eyelids, my cheeks, my chin, my forehead—everywhere but my mouth. “Do you want to come to church with me sometime soon?” he murmurs.

  It’s not what I was expecting. “Uhhh . . . okay.”

  More kisses. My earlobes. My neck. I start kissing back, but every time I try to kiss him on the lips, he tilts his head away. After a few minutes of this, he says, “Oh, God. I need to go inside.” For someone so religious, I’m kind of shocked by how lax Drew is with his language. Wouldn’t some people consider him blasphemous for invoking the name of God—whether he’s drunk or not?

  He leads me inside by the hand—every other girl is watching us, even if they’re pretending not to—and leaves me by the bar with Stetson before disappearing into the bathroom.

  “You know what he’s doing in there, right?” Stetson asks. He is behind the bar, casually prying open the lock on a glass case of what appears to be very old and expensive scotch. “He’s throwing up. He’ll be sick for, like, three days.” The lock opens. Stetson looks at the bottles for a few minutes, picking them up to examine their labels more closely, and then puts them all back, replacing the lock without taking so much as a sip.

  “You have to loosen him up for us,” he says to me, lighting a cigarette between his teeth, which are just a tad crooked. “Okay? Drew is my boy, but he’s uptight as hell.”

  “He wants me to go to church with him,” I say. I can’t believe I’m actually talking to Stetson McClure. I’m amazed I’m able to form a complete sentence.

  Stetson shakes his head. “He’s just nervous. He likes you.” He blows smoke in my face. “Sorry. He does, though. A lot. He talks about you all the time. And Drew could have any chick he wants, you know? But he’s picky, so you should be flattered.” Picking up his drink, he starts to walk away. “You’re a lucky girl.”

  It’s a little past three in the morning, and pretty much everyone is asleep in different rooms all over the house. As far as I know, Drew is still in the bathroom downstairs, sick as a dog.

  I’m by myself in one of the spare bedrooms on the third floor. I haven’t been able to fall asleep, even though I’m so tired and thirsty that my muscles are starting to cramp up.

  The door creaks open. It’s Mazzie.

  She perches herself on the edge of the bed and pokes at my head. “Hey. Are you awake?”

  I nod.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  I nod again.

  She pauses, thinking about it. “We don’t have a car. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “It’s okay. We can walk.”

  It has started snowing, a thick wet layer of slush that won’t stick. There are no cars on the road, nothing but big white flakes falling onto our faces, erasing the buildings around us, and the low swish of our feet on the road as we try to keep our footing, a soft wheeze humming from the bottom of my lungs from too much smoking.

  In the middle of National Road, Mazzie turns to me without any warning. She grabs my arm and we both fall down, and then we’re sitting there in the middle of the bare road, and for a few seconds we just sit there, quiet, listening to the eerie silent noise of snow falling against land.

  Snow covers Mazzie’s eyelashes, making her look like a tiny ice princess—the closest she will ever come to wearing makeup.

  “You look pretty,” I say.

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m serious.”

  But she doesn’t want to hear it. Instead she says, “So—you and Drew?”

  I nod. “I think so.”

  She starts to get up, pulling me along with her. “I don’t like him.”

  “You don’t like anyone,” I say. I grin at her. “Except me.”

  We’re both standing now, but neither of us seems in a hurry to get back to the dorms. There is such constant pressure at Woodsdale, with academics and swimming and this whole new social life, sometimes I don’t realize how tense I am until I’m with Mazzie, and I notice its absence. The only other time I feel this way is when I’m underwater. I’ve started to realize that, when it is only the two of us, I feel a kind of separateness from everyone else. Sometimes she tells me things about myself that even I don’t know.

  “No,” she says, “I don’t like you.”

  But even though Mazzie isn’t a snob like Estella or a pushover like Lindsey, she still knows a different world than me. She’s never set foot inside a public school. Her opinion of Woodsdale as subpar, as far as boarding schools go, hasn’t changed. I’ve told her everything about me and I still know so little about her. But I can’t imagine anything she could possibly tell me that would make me like her less.

  Back in our room we strip down to our underwear, red faced and breathing heavily from the trek. I know she will grind her teeth all night, giving a beat to my wheeze. It will sound like this: crunch-phee-crunch-phee-crunch-phee—it’s almost like our song. After so many nights of the same thing here, I cannot fall asleep without its melody.

  chapter 6

  Will is home. My parents don’t even tell me. But I know, as soon as I walk in the front door for winter break, that he’s here somewhere. On the family photo that hangs over the mantel in the living room, my brother has drawn big red horns and a tail on the Ghost with permanent marker.

  I’ve been dreading Christmas break up to this point. I even considered staying at Woodsdale—there are a few kids who do that, mostly from other countries and different religions that don’t celebra
te Christmas—but the Ghost wasn’t about to let that happen.

  I run up the steps to Will’s room, knock on the door, and open it before he can even respond.

  I want to close my eyes and turn away. I cover my mouth with my hand. He looks like a different person: twenty, maybe thirty pounds lighter, paler than the Ghost himself. He’s shirtless, on his back in bed, headphones over his ears, tapping a bare foot as he gazes at the ceiling. He doesn’t notice me. His music is so loud that I can clearly hear it outside the headphones. He’s so thin that each of his ribs is visible. I can see his hip bones beneath his jeans.

  More than anything, though, it is his arm that makes me want to look away. His wounds have healed into a network of scars that cross and weave over each other like a map leading to nowhere. They are deep and thick and will never fade. The injuries are so bad that they go beyond simple scarring; they’re a deformity.

  I remember everything again, like a flood that I’ve been blocking since I left for school: all the blood, my mother covered in it, the Ghost pale and horrified as he knotted his tie around Will’s arm, all the neighbors standing there watching.

  If I were still at Woodsdale right now, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this. I could be swimming, or else driving around with Lindsey and Estella, music blasting from the car speakers, without a care in the world.

  “Katie,” Will says, sitting up as soon as he notices me. He slips his headphones off. The music becomes louder, heavy and grating. I’m amazed he can hear anything.

  I try to smile. When he crosses the room to hug me, I can feel the veins in the soft tissue connecting his ribs.

  He closes the door and we sit on his bed. We both light cigarettes.

  “I’m surprised you still smoke,” he says. There’s a new hoarseness to his voice. “They let you smoke at that fancy school?”

  I shake my head. “Just when I go out on weekends.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” His eyes look huge. His cheekbones, which I’ve never noticed before, are high and pronounced. This is not my brother.