Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  Hiyam rolled her eyes in saintly tolerance. “I’m practicing positivity.”

  I kept a straight face. So to speak.

  Hiyam hadn’t dressed up for Halloween, but people constantly asked if she was so-and-so from such-and-such reality show, which flattered her at first, then made her suspicious, then sullen. She started saying, “I’m Hiyam Farhoudi,” and raising her eyebrows as if her notoriety was self-explanatory.

  As for me, I was one half of a duo. I wore an old-fashioned floral dress over a hoodie rimmed with felt fangs, and fingerless gloves with fur glued on. A name tag on my chest said HELLO MY NAME IS and in the name space was a blood stain.

  “What are you?” Hiyam had said.

  “The Little Bad Wolf.”

  “Where’s Red Riding Hood?”

  Blythe was in the Seventh Circle, dancing alone in a heartsblood-red dress. Golden hair tucked into her hood, cheeks rouged. We hadn’t seen each other for days and when our eyes met across the floor I felt my blood pulsing in my fingertips. Armin was deejaying the Cathedral tonight, doing a retro eighties set in my honor. As I stepped onto the dance floor he played “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

  “I’ll get drinks,” I said. “Keep Red company?”

  Hiyam gave me a narrow look. Sometimes it seemed she knew exactly what I was up to. She joined Blythe and leaned close and the two of them laughed, their backs to me.

  Whatever.

  I grabbed sodas and a Red Bull from the bar. Instead of returning I detoured downstairs, descending through layers of dry ice like tulle. In the white haze everything was fuzzy and uncertain, uncommitted to form. Corridors branched off into sudden dead ends and spidery passages looped around and around until all sound and light died and you could not tell direction anymore—left or right, up or down, inside out. A schizophrenic mind modeled in architecture. Hidden rooms, turns that cut you off from existence. Long stretches where anything you said would be absorbed by stone, by a thousand cracks that each could hold a tiny part of a human scream.

  I stopped in an alcove, put the cups on a ledge, and reached into my pocket.

  How Poe-esque of me.

  On my return, I was nearing the end of a corridor swirling with chalky fog when a sharp unease spasmed across my shoulder blades.

  I glanced back. No one there.

  I set off again, listening. My own footsteps barely echoed, as if the walls were eating them.

  When I turned a corner I caught a streak of dark movement behind me.

  Fear feeds on shadows. The monster we can’t see is worse than the one that shows its face. Who was it, I wondered frantically, and how did they know, and what did they know? In panic I took several rapid turns, disorienting myself. Usually I was good at this, I was the minotaur at the center of my own labyrinth, but I hadn’t expected to be discovered so easily, so prematurely.

  I rounded another bend and collided with something red.

  “Bloody hell,” Blythe said, catching me. “Been looking everywhere for you. What’re you doing down here?”

  “I needed to get away.”

  It was even true.

  She glimpsed the cups in my hands. “Let me help.”

  I tried to edge around her, but she took the Red Bull. I held on to it and our fingers interlaced. Mischief flickered in her eyes.

  “My,” she whispered, “what big claws you have.”

  “Let go.”

  Her grip tightened. She was going to crush it, spill everywhere. I released.

  “Don’t,” I said despondently.

  She raised the cup to her mouth, maintaining eye contact. Slow enough for me to stop her. But I didn’t. I watched her drink it in one long swallow and toss the cup.

  My heart pushed shards of ice through my veins.

  Blythe’s face was shadowed inside the red hood. She spoke with eerie sibilance. “It’s inside me now. In my blood.”

  She had no idea. But she would soon.

  “Come on, killer.” She took my hand.

  As we left I forced myself not to look back. It had probably just been Blythe, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of something there, deeper in, that had watched me.

  Still watched.

  For a while we were normal clubbing college kids. Armin played Depeche Mode remixes, one hand on the faders and the other tapping beats in the air, bringing us higher, higher. We rode the wave of music until the crest couldn’t hold us anymore and crashed in a glorious drop, all that energy bursting into brilliant foam and spray, so palpable the air sparkled with sweat. Then we did it again, again. Each time the euphoric rise, the ecstatic crash. Each time throwing ourselves willfully into blissful oblivion. Blythe was a blaze of blond and scarlet, an irresistible fire, and we danced together like we had that summer. Her arms curled around me from behind and I let her body hold mine. We moved in perfect sync, barely looking at each other. When we did, our faces were close enough to share a breath. My fingers trailed down her arms. Hers over my ribs. Armin played “Strangelove” and Hiyam stared at us, sulky.

  “Why don’t you two just fuck already?”

  “Only if you’ll join,” Blythe said.

  “That’s so college.”

  When the song ended we disentangled ourselves and Hiyam stepped in, brushing Blythe’s hair from her neck. Three red runnels marred her smooth buttercream skin.

  “Did something scratch you?”

  Blythe only smiled. I looked off into the crowd.

  Hiyam let herself be coaxed into dancing and I became the wallflower again. Blythe flashed fuck-me eyes at a tall blond Slavic guy. Hiyam told an emo boy who disturbingly resembled Donnie to get on his knees and he did, and stayed there awaiting her command. We laughed. Mine was hollow. It was hard to look at Blythe, but the longer I watched her with Hiyam the less bad I felt about the drink. Those two. Birds of a feather. Wrapping men around their fingers, toying with people’s hearts. So fucking alpha. So cold. Why would she even want me around?

  Hypocrite, I thought. How do you think she feels when you go home with Armin?

  I felt sick.

  Bathroom, I mouthed.

  Hiyam flicked an eyebrow in acknowledgment. Blythe didn’t even notice.

  At the sink I braced my hands on the counter and breathed. Girls came and went, their voices a dim drone. Everything seemed flat and faraway. God, how it weighed on me, this fiction I was living.

  A hand stroked my spine. I raised my eyes to the mirror.

  Blythe stood behind me, face flushed, radiant. As rosy-cheeked and alive as a fairy-tale girl about to get eaten by the wolf.

  “How do you feel?” I said.

  “In-fucking-credible.” Her hand slid to the small of my back. She smiled in that way that could blind you unknowingly, like the sun during eclipse.

  There were people around us but all sorts of weirdness went down at Umbra. It was safer here than almost anywhere.

  I turned and Blythe cupped my chin, her thumb on my bottom lip. She’d left little space between me and the sink. Fire surged from my toes to my fingertips, kindling every nerve ending.

  “Get bored of that guy already?” I said.

  “I was never interested.”

  “You sure you don’t want to take him home and fuck him a bit?”

  “I’d rather take you home.”

  A girl next to us held her lipstick motionless in midair.

  Blythe leaned in. She tilted my face toward hers and brought her mouth close and my lips parted automatically.

  “You dosed it,” she said.

  Fuck.

  “I know what X feels like.” Her hand tightened on my jaw. “You dosed the drink.”

  I spotted a stall opening and pulled Blythe inside, cutting in line. Slammed the door over someone’s protest and herded her to the wall. “Could you be a bit more discreet?”


  “Why did you dose our drinks?”

  “Not yours.”

  She laughed disbelievingly. Then our positions reversed and she pinned me to the opposite wall. A garbage box jammed into my tailbone. “What the hell are you up to?”

  “Artemis and Apollo.”

  She stared, unblinking. “What?”

  “What do those names mean to you?”

  “It’s me and Armin.”

  I put my hands on her arms. It took a conscious effort not to clench. “Who else knows you by those names?”

  “What does this have to do with—”

  My nails poised atop her skin like ten tiny knives. “If you really care about me, be honest. Who knows?”

  “Christ.” She shrugged me off, slouched against the door. “Everyone knows DJ Apollo. No one knows me.”

  “No one?”

  “No one who matters.”

  “So who knows? Blythe, who?”

  Weirdly, she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “A girl. Elle.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Someone I used to know.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I don’t remember. We drifted apart. It was all a long time ago.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Blythe glared at me, suddenly and inexplicably furious. “She can drop off the face of the earth for all I care. What the fuck does it matter?”

  “Okay.” I took her wrists in either hand, my thumbs to her frenzied pulse. Made my tone gentler. “I believe you. I’ll explain everything later. Not here. It’s not safe.”

  In her face was the same knowing as when I’d given her pills that first night, and all the nights we’d been bad together since. That dark electricity, the sinister spark between two girls who share a secret.

  “Do you trust me?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl.”

  I brought her palms to my mouth and kissed them. Then put one to my chest, my heart. Pressed it there. Her eyes glimmered softly and she leaned in again, but I averted my face at the last second.

  “Lipstick,” I said.

  “Who fucking cares?”

  I gripped her hands harder. “The way you feel right now is how I feel all the time with you.”

  “It’s agony.”

  “I know.”

  “Everything is agony. Every poem I write. Every song I hear. Every time I come. It’s murder watching you fall in love with him.”

  A hot needle pricked my throat. “I’m not in love with him, Blythe.”

  “But in the end you’ll go home with him. It’ll always be him.”

  I struggled for something to assuage her, but nothing came. Her face twisted and she stormed out of the stall.

  I inhaled, concentrating on the rush of oxygen in my blood, that free high. These things we do, I thought. What we need and what we want. Never the same.

  When I left the stall I found Blythe at the sink, the hood cloaking her face. I touched her and she shook her head subtly. I started to speak and only then noticed what was wrong.

  On the far side of the bathroom, watching us both, was Hiyam.

  DECEMBER, LAST YEAR

  Four of us sat in the truck, all in black save Blythe in her devil-red dress. December lay over Chicago like pieces of smashed-up jewelry, silver snowmelt dripping from branches, diamond shards floating down the river when the ice cracked. Donnie sat at the wheel. Armin and I were in the backseat. I rubbed a thumb over the aluminum bat balanced on my knees and stared out at the brilliant asterisks of streetlights, little smashed spots in the black glass sky.

  “Last chance to change your mind,” Armin said quietly.

  I fingered the chain around my neck.

  They all watched me. Each expression was so clear: Donnie’s nervous innocence, Blythe’s simmering determination, Armin’s weary reluctance. All waiting for me. This was mine—my moment, patiently cultivated, buried in blood-rich soil and tended with loving madness until it came shooting up, lush and overripe, swollen with hate, so close to bursting. This was the seed that had been growing in me. Tonight it would flower.

  I curled both hands around the bat. Leaned into the backseat and felt the hardness there, the steel at my spine.

  “Phase one,” I said, “starts now.”

  FEBRUARY, LAST YEAR

  Friday night. My place. You’ll be there.

  The text echoed in my head all day. I got a pass to see the nurse and instead went to the Nest, the smokers’ hideout near the track, and huddled inside a cocoon of evergreens, chain-smoking. Of course my reprieve from being school pariah didn’t last. Zoeller had made it clear I was his new mindfuck toy. If I wanted it to stop, I’d have to take the fun out of it. Which left two options.

  Kill myself.

  Become him.

  The third option—kill him—didn’t occur to me for a long, long time.

  At least he stayed true to his word. My coming-out video vanished. Not that it mattered—someone made a Facebook page in my name and filled it with lesbian porn. Facebook took that down; they started a Tumblr. Ask the Fag. Tumblr took that down and a still from the Kelsey vid became a meme, me handing her the rose. Delusional Dyke. It was actually kind of funny.

  Upper text: WANNA COME OVER AND WATCH YOUTUBE?

  Lower: I MADE A MUSIC VIDEO OF THE BEST

  L WORD KISSES

  Upper: COULDN’T HELP NOTICING YOU SHOWED ME YOUR TITS IN THE GIRLS’ LOCKER ROOM

  Lower: SO WHEN ARE WE HAVING SEX?

  No one can stop a meme once it’s gone viral. The Internet never forgets.

  So when Zoeller texted me to show up at his place, I thought, What do I have to lose?

  I didn’t tell Donnie where I was going that night. I parked a few houses down, checking myself in the rearview. Coral-red lipstick, guileless eyes ringed thickly with black. Wool coat with a fur collar. Dead doll stare.

  I looked small and lost.

  Starlight speckled the asphalt, shimmering. It was pristinely quiet, my footsteps ringing like clinking champagne flutes, everything coated with a glassy dusting of frost. Zoeller lived in one of those Naperville mansions typical of midwestern gentry: cartoonishly oversized, glutted with emptiness. A McDonald’s Value Meal aesthetic. Big garage, big yard, big fucking holes to fill. Those houses told a story. The bigger they were, the emptier the people inside felt.

  I walked in as Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” came on and felt ridiculously baller for a moment, but the glamour faded as I scanned the crowd. So whitebread. Walking brochures for Invisalign and Proactiv, future marathon runners and charity fund-raisers talking about the college parties they’d throw, how they’d chase drinking binges with Ritalin to maintain their GPAs, fuck an entire frat, pay exchange students to write their papers while they took X and felt alive for the first time. Trying so hard to trash the emotional and financial stability their parents provided, to invent hang-ups and neuroses. Angels trying to scar themselves, bored of perfection. Oh, let me, I thought. I’d hurl the acid in their faces. There was no real ugliness in them. Their pain, like everything else they owned, was manufactured, manicured.

  Happy little robots.

  When Mom was right, she was so fucking right.

  I skirted the crowd, looking for Brandt. My phone vibrated. Backyard.

  Outside, my breath wrapped around me in smoky ribbons. Ice crystals hovered and swirled like winter fireflies. For a moment, somewhere between the glow of the house and the faint tremble of light far off, I floated in a peaceful darkness. I wanted to stay there forever, in that timeless twinkling place where there was no past and no future, no judgment or fear.

  Xanax is fucking beautiful like that. I popped another, just in case.

  The light in the distance was an RV. I tapped on the door. Voices inside, lowerin
g. The door opened.

  “Hello, Laney.”

  I followed Zoeller in.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. Sterile. Alcohol, or iodine. Like a clinic. Then I noticed the books stacked on every flat surface. All nonfiction: cosmology, anatomy, ethics. Stars and skin and sin.

  Then I noticed Kelsey Klein.

  I startled so hard I almost tumbled back outside.

  “I take it you’ve met,” Zoeller said, not smiling, though his voice curled at the edges.

  He beckoned me to the couch. The Arcade Fire pulsed in the background, a sly lynx stalk of a bass line, sexy. On the glass coffee table were half a dozen neatly cut lines of coke.

  Zoeller raised an eyebrow.

  “No thanks.” The couch wasn’t wide. I pressed my legs together to avoid touching Kelsey. First sign this was becoming another video, I was out.

  “Kel, do a line.”

  She bent obediently, sealing one nostril and snorting hard. Coke sugared the peach-blond down on her upper lip and her pink tongue darted out to lap it, practiced. Zoeller watched me over her curved back. Her blouse was gossamer, thin and translucent as an insect wing. Black bra straps. I wrenched my eyes away.

  “What do you want?” I asked Z.

  “I want to know why you haven’t come to me for help.”

  Kelsey thudded against the backrest, pop-eyed, neck cording. Her whole body hummed, electric. She exhaled in a loud girlish gasp that sounded incredibly rehearsed. And incredibly hot.

  I never knew she was into blow. Never knew she touched drugs, period.

  “Help with what?” This time I didn’t look away. Kelsey was too high to notice.

  “You have a PR problem.” Zoeller’s arm sprawled across the backrest, thick and pale as the underbelly of a snake. “I can fix it.”

  “You’ve fixed enough.”

  “Don’t be like that.” He smiled now. “You’re a smart girl.”

  “Don’t tell me what I am.”

  “Lesson number one: defensiveness is defeat. Never defend yourself.”

  Kelsey’s palms lay on the couch, fingers kneading, seemingly unconscious of it. Her near hand brushed my knee.