Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  “Spare me your pickup artist philosophy,” I told Zoeller. “You’re not going to mind-game me.”

  He stood and walked off as if suddenly bored. Grabbed a random book, leafed through it. Kelsey moaned and rolled her head against the backrest.

  “What do you really want?” I said. “You’re the one who caused my PR problem. Now you want to fix it? That’s like—” I tossed a hand out. “Machiavellian masturbation.”

  For the first time I’d ever seen, Zoeller laughed. A real laugh, his eyes shutting, that liquid baritone pouring out and filling his creepy serial killer wood-paneled RV. I watched his Adam’s apple bob, imagining my small hands crushing it. When his laughter died he stared at me as if nothing else existed. Too intensely, but too-intense stares were my forte.

  “I’m never wrong about people,” he said.

  We listened to the rest of that Arcade Fire album, watching Kelsey do lines and pace the trailer and scream joyously at the ceiling. Zoeller swigged from a bottle of warm schnapps. My mouth watered. I wanted a drink like crazy, but this was the last person in the world I’d trust not to date-rape-drug me. He told Kelsey to do things—take your shirt off, pinch your nipples, put your hand inside your panties—in a dispassionate monotone, and each time she did my face burned hotter. Still I refused to look away. He was testing me. This was some kind of initiation, like fraternities did. So I made myself watch. This wasn’t the girl I’d crushed on. This was someone else, some beautiful falling star, her skin snow white, her heart trilling from coke and her breasts dewy with sweet-smelling sweat, so desperate for Z’s dick that she’d debase herself in front of me. Anything for him.

  Zoeller flicked me a liquor-glazed glance from the other end of the couch. “Kiss her,” he said.

  For a moment I was confused. No way was I taking orders.

  Then Kelsey sat between us, turning to me.

  “No,” I said.

  She didn’t hesitate. She put a hand to my cheek.

  If I were strong, I would’ve pulled back. Walked out. Gotten the hell away from Zoeller and his psycho sex circus. But part of me wanted to see where this would go, what exactly she’d do for him. Just how far under his spell she really was.

  And part of me was dying to press my lips to that red satin mouth.

  She kissed me softly, not with the raunchy abandon I’d expected. Even straight girls will kiss another girl softly. I knew it, I knew this was all some sick power trip, and I didn’t care. Closed my eyes, opened my mouth. Her hand trembled against my face and I wasn’t sure if it was a coke tremor or legit nerves but it sent ten thousand joules straight to my heart. There was a fragility, a preciousness to that kiss, two paper dolls meeting in the lightest, airiest touch. Even Z couldn’t ruin that. I wasn’t prepared for Kelsey to push me down to the couch, to kiss me harder. For her hands to move to my shoulders and pin me there. I let it happen out of sheer astonishment, only stopping when her tongue thrust into my mouth in a mechanical, dutiful way.

  “What the fuck?” I gasped, twisting out from under her and stumbling to my feet. Hair disheveled, mouth slack and wet.

  Zoeller watched me owlishly.

  “God.” I grabbed my coat off a chair, yanked out a cig. “You creeps. Both of you. Go fuck yourselves.”

  Kelsey blinked in confusion. “I thought you liked me.”

  “News flash, Kelsey. He’s using you.” I glared at Zoeller as I spoke, italicizing with little jerks of my coat. “Don’t you get it? He doesn’t give a shit about you. He wants to humiliate me, and he’s using you to do it. He’ll fuck you and throw you away like every other girl he’s ever met.”

  “Or maybe she came to me after your confession,” Z said, his words lazy, ponderous. “Because she couldn’t stop thinking about you. Maybe she was scared to act on it after what happened. Maybe she knew she could meet you here, with me, in safety.”

  “Lying bastard,” I said, fumbling at the door lock.

  I’d made it outside and halfway across the lawn when the RV door banged open, a shadow looming over the snow. Kelsey caught me before I reached the gate. I shrugged her hand off violently.

  “Laney.”

  “Don’t call me that. You don’t know me. We don’t know each other. Look, I’m sorry about the rose, but this is so fucked-up—”

  “I know.” In the dark her face was a pale oval, that mouth I’d kissed a blood-red blur. I could still taste her, the tingle of coke and a whiff of peppermint schnapps. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Great. But Zoeller does.”

  She sighed, her breath clouding the space between us.

  “How can you want a guy like that? Don’t you see what he is?”

  “You don’t understand.” She frowned at her shoes. Amazingly, she seemed angry. “I’ve been nobody my whole life. My sister has everything. She’s the one my parents are proud of. I’m always runner-up, good effort, Kel, good try. When someone actually notices me, even if it’s him, it’s like finally—I’m somebody.”

  “The attention he’s giving you is the worst kind of attention.”

  “I know. You think I should care, but I don’t. I just want to feel wanted for once.”

  God, hadn’t I done that? But she didn’t want to be wanted by someone like me. She wanted some shitbag like Zoeller to get hard for her.

  It was so sad. All of us were so sad.

  I turned and she touched me again, softer.

  “Delaney.”

  I winced, even though I didn’t want to pretend we were friends. Because some pathetic twinge of hope still stirred in my chest. Some absurd idea that she’d see what an asshole Zoeller was and come running to me.

  “I know what you want.” Her hand remained on my arm. I didn’t imagine the squeeze. “And he’s right, I can’t stop thinking about it. So I just want you to know . . . I’m open to trying. When you’re high, everything feels good.”

  I walked back to Mom’s car even hollower than I’d come.

  DECEMBER, LAST YEAR

  We moved fast, the bat light in my left hand. Somewhere behind me Armin’s shoes whispered over the ice. We were shadows slipping through the alley, leaving ghost trails of breath. Despite the cold and our skimpy hoodies—we needed unrestricted movement—I didn’t shiver. There was a fire in me colder than the winter blazing around us.

  We reached the spot I’d scouted on Google Maps: a blind nestled between garages, blocked from the alley by a low brick wall. Armin vaulted over it fluidly, hoisted me up. I slung my bat and bag to the pavement and removed supplies: tubes of greasepaint, mini flashlights, gloves. As I unscrewed a cap he seized my arm.

  “What?”

  He just stared, his eyes glistening darkly.

  “We don’t have time for this.” I pulled free and squeezed the tube.

  Him first. I slathered thick paint onto his face: white base, silver streaks around his mouth, black teardrops over his eyes. The Snow Wolf. Kenosha Tech’s mascot. Our rival school.

  I showed Armin his face in my phone viewfinder. No expression.

  When my turn came he hesitated. I bit the inside of my lip, sucked the thin thread of sweetness. The best way to control people is to not let on that you’re controlling them. Set up the situation like dominoes, tip the first one, and lean back. Wait for it. Trust gravity.

  Click clack crash.

  He ran a fingertip down my cheek, as if drawing a tear.

  When he finished painting I checked myself in the phone cam. I was actually cute, those big blue eyes wide and blank, empty of the evil inside me.

  “How do I look?” I said.

  “Like a stranger.”

  “Good.”

  I stashed everything in the bag and began to rise, but Armin had hold of my hand.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said, predictably.

  “I do, thou
gh.”

  “The statute of limitations hasn’t run out. You still have time. You can—”

  I dragged the bat across the rough asphalt, a grinding metallic sound to match the churn in my gut. “Out of the question. We’ve discussed this.”

  “Tell me, Laney.” His hand on mine was soft but enveloping. “Will this fix it? Will it really make you feel better, in the long run?”

  “It’ll make me feel better right now.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you. That sounds like Blythe.”

  Our breath misted around us. I withdrew my hand.

  “I’ll do anything for you,” Armin said, his voice rising and tightening like a note moving up a violin string. “You know that. But if you want to do this right, you have to tell. Violence won’t solve anything, and it won’t satisfy you.”

  Nothing satisfies me, I thought. My fingers flexed on the grip tape. I was a little high, warm white milk spreading through my veins, a steady-state buzz. Just for nerves.

  “You know what telling means?” I said. “It means another Steubenville. No one cares. No one believes.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Who?”

  “Others it might happen to. Other girls.”

  I hefted the bat, spun it, smacked it into my palm. “I don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for others. I’m still trying to staunch my own bleeding.”

  Armin stared up at me, his face bathed in moonlight, on his knees like a saint. From the start he’d fought me on this. The good doctor, the man of compassion and morality. When he spoke he sounded far away.

  “ ‘He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster.’ ”

  “Get up, Nietzsche.”

  He stood. I gave him the bat.

  “Better?”

  He didn’t look appeased. “Are you angry?”

  “Do I seem angry?”

  “You seem perfectly calm. That’s what frightens me.”

  I looked him in the eyes, in our ridiculous painted wolf faces, and slung my bag over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  Once, on a science blog, I read about the life cycle of a star.

  When most stars die, they don’t supernova. They aren’t heavy enough. Instead they collapse, gas and metal condensing into a tight ball that burns ultrapure and ultrabright, a white dwarf. The rest of their body shivers off in clouds of luminous stardust and becomes a nebula, an echoing veil of grandeur. But the core is pure. The core burns superhot. And over billions and billions of years it cools off, the heaviest elements sinking into the center, condensing, hardening. Becoming diamond.

  That’s the fate of most stars. They burn away all their delicate parts and boil themselves down into diamonds.

  Anger is like that. Runs on its own fumes, devours itself voraciously, explosively, until one day there is no fire left. Only pure, cold, unbreakable hardness.

  Like the diamond core in me.

  And the cold, hard object tucked against my spine.

  FEBRUARY, LAST YEAR

  Nice car,” Zoeller said.

  I had no idea if he was being sarcastic. I never did.

  Despite the fact that he was richer than hell, Z didn’t have a ride. His parents gave him a BMW for his sixteenth and he sold it to buy the RV parked permanently in his backyard. He didn’t need to go anywhere. He was magnetic. Everything—and everyone—he wanted came to him.

  Like me.

  One foggy winter afternoon I picked him up after school in Mom’s car.

  He slid in, his crisp aftershave peppering the close air. That alcoholish smell, borderline formaldehyde, but a hint of smut in it, dirty sex. I fixed my eyes dead ahead, one hand on the gearshift.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Hello.”

  I exhaled through my nose. Refused to look at him.

  He fiddled with the glove box, the radio, the storage compartments. Finally I turned, teeth gritted. Dull sun slicked his brown leather jacket.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Music?”

  My upper lip peaked. “Will you just tell me where we’re going?”

  “Don’t be boorish.” He flashed a smile. His hair was immaculately coiffed, gleaming. What light there was poured over him adoringly, as if it loved lavishing itself on him.

  I shoved my phone into his hands, mostly so I wouldn’t have to suffer his infuriating handsomeness a second longer.

  Zoeller put on the Black Keys.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  Driving was a welcome distraction. His eyes slid over me the whole time like cold oil, but when he guided me onto the highway everything dissolved till it was just me and the smooth asphalt beneath my tires, my foot biting into the gas, the bluesy swagger of the music.

  The address Zoeller gave me didn’t exist.

  I drove past the spot where it should’ve been twice. Had to make a U-ie in heavy traffic, cars zipping past, honking.

  “You sure it’s here?” I said.

  Zoeller gave me a smugly amused look. Later I’d think of it as his liar’s face. He always wore it.

  I pulled into a parking lot and killed the engine.

  “If you’re seriously trolling me—” I began.

  “Get back on the road.”

  I didn’t move. He waited, patient.

  “Get out of my car,” I said.

  Z laughed.

  “Not kidding.”

  “I had to make sure you’d listen,” he said. “Get on the road.”

  It was less of a hassle to do what he said than eject him from the vehicle. Dealing with Zoeller was a constant test of my threshold for violence. The only reason I’d even shown up was because Kelsey asked me personally, promising he just wanted to talk. When she gave me that lopsided smile, now a little knowing, a little teasing, that sullen teenage girl sexuality that ripped my heart up and dropped the shreds into my gut, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted her. I’d do it for her. Didn’t matter how fake this was—if fakeness was all I could have, I’d take it.

  We drove west into the snowdrop sun. Z guided me out of Naperville, through rigidly perfect subdivisions into rough country. Lawns broadened into fields and fields turned fallow, the soil black and frozen. We were on a ragged highway slicing through farmland. When we hadn’t passed another car for nearly a minute, he spoke.

  “Let go of the wheel.”

  I looked over at him.

  “Let go.”

  I laughed in his face and turned back to the road.

  “Final warning,” Zoeller said.

  Strange word to use, warning. I understood why when I glanced at him again.

  There was a very real-looking gun in his hand.

  I jerked reflexively, swerving into the oncoming lane. A car a few hundred feet away laid on its horn. I straightened out.

  “Are you fucking nuts?” I said.

  “Take your hands off the wheel.”

  “What the hell is that, an air gun?”

  “I’ll fire it and show you.”

  My hands clenched desperately. I darted glances at the gun, his face, the road. “You’re fucking insane. You’ll kill us both.”

  Zoeller reached over and pressed the cruise control button, locking us to 50 mph.

  “Let go of the wheel, Laney.”

  I lifted my palms, hovering an inch above it.

  “Sit on your hands.”

  It was the same tone he’d used to tell Kelsey to take her clothes off and touch herself. Flat, clinical.

  “Do you seriously want to do this?” I forced myself to match his calm. “We will die, Brandt. Me and you. Right here, right now.”

  He touched my ribs with the gun muzzle.

  I held his gaze as I slid my hands beneath m
y thighs. It didn’t matter if I looked at the road now. I was shaking hard, but felt detached from the shaking, from the body in my seat. Depersonalized.

  Zoeller smiled with boyish glee and faced forward, relaxing into the heated leather.

  My plan didn’t work. I’d angled the wheel away from oncoming traffic, but some grade in the road thwarted me and we drifted left. I’d seen headlights a mile or so down. Less than half a minute before the ugliness.

  I’d always envisioned my death as a small, self-inflicted thing. All I could think of now was Donnie, the sweetest boy I’d ever known, with the softest heart—a heart that poured unconditional love. God, he’d cry. He’d be so alone in this world without me. I should’ve been there more for him, should’ve protected him from Mom.

  From myself.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw the semi coming. Heard the surreal Klaxon howl of its horn.

  “Do you feel it?” Zoeller said reverently. I’d never heard such emotion in his voice.

  “Feel what?”

  “How free we are.”

  Then we were airborne.

  A car crash is a flickering film reel of too-fast and too-slow moments, almost like when you come, simultaneously suspended in eternity and torn from it with terrifying speed. One second my arms and legs floated, weightless, tethered only by my seat belt, my hair hanging perfectly still in zero g. Even the down on my arms and the back of my neck rose, everything defying gravity. In that moment I was eternal and cut free from the heaviness of this life. Then my jaw slammed closed, a sweet burst of heat injecting my mouth, my skull snapping against the headrest and filling instantly with fog and rebounding just in time to meet the airbag punching me in the face. Then nothing.

  It was a while before I realized the hands I was staring at were mine. The tiny puppet beneath me was my body. Alive. Sore but seemingly whole. The dashboard dinged politely, reminding us over and over: AIRBAG DEPLOYED, AIRBAG DEPLOYED.

  I looked at the passenger seat.

  Zoeller stared straight ahead, so still I feared—hoped, a little—he was dead. But he blinked, started to laugh in a weird high voice. Giddiness transfigured him, made him disturbingly childlike.