Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

  “How do I fucking do it?” I said.

  Zoeller beckoned me back to the shore. When he took my hand this time, I didn’t balk. He placed the frail stem of a frozen leaf between two fingers and pinched them closed.

  “How?” I said again.

  Our faces were unsettlingly close. I could feel his breath when he spoke. “Let go.”

  I looked at the rushing water, then back at him. “You are a total waste of time.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “This is another dumb thought exercise in how you can’t control anything and life is meaningless, random pain. I never should’ve read you Eliot.” I started to stand.

  His hand contracted. “You control when you let go.”

  We both looked at the water. It was chaos, wild and elemental, madness. But if you looked long enough you could discern threads, slick silver, jet black, splitting and merging and weaving in a living loom. There were patterns, if fleeting, ephemeral ones.

  His thumb pressed down, opening my fingers. The leaf whisked away and rode a fat black swell and slapped itself onto the side of the rock.

  You’re fucking kidding, I thought.

  When I looked at Zoeller he was still uncomfortably close, and my heart sped up. Anxiety. He was, after all, a sociopath.

  The rain that had been weak and skittish all day thickened.

  “Shit,” I said, standing. I felt weirded out, off-kilter.

  We headed for the car, silent, but halfway there the rain became a downpour and we ran, splashing through puddles and throwing ourselves, soaked, onto Mom’s spotless leather.

  My hands shook. It took three tries to get the key in the ignition.

  “What are you feeling?” Zoeller said.

  “I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t the cold, or not just the cold. Something was out of balance inside me. Something moving fast, accelerating. Skewing my center of gravity.

  I’d always thought the way to get free of Mom was to become stronger than her, but it wasn’t that at all. The way to win was to let go. Stop caring. Stop trying to control everything. Let it flow. Look for the opportunity, the current that could carry me where I wanted to go.

  Let it happen, Laney.

  This thing you want.

  I drove to his house.

  The mansion was lit up like a church, dazzling rays of gold piercing the pewter haze. We walked through the rain to the dismal RV in back.

  Freezing inside, like always. That cold chemical smell. The creepiness of it all, the least safe place I’d ever been.

  Zoeller glanced at me and stripped off his sopping hoodie. Then his shirt. Milk-white skin, molded by muscle. A faint trail of blond hair disappeared below his belt.

  When he reached for the zipper of my hoodie I didn’t move.

  “No kissing,” I said as he took it off. “Just fuck me.”

  “All right.”

  That was the last thing either of us said that night.

  ———

  In the morning I walked home in runny makeup with a depressing taste in my mouth and my head full of weirdness and found my mother hanging in the garage.

  I knew. I knew how unstable and dangerous she was. I smoked a cigarette and thought, Is this the only way I can hurt her back?

  The only way I can free us from her?

  So I watched Lady Lazarus writhe on that cord. Filled my lungs with smoke while hers starved for oxygen. But she didn’t come back, not then, not one year in every ten, not with flaming hair to eat men like air. Her throat cinched shut, pulled tight by ten feet of braided nylon and the infinite heaviness of the dark seed inside her.

  I could’ve saved her. Saved us both.

  But I let it happen.

  I let her go.

  ———

  At the hospital they fed me Xanax to calm the panic. Which was good, because the highest risk of confession lay in those first few hours.

  Whirling lights. Flashing chrome. White sheets.

  A frantic burst of activity in the ER, paddles to her heart.

  The grim faces, the shaking heads.

  Time of death: 6:36 a.m.

  At 6:36 in the morning she’d be walking through the garden with her coffee, trailing fingertips over the rose leaves, sucking the sweet dew, the bead of blood from a hidden thorn. Smiling mysteriously at some wry internal observation she’d never share. Lifting her face to the pink sun, caffeine singing in her veins. Beautiful and terrible. Alive.

  Her face was so still. More consummate than sleep, a stillness that would never change, the still point of the turning world. I stood at the glass ER doors, screaming, beating with my fists until red smeared the clear and they dragged me away and gave me more Xanax and a white blank space opened in my head.

  By afternoon I was totally unhinged. I hadn’t eaten or slept in two days. Everything blurred—Zoeller, Mom, Donnie sobbing his heart out, Dad crying, everyone so sad, so fucking sad because I took her away.

  Autopsy, a white coat said. Toxicology report.

  Confess before they figure it out. Before they accuse me of a cover-up.

  Jesus God. This was real. This was a real thing that had happened, was happening. Would keep happening for the rest of my life.

  A thousand times I opened my mouth, and they stuffed drugs in it. The one time in my fucking life when I didn’t want to be high, and everyone kept getting me stoned.

  They marveled when the initial dose didn’t work. They put in more until I stopped grabbing their coats, their collars.

  Send me a fucking priest. Someone take my confession.

  Go home, Dad said. Both of you. He had to stay and fill out paperwork. The dead generate a lot of paperwork.

  His eyes looked through everything like X-rays. He did not see me trying to spit out the truth.

  Donnie never stopped crying. Not once. When the energy left him it was just water, leaking endlessly down his face.

  And me, Laney Keating, the killer, driving him home.

  No one had taken down the noose. I found that out when I pulled into the garage.

  ———

  I pounded on the thin metal door until it began to dent under my fist.

  Zoeller opened it, blinking. Naked except for boxers, hair mussed. His eyes cleared when he saw me.

  “Laney.”

  I stood in the cold, my hands hanging uselessly, staring up at him.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  I couldn’t get words out. What words were there for this?

  I stood there, mute and limp, until he drew me inside and sat me on the couch. Just because we’d fucked last night—a lot—didn’t mean there was any tenderness between us. He sat on the armrest, watching me curiously. Emotions fascinated him. Things we can’t experience personally are always fascinating.

  “Do you have anything?” I said.

  He rummaged in a cupboard and handed me two pills. I didn’t even care what they were. I swallowed them dry.

  “We did it.”

  His head tilted, almost avian.

  “We killed her.” The words fit strangely in my mouth. “She’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  I spoke in a slow, dull voice. “My mother is dead. She hanged herself.”

  Compression of the carotids. Rapid unconsciousness. Night sweeps in from the edges, sound blurring into an ocean roar. The world shrinks smaller and smaller to a pinhole of light, to the diameter of the last artery still feeding blood to the brain, to a singularity where all you have ever dreamed and felt condenses into one bright, trembling speck, then closes.

  My palms smacked the coffee table, bracing me from a fall. Zoeller’s arms wrapped around me. Too woozy to fend him off.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  As soon as he let go I coll
apsed to the floor in a dead faint.

  I woke on the couch. Z sat in an armchair nearby, watching. He’d put on sweatpants but no shirt. His body was meat. I felt nothing, not even revulsion.

  “When was the last time you ate?” he said.

  I tried to sit up. Something invisible pushed me back down.

  “You’re dehydrated. At least drink something.”

  Water bottle on the table, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  I chugged the water. When I put it down I wanted to puke.

  “What happened?” Zoeller said, his voice hushed.

  “We triggered her mania and she killed herself.”

  If I just said it enough, maybe it would stop sounding so real. It would become a fact, a thing in a book, not my real life.

  “Tell me about it.”

  So I told him. How I’d watched unwittingly. Found the note with my name. The sick realization, when it was over, that this was not what I had wanted at all, at all.

  “What did the note say?”

  “I couldn’t read it.”

  He seemed to understand. “What did she look like? The body.”

  I straightened, suddenly awake. “You sick fuck. You’re getting off on this.”

  “Tell me, Laney. I know you want to tell me.”

  “Her face was fucking white. There was no blood in her head. It pooled around her throat in a necklace the color of a deep bruise. The vessels in her eyes burst. Is that what you want?”

  I stood, forcing the tears down. My hands raked through my hair.

  “We have to tell them. It was an accident. It wasn’t supposed to go this far. We can explain.”

  “Did you know?”

  I looked at him askance, fearfully. “Know what?”

  “Was she still alive when you got home? Did you let her die?”

  This was the question I couldn’t answer.

  I didn’t know. I didn’t know if it was intentional. I didn’t know if I fully understood what was happening, if keeping my feet on the porch and finishing the cigarette was an act of murder, or innocent apathy.

  I knew I hated her that morning. I knew that much.

  “It was an accident,” I whispered again.

  Zoeller eyed me with dispassion. “We’re not telling anyone.”

  “They’ll find out we switched her meds.”

  “They won’t find out anything. Your mom had a prescription for Zoloft.”

  Even in my fugue, this struck me as odd. “What?”

  “My friend the doctor took care of it. He called in a favor.”

  I gaped. “You covered your ass. You anticipated this.”

  Z said nothing.

  “Don’t you feel the least bit sorry? A human being is dead because of us. My fucking mother.”

  “You don’t see the gift I’ve given you, Laney. You’re free.”

  I stared a moment longer. Then I flew at him.

  It was pointless. He was twice my size. I was weak and crazed. He spun me around, crushed me to his chest, his hard body. I recoiled.

  “You sick fuck. You actually think this was a good thing.”

  “I set you free. You don’t see it now, but you will.”

  I bit his hand, hot red salt. He let me go.

  “Is this what you wanted all along?” I screamed. “To make me kill her? Was this all some sick game? Pretending to like me, messing with my head?”

  Only once did I ever see Zoeller look regretful, and it was then. His bloodied hand hung at his side, forgotten. There was something almost rueful in those dead green eyes.

  “Smart girl.”

  A chill went through me.

  “Look back, Laney. Think hard. Did you really believe Luke could organize that anti-bullying shit? Did you believe Kelsey actually wanted to fuck you? That she’d ever tell her asshole dad?”

  An ax lodged in my chest, snapping through me rib by rib.

  “Did you believe I was starting to care?” He moved closer, gazing down at me. “Letting you in, trusting you? Sharing my thoughts and feelings?” His face was too close to mine, his breath cold and scentless. “Did you believe I fucked you because I felt something?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “I don’t give a shit about you. I just wanted to see how far you’d go.” Zoeller laughed. “You killed your mom. For me. Because of me. What a psycho.”

  I looked around the trailer for something sharp. “You are dead. I’ll fucking kill you.”

  His hands shot out, clamping onto my shoulders, and I fought but there was no point. He put me on the couch where he wanted, under him. This is not even happening, I thought. This is some nightmare. Not real.

  “Look at me,” he said. I looked. “Now say it. Say, ‘You ruined my life.’ ”

  I didn’t want to be here anymore. In this sad little scene. In my body, in this universe.

  “Laney.”

  His voice was a hiss. He put his mouth near my ear.

  “Say it. For the camera.”

  Another chill. Deeper.

  “You ruined my life,” I said, robotically.

  Zoeller’s arms flexed, drawing me closer. “If you want to know why, find Artemis and Apollo.” He pressed a finger into the hollow of my throat and traced something. Two circles. One big, one small, eating the other. “Figure it out. You’re a smart girl.”

  I stared at the fluorescent tube overhead. His body lifted, his shadow sliding over me. Then he left the trailer, left me alone in the light.

  JULY, LAST YEAR

  I handed Josh the flask of Jack, grinning. “C’mon, you wimp. I’m like one-quarter your size. You can’t quit already.”

  He made a sour face and sipped. “I’m gonna puke, Laney.”

  “Not on me.” I rolled to the other side of the mattress.

  I was in Josh’s room at the Lincoln Park house, sprawling on his bed, watching Game of Thrones. Every time we saw tits, we took a drink.

  Fifteen minutes into this ep and we were sloshed.

  “You remind me of Varys,” Josh said.

  “Are you calling me a eunuch?”

  “No, you just—you know things. You’re like the spider at the center of the web, pulling all the threads.”

  I raised an eyebrow enigmatically.

  When Josh no longer resembled the next stop on the Vomit Comet I slung my leg across his, nonchalant. Then an arm. Then I was atop him. He bit his lip, put his hands on my breasts.

  “I don’t think you really like this,” he said.

  “Shut up. Let’s make out.”

  He held me, but tentatively. “Can I ask you something? I apologize in advance if it offends you.”

  Oh god. Here we go.

  “Are you gay?”

  I flung myself off him. Pressed my face into the mattress.

  “I’m sorry,” Josh said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Offend me. I know. You haven’t.” I raised my head. “You’re a good guy, Josh.”

  He eyed me cautiously, that broad face kind, open.

  “I’m not gay,” I said. “I wish I was.”

  “Why?”

  I flipped over, air puffing out of me. “I wish there was one word for what I am. That would be so much easier. People would still hate me, but at least I could say, ‘You hate me because I’m gay,’ not, ‘You hate me because I’m a five on the Kinsey scale, and sometimes I fuck guys but I’ve only fallen in love with girls.’ ”

  Josh paused the TV, the screen dimming.

  “If I was gay,” I told the ceiling, “I wouldn’t need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn’t have to explain that I fall in
love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn’t say I’m ‘just a slut’ or ‘faking it’ or ‘undecided’ or ‘confused.’ I’m not confused. I don’t categorize people by who I’m allowed to like and who I’m allowed to love. Love doesn’t fit into boxes like that. It’s blurry, slippery, quantum. It’s only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.” I glanced at Josh. “That’s me. I’m not gay, not bi. I’m something quantum. I can’t define it.”

  “You’re just human.”

  I started to laugh. “Thank you. Seriously, thank you. You are the first guy I’ve met who gets it.”

  What a bitch I was, using him.

  But as the girl I was falling in love with would tell me someday: a bitch is a woman who gets what she wants.

  “My turn.” I sat up, cross-legged. “Explain why you’re in a frat when you’re way too intelligent and open-minded for these assholes.”

  We talked late into the night, lying together on his bed, and it never felt awkward. It was like chilling with my brother. I turned it in my hands, the invisible Rubik’s cube Z had left me with. Pieces were beginning to line up. I wandered around Josh’s room, scanning his bookshelves. Lots of YA, surprisingly. Lots of John Green, unsurprisingly. The literature of sensitive nerds nursing crushes on manic pixie dream girls. I grabbed a money clip from the bureau with his ID.

  “Let’s see your school photo.”

  “Oh god. Laney, please.”

  My thumb brushed the eclipse symbol on the clip. “I’ve seen this before. This is from Umbra.”

  “You go to Umbra?”

  “I’m friends with DJ Apollo.”

  Instantly his demeanor changed. He came to my side, frowning, tense. “Apollo? Are you serious?”

  I flipped the clip back onto the dresser. “What, is he like some major douchebag?”

  Josh’s eyes darted after that silver gleam.

  I watched him struggle. That’s the hardest part, letting them fall on their own. Not pushing. His reservations buckled under the bond we’d built.

  “Come sit down,” he said.

  We sat.

  “I’m going to tell you something you can’t tell anyone else. Anyone. It could get me in massive trouble, but I think it’s right for you to know. You’re not safe with him.”