Night Owls

by Jenn Bennett

  Jack bent over it with her, studying whatever was written on the paper. And I did some studying of my own, using the opportunity to really look at Jillian. She was pretty. Heartbreakingly so. And though she didn’t have Jack’s dark double lashes, she shared his terrific bones and height.

  But when I looked closer, what stood out the most wasn’t genetic: Thick, shiny scars ran up both her inner forearms and across one side of her neck. The scars were shocking, and once I’d noticed them, I couldn’t see anything else. A dozen questions raced through my head. It took everything I had not to gawk.

  “This is a tough one,” Jack said. “I’m not sure if I can use any of these.”

  “I thought there were a couple. ‘Screw’ is always good.”

  “I’m not using ‘screw,’ Jillian.”

  “Okay, okay. What about this one.”

  Jack twisted the page and smiled. “Yeah. That’ll work great. Here, let’s see if Beatrix can find it.”

  “It’s a test,” Jillian said excitedly while handing the paper to Jack, who handed it to me; I guessed she really didn’t like touching.

  When I took the wrinkled page, I caught a glimpse of the other “puzzles.” They were all basically the same: homemade word searches. A grid of letters, most of them legible, some not so much. I sat back down and studied the one in my hand.

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to find. Nothing had been circled, but one word was bolded in the center of the grid: “Charlie.” It looked like she’d started with that and built words off it. And seeing how quite a few of those words were things like kissing and licker and the previously discussed screw, I didn’t really want to get into exactly who Charlie was, but she told me anyway.

  “Charlie’s one of the orderlies. It was just a joke because he’s too mean.”

  “He’s tough, not mean,” Jack said.

  “No, I meant he’s straight, or, um . . . what’s the word?”

  “Stoic.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pointed at Jack and nodded. “Stoic.”

  I studied the puzzle, searching for the word they’d found. The marker she’d used wasn’t the same metallic gold that Jack used for his pieces. But it could definitely be called golden. And at the bottom of the grid, I spotted four letters that shook something loose in my brain. I could already envision it written in glittering spray paint.

  “Rise?” I guessed.

  Brother and sister shot me dueling grins.

  And that was the exact moment I fell in love with Jack Vincent.

  20

  I’VE NEVER REALLY MINDED THE SCENT OF HOSPITALS. Maybe it’s because my mom’s a nurse. It’s familiar. Comfortable. Sure, I understand why some people might associate the scent with bad things, like tears and pain and death. But it should be associated with good things, too, like healing and hope and second chances.

  And as I exited the psych building with Jack, I associated the scent with other positive things, like admiration. Understanding. And a strange sort of tenderness that melted the right ventricle of my heart.

  “You’re painting all the words for her,” I said, looping the handles of my sketch bag over my shoulders and clamping it between my elbow and ribs. Chilly night air gusted through my open jacket.

  “She feels trapped. She loves the city, but she’s been terrified of it ever since she got sick. Too much noise, too many people. And you saw her on a good night—a really good one. Some days, she shuts down completely and won’t talk. She’s lost all her friends, and she hasn’t been out in public doing normal things for so long. I just wanted to show her that the walls aren’t closing in and that there’s something out there. Something that’s hers.”

  “Something to give her a reason to keep going.”

  “Yeah.”

  We strolled down the sidewalk, both quiet, until we ended up at a bench near the back parking garage entrance. Jack stopped and sat me down. “I need to tell you the rest before I lose my nerve.”

  “Tell me.”

  A long breath gusted from his lips. Legs spread, he leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, cracking his knuckles. “It happened at Thanksgiving, when we were sophomores. Things had slowly been going downhill for her for months. She dropped out of all her extracurricular stuff at school and started staying at home more. Her grades fell. Her friends stopped coming over. One teacher called my parents in, all concerned about the way she stared in class, like a zombie. The teachers all thought it was drugs.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “No. But I thought it might be, too, for a while. She went from being homecoming princess to someone who stopped wearing makeup and dressed like a slob. My parents got her on an antidepressant, which helped for a little while. But after a few months, she started saying strange things and complaining about hearing voices. She seemed agitated and tweaky. And that’s when she started secretly smoking. She said it calmed her nerves. We later found out that something like eighty percent of people with schizophrenia smoke. The researchers don’t know why, exactly—there’s a ton of theories they can’t agree on. But for Jillie to smoke? It was just so out of character.”

  He shook his head and waited for a couple of students to walk past before continuing. “Anyway, early that October, she went into a rage at school. It was our old school, before I transferred to the one I go to now, and we were in the same class, so I saw it happen. She couldn’t answer a history question about the colonies, and Mr. Davis snapped and mocked her. The next thing I knew, she’d dumped over her desk and was screaming crazy stuff, running erratically, knocking things over. She grabbed a stapler and lobbed it at Mr. Davis. It hit him in the face. Hard. He had a black eye for a couple of weeks. And Jillian got an overnight stay in a psych facility across town.”

  “Not here?” I asked.

  “No, and they said she was bipolar. Gave her meds. My dad made good with the teacher and the school. And a week later, she was back in class. No report filed with the police, nothing on her school record. It was as if it had never happened. But by the middle of November, she started skipping school. Ran away for two nights. One of our neighbors found her in the ravine behind our house—she’d been camping out in his shed.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She’d gone off her meds. Not that they were the right ones. But that’s when I first noticed the cycle thing. She gets agitated, withdraws, gets agitated, withdraws. . . . And by the time Thanksgiving weekend rolled around, she was agitated. Talking to herself. Constantly startled and on edge. Making a lot of weird gestures. Stopping in the middle of sentences.

  “We were having family over that afternoon,” he continued in a lower voice. “And I was in the kitchen, arguing with my parents about her. My dad didn’t want my grandmother to see Jillian like that. He was talking about checking her back into the hospital for the holiday, and my mom was defending her, and I was arguing with both of them. And Jillian walked in on it.”

  He cracked his knuckles and looked away toward the slowing traffic, so I couldn’t see his face. But the tension stiffening his arms was telling.

  “It all happened so fast,” he said. “Everyone was yelling, and then I saw the knife glint in the kitchen light, and Mom was bleeding through her shirt. Dad wrestled Jillian away, and she wasn’t Jillie—not in her eyes. She was someone else. But there wasn’t time to . . . do anything about it. Mom was bleeding out on the floor, and Jillie had gone catatonic. Dad told me to lock her in the basement. He thought she might run again. Maybe try to hurt someone else.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, so I pressed. “What happened to your mom?”

  “Dad and I followed the ambulance. They had her in surgery for an hour. The knife didn’t puncture anything important. Mostly muscle damage around her shoulder. That’s why if you ever see her at political events with my dad, she waves funny—she still can’t lift her left arm all the way.”

  I recalled seeing a couple of ignorant comments about that online before I stopped snoopin
g around for stuff about the Vincents, but I didn’t say this, and he continued his story.

  “Once we found out Mom was okay, I went back home to check on Jillie. Dad told me not to unlock the basement until he got back. But she wouldn’t answer, and I couldn’t hear her moving around.”

  He slowly shook his head several times, reliving it all in his mind, I supposed. When he spoke again, his voice was so gravelly I could barely hear him. “I walked downstairs, calling for her. I couldn’t find her at first. When I flipped on the light in the game room, all I could see was blood. On the carpet, her clothes . . . I couldn’t tell where it was all coming from. I found the neck wound, and she was still breathing, so I called 911 and tried to stop the bleeding. But it was coming from her wrists, too. I thought she was dying in my arms, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  Several things clicked into place: Jillian’s scars; my drawing of Minnie, dead, with her forearm dissected in exactly the same place; Jack fainting at the sight of it.

  Now I was breathing too fast. I wanted to touch him—console him somehow. But was that what he needed? What was I supposed to say? I didn’t know. But I tried to picture the girl I’d just seen—chatty, nervous, and almost shy—doing everything Jack had just told me. I couldn’t.

  “There was never any break-in,” I said.

  He shook his head. “That was to keep the press out of it. My dad’s opponents would go nuts if they knew it was really Jillian who’d stabbed my mom. They still found out that she’d been hospitalized, but the ‘official’ reason was stress and trauma due to the supposed break-in, and my dad’s staff then came up with the cover story about Jillian going away to boarding school in Europe. The press bought it, and everyone forgot about her.”

  I didn’t say anything, but after a few moments Jack dropped his head and mumbled, “How did no one see the knife? We still can’t figure out how that happened. Dad knocked it out of her hand. I saw it for a second. If it hadn’t been so chaotic . . . I just . . .”

  I took a deep breath, hugged my stomach, and leaned forward to get closer to him. “If it hadn’t been so chaotic, she might’ve found another way. If not that day, then another. You seriously cannot be blaming yourself for this—you don’t, do you?”

  “No. I mean, I know better. Logically. We all go to family counseling every week. So believe me, I’ve looked at it from every angle. Our therapist says it’s survivor guilt—I got the good genes, and she got the screwed-up ones. It’s worse because we’re twins.”

  “But you can’t change that. And she’s better, yeah?”

  “Better, but she’ll never be okay. She won’t have a normal life. She won’t ever go to school again, and she won’t get married or have kids. And even though I saved her once, I can’t always be there. I think about going to college, and I don’t know how that will work. What will she do if I can’t see her for an entire semester?”

  “You could go somewhere local. See her on the weekends.”

  “Maybe. But if my dad runs another campaign, my parents will be out of the picture. Campaigning is nonstop stress for both of them. Long hours. Trips. And if he wins? Governor of California? We’d have to move, and I can’t even fathom the drama.”

  “I don’t think it’s your job to worry about that.”

  “Kind of hard not to when it’s my life. Now do you see what you’ve gotten yourself into? Do you understand why I didn’t call you after her seizure?”

  “I understand,” I said, tapping my knee against his leg. “But don’t ever do that again. If anything happens, no matter what, you call me. Okay?”

  He tilted his head to look at me and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Promise me, Jack.”

  “I promise.”

  A friendly voice called out from the parking garage entrance. I spotted Panhandler Will walking toward us. “Sad Girl and Monk,” he said cheerily. “You found each other.”

  “We did,” I confirmed. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime, anytime. No, man, I’m good,” he said, waving away the money Jack had dug from his pocket. “I just wanted to say hi. I wasn’t asking.”

  “Take it anyway,” Jack said. “You should open a dating service for the hospital. Play matchmaker and get people together.”

  “You’re teasing me,” Will said, taking the offered bill.

  “Yeah, I am,” Jack said with a smile.

  Will smiled back, almost shyly, before swiveling around to peer farther down the sidewalk. “Dammit. Rent-a-cops. Gotta go. Thanks, Monk. See you, Sad Girl.”

  After Will disappeared into the garage, Jack said, “You know he used to be a patient in Jillian’s ward, right?”

  “Seriously? I mean, I knew he wasn’t . . . jeez. How long ago?”

  “Like, seven years ago. One of the orderlies remembers him. He says they never diagnosed exactly what was wrong, but he’s on a low-dose antipsychotic. They sneak him free medicine and try to check up on him. I guess he has no relatives and no place to crash.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Many things in life do, Bex.”

  I slid my hand into his. For several beats, his grip was almost tight enough to hurt, but I didn’t let go. Not then, and not when he told me he had to get home because his parents were expecting him. Or when he insisted on riding the N-Judah back with me because it was “dangerous to ride public transportation at night.” (Oh, the irony.) And not when he walked me down the block-long hill to my house.

  “What are you going to do about ‘rise’?” I asked after we turned the corner and the pale yellow siding on my house came into view.

  “Ah, yes. ‘Rise.’ ” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been trying to match up the words to places Jillian likes. But it’s a hard balance, finding a spot that’s both significant and hidden enough that I can work. And security cameras are a problem. So it’s like solving a secondary puzzle to figure out the perfect spot.”

  I stopped across the street from my house. “Could you use a getaway girl?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why?”

  “First, you don’t drive, so you’d make a terrible getaway girl. And second, you told me yourself—felony charges. I won’t put you in a situation where you might get dragged down with me. Nurse Katherine the Great would never let me see you again.”

  “This is true. But I thought feeling alive is always worth the risk. At least, that’s what someone once told me.”

  He smiled for the first time since we’d left the psych ward. “That person was an idiot.”

  “I don’t know about that. Personally, I think he’s pretty amazing.”

  “Amazing, huh? Tell me more about how great I am.”

  “Were we talking about you?” I asked, squinting up at him quizzically.

  Smiling, he finally let go of my hand. “You really are a lake,” he murmured. Then he slipped his arms around my back, and I curled my arms around him, boldly taking the liberty of going right under his scuffed leather jacket, like I’d been doing it for years. He smelled good. He felt good. And when he bent his head and kissed me—slowly, deeply . . . doing this lazy, rolling thing with his tongue that drove me wild—I forgot that we were standing in the middle of a city sidewalk. I forgot everything but the two of us. And nothing else mattered.

  When he finally left, my kiss-weakened legs were barely able to climb our front steps. Two hours later, I got a text from him: Good night, Bex.

  And the next morning, I got another: If you really want to be my getaway girl, be ready tomorrow at midnight. Dress in black.

  21

  JUST BEFORE OUR MEETING TIME, I DID JACK’S CONTROLLED breathing trick to relax and padded down the hallway to my mom’s room. Dressed in loungewear, she was stretched out beneath her bedcovers, a glass of wine on her bedside table.

  “Hey,” I said. “My shift kinda sucked and I’m supertired, so I’m just going to crash for the night.”

  Mom looked up from her e-reader. “You’re working too much a
t Alto.”

  “But I’m putting a ton of money away in savings.”

  She gave me a sleepy smile. “Which is why you won’t be living here when you’re twenty, like your brother. Keep it up.”

  “You’re not the least bit sad he’s moving in with Noah?”

  “Of course I’m sad. He’s my baby. He always will be, even when he’s fifty and has kids of his own.”

  I tried to picture Heath as a father. “Do they make studded leather diapers?”

  “Imagine trying to clean those.”

  “Blech. I’d rather not.”

  “While we’re on the subject, I brought something home from the hospital for you.” She pointed toward the opposite wall, where a stack of folded multicolored scrubs sat on a rocking chair. My gaze swept upward to the nearby chest of drawers. Hold on. What was that, sitting on top?

  Oh. Oh.

  A tower of condom boxes, all shrink-wrapped together.

  I wanted to dissolve into vapor and hide under the floorboards.

  “As much as I, myself, have fantasized about having Mayor Vincent’s love child—”

  I covered my ears. “Please, stop. Don’t say anything else.”

  “—I don’t want to raise a grandchild while you run off to college.”

  “There is zero chance of that happening at the moment, I promise.”

  “Moments change, and that boy is awfully charming. Besides, you’re smiling a lot lately, and that’s always a bad sign.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, moaning. She knew how I felt about him. How did she do that? I hardly knew it myself. I wasn’t even positive. Maybe I was just riding a wave of body chemicals and animal attraction. I mean, how well did I even know Jack? He could have some irritating habit I didn’t know about—some hidden character flaw. I didn’t realize Howard Hooper was homophobic until I’d had sex with him four times. (Then again, maybe I was the one with the character flaw because I was stupid enough to have sex with a jackass.)

  Mom had never once pushed condoms on me. Sure, there were some in the bathroom drawer, and I’d had multiple safe-sex conversations with her over the years; she is a nurse. But why now?