Red Water: A Novel

by Kristen Mae

  I throw my arms around Garrett’s neck, brave from the two beers I’ve consumed, and he peels my hands off and lowers them firmly to my sides. My heart sinks like an anchor until he takes one of my hands and spins me instead. He wants to be playful. I love this side of him, love that he is letting me see it, love that it exists at all.

  Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” comes on and everyone goes crazy dancing. Then the floor is clearing, and I know it’s because of Rome. I can only see through a crack between people’s shoulders, but it seems like the whole party is watching him moonwalk and gyrate in a perfect imitation of the King of Pop. Bethany and Daphne are standing on the opposite side of the floor next to Garrett’s friend, grinning and cheering with the crowd.

  A girl I’ve never seen before joins Rome on the floor, and they dance the classic “Thriller” choreography in unison. I can’t believe there are even people my age who know the entire routine. Their synchronization is so perfect, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d rehearsed in advance.

  I turn to look at Garrett and he’s already looking at me, his face serious, and I have the sinking feeling I’ve done something wrong again. Last time I messed up I ended up with my face in a riverbank. My heart bangs in my chest, throwing me off balance because it’s out of time with the music. I’m afraid to look at the dance floor again but I can’t just stand there staring at Garrett’s somber face; I turn my gaze back to the two dancers, though this time I force my expression into one of boredom.

  My chest is swelling and deflating like the throat of an excited bullfrog. I’m sure Garrett’s noticed that he’s made me nervous—it’s not the kind of thing he would overlook. There are still people standing in front of us, blocking us from view, so I do something crazy: I reach over with my right hand and cup Garrett between the legs. You’re the one I want, I think I’m telling him. He lets me do it for just a second before encircling my wrist with his strong fingers and returning my hand to my side.

  The moment the song ends, Garrett grabs me by the arm and yanks me out of the party, down the stairs, and across the street to the music school. “Where are we going?” I say as he’s pulling me across the street, but he doesn’t answer. I didn’t even get a chance to tell my friends I was leaving. It doesn’t matter, though. This adventure with Garrett, this feeling of not knowing what he has planned, that something dangerous might happen—it pardons the other, smaller injustices.

  “Swipe your card,” he says when we reach the door, and I fish around in my purse for the card. I can still hear the dull thump of the music from the party. My breath is coming in gasps.

  “Your cello in here?” he asks, and I nod. “I want you to play for me.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I know he means for me to play in the way that is only meant for him.

  Once I’ve retrieved my cello from its locker, we look for a practice room. The place is mostly empty, since it’s Halloween—the sound of one lonely Oboe croons from the other end of the hallway. We might as well be alone.

  We choose a larger room occupied by a baby grand piano, but even so there is little room to move once Garrett and I are inside with my cello. I’m still unlatching my case when the door snaps shut, the deadbolt clanking into place. His intent is like tentacles reaching for me—I can hardly stand to have my back to him, so close like this. Then his hand is on my hip, turning me, and I leave my cello standing for a moment in the open case waiting for me to make it sing. But not yet. Garrett’s tongue is in my mouth now, rough and demanding, and he yanks my black Wednesday Addams skirt high up my thighs. I’m already shuddering, soaking through my underwear. He’s going to do it again—tear me apart and stitch me up.

  He pushes me backward until I’m leaning against the piano, the hardness of the bench pressing into the backs of my knees. A ghost of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “You think you can just grab my dick like that in a crowd of people?” His voice is low and measured, almost sweet, but vibrating with intensity. He grabs me between the legs then, viciously, as if to demonstrate who belongs to whom.

  I grip the edges of the piano. “Are you mad?” I practically wheeze the words into his face.

  “Don’t ever fucking do that again.” He grabs one of my braids with his free hand and jerks it hard.

  “Ow, okay, okay, I won’t do it. I thought you’d like it.” But he doesn’t seem to hear me, he’s already pushing my underwear to the side and stabbing into me with his fingers, hurting me so much I’m climbing up on the piano backwards, spreading my legs and whimpering, wanting him to be nicer with his touch, just a little bit nicer so it doesn’t hurt as much. He pulls my braids again and my head goes backward so fast I have to catch myself to keep from toppling into the belly of the piano.

  “I’m sorry,” I whimper, my eyes burning. “I’m so sorry, please.” He slows his abuse, massages me now, and god, fuck him for knowing how to do this to me. I’m nothing but a dirty slut, desperate for him, and he knows it and makes sure I know it too. His fingers slide up into my wetness, pulling low, guttural moans from me, and I hate these noises I make, but he likes them so it’s okay—his blue eyes are shining and he’s sucking his teeth while he watches me submit. That’s it for me. Seeing him suck his teeth like that, knowing he’s getting off on this, that’s enough, I’m going to come, and…fuck—

  He pulls his fingers from me. “Get undressed.”

  I’m throbbing emptily, and it’s so painful I almost want to finish myself off right there in front of him, but I know he’d be a different kind of mad—a really bad kind of mad—if I did that. So I take off my clothes and leave them in a pile on the piano and now I’m standing naked in front of him, rocking back and forth, clenching and unclenching my fists, biting my bottom lip. Waiting.

  “Now play your cello.”

  I’m trembling. I’m not sure I can even do this, but I feel trapped here, deliciously trapped. What would happen if I said no and tried to put my clothes on and leave? Would he drag me back here? Would he get angry and hit me? Would he let me go and never talk to me again? But no, I can’t even consider that last one—that would be worse than getting hit.

  I pull the piano bench out and sit on it naked with my cello between my legs, checking the intonation of the strings. The piano bench is wet beneath me—nasty. My nipples go hard, thinking of how nasty I am.

  I begin to play, shaky at first, but it’s easier to play through the shakiness if I tear at my strings and become the savage I was downtown. But unlike downtown, I keep my eyes open and watch Garrett watching me. His nostrils are flaring; he likes what I’m doing. I keep expecting him to pull himself out and masturbate, and I don’t know why he doesn’t—he stands there strong and stoic, still dressed in his gangster costume, ignoring the hard bulge pressing at the zipper of his pants. What happened to his pretend machine gun, anyway?

  I keep playing, pulling wildly at the notes while my left hand grabs at whatever melody it wants. I hardly know what I’m doing anymore—even my braids brushing against my naked shoulder blades make this sick and erotic. I rip at my lowest string, the deep bass note that vibrates my whole instrument and sends the vibrations quaking through my knees and legs and into the deepest parts of me and—

  Garrett snatches my cello from my hands, but not before I’ve already tumbled over into orgasm. He leans the instrument in the corner and yanks me by my braids while I moan and gasp, stupefied once again by my body’s lust for depravity. He turns me and throws me against the piano so I land hard on the keys with my elbows—not graceful—and a dissonant racket reverberates through the room like someone has dropped a stack of ceramic plates on a concrete floor. I’m making a terrible racket too, whinnying with pain from my injured scalp and still reeling from my orgasm. If anyone’s out in the hallway, they’re getting an earful.

  Garrett still has me by the braids with one hand, shaking me, and then he spanks me hard with the other. I shriek from the sting—he’s never hit me before. My breasts are pressed hard int
o the piano now, sending bursts of pain singing through my body, the keys beating my forearms like metal bars.

  “Worthless whore,” he growls, and hits me again, harder, and then I’m crying, tears running rivers down my cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say, my voice a choked whimper. I try to turn—I want to see his face—but he tightens his hold on my braids, low at the base of my neck, and forces my face forward so that I’m looking down into the piano’s belly, staring at its golden strings.

  I hear the hiss of a zipper being opened, hear him shuffling, hear the condom wrapper. “You play like that,” he says, low, “just belch out a bunch of random notes that make no sense, and you think you’re making music?”

  He plunges into me, hard and deep, ramming me into the piano’s hard edges and reigniting the agony in my breasts and forearms.

  “I thought you liked it,” I sob, and for some reason I’m trying to be quiet, restraining my voice, gritting my teeth against the cries that want to escape. I should just go ahead and scream—at this point it wouldn’t matter what anyone out in the hallway hears.

  “You make a fool of yourself putting yourself on display, swinging your hair so proud like you’re something special. You look ridiculous and desperate.”

  You’re like your mother, Malory. Very weak, not the kind of person who will leave a special mark on the world.

  I think of all the money I made playing that way, letting the music pour out of me however it wanted. I think of the crowd, how fascinated they seemed. But maybe they were hearing something different than what I thought. Maybe I really was only making a spectacle of myself. I’m pounded into the piano again and again, sometimes hitting the keys and making that little tinkling noise, and eventually I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for it to be over. I feel like someone is scraping me out, pulling out all my guts so that I’ll soon be left with nothing but a vast, open space inside. Soon I’ll be just a shell.

  “You’re like a bag lady out there, holding out your hand, aren’t you?” Each thrust is harder than the last, the slap of his skin against mine an ugly thwapping noise in the room, mixing dissonantly with the plink of the piano. He pulls my braids again, yanking my head up from the piano, and my eyes spring wide with pain. “Aren’t you just a beggar?” he murmurs at my ear.

  “Yes,” I say, because I want him to stop hurting me now, but also because it’s true. Look how I keep coming back to him over and over even though I’m nothing but his plaything. I’m content to let him tear me apart. I like the idea of being an empty shell. Powerless and useless, just as my father said for years, just as my mother proved when she committed suicide. How foolish I was to believe she was getting better. I might as well have killed her myself.

  A memory flashes through my mind then, my father’s voice in the dark, saying those very words, You might as well have killed her yourself. Wait—are they my words or are they his? My heart rate climbs at the idea that my father has put this thought into my head. What other thoughts did he put there? What other words don’t I remember?

  Garrett slams into me one last time, my chest crashing into the edge of the piano while he goes rigid with orgasm, not making a sound, still pushing my head forward so I can’t look at him. He pulls out of me and leaves me bent over the piano panting while he zips himself up.

  “Get dressed,” he says, and leaves me by myself in the room. He is going to clean himself up, I know. Going to clean off my filth.

  He walks me to my dorm after, holds my hand like he doesn’t care who sees. Like he loves me. I’m still dressed like Wednesday Addams albeit a more disheveled version. One of my braids is loose, billowing against my back like a rope that’s come unraveled. I keep picking at it, rebraiding it, as if there’s any way it could stay put without something to hold it together.

  Garrett never turns his face to meet my gaze, but his profile is just as beautiful and clean and organized as the rest of him. His breath, even from feet away, still smells like wintergreen. He is still the most confident person I have ever known. But my forearms are achy and bruised. He has hurt me, torn me away from myself, pulled me undone, torn me from myself as surely as he unraveled my braid. And yet I want him. I want him to want me. Imagine, someone like Garrett, who has no need to want anyone, anything—wanting me.

  It is an unholy grail.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Daphne is there when I wake in the morning, asleep in her bed with her face turned toward me and her mouth ajar, snoring lightly. She’s still wearing her Tinkerbell makeup. I wonder what she thought when she came home last night and found me here instead of at Garrett’s. He didn’t let me sleep at his house, and I was too afraid to ask. I think he’s putting me in my place, showing me that I am not in a position to expect anything of him—not permission to lay my hands on him in a crowd, and certainly not to think I can occupy half his bed. Did he have some idea how badly I wanted to press my naked body against his while he slept, to fool myself into thinking his unconsciousness was something like benevolence? He must have. Denying me was the perfect castigation; now I crave him more than ever.

  I hear a knock at the door and dig out my phone to check the time. 9:12 a.m., and I have at least ten messages between Bethany, Daphne, and Rome. Now I remember that I was the one who drove to the party, which means my car must still be parked there. Possibly towed. One more fucking thing. I heave myself up out of my bed and open the door a crack.

  “Rome.” I slip out into the dim hallway. Rome’s got his head bent a little, that ridiculous wide-brimmed hat of his almost hiding his eyes, but not quite—he’s staring at me from under the brim, very serious.

  “Why are you knocking so early?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.

  “Just had to check.” His eyes are dark and cold.

  “I only just got your messages. Sorry, I—”

  “It’s making me sick, Malory.”

  My jaw drops. I don’t know what to say. “Rome, it’s really none of your—”

  “None of my business, yeah, obviously, but that’s not what I mean.” He takes off his hat and scrapes his fingertips through his short curls. He’s got his head turned from me now, like he can’t bear to look at me.

  And then it hits me: “Rome, are you jealous?”

  “So what if I am?” He faces me again. “Mal, I just…I know this guy, and maybe you think you know him too, but you don’t. He’s…done things. People talk. He’s not right.”

  A tremor of fear rattles my insides, instantly chased away by a soft heat. I swallow over the tightness in my throat. “I know who he is.”

  “You sure about that?” He reaches out like he’s going to touch my face, and I cringe backward. “Did he hurt you?” He narrows his eyes and steps closer.

  I resist the urge to look down at my arms.

  Rome pulls his hand back, his other hand still clutching his hat to his chest. Then he straightens himself, cocks his head at me, and says it again, slower, quieter: “Did he fucking hurt you?”

  Like it’s any of his business. I tilt my chin up, defiant. “Rome,” I almost laugh. “I let him hurt me. I like it when he hurts me.”

  I know I shouldn’t be able to see it in this dim lighting and with his dark skin, and I suppose I can’t really, but somehow I know that Rome is flushing—that I’ve said something he feels way down deep in his gut the same way I feel it when Garrett toys with me and makes me come alive. I guess Rome likes to be tortured as much as I do. Now I really do laugh. We’re a couple of sick fucks. I wonder what happened to Rome to make him love wanting something he can’t have.

  He closes his eyes, rubs his hand over his mouth like he’s trying to wipe away the filth of my words. “Well,” he says, his voice scratchy. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

  “So,” I say, brightening my tone, “are we still studying later?” I smile at him through tight lips, as if I have the right to be so cocky. I am a liar, liar, liar.

  “Ah,” he says. “Today? Maybe not today. I t
hink…I think I’ll just see you in class on Tuesday, okay?”

  “But we’ve got a quiz.”

  “You’re ready, right? You don’t need my help.” His expression is hopeful, but I can’t tell what he’s hoping for, if it’s for me to need him or for me to leave him alone.

  I’m bad for him; any idiot could see that. “No,” I say, my voice soft and accommodating. “I don’t need you.”

  He presses his eyes closed and makes a sharp huffing sound, shakes his head the way people do when someone they thought they knew has turned out to be a terrible disappointment. Then he turns and walks down the hallway, leaving me to pretend that I’ll get on without him just fine.

  * * *

  I play downtown Sunday, demurely. Lots of Bach. A few folk tunes, some children’s songs. I’m stiff, but accurate, and I make money, which I keep for myself despite passing two homeless people on the way back to my car. Garrett doesn’t call.

  Bethany texts me Monday morning, asking where I am. I couldn’t make myself get out of bed; couldn’t make myself care. At my lesson with Yarvik, I’m a robot. She sets herself apart from me, glides back and forth across the room in her rolling office chair, puzzling over me like I’m an abstract piece of art.

  Still nothing from Garrett.

  I study by myself for Tuesday’s quiz. I’m getting better at pinpointing the details that need the most focus, remembering to elaborate on the why and how as much as the who, what, when. I glance at Rome as we’re passing our quizzes forward at the end of class, and he tips his head at me, polite but detached, like he’s reevaluating his involvement with me. It churns my gut, him looking at me like that, like I’m poisonous. Rome was right—I don’t need him. He can fuck off, anyway.

  By Wednesday, I still haven’t been able to force myself to get up early enough to meet Bethany in the practice rooms. She captures me in the hallway on my way to Music Theory: “Malory, where have you been? And why didn’t you answer my messages?”