Mixed Signals

by Alyssa Cole

  When I reached the sanctuary of my room, I dug into my emergency supply and pulled out the venison jerky my parents had sent in a care package. I also grabbed a chocolate bar. Salty and sweet would be my pals, even if no one else was up to the task.

  I glanced at the author photo. The smarmy-looking dude seemed familiar for some reason, but I figured it was because he was related to Danielle. The book hadn’t gripped me the first time around, so I expected it to be boring, but I was immediately pulled in. Even though it was nonfiction, it was storytelling in the best possible way—each chapter was an overview of the day preceding the Flare for each engineer, interspersed with smaller mini-chapters describing the way the nuclear plant worked. On their own, each chapter was well-written but innocuous. Together, they built an enormous tension, clearly exhibiting how each engineer depended on one another and how each system was interdependent. All of these twined together to create a fierce sense of dread as the Flare, and the inevitable breakdown of the system, approached. Morbid curiosity made you keep flipping the pages.

  When I got to chapter seven, I realized it was about two engineers and not one, a married couple. The chapter started with Leanna Donninger sitting at the breakfast table before her shift as her daughter served her pancakes in the shape of teddy bears.

  Danielle’s work study form flashed into my head again. Danielle Donninger. The last name couldn’t be a coincidence, and the picture of the couple with their much younger daughter—hatless and happy—proved it without a shadow of a doubt. I, and most of my classmates, had been assigned to read about Danielle’s parents’ death. Now I understood why she’d been excused from Disaster Lit. All of my concerns about my love life wilted into insignificance.

  My food sat uneaten as I powered my way through the following chapters. Leanna and David Donninger had succumbed to their radiation poisoning years ago, a slow and painful death that I would get to experience with them in the last chapter. But first I would read about that last morning at home with their daughter, Danielle. How David had helped her with her homework that night and worried when the electricity was out the next morning and his wife hadn’t returned from the plant. By the next evening he couldn’t take not knowing whether his wife, and his co-workers, needed him. He dropped Danielle off with his brother and headed to the nuclear plant.

  I remembered distinctly what it’d felt like when my parents had left and not come back right after the Flare. A horrible, numbing dread that followed me like a shadow. Nightmares, horrific thoughts and, worst of all, having to get up every day and pretend everything was okay. They too had gone to help others at expense to themselves, but my parents had come back. I’d been spared from that agony of loss so many of my friends and peers had experienced.

  When death happened on such a wide scale, you had to cut yourself off from it or you’d go insane. I had become a pro at that when someone was going to reveal something painful, and I could throw up defensive walls to protect myself. But this book had caught me unawares. Danielle’s uncle was a master at pointing out the little, humanizing details, like the matching panda hats David and his daughter had bought on a trip to Niagara Falls. How, toward the end, their daughter had kept her rapidly deteriorating parents entertained with outlandish stories.

  When I was done, I curled against my pillow and sobbed until my eyes ached. I’d often worried about one or the other of my family members being killed, and with good reason. To imagine my whole world taken from me was unbearable. Yet so many people carried this weight every day. Danielle. Edwin. Mykhail. How did they go on? How did they put one foot in front of the other?

  I wiped my face off and dragged myself out of bed. When Danielle opened her door, I was holding a chocolate bar and trying to be normal, but she wasn’t fooled.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “You can only come in if you don’t talk about it.”

  I nodded and entered. “I just wanted to see if you wanted some of this sea-salt chocolate bar. I don’t think I should eat the whole thing.”

  She sat on the floor in the middle of a semicircle of sheets of papers that radiated out from her. Her pencils sat at her side and her fingers were stained with ink. Each paper had a variant of the same drawing. A lone wolf girl howling up at a full moon that encircled the silhouette of two large wolves loping away.

  I sat stiffly on her bed. I felt as if I’d violated her trust somehow, even though all I’d done was my required reading. I broke off a piece of chocolate and handed it to her.

  “My uncle is a fantastic writer but a horrible man. Do you know he made me read drafts of the book as he was writing? I had to spend the better part of a year down in the bomb shelter with him because he was so paranoid the power plant was going to blow.” She took a small bite. “He belittled my art and said my parents had coddled me. He said my interests were a disgrace to them and their intellect.” Her eyes were blank when she looked at me, like an unfinished drawing that was a few strokes of graphite away from that spark of life. “Lots of people have started to figure out who I am and why I got to come here. It sucks. I hate having to answer questions and for people to think they know everything about me when they know nothing.”

  “I’m sorry. I—” I didn’t know what to do.

  While I was dawdling, she came to a decision. Her hand went up to her hat and before I could stop her, she pulled it off. The back of her hair was thick and lustrous, but her hairline went back almost as far as the crown of her head. She ran her fingers over the raw, flaky skin. “I twist my hair off in my sleep. Nerves. I wish I sucked my thumb instead.” She shrugged and pulled the hat back on. “I wanted you to know. The hat is cute, but I don’t wear it because I’m some airhead stuck in fantasyland.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me.” I was scrambling. My first friend in forever had confided something enormous in me, and I had nothing to give her in return. Maybe not nothing. “Was ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ really your mom’s favorite song, like it says in the book? I know it... I can sing it if you want.”

  She had reached a hand out for her pencil and it hovered there now. I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing, but then she gave a single nod. “I’d like that,” she said. She picked up her pencil and began her sketch anew on a fresh sheet of paper. She stretched her arms as she worked so the paper was out of reach of the tears that dripped from her chin. She worked quickly, and a moment after I warbled the last note she put down her pencil and examined the final product. “I think this is the one.” With that, she stood and tacked it over one of the posters beside her bed. “Thanks, Maggie.”

  I left the chocolate on her bed when I made my exit, then went and washed my face in the bathroom. This time, I did examine myself in the mirror. What was reflected was maybe the luckiest person at the whole damn school, yet I was working myself up over boy troubles.

  “Perspective,” I whispered. My phone rang, the chirping echoing off the bathroom tiles. An unfamiliar number flashed on the screen.

  “Maggie? This is Felix. We were wondering if Edwin talked to you after he left here?”

  I was already through the bathroom door, jogging back to my room. Felix wouldn’t call just to say hello. “No. Why?”

  “He kiiiinda got electrocuted and—”

  “What?” I shouted. The student in the room I was running past slammed his door shut.

  “I don’t think it was, like, getting-struck-by-lightning electrocuted, but he wouldn’t go to the hospital and now he isn’t answering his phone.”

  I knew Edwin was probably fine. I knew I shouldn’t blow things out of proportion. But I’d just read a book that was a personal meditation on loss. By the end, a certain refrain had been made clear. If I’d known that was the last time I would talk to him, I would have...

  “I’m going to his place now,” I said and hung up.

  I couldn’t help but think of the way I h
ad left things with Edwin. I needed to make things right—if I still had time.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was out of breath by the time I got to his dorm across campus, partially from running and partially from the thought of anything happening to him. When I’d thought I lost Devon, the pain had been very real, but it had been for the idea of a person and not who he really was. With Edwin, it would be so much worse. I knew his particular smell. I knew the texture of his skin and of his tongue. I knew the way he tilted his head to the side and lowered his eyelids at me when I did something to annoy him, and that intense look I now knew meant that he wanted me. I couldn’t lose that, either via freak electrocution or my own stupidity.

  I followed one of his dorm mates in and hurried through the unfamiliar hallways searching for room 4J. Four flights and one unintentional man ass viewing later, I was outside his door. I knocked hard, ignoring the several notes from women asking him when he was free scrawled across his message board. I knocked again, harder, and then heard the sound of something crashing to the floor, followed by a muffled “Carajo!”

  I tried the doorknob and pushed hard, expecting resistance where there was none so I stumbled in over the threshold into darkness. I ran my hand over the wall until I hit the light switch and squeaked at what I saw.

  “Oh my God!” Edwin stood groggily next to his bed clad in nothing but the smooth expanse of brown skin, the aforementioned deity had blessed him with. His body was muscular, not like a bodybuilder’s but like someone who went to the gym regularly and had a job in manual labor. Dark hair curled tightly over his chest, losing its kink as it traveled down over the ridges of his abdomen and into the thatch that surrounded... I slid my eyes away from his groin, focusing on the girth of his thighs instead, which seemed less pervalicious.

  “Mags?” He blinked at me, and the appendage at his groin nodded a greeting at me, as well. He turned to put on a pair of shorts, but not before his erection raised to half-mast before my eyes. I was intrigued at how his penis seemed to have an agenda of its own, straining outward, while Edward tried to make himself decent. It felt silly to be surprised, but it wasn’t as if I’d had much experience. I wanted to know more, though. My instinct was to walk over and grip him in my fist, to explore every part of him until nothing could surprise me anymore. At that thought, I felt a clenching need low in my body; it seemed Edwin wasn’t the only one with autonomous genitalia.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice hoarse. He sat on his bed, and I took a few steps closer.

  “Felix called me and told me you got electrocuted. I came over expecting to find, well, not this.” I motioned to his now partially clothed glory, and he laughed.

  “Disappointed?” The raise of his brows indicated he already knew the answer to that.

  “Why did Felix lie to me?” I asked instead of responding. I hoped he would say it was part of his clever ruse to get me to his room, but he shrugged.

  “You know he can be a little overprotective. I opened a door at the plant that had been wired to a car battery.”

  My breath left me in a rush. “What? Why would anyone do that?” I knew why, obviously. They wanted to hurt someone, and that someone had almost been Edwin.

  “There was a lot of mischief done at the plant. Whoever it was wanted to take the electricity out, and when they couldn’t do that they went apeshit everywhere else. Lucky for me, they had no idea what they were doing. I only got a bit of a shock, but I think it really freaked Felix out.”

  “I know Felix is careful, but he’s not one to freak out over nothing. Tell me the truth.”

  “Okay, maybe I got thrown back a few feet, but seriously, I’m fine!” His last few words were said on a laugh as I stomped over and made like I was going to push him for lying to me. He held me by the wrists and lay down, pulling me onto the bed beside him in one quick motion. He released my wrists and lay on his back, closing his eyes.

  “I’m trying to recuperate,” he said quietly. “You’re supposed to be bringing me ice cream and stuff, not wailing on me.”

  “You could have been hurt, Edwin,” I said. I shifted a bit closer to him, wanting to feel the warmth of him along my side.

  “Nah.” He motioned upward with his head. “You forget that I’ve got some people up there looking out for me. If I’ve made it this far, I’ll be okay.”

  My throat went tight at his words, and I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I hope they’re not looking now,” I said before I leaned in and kissed him. I surprised him, although I didn’t understand why, as he’d just pulled me into bed with him while in a state of undress. This was the next reasonable course of action. I took advantage of my momentary upper hand and licked over his bottom lip, testing the plumpness of it between my teeth. He groaned, a deep and satisfied sound that already had me plotting how to draw it out of him again. His tongue snaked out to meet mine and I felt their joining in my entire body, a decadent ripple of pleasure that spread down my neck and back. The same frenzy that had descended on us in the car returned as his soft lips pressed bruising kisses into mine, as his hands cradled my neck gently and then roughly grabbed the edge of my hoodie instead, as if he wouldn’t exert that kind of strength on me, only my inanimate clothing.

  I pushed him for real then, rolling him onto his back as I straddled him. He brought his hands between us to unzip my hoodie without removing his mouth from mine, without stopping the ridiculously sexy thrust of his tongue that matched the rocking of his hips up from the bed. My hips were moving in kind, chasing his without any effort of my own, the same as when we’d danced. Once I picked up on the basic rhythm, I inserted my own variations that made what we were doing our own unique dance. His hands slid up my thighs, under my shirt, to grip the bare skin of my waist and settle me lower down on his body. When the thickness of his cock bumped against my behind, my rhythm went off completely and I gasped into his mouth.

  He stopped moving, except for kissing my lips, my cheeks, the smooth skin beneath my eyes. “We should stop,” he said.

  “Why would you say something crazy like that?” I asked. I tilted my head so I could catch my lips with his, and the low groan he made when I licked into his mouth drove my need even further. I clasped his face with my hands as I kissed him, but he gently pulled his head back and looked at me with the “wise old man” look that always showed up just when we were having a good time.

  “Your first time should be special,” he said.

  I moved my ass against him a little, and he thrust up involuntarily. “Did you rent a room at the Ritz for your first time?”

  He laughed and his body shook beneath me. “Pssh, no. It was in the bathroom at my friend’s grandmother’s house.”

  “Classy,” I said. “If that’s the case, then this is the equivalent of a date with caviar and champagne.”

  He smoothed his palm over the back of my head and down my neck. The warm weight of it pushed pleasantly against my spine as he moved down to cup my ass. “Maggie.” He sighed. “You’ve barely even had time to date anyone. I don’t want you to regret this.”

  Disappointment and humiliation slowed the movement of my hips, made it awkward and jerky instead of sinuous and sexy. “If you don’t want to have sex with me, that’s fine.” My voice shook embarrassingly, but I continued. “But in case that shock earlier scrambled your memory, I’ve wanted this for a long time now. I’m pretty sure there’s no way I’m going to regret this unless the top three men from my list of hot British actors bust down the door in the afterglow and state that they’d been traveling for months to pop my cherry.”

  He didn’t laugh. “You came to me before because you had a specific goal. I don’t want to just be the guy who helped you meet that goal. I have feelings for you, and I have for a little while now.”

  It was my turn to be shocked. I sat up, and he followed so that I was settled
comfortably on his lap, with my legs wrapped around him. His biceps looked like convenient armrests, so I placed my hands there. “How long is ‘a little while’? Have you secretly liked me this whole time and I’ve been suffering for nothing?”

  A furrow formed between his eyebrows. “No. Why would I wait for years to tell you I liked you if I knew the feeling was mutual?”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “I’m confused.”

  “I mean, I always thought you were cool, but for a long time you were my friend’s weird little sister who tried to bang me out of nowhere. I know because I have a penis, I’m supposed to think that’s great, but...no.” I cringed, shame dousing the heat that our kissing had built up within me. “Then you were my friend’s weird little sister who hated me because I hadn’t banged her.”

  “I didn’t hate you.” He stared at me and raised his brows. “Okay, maybe a little bit,” I admitted, looking away from him.

  His hand cupped my face and gently turned my head to his. His other hand brushed against my stomach and squeezed into the bit of space where the apex of my thighs wasn’t flush against his body. The slow circle he worked there was enough to make me forget what we were even talking about. “But when I came to visit a couple of months before you went to school, I drove up and heard this amazing voice belting out a song. It was a woman’s voice, not a girl’s, and it grabbed me by the dick and dragged me around the side of the house and led me to you. You were snapping peas or some other Betty Crocker shit, but your voice was ethereal. And then John came outside and when the singing stopped, you started joking with him and you were hilarious.”

  “I’ve always been able to sing, and I’ve always been funny,” I said, letting my immodest flag fly. And why not? I was practically humping the guy’s hand at the same time, so he had to know I wasn’t some meek little thing. “Why then?”