by Ryan Schow
That said, I launch the letter opener at my neck. Like a spear, it drives through flesh just off center, destroying ligaments, nerves, arteries and veins, and bouncing off the outer buckle of my spine. With barely a second’s delay, the opener shoots out of the back of my neck, burying itself into the wall behind us.
I just sit there, stunned by the pain and the violence I heaped upon myself. But no one is more speechless than Headmistress Klein. If she was fading from reality, from sanity, a moment ago, she isn’t now. She’s the exact opposite: perfectly alert, all the tiny brown hairs on her neck standing straight.
I can see she wants to hop out of her cushy office chair and do something to staunch the bleeding, but I think she’s still in shock. As in frozen still.
Blood spouts from my neck in a few steady shots, then it gets really hot inside me. The fire ants are marching. All the important parts of me are coming back together, and the skin is healing—sewing itself up—right before Headmistress Klein’s eyes.
None of this should be possible.
But it is.
Behind me, my invisible fingers work the letter opener from the wall, spin it around and deliver it slowly and purposefully through the air to Headmistress Klein. It is bent where it hit vertebrae. Bent where it struck something in the wall. Still it floats, gently in the air, my point perfectly clear: I am impossible and I am injured, but I am also in complete control.
By the time Headmistress Klein gets her makeshift “knife” back my injuries have already healed.
I wipe the blood from the front of my neck using my shirt, then sit in silence across from a woman who looks pale enough to pass out. The look on my face is expressionless.
Like a robot.
“I want Blake’s room,” I say. “Don’t make me tell you again.”
Still stricken, half out of her mind, she wavers in her chair. “This is blackmail,” she says, whisper quiet through bloodless lips.
“It is blackmail, yes. But I’m going to threaten you, too, if I don’t like your answer.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she says, breathless. “The room is yours.”
“You breathe a word of our conversation to anyone, and I mean anyone, I swear to God, your very next breath will be your last. Am I clear?”
“Perfectly.”
I stand and head for the door, but before I leave, I turn and say, “While I was inside your mind, while I was rooting through the difficulties of your life, I found Samuel, and I found all of the pain you carry as a result of his…passing. It’s a dark, debilitating cloud of misery. The kind that drives people into dismal places. I’m sorry for your loss, and if there was something I could do to end it for you, I promise you I would. But you wouldn’t let me, would you?”
She quietly says, “No.”
“Because that’s where he lives,” I hear myself say. “That’s where he’s still alive.”
At this point, she totally breaks down.
And that’s when I leave. I can’t decide if that was a terrible thing to do, or an act of total compassion. I like to think the latter, but these days, who I’m becoming, it’s sunshine turning to black clouds, and if I don’t do something to reverse directions, who knows what real damage I’ll cause?
4
While I’m walking through campus, much more at peace with myself now that I’ve vented, I realize I have to change. Foreign DNA or not, I am me now. A first person reality, not a third person fantasy. What I need to do is be a better person.
I have to.
Later on that night, on the couch at Holland’s home, the same home I broke into when I was Savannah Van Duyn to steal the key to his lab, I lay awake thinking of the white-haired girl who came to me today.
“You’re more beautiful than I imagined,” she had said.
I can’t figure out what she meant by that and it’s driving me crazy. I let my mind wander the earth, looking for her DNA signature, searching for her, but I come up empty handed. Is this even possible?
She has to exist!
That’s when Holland’s cat walks through the darkness, jumps on the couch, up onto the blanket I’m sleeping on and starts to knead my stomach like she’s a baker working her dough. The little paws press up and down into my stomach until the cat feels it’s comfortable enough to lay down. Her purring soothes me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to leave here.
I am.
A few minutes later sleep takes hold of me, lifting me out of this world and into the erotic dream that rocked me just days ago.
I’m in a bedroom again. It’s dark, not pitch black. It’s warm enough to be comfortable but cool enough to harden my nipples against him. This mystery man. His hands are on me, my body alive to his touch. Palms as soft as silk but strong run smooth over my bare arms, then trail down to my ass. They cup my butt cheeks, steal my breath. I hear my sigh, feel the weight of it, how it is a statement of euphoria, how it’s me begging to be taken.
I want to be taken!
His mouth finds mine, the warmth and tenderness of his kiss inviting. If I could, I would shove my soul into his, make us one, make us close and indestructible, but I can’t so my kiss gets harder, deeper, more passionate.
More than anything, I ache to lose myself in him.
When my need is at its pinnacle, when my lust is so nearly overwhelming it hits me like a molten heat swirling low in my abdomen, a screeching sound louder than a Kansas tornado siren cuts through the haze of my dream. I sit up fast to the sound of my alarm clock going off.
“Shit,” I groan, silencing the thing. “Gosh damn mother freaking shit.” Pushing my hair off my face, I lay back down on the couch. The cat is no where to be found, and here I am lying on sweat soaked blankets. My hand goes to my privates, which are warm and damp, a sensuous reminder of the dream. And a whole new feeling for me.
Thinking of the man, of the dream, my body heaves out an involuntary, sex craved sigh, and it’s embarrassing. Looking around, no one is in the kitchen or living room. It’s just me and my…unchecked hormones.
And thank God, because this part of me can’t emerge in the company of kids, strangers or enemies. Which is yet another reason to get my own place.
Raven, the Ruiner of Lives
1
Early the next morning, an hour and a half before classes start, I head over to the headmistress’s office. She tells me Blake is moving out right now.
“I think it’s terrible she’s going to be moving into her step-sister’s room, especially after all that’s happened,” Headmistress Klein says. Like she’s scolding me. Like she’s attempting to make me feel bad about my actions.
“I was there when Maggie killed herself,” Raven says. “She did it in my bathtub. It was me who held her body, bled out and pale, her wrists razored open. Just like her mother. So don’t try to make me feel like crap because you know nothing of me or what I’ve been through.”
Looking at Headmistress Klein, she’s shocked.
“You didn’t know?” I ask. “Just a little backstory for you, Sylvia. Maggie was the one who found her mother dead, in the bath, clothes folded beside the tub. It haunted her. Made her hate her mother, and miss her at the same time. But it shaped her, too. Made her take the same path her mother took. Made her kill herself the exact same way.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Blake deserves to be in pain for the ways she tormented Maggie when she first came to Astor Academy. Music was her connection to her mother, and Blake ridiculed her over it. And on your speaker system, no less. What did you do about that? Nothing. Not a damn thing.”
“And you think making her live in her step-sister’s room will do what to her? Act as her penance for what she’s done?”
“That’s not it at all. I just want to be near Abby so that when she f*cks up I can help her through it. This school is…not easy. Some of the girls who go here, they are some of the worst bullies I’ve ever encountered.”
“Speaking of that,” Headmistress
Klein said, “I spoke with both Cameron and Theresa, as well as Abby about yesterday.”
“It won’t do any good,” I say.
“I think it will.”
“I sat here in your office last year, just after Julie Sanderson keyed my Range Rover, and you threatened us, but it didn’t help. The food fight I started, how Bridget struck Cameron in the face with her food tray, that didn’t get us kicked out of school. And when I punched Julie in her stupid face in the cafeteria near the end of my first semester? That didn’t get me expelled either. Savannah Van Duyn, for all the trouble I caused when I was her, I never got expelled, much less suspended. Not Abby either. And not when I electrocuted Blake almost to death with a tazer in the dorm’s hallway. Oh, and not for the time I slung food at Cameron in the cafeteria when I’d been consoling Maggie. You brought us in to your office, had your talks with me, with us, but a boatload of good that did. So what makes you think you’ll put a stop to anything now? I’ve got news for you, lady, you aren’t stopping shit and you know it.”
“I like to think—” she starts to say.
“Of course, you do,” I interrupt, “but no one is better for your unfounded optimism.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’m smarter about these things than you. Cameron O’Dell made two students kill themselves for the things she said online and still she’s allowed internet access, a Facebook page, a SocioSphere page. Is that right? Is that just? That toxic bitch should be thrown in jail for cyberbullying, but no. She’s busy throwing plates at innocent girls. And is she suspended? Nope. Not at all. You saw that girl’s stitches, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” the headmistress says, shamefully.
“Ten bucks and a Coke says you didn’t even contact her father, my father, to explain to him what happened and how it was dealt with.”
“I feel it best—” she starts to say, about to defend her inability to handle school bullying.
“The truth is this school is out of your control,” I interrupt, “but you’re hanging on for the half million dollar salary, isn’t that right?”
“It’s not that,” she says, trying to get a word in edgewise.
“You’ve lost control of your school.”
She looks at me, her eyes giving up, her will broken. “Yes,” she admits, her features and voice solemn, resigned. “Yes, I have.”
“Finally, the gosh damn truth.”
She steals a deep breath, barely able to meet my eyes, and says, “You have the room you wanted, my silence, my dignity and my balls. Isn’t that enough? What else do you want?”
“I want you to know that since you’ve done nothing about Cameron O’Dell, I’m going to do something about her. And I’m going to do it my way. If you know what’s best for you, your career and your safety, the best thing you can do is steer clear of me.”
“Just don’t hurt her,” Headmistress Klein says without an ounce of humor.
Walking out, over my shoulder, I say, “I’m not making any promises.”
2
A quick walk to the dorms takes me to Blake’s room in time to catch her moving out. For some reason, I want to see her there. Being forced to move. Being shuffled upstairs into her suicided step-sister’s room. Cameron and Theresa, however, take me by surprise. They’re helping. And Abby? She’s safely inside her room with the door locked. She’s probably still getting ready and wondering who’s moving out at seven a.m.
Blake, that’s who.
Cameron, Theresa and Blake are gathering up the rest of Blake’s clothes when I stroll in. It’s still early, so they’re all sleepy eyed, their hair not up to their usual standards.
“Who are you?” Cameron says. Her tired voice is the same as her bitchy voice.
“I’m going to be living here,” I say, plain as day.
Blake drops her handful of clothes like they don’t matter and she walks over to me, like she wants to fight. Whatever. I stare her down, not worried in the slightest. And quite frankly, the way she looks, I’m surprised she isn’t wearing makeup.
“You’re the one who got me kicked out?” Blake snaps. Wearing little makeup, it almost makes her hard looking. Well as hard looking as you can look for going to a prep school for the demon spawn of the über-elite.
“I’m the one giving you a chance to finally grieve your step-sister,” I say.
“That’s icy,” Cameron says. At least she’s got her face on.
“Who the hell are you to get me kicked out of my room?” Blake snarls, even though I’m in her head enough to know she’s missing Maggie, and still suffering bouts of guilt. And all this hostility? It’s an act. A show of strength to save face in front of her friends.
“I’m just a girl,” I say, like it’s the world’s most obvious thing. “Raven, to be precise.”
“Raven, the bitch,” Cameron mutters.
“Yes,” I announce, loud and proud. “Raven the bitch. Raven the ruiner of young lives. Now before this turns ugly, and violent—and I’m sure you’ve already been warned about your behavior, Cameron—I’d like to offer a truce, and my help.”
“You want to help?” Theresa says. I like what she’s done with her hair. In fact, I like what she’s done with her entire look. And it’s not lost on me that she was the only friend of Maggie’s to come to her funeral. As much as I loathe her, she might have earned a fragment of my respect.
“There’s no reason for us not to get along,” I reason. “Especially since we don’t know each other. Besides, this will be good for Blake. She needs closure. Isn’t that right, Blake?”
Strangely, Blake nods her head. Even more puzzling is why no one asks me how I know these things? Or who I really am. I chalk it up to each and every one of them being narcissistic twats. But that’s just me.
“Good,” I say pleasantly. “So what can I take?”
After what feels like ten years of silence, Blake says, “How about the linens?”
“I can do that,” I say.
“I hope we’re not skipping breakfast for this,” Cameron says, and I think it sounds like the most normal thing I’ve ever heard this rotten scab say.
3
It doesn’t take long for us to move Blake’s stuff upstairs, but the four of us miss breakfast. “I’ll take the rest,” I tell Blake, and she’s hesitant. Cameron and Theresa take off, leaving the two of us to each other.
“I didn’t like my step-sister,” Blake says to me because we’re strangers.
“That’s what I hear.”
“As stupid as it sounds,” she says, her eyes glistening, “I miss her. I think this will be good for me. To be close to her like this.”
My psychic tentacles scuttle the corridors of her mind. What I feel most is how numb she has become. The haze of drugs. The kind of prescription drugs that mellow your brain then coat it with green fuzz. Deeper still, beyond the Xanax fog, are realms of feeling: depression, sorrow, guilt, loss. For what seems like forever, I feel for the girl.
“You can trust me,” I whisper into her mind, a mild suggestion I want her to take. If only so I can move my stuff in while everyone is at school. To my surprise, I feel her mind accepting my suggestion as her own. Either that or I’m crazy.
“I trust you,” she says, handing me the key to my new room and the key to her new room.
Okay, maybe not crazy. Manipulative and wrong, but not crazy.
“If you need to talk,” I say.
“I won’t,” she replies, fast. “But thanks anyway.”
On the way back downstairs, I can’t help wondering what other talents I possess and have yet to discover. And for her sake, I truly hope Blake is okay.
It takes me a few more runs to empty her things from my room into hers upstairs. I lock her door and take her new key downstairs with me. About lunch time, I walk to Holland’s office where he’s waiting for me. The way he looks, it’s like someone’s got his testicles in a vice.
“You can’t just not show up for work,” he says.
“I was ironing out the final details of my living situation.”
“Your what?”
“Yeah, I’m not living with you anymore,” I say, setting my things on the reception desk. “I’ll miss the cat, though.”
“Where are you—”
“On campus, right next to Abby.”
Nostrils flare. Eyes narrow. Head and eyes peel away from me in disgust. “You can’t help yourself, can you?” He steals a deep breath and for whatever reason, I’m really enjoying his meltdown. This part of me who likes teasing and tormenting, she’s satiated. “You always have to meddle, don’t you? And test me. To aggravate the fu—, the hell out of me!”
“Don’t get your G-string in a twist, Josef. We’ll hardly even talk.”
“This was a mistake, bringing you back here.”
“Won’t be the first mistake you’ve made with me, Heir Mengele. And it certainly won’t be the worst, or the last.”
“That is my fear,” he says. “Just…stay away from her.”
“I will.”
“You won’t, you liar,” he snaps.
For some reason, the many faces of Wolfgang Gerhard calm me. When he became Enzo Holland version 1.0—the last version of himself—he was like Japan’s Fukushima reactors: fully unstable, primed to end the world.
He keeps staring at me, his eyes jumpy, mean, like he just let it go. “I know you. What you will do is insert yourself into her life an inch at a time until you are back in all the lives you said you would leave behind.”
Maybe he’s right. Okay, crap, he’s definitely right.
“Someday I might surprise you, Dr. Angel of Death.”
“NO!” he booms, startling me. “Stop taunting me with memories of that man!”
I slip into his head, not even meaning to, and there are fire pits and full trains and barking dogs and guns and snowflakes that are not snow but the ashes of the dead—women and children, the elderly. Boiling under the surface of these images is a cold lunacy, as infectious as cancer, as aggressive as flesh eating bacteria. My emotions become entangled in his. Swallowed in a heart beat. Driven to the core of me, like a stake being thrust into my center, is a calculated insanity, a thirst for torture, a vengeance for life and freedom and leniency. I hate him so much it makes me hate everything even more.