I cornered Jasmine once, a month into the semester. She’d snuck out for a cigarette after lunch and I went out with her. Not too intimidating in my wheelchair and all. Crap, I miss being intimidating. It kept me from being bullied. It gave me the kind of power that was perfect for situations like this.
It gave me the kind of power that was easy to abuse, too.
“You have to stop,” I told her. “Alice has had a hard enough time. She doesn’t need you spreading rumors for the entire semester.”
If she could, she’d probably have blown her cigarette smoke right down on me. But she was too far away. Still, I could smell it and I felt a stinging sensation right smack dab in the middle of my forehead. I hate the smell of smoke; it always gives me a headache. “You don’t remember anything, do you?” she asked accusingly.
I shrugged. I’d made up a simple story to ensure I didn’t get caught in any lies: something had chased us under the tunnels. I’d brought up the rear with a torch. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does, Chase!” Jasmine shouted. She looked violently angry. She stood over me, pointing her half-finished cigarette down at my face. The girl was intimidating, all right. “It matters cause I’m all screwed up! I have nightmares every night about that tunnel! And no one knows what happened! Seth is dead. Someone killed him. That Sanda girl is in some coma or something. Alice is the only other person who knows for sure and you know she’s weird, you know she’s always been a little off, and now someone’s dead and I’m the only one who seems to care!”
I felt a warm rush of energy. The air was freezing and my bare arms had already numbed. But I recognized that warm rush. I wanted to fight. I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell this girl a hundred different things so vulgar that I probably shouldn’t write any of it down.
Before I could figure out what to say, Jasmine flicked her cigarette and returned inside. The cold air stung my ears and I had this profound moment of clarity: Jasmine was gonna be messed up for a long time. The Corrupted could change people’s lives. This wasn’t like in a supernatural movie where people just went with the flow and then got together afterwards to hang out. Those bystanders in the movies who run away from the monsters? They’re affected.
I punched the handicap accessibility button as hard as I could. The door swung open. It’s hard to put this frustration into words. Most people won’t ever feel it because it’s so easy to take your legs for granted. But just sitting there, staring up at Jasmine … the powerlessness. And then the door? I needed help opening a door. Even if I’d been using my crutches, I’d probably still have needed to push that button.
Powerless. I couldn’t protect Alice from kids like Jasmine.
I’m so bad at this writing stuff. I kept a little log after we got home so that I would keep my thoughts organized. A little notepad that I could write down some week-to-week stuff on because Briar said it would be important. But none of my notes are all that important. Here’s the month of January:
Week 1: Alice stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria. Then she started again after Rachel and I convinced her we could hide in the back.
Week 2: Alice’s parents got into an argument about dinner. It put Alice in a worse mood for a few days. She hasn’t mentioned Seth at all.
Week 3: Actually miss my parents from time to time … weird. Will visit more often.
Week 4: Alice laughed a bit during some of her favorite movies. She likes the scene in Ghostbusters when Rick Moranis is chased by a demon dog. She also likes the scene in The Goonies when Chunk confesses all the horrible things he’s done. Will try to find more movies that will make her smile. Don’t know what else to do.
Great notes, Chase. There’s more for the month of February, but what’s the point? Looking back at all of it, I don’t come off that good. Sometimes, when I got frustrated with Alice’s dour mood, I’d write that she’s moping or she’s dragging her feet. Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone all night, I’d get all upset as if it was some personal slight or something. Then I’d be in a bad mood, too, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’d just toss and turn and stare at the little green digital clock on the ancient VCR Alice’s parents insist on keeping under their DVD player.
Some boyfriend. Crap. Crap. CRAP.
I miss Seth. I miss him so much I feel like I’ve lost a brother.
I didn’t know what had happened until Alice reached the train station a full four hours later. She’d looked like a mess. She could barely lift her left arm because of the horrible bruise just below her shoulder. She’d sobbed something about Seth and at first I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then this cold feeling came over me like I’d just gone skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan in winter. I couldn’t shake it. No one else from the fencing team—and that includes Mr. Whitmann and Mrs. Satrapi—could even process the new revelation. So everyone just stood there, staring like zombies.
Thankfully, with this prince guy officially gone, the police didn’t have much incentive to protect their dear master or leader or protector or whatever the Malevolence had been to the townsfolk. They showed up fast, got Sanda to the local hospital, and contacted Seth’s parents. We all sat in the train station, numb.
The next day, we took the train to Bucharest and took this cramped plane home, and that was when people started finally talking. Piecing it all together. The reality that Seth was coming home in a … crap, I dunno. I suppose they put him in a bag or a box and shipped him like a piece of cargo. I can’t even write it without tearing up.
The authorities couldn’t transport Seth on a plane because of some procedural restrictions and so he went home in the cargo hold of a ship. And Briar traveled with him.
I have this weird image in my head of Briar lying at the foot of the bag like a pet who’d just lost its master, keeping a watchful eye on Seth’s body. It’s just an image in my head, though. Briar won’t talk about the trip home. He wouldn’t even write about it here in Alice’s diary. All I know is that he accompanied Seth from Europe to New York city. In New York, the body was flown back. Briar won’t say anything else.
The shock started wearing off about four hours into our flight home, and that was when it sank in. Seth was gone. I mean, he was dead. According to the little electronic map on the TV screen in front of my seat, we were barely halfway across the Atlantic Ocean at the time. I didn’t want to use those damn forearm crutches the prince had given me, but more than that I didn’t want help being wheeled to the cramped little bathroom. So I used the crutches and went into the bathroom and just started crying.
Then I started pounding the forearm crutches against the plastic walls. Then a stewardess knocked on the door and asked me to stop. She sounded absolutely terrified.
When we got home, I moved in with Alice’s family and did whatever I could to make myself useful. Her parents were a mess. They didn’t know how to handle the whole situation. I didn’t either. So we all did what we thought would be best. Alice’s dad kept giving me money and telling me to take Alice out, or buy her flowers, or buy a new video game, or a board game, or books. He was just shelling out money. Alice’s mom kept trying to talk to her, and when that didn’t work, she just started giving Alice backrubs before bed and doing her best to make sure Alice had a routine: a big breakfast before school and a big dinner at 6:30 pm every night on the dot.
They encouraged Alice to sleep on the pull-out bed with me. Think about that: they encouraged her to sleep with me. In the purely literal sense, of course. I mean, they weren’t telling her to “sleep” with me or anything. I can only imagine the jokes Seth would be making right now hearing about that.
Little moments like this open up the wound all over again. Little moments when you’re just positive Seth would have said something ridiculously funny. These moments drove me crazy for the first month. They were like little landmines hidden away all over the place and they exploded when you least expected it.
One of them blew up on Alice, and I’d triggered it. She wouldn
’t talk about Seth at all, and her mom was getting worried. Seriously worried. She sat me down one night and told me I needed to start bringing Seth up when we talked. This was about five weeks after we got back. It was early February and Alice and I were both studying in the evenings for the ACT test. That night, though, Alice had gone out to do a run alone.
“You’re … I mean, you’re not crazy, but that idea doesn’t sound good,” I said.
She grabbed my hands. Her parents were both big fans of popping the personal bubble. Her dad loved slapping me on the back. It took a while to get used to, coming from a family that didn’t do too much touching. “Chase,” she said, “I’m worried that Alice is still in denial. She needs to acknowledge that Seth is gone. She can’t move on until she confronts the truth.”
“But she did,” I said. “The night it happened—”
“What about since?” she asked.
“… No.”
“Chase.” She looked into my eyes. She was all business now. Her hands squeezed mine. It made me uncomfortable—she was treating me like an adult. “Alice didn’t go to the memorial service. She didn’t go to the burial. She needs your help.”
So that was my first big job. I had to bring up Seth. I had to basically make Alice feel like complete crap, which was the opposite of what I’d been trying to do ever since I’d moved in. I started doing it subtly, just bringing Seth up a couple times a day—never at school. At school, Alice put her head down and powered through everything, leaving early to work at the library where I could only imagine she was showered with remorseful looks from her librarian friends. By the time I joined her in the afternoon, she usually had an entire shelving unit stripped of books and cleaned top to bottom. I couldn’t bring Seth up there, either—not with the whole “quiet” thing going on.
That left home. “Home.” Alice’s home. I tried bringing up Seth on the fly, but she just sorta ignored me. Her parents tried it at dinner a couple times, but Alice just excused herself (even if she’d only had a couple bites) and went to her room to read. I think she stayed up there when she didn’t want me around. She knew how hard it was for me to get up the stairs, even with the help of the crutches.
New crutches. I’d thrown the prince’s away. My dad had gone out and gotten me some new ones, and he’d outfitted my car with a special steering wheel that let me drive without using my feet. He took me out every day for a month to “practice,” which usually meant me chauffeuring him around Milwaukee while he did errands. Gas prices were going through the roof so we had to get the most out of our drives together.
I don’t think my dad really realized just how much it helped, keeping busy like that. I only talked with my old baseball buddies once in a while, and Rachel and Clyde and Margaret could only stop by on the weekends to hang out. I got lonely. I got frustrated. I complained to the bathroom mirror and then I cursed myself for being so selfish. But then I went and picked up my dad and I felt better, driving around in the family car that always smelled like old French fries.
Months dragged by. Alice seemed like she was getting better, then she seemed like she was getting worse. We took the ACT test. We both did OK. Good enough. And that was how Alice finished out school: good enough, which for her was a B average. I finished high school with the best grades in my entire life: B’s.
I’d stopped mentioning Seth while school was chaotic, but when it was over I started again. Alice tried to avoid it. She looked away. She went for long runs around the neighborhood. She hid away in her room or in the forest nearby to train alone. Briar kept his distance, convinced that she would get through this. I wasn’t so sure. I was losing hope.
Alice’s parents gently pushed her through the motions, making a big deal out of her graduation—and mine. My parents came, of course, but they weren’t nearly as excited as her parents. You’d have thought we were piloting a spaceship to the moon. Reserved parents, meet over-enthusiastic parents.
“It’s the first step to success,” her dad told me after he’d taken three pictures of me and Alice holding our diplomas.
And you know what? Even my uptight parents started believing it; they took all of us out for an Italian dinner and ordered some of the best food on the menu. It made me feel pretty darned good, like maybe applying to a bunch of colleges had been a good idea. And I was in debt to my dad and ma for helping me fill all those applications out.
OK, melodrama over. My point is that six months had passed and Alice still hadn’t accepted that Seth was gone. It was only mid-June but it was scorching hot outside. Inside, the air conditioning fought to keep up. I was going a little stir-crazy inside Alice’s house. Ever since graduation, my routine had been pretty much the same thing:
Get woken up by Alice’s parents in the early morning when they leave to go play golf.
Go back to sleep.
Wake up later.
Eat brunch with Alice.
Sit around with Alice. Maybe watch some TV.
Eat dinner.
Watch a movie or read.
Go to bed.
That was it. Every freaking day for two straight weeks, that was all I did. I was running out of books. My mom had brought over a stack that included Ernest Hemingway, Charles Stross and Lemony Snicket. Burned through ‘em all. Which meant I was stuck with Netflix and all the horrible TV shows it carries.
So my mood got sour. I can only thank God that Alice was at least going through the motions of a human being. I mean, sure, she wasn’t her usual self, but at least she wasn’t pouting endlessly like that girl in Twilight. That didn’t stop me from comparing the two, just to try and get a rise out of her.
It was a jerk thing to do.
“You’re just like Bella,” I told her one afternoon. “You’re sulking around and you’re not getting any better!”
Oh crap. When I’d said the words, they’d sounded pretty spot-on. Now, writing it down, I can’t believe how stupid I was. I mean, I knew after I said it that I was being too harsh. But in my mind I thought I was at least a little justified.
Nope. Totally not justified. Who’s the jerk? I’m the jerk.
The old Alice might have lost it on me, and rightfully so. I mean, seriously, what had I been thinking? Comparing her to Bella? What a freaking teenager thing to do.
But instead of getting mad, she just shook her head, staring down at the kitchen floor. I felt this weird chill go down my spine. What had just happened between us? A switch had turned off. Maybe that switch would never turn back on again and that thought scared the heck outta me.
“Wait,” I said, following her into the narrow hallway. “Wait. Just talk to me. Please. Say anything. Tell me I’m an ass. Yell at me. Say something.”
Alice walked upstairs, taking the steps one at a time. I followed her, using one crutch and clutching the old wooden staircase banister. My heart was racing. I was so angry now. Angry because Alice still wasn’t better. Angry because I was afraid. Lining the wall of the staircase were pictures of Alice. Alice the child, with cute little black bangs. Alice the bookworm, reading James and Giant Peach to her dolls. Alice and Seth, still in middle school, sitting on swings.
“Why can’t you realize he’s gone?” I asked once I reached the doorway.
She was lying on her bed, reading a Thesaurus. A big, fat Thesaurus. She was already halfway through.
“So that’s what you do up here when you want to be alone?” I shook my head. “Read a dictionary, for crying out loud. At least that makes some sense. A thesaurus is just a bunch of words that mean other words!”
She didn’t respond.
I stepped inside the room, walking over to her desk so I could rest on hand on it and take my weight off my legs. My heart raced in my ears. My face felt hot. That stupid crutch just made everything worse. It made me feel even more helpless than I already was. I wanted Alice to be better already but I didn’t know what to do.
Neither did Briar.
We’d been through so much, but nothing had prepared us for
this. And so we were just kind of treading water. I didn’t know what to do with all the feelings I had. I needed someone who could reminisce with me about Seth. Right now. Right at this very moment. Because this was just the most perfect “Seth” moment.
“He would have something funny to say about the thesaurus,” I whispered. And God help me, I had to chuckle. Because if Seth saw Alice reading a Thesaurus, he’d say something funny. He would have the perfect witty comment ready to go.
Alice turned to me. Her calm face was gone. “You don’t know that!” she shouted. Her upper lip quivered a little bit. Her glare made me take a shaky step back, my hand slipping on a piece of paper on her desk, causing me to nearly fall over.
I righted myself just in time to avoid the Thesaurus, which crashed into the wall behind me with a massive thud. She got off her bed, closing the distance between us in half a heartbeat. I can’t lie, I was totally scared. If this was what Corrupted saw right before she killed them, then it was no wonder she was so good.
“You didn’t know him like I did!” she screamed, jamming a finger into my chest again and again. I was losing my balance so I tried to grab her wrist. She pulled away, pinching the nerve under my thumb. I felt my legs buckle under my weight.
“No one knew him like I did! No one! And now he’s gone! He’s …” the anger melted from her face. Quick breaths came out like machine-gun fire. Her grip softened. “Chase, he’s gone. Seth is gone.”
I tried to reach out to her. I lost my balance, my single forearm crutch wobbling in my left hand. My knees buckled. I fell onto the soft carpet, tears in my eyes. Alice sat down beside me, tears already streaming down her cheeks. She was bawling so hard that she began hiccupping and convulsing, her hands clawing at the air as if she was trying to find something behind her tears.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 2