The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  Veronica sighed like a parent who’s been asked one too many questions. Lily picked up the flashlight. Veronica and Krista walked with her down the long Trench corridor, up the stairs, and into the stairwell. They didn’t speak until they’d gone out the back door of the school, propping it open with a textbook.

  “You can wait by the picnic tables next to the soccer field,” Veronica said. Lily hesitated. If only Veronica would wink again and remind her this was just a game. “We’ll get you when we’re ready.” Veronica and Krista disappeared into the school.

  Lily sat on the picnic table where Justin had first asked her out. Beyond the fields and woods loomed the hulking Hoosac Mountains. Somewhere out there was the end of the world—a place where sky and earth fused, where you could stand on solid ground and dive into space. Lily imagined floating through the expanse, watching the stars, soaking up the infinite black. She’d always wanted to be with others, in the center of a group. But without other people there’d be nothing to want.

  It was her character, not the real Lily, who craved this acceptance, she told herself. Then again, even though the diary didn’t belong to her and she hadn’t written those lines, she felt an uncomfortable ownership over them. She was wearing a costume, but she felt exactly like herself.

  Lily looked toward the sky, at the scattered stars and fulsome moon. She pulled off Veronica’s earrings and threw them into the grass. Her character wasn’t the stars or the moon. Her character was a little satellite orbiting a large planet. A girl who went around and around, trapped in somebody else’s gravitational pull. The real Lily wasn’t alone, because the real Lily had an ally. Justin. But she didn’t feel connected to him now.

  “I’m a freak!” she yelled into the night. “A fucking freak!”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Lily jumped off the picnic table and whirled around to see Alexi Oppenheimer standing a few yards behind her. His face emerged from the darkness, his sharp cheekbones coming into relief. He wore his soccer jacket, with the neck unzipped and the sleeves pushed up. The strength of Alexi’s body was contained within those firm, sculpted forearms, and he knew it.

  “Are you okay?” Alexi reached out as though she needed steadying.

  “What are you doing here? Are you part of this too?” She looked wildly around for Krista hiding with the camera.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Lily shook her head. A rush of tears came.

  “Did the girls do something to you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Let’s see. Did they put your hand in hot water while you were sleeping? Or cover you in whipped cream? This is a sleepover party. What did you expect?”

  She stared him down. “You’re part of this!”

  “What? Listen, can we just talk a little?” He crept toward her like she was a wild animal. He reached out his hand.

  “Get away from me.” But she didn’t move. With surprising steadiness, Alexi brushed away the tears on her face. Her body broke out in goose bumps. Then, suddenly, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to punch his self-assured, smiling face. “Fuck you, Alexi.”

  He shook his head. “Hold on a sec, okay?” He fumbled with a small object and then tossed it to her. It was a digital tape recorder. “Krista couldn’t come out here and still have this be ‘organic.’ You know Ronnie.”

  Lily nodded. Her knees buckled. Was she drunk? When had that happened?

  “Jeez, Morgan. Sit down before you fall over.”

  Lily loved the way he called her by her last name. She walked toward him and lowered herself to the ground.

  “How’s the weather over there?”

  She scooted a few feet closer. And suddenly the immensity of the moment hit her. She was alone in a dark field with Alexi Oppenheimer.

  “Alexi, what’s happening?” Her head throbbed. She put her head in her hands.

  “It’s part of the project,” he said. “Ronnie wanted to diversify the content, or something like that. Audio without video. A twist in the plot, i.e., me. I’m supposed to seduce you, get you more drunk. And then I’m supposed to offer you this.” He held up a flask. “There’s a sleeping pill dissolved in it. After you pass out, I’m supposed to carry you back in. Ronnie has this whole plan for editing the video—with you getting more and more intoxicated over the course of the night, and a final shot of you passed out on the floor of the school. She’s calling the whole thing Sacrificial Lamb. Or something.”

  Lily looked up, feeling the sky rush away from her. “So what now?”

  Alexi looked at her intently, and she flushed again under the weight of his gaze. He pulled out an airplane bottle, drank half, and handed the bottle to her. She hesitated. “Just alcohol,” he said, and she finished it off. “You can lie in my lap if you want.” She didn’t move.

  “Come on, Morgan. I’ve confessed everything. There aren’t any more tricks.”

  “But what about Veronica’s project?”

  “I’ll tell her I erased it by accident.” He reached out and stroked Lily’s hair. At his touch, she felt her entire body swallow. He mistook her reaction for a shiver and moved closer to her. “I’ll warm you up.”

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  “I know. That Kaplan kid.” He stroked her hair again. She closed her eyes. Hot tears fell down her cheeks. Everything was confused. She bit her lip, but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  Maybe she was like her character. If she really loved Justin, she wouldn’t want to be here with Alexi. But she did love Justin, or felt something real for him. If she was more like Veronica, she wouldn’t worry about these conflicting emotions. She’d embrace her feelings, no matter how messy they were. She’d revel in her confusion.

  “I want a drink,” Lily said, and Alexi handed her another airplane bottle. “No,” she said. “I want the one with the pill in it.”

  “Okay. If you really want to,” Alexi said. He didn’t sound convinced.

  Lily switched the recorder back on. He looked at her and she nodded. He hesitated but she nodded again.

  “Here, Lily,” he said. “Have a drink.”

  She took the flask and drank deep.

  “Why don’t you lay your head on my stomach,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “You’ve got to relax, Lily. Have another drink.”

  Lily drank again. Then again.

  “Now put your head here,” Alexi instructed. She could feel his stomach muscles beneath the soccer jacket. He rested his hand on her abdomen. She imagined his fingers running across her belly button, slipping into her skirt. She shivered, then flushed hot.

  “How about one more drink?”

  “All right.”

  The next thing she knew, the flask was floating out of her hands, drifting away as though weightless. There was a soft pressure against her head. A comforting motion, moving down, down her scalp.

  “Doesn’t it feel good to break the rules, Lily? Doesn’t it feel good to be yourself?”

  “Mmmm.” She was vaguely conscious of Alexi holding the tape recorder closer to her mouth. “Mmmm,” she mumbled again.

  “Look at those shooting stars. Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Lily opened her eyes to the sky. Her eyesight was too poor to see anything as particular as a shooting star, and yet she felt them moving above her: bursts of light that shot across the sky and burned up in the black.

  “How about another little sip?” Alexi whispered.

  Lily’s head rose and fell on the waves of Alexi’s breathing. Something flashed by her. A star or the glint of a flask?

  Her skull felt like lead. Up . . . and . . . down. Her head approached the sky, lingered at the edge of space, and began its slow descent to earth. Then she was moving, soaring through the night, the wind rushing over her face.

  Jonah

  December 2012

  PASTERNAK TOLD ME that under no condition was I to further investigate Matt Sheridan’s case. “I’d be
deposed in a second,” he said, “if people discovered I’d misconstrued the facts. Let’s just find Prisom’s Party and stop this unpleasantness from happening in the future.”

  Pasternak was a coward. It was wrong to let Matt wallow at Melville. In addition to which, I knew that finding Prisom’s Party wasn’t an end. If treated like one, this “unpleasantness,” as Pasternak called it, would only repeat itself, like the seasons and the carbon cycle and most other natural processes of decay and rebirth.

  It was December 7, my twenty-ninth birthday. I was never much for birthdays, and I hadn’t told anyone, including Hazel. I almost wished I’d forgotten the date myself. Twenty-nine seemed momentous, the last year before I entered full-fledged adulthood. I’d gone a good distance in the journey toward financial independence and professional success, employing the various tools and weapons I’d collected along the way. But then I made a faulty step, ran smack into some evil-eyed mushroom, and was forced to start over. The irony, of course, was that even though the game had reset (literally sent me back to home base), I already had the princess within my sights.

  I drove to the Historical Society after school. Part of me wanted nothing more than to spend my life with Hazel, creating a replica of Rick and Mary Ann Rayburn’s home, a perfectly calibrated fusion of bright lights and finger paints. This image grabbed me so hard that I had to take a moment in the car before going inside. I’d taken the hint from her once already: too much emotion would push her away.

  As it turned out, Hazel had baked me a cake. She was not the Martha Stewart type, which was clear from the product, a Betty Crocker confection that emerged from the oven desiccated, despite its being engineered to turn out moist no matter what you did to it. The cake had chocolate frosting and said, Happy Birthday, Jonah, in blue letters.

  “I can’t believe you remembered,” I said.

  Hazel looked like I’d said something ridiculous. “You deserve to celebrate your life, Jonah. You’re almost a man.”

  “I thought I was a man at thirteen.”

  Hazel smirked. “I forgot how we Jews insist on torturing our young.”

  She didn’t sing to me (she was tone-deaf), but she listened attentively as I told her about my meeting with Matt Sheridan and how, more than ever, I felt compelled to drag Prisom’s Party into the open. “They’ve crossed a frightening line with the Sonya Stevens business,” I said. “I’m worried about what’s coming.”

  Hazel shook her head. “You’re going to believe what some screwed-up kid told you?”

  “Yes.”

  Hazel poked at the brown and yellow lump on her plate. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and offered it to me, knowing I didn’t smoke.

  “We’re talking criminal activity, Hazel.”

  “Your crusade to save the souls of these students,” Hazel said, blowing smoke over her shoulder, “is a lot of bullshit.” She rose and walked over to the sink.

  “Not to me,” I said, hurt. “And at least I have a crusade. I’m teaching these kids how to think, which is more than whatever it is you’re doing, holed up in here. You had ambitions of your own, remember?”

  Hazel stared out the window. I couldn’t see her face, but I noticed the cigarette shaking between her fingers. Suddenly I realized it wasn’t my birthday she’d remembered. It was my brother’s. “You could have put his name on the cake, too,” I said. “You don’t have to pretend like he’s not here.”

  Hazel slammed her fist on the counter and walked out of the room.

  Only once had Hazel and I talked about her feelings for Justin. It was a Sunday night in March of my sophomore year, a few months before the accident. Lily had been at our house for dinner that night—the first time she’d ever sat down to eat with my parents—and I’d run into her alone in our upstairs hallway. I remember her eyes glowing and the veins running along her pale forehead, like purple weeds trapped beneath ice. She seemed to be constructed from glass.

  Lily had always been shy and accommodating (an obsequiousness I detested), but when I accused her of manipulating my brother, she lashed back with unexpected vitriol. Furious, I called Hazel to commiserate, and within half an hour we were speeding away in her car.

  “I’m fucking sick of this,” she said.

  In the dark, I struggled to suppress a smile, certain that Hazel was furious at Lily on my behalf. But something was wrong. Hazel was driving too fast. She swung us recklessly around the curves in the road, jerking the steering wheel in her hands. I asked where we were going, but she ignored me.

  “Could you slow down a little?” I said, gripping the seat as she accelerated. She scowled but eased up on the gas. “Listen,” I said, thinking she’d calmed down some, “we just need to take a different approach to this whole Lily situation—whoa!” We’d crested a hill, and the dip felt like momentary free fall. We were in the hills, heading toward Bethlehem. A bunch of kids from school lived in Bethlehem, but we weren’t friends with any of them.

  “Maybe if we could find another girl,” I continued. “You know, someone who could show Justin that Lily’s not so great.”

  Hazel said nothing, which I took as a sign that she was listening.

  “Like Marina Malby, on the debate team. She’s pretty cute. Or what about that girl who goes to Blessed Sacrament—you know, the one we met at the math bowl. Anna?”

  Suddenly the car jerked right and swung wildly onto the shoulder, spraying gravel. I was wearing my seat belt, but the sudden movement threw me against the door. I banged my shoulder on the window.

  “What happened?” I said, holding my throbbing arm. “Was it an animal? Are you okay?” Still Hazel said nothing. She gripped the wheel, stared straight ahead. I realized she’d veered off the road on purpose. “Are you trying to kill us?”

  She turned to face me. Her eyes flashed like an animal stalking in the dark. “Shut up, Jonah!”

  The rebuke startled me so much that I sank back into my seat. “I’m just sitting here talking,” I mumbled to myself, knowing full well that she could hear me, “and all of a sudden we’re flying off the road. And she’s telling me to shut my mouth?”

  “It fucking has to stop!” Hazel slapped the steering wheel. Her voice cracked, and she started to cry. Then I really did shut up. Hazel was not a crier. We sat for a moment in silence. An SUV pulling a trailer sped by, and our car, parked dangerously close to the road, shuddered.

  “What did I do?”

  Hazel slapped the wheel again, then clenched her fist and pressed it against her stomach.

  “You’re so naïve, Jonah.” She chuckled through her tears. “You’re like this little kid, just trying to keep up.”

  A burning sensation rose up my neck and into my face. My whole life she’d called me Mr. Tumnus, but it had never occurred to me that she equated my underdeveloped body with an underdeveloped mind.

  “Fuck you, Hazel,” I said under my breath, tears burning my eyes.

  Hazel sniffed. “Another girl? A distraction? Brilliant ideas, Jonah. Congratulations on being the single most brilliant person I’ve ever met in my entire fucking life.”

  She was staring at me now, her face blazing mad.

  “Did it ever occur to you that there already is another girl? She’s right in front of him, and he doesn’t see her. All he sees—all he wants—is some ghost. Why is that?” She leaned in close, and her breath was hot on my face. “Can you tell me why, Jonah? Can that brilliant mind of yours figure it out?”

  I looked at my lap. I turned my hands over and studied them. I imagined my hands caressing Hazel’s wide cheeks and full breasts. I imagined my fingers, so small and unsure of themselves. Hazel was right. Compared to her, I was just a kid. My brother, however, had the hands of a grown man, even if he didn’t know what to do with them any more than I did.

  We pulled back onto the road and continued our drive in silence. Soon we emerged from the hills and entered Bethlehem. After a few minutes, a development of large obtrusive houses rose before us. Hazel s
topped outside a brightly lit monstrosity looming over a wide lawn. She turned the car off but didn’t move. Timidly, I asked where we were.

  “Veronica Mercy lives here.” She closed her eyes for a minute. She seemed far away.

  I stared out the window at Veronica Mercy’s house. The Mercys probably threw extravagant Christmas parties. I bet they’d bought Veronica a new car for her birthday. Still, I thought, whatever class differences existed between us were immaterial; I could own a hundred cars, but that wouldn’t change my biology. My little-kid hands.

  “I’m going to deal with this Lily situation right now,” Hazel said. “Trust me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I have it on good faith that Veronica is applying to art apprenticeships this summer, and I have decided to become her muse.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mother’s colony has a new apprenticeship program, only it’s very competitive.”

  “Lorna accepts teenagers?”

  Hazel shrugged. “Unexpected things happen all the time, Jonah.”

  “And this has to do with Lily because . . .”

  “If the gods don’t direct the hands of men, they have no business being gods.” Hazel slammed the car door and left me alone in the dark. Whatever scheme she’d concocted, I couldn’t even begin to guess.

  I found Hazel in the Historical Society’s darkened antechamber, staring out at the snowy landscape. Winter’s drab and lonely monochrome stretched for miles, unbroken. I walked toward her and rested my hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This isn’t an easy day.”

  “I’m not like you, Jonah,” she said, her voice even less forgiving than the scene outside. “I couldn’t just start my life over like it didn’t happen.”

  “That’s what you think I did?”

  Hazel sucked in a breath, but she didn’t answer. I couldn’t stand this. I needed to make things right. “Let’s not judge each other,” I said. “Let’s just be happy that we’re together.” I nuzzled her neck. She turned and I cupped my palms on either side of her head. She was capable of fierce beauty and even fiercer life. She burned hot at her core. If only she’d let me help her, I could restore her to her natural state.