Twice Shy

by Patrick Freivald

  "Thanks again, Mike. For everything."

  He hugged her, and held it for a bit longer than was proper for a boy with a girlfriend. His whisper in her ear was fierce. "They'll catch him, Ani." He stepped back, put on his boots, and was gone.

  The moment the door closed her mother slammed the notebook shut. "You are not going to that boy's house for piano lessons."

  Ani suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "I know, Mom. I'm giving her ten hours of lessons here. I had to do something." I wanted to do something.

  Her mom frowned at the door. "Yes. I suppose you did."

  Ani approached the gold-wrapped box like it was a rattlesnake. She picked it up, bit her bottom lip, and looked at her mom. It was light and made no noise when she shook it.

  "Oh, sweetie, you're a basket case. Christmas Eve is close enough."

  She tore off the wrapping paper, revealing a white box. She pulled off the lid and a card fell to the floor. Underneath was a pewter ring of tiny skulls with red glass for eyes. Engraved on the inside it said, For Ani. Forever your friend. Mike. She put it on her middle finger and held it out to her mom, who smiled up at her.

  "It's vile," Ani said. "I love it." She put a hand to her mouth, reached down and picked up the envelope. Inside was a handwritten note on plain stationery.

  * * *

  Dear Ani,

  I didn't realize how much you still meant to me until last week. I'm so sorry I couldn't hold on to him. I'm sorry that I pushed you away. I'll call you tomorrow. Please don't show this to anyone.

  Forever your friend,

  Mike.

  * * *

  Her mom held out her hand, and Ani handed her the note. Her eyes scanned it twice, three, four times. Finally, she looked up. "I know that look, Ani. Be smart."

  Ani swallowed. "I will, Mom."

  "I mean it."

  "So do I." She almost believed herself.

  * * *

  Christmas morning, her mom unwrapped her presents. She seemed to enjoy the sweater and the earrings Ani had made in art class. How do you shop for someone whose only hobby is cutting off parts of her daughter's flesh and performing experiments?

  Ani shredded the pink wrapping paper on her gift from her mother and pulled the top off the cardboard garment box. Inside was a strapless mini-dress in her favorite color: Barbie Dream-House Pink. She ran her hands down the smooth satin, then lifted it out of the box.

  "What's this?"

  Her mom's smile was fierce. "That is a promise, from me to you. You will be able to wear that dress to graduation, in front of everyone, because you will be beautiful, you will be confident, and you will be symptom-free."

  * * *

  Mike didn't call on Christmas day. Or the next day. Or the next. A quick walk by his house—with Fey, Jake, and pepper spray in her pocket, and a promise to her mother that she wouldn't be gone more than an hour, and all of this after an hour of begging that she was going crazy and just needed to get outside for a while—revealed Devon's car in the driveway, but not his mom's car. Ani didn't think Fey noticed her looking.

  * * *

  She got home and moped in her room while her mom ran to the store. He said he'd call. She picked up the phone, dialed his number, and hit END. She put the phone back in the cradle and went back to reading. More like holding a book and sulking. She gave up after a half-hour. She looked at the phone. Maybe I'll paint.

  She grabbed her brushes, easel, and canvas, tucked her box of paints into her right elbow, and walked out into the hall.

  Her head rang.

  The world slowed, smeared.

  Paint brushes like spilled spaghetti onto the floor, beautiful in their simplicity. Tiny paint cans bumbled and bustled their way over the railing, a suicide of color trapped in chrome.

  The world hazed red, and she crumpled to the floor.

  Something grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Several figures in black stood above her, looking down, swimming in and out of each other. As they knelt, they resolved themselves into a single shape.

  Dylan.

  His hair was black again, but his chin was coated with downy blond peach fuzz. Black turtleneck, black jeans, white makeup. He wore his stupid silver bracelet. She tried to speak, but her tongue was thick and syrupy in her mouth.

  "Shhh," he said, raising his right hand. He held a pistol, the grip wrapped in black electrical tape. "I don't want to hit you again, but I will if you force me to." He straddled her and brushed her cheek with the back of his left hand. He sucked in a breath, held it, and let it out, shuddering.

  She struggled, but her arms were pinned by his legs. She was strong, stronger than any normal human girl could be, but she had no leverage, and he was twice her size. He shook his head, his frown almost sad.

  "Ani. Stop. It doesn't have to be like this." She kicked. His legs tightened, and the barrel of the pistol tilted down to her face. All emotion left his voice, and his face went slack. "I said stop."

  She froze.

  He leaned forward and put his elbow on the floor, the pistol cold against her temple. "Don't move. Don't even breathe." He shifted so that he lay half on top of her, interposing his leg between hers, and his left hand slid down her body, nestling between her legs. He gasped and leaned in close, his eyes flat, mouth open in ecstasy as he felt her through her jeans. She forced herself not to react.

  "See? We can be—"

  Ani lunged and bit down, then wrenched her head to the side.

  His cheek tore from his face as the pistol went off beneath her head. Crimson gore showered her as he screamed, recoiling. She grabbed his thigh with her right hand and heaved, half-standing as he crashed through the railing. He grabbed her arm and yanked her off her feet. They fell in a shower of splintered wood.

  Dylan hit the floor headfirst with a sickening thud. Ani landed on her side and heard a crack as pain blossomed in her hip. She sat up and felt bone grinding in her pelvis, a numb inferno wracking her body. Gritting her teeth against it, she looked at Dylan.

  His eyes were half-open, and she could see bone through the ruin of his cheek. He wasn't moving. His chest rose, then fell. Rose, then fell. He looked delicious, but the pain in her hip obliterated thoughts of food. Without taking her eyes off him, she clawed her way up the couch, then used the armrest to stand.

  She took a step and cried out, a hot iron stabbing into her hip. Oh, God. She slid her right foot forward and put weight on it, gasping. I can't do it. Then her left foot. It's too much. She gritted her teeth and shambled to her mom's desk, one foot at a time.

  She grabbed the phone off the cradle and lowered herself into the loveseat. Sitting was almost as bad. She dialed her mother's cell phone.

  She picked up on the first ring. "This is Sarah."

  "Mom, you have to come home right now." The calm of her own voice surprised her.

  "I'm at the bank. It'll be—"

  "It's an emergency."

  A brief pause, then, "Two minutes."

  It took her three.

  Her mom strode into the room, took stock of the situation, and took charge. "Ani, get yourself cleaned up. Now. I'll take care of Dylan."

  "What are you—" Her mom held up a finger, then used it to point at the bathroom. Ani pulled herself to her feet and shuffled into the bathroom to wash up, each step an agony. She scrubbed the blood from her face and hands, using a makeup mirror to ensure that she got it all. She heard the front door open, and voices murmured as she brushed her teeth.

  By the time she came back out, Mr. Washington was there. So were the police, a pair of mustached officers in blue uniforms. Before Ani could do anything, her mom rushed forward and pulled her into a hug, rocking her back and forth. "Oh, Ani, I'm so glad you're all right!" Then she whispered. "Mrs. Washington called 911 when they heard the gunshot. He's in a coma. I gave him a shot of serum." Ani felt the sting of a needle enter the base of her skull, then pull away.

  "He attacked you," her mom whispered. "You pushed him through
the railing. That's it. You don't remember anything else."

  "Mom, I bit him," she whispered back, trying not to move her lips. "They're going to test me."

  Her mom squeezed tighter. "No they won't. Trust me. Try not to limp too much. We can't have you going to the hospital."

  "Ma'am?" one of the policemen said. "Can we ask your daughter some questions?"

  Her mother pulled away, then helped Ani to a chair. "Certainly, officer."

  The interrogation took twenty minutes. They asked her the same questions over and over again, but she kept saying she didn't know. Finally, they left.

  * * *

  They stayed up all night so that her mom could pin her fractured hip and forge documentation from the nonexistent doctor Ani had been seeing for two years. The pin helped a lot, but it wasn't her mother's area of expertise, and Ani's left foot dragged a little as she walked. Her mom assured her it would get better with time and regenerative therapy. She'd always been a bad liar.

  Her mom assured her that she had made the cheek wound look like it was caused by the railing and that the hospital staff wouldn't even question the story. They never found the missing hunk of flesh.

  "Won't he turn into a zombie now?" Ani asked.

  "No. Your saliva hasn't been contagious since you went on the new serum."

  "Are you sure?"

  Her mom thought about it, then nodded. "It doesn't infect human flesh in a Petri dish. There's no reason to think it would infect Dylan. He's under full psychiatric restraints, anyway, just in case he wakes up."

  They ran a fresh test, just to be sure. It came back clean.

  Mike called the next morning, but her mother intercepted it. "She's fine; she's resting. You can talk to her at school." Then everyone else called. They spent the next three days fending off reporters, well-wishers, gossip-seekers, and ambulance-chasers. Dylan's mom brought Ani flowers and tried to convince them not to press charges. Ani was banished to her room when talk of lawyers came up.

  * * *

  The medical equipment chirped and hissed everywhere in the brain trauma unit. "We shouldn't be here," Ani's mom said without conviction. The sterile white sheets rose and fell in time with Dylan's chest. His face was a greenish-gray, his slack jaw propped to accommodate the feeding tube. An IV trickled life-giving fluids into his arm.

  "I know," Ani said, eyeing the armed policeman on guard outside the room. "But I had to see him, know that he's..."

  "Asleep?" her mom asked. Not a mindless, brain-eating monster.

  "That, too," Ani said.

  "You can't blame yourself," her mom said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "He attacked you."

  "I know," Ani said. And he tried to rape me. But he's here because of what I am. "But what happens when he wakes up?" If he wakes up.

  Her mom looked at the policeman, then back at Dylan. "When he wakes up he goes to jail and then to trial. I've already spoken to Judge Green, and there's no way he'll be getting bail."

  "But what—"

  "Hush," her mom said. "We've seen enough." She kissed Ani on the forehead. "Okay, sweetie?"

  Dylan looked so pathetic and sad and small. "Yeah." Ani averted her eyes. "Okay."

  * * *

  Fey called on New Year's Eve.

  "Ani, party tonight. Boys, booze, bouncing. You in?"

  Oh, God, no. "I'm not up for bouncing." Or boys. Or booze. "Anyway, I'd have to ask my mom."

  She could almost hear the smile in Fey's voice. "Not for nothing, but you're an idiot. Like I'm going to a New Year's party. For real, I scored a couple bottles of Asti and some ox. We're going to hang out at the gravel pit and launch firecrackers. See you at ten?"

  "Hold on a sec." She set the phone on the table and shambled over to her mom. She told her what they'd be doing, and her mom said yes.

  As she put the phone back to her ear, her mom raised her voice. "You'll be at Fey's the entire time? No sneaking out? No stupid stuff?"

  "Mom..." Ani said. It's hard to whine while smiling. "If you can't trust me now, you'll never be able to."

  Her mom paused for effect, then said, "Okay, but you're in this house by twelve-thirty. And not a minute later."

  "Heard it," Fey said and hung up.

  She gave the phone to her mom and pecked her cheek.

  "Be home by one. And when you get here," her mother said, "you get straight in the bath."

  * * *

  It was freezing at the gravel pit, and ice-rime coated everything. Jake's car was already there, the windows fogged, Halestorm blaring on the stereo. They knocked on the window and let themselves in, with Fey taking shotgun. The car wasn't much warmer than outside.

  "Can we listen to real music?" Fey asked. Like Chopin? She pulled Jake's CDs from under the passenger seat and flipped through them with shaking hands. "It's freezing in here."

  Ani handed Jake two bottles of vodka, one half-empty. "Sweet," he said. He popped out of the car and put them in the trunk, under the spare tire.

  Fey settled on Evanescence's first album, struggled to put the CD into the player, then rubbed her hands together. "Screw this." She got out of the car and into the back seat, bumping Ani to the middle. Jake joined them, and they huddled under his emergency blanket. The hot pads hidden in Ani’s coat helped, and after a while, Fey's teeth stopped chattering.

  They passed the champagne back and forth, with Jake drinking more than half of it himself, and with no more than a few swallows left he pulled out a couple of small white pills. Oxycodone? "Yes, please!" Fey said, and plucked one out of his offered hand. Ani declined. They washed them down with the last of the champagne. Fey had one. Jake had three.

  "So where are the fireworks?" Fey asked. "It ain't New Year’s without fireworks."

  Jake reached into the front seat and popped the glove box, revealing all of six bottle rockets and a pack of jumping jacks. He lit the jumping jacks one at a time with the cigarette lighter and popped them out the door, blasting the car with cold every time. He went outside to fire the bottle rockets, "wowing" at the crystal-clear sky every time he looked up. Twenty minutes after they were gone, he was curled up against Fey, semi-fetal, eyes closed, and snoring.

  Ani and Fey listened to Trent Reznor's bass-driven, violence-porn almost-music, complained about life, and counted drunk drivers.

  It felt so good to be out of the house. Free.

  Chapter 15

  Travis had a meeting with the insurance adjuster that coming Monday, so Ani spent both New Year's Day and Sunday helping him reconstruct his inventory. All receipts and records had been lost in the fire so they had to do it from memory, but after sixteen hours, they had a good approximation of what was in the store at the time. He paid her a hundred and forty dollars, cash, under the table.

  Unfortunately, he also took her to lunch both days. This meant drinking digestive enzymes when she got home, followed by needles in her stomach to excavate the dissolved food the next morning. And breath mints. Oodles of breath mints.

  * * *

  Monday was back to school, where, for the first time, she truly understood the curse of celebrity. Everyone pestered her to tell the story. Even teachers asked. Each time, she gave the same answer. "The police told me not to talk about it." It wasn't true, but it got them off her back. Mostly.

  She barely saw Mike, and they would never be alone anyway. Between the people harassing her for details and Devon's constant presence on his arm, they had no opportunity to talk. He didn't even try.

  Fey saw her looking at him and rolled her eyes. "Not for nothing, but if you weren't the only person on the planet without a cell phone you could text him instead of just staring lovey-dovey at him."

  "Mom won't let me."

  "Mom won't let me," Fey mocked. "You're seventeen freaking years old. Buy a prepaid and don't tell her."

  Ani shook her head. "Yeah... That's... I... I'm not going to do that."

  "Why the hell not?" Because it's one of the rules. No secrets, no chance for secrets, no social li
fe except what is expressly approved.

  "Because she'd kill me. Literally."

  "Whatever," Fey said. As she walked away, more busybodies took her place. Ani did her best to blow them off. If I got a prepaid, where could I hide it that Mom wouldn't find? Nowhere came to mind.

  * * *

  She walked home, shielded from the sun by her coat and hat. The day had turned bitter cold under the cloudless sky, and her damaged gait left weird, lopsided footprints behind her, but she didn't mind. She was outside; she wore heated gloves and leggings, and protected her face with a scarf. It's not like I have to worry about hypothermia.

  As she turned the corner to her street, Devon's car passed. It stopped at Mike's house, idling at the bottom of the driveway. He got out of the passenger's side, and it drove away. Ani waved at him. He hesitated, then gave a half-wave before going inside.

  What the heck was that?

  She was in a foul mood by the time she got in the house and fuming when her mom got home. She painted to hide her agitation—she'd betray herself pounding on the piano—but didn't manage more than some angry impressionistic brush strokes before she gave up and went to her room.

  She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. A normal girl would have gone to sleep in a depressed funk, but that was one more thing her dead body couldn't do.

  * * *

  Wednesday was "Shadowing Day." Each willing and unwilling eleventh grader was assigned an eighth grader from the Lower School, who followed them from class to class and made any real social interaction impossible. Ani and Fey had been saddled with twin sisters, up-and-comers on the emo scene, full of angst and malaise. They spent most of the day not talking. Now this is a reason to hate life, girls.

  There was a small spot of drama before lunch, when Mrs. Weller saw Jake selling oranges to the noobs for five bucks a piece. Serves him right. They're jaded, not stupid. The oranges were confiscated, and Jake was marched off to the principal's office.