by Beth Bloom
I told him, “It used to make me happy,” but even while saying it, I didn’t know if it ever did. I’d never thought about it in those terms. I loved Libby; therefore she made me happy. Right?
“Well, you saved her life. Doesn’t matter what happens now. She owes you one permanently.”
“You saved her life. I was over by the window sunbathing.”
“Hey, you’re right. This girl owes me everything. Guess she’ll have to be my slave now.” Whit brushed the hair out of my face and used his Celtics jersey to blot the leftover tears.
“She’s pretty used to enslavement.”
“Harsh, man,” Whit said, grinning. “But nonfiction nonetheless.”
He hugged me again, then released me again. He lifted me up and handed me one of the plastic bags of snacks. My empty stomach rumbled. A bag of jalapeño Corn Nuts had never seemed such a sweet and heroic gesture.
“So if Libby’s my slave,” Whit started as he straightened my tank top, “and she has to do whatever I say, then after I squash her dreams of becoming a hologram, what do you want from her? I’ll make her give you anything.”
What I wanted was for Libby to wake up tonight with complete amnesia of all things Stiles-related. But that didn’t seem likely. So I compromised: “Uh, that’s my Nine Inch Nails shirt, for the record.”
“Done.” Whit reached over Libby’s body, grabbed the T-shirt, and shoved it into my hand. “I knew this shirt belonged to more of a badass. Here. Consider this the first of many thank-you gifts from your best friend Libby.”
I looked at the shirt, then at the sleeping beauty. Snacks, sodas, and so few miles to our destination: I had seriously so many gifts.
I tossed the shirt back in the car. “Whatever, looks better on her anyway.”
Two minutes later we were back on the road, stuffing toxic waste in our mouths, finally, finally listening to The Chronic, talking trash, watching dust and dirt and nothing, shaking it all off. Then we started spotting the faint silhouettes of Joshua trees out in the desert. That meant Aunt Lynn’s cosmic vibes weren’t far away.
I knew some things never changed, but some things I wanted to. This would change Libby and me. Good.
Aunt Lynn was perched on a wooden porch swing when Whit pulled the Camry up into the dirt driveway. She got up and came out toward us, smiling, her arms outstretched, her blondish-gray hair piled into a loose bun on top of her head.
Although she was immediate family, Aunt Lynn was nothing at all like Stella or Libby, the Block glamour girls with their legs for days and their effortless city cool. Lynn had spent some time in that world, but then something else had called to her, something weirder and more spiritual. So she’d said her good-byes and come out to the desert to wear giant white linen dresses, no makeup, and long crystal necklaces. And here she was, beaming, barefoot, happy in her outsider life, hugging Whit and me like we were her own niece and nephew. A set of wind chimes clanged peacefully from the porch like a good omen. I exhaled.
We exchanged the shortest pleasantries:
Haven’t seen you in so long. Look at you, you’re a woman now. Whit, Lynn. Lynn, Whit. He rescued Libby from bloodsucking male models. His older brother is one too. That’s the one I’m in love with.
All caught up.
I cringed when Lynn finally opened the Camry’s back door and found Libby crumpled up and unconscious in what she probably could only assume was a postdrug stupor. But she didn’t freak out. She just scooped Libby up, propped her against her shoulder, and began hobbling her niece toward the house. They were both barefoot, their bodies one mass under the porch light, angel and ghost.
We followed them into the house, and Lynn led Libby away down a hall while Whit and I seated ourselves on huge Japanese pillow cushions on the floor in the sparsely furnished living room. There wasn’t a couch, just the cushions and a low, long cherrywood table.
Then Lynn came back and brought us a small ceramic pot of tea with two cups. She told us she was so happy that we’d all be here when Libby woke up.
But I did not want to be here for that. I pinched Whit on the arm. He caught my drift.
“You’re staying for dinner, of course,” Lynn said suddenly, as if psychically picking up my escape signal.
All we could do was consent and relax back on the cushions and sip our tea. Lynn smiled, said, “Wonderful,” and disappeared down the hallway.
As soon as we heard the door close, Whit turned to me. “She’s taking this well. We dropped off a very, very damaged package.”
“Maybe she has faith. Third-eye stuff.” I felt it: Libby was safe here.
But were we? Was I? Dusk was close, the undead—wherever they were—were stirring, and dinner was only a meal. We couldn’t stay here forever.
“What do you think’s going to happen when they find out she’s gone?”
Whit looked at me and rubbed his eyes. “Nothing. She’ll be gone; they won’t know where. Or how.”
“What if they guess?”
“They won’t.”
I felt my nerves crawl. “I don’t know.” I looked out the window into the dark.
“Quinn, they won’t.”
Then there was a light creak down the hall, then footsteps, then Lynn came into the room, and in her hand was the bony hand of an old best friend of mine. Libby’s eyes were open—they were brown or something—and she was walking, one foot in front of the other, very slowly. Her free hand dragged itself absently along the wall.
“How is she scarier now than she was before?” Whit asked under his breath.
Somehow, with her eyes open, Libby’s head looked more like a skull. And with her spine upright and limbs moving, her body looked more like a skeleton. Seriously freaky.
Lynn whispered something in Libby’s ear and they separated, aunt to the kitchen, niece to the living room. She came in and collapsed in a heap on a cushion, her eyes huge and glassy. She showed no sign that she even realized there were other people in the room.
I leaned in to Whit. “We would know if she’s one of them, right?”
Whit squinted behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “Not until she kills someone.”
I glared at him. “Cool, Whit.”
“Or until she eats some food maybe?”
Lynn started bringing out huge bowls of salad. Me and Whit picked at ours, said thanks, took some bites. Libby just sat there, staring ahead in an unfocused way.
When Lynn got up to get dulse flakes and cayenne pepper from the kitchen, I turned and grabbed Libby’s hand. She moved her head sluggishly in my direction. Weak, but a sign of life.
“Hi,” I said.
She just stared at me, vacant. I noticed the whites of her eyes were very white. I didn’t know why, but I’d thought they’d be bloodshot.
“Hi,” I said again, softer.
Her mouth hung open for a second, and then she managed a hollow, distant “Hi.” Her first word.
“How are you?”
Her mouth hung open again, but nothing came out. Her face twitched slightly. I scooted over toward Whit. No one was home at Libby’s. Not right now.
Lynn returned and sat back down. “Eat, eat,” she encouraged.
So we did—three-fourths of us at least—and tried to enjoy being together on a summer night, on soft cushions, with giant salads. I said a small, human prayer for such small, human things as these.
Aunt Lynn tried to persuade us to drive back in the morning, but we politely declined. I told her Bonnie and Elliott were expecting me. Whit said Naomi would be alone in the Sheets house. We made no return plans to pick up Libby. For now this was a one-way trip for her.
As we moved toward the door to leave, I stopped and stepped back close to Libby, hugging her till I’d lifted her up off the ground for a second. One baby to another says I’m lucky to have met you, I hummed.
But it probably wasn’t true. That baby probably wasn’t lucky to have met that other baby at all. I bet even Kurt had known that.
“Se
e you senior year,” I thought I said to her, but when I was back in the Camry, I couldn’t remember. I may not have said anything to Libby when I hugged her good-bye.
The drive was fast. Short. Whatever. There was nobody on the highways, it was too late. Whit and I didn’t say much, but it was okay. We rolled down the windows and let the warm night air do the talking.
When Whit finally parked in front of my mother’s tea lights, it was almost midnight. My parents were totally asleep. I got out of the car and Whit followed up the stone steps, to the front door, inside, up to my bedroom. I was too sleepy to convince him I’d make it to bed on my own. And maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe I would’ve passed out right in the foyer, my cheek pressed against the cold tile floor until morning, when my parents found me. As if my sanity wasn’t already in question. I waited to see if Whit was actually going to try and tuck me in or something.
“I thought it’d be messier in here,” he said, and yawned.
“It was.” I slunk down to the carpet.
“Going home.” Whit kicked me lightly on the leg. “See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Are you crazy? You want to hang out again?”
“I miss the boring times. Those were classic.” He said it wistfully, as if we’d even shared more than twenty total hours between us. “Tower Records and In-N-Out?” he asked, already halfway out the door.
“Whit, soon I won’t fit into any of my pants,” I whined.
“Like you wear pants.” He knocked once on the door frame, yawned out “Tomorrow,” and was gone.
I felt like falling asleep in my Mickey shirt and dirty sneakers and leaving all the lights on too, but for some reason glanced at my answering machine first. The red message light was blinking. I didn’t feel like dealing with it, but I pressed the play button anyway. It was Morgan’s voice, so I started to zone it out, but then I realized what he was saying and my blood drained down to my toes.
“Dude, I don’t know what you did, but the twins came into the video store tonight. Does the word ‘warpath’ mean anything to you? I told them you don’t work here anymore. I told them you were on vacation. You better hide out, man. It was some evil stuff.”
I was already flat on the floor, so I couldn’t fall down farther. I was already on my knees, so I prayed to Santa Ana: Blow it all away.
14.
QUAKE
I couldn’t sleep until I eventually fell asleep and, once asleep, my body knew to stay asleep. I woke up briefly every other hour, just for a few minutes, to the sound of the garbage truck’s mechanical crunch or our housekeeper Carmen’s ranchera radio/vacuum combo or, finally, my parents sighing loudly as they stood beside my bed, staring down at me.
“I thought we were done with this.”
“Look at us, Quinn.”
I slowly pulled the blanket down to my chin and looked at them. They were dressed up for some party. My mother was carrying the tiniest clutch bag, my father held his reading glasses. Upon seeing me, their faces fell. I wondered what I looked like. How bad I’d really gotten.
“What are you doing?”
That was me.
“What are we all doing?”
That was my dad.
They waited. I rubbed my eyes, blinked out the moisture of old tears.
“Going to the…” My mother started out the words slowly and moved her hand as if to say, Join me in finishing this sentence, Quinn.
“Going to the…Going to the…”
“Hollywood Bowl!” my father jumped in.
No, that didn’t sound right.
I said, “I’m not going to the Hollywood Bowl,” but not in a defiant way. I said it like clearly, obviously, I’m in no condition to be going to the Hollywood Bowl right now, because I’m terrified and because I can’t be out at night.
“Don’t pull this,” my mother said.
“Quinn, we’ve had these tickets for two months. Can’t you put your problems on hold for one night?” My dad reached under my arms and lifted me up out of bed like a sack of flour. “How about for Harry Connick Junior?”
“Harry Connick Junior,” I repeated. No way I’d agreed to that.
“How about for your old mother and father who want to spend some time with you?”
I dropped my forehead into my palm. I let out the smallest whimper. “We can rent a movie. We can play Trivial Pursuit.” I grabbed my father by the elbow.
But they didn’t see the pleading in my eyes. Or if they did see it, they didn’t know what it meant.
“We’re going,” my mother said.
“Get dressed, kid,” my father said.
I dropped to my knees. I wrapped one arm around each of their legs and held tightly. I pressed my head between them. I couldn’t go. And they couldn’t go and leave me here alone. I didn’t know where the safe zone was. Was my house safe? Were my parents safe outside, after dark, as long as they weren’t with me?
No one said anything.
Maybe my parents were having a silent conversation above me. Maybe through their eyes and facial expressions they were discussing what to do with their crazy daughter. Maybe something like that was happening, but it was quiet in the room.
Then I heard, “Fine,” and realized that I’d ruined my mother’s night. Week. Summer?
“They’re season passes,” my dad said, then patted my head. “The Bowl’s always going to be there.”
I let out a small gasp and squeezed their legs together. “I’ll get dressed, I’ll get dressed and come down for dinner,” I said, so happy to be staying in that the words gushed out of my mouth like a shook-up can of Coke.
As my parents wriggled free from my grip, I noticed the sun out my window dipping just below the roof. I reached out for them again, but they’d left the room. In the hallway someone mentioned something about Thai takeout and Blockbuster.
Hiding from vampires was a monotonous scene. At night. During the day my life was packed, thanks to Whit: at the MOCA downtown, the Armand Hammer, chili-cheese dogs at Oki Dog, free samples at the Fairfax Farmers Market, pretending to shoplift at the Virgin Megastore followed by a bad indie at the Sunset 5 and crappy Chinese chicken salads at Wolfgang Puck’s, trendy-band-of-the-month at the Palladium, people-watching and trash-talking at the Galleria, friendship bracelets and potato tacos on Olvera Street, car washing, lip-synching, pool dunking, anything, everything random.
Even though I’d never told him about Morgan’s answering machine message—the less he knew, the safer he was—Whit sensed my generally freaked-out vibe and seemed anxious to chill it out. He called all the time just to talk or listen to me talk, and his list for possible hang-out plans was endless. Maybe he thought that if I was too physically and emotionally wiped out from nonstop daytime activities, I’d be too exhausted to panic about potential Libby revenge attempts and weird sounds outside my window at night.
I tried to play down my paranoia by keeping up my usual act: sarcasm, post-irony, feigned disinterest, parade-raining-on humor. But Whit knew me too well now to fall for all that. He had this rad ability to deflect everything tense and heavy and ominous about our situation and turn it into something lighter, more manageable. He did believe in supernatural stuff—both good and bad—because it was a reality in his life, but he also knew when to be human and let things be quiet. And when it got too quiet, he let me pretend like that was fine. Sometimes when we were together he’d touch me in some way, on the soft part of my forearm, or a pat on the head, or a side hug, or a high five where he held my hand and didn’t let go. But mostly he just tried to make me laugh and stay okay and helped keep my blood inside my body where it belonged.
Everything was super present tense with Whit, too. He didn’t get into prologues or origins or deep history. I assumed when he felt like opening up about what life was like as a Sheets boy in the midst of two brilliant explorers, one sexy dead dude, and an award-winning priss, he’d bring it up himself. I also assumed if he wanted to know about my far less exciting, far more normal—bu
t getting less normal by the day—seventeen years of existence, then he’d ask. Not so much.
This would’ve bothered me before. But before, everything bothered me, so whatever.
We avoided upsetting conversation topics like Libby’s health, the whereabouts of the twins, and what would happen when the Sheetses came home or the fall semester began or the Laurel Canyon branch of Hellmouth reopened. We definitely never brought up James. We never ever mentioned Naomi. But I saw her once.
It was three days after Joshua Tree. We were on our way to Think Ink in the Valley, where Whit was going to re-ponder the possibility of finally getting his first tattoo. We had just left the Sheetses’ when he realized he’d left his driver’s license on his desk, so I waited in the Camry while he ran inside to grab it.
Whit had been inside for only a couple of seconds when I saw her. She was just finishing a jog. Her whole body moved like in slow-mo, each limb pumping in hyper-focus, covered in sweat. Then her eyes locked on mine, pure poison, never blinking. I couldn’t slip any lower in my seat without literally crouching down into the foot space, and I felt like that’s exactly what she was hoping I’d do—cower, flee, go underground. I would’ve if I could’ve.
Instead I leaned an arm on the window, forced a pathetic smile, and threw up a peace sign. Mine probably looked guiltier than Nixon’s.
When Whit passed her coming back to the car, they exchanged a few words. Don’t murder her, I imagined Whit saying. Then her saying, But I want to.
Minutes later we were out of the canyons and onto the 101, cruising north.
“God she hates me,” I said.
“No. She’s just happy you haven’t met Henry yet.”
“Who’s Henry?”
“Our other brother.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
He took his eyes off the road and put them on me. “Yes, Quinn. I am kidding you.”
I was a sucker.
And those were our days. Not un-fun, kind of cool, and filled with a decent amount of wacky field trips and comic banter. I stuck to a semi-tight schedule, though. I wasn’t exactly Cinderella, but when the clock read six, sometimes seven—but almost never later—the curtain closed, Whit dropped me off, and my nights began. And those were much less awesome.