Cycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  Am I broken? Diseased? Do I need Viagra?

  Nope. My malady is far worse than that, ladies and gentlemen. It’s terminal. It’s the reason I requested all this porn in the first place. You see, these beautiful girls, naked and compliant as they may be, are no more than stand-ins for the true object of my desire. Their explicit poses and ingenious sexual experiments with door handles and produce are just lurid enough to distract me from my obsession for a few days. Ultimately, obsession wins.

  Good-bye, ladies. So long and farewell. My heart and my libido belong to . . .

  I won’t say it. If I don’t say her name, she’ll have no power over me. Right?

  I have her photograph hidden between the mattress and box spring. Jill doesn’t know about it. I mean, technically it belongs to her. She had it taken at one of those silly booths at the Liberty Bell Mall. I’ve spent all morning trying to banish its existence from my mind, distracting myself with horseback Martha and nipple-licking LaTanya.

  But at 11:36 p.m., after a struggle that was always doomed, I succumb to the inevitable. Digging the tiny photo from between the mattress and box spring, I sit cross-legged on the floor in my underwear. My hands in prayer around the forbidden object, I hesitate to look, knowing that once I see it, the old desire will return, potent, all-encompassing and never fully slaked.

  This is not my fault. I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried to squash this obsession. But I’m only human.

  I open my palms and there she is.

  Ramie.

  Her thick, full lips pucker as she plants a big friendly kiss on Jill’s face. On my face. Yes, I remember that moment. I remember every fractional instant of that moment, because I remember everything. Every time Ramie touches Jill’s hand. Every time she whispers with hot, moist breath into Jill’s ear. Every secret. Every gesture. I remember it all.

  Jill pays obsessive attention to all that Ramie does and says, because she worships Ramie in her silly girl-crush way. But when I wake up alone in this room, I invade Jill’s memories like a Viking horde. I mine their phone conversations, their chats by the lockers, their trips to the mall, their sharing of fitting rooms.

  Oh man.

  The way she bites her lower lip while she’s studying Italian Vogue, her pigeon-toed stance when she thinks no one is looking, her long slim fingers twisting Jill’s hair into a French braid.

  Her blue lace bra!

  Screw LaTanya. Screw Betsy. Screw Martha. Only one girl will do for me. All five feet ten inches of her. All one hundred and eighteen pounds of willowy lusciousness. Body, mind and soul, Ramie, I’ll take it all. Your cockeyed plan to infiltrate the student government with anarchists, your half-baked scheme to plant a bag of weed in the football captain’s locker, your ambition to change the face of fashion through the unconventional use of plastics. I’m listening, Ramie.

  And I’m watching too.

  By 2:00 a.m., I’m spent. Drained. The porno mags are stacked neatly on the dresser next to Jill’s Hello Kitty makeup case. I’ve got the Ramie photo in my hand (my other hand) and I’m staring at it by the dim light from the imitation Lladró flamenco lamp on the bedside table. I can’t sleep and I can’t wank anymore. It’s day four. I’ll be gone tomorrow. I’ve written Jill a note to request some porn DVDs, but I know they won’t help. Next cycle, I’ll find myself in this same burning dilemma.

  We’re supposed to keep our lives separate, Jill and I. That’s the deal. That way, she can be Nancy Normal and I can spend my days watching Elvis DVDs and fighting off boredom with epic bouts of masturbation. She doesn’t interfere with my life, and I don’t interfere with hers.

  But now, my reckless brain is concocting rationalizations. Why, it argues, should I be condemned to a life in this room while Jill roams freely? Why should Jill get Ramie all to herself?

  I know the answers to these questions. I know why we live the way we live. The world couldn’t handle a cycling hermaphrodite. Hiding my existence from the outside world, cruel as it seems, is an absolute necessity. Anything I do to screw up this arrangement is an incentive for Jill and Mom to try to erase me. Not to mention, I think the success of this arrangement—especially all that Plan B stuff—is what really created me in the first place. It was only after Jill’s deliberate forgetting that my separate personality evolved. I should guard this arrangement with my life!

  But my devious brain won’t let it lie. Jill won’t remember a thing, it tells me. You’re nothing but a blackout phase. You can do anything you want and no one will ever know.

  For three long years (that’s one hundred and forty-nine days of Jacktime, to be exact), I’ve endured this tiny room, mining Jill’s memories for a modest vicarious existence. I’ve been a good little prisoner. I’ve eaten my peanut butter sandwiches and kept my mouth shut. But now, in the twisted logic of a sleepless night, after the porn has failed to quench my devouring hunger, I’m starting to question all of it.

  Why shouldn’t I sneak out that window? Why shouldn’t I climb that tree outside Ramie’s bedroom and watch her sleep?

  It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. I’ve thought about it plenty. After Mom and Dad stopped checking up on me in here, I imagined sneaking out and following Ramie, maybe introducing myself to her as a new kid in town. But I never had the stones to go through with it.

  Something’s different tonight. I’m not sure what.

  Getting out of bed in my T-shirt and boxer briefs, I return the forbidden photo to its hiding place between the mattress and box spring, pull on my jeans and dig out the one pair of shoes I own: ancient white Converse All Stars, which are buried beneath a pile of Jill’s clothes and are at least two sizes too small. I’ve never worn them, never had to.

  Kneeling on the pink wooden chest beneath the frosted window, I stare into the darkness beyond, then flip the locks and open it. Cold hits me with a quick and unforgiving blow. A coat. People wear coats outside, don’t they?

  Damn, I realize. I’m going outside.

  I grab Jill’s long black wool coat, which barely reaches my wrists and squeezes my shoulders. It looks ridiculous and—

  WHAT AM I, NUTS?

  I can’t go outside! Someone might see me.

  Nevertheless, I step onto the wooden chest and slide over the windowsill backward. Frigid air burns my ankles as I dangle a good five feet from the ground. I should have worn socks. Not that I have socks. As my fingertips strain to hold my weight, I realize that after I drop, I have no way of getting back up to the window. I’ll have to come in the front door. But, of course, I don’t have a key on me, and despite the fact that there has never been a break-in anywhere near my house, Mom keeps this place locked up like Fort Knox.

  My fingers are about to give out when I dig my feet into the brick face and climb back up. With a giant heave, I pull my chest across the windowsill, then wriggle to the floor.

  I can’t go through with this. I can’t go jumping through windows and roaming the streets of Winterhead to spy on a girl as she sleeps.

  But I’m going to.

  I just have to do a little planning first. Jill would never go off half-cocked like this. She’d have backup plans and abort protocols. She’d have spreadsheets and pie charts. There’d be Plans A through Z and Projects One through One Hundred. I have to think!

  I know Jill has a key to the front door, but I don’t want my return to wake up Mom, whose bedroom is dangerously close to it. So I take the sheet off the bed and tie it around the leg of Jill’s pink chest. The sheet only hangs down a few feet, so I pull the fitted sheet off the bed and tie that to the end of it. This buys me another seven feet or so, enough to jump and grab when I’m on the ground. I dig through Jill’s underwear drawer for some socks, but finding only bright, girlie, lacy crap with polka dots and stuff, I decide to suffer.

  Before the remains of good sense can stop me, I hang out the window and drop to the soft wood chips below.

  Cold air burns my throat. What a rush.

  Above me is Mom’s d
arkened window. I freeze in anticipation of her light coming on. It doesn’t. At knee height is the basement window behind which Dad sleeps. It too remains dark. After another deep breath of cold air, I slip between two holly bushes and creep to the edge of the front lawn. You can’t see any other houses from here. We’re at the end of a winding street.

  Everything seems so far away—the giant pine tree whose branches dip into Trask Road, the telephone wires snaking away. Even the sky, jet-black with wispy clouds, seems impossibly distant.

  Pulling Jill’s coat tight, I look at our house dwarfed by that big sky, then turn to begin my journey down Trask Road.

  When I’ve rounded the bend that leads me toward Main Street, I realize I’ve seen all of this before—the Rennies’ house, with five cars jammed in the driveway, the Mazzaglias’ house, meticulously landscaped by old Mr. Mazzaglia with a tiny pair of scissors—but only through Jill’s perception. I know every inch of this route, yet it all feels new.

  The Bukers’ ferocious boxer, chained to a post out front, snarls at me but doesn’t bother getting up. When I get to Main Street, not a car is in sight. I skip across to the sidewalk on the other side, then head north toward the center of town. Streetlights cast blobs of light.

  When I hear a car up ahead, I tuck into the mouth of the Perkins’ driveway to squat behind a bittersweet bush. The car swishes by and fades around Main Street’s gentle curve.

  In twenty quiet minutes, with only the sound of rustling trees to keep me company, I am at the mouth of Cherry Street—Ramie’s street. I head into its dark embrace. Ramie’s house is only a hundred yards in, and when I get there, a rotting wooden plaque greets me with “Boulieaux” formed in seashells. Midway up her sloping front lawn, an enormous maple extends its branches from the edge of Cherry Street to the porch roof, which creates a convenient platform beneath Ramie’s bedroom window.

  I crunch through the frozen grass to a splintery wooden swing that dangles from the maple tree. Stepping on it, I shinny up the rope and straddle the branch that will deliver me to the porch roof. The branch sags and creaks with my weight as I scoot outward. Halfway to the porch roof, I stop and look down. Below me is the hard, frozen ground. Above, the dark shapes of naked branches rustle and play peekaboo with the half-moon.

  I am outside.

  I am cold and frightened, and the knobby branch digs angry knuckles into the bony sections of my ass. I have never felt any of these sensations before. At least not with my own skin. In my three years of life, I have felt nothing but soft sheets, plush carpeting and central heating. Sure, Jill’s been cold and uncomfortable plenty of times, but I never bothered to dwell on those things. Now that I’m experiencing it all with my own body, I feel electric. I want to jump. I want to swim. I want to run. I want to break something. I want to fly.

  I grab the rough branch in front of me and scoot outward. When I get to the tip of the branch, it sags just below the porch roof. Grabbing the edge of the roof, I pull myself and the springy branch upward, then slide belly-first onto the rough vinyl tiles. After lying still for a few seconds to ensure that the roof can hold my weight, I turn onto my back and wait for signs that someone has heard me. There is no sound except a weak wind through the bare branches of the maple tree. Slowly, quietly, I get to my feet. Just a few strides to the left, at the corner of the house, is Ramie’s bedroom window.

  I won’t lie. The slim remains of common sense command me to run, to stop this imbecilic mission and go back to the safety of soft sheets and plush carpeting. But common sense is the ninety-eight-pound weakling in this contest.

  I walk toe-heel to the edge of the roof, where Ramie’s bedroom window sits shiny and black, then press my forehead against the cold surface and make a visor with my hands. As my eyes adjust, a shape emerges, vague and cubelike. It’s Ramie’s bed and on it is Ramie. As the darkness retrains my eyes, I make out which end is the head and which is the foot of the bed. It’s a mere three feet from this window, three feet from my hands. My breath fogs the window and I wipe it clean. I make out the tangle of Ramie’s dark hair emerging like a wild bush from the pale comforter. She’s lying on her back with her face turned to the window. The half-moon’s light catches the sharp curve of her jaw, then fades to shadow where I know her lips are. Her big eyes are closed and a stray tangle of dark hair lies across her nose.

  I am seeing Ramie’s face for the very first time with my own eyes.

  There is movement in my nether regions.

  I want to pry open her window and slither into her bed like a snake. But I’m not that far gone. Not yet. I unbutton my jeans. The cold air is a quick dampener but my desire revives quickly. I keep unbuttoning and when I reach in, something happens inside Ramie’s room.

  She’s rolling away from me! Instinctively, my right hand emerges from my jeans and raps on the window. Ramie starts and turns back to me. I catch a brief glimpse of the shining paleness of her face and that’s when it happens.

  I peel myself from the window, press my back against the sliver of roof between it and the edge—and miss!

  It’s not a long way to the ground. But it is far enough for me to realize I am falling from Ramie’s porch with my pants unbuttoned. I do manage to right myself midfall and land feetfirst, but it’s hardly a gymnast’s dismount. The momentum of the fall sends me over onto my left hip and shoulder. I hear Ramie’s window hiss open. Scrambling to my feet, I press my body against the porch screen and button my trousers. She moves above me, but the vague creaking is indecipherable.

  If I sneak to the base of the maple tree, I should be able to see her. But then she’d see me too. Do I risk it?

  The creaking stops. Either she’s gone back to bed or she’s waiting for me to reveal myself. I have to move eventually. I can’t hide under the eaves of her porch roof all night. I guess this is what backup plans and abort protocols are all about.

  As I press against the porch screen, trying to make myself as flat as possible, I recall an old Kick-the-Can strategy of Jill’s. I decide to adopt it. Dropping to my belly, I snake as quietly as possible from Ramie’s porch right onto the lawn, shielded only by darkness. When I get to the maple tree, I slither to the far side, then slowly get to my knees and peer around the trunk.

  Ramie stands at her open window, hands pressed to the sill. The wind blows her tangle of hair and she shakes it out of her eyes. The odd thing is, she’s not looking down. She’s looking up. I look up to see what she’s looking at, but all I see are the branches of the maple tree. In another moment, she’s gone.

  Desperate for another look at her, I haul ass up the maple tree and straddle the branch leading to the porch roof. I’m about to start inching outward when Ramie returns to the window, wrapped in her thick white comforter. I freeze. Ramie opens her window wide, then perches on the sill with her knees tucked up against her and the comforter as shelter. Leaning her head against the window frame, she looks upward again.

  Looking upward myself, I can just make out an incredible sight between two branches of the maple tree. The wispy clouds are gone, and against the ink black of the night sky are a billion pinpricks of light. Among them, in a definite band, is the arc of the Milky Way. Turning to Ramie’s window, I triangulate her gaze. She’s looking right at it. She’s wondering what it’s like out there at the edge of the galaxy, wondering if anyone’s sitting there among those stars looking earthward. I know Ramie, even if it’s through the veil of Jill’s perception. She’s thinking all of these things, plus some things I couldn’t imagine. She’ll sit there until the night air seeps in through that comforter, thinking beautiful Ramie thoughts until it’s too cold to bear. And I’ll remain here straddling this branch with a bruised hip, frozen ankles and a persistent hard-on. I’ll sit here and stare at Ramie Boulieaux until she returns to bed.

  And that is exactly what we do.

  April 13

  Jill

  When I wake up, my whole body aches. I sit up, look at my all-girl face in the mirror, then do my Plan
B rituals. After that, I check the date on my clock. Friday, April 6. Seventy-eight days until prom night. Apple green marker in hand, I cross off the four previous days. Jack came early this cycle, so I have to rework my prom projections. Flipping through the months, I realize that my previously reliable 28.76-day cycle has drifted into a disconcerting irregularity. I do a quick calculation. The new average cycle length, based on the last six months, clocks in at 27.67 days. That whittles the window between prom night and Jack’s expected arrival from five days to a hair-raising two! A further increase in cycle irregularity, and I could miss the prom altogether!

  Prom.

  Tommy.

  The Bump.

  The J-bar!

  My life is a disaster on so many levels, I can hardly keep track of it all.

  Dragging myself to the dresser, I peel off Jack’s stinky white T-shirt and notice a hideous bruise on my left shoulder. Pulling his boxer briefs down, I spot its bluish green twin on my left hip. I take down the note taped to the corner of the mirror. “Hey, Jill. Sorry things didn’t work out for you at the Bump. Maybe you should try something truly radical, like being yourself. Just a thought. Anyway, I do appreciate the porn. How about some DVDs next time? I like brunettes. Oh, and sorry about the bruises. I was doing yoga. Got carried away. Love, Jack.”

  Love, Jack? What a suck-up. And how gross is it that he knows about the Bump, that he knows about my life at all? Plus what’s with showing up early? I turn the note over and write “Stop invading my phase! I’m on a tight schedule here!”

  Then I realize how stupid that is. It’s not as if he controls these things. I grab some paper from my desk and write, “Sure. No problem. I’ll ask Mom for more naked brunettes. Hey, while you’re exercising, how about trying to do something about this arm flab?”

  I almost write “Love, Jill,” but it feels smarmy, so I just write “Jill.”

  Over French toast, I ask Mom for the porn DVDs, which she agrees to after casting a cold but ambiguous glance at Dad. I have not been entirely successful in my avoidance of Baron von Box-of-Porn, as he tends to be underfoot now and then. I suppose I shouldn’t blame him for hoarding it, though. I’m sure he gets nothing from Mom. I deeply hate having psychologically complex parents. Have I told you that?