Even in the cold of night, the inside of the shack stank of sweat in all the wrong places. A few cans of fish lay opened and discarded on a table, a splattering of utensils around them. A furry creature sat on the table, astride one of the opened cans, licking. A cat. Its eyes gazed at me with a faint glow.
I stood very still. From somewhere towards the back of the room came the slight puff of a snore pushed between blubbery lips. Then a wheezy intake of breath, a violin played out of tune. Judging from the volume of the snore, the sleeper had to be a man. And a heavyset one, at that, probably with globs of pale flesh bulging out of his pajamas.
And then there was the gut-wrenching smell. Nauseating. It was high time to leave.
I eased the door shut. Turned around.
A figure of someone standing in the moonlight, a ghostly sentinel. Staring at me.
My throat filled up with a silent scream.
“You finally came,” she said.
“Damn it!” I hissed, my heart hammering inside.
“I gave up on you. Thought you’d quit on me.” She spoke loudly, as if she were in broad daylight walking down Main Street on a Sunday afternoon.
“Did you have to spook me like that?”
“I was here the whole time. You’re blind as a bat.” Her tone was berating.
“Shh! Someone’s sleeping in there.” I pointed with my finger.
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about him. He could sleep through an earthquake.”
“Is that your dad?”
She nodded, a certain fear in her eyes.
I stepped off the porch, away from the stench of the house, stumbled out to the middle of the yard, and lifted my face to the moonlight with all the relish of a pale sunbather on the first warm day of summer. The air out there, which only five minutes ago seemed disgusting, I now found as fresh and crisp as Denver mountain air.
“What the hell am I doing here?” I whispered. “What is it that you wanted to show me?”
“Didn’t say I wanted to show you anything.”
“You did. You wrote that you had something to show me.”
“No. I said I have something to tell you.”
I looked at her. In the pale moonlight, she stood like a scarecrow in a field of discarded detritus, snipped of strength and muscle tone, a sallow stick figure. Only her lips had color. As she walked over to me, I noticed, to my horror, that she was wearing some bright red lipstick. But she’d overstepped the parameters of her lips and given them a bloated, swollen look as if she’d just been sucker-punched on the mouth. She wanted to look pretty for me.
“Look at this place,” I said. “How can you live here?”
“It ain’t half bad,” she said. “I already cleaned it up some ’fore you got here.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Piles of trash lay strewn about, no doubt home to all kinds of varmints and ticks. The air was redolent with decomposition.
“Why did you ask me to come here?” I asked.
“You’re the one with the bike,” she explained. “I ain’t walkin’ if I don’t have to.”
“But why not at school? Why—?”
“Because you ignore me at school. As if I ain’t even there. Won’t even look at me.”
“That’s because we have nothing to talk about.”
“We have what we know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t need to be so uptight about it. You know,” she said, looking directly at me. Her eyes dropped down, pausing fleetingly at my lips before falling away to the ground. “That.”
I diverted my eyes downwards. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled.
She looked at me incredulously. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Our secret.”
I shuffled my feet. “Yeah, well, what about it?”
She smiled to herself and waggled her eyebrows at me. “Why don’t we sit down a little?” she suggested. “So we can talk.” A flirtatious smirk embroidered itself onto her lips.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Just tell me what you know.”
“And I will. But let’s sit first.” She reached for my arm as if to lead me.
“Tell me now!” I hissed at her, slashing my arm away.
“You drag me out here in the middle of the night, and all you want to do is just tell me something?” I brushed at the sleeve where her hand had briefly touched. “Tell me now, or I’m leaving! I have no time for your games.”
“Why don’t we sit? Why don’t we, like, do what we did on the stage? Why don’t we just sit?” Her face contorted into a plea. Then her hand clutched my coat sleeve; she suddenly flopped down, pulling me down with her.
We landed hard on some planks of rotten wood. My left elbow took the brunt of the fall; a jolt of electricity shot up my arm.
She continued to speak, hurriedly, as if she knew she only had a few seconds before I collected myself. “I thought we could continue what we started. I thought we stopped when we could have, you know, continued and stuff.” She edged herself closer to me.
And despite myself, I felt my heart begin to tremor. I hated myself for feeling this way, but no girl had ever liked me before in my life. Ever. I tried to stay angry with Jan, but a different kind of passion began to arouse itself in me. There was a little careless freckle in the soft indent of her neck. Inexplicably, I suddenly found myself wanting to kiss it.
She placed her hand on mine; I pulled my hand away. “Stop it,” I hissed. “Just stop it.”
A geyser of hurt exploded in her eyes. She shrank from me, retreating back into the light. A world of rejection was in her wobbling lips.
Then, feline-like, she pounced on me. At first I thought she was attacking me, and I tried to find her wrists to thwart her from clawing me. She landed on top of me, pushing me down onto my back. It was then I understood her true intent. Her lips, rimmed with hard determination, found mine. And with her lipstick on, it was like kissing a greasy, cold keyboard. She made absurd smacking noises. I felt her oily, pimpled forehead against mine, as greasy as her overly rouged lips.
“Stop it!” I yelled. “Get off me now!”
And just like that, she froze.
Slowly she rose and backed off, growing smaller in the darkness. Diminishing. I panted hard, panicked. Brushing my legs and arms, I picked myself up.
“Don’t you like me?” she asked me. Her voice came out kind of spry. “When we kissed, I thought—I mean, the way you kissed me back, I thought you liked me. I thought that was our secret.”
I cringed. I thought to tell her the truth, to tell her that there was nothing in her personality that enthralled me, nor much in her looks either. That when I had kissed her back, I’d simply been caught up in the throes of something that had taken me by complete surprise. That when I pictured the image of the two of us walking around the school hallways hand-in-hand or sitting at the movie theater together, all I could see was one word: ludicrous.
I turned on my heel and started walking. “I’m leaving.” I’d gotten no more than ten paces when she said, “Why don’t you give me a chance?”
I kept on walking to my bike.
“All I want is to get out of this hellhole. Do you think I like it? Do you think I like being hated by everyone?”
I turned around. “Look, I’m leaving.”
“I’m just like you, you know.”
“You’re nothing like me,” I spat.
She nodded. “You and me, we’re just the same. Nobody pays attention to us. People take one look at us and dismiss us. Like nothing. Like we’re nothing.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“You’re a loner, Kris.”
“Like I said: speak for yourself. I’ve got friends. I’ve got Naomi.”
“And I’ve got my dad. I tell him everything. He knows everything that goes on. He knows all the kids I hate at school. He knows about you. So he’s a little wrecked in his head, especially without his medication, but I’
ve got him. So you’ve got Naomi. So what? We’re still nobodies.”
“Like. I. Said. Speak. For. Yourself. Am. I. Speaking. Slowly. Enough. For. You?”
“I left a gift for you today,” she said, her voice pleading.
“I left it for you in your backpack.”
Her declaration, so simple and direct, caught me off guard. “The knife?” I hissed. “You’re the one who put the knife in my bag?”
“Calm down. I did it as a gift. For you. Something you really need. You told me how you were chased the other day, so I thought you should carry this. For your protection.”
“Do you know how stupid…don’t you know the trouble you’ve gotten me into because—?”
“It’s the only thing I could think of!” she shouted back. “I don’t have money, and it was lying in the kitchen, so I took it, OK? When my dad wasn’t looking. And gave it to you. I thought you’d like it.”
I flung my arms into the air, my insides burning.
“Look, I’m sorry, OK? I just meant well. I thought you’d like it.”
I turned and began storming away.
“Where are you going?” she asked. “Don’t ever give me anything again. Don’t ever even talk to me again.
Don’t even think about me. Don’t anything me.”
“Please, Kris,” she implored, “stay for a bit. Don’t go. I won’t do nothin’. We don’t have to kiss or nothin’, you know, we can just, like, be here together. It doesn’t—”
I ignored her and strode faster towards my bike.
“Kris!” she shouted after me.
I turned; her face was lit by the silvery moonlight, the squalor of her home strewn around her. Then the light subsided: she dissolved into her surroundings. And she spoke with a wavering voice that a convict might use when pleading with the executioner. “I think I like you.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” I said contemptuously.
She flinched a little at that. “No. No,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “It’s just that I…” Her fingers wrangled one another as she spoke. “I care for you, Kris. I really, really want to be with you. I see something in you that others don’t. Even on that first day in class when I looked at you, I knew. That you’re special and…and…I care for you a lot. I think I even lo—”
“No!”
“I said that I—”
“Are you crazy?”
“No, I—”
“You don’t even know me!”
And then it hit me. In choosing to kiss me—out of all the other guys in school—she was basically picking the one person she had the best chance with. She looked to the very bottom of the totem pole of born-losers at school and saw me. The Chinese kid with badly matching clothes and a dorky haircut. In my mind, I spat on her.
“I do know you, Kris,” she said meekly. “Don’t you like me even a little?”
“Why would I like you? What’s there to like about you?” Her face didn’t register any surprise or shock. She took it in, deadpan. “Why did you kiss me back, then?” she asked with quiet resignation.
I acted as if I hadn’t heard her. “You’re fugly. You’re stupid,” I went on. I was relentless. “I don’t know what I’m doing here with you. Don’t ever talk to me again, you stupid slut.”
I had never said such words to anyone before, nor even imagined the possibility of it. But I’ve learned a few things about life since then, and one of them is that everyone must have someone to feel superior to. It is a necessity of life. Even bottom-dwellers must find a roach to step on.
She stepped back, aghast. I sensed something inside her reeling backwards. I should have felt shame, but instead I found release, a purging of that embarrassing kissing incident I’d had with her.
Then a meanness in her eyes suddenly lashed at me, wet and glinting. “But I do know you, Kris. Better than you think!” she said with surprising force. “Better than you might possibly think!”
“You know nothing about me!”
“You’re just like everyone else,” she retorted. “You’re just as bad as them—”
“Shut up!” I yelled.
“I thought you were different from the rest—”
“I am different,” I spat back at her, my voice filled with venom. “Just look at me—look at my hair, look at my eyes, look at my face. I am different.”
We glared at each other.
“I take back what I said,” she said, her chest heaving up and down.
“What?”
“I take it all back. Everything. Everything I said to you.” I backpedaled two or three steps, turned, and began to walk away.
“Kris!” she shouted, her voice hotly urgent.
I hated it when she said my name; it implied a level of intimacy we didn’t share. I thought she was going to rail on about something or follow me, but she didn’t say another word. By the time I turned the bike around and hoisted myself onto the seat, she had vanished. When I twisted around one last time before careening around a bend, my bike dangerously wavering, I saw nothing but a vacant clearing in front of her home blighted in the tombstone-gray light of the crescent moon.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
DECEMBER 19
Into an ever-deepening mystery that has tormented the town of Ashland comes further tragedy: yet another Slackenkill High School student has mysteriously disappeared.
The circumstances surrounding this particular disappearance are even more harrowing due to the level of violence so evidently—and some would say tauntingly—displayed. Police were led by teachers to a girls’ bathroom in the east wing of the school early yesterday where freshman Trey Logan’s severed right hand was discovered in a trashcan.
Shock and panic spread quickly through the hallways and classrooms of the school just as morning classes were beginning. In the mayhem and bedlam that ensued, local city police failed to effectively cordon off the area and may have lost valuable evidence—if not suspects—from right under their noses.
Officials, who confirmed late yesterday afternoon that fingerprints taken from the hand were indeed Mr. Logan’s, have been quick to add that they are still holding out hope for the victim. He was last seen yesterday evening at a local bowling alley with some friends. He was wearing a green North Face jacket, Gap blue jeans, and brown boots—generic fare, acknowledged the police spokes-person, but he added that Mr. Logan regularly wore a very distinctive gold chain around his neck with his initials emblazoned on it. Anyone with any information is urged to contact the police hotline number immediately. The FBI, which has admitted to clandestine investigations over the past few weeks, had no comment to make except that they were working “in conjunction with local law enforcement,” doing everything they could. They added that the latest disappearance, while tragic, might nevertheless help officials solve the serial abductions by clues perhaps inadvertently left behind.
DECEMBER 19
Fresh mozzarella with prosciutto, tomatoes, and basil oil. Minestrone soup with a sprinkling of basil leaves. Lasagna layered with meat ragu, béchamel, and roasted garlic. And to top it all off, a decadent hot fudge sundae.
“That was pretty fantastic,” I said to Miss Durgenhoff. She was sitting at the end of the bed, an apron tied around her waist. “I’ve never had dinner in bed.”
“Well, when I saw you come home, you looked beat,” she said cheerily. “Figured you crashed on your bed when you didn’t come down for the longest. So…well, voila.”
“You’re definitely spoiling me.”
“Consider it a thank you. For all the ways you’ve been kind to me.”
“Hardly.”
“And as extra fuel for the coming few days. With the musical and all, you’ll need it. It’s so close now—just a few more days.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Four more days. Hard to imagine.”
She smiled whimsically. “You’ll be fine. Great, in fact.”
“Next two days are crucial. Mr. Matthewman hates the fact that I still have
n’t practiced with the chorus yet. So we have rehearsals with the chorus, dress rehearsals with the orchestra, he whole works, from morning to night. He’s really packed it in.”
“Well, it couldn’t be helped, right? You were an eleventh-hour replacement. And there were exigent circumstances.”
“I suppose. Anyway, the next couple of days are key. Pretty nervous, I have to tell you.”
She smiled at me with those winsome eyes of hers. For a few moments we sat in an easy silence.
“It’s actually me who has to thank you, Miss Durgenhoff.”
“Oh? How so?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
Miss Durgenhoff laughed a little. “That’s OK.” She smiled wider. “You don’t have to say anything.”
I propped myself up higher. “No, I should. You encouraged me. About my singing.”
“Oh, it was nothing. Hard not to praise natural talent, after all. You’re going to be great. Amazing.”
I tugged on my blanket. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve really got it in me,” I said after a while. “It still feels so unreal to me. I keep imagining the worst that could happen. Like catching a cold or something, and my voice just goes kaput overnight.”
Miss Durgenhoff smoothed the front of her apron. “I seriously doubt that’s going to happen,” she said. “I’ve been hearing you sing, and you have such a commanding voice, strong. A voice with some real backbone and muscle. I don’t see it petering out.”
“I hope not.” I took another scoop of the sundae. “Mr. Matthewman says I emotionally check out of my songs way too much. He wants me to find passion every time.” I stared down at my plate, shaking my head slightly. “I don’t know how to do that. Like, how can you be passionate every time?”
“Oh, that you most certainly can do,” she said. The sudden seriousness in her tone surprised me.
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