Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  She admittedly perused the Internet and every book and text that she could get her fingers on. She buried herself in the words of others, absorbing, assimilating, sorting and discarding most of the time, but not always. Sometimes, she just sat and was silent, and it seemed that it was in these times that even more insights came. Of course this was the very same time that Trillian took over, but that was the way it was. Though Kaila knew that she too had succumbed to the caring flaw, she had been too young to remember exactly what she had been bothered about. What had driven her to do the things she and Trillian were accused of, things that she had only snippets of memory of doing? It was just one more mystery that Kaila wanted to solve some day.

  “Secrets are not welcome in Wildwind,” Kaila said abruptly.

  She felt a sudden surge of irritation turn on, full force.

  The transition had been so rapid that even she was surprised. It made her wonder if Trillian was behind this shift. No one hated secrets more than Trillian. Trillian’s abhorrence was a study in contrasts since she was the master of secrets, never revealing all the interesting facts and details that she had lodged in her being. If Kaila was being honest she was marginally embarrassed by the surly tone of her voice that she now wanted to blame on Trillian. For some reason Kaila liked Derrick, much more than she should have.

  Derrick shrugged, clearly unaware of the internal battle raging within Kaila. If she had entertained the notion before, now she was certain, Trillian was pissed at Derrick, in fact she didn’t much like him at all; Trillian didn’t trust him.

  Kaila made a concerted effort to shove down Trillian, tuck her back into the recesses of her mind where she couldn’t make rude comments to people that Kaila wanted to talk to.

  “I’m sure you have secrets too. Sometimes the secrets we keep are the only threads of reality that keep us together, and if we let people know the truths, it would snip all the lines and then we would fall apart. And all that was inside would be outside.”

  Kaila cocked her head, unsure of exactly what Derrick had meant. She knew Trillian would have understood the meaning of his words. But she was by no means willing to allow Trillian to have control, especially when her rancor for Derrick had made the blood in her veins thrum like a torrent.

  “You talk weird,” Kaila said, hitching her computer under her armpit.

  Derrick appeared distinctly rankled by Kaila’s offhand remark, as if she had somehow affronted him. She didn’t much care if she had, people who reacted unfavorably to her words were of no concern to her. What was of interest was why in fact he was acting that way.

  Derrick shifted his stance hastily, drawing back from Kaila without actually taking a single step away. Kaila knew that Derrick was in Wildwind because he was crazy, just like all the other patients, but she had to admit that he was quite good at hiding his peculiarity from people. They stood locked in place, an unsaid stare-down ensued until Derrick finally turned around and started for the door. For some reason Kaila wanted Derrick to stay, wanted to pick through his brain. She was certain his mind held many oddities, but also interesting facts.

  “Please, don’t leave. I promise not to pry,” Kaila hollered after him.

  He had already reached the door. She saw him pause, but moments later he continued on, walking until he was out of sight; the only remnant of his presence was the smell of his cologne. What was more surprising than Derrick’s unceremonious exit was Kaila’s disappointment at what felt like a loss. And though she had never gauged her behavior before in her life, that exact thought suddenly popped into her mind. A voice that wasn’t Trillian’s said that Derrick held so many answers to the bevy of questions that floated perpetually around in her brain.

  Norm had meant something to her, but Derrick meant something completely different. Without trying, or at least it hadn’t seemed like he had been trying, Derrick had become an enigma that Kaila had to study, to discover what made him tick. If she hadn’t been fully convinced before, she was now. Derrick would be her mission, a lock that needed to be picked; she wasn’t going to give up until she had discovered all his secrets.

  CHAPTER 15

  “They caught Derrick with a laptop in the storage room. He was trying to hack into the Wildwind computer files,” Janelle said.

  Janelle was reclined on Pauline’s bed; her ample form occupied all the space available, leaving Pauline to perch on the tiny corner at the foot of the bed.

  “Who told you that?” Pauline asked. She glided a hand along the curve of Janelle’s thigh in what Kaila recognized as a seductive way. Kaila was aware that the two girls did things, sex things, like what she had watched online, where girls found what appeared to be ingenious ways to pleasure one another, despite no penis being involved.

  Sex and all it entailed hadn’t been something that had touched Kaila’s radar, until it had. When she was around twenty-two her interest had peaked, after she had walked in on an old roommate having sex in the bed adjacent to Kaila’s. Danicka, who liked to call herself Petal, had opened Kaila’s eyes on the whole matter.

  The guy having sex with Danicka was a skinny cleaner named Sean, with cystic acne that even peppered his white buttocks. The two had been too immersed in the sex act to realize that Kaila had moved into the vicinity. She had studied the backside of Sean, his behind moving rapidly, slapping so hard between Danicka’s spread legs that the noise of smacking flesh had drowned out all other sounds in the atmosphere. She had been amazed at how the sac of Sean’s scrotum seemed stretched and loose, and had hit against the lower part of Danicka’s vagina like a wet rag. Kaila had wondered if it felt like a half-filled water balloon that she and the other residents sometimes played with on hot days. Sean’s face had been red, his cheeks puffed in pain or pleasure, Kaila wasn’t sure which.

  Kaila had seen Danicka’s breasts before, since Danicka had never seemed to care who was around when she stripped naked. But now, even that part of her anatomy had changed, the nipples were drawn up into taut peaks, everything swollen. Danicka’s face was just as flushed as Sean’s had been, her eyes half-closed, an expression of satisfaction colored her face. On and on the steam engine chugged. To Kaila it was like watching an episode of National Geographic, only this show had humans doing things that she had only seen animals do, prior to then.

  Kaila could have watched the two forever, studying every nuance and shift of their bodies and listened to the groans and the steady squeak of the mattress. Unfortunately it all came to a halting conclusion when Danicka’s huge brown eyes had spotted Kaila, standing just a few feet away. As soon as Danicka had realized that they weren’t alone, her gloss-slicked lips formed a pout, her brow furrowed and all the pleasure that had marked her expression seconds before vanished. Absolute panic ensued.

  Danicka began pounding Sean’s naked shoulder with a red nailed fist, urging him to stop. It seemed to take forever for Sean to receive the message, as he continued to move like a mad man, thrusting in a steady rhythm, as if any thoughts apart from pumping were impossible. Then he went stiff, his whole body jerking like a live wire was electrocuting him. Only then did he seem to get his bearings and understand the message that Danicka had been so adamant to give him; they were no longer alone. Kaila hadn’t thought his already flushed face could have become any more rouge, but it had, even his neck looked like it had been dipped into scalding water.

  Kaila refused to turn away. She had needed to see his penis since she had never seen such a thing in real, and most definitely not one that had just been performing sex. Her eyes were literally glued to the main connection point. Danicka’s orders to look away, her attempts to shame Kaila into averting her stare hadn’t worked. Danicka hadn’t understood that Kaila didn’t feel shame about anything she did, because everything Kaila did had a reason, a justification.

  Finally, Sean had slid his penis out and Kaila had eyed it with interest. It was roughly five inches in length, with a condom pulled like a tube sock right up to the thick bush of his pubic hair. Kaila wat
ched as the condom began to wrinkle around his partially swollen member that was rapidly deflating. The fluid that had gathered at the tip, milky and white, hadn’t dodged her keen eyes, and the sight of it had Kaila practically exploding with glee that she had just witnessed a man ejaculate in real. She had clapped her hands together enthusiastically, as if she had just watched an applause worthy event, which in her opinion it absolutely had been.

  “You’re completely fucked in the head,” Danicka had said, spinning her finger in a circle at the side of her head…

  “Kaila?” Pauline’s voice broke through, shuttling her back to the moment.

  She wasn’t sure how long she had been away only that Janelle was now sitting on the side of the bed next to Pauline. Both of them stared at her with concerned expressions.

  “I don’t understand why it’s not okay to have sex with someone who’s the same sex as you,” Kaila said, completely shifting the conversation away from Derrick and his hacking.

  Pauline’s brow wrinkled as if she hadn’t quite understood Kaila’s bold statement.

  “Who said it’s not okay?” Pauline said.

  There was acid in her tone, something that Kaila didn’t often hear in her roommate’s voice.

  “People say it. I’ve read things, petitions, people saying that being gay is a sin and wrong…”

  This exact concept had baffled Kaila for quite a long time, but she had never asked anyone about it. She wasn’t sure why people believed it to be true, or even why it was important to talk about it right at that moment, but somehow it was. Kaila needed someone else to shine a light on a notion that had never made sense to her; it was one more puzzle to be solved.

  She had done all she could to find the truth and the answers as to why, but had come up short. In her research as well as observing women, Kaila had watched men together and was surprised at their ability to enjoy themselves, just as much as they seemed to when a woman was involved. If people worried that the couple couldn’t enjoy having sex, and that was the reason it was considered wrong, then they just needed to watch some of the movies to see for themselves.

  She had also mused that it might have been a love thing, but that hadn’t seemed to solve her quandary. Kaila knew from personal experience with her feelings for Norm, or whatever had grown within her, that sometimes you just started caring about someone without even trying. And even if other people didn’t exactly understand or condone what you felt, you didn’t feel it any less. Wasn’t there a saying about you not choosing love and love choosing you?

  Still, she wasn’t quite sure if what she had felt for Norm, still felt now, despite him being gone for what seemed like a very long time, was actually love, since she had no reference point. But if she counted the research she had done on that exact feeling, it might have been close. People described love as making your heart beat faster when you saw that special person, in fact sometimes just the thought of Norm was enough to make Kaila’s heart hammer her ribs like a jackhammer. And it seemed that now that he was gone, her reaction to the memory of their almost sex in the storage closet made her want more than anything in the universe, to go back in time and finish what they had never had a chance to complete. To hold him against her bare flesh, to feel that same sensation.

  Kaila shifted her gaze from Pauline, to Janelle, then back.

  “You and Janelle have sex with each other, and I know that you do those things because you love, or at least like each other, so why would that be wrong?” Kaila asked, folding her arms across her breasts.

  “It’s not wrong…or least it’s not wrong to me.”

  Kaila heard the quaver in Pauline’s voice before her eyes clouded with tears. She knew that her words had upset Pauline, but her need for an answer seemed more important than Pauline’s emotions. Tears would dry up, but the opportunity to have something that felt extremely important explained felt more urgent. Janelle wrapped her meaty arm around Pauline, drawing her closer until her silky head was positioned in the crook of Janelle’s neck.

  “Why are you torturing her Kaila?”

  Janelle’s voice was low and carried an unspoken warning for Kaila to shut up. Janelle’s chagrin did nothing to make Kaila feel sympathetic toward Pauline, or her inability to accept that she loved women not men. In fact it was just the opposite, because it was like denying your skin was the color it was, who you loved or didn’t love seemed innate, not planned.

  Trillian had whispered a truth to Kaila the last time Pauline had admitted her love for women, a truth that Kaila refused to give any thought too but suddenly made sense; Pauline was one of those people that believed being gay was wrong. Trillian had told Kaila that it was this very idea that had left Pauline feeling less than, believing that suicide was her only option in a world that didn’t accept that it was okay to love someone that had the same anatomical structure as she did. Trillian had urged Kaila to convey her messages, because just like Kaila could predict, so too could Trillian. Much like Derrick’s ability to see a death that was going to happen, Trillian could see things too. She knew that Pauline was going to try again and again until she succeeded, or until she accepted her truth; that she hated herself for being different, enough so that she wanted to die.

  “I’m not torturing her, I want to know why she thinks it’s wrong to love a woman, why is it wrong, why is it wrong, why is it wrong?”

  Kaila’s voice had risen in cadence, until she was screaming the question that was now wrapped tight in fury. She, and Trillian too, needed Pauline to answer them, give them a reason for her self-hatred.

  More tears flooded Pauline’s eyes, falling in heavy drops down her pale cheeks, taking her mascara and all the eye makeup that she had applied so carefully with the salty water. But instead of crumpling into a ball of tears and snot, she pulled out of Janelle’s grasp and leapt to her feet. She loomed over Kaila as if she intended to hit her.

  “Because it is, it just is…” Pauline bellowed so loudly that Kaila was certain that the Wildwind staff would soon be joining them in the room. Her body was stiff with anger, like a twig that had been bent to its limit and was ready to snap in half; Pauline was ready to snap in half.

  Then it came in a rush of power, so much so that Kaila felt as if she had been jolted with a stun gun, only she hadn’t, it was just Trillian waking up. But this Trillian wasn’t the understanding one that waited her turn to get what she wanted most, this was something more, a force that Kaila had no way of stopping.

  Trillian’s will tugged Kaila to her feet, her erect body was now mere inches from Pauline. Even though Trillian was in absolute control, Kaila was present too, as if a passenger in a car that she was not driving, but she could still peer out the windows. Kaila was certain that she couldn’t stop Trillian even if she tried. In an unexpected move that left even Kaila stunned, Trillian reached for Pauline, cupping her large hands on the fine bones of Pauline’s face. Kaila felt the contact, waited for the spiders, hairy tarantulas, black widows anything that was lethal, to arrive, but there was none of that, just Pauline’s soft skin against the thick flesh of Kaila’s palms. Trillian held Pauline’s face as if she were handling something so fragile where even a touch might cause it to disintegrate.

  “Love is never wrong,” Trillian said.

  Then whatever string Trillian had used to control Kaila was snipped away, leaving her boneless. She collapsed and everything went black.

  CHAPTER 16

  Derrick’s voice, panicked with a hint of irritation, brought Kaila out of the dark place she had been swept away to.

  “If she keeps having these seizures she’s going to need to be evaluated. There’s something definitely wrong with her, something I have no idea how to fix…” Derrick said.

  “You’re supposed to be a doctor aren’t you?”

  Pauline’s voice was higher than normal and tempered with deep anxiety.

  “I’m not a doctor yet, I was pre-med, not even close to the kind of doctor Kaila needs, she’s having seizures. She prob
ably needs a CT scan at the very least, an MRI would be even better.”

  Kaila’s eyes felt as if they had been super-glued together, she struggled to open them, while the bickering between Derrick and Pauline continued. She felt spider legs graze her forehead. It was the jolt she needed to pop her eyes wide. She noticed immediately that she was in her own bed and her head was propped up on several pillows so she was positioned in a sitting pose. Derrick and Pauline were too busy arguing to clue in that she had regained consciousness.

  “I’m fine,” she croaked. She cleared her throat before she repeated. “I’m okay.”

  Pauline and Derrick were so close that they were almost chest-to-chest. Pauline shook a slender finger in Derrick’s face, a mere half-inch away from his nose. He took a few steps back from her, widening the gap between them as if intimidated. Seeing Derrick cowed by Pauline made Kaila wonder why she, who had at least forty pounds on Pauline, didn’t seem to affect Derrick in the least. Witnessing this unexpected behavior only heightened Kaila’s confusion about how Derrick operated, this in effect made her interest in him grow by degrees.

  “I’m fine,” Kaila shouted, loud enough so both Derrick and Pauline were silenced. Kaila noted that Janelle was nowhere to be seen. She hoped that didn’t mean that Janelle was off trying to convince a Wildwind staff member to check in on her.

  Apprehension slid like a sharp blade down Kaila’s spine. The last thing she could deal with was yet another White Room stay. In her opinion, the White Room with its extreme quiet, blank décor and constant stream of medications, made her feel like a lab rat and a lot more unbalanced for having been inside.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  She allowed her eyes to come to rest on Pauline, then Derrick. They wore twin expressions of relief for entirely different reasons.