Be in the Real

by Denise Mathew

  “Why?” Kaila asked, her voice muted.

  Knowing that all she had pinned her hopes and dreams on had been an illusion, and that Derrick had been lying to her made her feel as though something had shattered inside her.

  Snippets of the lost moments that she had experienced since she had left Wildwind, slipped through Trillian’s defenses. Kaila had blurred images of meetings with Franco where Trillian had been in complete control. And there were faces, so many faces all around her. Some people she recognized, others she didn’t, and they were asking her questions, picking her brain, probing, and one fact was certain, everyone was thoroughly captivated by the words spilling from Trillian’s lips.

  Her parents were there also which seemed impossible, since they had been dead so long, that their bones were surely to have been nothing but powder now. And when she remembered more about her parents, she recalled that her mother’s hair had been mousy brown and poker straight, not coppery at all. Her father looked different too, the blue eyes that she had always thought she had shared with him were no longer the same, and instead were hazel with flecks of gold. Kaila didn’t know what was true or not because Trillian was so very good at keeping secrets.

  Kaila’s parents had questions too, about why she had sent them away to the land of the dead. Kaila refused to answer their queries, refused to tell them or anyone else for that matter, that she didn’t remember anything only what Trillian had told her. Kaila had always known that if everyone knew the truth, that Trillian had crushed her mother’s sleeping pills and had put them in the red wine that her parents liked to drink, so that she could kill them while they slept, they would have tried to get rid of Trillian forever. But as much as Kaila refused to look at the truth, she equally wanted to let her parents know that she would have stopped Trillian if she had only realized what Trillian had planned to do. More than anything Kaila wanted to tell anybody that would listen that Trillian had done it to protect Kaila, to stop them from…

  Kaila knew that she couldn’t go back in time and fix what had been irrevocably broken. Murder was murder, and the reasons for why it came to happen didn’t change anything. Kaila’s innocence and naivety had made her trust Trillian’s lies, and her fear had allowed her to succumb to Trillian’s will, but that meant little now. All that mattered was that Kaila had trusted Trillian, had listened when she had told her to go away for a little while so she could fix it. And it had been fixed forever…

  Kaila shook her head violently. Pauline and Derrick had become shadows, obscured by the past that was rearing its ugly head, forcing Kaila to remember all the things that Trillian, and her parents too, had done. Kaila now knew why Trillian had done it, because she didn’t have the strength to be brave anymore, not anymore. But it hadn’t worked like Trillian had said; there had been no new family, no new life. Trillian hadn’t said that Kaila would go on living, but would not really be living because how could a bird ever grow accustomed to the gilded cage where it found itself. Where every spread of its wings met with resistance and all that it had once called freedom was nothing but a vague memory, dotted with smidgens of color that were artificial and fake, and nothing like the true home that it had once known…

  “Kaila, are you okay?”

  Pauline’s voice was urgent, drawing her back to the present.

  Kaila didn’t want to worry Pauline, not after everything she had gone through to get there, but at that very moment she didn’t have the strength to speak, to explain, to question what it all meant. Her bones felt like they had been rendered to cartilage, wiggly and unable to support her any longer. Then she was falling and there was little she could do to prevent it from happening. Even Trillian was unsure of what she should do. It felt as if Kaila’s brain was exploding, imploding with all the information that had been kept from her, hidden within the depths of Trillian, never to be spoken about until it was.

  “Fuck, help me with her,” Derrick hollered through the tunnel of blackness that had descended upon Kaila.

  She felt fingers, hands, pressure, but the spiders didn’t come, for they too had abandoned her in her darkest moment. A moment where she realized that it had all been a dream; nothing had been true, not even her life outside Wildwind.

  CHAPTER 39

  The light came back in degrees, smudges dissolved into lines until Derrick’s face appeared a few inches above her. His expression was one of absolute panic, something that she had felt he was incapable of, yet was blindingly apparent.

  “Fuck Derrick, what’s happening, should I call 911?”

  Pauline’s words were laced with terror. Kaila felt guilty for causing her friend so much distress.

  “She’s been off her meds for too long, I…I…don’t know…these seizures are fucked up…”

  “It’s got to be the tumor…” Pauline said.

  “Tumor?” Derrick sounded confused by the word.

  His voice trailed off when he noticed that Kaila was staring up at him.

  “It’s not a tumor, it’s Trill…” Kaila started to say but stopped speaking abruptly when she remembered she wasn’t supposed to talk about Trillian.

  Derrick released his hold on her shoulders. Only after he did, did Kaila realize that he had been touching her in the first place. Once again the spiders were conspicuously absent. Another time and place Kaila might have marveled at this fact, but right then there were too many other moving parts in the maze that she had entered, to be sidetracked.

  “You lied to me,” she said.

  Her voice was croaky and sounded as if she hadn’t spoken in a millennium.

  Derrick pulled back from her abruptly. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came. Knowing that she had little leverage in her current prone position she moved to get back to her feet.

  Only when Kaila tried to sit up did she realize that she had been lying on a stone surface. The chair that she had been sitting on before was a few feet away. Pauline was crouched beside Derrick. She had donned a mint green satiny kimono with images of bright orange Koi fish that were frozen in midair as they leapt from sapphire blue water. The strain in Pauline’s face served to hasten Kaila’s need to get up onto her feet.

  Pauline moved in closer to Kaila, near enough so the scent of coconut suntan lotion with an undertone of sunlight wafted Kaila’s way. Pauline reached out a hand to Kaila on reflex. She quickly pulled away when Kaila made no move to garner the help.

  Even as Kaila attempted to right her body, she noticed that it wasn’t being as cooperative as she might have liked. The weakness that had made its presence known before remained, and she was forced to lean on Derrick when she stood up. He slipped an arm around her waist. He held her tight against his side as he guided her to a more comfortable looking dark wicker papasan chair with a creamy white cushion that was flecked with rusty red. Kaila allowed him to help her and took a seat in the odd chair without comment. Her head was still too woozy to protest. Moments before he released his hold on her, the spiders arrived back from their sojourn, skimming the flesh at the small of her back. Derrick’s hand was off her well before they grew too agitated. Spread like a starfish on the chair, Kaila eyed Derrick then Pauline. Pauline spoke before Kaila had a chance to say anything.

  “Are you sure you’re okay Kaila,” she asked, striding toward her.

  The corner of her kimono flapped open as she did, revealing her slim hip. It still felt odd to Kaila to see Pauline dressed in a bathing suit, but even more so, was that she was actually there at Pauline’s house. Pauline had never talked much about where she had lived, so Kaila hadn’t known what to expect at all.

  Pauline paused in front of Kaila. She glanced down at her; an expression of worry still marred her face. Before Kaila could answer her question Pauline leaned down and planted a kiss on Kaila’s forehead. Her lips felt soft and brushed so lightly against Kaila’s skin that she might not have realized that it had actually happened if she hadn’t been watching.

  “Shit Kaila, don’t do that to me ag
ain,” Pauline said. She cocked her hip to the side. Kaila nodded, still mystified that Pauline had kissed her at all. She touched the spot where Pauline’s lips had just been. But even the impromptu kiss wasn’t enough to tug her focus from Derrick who was stretched out in a lounge chair. His face was sickly green with what appeared to be concern.

  “Your prophecy wasn’t true at all,” Kaila shouted over at him.

  He went stiff at the words. His lips pressed into a hard line.

  “Never mind about him Kaila, what matters most is that you’re here, and we can have so much fun.”

  Pauline swept over to the glass table. There were a dozen or so perfectly straight lines of white powder on the surface. Though Kaila had never seen cocaine in the real, she was certain that it was exactly that. Apparently over the shock that Kaila had caused her, Pauline rolled a dollar bill into a tight tube. She proceeded to snort four lines of the powder, touching her nostril with her index finger for a few seconds after each one. Pauline licked her finger, cleaning the remnants of the cocaine away. The leftovers went into Pauline’s mouth.

  “Come on Derrick, you deserve a reward for saving my life,” Pauline said with emphasis on the word saving. Derrick did something that Kaila had never seen him do before, he blushed. The rosy color started at the rounded collar of his tee and rapidly moved up the length of his neck, surging past his cheeks right up to his hairline until he was bright red and flushed.

  Pauline laughed out loud, amused at his dramatic response, but still beckoned him with a slender hand.

  “Come on, be a good boy and join me,” she said with a seductive look that wasn’t lost on him. Pauline threw off her kimono revealing practically every inch of her tanned skin, save for the strategically placed pieces of fabric.

  “What about your parents?” Derrick said, looking over his shoulder, back at the house, as if he expected Pauline’s parents to arrive at that very instant.

  Pauline shrugged. “The Cayman Islands, and I made all the staff go home early. So don’t worry Derrick no one will be here to screw up our fun.”

  She smirked then crossed her arms over her chest.

  Derrick nodded then his whole body seemed to relax and he was on to other things, namely Pauline. Not for the first time his eyes found Pauline’s slender frame. His gaze skimmed the length of her, resting for a few moments on her breasts, half-concealed by her bikini top. His eyes continued traveling over her figure right down to her petal pink painted toenails. Then he was on his feet, grinning.

  Kaila had always preferred looking at images of men, all hard muscle and carved lines, but even she had to admit that Pauline had a striking form that was curved in all the right places with a softness that said she was an intensely sexual creature. The memory of Pauline and Derrick together so long ago in Wildwind pushed forward into Kaila’s psyche. She couldn’t help but wonder what it might have looked like if she had caught Pauline and Derrick like she had Danicka. Yet Derrick being with Pauline felt so different, dirty even, because Pauline was supposed to be with girls and Derrick was supposed to be...

  “Fuck it, all the shit is going to hit the fan in a few hours anyway, I may as well enjoy it while I can.”

  Kaila witnessed him transform from a man-boy to a man in the blink of an eye. Pauline matched his smile, arching an eyebrow in amusement.

  “That was easy,” she said, moving back toward the glass-topped table.

  Derrick’s eyes were glued to the arch of Pauline’s spine where her hair brushed back and forth with every step she took. He joined her seconds later, his focus finally pulled onto something other than Pauline’s half-nakedness.

  There was hunger in Derrick’s eyes when he stared down at the lines of cocaine that lay waiting to be consumed. Kaila watched him intently and was surprised to witness the ease with which he pulled the white powder into his nose, exactly like Pauline had. He too touched his nostril with his index finger to ensure none of the drug escaped; obviously it was a ritual that followed the snorting.

  “With diggs like this how did you ever end up in Wildwind? There are way better facilities than that dump,” Derrick said.

  Pauline shrugged, taking the question in stride.

  “Bad behavior, a lot of getting booted out of fancy doors until nobody but Wildwind and a handful of other places would take me. Wildwind somehow stuck.”

  Derrick nodded then bent his head down for another line. As soon as he had sucked in more of the drug, he closed his eyes. He sighed, then ran his fingers through his hair several times as if it soothed him. Kaila watched as all the lines of tension in his expression dropped away, and his body went slack with relaxation. When he opened his eyes again they were glazed. Euphoria rushed across Derrick’s face at the same moment that Pauline brought Kaila back into her line of view.

  “I so love you Kaila. I’ve missed you so damn much, in fact I missed the old grind so much that I was getting ready to make my grand re-entry. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to work it out this time.”

  Pauline strode forward, her hair moved away from her face with the action. For a fraction of a second her star-shaped scar was exposed. More than ever before Kaila knew that the star was a symbol that was meant to impart important information, yet she still had failed to truly comprehend what it meant. Then in a flurry of understanding Kaila knew with a resounding conviction what the scar meant, and it was nothing like she had expected.

  The truth was unsettling in its simplicity. Kaila knew that Trillian had read it all wrong because the scar wasn’t natures elaborate attempt to contact her, to impart secrets from the universe as Trillian had supposed. In fact the scar was a mark of death, where only a fraction of an inch to the right or left would have rendered this conversation with Pauline impossible; Pauline would have been dead. And there it was, all the glamor and allure was stripped away, leaving the bare bones and skeleton of the Grim Reaper who had missed his collection too many times already with Pauline. Somehow Kaila knew that the next time he would take what he wanted and there would be no negotiation.

  A shudder ran through her. She felt locked in a block of ice despite the sweltering heat.

  “Don’t do it,” Kaila said.

  Her voice was barely a whisper. Her revelation had vacuumed the oxygen from her lungs, leaving them empty like unfilled balloons.

  “Don’t do what?”

  Pauline was now just a few feet away. Her eyes had taken on a glassy appearance like those of an animal that had been preserved by taxidermy. Her pallor was too white except for two blotches of pink on her cheeks, as if someone had used a paintbrush to mark them.

  “Don’t come back, live here, live in this place, just live,” Kaila said, her voice returning to its natural cadence.

  Pauline cocked her head to the side as though she didn’t understand, as if the idea of living in a place outside of Wildwind was ludicrous. Silenced by Kaila’s words, Pauline studied her friend for a few more minutes, clearly baffled by the statement. Another time, long before she had stepped into the real, seen and done things that she had only envisioned through the screen of a computer, Kaila might have been thrilled to have Pauline back in Wildwind. With Pauline back inside, they could pick up where they had left off, easily grasping onto their routines as old friends did. But not now, not when she had seen it all and understood all that she had been missing. Being in the real had been like tasting the sweet flavor of sugar for the first time ever, once it passed across your taste buds your tongue would never be the same, and you would crave that sweetness over and again. That was what it had felt like for Kaila, only her sugar had been real life and all the sweetness that came with it. Kaila understood that all of her experiences would soon come to an end and she would return to Wildwind, but Pauline had a chance in the real.

  Pauline laughed nervously.

  “This is all getting too heavy. I need to dance, let’s dance. Come on Derrick.”

  She glided toward Derrick, grasping both of his hands in hers, then she t
ugged him to his feet. Before he could protest she had pressed her body against his, stealing his mouth in a kiss. Derrick leaned into the kiss, working his fingers down Pauline’s naked spine until they came to rest on her hips. Whatever space that had been between them vanished. Kaila watched with apt interest as their mouths worked in time with one another. Derrick’s hands explored Pauline’s body without abandon, as if Kaila was no longer there.

  “He has a girlfriend,” Kaila blurted out.

  She was suddenly jealous that Derrick was with someone that wasn’t her. “And you’re supposed to be a lesbian,” she finished.

  Pauline broke free, then spun to face Kaila. A crooked smile filled her face, crinkling her eyes in a way that Kaila seldom saw, in pure happiness.

  “We need to swim,” she said without missing a beat.

  Kaila stared at Pauline for a few moments, mulling the idea over in her head.

  “But I don’t have a bathing suit like you do,” Kaila said. Her attention had been diverted away from the anger that had been brewing at the sight of Pauline and Derrick together. She glanced down at the turquoise water of the pool. In that moment all she could think about was what it would feel like to be submerged in that water, have it rush over her body, just one more memory that she could tug out of her mind after she was back in Wildwind.

  “Don’t worry, I have a bunch of spares, let me go inside and get something for you.”

  She brought her focus to Derrick whose grin was unnaturally toothy.

  “I have something for you too,” she purred.

  “You like girls, why are you looking at him like that,” Kaila said.

  The irritation that she had forgotten was back in full force.

  “Why are you looking at him like you want to have sex with him? He’s not Janelle.”

  Pauline’s face instantly fell, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t say that name again. Janelle is like everyone else, she used me and when she got bored...”

  She shook her head violently. “She hooked up with some old boyfriend as soon as she got out and…fuck her, fuck them all…I’m just trying to be normal Kaila, boys and girls together is normal. At least that’s what my parents try to drive into my brain day and night.”