The Tear Collector

by Patrick Jones

  “That’s okay, no message,” I say, then add in a very small voice, “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure, Cass,” the still nameless woman replies.

  “I know you’re not supposed to tell me, but I can’t get ahold of my friend Scott,” I say. “I just need to know if he’s there visiting his grandmother, Lenore Parker.”

  “Cass, you know the rules about confidentiality.”

  “Please, one time,” I say, trying to sound like a desperate child. “I won’t tell my grandmother. You won’t tell her. I won’t tell Scott. Nobody gets hurt, so what’s the harm?”

  There’s a pause as she either sorts through my logic or searches for Scott. A few moments later, she returns to the phone. “Mrs. Parker has a young male visitor, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Have a blessed day,” the woman says, and I finally recognize the voice.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” I say, her blessed expression clicking the connection. I give Samantha back her phone, although I hope she doesn’t use it. I’ve noticed she’s a terrible driver even while paying attention to the road; I can’t imagine her driving while distracted.

  “Who was that?” Samantha asks.

  “I know where Scott is. He’s with his grandmother at the nursing home.”

  “How sad,” Samantha says. “I know his grandmother means a lot to him.”

  “Are your grandparents still living?” I ask, searching for more clues.

  “No,” she says, quickly, defensively, instinctively. I don’t respond. She reaches to change the music but instead says, “I don’t know. My mom, well, she doesn’t really...”

  Samantha stops in midrevelation. I remain silent, hoping she will continue, but she’s not biting.

  “Where is this place?” she finally asks.

  I give her directions, then probe about her grandparents and her mother, but Samantha’s not speaking. We’re rounding a big turn on the south side of the lake when I say, “Pull over for a second.”

  She brings the car to stop on the side of the road. “This is it,” I say. “Where Robyn—”

  She cuts me off, “I told you, I didn’t want to see this!”

  “You need to see it, Samantha,” I say firmly.

  She turns the music up; I turn it down. She rolls down the window; I turn up the heat.

  “I know you weren’t close to Robyn, but you still need to express your grief,” I say.

  She stares me down, then says. “Cassandra, I don’t cry in front of people, so give it up.”

  I grab Samantha’s hand as she starts to put the car in drive. “It’s okay. I’m your friend.”

  She pulls her hands away and stares harder. Death metal fills the car; the spot on the road where Robyn died fades into the distance, but she doesn’t crack. Samantha’s emotional calluses are too thick even for me. We drive the rest in the way in loud silence thinking about all the things we probably want to say. She wants to talk; I want to listen. It’s just a matter of timing.

  She drops me at Avalon Convalescence Care, then speeds away. The staff at the nursing home lets me pass and I move as quickly as if I were swimming for the Olympic gold. I see Scott standing at his grandmother’s bed. The glare he gives me holds all his hurt in two eyes.

  “What do you want?” he says. Before I can answer, he adds, “I want you to leave.”

  “No,” I say, then walk toward him. “That was my cousin Alexei. He’s insane.”

  “Just leave us alone,” he says angrily, almost shouting over the beeping and gurgling machines.

  “It’s true,” I tell him, feeling desperate for the first time ever. “Please believe me.”

  “I can’t take any more of this,” Scott says. I can tell by the look in his eyes that “this” refers to pain, but he knows that even the word “pain” falls short of describing the hurt within.

  “I would never do anything to hurt you,” I say, praying that I can make the words true.

  “I don’t need to hear it,” he says.

  “Listen to what I just said. I would never do anything to hurt you.” To my shock, a tear begins to roll down my cheek. “Let me explain—”

  Scott is just as surprised by my tear as I am. He cuts me off, saying, “No, Cass, you don’t need to explain. I guess I believe you.”

  “Alexei is evil. He is—”

  Scott cuts me off again as he wipes away the tear. “I said I believe you. You know why?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Because I have to. I believe in you,” he whispers. “Because I love you, Cass.”

  Scott softly touches my hand, unaware that inside me a battle rages. Every ounce of who I want to become pushes against every pound of who I have been. I desperately want to fight my nature and change my fate, but it feels like I’m struggling to change the rotation of the earth itself.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say as my eyes focus on the floor to hide my confusion and pain. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to fight my family so we can stay together.”

  I owe him the truth, so I say, “You’re what I want, but obeying my family is part of who I am.”

  “That’s why I love you, Cass,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are who you are,” he says.

  “You’re not like Samantha, Cody, or even Robyn trying to be something they’re not. You’re real. You care about people other than yourself.”

  I just stare back at him, hoping my eyes will reveal what my heart is starting to feel, because there’s no way I can open my mouth and tell him the truth, my truth. I’m real. I am my nature. And I am not human. “Scott, you’re wrong about me. Maybe we should just end this.”

  “I won’t let you do that. I know you want this.” Like his grandmother next to us fighting against death, Scott fights for me with the same courage, faith, and strength. “And I want you.”

  “What I do is break boys’ hearts, you knew that about me,” I remind him.

  “You broke up with all of those other boys because you weren’t ready,” he says.

  “Ready for what?”

  “To find me.”

  As if I’m struck deaf, the world goes silent at his words. If the machines were hooked up to me instead of his grandmother, the flatline of emotion that runs through me would spike. Ever since I met Scott, my heart’s been on a journey to become human, filled with not just blood, but with emotion. And now I’ve come to a threshold. As with Siobhan before me, love can end my familiar life and allow me to start a new one.

  “I will do anything to stay with you, Cass,” he whispers. “Will you do the same for me?”

  “If I can do it, I will,” I say, as my eyes flood with tears. I reach out and he opens his arms to receive me.

  As he holds me close, he says, “Other than you, there’s only one thing I want.”

  He turns us so we’re staring at his grandmother. I expect a kiss, but instead, under the din of beeping machines, he whispers, “What I want more than anything is something you can’t do.”

  “What is that?”

  He’s not looking at me; he’s looking at his grandmother before us. Or rather the woman who used to be his grandmother. She’s not a monster, but she’s not really herself anymore, and Scott knows it. He fights through tears, then says, “All I want is her suffering to end and for her to die in peace.”

  “Are you asking me to—?”

  “No, of course not,” Scott says. “Just pray with me that she finds peace.”

  Again, I go silent. I look at his grandmother, so near death. I think of Robyn wanting to trade lives with Becca. And I think about myself, not a human but wanting desperately to become one. Finally, I think of Veronica and the powers possessed by the family elder. The power to transfer energy. The power to restore life—but only by causing a death.

  CHAPTER 16

  SATURDAY, APRIL 11

  Samantha, you awake?”

  Her b
edroom is very dark; the only light is from the red letters on the unset alarm clock telling me it’s just a few minutes before midnight, the start of Easter morning.

  “Wide,” Samantha answers.

  “What a tough few days,” I say, then sigh. After leaving the nursing home, I spent Friday night at Scott’s house. While his mom reluctantly agreed to let me stay, she locked me in a guest room—much to his dismay. In the middle of the night, Scott knocked gently, but I turned him away. I couldn’t risk his mom catching us, kicking me out, or cutting me off from Scott if she found us together. Even still, I must have upset his mother terribly. Because after I left his house this morning, it was as if Scott disappeared. No one answered the phone at his house, he didn’t pick up his cell, and Mrs. Johnson told me (once you get someone to bend a rule, breaking it is easy) that he didn’t visit his grandmother other than briefly on Saturday morning.

  To my family, it’s also as if I’ve disappeared, and I’m sure my mom is just as upset. Without my cell, they couldn’t find me. I left a message on the machine at home letting her know I was safe, but that I wasn’t ready to come home yet. I need some calm before facing that storm. So once again, I turn to Samantha to bail me out.

  She picked me up after my hospital shift today, then we spent the night watching scary movies. I spent Friday afternoon with evil no longer lurking in the shadows, but instead actually touching my skin in the form of Alexei. My movie monster is too real.

  “Well, tonight was fun,” Samantha says and I’m at a loss for words. That word—“fun”—like so many other words, has never been part of my vocabulary. It’s just a word, not a feeling.

  “Better than yesterday,” I say.

  “I guess,” she says. Samantha doesn’t realize I’m a better writer than she’ll ever be, with the story I made up to explain why she needed to rescue me Friday afternoon. The fabrication involved my family being cruel to me; I sensed it was the kind of story that she’d believe.

  “Thanks for letting me stay over,” I say. “Sorry to keep you up so late talking.”

  “It’s okay, I’m used to being up late,” she says. “Why do you think I’m always almost asleep in school?”

  “I just thought you were like me,” I offer.

  “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “Just bored to death by it all,” I say.

  “Well, a lot of it is pretty boring,” she says.

  “Well, not like Bio,” I say. “Like a few weeks ago with you and Scott going at it, that wasn’t boring at all.”

  “I kinda lost it,” she says. “That’s not like me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m just really antireligion. Maybe that’s yet another reason Scott and I didn’t last, since he’s so religious,” she says. “You believe in God, right?”

  “I believe in Jesus,” is my hairsplitting answer.

  “I don’t, and it’s not because of science or anything,” she says. “Or the absurdity of an invisible wish-granting giant in the sky. There’s just too much hate and hurt in the world.”

  “Maybe it serves a purpose,” I say, very carefully. I never got close to conversations like this with Robyn, old boyfriends, or other friends. But something about this night, something about this girl, seems different. Maybe it’s coming in contact with Alexei that has me feeling closer to her, closer to just feeling. Alexei used my cell phone to call Samantha several times today looking for me, but she’s lied for me, like a true friend would.

  I yawn, then say, “Sorry, I guess I’m just tired. We should sleep. I’ll need to go to Mass tomorrow, then work.”

  “I can’t sleep most nights,” she says. “You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “I just lie awake thinking of all the stupid things I’ve done and I’ve said,” she says. “No wonder people equate sleep with death.” I flash to Scott’s grandmother. A coma is not sleep; it is not death. Scott’s grandmother is just like me; another creature caught in between.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they say when you die, your whole life passes before your eyes,” she says. “That’s me when I try to sleep. My whole miserable rotten life passes before me.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” I say, correcting and comforting, if from a distance.

  “It is who I am,” she says.

  “Samantha, I don’t think you know who you are,” I say, not to insult but to bait. “You’re not Goth, you’re not emo. You should just be yourself.”

  She’s doesn’t respond as I tell her all about her life. I rise from the floor, where I’ve been comfortably numb on a sleeping bag. I walk through the darkness toward Samantha’s bed, then lean in as I ask, “Who are you, Samantha? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone anything.”

  “Anything?” In just one word, she sounds confused, nervous, scared, but mostly excited.

  “Who are you, Samantha?” I ask, then sit on her tiny bed. She is lying perfectly still. For seconds, then minutes, the air is still as all noise vanishes into a vacuum of silence.

  “Do you really want to know?” she whispers. “Can I really trust you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I know you have something you want to say. Don’t keep it in. Your uncried tears, your secrets, all of it are just poison. Let it out, and you’ll feel better forever.”

  “You want to know about me?” she says, and I’m trying not to salivate as I hear the shaking presobbing sounds choking in her throat.

  “Yes, tell me everything,” I whisper. “Whatever pain you bear, let me lift it from you.”

  She pulls her two black T-shirts over her head, then brushes her hair away from her back—her cut and scarred back. These are not surface cuts, like the crosses on her arms. The scars are deep, and there must be over a hundred. Their location shows these are also not self-inflicted.

  “This is me,” she says, her back still to me. “I’m a scarred freak.”

  “Samantha.” I say her name because there’s nothing else to say.

  “So, what’s a few crosses on my arms compared to this cross I bear,” she whispers, yet it is like she’s shouting in defiance, I’m just not sure of what or whom. “This is me.”

  “What happened?” I ask as she puts her shirt back on, then turns to face me. She’s backed herself into the corner of the bed; I’ve moved to the edge.

  “I was four,” she starts. “My mom...”

  “Go on,” I say. “You can trust me.”

  Her piercing eyes challenge my statement, so I repeat myself. “You can trust me.”

  “I’ll tell you this,” she says slowly. “But you have to tell me something.”

  “What?” I ask, but she just stares back at me. I think about what I can reveal and what I can’t. I try to imagine what Samantha believes, but mostly I focus on all the hurt she’s hoarding.

  “A secret as dark as this one,” is her eerie response. She takes a deep breath, then continues. “We were living in Flint, north end. I don’t remember much of it.”

  “Close your eyes,” I whisper, then reach to turn off the lights.

  “I was four. Mark, one of my mom’s druggie boyfriends, was over. Maybe he was watching me. I don’t know. There were always people coming and going. I remember I was crying. I was crying about something because when you’re four that’s what you do, you know?”

  I don’t respond. I don’t want to lie to Samantha as she starts to reveal her truth.

  “So, the druggie Mark got mad at me for crying. Yelled, screamed, hit me, all that. But I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, stop. The more he told me to stop crying, the more I bawled. So, he...”

  I stay silent.

  “He threw me through a window,” Samantha finally says. I inch closer; I don’t sense tears yet, only sweat and fear. Her heart’s beating as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.

  “And he left me there,” she says, then sighs. “He left me bleeding on the ground, lying in a pool of jagged glass cutting up my body. He didn’t call for help.
He just walked away.”

  “Samantha, I didn’t know,” I whisper.

  “Nobody does,” she says. “My mom got one of her dealer doctors to write some bullshit excuse about a heart murmur so I’d never have to take gym, so nobody—until you tonight—ever saw it.”

  “Not even Scott?”

  “No,” she says. I want to know more about that “no,” but I let it pass. For now.

  “Now do you understand me why I cut myself, why I never cry, and why I’m a freak?”

  I push closer, one inch at a time. “You’re not a freak.”

  “Yes, I am, just like you are,” she says. “So we can be friends now. Freak friends.”

  “Yes, we can be friends, but more importantly, your healing can begin,” I say.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t heal scars until you admit they are there,” I whisper. “It’s hard what you’ve just done, but it is harder to keep it inside. It’s a scary thing to tell someone your secrets.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, it’s not like flipping a switch,” she says, then flips on the light. I look into her eyes filled with pain, but still without a single teardrop. “What scares you, Cass?”

  “You are scaring me a little right now,” I tell her, then laugh. She doesn’t laugh back.

  “No, I’m not. Cassandra, I don’t think you’re afraid of anything,” she says, accusingly.

  “You are so wrong,” I tell her the bold truth. The difference between my fear and hers is that my fear has a name—Alexei. Her fears may be behind her; my fate and fear still await me.

  “You don’t cry either, but you’re always around when people do. Why is that?” she asks. “You break up with guys but move quickly on to the next. It’s like you don’t feel like the rest of us.”

  “You’re talking crazy again,” I say, moving off the bed, but she grabs my hand.

  “No, I’m talking truth,” she says. “You can deny what you are, but you can’t hide it.”

  I look over at her bookcase, then grab a random book off the shelf. It is, of course, a vampire novel. I point it at her, and say, “You’ve read too many of these.”