by Abe Moss
“I like to read,” she told them all. “Mysteries and things like that. I also listen to music.”
“What kind?” Addie lifted her gaze from the fire and saw it was Joanna who asked. “Phony white girl music, I bet.”
“Phony what now?” Bud joined in.
Nuala shushed them.
“Mostly old rock bands,” Addie answered. “A lot of it’s called ‘classic rock’ nowadays. Queen, AC/DC…”
“Bowie?” Joanna asked. “I love Bowie.”
Addie gave a short, timid laugh. “Yeah, him too.”
“What interests you in that particular music?” Nuala asked. The momentary comfort Addie felt with the others was inhaled by the fire. “How did you find you liked it?”
“Well… like anything else, I guess.” She dropped her eyes to her sweaty hands. “I just heard it and found I liked it.”
“Music before your time,” Nuala said. There was a pause, and Addie suddenly understood what she was after. “How did you first hear it?”
“It was what my dad listened to.” She looked directly into Nuala’s eyes across the fire. “I guess I got it from him.”
There was a tension in the air now, suspended around them like the floating embers off the fire. It was a feeling—or a knowledge, rather—that Nuala not only knew more than she let on… but that she knew everything there was to know. She had questions for them more specific than she pretended. This introduction, Addie thought, wasn’t as aimless or as friendly as she probably meant it to seem.
“I know this is quite a jump into more personal territory,” Nuala said, “but could you share with us anything about your father, now that we’ve stumbled onto the subject? Where is he now?”
“You know where he is.”
The dark room in which she sat, with just a fire before her, had now invited Nuala inside, and it was just the two of them together now. Their expressions were difficult to decipher, warped and hidden by the lashing light and shadows, but Addie detected the masked delight in Nuala’s voice.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I don’t know anything about your father.”
“He’s dead. He’s been dead over four years now.”
The fire’s crackling was near deafening within the silence that followed. Addie stared coldly into Nuala’s eyes, which were narrowed in her direction, studying her, anticipating her.
Suddenly Bud spoke up between them. “I’ll go next,” he said. The darkness ebbed around them until Addie could see the others, the tension dissolved instantly. She took a deep, grateful breath.
“All right,” Nuala agreed, disappointedly allowing the interruption. “Tell us about yourself.”
“My name is Bud Harlow and I’m nineteen. I like… drawing, I guess. I draw a lot of comics and things like that…” He paused, possibly waiting for someone to ask him something but no one did. Even Joanna had nothing to say. For Addie, at least, Bud’s introduction was slightly overshadowed by the lingering dislike she felt for Nuala, and the clammy, worrisome thoughts of her father she’d brought to the circle. She shook her head—tried to focus more on Bud’s words. “I also like music,” he continued. “That phony white girl stuff, especially.” He said this to Joanna, who only blinked coldly. “But, uh… I also liked spending time with my friends. I did that less and less toward the end, though. I mean… before I ended up here.”
“Why is that?” Nuala asked. Addie felt her dislike growing stronger. This was clearly group therapy, and while Addie never really entertained it as anything else, she couldn’t help feeling it was in poor taste. Painting a house apparently hadn’t brought them together quickly enough.
“We just…” Bud paused. “We just grew apart, that’s all. It happens.”
“It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it yet. When you’re more comfortable.”
They took a break from talking and prepared their cooked hotdogs. Addie put ketchup on hers inside its bun, and that was all. She had some potato chips as well on her plate. No one spoke as they ate. When Addie was half finished, she grabbed herself a foam cup and took it to the water pump. She drank her water there, away from the others at the fire, craving just a single moment alone.
It was Bud who interrupted her isolation. He approached, grinning sheepishly, and drank with his mouth beneath the spout. Then he stood straight, looked over his shoulder at the fire, and then turned to Addie.
“She knows everything about us, doesn’t she?” Addie regarded him, not a word. “How does she know so much?”
Addie looked toward the others. Nuala stood next to the fire, between Lyle and Joanna who sat in the dirt on either side, and she was watching them at the water pump. Just standing and watching.
“I don’t know,” Addie said. “I’m starting to wonder if there is a doctor, or if it’s just her…”
They returned to the fire, where it was revealed Nuala had brought makings for s’mores. She unpackaged chocolate and marshmallows and graham crackers. They sat again in their evenly spaced circle, with the hotdogs replaced by powdery marshmallows over the fire. It was Joanna’s turn to speak.
“What do you wanna know…”
“Tell us your name again, and—”
“My name is Joanna Michaels. I’m sixteen.”
“You seem so grown for only sixteen,” Nuala remarked. “How is it you’re so forthright and fearless at such a young age?”
“Are you mocking me?”
Nuala seemed surprised. “No, of course not!”
“Why don’t you ask me a real question, then, like the others?”
“All right…” Nuala considered it a moment. “How do you spend your free time?”
It took Joanna a moment to find an answer. “With my friends, mostly. And my family.” She paused. “I know they’re all looking for me right now, too. My family won’t give up looking for me, either. Not until they find me dead or alive.”
“I’m sure they won’t give up,” Nuala said. “Luckily they’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah. We’ll see, I guess.”
“So was that all, then?” Nuala said. “You spend time with your friends and family. Do you miss them right now?”
Joanna scoffed. “Of course I do. Stupid question…”
“Then why are you here?”
Joanna, having taken a bite of her s’more, paused her chewing. “What do you mean why am I here? Because you brought me here.”
“Not for nothing. You’re here for a reason, aren’t you?”
“Oh, come on…”
“Why do it, if you’d miss them?”
“I’m not talking about this shit. Not if they don’t have to.”
“No one has to talk about anything they’re uncomfortable with.”
“Okay, then leave me alone.”
Nuala sighed. “All right. Lyle, would you like to introduce yourself?”
They all turned their attention on him now. He’d been so quiet all this time, sitting farther from the fire than the rest of them, that they’d almost forgotten he was there. Probably how he preferred it…
“Lyle Page…” His voice drifted and he took a breath. He looked up at them, all waiting for his next words, and his hard brow furrowed. “I’m twenty years old and I hate people staring at me…”
“We’re not staring,” Nuala said. She smiled politely. “We’re just interested, is all.”
Lyle began to grumble something else when he was interrupted.
“Look!” Joanna said in a whispered shout. She pointed. “In the window…”
They turned to face the main house, and their eyes were drawn to one of the upstairs windows, now bright with light.
“I saw someone there,” Joanna said. “A figure.”
Addie watched with the others, hoping to see something. Anything. Even as cold as she found herself growing toward Nuala, the doctor lived differently in her mind. Separate. His true intentions were unknown as of yet, elusive. Nuala might only be his pawn
, and an unreliable one at that. She wished she could speak to him instead of her. Perhaps he was more reasonable. More open…
They watched the window for nearly five minutes before Nuala attempted wrangling their attention back to the fire.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “The doctor is up, that’s all. Let’s come back to our discussion.”
“I want to be done,” Addie said. She dropped her skewer in the dirt and got to her feet. “I’m tired.”
“Same here.” Joanna also stood.
“But we’ve barely gotten to talk about anything!” Nuala pleaded. Bud also climbed to his feet. “You can’t already be tired. I have so many questions to ask you.”
“When will we meet the doctor, anyway?” Addie asked. “How much longer until you decide us ‘worthy’?”
“It’s not a matter of worthiness,” Nuala said. “It’s a matter of readiness. He’ll meet you when you’re ready for the more intensive stages of your recovery.”
“Well I hope he’s more experienced,” Addie said, injecting her words with as much cruelty as she could gather. “This whole…” She gestured to the fire pit and the cooler and the blanket covered in open packages. “…thing, is silly. You’re trying to manipulate us into opening up, like we aren’t aware of it. You think handing us buckets of paint and forcing us side by side will make this home?”
“That wasn’t my intention at all, Adelaide. I was only—”
“Could you please stop calling me that? No one calls me that.”
“Oh! I’m sorry…”
“You think knowing about our lives means you must know us, but you don’t. Maybe the doctor takes this seriously, but it’s a game to you. I don’t want to be your entertainment. I want… I want…”
Nuala jumped to her feet and came toward her, kicking her foot through the fire and sending charred wood and embers over the dirt.
“Yes! What is it? What is it you want, Addie?” She loomed over her, her eyes full of hope. Addie cowered from her, and it occurred to her that even now she was giving Nuala what she wanted. A breakthrough, or something like it.
“I…” She stepped back, moving toward the guesthouse. “I want to go to bed.”
With a withered expression, Nuala watched her go, her empty hands clasped between her bosom as the others followed her inside.
✽✽✽
Addie woke from a nightmare, slick with sweat, tears in her eyes. She threw the blankets off her legs and lay chilled for a moment. Unable to shake the dream or the clinging dread that followed her out of it, she got to her knees and watched out her window, hoping to see something that might do it for her. But the fields were empty and quiet. The sky was empty and dark.
She felt a fit of sobs brewing inside her. Desperate to suppress them, she left her bed, her bedroom, sneaked down the hall, through the sleeping foyer, and opened the entrance. There she paused. She examined the yard, searching for the creature, for its buzzing eyes. Gone or in hiding for now, it seemed. She stepped outside and shut the door behind her.
She paced along the house’s edge, to its corner and back to the door, biting her lip to seal the rising sobs. She came to the door again, sinking her fingers into her folded arms, and turned to pace back to the corner. The dream would not leave her. Its images boiled vibrant in her mind’s eye, as clear as they’d been in the dream itself, and soon her lip begged not to be bitten any harder lest she draw blood.
She turned and started for the front door again when she saw it was now open. Bud stood, watching with caution.
“Are you all right?”
Addie threw her arms around him. Squeezed. He stood rigid against her. She didn’t care. He didn’t complain. She clawed his shirt into her fists and wept. When it finally caught up to her, what she was doing, she released him and shrank away.
“I’m sorry.” She turned to hide the way her face twisted. “What’s wrong with me?”
“It’s fine,” he said.
“It’s not fine.” She smeared her palms against her cheeks. “I shouldn’t be like this. I’m sick of being like this… I’m not a little girl anymore, I shouldn’t be crying like one.”
Anxious, Bud massaged his hands together while she continued pacing in short circles. “There’s nothing wrong with crying a little.”
“I’m pathetic.” She turned to him then, swept the hair from her wet face. She took one look into his eyes and couldn’t bear it. She stared at the dirt between them instead. “Why am I so desperate for attention? It’s stupid. I’m so stupid.”
“We all want to feel cared about sometimes.”
“Yeah, I guess…” She shook her head. “Does anyone really care, though? I don’t think so.”
She passed Bud to the front door, where she stopped and sat on the tiny porch. Bud remained standing. He put his hands into his pockets.
“What brought you out here, anyway?” he asked.
“I just… couldn’t sleep. Actually…” She paused. “I had a nightmare.”
Bud joined her on the porch, side by side.
“What about?”
She gave him a sidelong glance. He waited. There was a part of her, she knew, that craved to spill everything to someone. Anyone. To let the floodgates open. She thought if that was her reason for being here—to open up—Bud would be a better confidant than Nuala, at least.
“I dreamed about my mom.”
“Sounds horrifying.”
She looked at him, and caught him grinning.
“You laughing at me?”
“I’m just… trying to break the ice, I guess. Sorry.”
She nodded.
“I agreed with what you said earlier, by the way,” Bud said. “About Nuala using us as entertainment. I think she enjoys getting us riled up. I don’t like it.” He paused, and a comfortable silence hung about them. “It still feels weird being here, doesn’t it? We’ve essentially been kidnapped, and yet I’m starting to feel okay with that. I can’t explain it.”
“I get it,” Addie said. “I feel it, too.”
They sat without speaking for a while.
“So,” he said. “It was about your mom?”
“Oh. Yeah. It was just a dream, was all.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?” He sounded eager.
“I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me something,” she said. When she looked at him his face was taut with alarm. “I mean… nothing you’re uncomfortable with.”
“All right. What do you want to know?”
She took a minute to think, chewing it over in her mind, wondering if it might be too much too soon.
“You said something last night that confused me. You said, ‘don’t you know what I am?’”
“Oh.”
He brought his legs to his chest, holding them against himself.
“Did you mean that you’re gay?”
He swallowed loudly, not saying anything. An unusual urge came over her then. She wanted to touch him, to slide her hand across his back, over his shoulder, to give him comfort, and then she wondered if she was being selfish, hoping for reciprocation. But was that really so selfish? Like he’d said only minutes ago: everyone likes to feel cared about sometimes.
She put her hand on his shoulder, gentle and slow. “It’s okay.”
“How is it okay?”
“Because… it wasn’t something you chose, after all.”
“How do you know I didn’t choose it?”
“Because I’m smarter than that. At least, I know I didn’t choose.”
He cleared his throat. “That’s not what my family would have you believe.”
“Well, your family’s wrong.”
He looked at her, his eyes dull and raw in the dimness of the night, and she saw in them a desperation to believe she told the truth.
“I love them,” he said. “I feel like I would do anything for them, anything to make them happy. And at the same time… I hate them. I feel awful for it. I know they must love me deep down… but I’m
ruined because of what I am.”
“That’s their choice, though.” Addie removed her hand from his shoulder and leaned forward on the porch to better see his face. “You’re their son. Their brother…”
“And yet they’d rather disown me…”
“That doesn’t say anything about you.” The next words out of Addie’s mouth troubled her, because she didn’t feel right giving advice she couldn’t take herself. But she said it anyway. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for other people’s actions.”
He didn’t say anything. Addie wondered if her words meant anything, or if she was only saying what sounded best. Was it true?
“Enough about me,” he said. He sat straighter. “Tell me about your nightmare.”
“Well, it wasn’t really a nightmare. It was more like a very uncomfortable dream.”
“So… like a nightmare, yeah?”
“I was arguing with my mom.”
“I’ve had those before. What was the argument about?”
“The argument itself didn’t make a lot of sense. Well, maybe it did. I was trying to fix my mom’s TV. She was mad about it being broken, and I thought I could help by trying to fix it. Only I didn’t know how and I made it worse. The TV caught fire.” It sounded funnier out loud, and she laughed as she said it. Bud laughed too. “But then my mom started in on me, about how I can’t do anything right. So we started fighting. She said something about how I was worthless, and I told her I wished she was dead. I pushed her and she fell on the burning TV. I tried to help her up, but she was on fire too and I panicked. I went to the kitchen sink and cupped my hands under the faucet, like a handful of water would do anything. You know how we do such weird things in dreams… When I got back to her, she was all flames and the water had already fallen through my fingers. That’s when I woke up.”
Bud didn’t respond immediately, and as uncomfortable as Addie felt, she didn’t fill the quiet with anything needless. They just sat and soaked it in.
“Does it mean anything to you?” he finally asked. “Did you and your mom fight a lot?”