“You know,” she said, moving farther down the couch, “in the book Annie Wilkes actually cuts his feet off.”
They spent the rest of the movie silent, and afterward, he’d left without saying goodbye.
He arrived at her house at 2:10 p.m., two videotapes in one hand, a single bag of uncooked microwave popcorn in the other.
“I figured we should start with Hellraiser,” he said.
“Shawn—”
“I know, I know. I brought C.H.U.D. II as well, but we can start with Pinhead, can’t we?”
He walked in, placed the tapes and the popcorn on the coffee table, sat down. Kendra thought he looked remarkably comfortable sitting there—his legs splayed wide, his shoulders slouched, his head tilted slightly to the side. Kendra looked down at the videotape.
“Your brothers okay?” Kendra said.
“Well, you know,” he said. They always watched at her place because he had four loud siblings who seemingly never left the house, and strangely, though Shawn was second oldest, he wielded almost no power over them. In fact, the last time Kendra was over to his place, Fenton, his thirteen-year-old brother, had walked into the room as soon as they’d put the movie in. He’d flopped on the couch between them, watched for five minutes, said, Nah, got up, ejected the video, took the remote, and turned it to MTV. Kendra sat up, said, Excuse you, and turned expectantly to Shawn, certain he wouldn’t stand for such incorrigible behavior from an underling. But Shawn stayed still, watching silently as his little brother flipped through channel after channel after channel, and when it was clear that Fenton was now lord of the living room, Kendra stood and went home.
When she’d asked him about it later, Shawn told her that it’d always been that way, that the more he stood up for himself, the more his brothers acted out. He’d learned to let things go: nobody, it seemed—no sibling, parent, or friend—ever came to his defense.
“I think they all think of me as some sort of freak,” he told her. “Like I’m so different than all of them, like maybe I was a mistake.”
“The world is ass-backwards,” she said, thinking of a few of her own extended family members, how they chided her for reading books. “Like people tell you that you need to do one thing to better yourself, then make fun of you when you actually do it. I don’t get it.”
“Well, I guess that makes us the rebels, huh,” he said.
“Ha,” she said. “Yeah, something like that.”
At her house, Kendra sat on the couch, a safe distance from Shawn but not so far as to be impolite. She said, “My mom’s in her room, right down the hall.”
“Will it be okay?” Shawn said.
“Yeah,” she said, fidgeting with the bottom of her T-shirt. “She doesn’t come out much. Just to use the bathroom, sometimes to get food, but she’ll leave us alone.” Kendra thought about her mother that morning, hair mangled, cheeks wrinkly, her robe stained with what looked like spaghetti sauce. She’d moved around the kitchen without speaking, grabbing a box of cereal and a spoon before retreating to her room. Must be nice to just give up like that, Kendra had thought. To not have to interact, go to school, whatever. To just sit in there and rot.
“It’s gotta be difficult for you two right now,” Shawn said.
“Some days,” she said.
“I don’t know if I told you, but my grandma died a couple years ago.”
Kendra pursed her lips. “So, I guess Hellraiser first?”
“Save the laughs for last,” Shawn said, smiling.
“Fine,” Kendra said. “Put it in.”
The reason Kendra didn’t like Hellraiser was because she thought it relied too much on gore. She read a lot of horror novels—particularly Stephen King—not because she liked being scared but because at the center of many of these books was a love story, a torrid, or sweet, or newfangled romance that endured tremendous, often supernatural, strain. She read these books to see whether the couples made it through the strain, whether the most harrowing of circumstances was enough to tear them apart. In this way, she categorized good versus bad books. For instance: Carrie, bad. Pet Sematary, bad. The Stand, good! It, good! The Shining, so, so, soooo bad!
But after this viewing, as the credits rolled, she felt strangely solemn, almost transformed. How hadn’t she seen it before? Hellraiser was a love story! A twisted, bloody, crazy one, but a love story nonetheless. Julia was deeply in love with Frank, so much so that she was willing to make sacrifice after sacrifice to restore him to humanity! It was tender. It was romantic. It was beautiful. She turned to Shawn, grinned, and wondered what her father would think of this scenario, her on the couch alone with this boy. Her dad had never directly spoken to her about the opposite sex but had once discussed it succinctly via Lynette. Her mother had been on the phone with her father, laughing, and when she’d hung up, her eyes dancing, Lynette had looked down at Kendra and said, “I’m supposed to write it down.” She raced to the kitchen, scribbled on a piece of paper, then handed the folded scrap to Kendra. Still chuckling, she said, “A message from your brilliant father. He thought it was very urgent.” Kendra opened the note. It read: kendra, always remember: boys lust. girls trust. this is the main problem.
“You wanna take a break before C.H.U.D.?” Shawn said, eyeing the uncooked bag of popcorn.
Kendra didn’t answer, just stared at the blank screen. Outside, near-dusk cast hectic shadows onto the living-room floor. Beside Shawn’s left foot, on top of the red-green oriental rug, sat a rogue Frito, half-pulverized.
“Hello?” Shawn said.
“Shawn,” Kendra said, turning to him, feeling warm, grabbing his hand. “Did you think that movie was sort of romantic?”
“Romantic? Hellraiser?” he said, looking down at her hand over his.
“I mean, obviously not the bloody stuff and the Cenobites,” she said.
Shawn shook his head. “There’s nothing really romantic about it, Kendra,” he said.
“But I remember once in horror club you saying that you loved horror because it tested human limits. Like, wouldn’t this have been an ultimate test of loyalty?”
“I guess,” he said. “But is loyalty the same as romance?”
She leaned back, let go of his hand, sighed. The conversation in question had happened early on. Shawn, self-appointed president, had asked everyone to state why they’d wanted to join the club, what drew them to the genre. When they’d finished, he’d cleared his throat and said, “Horror tests limits. Horror shows who we are. When we’re faced with a monster, or a ghost, or a serial killer, what we’re actually made of comes forth. I like to see what people are made of. Therefore, I like horror.”
Kendra had found his small speech inspiring—it’d propelled her to really examine why she was drawn to the macabre. And now, thinking about Julia and Frank and the lengths they went to love each other, and thinking of Shawn in that classroom, talking about limits, about what they were made of, she felt a sudden, overwhelming sense of serenity, and her father’s face, though still ever-present, blurred around the edges. She turned to Shawn, drew in a deep breath.
“Shawn,” she said, her forehead hot.
“Hey,” he said.
Without thinking, she mashed her face against his. His lips tightened at first, a surprised blockade, but then they opened, and his top lip massaged her bottom one, and she tasted lemonade. She reached inside his shirt, felt the smooth curve of his lower back, pulled him toward her. Though he was skinny, his weight felt substantial and sheltering, his arms wrapping around her like insulation. On her thigh, she felt his cock pressing through his jeans, insistent, and she understood then that he would be her first, that she wanted him to be her first. At some point—not today, maybe not even in the next year, but someday—she would be ready, and it would be remarkable. She’d see fireworks, as Camille had claimed. She’d be transformed.
No limits, she thought.
She closed her eyes, allowed his lips to consume hers, and for the first time since his death
, her father was nowhere to be found.
In late March, the winter winds finally subsiding, Lynette, breaking from hibernation, sat down with Kendra on the living-room couch. Lynette looked near-normal, her red blouse unstained, her black pants creased in the right places, and the puffiness that’d defined the top part of her face had been replaced with smooth, unblemished skin. It was a Sunday, and Kendra had a geometry quiz the next day. She sat with her math book open in her lap. She hadn’t done any problems, had just been looking at the numbers till they fuzzed.
“I got a call from Mrs. Witmer,” Lynette said, her eyebrows sinking. “She’s worried about you.”
“She always worries,” Kendra said, thinking about her principal, wondering why she’d call her mom. It’s not like she was failing any of her classes.
“She said you sometimes leave class early.”
Kendra shrugged. “I’m not failing,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Lynette sighed, ran a hand through her hair. “I think we should talk,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Kendra said.
“We haven’t really discussed your dad. Not directly.”
“I’m fine,” Kendra said. She looked down at her book, saw a bunch of triangles and numbers.
“Well,” Lynette said, smoothing down her shirt, “I know this has been a tough school year.”
Kendra shook her head, looked out the window. Her neighbor, Raynelle Parsons, an old, single widow, walked by with her cane. She stopped, glanced up at the sky, then hobbled along. She always took walks in the afternoon, rain or shine.
“I’m glad you have a good friend,” Lynette said.
“Huh?” Kendra said.
“Shawn Sims? I’m glad you’re able to—”
“He’s not a friend, Mom,” she said, though as the words came out, Kendra wondered: what was he? Outside of Saturdays, to her dismay, she didn’t have much of a relationship with Shawn. She saw him in class, and in the halls, and she always smiled, said hi, but they rarely spoke, the school environment with its jocks and cheerleaders and broad, imperious administrators somehow negating their more personal weekend association, the times when they watched movies and made out. They hadn’t progressed to more than kissing—she hadn’t felt the moment was right yet—but their make-out sessions were intense, and she’d allowed him to touch her everywhere above the clothes.
“I’m just saying that I’m glad you have someone to talk to,” Lynette said, grimacing.
“I talk to Camille,” Kendra said. “I talk to tons of people.”
“I haven’t seen Camille much these days,” Lynette said.
“That’s ’cause you barely come out of your room,” Kendra said.
“Kendra, please,” Lynette said.
“What?” Kendra said.
“Just . . .”
“What do you want?”
“Why are you being difficult?”
“I’m not being difficult,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “I have a test tomorrow.”
“I’m checking in,” Lynette said. “I’m acknowledging that this hasn’t been easy for either of us. I’m also . . .”
“You’re also what?”
Lynette turned fully toward Kendra. She reached out, grabbed her daughter’s hand. Kendra withdrew, said, “Jesus, what?”
“You know, I really love the relationship you have with Bryan,” Lynette said, stumbling. “I never had cousins that I was close to. What you two have is special.”
“Bryan?” Kendra said.
“I always wished I were closer to my extended family, but we never really gelled.”
“Why are you talking about Bryan?”
Lynette breathed in deep, closed her eyes. “I think we should be closer to them,” she said. “I think it’d be good for both of us.”
“But they’re in Nebraska,” Kendra said, feeling her chest tighten.
Lynette closed her mouth, looked down, fiddled with a button on her shirt.
Kendra’s heart raced. “No,” she said. “No.”
“I’m having a hard time getting work here,” Lynette said, talking to the floor now. “Rae said she could line me up with a receptionist job. You remember when she worked at Paw Pediatrics? Well, it turns out they actually remember me from the last time I was out there. And the current receptionist is leaving in a few months, so the timing’s perfect. Anyway, she thinks it’d be good for us to be away from here, this house. I agree with her.”
“But you haven’t even tried to get a job here,” Kendra said, sitting up, her vision blurring. “You’ve just been—”
“Bryan’s moving out of their apartment, going to college,” Lynette said. “You’ll have your own room.”
“I have my own room now!”
She thought, then, of Shawn, of how his face tightened right before a jump-scare, how he noticeably relaxed at the end, how he turned to her after he’d pressed Stop on the remote, burrowing his gaze into hers, gauging her reaction through sustained eye contact. She thought about his tongue, that slithery-soft slab that probed and investigated and explored not only her mouth but her neck, shoulders, and arms. She thought about their movies, how on the screen, some killer would be decapitating or stabbing or chain-sawing and they’d be lip-locked, saliva passing freely, hands everywhere, legs intertwined. She thought about all the times they’d shared a popcorn bag, how their fingers touched, how even that small gesture sent a bolt of warmth up her spine. Saturdays were an absolute reprieve from her zombified mother, her boring teachers, her self-absorbed best friend, and her caustic, raging, dead dead dead father, the man whose face threatened to hurtle back at her full-force should her Shawn Sims Saturdays be taken from her.
“It’ll be temporary,” Lynette said.
“I can’t live there,” Kendra said. “I can’t. You can’t make me move there.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” Lynette said, putting her hand on Kendra’s cheek. “We’ll be back to visit all the time. I promise, okay?”
“No,” Kendra said, brushing her mother’s hand away. “It’s not okay.” She grabbed her math book, ran up the stairs, slammed her bedroom door. “It’s not okay!” she shouted.
Later that night, she called Camille, told her the news.
“Nebraska?” Camille said. “What is that?” She sounded out of breath.
“It’s where my cousin and aunt live,” Kendra said, feeling dread. “It’s out—”
“Oh wait, I just saw it on a map. Kendra, you can’t live there. Does your mom even know anything about it? Kendra, you must tell her. It’s shaped like a fucking cannon. That and Oklahoma, like two states down, they’re cannons. Like they wanna shoot you further west, like to California. Kendra! You cannot move to a state that’s shaped like a goddamn cannon! This is the worst. And—what’s that, baby? Yeah, she’s moving to Nebraska! I know! I told her . . .”
“Who’re you talking to?” Kendra said.
“Who do you think I’m talking to? He said that there’s no such thing as Black people in Nebraska because they’re all lynched. Anyone who moves there and is Black, the KKK just hang ’em up.”
“That’s ridiculous. My cousin—”
“You think there’s not a reason that state is shaped like a cannon? D says during Civil War days they made those state lines for a purpose, to tell Black people who’s boss. Like Southerners wanted everyone to know—”
“Nebraska was not part of the Confederacy,” Kendra said, rolling her eyes.
“Listen, I’m just saying that it’s very suspicious that it looks like that, and even if you don’t get lynched, how’re you gonna manage all that white? It’s white everywhere. Swear. Like, I’ve been to Minnesota once, like Minneapolis. I was like: Where the fuck am I? How the fuck did this happen?”
“It can’t be all white.”
“Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” Camille said.
Kendra sighed. The girl was so difficult to talk to; just once she’d like to be able
to speak without having to wait through a long-winded Camille retort. She wondered sometimes why she even remained in such a one-sided friendship: she wasn’t really getting much out of it. Certainly there were other more generous girls around in whom she could confide.
And yet: with Camille there’d always been that fierce loyalty, that protective quality that Kendra had rarely received from either of her parents. Camille said it came from constantly defending her little brother Reggie, who’d been born with a hearing deficiency and wore a large gray hearing aid on his right ear.
“People are so dumb,” she’d once told Kendra. “I mean, why would anyone ever make fun of someone for something they couldn’t control? It’s not like Reggie’s using that thing as a fashion statement.”
On the phone, Kendra said, “I’m listening.”
“Have you told Shawn?” Camille said. “You just gonna leave him with his creepy slasher flicks? Boy’ll probably turn into some raging serial killer without you, I swear.”
“You’re being stupid,” Kendra said.
“Whatever,” Camille said. “You’ll see.”
“I’m gonna call him now.”
“Good luck. He’s gonna freak.”
Kendra hung up the phone, stared at it on its cradle, willed herself to pick it back up. She didn’t want to hear his voice, didn’t want to feel that tight urgency flood her body the way it did every time he spoke. Should she get the sex part over with? she wondered. Invite him to her house, tell him she was ready? If she didn’t, it’d be too late, right? She’d be more than a thousand miles away. And on the visits her mother claimed they’d make—would there ever be enough time? Would it be right if she waited?
Slowly, she dialed his number. When he picked up, he sounded groggy, like he’d just awoken from a nap.
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