by Bryan Bliss
She opened Frankenstein and started flipping pages, toward the section she knew was written in the point of view of the Monster. The first time she’d read the book, she’d been shocked to discover that the Monster wasn’t, well, a monster. She could still remember the moment—in her bed, Derrick asleep in his room—realizing the profound loneliness of the Monster and not understanding what it would be like to be that much of an outsider.
A little over a year ago. Only months before she became an outsider, too.
In the months after, people used Monster language a lot. The monster who did this, that sort of thing. She hadn’t known the kid and now could barely remember his face, even though sometimes he would appear to her in dreams, nothing but a shadow. Something she never thought she could escape.
She could feel tears beginning to well up and she wiped at them quickly, hoping nobody saw her. Trying to stem the tide, to give herself a distraction, she quickly wrote, The Monster was created.
She stared at the words, which felt truer than she’d expected. The Monster was unable to experience the world in even the simplest of ways. The joy of discovery was always mixed with the pain of rejection, the sudden and brutal reminder that the Monster would never be the same—a continual life of after.
The bell rang and kids stood up, hurrying into the hallways for their five minutes of cramped freedom between classes. When Claire didn’t join them, Dr. Palmer came over and rapped her knuckles on the desk.
She opened her mouth to speak but noticed the words on the paper. Her face changed ever so slightly, from playful to thoughtful to, maybe, impressed.
“It must be difficult to be a creation,” she said. “To lose all sense of . . . I don’t know. Agency, maybe? Control?”
Claire didn’t want to look up. Didn’t want Dr. Palmer to see her face, the shadow of her tears, which were surely evident. The undeniable truth that she’d lost control of even the simplest parts of her life.
“Claire . . . are you okay?”
Claire wanted to say it exactly right, so she didn’t answer right away, even though kids were coming into the classroom now. She forced all the emotion out of her voice, trying to sound more robot than human.
“Do you think the Monster would’ve ever been, you know, able to live in the normal world?”
Dr. Palmer sat down in the desk in front of her and waited for Claire to look up. When she did, Dr. Palmer smiled gently and said, “Well, what happens in the cottage at the edge of the village?”
Claire thought for a second. “He listens to the family.”
“Right. And more importantly, he learns. He becomes educated. And education leads to . . .”
“College?”
Dr. Palmer laughed.
“Well, sometimes. But I was thinking empathy. The more we know, the more difficult it becomes to ignore our surroundings—to ignore things like suffering and joy and pleasure.”
“So, he’s becoming less of a monster,” Claire said.
“In a sense,” Dr. Palmer said. “I think he’s growing, maybe. Evolving. The point is, it’s impossible to stay static, no matter what happens to us. We’re always changing. We’re always growing. And we’re always healing.”
She held Claire’s gaze for a long moment, before smiling one last time.
“You’re going to be late,” she said. “I’ll write you a pass, okay?”
Claire nodded, standing up and following Dr. Palmer to her desk. The kids in the class were buzzing behind her and it made Claire nervous (breathing, breathing) to stand with her back to them. Dr. Palmer handed the pass to her. Claire took it and stood there, thinking.
“What do you think the Monster would be like today?” she asked quietly. “If he got the chance to live happily ever after?”
Dr. Palmer didn’t hesitate.
“He would do the best he could, every day.”
Claire spent most of her trigonometry class thinking about Dr. Palmer’s statement, a decision that submarined her on multiple fronts. First, her teacher—a squat man with an impressive braided ponytail—said her name three times before she shook herself out of her own brain and, as the class tried to muffle its laughter, had to admit that she wasn’t listening.
But perhaps more importantly, the Monster had once again taken up residence in her imagination. Before, she empathized with its struggle—constantly reacting to a world that never felt safe. It had been an intellectual exercise, something that would keep her up at night. But now it pushed too close to her own life.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she couldn’t separate that Monster from the menacing monsters of Dark’s notebooks. He’d given shape to something that, until now, had been formless. And while Dr. Palmer’s statement—he would try his best—made her feel hopeful, she couldn’t keep herself from focusing on the sharp hands and reaching eyes that seemed to crawl out of her subconscious until every part of her body was humming with anxiety.
The rational explanation was that Dark simply connected with the book—probably the movie, but maybe the book—in not quite the same way she had, but in some way. And if she wanted to be stereotypical, she could point to the evidence—black clothes, pale skin, dyed black hair. He looked the type.
But the fury of his drawings. The lines that seemed to come from a different, almost needful place. It didn’t look like passion. It looked like anger.
And that’s what worried her. That’s what tied her in knots and had teachers calling her name, period after period, until she was coming down the stairs for lunch, stuck in that same fog.
God was standing against the wall, waiting for her. When he saw her, he jumped forward and matched her pace.
“Hey, can we talk for a minute? Like, in private?”
Claire looked around the hallway. There wasn’t a private place in this entire school, a fact that routinely laid her low. The hallways were eternally clogged, forcing Claire to press herself against the walls just to keep moving against the constant traffic jam. She couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if they all had to move fast.
“We can go to the choir room. The teacher hates me, but I’m sure she’s forgotten about the incident.”
“The incident?” Claire asked, forgetting the hallway for a moment. She laughed nervously.
“Freshman year. I sang a solo and . . . it didn’t go well. Just leave it at that.”
Claire tried to imagine God in choir, dressed in a matching outfit with his hair just so. Singing and pantomiming for parents and grandparents. The smile that appeared on her face disappeared when she saw the look on God’s face.
“Yeah, sure,” she said.
The choir room was only a few steps down the hallway, on the other side of the main entrance to the school. And like God promised, it was mostly quiet other than a couple of boys who were working their way through a piece of music on the piano. They ignored God and Claire, save a cursory glance when the door opened.
“Okay, I don’t know how to say this.”
Claire could feel her heart rate climbing as he spoke. She’d never been good with conflict, not even before. She always wanted to control the situation, no matter how small. And now, after, she couldn’t tell how much was control and how much was simple fear.
“About Dark—”
“I didn’t open his door. The cat did it. But I’m not sure what to think about that drawing or the notebooks and . . . help. Please.”
She had to take a breath after she finished talking, and God closed his eyes for a second before he spoke.
“I understand. I do.”
God paused again and Claire recognized the look on his face. It was hesitation mixed with the need to say something really important. Her brother. Those early therapists. Teachers. She’d seen it plenty of times before.
“They’re fucking scary, okay? And I don’t know why he draws them. And I don’t particularly care because . . . those drawings? They keep him balanced somehow. Before he started drawing them, I literally worried about h
im all the time.”
God shook his head, like he was trying to get rid of a bad dream.
“Leg and I have spent a lot of time protecting him from, well, everybody. From their assumptions. Their accusations. All of it. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t want to have to protect him from you, too.”
“What are you protecting him from exactly?” Claire asked.
God looked over at the two boys, who were really starting to amp up their volume—their enthusiasm.
“If there’s a problem in this school, they always look at Dark. Doesn’t matter what it is. All people see are the clothes and how aloof he is”—God smiled here, as if he was remembering something—“and it makes me tired. It pisses me off. And I just want people to see him the way I see him.”
“And how’s that?” Claire asked.
She studied every muscle twitch, every blink of his eyes—looking for even the slightest tell. The slightest evidence that God was trying to hide something.
He looked her straight in the eye and said, “He’s the best person I know.”
Whatever sincerity had powered his response quickly turned to embarrassment. God rubbed the back of his neck, as if he could massage the redness away.
“Look. I just wanted to clear this up, you know? We think you’re cool. Hell, Dark thinks you’re cool—and that dude hates everybody.”
God patted Claire on her knee, which seemed a little too familiar while also being oddly formal at the same time. And then he stood up, stretching his back and giving the two boys a brief look that, for a moment, bordered on panic. A distant memory, rearing its head. He reached a hand down to Claire.
“So, what do you think? Lunch? Maybe we start all over?”
Chapter Eight
WHEN CLAIRE GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL, DERRICK HAD all of his boards out in the living room and he was meticulously checking the grip tape, adjusting the trucks, inspecting every part of every board. She fell down onto the couch behind him and closed her eyes.
“How was school?” he asked, using a knife to work some grime from the inside of a wheel. When Claire didn’t answer, he turned around so he could see her. “Hey—you good?”
“I’m just tired,” she said.
And it wasn’t a lie. Every single part of her body felt ragged. She’d spent half the night and most of the day worrying about Dark and reminding herself of every single moment where she’d been frozen by fear and how, always, it turned out to be nothing more than a trick of her splintered head.
Like when she went yelling for a security guard at the Mall of America because a father was pulling a baby bottle out of his diaper bag. Or at school, when she refused to go into the auditorium because the exits were too far from the seats. Or the one time she took the light rail alone and every single person that stepped onto the car represented a new threat that couldn’t be properly observed or neutralized or anything.
And now, Dark.
So, she was exhausted. She wanted to go to sleep and stay in bed until winter finally ended in this frozen state and she could hear the songs of new birds outside her window in a world that, for a moment, seemed unspoiled.
“Listen, we don’t have to go tonight,” Derrick said.
But even Claire could tell he was hoping she would rally. He’d already given up so much, competing when he had time and never complaining as sponsor after sponsor decided a pro skater in Hickory, North Carolina, wasn’t exactly capturing skate culture’s imagination. And that was before the move to Minnesota, before he became, essentially, a glorified front-end clerk at the Lair.
He wanted this and she knew it. Plus, skating had saved her before. So maybe it would one more time, if not for her sake, then for Derrick’s.
“Somebody has to bring home a paycheck around here,” she said, forcing her voice to seem light. And it worked, because Derrick laughed, which infected the room—pushing itself inside of her until she, too, was laughing deliriously and wondering if this, too, might fix whatever was broken inside of her.
The Lair was packed—more than usual, which was a good sign for Derrick. He always skated better when there was a crowd. However, as soon as he saw the room, he gave Claire an uneasy look, which she shook off like the snow from her jacket, and told him to “go rip it up,” which made him laugh again.
She put her board on the ground and, without thinking, pushed off and tried to disappear into the throngs of skaters. She had a clean line for about five seconds before a kid on a scooter came flying past her, not only knocking her over but nearly putting a crack in her helmet, too. She sat there for a moment, trying to push down the anti-scooter mentality she’d developed—and Derrick stoked—in the last year. She was still swallowing all the unsavory words she wanted to yell out, when Leg and God came rolling up.
“Fucking scooter kids,” Leg said, reaching down to help her up. “They’re a menace to society. Not just the skate park. Society.”
God gave her a quick nod as he scanned the skate park. “We want to get in a few runs before your brother starts tearing shit up.”
“Okay,” Claire said. “I don’t want to slow you guys down.”
God gave her a look. “What? No. Come skate with us.”
This time, Claire scanned the park. Still full. Still intimidating. Still impossible.
“I don’t think you’re prepared for how bad I really am.”
God rolled his eyes. “Trust us. We’re nearly professionals.”
Then he took her by the hands and they were going fast—faster than she thought was possible after only a few feet of buildup. For the first few seconds, Claire couldn’t breathe enough to tell him to stop. But seconds passed, and she realized it wasn’t panic, but, something different. Something closer to exhilaration.
Every few feet, God would yell out, “Left!” And she’d shift her weight to the left, hoping the board would respond, which it always did. Despite her inability to stay upright, she still had innate athletic talent and that, combined with God’s natural instincts on how to maneuver the board, seemed to be enough.
Leg came screaming up next to them, laughing hysterically and giving her fist pumps, hand claps—truly excited. And then God let go of her hands, and for a brief second it felt like she was flying, like she couldn’t be stopped.
A second later Leg had her by the hand and they were once again shooting toward the other side of the skate park. Claire was laughing now; it came in bursts between breaths, an uncontrollable action.
Leg passed her off to God again. As they were coming up to the ramp, she expected him to once again give her a direction, but instead he said, “You got this!”
And then he let go.
She told herself to breathe.
To focus.
Shift your weight, watch your feet, don’t be afraid to eat shit because none of that matters, just having the courage to go for it.
All of the lessons Derrick had taught her.
When she hit the ramp, she pivoted—a move she’d seen countless six-year-olds perform on their first day on the board—and came back down the ramp toward God.
The entire place exploded into applause. People slapping their boards onto the ground in appreciation, respect, the unspoken language of the skate park that acknowledged and applauded any growth—any moment of checking fear and all that other shit in the hopes of landing a trick you’ve never landed before.
Claire didn’t notice Dark sitting on the couches, head in his notebook, until she and Leg and God climbed up the ramp, still feeding off her success.
“Derrick better watch out!” Leg said loudly, clearly hoping his voice would carry to where Derrick was warming up. When it didn’t, he turned to Claire and said, “Next time we’re skating the bowl.”
“Yeah, no,” Claire said, but she couldn’t deny her excitement. “But maybe I’ll make it across the park without falling?”
“Perfect,” Leg said.
They dropped onto the couch next to Dark, who gave a momentary grimace and then s
cooted to the farthest cushion.
“Dark, did you see Claire?” Leg asked. “If she can do it, I’m a hundred percent certain your never-wants-to-go-out-in-the-sun ass could ride a board with your best friends every once in a while.”
“Moral support,” Dark said, turning his notebook to the side to shade a drawing. When he noticed Claire looking, he closed the notebook and avoided her eyes.
“What.”
“Nothing. I’m just—I don’t know. Sorry.”
God tapped his board on the ground. “But you’re going to come watch Derrick, right? Dude is brilliant.”
Dark mumbled something incomprehensible before opening his notebook once again. But he didn’t draw this time. Instead he began flipping through the pages, pausing only a second or two on certain pages the way her grandfather used to read the newspaper.
“Well, we’re going to go get a seat on the lip of the bowl so we can watch.” God looked at Dark and then at Claire. When neither of the moved, he slapped Leg on the shoulder and said, “Race you.”
And then he took off, cackling as Leg started swearing loudly and proclaiming that any result would have an asterisk. The last thing Claire heard him say before he was swallowed up by the sound of the room was, “Asterisk!”
Before she could even turn—and say what? She didn’t know, but she felt like she needed to say something—Dark said, “They’re both certified idiots.”
“I know—”
“Why were you looking in my room?”
Claire sighed. “I didn’t mean to. The cat opened the door and I couldn’t help but see . . . it.”
Dark grimaced again. “It’s not like it’s porn or something. Jesus.”
“Why do you draw them?”
Claire was surprised by her own question and Dark seemed to be just as shocked. He stared at her like she’d asked him to speak against the dead.