Until the Day I Die

by Carpenter, Emily

  Blood.

  16

  SHORIE

  Friday night, after a few attempts to talk me into going to eat then to a party at this house on Gay Street, Dele gives up. She says goodbye, and she and Rayanne finally leave me alone.

  It’s not that I dislike Dele—I like her just fine, actually—but there’s no way in hell I can hang out with a bunch of people tonight. I’m miserable, and I’m not one of those people, like my mother, who can fake happy. Parties aren’t my thing anyway. Flirting and dancing don’t exactly come naturally to me.

  I stretch out on my scratchy lavender comforter that will probably smell like the inside of a Pottery Barn until time is no more and stare up at the blank white ceiling of my dorm room. The journal wasn’t in Dad’s office at Jax. Ben waited in the car while I ran up and turned the office upside down with no luck.

  I roll over and smoosh my face into my faded yellow pillowcase I brought from home. My pillow is just the right amount of flat and smells heavenly, too, just like our house—a combination of the laundry detergent Mom uses, that citrusy floor polish, the rosemary candles she burns, Dad’s shaving cream, and a whiff of Foxy’s litter box tang.

  That’s what does it, interestingly enough. The thought of Foxy, her white fur and single black spot right on top of her head. Her trusting green eyes blinking up at me. I start wailing and sobbing into my pillow, and all the while a part of my brain remains detached, floating somewhere up against the ceiling.

  When will this pain stop? my brain thinks, looking down at me. When I’m dead too? But there is no answer, and I keep crying. Eventually the tears dry up, and my body lets out a final shudder. I feel like one of those cicada shells in the daylilies beside the garage. Empty. But also very calm.

  I haven’t checked today’s server report so I open my email to see if the error message has shown up again. Today’s is clear, interestingly. And when I download the log, the only activity I see is not by an admin, but by a user. It looks like from the 128-bit universally unique identifier, a regular Jax user has logged on the same way an administrator does.

  Okay, that’s highly unusual.

  I jot the UUID down and stare at it. Somebody’s up to something, messing with the servers. And it appears they fixed the deadlock issue, which is not the way things work at Jax. Only admins get on the servers and fix things.

  The frustrating thing is there’s no way for me to know who this person is. As a digital wallet app, Jax has to follow really strict FDIC rules about privacy. All our user accounts are anonymized with these UUIDs. This person could be any one of the millions of people who are using Jax.

  There is one way to gather more data from this UUID, although it’s not an entirely legal one. It would involve uploading a basic surveillance software program to my phone, then doing some minor reconfiguring of the setup. Installing spyware on this person’s Jax account, in other words. Which is terrible and all kinds of wrong and really not what I should be doing. But I’m curious—okay, nosy—and it’s the only way I’m going to figure out what’s going on. If I ask Scotty, he’ll just bump me off the report list.

  I grab my laptop and start digging.

  An hour and a half later, I realize two things. I’m starving, and there’s no food in our room. Well, Dele has some peach yogurt and grapes and Little Debbie Swiss Rolls in the fridge, but I haven’t had a chance to go to the store yet, so I don’t have anything. I check the school’s app and see there’s one cafeteria open until nine. I flash to an image. Me, sitting at a table, choking down a sad, limp sandwich, while a couple of other kids—who either didn’t know how to find their way to parties or were too stubborn or anxious to go to the ones they were invited to—notice with pity my puffy red cry-face. Ah, the homesick girl.

  What I really want is a Davenport’s black olive and onion pizza and a large root beer over mounds of flake ice, but that’s not going to happen, so I better get my butt in gear. I do a quick check in the mirror, then grab my wallet and room key. The idea of hunting for a meal in the fresh air sounds strangely invigorating. Something concrete to focus on.

  I head toward where the new-student guide said there are some food trucks, in one of the fields where they let the RVs park on game days. Sure enough, in the center of the field there’s a semicircle of food trucks, all but one of them shuttered. I check my app. Great. Not officially open until school starts. But there is that one . . .

  It has a pita wrap painted on the side of it with the words SHAWARMA-RAMA below. It may not be a black olive and onion pizza, but the window’s up and the trio of picnic tables beside it is deserted, so it’ll have to do. I break into a trot, actually salivating and waving my phone around in the general direction of the truck. No menu or price suggestions pop up on Jax. Then, when I’m about half a block away, the awning slams shut. I slow, hot and wilted, my feet throbbing from all that running in my slides.

  I rap tentatively on the pink metal. “Hello? Would you mind selling me . . . well, whatever you’ve got left? Leftovers? I’ve got cash.” There’s no answer. “I’ll pay you double. Whatever you’ve got. Please, I’m starving.”

  Nothing.

  I glare at the truck. There’s somebody inside, I can see that, but now they’re hiding from me. It’s completely silent in there too. Instead of cleaning up, like he should be doing, that asshole is holding his breath, waiting for me to give up and go away.

  “Great customer service, buddy,” I shout, then sit. I can outlast this guy. He has no idea.

  The sun’s going down, a hot, messy egg yolk, spilling every shade of orange there is across the horizon and then trails of pink and blue and purple. Prettiest sunset on the plains, Dad used to say, and he’s not far off. This was his alma mater. He majored in computer science, like me, joined a fraternity, and played intramural football. Also he was a Plainsman, which is basically like the official host of the school who has to wear an amazingly ugly orange blazer and striped tie. But it was a big deal, and I’ve seen pictures of him at games. He looked a lot like a young Paul Newman.

  Which is not a thing I would say, except that Gigi used to say it a lot. Once I googled Paul Newman, and he was a straight-up babe, for sure, but nobody likes to think of their dad that way. I just think Dad looked cute and happy, hugging my mom under the spreading branches of an old oak festooned with toilet paper.

  I check my phone. It’s been exactly fifteen minutes. And I guess I can hear a few thumps from the truck, but the Shawarma-Rama guy hasn’t had the decency to show his face or collect the napkin dispensers from the picnic tables. I pick up one of the dispensers and hurl it at the truck.

  Instantly the door to the food truck slams open, and the guy thunders out.

  Holy Paul Newman.

  This guy really does look like him. Or maybe not him—but he’s movie star good looking, so much so that my mouth goes dry and my face suddenly feels like I’ve just slathered on a molten lava facial mask. I wish desperately I hadn’t thrown his napkin dispenser at his food truck. I wish desperately that I had bothered to brush my hair. And also my teeth.

  “What the hell,” he says, looking me up and down with his squinty, sexy movie star eyes. He’s wearing jeans and a pink T-shirt that says SHAWARMA-RAMA with the same horrific drawing of a pita with meat spilling out of it that’s on the side of the truck. I don’t really care about the shirt because his jaw is covered with stubble the color of warm cinnamon that I immediately imagine rubbing my nose against.

  “What did you do that for?” He picks up the dispenser and puts it on the steps of his truck. It looks like I’ve dented it.

  I stammer out an apology as he gathers the rest of the dispensers from the picnic tables. But he can’t open the door with his arms full.

  “I’ll get that.” I jump up and open the door. He stomps past me, letting the door slam behind him. I wait, not sure if he’s coming back.

  Then the door opens a foot or so, and a sinewy arm covered with cinnamon-colored hair holds out something
wrapped in foil. It smells fantastic, and I take it quickly, before the door shuts again. I eat the whole thing standing up, in about four bites, tahini sauce and chicken juice dripping all over my tank top. It seems Paul Newman’s made up his mind to hide in his shawarma truck, so what the hell. Why shouldn’t I go for it?

  But then, just as I’m wishing I’d torn a few napkins from the dispenser before I chucked it at the truck, the door opens and he clatters down the steps. I execute a surreptitious wipe of my chin on my shoulder.

  “Sorry about that,” he says gruffly.

  “Me too. I’m sorry too.” I dip into my wallet for my hundred and hold it out to him.

  He squints at it, then laughs. “I don’t have change for a hundred. But don’t worry about it—it’s on me.”

  I stuff it back in my wallet. “I mean, I don’t blame you for not wanting to serve me. It’s late. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a student and have the responsibility of providing those amazing pitas to twenty-eight thousand students and faculty, give or take. That’s really intense. And classes haven’t even started yet. I mean, whoa.”

  I mean, whoa? Could I sound dumber? Not to mention, I can’t believe how much I just said to this guy. I don’t talk this much to people I’ve known for years.

  “You have no idea,” he says.

  I blink at him. He and I are the same height, approximately, about five feet five. The physics of kissing this guy would be perfect, requiring just a minimum amount of effort. Just the slightest angling. The slightest push to enact the logic of Newton’s third law . . .

  “You want to get a drink?” he asks.

  I do, but I’m feeling overwhelmed by the idea of objects colliding from equal and opposite forces—and then kissing.

  “You don’t like beer?” he says.

  I don’t, but I’m not about to tell him that. And I really want to go with him. So, so much.

  “I’m eighteen,” I say.

  He makes a pfftt sound. “I know a place we can go. It’s no problem.”

  “You’re legal?” It’s a dumb question, but, aside from the spyware thing I just did back at the dorm, I’m generally a rule follower, and my brain needs all the facts. Especially if I have to factor in a potential ride in the back of a police cruiser.

  “Hell no.” He grins, revealing nothing more than a set of regular teeth and gums and slightly chapped lips. But somehow, together it’s more. Together it forms this magical, incandescent something.

  “I’m Rhys.” He offers his hand. “Not R-e-e-c-e. R-h-y-s. It’s Welsh.”

  “You’re Welsh?”

  “Grandfather is.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Shorie.” We shake.

  “Oh.” He looks slightly confused, like everyone else who hears my name for the first time. “S-h-o-r-i-e?”

  Oh my God. We are spelling names. Equal and opposite forces. “Yes. Exactly.”

  I think about a couple of things: No one knows where I am. I have no idea who this guy is. He is extremely good looking, but good genes and symmetrical facial features do not preclude the possibility of someone being a killer and/or rapist. But also, they do not preclude the possibility of someone being Mr. Right. Someone who spelled my name correctly on the very first try.

  Also, Mom made me take self-defense classes my senior year, in preparation for going away to college. Not only did I not hate them, I ended up being kind of good at getting wrist control over an opponent. Especially one just my height.

  “I should probably let my roommate know where I’m going,” I say. There’s a little tremor in my voice, which makes me blush. Good thing it’s getting dark.

  “Sure.” He glances at my shoulder, my clavicle, where the yellow lace bra is creeping out of my shirt, then looks over at the truck and ruffles his cinnamon hair. It sticks up adorably, and I want to smooth it so badly. “I’ll just lock up.”

  He disappears while I text Dele.

  I met a guy and we went out to get beers. I’m safe so don’t worry. Shorie

  The text reads like I’m a forty-year-old woman instead of a bubbly college freshman reveling in her boundless new freedom. But truth be known, I’ve never been bubbly or reveling or any way most girls are. I’ve been myself for eighteen years. I guess there’s no reason to stop now.

  Dele’s reply zooms back to me. Three lines of smiley faces with heart eyes. I put my phone in the pocket of my pants as Rhys clatters down the steps and locks the door.

  “All set?” he says.

  I nod.

  “You feel safe?”

  I gaze into his eyes. They are the most beautiful shade of caramel, fringed by lashes the same color as the hairs on his arms. He is cinnamon, caramel, and a dozen other dessert-themed colors that I can’t think of right now because my brain has switched over to some unknown frequency. I am in danger, I think, just not in the way he’s talking about.

  “Yes.”

  He drives a beat-up orange VW van with the grungiest seats I’ve ever seen. He brushes McDonald’s wrappers, water bottles, and about a pound of crumbs off onto the floorboard, and I climb in, trying not to think about the community of germs my butt is nestling into. He connects his phone to the radio and Run the Jewels plays. Okay, that works. I sit back (gingerly) against the seat and try to relax.

  We head out of Auburn—past Toomer’s Corner, and over the train tracks. Eventually all the signs of modern civilization have disappeared, and we’re out in the country. Stands of towering pines then cow fields flank both sides of the blacktop, and now there are so few streetlights I can see actual stars forming a canopy over the rolling hills.

  We drive and drive, talking about where we’re from and where we went to high school. I’ve just about made up my mind that if I have to be kidnapped, at least I’m being kidnapped by probably the single best-looking offender in FBI Most Wanted history, when Rhys pulls the wheel and guns it up a gravel drive.

  We park in the grass alongside a bunch of other cars, in front of a ramshackle farmhouse on the crest of a hill. The house is lit up with more string lights than any house I’ve ever seen, even at Christmas. There are white ones and multicolored ones, so many, in fact, that I can see the house is painted light blue with white trim. There’s music blaring, too, the Death Grips, and there are people everywhere. And a guy nestled into a hammock on the screened-in front porch.

  We climb the rickety steps. Even though five-eighths of the windowpanes on the front of the house are patched with cardboard, I can still see inside. The place is teeming. Rhys yanks the door, which seems to be stuck, and holds it open. I smell beer, weed, and something else. Something electric. The way it used to smell at Jax, back in the beginning.

  I turn to him in wonder. “What is this place?”

  He sighs, his face grim. “My office.”

  17

  ERIN

  With all the trois this and trois that, I expect to be staying in cottage three. But I’m actually in number twelve. This, it occurs to me, encapsulates the way Hidden Sands makes me feel. Like I’m out of the loop. I guess that shouldn’t come as a big surprise. I’m used to being in charge, and when I’m not, it throws me off-balance.

  My cottage is painted in what I’m quickly coming to think of as Hidden Sands White, a shade I’m pretty sure is going to end up giving me a splitting headache in this blinding Caribbean sunshine. The cottage is perched on a high ledge above the crescent beach and overrun, quaintly so, with a lush purple blooming vine. Inside, the small bedroom/sitting room combo smells of lavender-scented cleaner. My duffel and purse sit on a luggage rack, and I do a quick check. Wallet, passport—everything’s there, not that I’m going to need any of it. But it does make me feel better. Like my extra jeans and T-shirt from home would make me feel, if they weren’t banned.

  To be fair, the clothes they gave me aren’t bad. Three pair of unbelievably soft, beige drawstring pants made out of some stretchy-silky cotton blend. Three luxe white tank tops with the most spectacular barely there bu
ilt-in bra. And this drapey, lightweight cardigan that I’m already planning to smuggle home in my tiny duffel.

  No shoes. Everyone goes barefoot, because, as Grigore explained, those are the rules. To me, it’s just another psyops-style tactic. Also, I wonder what will happen if there’s some sort of natural disaster—a landslide, earthquake, or jeez, I don’t know, volcano eruption? How will we all escape? Town cars and golf carts, I guess.

  I assess the single room: white plaster walls, wood floor, no blinds or curtains on the windows. The only furniture a downy-looking king-size bed, low dresser, and one nightstand with a lamp. Everything is so clean it practically sparkles. There’s a tiny attached bathroom, the entirety of which I can see from where I’m standing. When I venture inside the cramped space, I notice something amiss.

  “What happened to the shower curtain?” I ask.

  “I’ll have housekeeping take care of that right away,” Grigore says from the room.

  Upon closer inspection, I see that there’s also no rod. The shower curtain is the kind that attaches with Velcro to the ceiling. I’ve seen pictures of these before. They’re used in psychiatric and correctional facilities. To prevent ligatures.

  I scoot out of the bathroom in time to see Grigore slide open the balcony doors. By now, the humidity has made my hair grow ten times its normal size. I’m starting to feel like I’m Medusa, strands slithering into my eyes and mouth and down my neck. But the breeze feels nice.

  I join Grigore at the iron rail. “The balcony’s accessible anytime,” he says, gazing out over the leafy hill that drops gently down to the curved white beach lapped by turquoise water. The sun’s already gone down, but there are still streaks of pink and orange and lavender spilling out over the horizon.

  “Should I feel the need to jump,” I say.

  He smiles. “If you did, you’d just roll down the hill and end up with a couple of bruises or a twisted ankle, tops.”