Chapter 28 #2
The girl stares into the sink where I just tossed her drink. And doesn’t say a word.
I snort, push myself away from the kitchen counter, and walk past her without another word.
It makes me sick to see how people close their eyes to reality.
The world isn’t just beautiful and full of colorful flowers.
There are bushes and poisonous plants, too.
The sun doesn’t just rise; it also sets.
Every day it’s new, and it makes sure that darkness falls.
Life can be ugly, so ugly, and if we do nothing about it, if we look away as soon as the beauty fades, then the days get darker and darker.
And we will have failed. Failed all along the line.
I discover Knox in the pool. He’s floating on his back, his eyes on the roof.
It looks like the world has stopped turning for him.
As if he didn’t notice anything going on around him.
Everyone seems to be making out with everyone else, right next to him some guy tumbles off that stupid zip line into the water.
A woman is pouring beer over her chest and letting two guys lick it off, which is super nasty and makes me think of all the tongue bacteria, and that later on this girl will go to sleep drooling with Streptococcus mutans all over her body, but there’s Knox floating there, like it’s nothing at all.
He’s just there, like a waterlily or a tanned corpse with an incredibly ripped body.
I want to yell at him until I’m hoarse, I want to pound my fists against his chest until my knuckles hurt and ask him if he really brought all these people over.
I do all of this in my mind, I can see it right before me, crystal clear, but in reality…
Well, in reality, I just stand there in my slippers and colored knit socks, staring at him and thinking that he’s both December and July. Which makes sense, because his skin is snow-white but warm, it really is, every time I touch him. He’s December and July. How beautiful he is, I think.
How beautiful.
Okay, I’ve got to stop. I’ve got to stay focused or in less than a minute I’m going to jump off this zip line myself and let my skin be smeared with Knox’s Streptococcus mutans. And that wouldn’t be a good idea, we all know that—bacteria is bad.
I push myself through the half-naked bodies and gasp for air as I slide the huge glass door open and step outside. It is damn cold. God. Maybe I should hop into the heated pool myself to fend off the frostbite I’m sure to get.
“Knox,” I say, reaching the side of the pool.
My teeth are chattering. Around us there is nothing but total snow chaos; even the silhouettes of the Aspen Highlands are difficult to make out.
He doesn’t seem to hear me though; no wonder, he’s off in his own world, so I crouch down next to him and splash water in his face. “Knox!”
He jerks up. I’ve disturbed his corpse position, but it’s no big deal because he’s gone completely underwater, sparing me from having to see disturbingly lovely upper body. Okay, maybe it is a big deal. Just a little bit.
“Get out.”
“Why?” he asks, scratching his birthmark. God, that birthmark! A drop of water drips over his face and pearls upon his lip.
“Because I want to talk to you, and if I spend one more second on this frozen ground, I’m going to freeze to death.”
“Then get in.”
“I’m not dressed appropriately. I’m wearing clothing, you see.”
“Take them off.”
“Yeah, right.” My fingertips are growing numb, holding them against the ground as I am. “As if I’d jump in in my underwear.”
“I don’t understand the problem.”
He says it so nonchalantly, so typically Knox-like, but it’s not Knox. Not really. He’s not himself. His smile looks weird, as if raising the corners of his mouth was difficult, and somehow he seems… I don’t know, as if looking at me was a kind of torture.
“Get out, Knox.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll tell your dad about the candy stash I recently discovered in the linen cabinet.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. I get up, without having seen his reaction, and march back into the living room.
The music is so loud that the bass is making my slippers vibrate.
By the time I reach the fireplace, my feet have been stepped on twice, some kind of sticky substance has been spilled on my arm, and I have been elbowed by three different people.
I have to take a deep breath, close my eyes, and slowly count to ten so as not to lose it.
When I open my eyes back up, I lose it anyway. Knox is in front of me, a step away at the most, drying himself off with a towel. He’s wearing blue-and-white-striped Gucci trunks, and for the first time, I’m aware of his knobby knees. They look like two uneven scoops of ice cream.
“What’s up, Paisley?” Knox shakes his head like a wet dog. He’s sweet and his hair is scruffy, not blond and not brown. Something in between. He flicks his towel against my arm and laughs. A bit soft, a bit raw, a bit too lovely.
“What’s up with you?” I cross my arms and lift my chin. The fire is defrosting my fingers and making them itch. “What’s this shit all about, Knox?”
He tosses his towel over his shoulders and pulls on it like it was a rubber band. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
“Seriously?” A group of women walks past—“Hey, Knox”—one of them runs her hand down his back while the other two cast me mean glances.
Knox gives them his famous I’m-going-to-eat-you-for-breakfast-babe smile and, in return, their looks make it clear that they’d love to tear off his Gucci shorts immediately.
As Knox makes no effort to interrupt the let’s-have-sex looks, I roll my eyes and snap my fingers in front of his face. He turns to look at me and sighs annoyedly.
I wasn’t aware that such small things like sighs carried such weight. Now I know it, for the sound makes me break out in goose bumps even though I’m standing next to the fireplace. It stings, so much so that I put a hand on my chest and swallow a gasp.
Knox is annoyed. By me. I am annoying him.
Of course, I am. I’m his chalet girl, after all.
His chalet girl who’s getting in the way of his fun.
A buzzkill. I’ve always been one of those.
I can hear the voices in my head whispering.
Paisley, don’t be such a party pooper. Let Mommy have her drink and go back to bed.
I didn’t have a bed. Our trailer only had one, and that belonged to Mom and her lovers.
Sometimes, on good days, I was allowed to sleep with her.
Otherwise, my “bed” was the little corner bench behind the little table.
It wasn’t terrible, really. I liked it. I could lift up the cushions because they’d come loose from the rivets, and when Mom and dude number four, eight, twenty-six, one-hundred-twelve were too loud, I could count the wood grain.
The bench was my good friend. I carved my initials into the wood with a rusty breadknife.
It belonged to me, and I was proud because, back then, beyond it, nothing belonged to me.
I didn’t even belong to myself. If I had, Mom wouldn’t have tried pawning me off to the junkie with the dead cat in our front “yard,” which grew worse day after day.
Now Knox is snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Hello?”
“What?” My tone is bitter because I don’t see Knox right now, but my mom, and I hate her, I hate her profoundly for calling me a party pooper, for letting me down, and, quite simply, for not loving me even though I loved her immensely. Immensely. “What do you want, Knox?”
“Me? You’re the one who called me over, threatening to blackmail me with telling my dad about my candy.”
True. I did. But I forgot. I even forgot the party going on around us the moment Mom came to mind.
But suddenly it all comes back: Knox. The music.
All the people. The half-naked women. The zip line.
And I’m pissed off, so pissed off at Knox for having thrown the party although I’m tired, although we were on the snowboard together, and I thought that we had shared a moment—a moment where he looked at me and touched me and made me tremble.
I thought he had changed, for me, and other women were of no interest. But then I come over here and see that I was wrong, so wrong, and that it’s because of me.
He wanted things this way. Knox wanted me.
I could be ready. He said that, just a few days ago, but now he’s anything but ready, and all because of me.
Because I didn’t want it. That’s what’s making me so angry. I am making myself so angry.
“It’s eleven o’clock, Knox!” I wave my hands around without knowing why. I think it probably looks stupid, but I keep doing it because it feels good. “Eleven o’clock! Do you know what that means?”
“Umm.” Knox picks at the tag of his towel and tries to keep himself from breaking into a grin. “No idea? Is this a new version of Cinderella or something, where, instead of midnight she’s got to leave at eleven, or else she’ll break out in warts or…”
“Knox!” He called me Cinderella. Cinderella. My eyes are burning with tears although I don’t want them to be. It simply happens.
Only now does what he said seem to become clear to him. His amused grin disappears as if the moist gleam in my eyes had come from his. “Shit, Paisley. Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Really, I wasn’t thinking. It wasn’t referring to you, I swear, it wasn’t.”
It takes all I’ve got to swallow the lump in my throat and hold back my tears. I don’t want to cry, not now. I know that I will as soon as I’m under the shower upstairs and then once I’m in bed I know I’ll make my pillow wet and my voice hoarse, but not right now.
“It means that I’ve been on my feet for more than eighteen hours. I went jogging, then I worked, then I had to train. Do you have any idea how hard training at iSkate is, Knox? Do you?”
His face contorts like I’ve given him a smack, but his pain doesn’t interest me, for a change. I am far too angry.
“After that, I couldn’t relax but had to get on the snowboard with you and go down the damn slope and then get back on the ice one more time despite my trembling, exhausted legs, despite my weak limbs and aching muscles.
And then I get here but not to finally—finally!
—fall into bed, but to take care of all the tourists, and to clean—yes, Knox, like Cinderella, you’re right.
You can be proud of yourself there. I’m fucking done, I just wanted to sleep, but then I get over here and find myself in the middle of one of your wrecking parties or orgies or whatever the hell it is and am now trying not to say anything, cause it’s your party.
You all set up a zip line, Knox, a goddamn zip line! ”
I’m out of breath, I spoke so quick. Knox is plucking at the hem of his trunks. He’s at least six-two, and he’s got a hard chest, a bit like Jacob Black in the second part of Twilight. He’s someone you just want to devour, but right now he looks like a beaten little boy.
Knox opens his mouth to say something, but I’m in such a rage I don’t let him.
“I don’t get it, Knox.” I push the arms of my wool sweater up and down, up and down.
The fire is hot. “Your father is paying me to take care of the tourist area and your resort, you included, but I’m not here to be your nanny and to clean up after your parties so that Daddy doesn’t find out.
I’m not doing it anymore. You’ve got training early in the morning, Knox, just like me.
Maybe you don’t care about snowboarding anymore, but then you should be a man and say something.
Say that you don’t want to do it instead of half-assedly going through the motions and disappointing all the people who believe in you.
And, on top of it all, making my life more difficult, although I am doing everything to try and straighten it out.
So, I don’t give a shit if you want to keep on partying.
I don’t give a shit if your dad comes home tomorrow and sees everything.
I’m not taking care of it. I’m going to bed because I’m tired and, yeah, I have to take care of myself because it’s eleven, and I’m Cinderella, and this is my own, brand-new story! ”
Knox just stands there staring at me, he doesn’t say a single word, and I don’t let him.
I turn around and push through the dancing crowd and the terribly long line for the zip line and walk up the stairs.
In front of my room, I stop. There’s a piece of lined paper on the door, it looks like it’s been stuck there with carpet glue.
The scrawled words read: Anyone who steps foot in here is going to end up a naked mole rat out on the slope of the Highlands—Knox.
I smile. I smile even though I am so angry. I convince myself that I’m smiling because of the carpet glue, seeing as that, in this house, there aren’t any carpets, but I know that’s nonsense.
I’m smiling because Knox has this strange talent of making my belly tingle with joy only seconds after making me just about insane.
I’d like to say that my move to Aspen changed everything, but that’s just not true. Aspen didn’t change me. Knox and me, it’s one of those things.
We met, and everything changed.