Chapter 2 Holden
Two
Holden
“The first day of school,” I muttered, regarding myself in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. “What a joke.”
What did anyone at a pitiful little high school tucked in a redwood forest think they could possibly teach me? I’d been to the edge of the abyss and back. There was nothing left for me to learn but how to survive with the scars it gave me.
To hell with everything else.
Do you want the money or not?
“On the other hand…”
I drew on Gucci jeans, a long-sleeve black button-down, and black Balenciaga boots as morning sunlight streamed in from the bay windows and spilled across the cedar floors of the guesthouse Mags and Reg set me up in.
Admittedly, they’d done good. I had a mini living room, bathroom, king-size bed, an ocean view, and built-in bookshelves that ran the length of one wall. I’d already begun filling the shelves with the dozens of books I’d bought over the last few weeks and my own journals.
Though the view outside my window forecast a sun-drenched day, I put on a heavy black peacoat and looped an emerald-green scarf with gold paisley swirls around my neck. My armor.
You’re not physically cold, said the ghost of therapy sessions past. It’s a psychological manifestation of the trauma you endured during the conversion therapy.
I’d had an entire year’s worth of round-the-clock treatment, and that “false cold” still felt pretty fucking real to me.
A soft knock came at the front door of the guesthouse.
“Mr. Holden? You will be late for school.”
Beatriz Alves, the Brazilian housekeeper, was the only person in this house I could tolerate, including myself.
“Bom dia, Beatriz. Estou indo.”
“Muito bem, senhor.”
On my way out, I closed my journal—the black-and-white speckled kind you could find anywhere—and set it on the stack of others like it on my mahogany desk.
More journals filled a locked trunk I kept under the window.
My life story. A story I’d been writing since I was ten years old and desperate for an outlet for the clamoring voices in my mind.
Loud voices that told me to be bold and live life fully and never give a fuck what anyone thought of me.
Quieter voices that whispered sinister things in my ear: that I was broken, that my mind was a labyrinth that I’d never map.
Writing was my map.
Someday, I’d write something official. I’d distill my life through fiction. Pile the pain on a hapless character and make him suffer. Maybe he’d get a happy ending.
Hell, one of us should.
I dropped my Djarum Blacks into one pocket of my coat and a silver flask filled with Ducasse vodka into the other, then took the path through the backyard, past the pool I’d never swim in, to Mags and Reg’s huge beachside craftsman.
Because they had more money than God and not a shred of imagination, the house was slathered in nautical decor. Blue-and-white-striped everything, anchor-themed art on the walls, and glass bowls of seashells for days.
In the depressingly cheery kitchen, Mags and Reg lounged over breakfast, their mugs filled with steaming coffee. Beatriz, small but spry for a woman pushing seventy, maneuvered around the white and chrome kitchen.
“There he is,” Reg exclaimed, then frowned. “You look quite…elegant, Holden.”
I could hear today’s weather report behind his words, but over the past three weeks, my aunt and uncle had learned not to question my winter wardrobe choices. Not unless they wanted an earful of Alaska.
“Thanks, Reg,” I said, pouring myself a cup of black coffee from the French press. I stifled a yawn and joined them at the table, stretching my long legs.
“You’re something of a night owl, eh?” Reg ventured. “I heard some activity late last night down in the basement gym.”
And before that, I snuck out to break into your neighbors’ empty house, Reg.
It was a little habit of mine, begun when I was a kid in Seattle and driving my parents crazy with my “sociopathic antics.” Breaking into people’s houses was easier than you’d think—a key under a pot or a window left open. I never stole anything; I just liked to see what real homes looked like.
But no sense in freaking out Auntie and Uncle so soon. The year was young.
“What can I say? I’m a health nut.”
My aunt frowned. “But exercising at three in the morning? Is that…normal?”
“I’m not familiar with the term.”
They exchanged concerned glances, and a twinge of guilt nipped at me.
“I don’t sleep much,” I explained. “Racing thoughts, anxiety… Sometimes exercise is the only way to burn it out of my system.”
I didn’t add that obsessively working out was another piece of my armor. I honed my body into a temple of lean muscle for future lovers and because I’d be fucked if I let anyone overpower me again.
Reg smiled brightly. “Well, you’re free to use the gym however you like. It’s been gathering dust, quite honestly. Glad someone in the house is getting use out of it.”
I sipped my coffee.
“Are you excited for your first day of school?” Mags asked. “Senior year. That must be exciting.”
“We hear you’re quite the intellectual,” Reg chimed in. “In fact, the curriculum at Central might not be enough to challenge you.”
“I’ve been challenged quite enough already,” I said bitterly. “Don’t you think?”
Another unwarranted flash of guilt lanced through me at my aunt’s and uncle’s distressed expressions. They’d known perfectly well what my parents had planned for me in Alaska, and neither had said a damn word or lifted a finger to stop it.
I whipped my wrist to check my antique Patek Philippe. “I think we’ve played house enough for today. I’m going to be late for school.” My chair scraped the travertine tiles as I abruptly stood up. “Is James ready?”
“Uh, yes, he should be out front,” Reg said.
“Have a good first day,” Mags said.
“Yep.” I pushed in my chair, that stupid remorse nagging at me like a toothache. “Thanks for the coffee,” I mumbled. “And the gym and the guesthouse and…everything else.”
Their surprised, touched smiles made my chest tight, and I turned to make an escape before anyone said another word.
Beatriz stopped me, pressing a small brown paper bag into my hands.
“What’s this?”
She gave a confused smile, warm and gentle. “It is lunch, meu doce garoto.”
My sweet boy.
I stared. Beatriz had made me a sack lunch, like mothers had been doing for their kids since time immemorial. My heart clenched tighter, and my jaw worked soundlessly. For once, my chattering brain had nothing to say.
She patted my cheek. “Have a good day, Mr. Holden.”
“Right. Thanks.”
I hurried out of the kitchen, seeking the reassuring weight of the flask in my coat pocket. Before I reached the front door, I took a deep, fortifying pull. The unsettling feeling in my chest drowned in the vodka that burned a path down my throat, the sharp edges of reality blurring slightly.
That’s enough of that, thanks very much.
Kindness, I’d come to know in my seventeen and a half million years on this planet, had only ever been used as a tool to get something out of me. The docs at the sanitarium used it to encourage me to spill my guts in therapy, and my parents…
Charles and Estelle Parish had turned on the warmth just before sending me to conversion therapy.
They shocked me with their sudden care and concern so that my naive fifteen-year-old self tearfully agreed to let a sadist who called himself Coach Braun take me to Alaska, where he and his “counselors” reached into my chest with cold hands and tried to rip out a fundamental piece of me.
A part of me that was as essential as my blood and bones but a “reckless lifestyle choice” to my parents.
That night, after they explained the camp, Mom actually cried and Dad touched me, right on the cheek, for the first time in years.
So I agreed. Anything to have more of that.
“Fool me once,” I muttered as I walked down the driveway and away from that awful night.
I took another pull from my flask, but the day was annoyingly brilliant.
Ocean salt laced the air, and mountains draped in forest cradled this city by the sea, forcing me to acknowledge its beauty.
Mags and Reg were stuffy and sort of ridiculous, but they were also trying their best to take care of me.
And Beatriz and her goddamn mothering… What the hell was that about?
I’d fallen through the looking glass from a cold, loveless wasteland into a world of sack lunches and parental figures wishing me a good day.
It won’t last. Give it a month before they try to get rid of you.
The driver my parents had hired for the year lounged against the side of a sleek black Cadillac in a black suit and white shirt, smoking a cigarette.
“Morning, James. Got a light?”
“Good morning, Mr. Parish. Of course.”
James Costa was pushing fifty with salt-and-pepper hair and a tough mobster look about him.
We’d been getting weird looks all summer as he shuttled me around to explore the city and its tourist-packed boardwalk.
I imagined how the two of us would look, rolling up to Santa Cruz Central High School in this black sedan.
I lit a Djarum off his lighter and inhaled. “They’re going to think we’re Mafia, James. I can’t tell if that’s a good or bad thing.”
“If I may say, sir, I wasn’t under the impression you gave a fuck about what anyone thinks.”
“Too true, my good man.”
When we finished our cigarettes, I ground mine out under my boot, and James opened the back door for me.
“Welp. High school awaits. Can you see it, James? Me? In high school, like a normal guy?”
“Not especially, sir. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said, climbing in. “I’m rather curious about it myself.”
***
It only took until first break to know that I’d never fit in at Santa Cruz Central High.