Chapter 28
I do push-ups for a while in my bedroom at the end of another day in which I have again failed to extinguish Joel (as Al would say), to come any closer to figuring out anything important, and also to finally call the pediatric dentist like my to-do list has been reminding me for a solid two months now.
I text Joel: It wasn’t just me. You were a lie too.
When he doesn’t respond, I continue: It’s the angel blood or whatever. You have an effect on people like me. It’s not even my fault.
The angel blood, however diluted in his veins, is what saved Adam at first. I know that now. Maybe it’s also what drew me to him.
I’m breathing faster as quick new words escape my fingers. I wonder if any of it was ever real with you.
What do I want from him now? I can’t let myself think too thoroughly about it.
He’s typing. It will always be your fault, he writes, and for some reason I’m very slightly happy. Just because he’s responding.
I cried over you, I write, my fingers skidding.
He writes, You expect me to believe you? This is just part of it, isn’t it? This is part of what you do.
I type, I loved you. Then I erase it, letter by letter, replacing it with nothing, with the blinking cursor on the white of the line.
You will always be a monster, he writes.
I flex my toes, stamp my feet. My body is leaning forward, aggressively awake, turned on, thrumming, confused, on the edge of a sea of endless sadness, the pull of its tide sucking at my feet.
What do I do now? I write, but this time it’s to Grub.
The screen stares back at me, infinite and tiny and alien, holding its breath.
You used to be here, I type.
Where are you now?
The floor beneath me feels fragile. Like it will splinter and I’ll fall into emptiness. But maybe that’s just the feeling of being alive.
I jump up, pull on my socks. I run to campus, run around the empty football stadium under the blare of the lights, the plastic ground spongy, childishly soft underfoot.
The moon looks slick and forgotten up there on its own, a peeled grape; the silver bleachers sit up very straight in their businesslike stacks.
There is an industrial whirring of some giant hidden fan, and the sound seems to arch over the place like a dome, silencing the rest of the world.
Who did they leave the lights on for? Me?
Around and around and around I go, thinking about the things Al said to me. How maybe Grub was right—we might have been the nicest ones. We tried the hardest. We starved our DPs. We starved the curse so we could love. Not that we realized we were doing that, really.
I have already cornered Al to ask him what else he knows about Dick Face, about my siblings. But there wasn’t anything more, or at least, he didn’t express anything more in a way I could understand.
I wonder if Grub would’ve made it to college, if he’d survived. If he’d never met Joel. I wonder if we ever would’ve found some kind of a cure. Probably not. How do you cure a curse from an immortal being, put on a philandering, hypnotic rock star? I have to find a way to talk to Dick Face again.
I’m not a detective, though. I never was.
James, I think.
I run by Joel’s house. I know his Japanese maple has senesced by now into a vicious, impossible shade of red, but it looks black as any other tree in the dark.
I loop back around. I won’t let myself go in, but I’ll run by one more time. I hear him playing, faint but unmissable, and slow down. The cello’s thick, mournful voice sings through the walls of the house, catches me. Do his neighbors appreciate how lucky they are?
And then I recognize the melody. Adele. The song I sang for him, the song I mocked him with, later.
But he’s added to it—the music travels to a different place, a river gathering up tributaries as it goes, moving more forcefully.
I realize I am standing on his front walk.
My body has carried me too close to the familiar house, and now I’m trembling there, dangling like a fish on the line of this music.
Long, searing, tender bow strokes: I feel them as though they are his hand on my skin, his mouth on me.
Then faster, but still with the same yearning, fiery sweetness.
Our song.
He is playing—I’m completely sure for a moment—the way he has been trying not to touch me.
He is playing his arms around me for too long when we sat right there on the steps, just the other night, playing the forbidden times when his hands lingered on me, when his gaze got stuck for an extra beating moment on my face.
And the need that rises in me in response is a leviathan; if it breeches it will break me into pieces.
I’m so turned on, I want to put my hand down my pants right here on the walkway.
I want to kick his door in and wrap myself around him, bury myself in him.
But it’s much worse than that. I want to trace the lines of his eyebrows and kiss the corners of his lips and his forehead.
I want to make him smile again, that easy, open smile.
I want it to belong to me. I want him to hold me.
I want his hands to stay on me. I want him to stay on me, in me, with me.
I take a stuttering step forward. I am suddenly aware that it is silent. The song has ended—or he has paused, sensing me lurking outside.
Is he standing up? Is he moving toward the window or even, please, the door?
No. I wrench backward, erasing the step I took.
Al is right. I can’t let myself see Joel again.
Al is probably somewhere behind me now, winded and limping in the shadows. Or maybe he’s frighteningly fast, like me. Maybe he’s gliding along. He might be right here, only paces away, watching me.
I startle, spin back toward the sidewalk, sprint toward home. I shake out my hands as I run. I’ve been clenching them into fists, as though holding on with all my might to something that doesn’t even exist.
When I open the front door, Dee pokes her purple-capped head out of the kitchen, surprising me.
“What are you doing up?” I ask her. She always takes her sleeping pill.
“Bizarre nightmare.” She shakes her head. “It was about you, actually.”
“Oh yeah?” I say warily. I don’t want to know.
“Yeah. You were turning into this . . . monster?” She laughs, gestures for me to follow her into the kitchen. I take off my shoes slowly. “Your eyes turned red,” comes her voice. “Like in a horror movie. Really cheesy. You were going to kill us. So creepy. Sorry. What were you doing outside?”
I come reluctantly into the kitchen. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a run.”
She squints at me. “A run? At night? In the cold?”
I shrug.
“Are you okay, T? I feel like you don’t want to talk to me anymore.”
I don’t think I can deal with this right now. “I’m fine. I should go to bed.”
“Wait.” She holds out a quart of mango sorbet. “Want some?”
Yes. And I also could go for a damn steak. I wave her off. Not a good idea to talk.
“Are you still feeling healthy?”
I pace for a few seconds, open the fridge, shut it again.
I can’t remember if I nodded just now or acknowledged her question in any way.
I want to leave, but Dee wants me to stay.
She says, spooning sorbet into her mouth, “I know this is weird, but it’s been really nice having Al around.
I just automatically trust him. Ella really likes him, too. ”
“Yeah.” I sigh.
Dee narrows her eyes at me. “Okay, I’m going to just be real with you.”
Damn it.
I wait.
“Are you feeling like you’ve moved beyond your depression? It seems like you’re on the right track. But you’re not telling me anything.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” I say before I can stop myself. This is the problem with it being late at night. I get too honest.
She blinks, sets the spoon down. “What? Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me, Dee.” Stop talking, I tell myself.
“Excuse me?” Her face closes. I know what she’s thinking. That this means I’ve been hiding my delusions from her.
“Never mind,” I snap. “I need to take a shower.”
“No!” She holds up her hand like a traffic cop. She’s always been the authority in this house, in our family. “Tell me what the hell you’re talking about. Is it more of this . . . curse stuff?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me! I know you’re sneaking around.”
I wince, rub my forehead. So much for being subtle.
“Where are you going at night?”
I take a breath. “I’ve been—seeing Joel.”
She looks unsurprised. Which isn’t really fair. It’s shocking, or should be. If she’d believed me to begin with and I’d been able to tell her the recent truth, she would be terrified now. But instead she says, “That’s good, T. I’m happy for you.”
“It’s not good!”
Dee seems to steel herself like she’s facing a toddler having a tantrum. “And he’s . . . okay?” She’s trying to ask it carefully. It comes across as condescending, but maybe that’s just me.
“Yes!” I lower my voice with effort. “He shouldn’t be. But he is.”
“That’s so good!”
I close my eyes, exhale, grip the edge of the counter, knocking an unpaid dermatologist bill and a cascade of junk mail to the floor.
“You have feelings for him,” she says patiently. “You’re letting yourself care about him.”
“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t.” I realize a second later that I’ve used the wrong word. I should’ve said “don’t.”
“Love is hard,” says Dee, sounding wise. Or completely trite. Or just utterly oblivious.
“It’s not love,” I hiss. (The way he was playing, though. He was playing that song for me. Or about me.) I kick the envelopes on the floor.
First Al and then this.
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Come on, T. How long are we going to do this for?”
I grit my teeth. I know what she’s talking about. My delusion. Her tacit agreement to humor my overwrought metaphors for being afraid to commit. “Until I die,” I say.
She sets the sorbet down hard, like banging a gavel. “Stop it.” And now she’s angry. Maybe she’s been angry for a long time, forcing it down, choking it back. “Just stop. I’ve tried to support you, but damn it, T, you do not make it easy! With this fantasy stuff!”
I let out an animal sound, a stifled growl.
My fingers are claws on the counter. “Fuck you, Dee,” I snarl, and her eyes jolt to mine.
I’ve never spoken to her like that before.
“I wish it was a fantasy!” And now I’m going to cry, out of fury.
I feel like my tears will be fire, they will burn my face.
How can I stay here? How did I ever think it would work for me to pretend to be normal? To live a little life in a little town in a little brown house with my normal little sister? It was never going to work. I will never fit into the world.
“What the hell am I supposed to think?” she spits.
“I don’t know!” I hurl back. “I don’t know!
But it would be nice if you believed me!
It would be nice if anyone believed me. But Grub is dead.
He’s dead, Dee. He was murdered for being—for being like this.
” I gesture violently over myself. “And the man you’re telling me to fall in love with— ” But I stop myself. I shake my head hard.
“Murdered?” Dee whispers. “What are you talking about? This is out of control— ”
I look into her eyes. “Go to sleep, Dee. Leave me alone.”
She stares at me. “No.”
“Yes.”
She blinks. And for a confused second, I want her to resist. I want it not to work. And I also want to stop her, to shut her off, to make the whole terrible exchange go away. I look down. “Good night,” I say.
“T! You’re freaking me out!”
“Try to forget about it,” I mutter. “Just do whatever you usually do.”
I take the steps two at a time. She doesn’t follow me.