Charm & Strange (8 page)

I nod.

“Hmm. Putting that together with the whole tennis and running thing, I’m guessing you go for sporty over that ballerina. Anna Kournikova? Is that the girl of your dreams?”

“Not even close,” I say, but a familiar shiver racks my spine. Titillating and guilt-laced.

Wrong girl. Right name.

chapter

sixteen

antimatter

I cried out when Keith grabbed my arm.

“What’s wrong with you?” he snapped, leaning over the bed where I lay. “Charlie’s waiting. Get up.”

He’d already gotten dressed and had breakfast. Me, I’d missed practice. I hadn’t been able to move that far.

Specks of July haze filtered in through the lace curtains, the day already overtired and overhot. I hated the impatience in his tone. I strained to push off the mattress, but the sharp pain in my abdomen made me whimper. I twisted my head toward the wall.

Keith’s voice lowered. “Come on, Drew. You’re okay.”

“No, I’m not!”

“What? You’re really sick or something?”

I pressed my head against the scratchy pillowcase and nodded.

“You need me to get Gram?” he asked.

No, I didn’t need that. Not at all. Our grandmother hadn’t warmed up to me since that first night. I said all the wrong things around her and she thought I was dumb. I knew she did. Keith, on the other hand, was loved, doted on. She’d even taken him into Cambridge to some famous bookstore, and when she went grocery shopping, she bought him vegetarian bacon, which tasted awful just like I knew it would. All I got were the dirty looks and chilly admonishments to stay quiet, act my age, and mind my manners. But I couldn’t help myself. I mewled again, a tortured sound. Keith scooted from the room to get her.

Two minutes later brought a flurry of footsteps and whispering in the hallway.

“What’s wrong with him?” And there it was. My grandmother’s voice, dripping with scorn.

“I think it’s his stomach. He hasn’t … I don’t think he’s gone to the bathroom since he got here.”

“He hasn’t gone in
six days
?”

The hallway rang with a bevy of giggles. God, was that Charlie out there? And
Phoebe
?

I withered beneath the blankets. Wished death on the entire world.

Keith cleared his throat. “Well, maybe, I think, maybe he should see a doctor. He’s crying.”

“He doesn’t need a doctor,” my grandmother said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

There was more giggling in the hall and then a knock on the door.

“Go away!” I shouted. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to crowd around and laugh more. Why would they do that? Why? It wasn’t funny. It
hurt
.

“It’s just me, Drew,” came a soft voice.

My stomach flipped over in a way that had nothing to do with my digestive issues. It was Anna, the elder cousin. She slid through a crack in the door and sat beside me. Her pale green dress was the same color as the leaves on the willow branches outside. I breathed her in, with my nose, my eyes, my everything—that long dark hair, that earthy warmth that smelled like digging flower beds in the spring with Siobhan, that syrupy way she melted into the blankets. My heart rate slowed. Suddenly I didn’t care that I had nothing on but a pair of pajama pants. I just wanted to crawl into her lap and stay there.

She rubbed my back. “I’m sorry you don’t feel good.”

I curled closer.

My grandmother swooped in then. “Sit up, Andrew.”

I wouldn’t let any moans of pain escape me, not in Anna’s presence. I was brave. I propped myself into sitting and ignored the fire raging in my midsection. Let my skinny legs dangle over the side of the bed. My grandmother jabbed at my gut with dry hands. I stiffened and resisted the urge to bite her.

“Does anything else hurt?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“This wouldn’t happen if you ate the food I made instead of sneaking downstairs at night and gorging yourself on junk.”

Oh, great. She knew. I looked away.

Smack! Her hand came out too quickly for me to register, ringing me with a sharp slap across the face.

“Pay attention when I talk to you!”

My lip curled. I wasn’t scared. Or hurt. Something awful came alive inside of me. A million images rushed into my head. Images of bad things. Very bad things. Things I could do.

“I’ll give him that, Gram,” Anna said quickly, taking the spoon and jar of medicine out of her hand. “He’s just embarrassed to have us all looking at him.”

“Mmm.”

After she’d left, Anna touched my face but said nothing.

“She’s so mean!”

“Don’t hold it against her,” Anna said.

“Well, I don’t like her. I don’t have to like her!”

“No, you don’t. But you do have to listen to her.”

I pouted. “Why? She hates me. And she loves everyone else.”

“She loves us all.”

“Then why doesn’t she act like it?”

“Because love doesn’t always look nice.”

I folded my arms even tighter. Did Anna think I deserved to be slapped? Because I was bad? That’s what it sounded like. My chest swelled with bubbles of shame. Maybe I
was
bad. All those mean thoughts in my mind, wanting to hurt people. My grandmother knew about Soren, maybe she knew other things. The kinds of pictures I liked to look at on the computer. The kinds of things I liked to read.

“Take this.” Anna waved a spoonful of frothy liquid before me.

I twisted my head. “It looks gross.”

“It’s milk of magnesia. And you definitely want to take it because if you don’t, Gram’ll come back in here and do something worse.”

“Like what?”

Anna grinned wide, the happiest I’d seen her. She rubbed her nose against mine. Eskimo kissing, we called it at school, but I never let anyone do it to me because I hated being touched. But Anna was different. Her skin was very soft, like the velvety folds of Pilot’s ears. The shame bubbles popped and my heart went all tingly. Anna was better than my mom. Maybe I loved her.

“I don’t know,” she said teasingly. “She might give you an enema or something. Wouldn’t that be awful?”

The tingling stopped and black dots danced in front of my eyes. I definitely did not want that. I opened my mouth wide. Anna stuck the spoon in.

*   *   *

Later, when I felt better and lighter, a thunderstorm washed across the state. Heavy drops of rain pummeled the earth like sniper fire and the air smelled bright and raw like ozone. I stood at the window and watched one of my grandfather’s spit cans roll off a pine bench and straight into the back pond, where it bobbed around before sinking. My grandmother’s herb garden was completely underwater. Half the plants had been washed away or flattened. I smiled.

Light footsteps approached. I dove back under the covers as Anna popped her head in again. She’d called in sick to her job at the local library so that she could take care of me.

“Still not feeling well?” she asked.

I pressed my cheek against the pillow and made sad eyes.

She sat beside me, soft thighs touching my knees. The fear-anger-confusion that lived inside me subsided, like the lowering tide.

Anna rubbed my back again.

I felt happy.

chapter

seventeen

matter

“You can go if you want,” Jordan tells me. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

My heart skips a beat, not in a lovey-dovey way, please, but in a
holy shit, ladies and gentlemen, mark the date and time, Winston Winters is being pushed away before he can withdraw sulkily
kind of way. I feel a little sick, actually. How did this happen? I’m not dense. Being pushed away implies I’m making an effort to stick around.

Something is very wrong.

I take a steadying breath and pull out my phone. A quick check confirms what I already know, what I can already sense—it’s late.

Later than it should be.

The sick feeling intensifies. I’m too keyed up. Anxious, maybe, I guess. Although “anxiety” is one of those words people at our boarding school throw around that’s hard for me to connect with. Kind of goes hand in hand with that whole “worry” thing. I don’t get that, either. Why get worked up over the bad thing that hasn’t happened yet when there’re plenty of bad things that have?

Take Teddy, for example. He’s a day student, but he and Lex have been tight since the first day of school, so I know him pretty well. The guy worries about everything. It’s draining to see. Never mind that his family is beyond nuclear-ideal—I stay with his folks during vacations or whenever I can get away with not going back to Virginia—he’s loaded, drives a 3 Series BMW, gets perfect grades, and even if he didn’t, what would it matter? Teddy’s a three-generation legacy at Brown, and really, if grades were going to make or break his college success, he’d be better off at public school, where his über-achievement and 4.3 GPA might actually impress somebody. He can’t see that, though. Instead, the guy’s on every SSRI in the book, pops Ambien just to sleep, and practically faints anytime a girl says hi to him. At sixteen. It’s ridiculous. Literally nothing bad has ever happened to him. He just
thinks
it will. As if thinking will help.

Thinking never helps. I know that.

“Teddy,” I asked him once, back when I still thought it was important to try to fit in, “will you feel less bad when a girl rejects you if you worry about it ahead of time?”

“Screw you,” he sniped. “So you’re saying she’s going to reject me no matter what?”

“That’s not what I said at all.”

He sniffed. “Well, if I worry about it, odds are I won’t ask her out in the first place. And I’ll still hate myself. Happy?”

I clenched my jaw. “Never.”

Teddy shook a finger at me. “No way, Winters. I get to be miserable, too. You don’t get to be the best at everything.”

But tonight, anxiety makes sense. Intellectually, I
should
be nervous. But do I feel it? Is that the reason I’m still sitting next to a girl I don’t know, running at the mouth about my
personal life
? Of all things.

The moon peeks at me from behind a stormy cloud.

It’s full. Alluring.

My tongue runs along the tips of my teeth.

It’s an old, old habit.

Jordan slouches over on my right. She thinks I’m ignoring her. This can’t be how she wanted to spend the evening. This can’t be why she came. I mean, I know what she wants. She wants to meet people. Make friends. Be normal. And to do that, she needs me to get up. To tell her I don’t need her to babysit me, either.

I can do that.

I will do that.

I get to my feet. “See you around, Jordan.”

“Sure thing,” she says. Her fingers work to spike her short boy hair so that it stands straight up and down. I don’t think she’s aware she’s doing it, which is kind of endearing, but it also sort of hurts to watch.

“Don’t walk back through the woods by yourself,” I tell her. “I’m serious. Ask Teddy if you can’t find somebody. He’s over there playing cards. He’s got glasses and a black shirt that says ‘Burn Hollywood Burn.’”

This startles her. She looks like she wants to ask why I’m so concerned, then seems to think better of it. Perhaps she remembers the details about the townie’s death and the words the news stations used to describe his killing: “torn apart.” “Eviscerated.” And my personal favorite: “partially consumed.”

She gives me a nod and a weak smile. “Thanks again, Win. I really liked talking with you. Let’s do it again sometime.”

I blink. “Just remember what I said.”

Then I turn on my heel and walk away.

Swiftly.

chapter

eighteen

antimatter

“Don’t you dare get on any rides, Drew! I swear to God, if you puke on yourself, I’ll wring your goddamn neck.” Keith towered Eiffel-tall, backing me against a cotton candy cart. I trembled. This was not my Keith. This Keith had narrow eyes and smelled of hair gel and aftershave. This Keith looked older. Meaner. Wildly unfamiliar.

“I’m not getting on any rides!” I snapped, although I kind of wanted to, just to spite him. Maybe I’d fall out.

“Here, just take this already.” He shoved a handful of bills in my face, then turned and loped over to where Charlie stood waiting in line for the Ferris wheel.

I jammed the cash into the front pocket of my cargo shorts and stalked down the carnival midway, my vision blurred with rage. I had no idea where I was going, but it was Fourth of July weekend and the place was beginning to fill up.

Dusk hovered on the edge of night, but that did nothing to thwart the New England mugginess. As I wound through the crowd, a watery heat clung to me, filling every pore, every fold, every touch of skin to skin. The heavy weight of summer.

The sharp scent of popcorn, sugar, and deep-frying oil made my mouth water as I lurched past the food stands, but I kept walking. I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to eat alone. Keith might be eager to ditch me, but I knew Phoebe would let me tag along with her and her friends. Or she would if I could just find her. My shoes kicked up fairground dust as I trudged around and around the maze of rides and games. This was useless. I couldn’t even text her because she’d managed to ruin her third phone in a year by dropping it in the toilet. Her dad had been seriously mad. Phoebe didn’t seem to care.

“Probably for the best,” she told me. “Those things give you titty cancer anyway.”

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but from what I could tell, Phoebe did not have titties.

“I think you mean brain cancer,” I said.

Eye roll. “Whatever.”

I picked up pace as I passed the Orbitron, one of those massive octopus-armed rides. Only this one didn’t just whip around at breakneck speed, the arms actually moved up and down in the air while spinning. Forget puking, I’d probably stroke out if I got on that thing. After that came a cluster of kiddie rides, including one consisting of these alarmingly painted “bumblebees” that should have been shut down for aesthetic reasons, if not racially offensive ones. I paused. Scanned the crowd again.

“Hey, kid.” A gruff voice reached me, stretching from the shadows beneath the bleachers of the pig-racing track.