Drain You (18 page)

“I love you, but I don’t know what to say. They’re after us,” he said.

“It’s been over a week.”

“They’re waiting for something.”

“How do you know? How do you know?” I looked into his eyes.

He didn’t have to reply. He knew because he knew.

“Okay, okay, okay.” I only had repetition and his soft blue shirt. I clung to both. “Okay.”

“We’re going to Libby’s tomorrow.” James stood up. I could see the pain in his face, but the sun was coming. He had to go.

“She’s not there. She’s in the desert.” I reached out for him, but he wasn’t interested in my hand. He was by the door.

“We’re going wherever she is.”

“Please, we can’t bring her back.”

“We’re not bringing her back, we’re using her. We have to find out whatever she knows.”

“She’s fried, she won’t remember anything.”

“We have to try.”

I knew we weren’t running away from them now; we were running toward them.

“Okay.” I kept my arm reaching.

James was across the room from me. He wasn’t getting back in bed.

“I’ve got to go.”

“I know.” I wouldn’t ever be able to say the word good-bye.

“I’ll be back.” Was he down the stairs?

“I know.” He would be back. Tonight. The second the sun went down.

He said, “I love you,” in a weird way. From outside?

I love you too, James, so much it hurts. I love all of us. It hurts times all of us.

The morning was
the rudest awakening. It sounded like my bedroom was the Enchanted Tiki Room. It sounded like there were birds in my bed. I threw a pillow at the chirping noise but hit my mirror instead. I tried to shut it all out, keep it together. No luck. Because glancing up I noticed, over in the corner of the room, leaned up against the wall like a silent spectator to my deranged and erotic nightlife, the large rectangular pane of glass that used to be my window.

There it was as if to say,
James didn’t come to you in a dream. You didn’t make it all up.
I stumbled back to bed and collapsed. I double-checked myself: a little achy, sore in places, my hair wavy and messed up. My panties were on the floor. His soft blue T-shirt was on my body. He’d been here, in my bedroom, last night, for
real. Like,
for real
for real.

It could’ve been five minutes or five hours later when the phone suddenly rang. Since Libby didn’t speak English and James had never called me ever, who did that leave?

Duh.

“Morgan, I’m a terrible person and I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done or will ever to do you, forever.” I sighed. “Okay, dude?”

“Okay…dude.”

Oh.

“Nice apology, though.”

Not Morgan.

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re still talking to me?”

“You got drunk and weird. It’s not like you puked in my Camry.”

“Right.”

Then Whit was over it, launching into a hyper-posi rant about how cool it was that I came to the party and how cool Tori thought I was and how cool the earthquake felt and how cool Jody Bennett was taking the whole postparty cleanup thing and how everything was just totally cool. He refrained from mentioning James’s return and how uncool James was being about our decision to piss off the canyons’ most Banana Republican killers, so I assumed the reunion hadn’t happened yet.
Would Whit even care? Naomi would. She’d probably ride a horse over me.

“So…are you alone?” I asked, trying to sound normal.

“She didn’t sleep over, you voyeur, but thanks for the vigilant suspicion.”

“Ew, I don’t care about that.” Kind of a lie, but I actually hadn’t thought about it since the car ride home. I’d had my own fireworks, thank you. Still a relief, though.

“Sure you don’t. Who are you referring to then?”

“Naomi.” It was at least partially true. I was fairly interested in Naomi’s reaction to my latest move to get her killed.

“Yeah, she’s here.”

“So the two of you are alone then?”

“Are you trying to freak me out?”

“No.”

He didn’t know.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’m coming over in, like, twenty minutes. Are you dressed?”

“Wait, you’re coming over? I don’t want to hang out today.” I wanted to see him, but everything was too crazy. James and I were leaving for Joshua Tree at sunset, so I didn’t have my usual blank-slate day to run around wherever, doing nothing with Whit. Even though I liked
running around wherever. Even though I loved doing nothing. With Whit.

“Nuh-uh. Not going to let you be weird about last night. You got jealous. Big deal. I’m really sexy, it’s not your fault.”

“Ugh, it’s not that.”

“Okay then, you’re just depressed and wiggy. You know I have to look out for you.”

“Not anymore,” I interrupted.

“Why not? Did Stiles fall on the wrong end of a wooden stake?”

“I don’t think that even works.”

“Well, what do you mean, ‘not anymore’?” he asked, bored of this, ready to prove that I was just being a brat.

Time to make stuff up. “Bonnie and Elliott want to bond, like have a family day or something. Attendance is mandatory. There’s roll call.”

Whit actually laughed at that, which I guess I would’ve done too if I wasn’t trying so hard to be left alone. Then he said, “Whatever. I’ll be there soon. Thank me later.”

“Noooo…,” I moaned, but he’d already hung up.

I threw on whatever—makeup, chains, earrings, Converses, ripped stuff, my usual—and pondered the results of my nonchalance in the mirror. Not bad. But I had to admit that wanting to look good for Whit—despite the fact that James was back and Whit totally boned out
on me last night to be with some fluffy redheaded piece of lint—was by far the most inane, stupid desire I’d had in at least twenty-four hours. When I moved some clothes on the floor, I saw them: the sad gray sweat shorts that had defined my meaningless existence for five straight days. A dark instinct called out to me to put them on. But I shut it out and threw the shorts into the back of the closet. I wasn’t meaningless anymore.

I yelled downstairs to see if my parents were home, but there was no answer, like always, and I didn’t bother wasting my time hunting through the house for Post-it Notes about lunch ideas or bedroom upkeep or Lexus maintenance or Morgan. I was blasting some Kill Rock Stars sampler—a not-so-good, too punkish one—in my bedroom when suddenly Whit tapped me on the shoulder. He’d knocked, waited, tried the door, walked into the house, up the stairs, and into my room without me hearing so much as a sound. So much for self-preservation. So much for staying on guard.

“Please stop acting cool,” Whit screamed over the music.

“It’s not acting,” I screamed back, then turned the CD off. “I’m tired, Whit. I’m hungover. Can’t we hang out tomorrow?”

“Sorry. Breakfast burritos at El Coyote. Next.”

“Whiiiiiit,” I whined. I tried to physically push him
out my door, but he was too strong and I was too sleepy. I gave up.

“You can’t just sit around and feel sorry for yourself. I thought we were past all that.”

I had no other choice. I had to let Whit stay my daytime babysitter until James decided to let them know he was back. This family was crazy. What else was new.

“Fine,” I said, heading downstairs. “TV me.”

Whit plopped down next to me on the couch and hooked his arm around my shoulder. We kicked our feet up on the coffee table, flipped around, laughed a lot, talked trash, almost forgot all the things there were to forget. Which was a lot.

But just after we’d locked into a serious cartoon block, the phone rang. It was Naomi.

“Give the phone to my brother. I know he’s there,” she said, on edge.

“Hi to you too.” I handed the phone to Whit. “You’re dead, dude,” I whispered.

“I’m so scared,” he whispered back, smiling, easy breezy. He took the phone, held it up to his ear, greeted his sister a little too cheerily, and then went silent, waiting through what I could only assume was a hostile tirade on the evils of being friends with me, hanging out with me, or doing anything at all that involved me.

I shrank back to the couch. I’d eavesdropped on this
kind of convo before. Wasn’t interested in a self-esteem demolisher just now.

Then Whit said, “What note?” A pause. “When?” He glared at me. “Okay.” Probably wasn’t okay. “Yeah, I’m coming home right now. Stop crying. Just wait for me, I’m leaving.” Then he hung up the phone, walked over to the television, and turned it off.

I tried to gauge his anger. A four maybe, out of ten.

“What’s wrong with you?” he yelled.

Okay, okay, more like a four out of five.

“You knew he was here? Were you going to tell me or what?”

I stood up to face him. “Oh, like you told me when he called?”

“Whatever. That was different.”

“Not even.”

“Don’t you think this matters to me and Naomi?” he spit at me.

“It’s not my job to tell you. Why should I?” I spit back.

“Because we’re, like, friends or something?”

“What are you so pissed about? Aren’t you happy?”

“Happy?” he yelled, shocked. “Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think my sister’s stupid?” He was genuinely mad, not cute mad, not sweet mad with hints of playful sarcasm, but, like, ready to be completely brutal mad.

“Whit, seriously, you’re being a jerk.”

“I know why he’s back, because I know why he left. And he wasn’t supposed to come back, because he told me it’d be too dangerous if he did.” He punched the cushion at the end of the sofa. He wiped at his eyes beneath his glasses. “So no, I’m not happy.”

“Fine,” I barely said, hiding my eyes. “Don’t be.”

“And you shouldn’t be happy either, because if he’s back, that means we’re all screwed.” I didn’t look up but I thought he was crying; his voice was doing that shaky thing that mine always did.

“We have a plan,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to hear it.”

I got up and grabbed his shirt and held on tight. I would beg, I would do anything; I couldn’t watch another bridge burn. “Whit, you can’t hate me. Everyone hates me.”

He rolled his eyes, threw my hands off him, said, “Boo-hoo,” and left me standing there. Alone with the Powerpuffs.

Obviously, Whit, I
can
just sit around and feel sorry for myself. If you need me, that’s what I’ll be doing all day until James shows up. And probably a little after that too.

When the sun set, my parents still didn’t show up, but James did. And he didn’t even seem mad at me anymore.
He fixed my window and listened to me whine about Whit and helped me write a note to my parents saying I’d be sleeping over at whoever’s house. Plus, he brought me a Diet Coke—in a bottle, not a can, but still—and smilingly suffered through several outfit changes, a few micro-meltdowns, and a couple of self-pitying rants. And throughout it all James happily took the bait when I fished for compliments or sympathy and basically acted like a real boyfriend. And I guess I acted like a real girlfriend too: manic and nuts as hell.

Eventually I locked up the house and turned off the lights and we hit the road. Once we were on the highway to Joshua Tree, James let me lay my head in his lap and I drifted off. Sometimes I’d wake up from five minutes of sleep and feel him lightly stroking the side of my face. Or I’d come to on my back, looking up at him looking straight ahead into the night, the window cracked with the wind blowing in, like a man just taking his woman out to the desert for some romance.

Unfortunately, my chance for romance had cut off somewhere between five and five fifteen this morning. This wasn’t even a business trip. This was like a shakedown-Libby-or-bust kind of thing. Blah-blah or die trying.

We were only a few exits from Aunt Lynn’s when I roused myself, stretching my sore neck. I tried to remind myself why we were here.

“You know, Libby wasn’t exactly easy to talk to even when she was normal,” I said, searching under the car seat for my shoes.

“Don’t worry.”

“Well I’m, like, only
completely
worried.”

“You said she was okay.”

“I said ‘sort of okay.’” That was still being generous. “What are you going to ask her?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What if she won’t talk to us? Or what if she sees you and has some insane post-torture flashback and starts screaming or crying or something?”

“Why would I mean anything to her? She’s barely met me.”

“Oh, you know you all look alike.”

“That’s prejudiced. That’s like pulse profiling.” He raised his eyebrows.

“And that’s, like, a Whit joke.”

I noticed James grip the steering wheel tighter, but he said nothing.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

In some ways James was still a typical teenage dude. I sighed. “What, James?”

“Nothing.” But he didn’t mean nothing. “You and Whit really messed things up.”

“But we were successful,” I said. It seemed like an important detail to stress.

And finally we were there: the semicircle dirt driveway, the softly lit adobe house, the wide front porch with the potted cacti and wind chimes and bench-seat swing. The lonely dark desert, littered with crooked, creepy Joshua trees.

We got out and headed toward the front door.

Then James said, “What do you consider successful?”

I swallowed hard. Point taken. I’ll let you know the answer to that one once I’ve reunited with my possibly comatose, most likely deranged, ex-best friend.

I hadn’t called in advance—which I only thought of after we’d knocked on the door—but for some reason Aunt Lynn didn’t seem remotely surprised to see us. She just bustled us in, offered us herbal tea, pomegranate seeds, edamame, hot wash towels. While we hovered in the living room she casually related the story of calling Stella, telling her sister that Libby had just come out for an impromptu desert relaxation retreat to help sprout alfalfa, make candles, and plant succulents. Then a gust of wind rattled the wind chimes, reminding me of why we were here: to scavenge the clangy, chimey recesses of Libby’s mind.

“Is Libby awake?” I asked. It was only ten thirty p.m., but who knew?

“She is; she’s reading out back. She’ll be so happy you’re here.” Lynn didn’t beam the same radiant light anymore. There was a slight sadness in her that I’d put there by dropping Libby in her lap. “You can go through the side gate next to the house.”

We nodded, and she patted my hand and left to tend to the teapot, feed the cat.

Outside everything was quiet except for a faint breeze. There were a thousand stars. We walked around on a pebble pathway that led through a gate into the back. The sound of our feet on the gravel was too intense, too suspenseful. I tried to walk lighter, but James urged me forward.

Past the house was a small open cabana area with some tables and chairs under a trellis-style roof. Seated in one of the chairs, facing away into the desert, was the silhouette of a figure shaped like Libby, long and lean. As we got closer I squinted my eyes to see in the direction she was staring. There was nothing out there. Sand. Shrubs. Joshua trees.

When we were by Libby’s table standing next to her, James gestured for me to speak, but I didn’t have anything to say. How could I expect her to remember me when remembering her was this hard?

“Libs, hi,” I said, sitting in the chair next to her.

She was Libby and she wasn’t. Her face looked severe,
starved, like she hadn’t eaten in a month. And the skin around her eyes was faded and gray, colorless. Someone who didn’t know her that well might’ve thought she just looked tired. But that wasn’t it. Libby looked tired after our five-day camping trip in the eighth grade. She looked tired in the morning after every really great party, after cramming for exams, after that week we thought we had mono but it was just food poisoning from some nasty sushi. This was something more, worse, different. I didn’t know what this was.