Drowning in You (15 page)

In a cruel twist, Walter has a
window in his room. Although only four storys from the road, it’s
high enough to see across corporate buildings and the shopping mall
is more visible from here than from any other height in town.
Colorful banners of half-naked chicks supposedly selling clothing
hang off the sides and other smaller banners display brand names in
electric colors. The overhead wires from the underground train line
criss-cross the sky farther away, where a sea of cars is shoved
into a tight parking lot. Roads, pedestrians on the sidewalk,
strollers filled with babies, angry drivers honking their
horns.

There’s a mini
world outside of Walter May’s window and all the money he has won’t
pay for him to wake up to see this. Not right now, anyway. I freeze
and turn, but he’s still asleep,
of
course
, so I clamp my hands on the glass in
front of me. The coolness from the window is at war with my flesh,
which feels like it’s burning up against it.

Looking down to the road below,
I say, “I’m in love with Charz, Walter. I’m not sure I know what
love is but I swear to God she’s an explosion in my heart of every
type of emotion. And I’m learning what love means to me through
her.

“
She was my
crush from childhood. The young me wouldn’t have believed it if I
said she’s the one I think about when I picture my life in a decade
or two or three. But she is. She’s everything unhealthy about an
addiction because I can’t have her now more than ever, but I can’t
get her out of my head. You’re not angry, are you?”

I glance over
my shoulder. He’s still ignoring me, the bastard. “Okay, good.
Fine. Well, I thought I couldn’t have her at sixteen because she
was too rich and cute. I thought I couldn’t have her at seventeen
because she had the legs of a model and the heart of an angel. Now
at twenty she’s still just as classy, and she’s finally interested
in me. Ain’t it funny how that doesn’t matter anymore because it
feels wrong having her want me, want
this
.

“
I’ve got
myself good this time.” I slide my hands down a fraction and the
imprint of where I was on the glass is a hot, cloudy outline. The
new bit of window is fresh and just as cool against my palms.
“Please make me unlove her because I can’t love her with everything
going on, and not being with her is hurting us both. And I wouldn’t
want her to get involved with a guy like me because Charz deserves
to be treated like she’s the only girl on the planet. That when I
look at her—”

A dark feeling crawls over my
body, a shadow of dread. There’s something else in this room and I
can feel it through the prickles at the base of my neck. I can’t
turn around.

But then I’ve spun around and
the rest of my sentence spills out as I stare at Charz pawing at
the glass of the door. “—I’ve never felt this way about anyone in
my entire life.”

Frozen all over, I don’t
remember darting out of the hospital, but I remember her face when
I met her at the door. That look of absolute confusion.

And a wound of dread opens up
inside of me, thinking that maybe she’d heard my confession.

14. Deadly or Delicious?

Charlee

No one saw Dexter walk in.
Apparently. Dad wasn’t scheduled for a check-up so nurses and
doctors didn’t have a reason to go in either.

I’m scrambling for answers.
This happens when I swim. Too much time to think.

When I touch the wall, I look
at the sixty-second time clock and decide to do a set of butterfly.
A third of the way through the set my body regrets the decision,
and I’m thinking push, push, push so hard that my tongue aches from
repeating the line. By the second-last sprint, I’m heaving so hard
my throat hurts, and my chest feels bigger every time I gulp down
air. I think I die during the sprint; my legs are lead, my arms are
spaghetti made of lead, and my abs are so stiff they ache, even
when I gasp at the air.

Why do I do
this to myself
, I think. Didn’t I quit
competitive racing for this reason? For a full minute, butt
prickled by the rough edge of the pool and shoulders hunched over,
elbows resting on my thighs, I try to remember what I was thinking
before I pushed my body through training.

Oh, Dex. I did
this to
not
remember. I wish I told him he shouldn’t care so much about
what others think. I wish I told him it would be easier if he were
mine because I could tell him how cowardly those guys were to call
him guilty and to attack him when two official investigations
called Mason’s an accident. Plus, Dex is too consumed by his guilt
to have been a careless criminal. I wish I said a lot to Dex, but I
never seem to say much of the important stuff.

With my dad, though—I just
don’t get it. Dex seemed to be talking to Dad from what I saw. But
I would bet my last dollar Dad was still out of it. He’d fallen
into a pattern of being awake only a few hours a day, according to
the nurses, and he was struggling to make it through full
conversations with me.

And I
know
I saw his eyes
closed the entire couple of minutes I watched them. The oddest
thing was Dex’s body language. The way Dex clung to that
window—trying to melt into it? Trying to slip through the other
side where he’d plummet to the ground?—it made the conversation
seem serious.

Dex’s body
language shocks me because I’ve only ever seen Dex seem tall and
confident, but the way he fell into that glass, talking to Dad over
his shoulder as if checking my father hadn’t died on him
mid-sentence, sparked thoughts of everything I am. Of how I prefer
to sideline confrontation. When I’m trying to blend into a group of
people, or turn into the shade Off White so the wall can’t tell
itself apart from me, it’s because I don’t want to cause trouble.
Dex
is
trouble. In
my history, Dex hasn’t shied away from girls, gyms or arguments. I
deflect conversations that turn down paths I refuse to follow…and
now this damn pool.

I decide it’s enough. That I am
sick of swimming, and swimming is horrible for someone like me.
There’s only one towel left in the linen cupboard in the corner of
the pool house. I pluck it out, have to dust off the layer of dirt
collected on top, and then smack it a few more times to be sure.
Mom never let the towel supply run this short. I don’t know if I’ve
ever used this one before.

Since I’m not with friends I do
the dorky thing of wrapping it over my shoulders and cuddle the
ends of the towel into my chest. But I’m not done. I go curl up in
my favorite deck chair. The tongues of steam licking halfway up the
room are a tease. I imagine the heat being leached from Dad’s
once-pink skin, turning it gray and then yellow.

Steam indicates heat but
there’s nothing remotely warm about this room. The steam shouldn’t
be fogging the windows of the pool house when I’m shaking like
this. Because it’s quite cold. Because everything feels like a
lie.

I try to find a comfortable
position in the chair, finally tucking my knees up to my chin and
clutching the towel around myself. I start the cycle of using my
body heat to warm my toes up inside the towel. I duck my head under
the material, so only a few fingers are outside of my makeshift
oven. The air is steamy in seconds, the chlorine heavier in the air
between my legs and lips, but I sit and just breathe until finally
I feel too warm.

As soon as I stand, I’m
shivering.

I almost—almost—swear to God to
make up his mind about the temperature, but I catch my thought
before it’s too late.

The windows are still fogged. I
dance my fingers on the water’s surface and it’s still the same
temperature. I glide my hands through my hair and squeeze out the
ends over my shoulder. A splash of water lands on the rough tiles
of the pool house. But the water slipping over my fingers is warm,
too.

I’m losing my mind. That’s the
real issue, I deduce, after three miles of training and ten minutes
of rocking on my deck chair, cuddling my towel around my knees like
a baby.

I turn off the heat to the
pool, dry myself and pull on fresh cotton shorts and a tank top. I
scoop my hair into a messy bun on top of my head and make sure to
comb out any loops so I won’t be tempted to pick at them.

Once my laptop boots up, I walk
back to the pool house. Because I left the outside door open, most
of the steam has been replaced with slithers of a chill if I move
to the wrong area. I shut the door, satisfied my laptop won’t drown
from the humidity. Actually, I’m more bummed, because my laptop
fizzling to a quick, short-circuited death would have been my last
distraction.

But now? My computer is loaded
and Google’s white background emphasizes the colorful letters on
the homepage where a search box sits underneath.

I take a breath, close my eyes
and let my fingers touch the keys from memory.

When I open my eyes, “Dex” is
listed with a graph and results, a computer store and Wikipedia
page.

No
, I tell myself,
you’re not searching for your
Dex
.

Eyes open this time, I suck in
another breath and type “Dexter Hollingworth Mason’s Ski Resort
accident”.

This time, every result in my
screen is a related article.

* * *

Though there are news articles
above, the first link I click from the Google search is Dex’s
Facebook profile. I could tell myself that I am putting off
searching about the accident—and frankly, I am doing that, too—but
the fact is I’ve been obsessed with him and everything about his
history for far too long.

Out of all the things to click
on, I go to his photos first. Out of all the photos, I click on the
one of him at a beach where he’s wearing only a pair of cropped
khakis.

At first all I notice are the
tats. The ones I recognize, plus more I haven’t seen before. A
stretch of symbols frame his arms. They begin at his wrist and curl
around his hard muscles and wind up to his lean neck. Inch by inch,
I follow each line, each twist, each curve, and by the time I’m
done studying his tattoos, I feel dizzy and faint. Oh. That’d be
because I’ve twisted my neck so my head is nearly upside down to
view the horizontal pictures.

After some time I rub at my
stiff shoulders. I massage away the tension and when I see the
time, I realize just how long I’ve been ogling his half-naked body.
I’m surprised there isn’t drool on the keyboard.

And they say boys are bad.

I get up and stand in front of
my pantry, hoping to find something to eat. While I consider toast
with honey drizzled on it, I end up wondering what it’d be like to
drizzle honey over Dex’s rock hard abs—and lick it off. More than a
little bit mortified, I open the freezer looking for something to
cool me down (since I’m suddenly hot), but as I start to unwrap the
packaging of the ice cream… I can’t even describe how embarrassed I
am about imagining Dex as the ice cream.

Since it’s almost three, I go
to pick up Darcy from school. Focusing on driving and traffic and
such helps.

You’d think after a few weeks
of doing this since Darcy went back to school, pick-up trips would
feel normal.

They don’t. Mom would be the
one to pick Darcy up. She was the one who remembered what days he
needed his sports uniform, whereas I send him to school on sports
days with his normal uniform, and vice versa. I forget when he has
tests and projects and speeches and special performance days.

My brother is probably the
loser of his classmates.

In a different, mismatched way,
this is the same as Dex.

Dex would come back from lunch
to assemblies and I’d catch a whiff of smoke as he trudged past me,
heading to the back corner with his buddies. But most times he’d
bring a guitar to school and disappear into the music room at the
beginning of lunch. One or two of the little kids would walk in and
out of that door. Dex would only come back out a minute before the
bell, shoving a sandwich down his throat. When I sat in class I
would see his buddies across the court scribbling graffiti on a
building or bench. That stopped when I was fifteen because the kids
Dex hung out with had dropped out. Dex stayed all the way to
graduation.

I remember the last time I saw
him. I was still a year away from graduating, but I was invited to
go to one of the several senior prank day parties to celebrate the
end of exams and classes.

It was the first time I’d
played “I Never”.

Sitting behind my friend, an
appendage to the edge of the circle, Dex, like all the graduating
students, was too drunk to remember I was there.

“
I Never slept
with my best friend’s girlfriend.” Out of the thirty or thirty-five
playing the game, four guys downed a shot and two girls downed
their shots.

“
I Never
cheated on a test this year.” Some people checked out others first,
and after a while, a dozen people sucked down their shots. Dex’s
buddies both drank and other random people. But not Dex.

“
I’ve never
stole money from my parents.” I used up my one and only shot to
that. Thankfully I was hidden behind my friend anyway. Thirty-five
or whatever the number of the people playing minus two downed their
shots. There was a collective fit of gasps, coughs and laughs when
everyone realized how common something petty like this was. Only
Dex and a Mormon girl didn’t drink.

The honk of a
car horn brings me back to the present. Spotting a parking spot in
the lot, I focus my thoughts on being
here
, park my car and pick up Darcy
from his classroom. He’s a non-stop radio as I take him back to my
car. Topics: Dad, friends, Dad, Mom, school, sports,
Dad.