Flicker & Burn: A Cold Fury Novel (5 page)

“Sara Jane,” Doug said quietly, “it’s okay.”

But now all of those things felt remote and even childish compared to my genetic destiny of furious Jekyll and electrical Hyde awakening inside my cells, body, and brain, and I couldn’t see any way to avoid it or any reason to—

“Come here,” Doug said, pulling me close, holding me like a panda bear embracing a kitten. “Calm down,” he whispered. I sat back, wiped my face, and told him everything—Uncle Nicky, my ancestors, my own DNA predisposition toward murder. Instead of the usual Doug Stuffins’s analysis of unbelievable facts, he said softly, “That’s complete bullshit.”

“What?” I snuffled.

“This isn’t some crappy movie, Sara Jane. Some fantasy about kids who are witches or magical douchebags shooting lightning bolts from their fingertips,” he said. “This is real life, your life. You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be.”

“But Uncle Nicky . . .”

“Uncle Nicky was a psycho for hire. You’re not.”

“The electricity. You saw the windows!”

“I don’t know about that. I got a C minus in science, so don’t ask me,” he said. “Listen, after my dickweed father deserted my mom and me, she came out of her vodka stupor just long enough to see that I was eating my anxiety. You think I’m fat now?” He shook his head and said, “She sent me to a shrink. I lasted a session and a half and then quit because the guy said something so true, it scared the shit out of me.”

“What’s that?”

“The dude looked at me and said, and I quote, ‘Douglas, in the end, it doesn’t matter who your family is or what they’ve done or not done for you. As you become an adult,
only you
are responsible for who you become.’” He shook his head, saying, “I couldn’t handle it. Still can’t. But I know it’s true. No one but me chooses Munchitos over a Stairmaster. It’s not my fate to be overweight and alone. It’s a choice.”

“Then why do you do it?” I asked quietly.

“Because it’s easy and I’m weak,” he said, holding my gaze. “But you’re not.”

I bit my lip, shaking my head. “A couple of days ago. On the bridge, I almost . . . I thought about . . .” I felt tears inching down my cheek like cold snails. I was so ashamed of myself that the words wouldn’t come. “I’m just so tired.”

“It’s late.”

“I don’t mean that kind of tired.”

“I know,” he said. “Look, I can’t make you feel any other way than how you feel. I can only tell you two things. First, you don’t know what’s true about your family and what’s not because they’re not here to ask. It’s the same with
‘Volta.’
Wherever that vault is, whatever the inscription on the brass key means, there’s no one to ask, so we’re going to have to figure it out ourselves. Second, if you kill yourself, I will too.”

“What? Doug, that’s crazy.”

“I mean it. Just like I can’t make you feel differently, I also can’t make you
not
do it,” he said. “But I can do for you what you did for me, which is make you think before you do something stupid. And what I want you to think about is, if you kill yourself, you’ll kill me too, because I’ll follow you. You’re all I have. If I lose you, I lose everything, so I might as well die.”

“No.”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed. “There. We just made a suicide pact. So think hard, Sara Jane.”

I tried to remove my hand, but he held tight. And I looked at him, seeing the truth in his eyes. “Okay, Doug,” I whispered. “Okay.”

Harry gave a tentative bark from the terrace door and segued into a walking whine, circling before sitting between us. Doug scratched the little greyhound’s ears, and I extended a hand. Harry looked at me intently, like trying to read my mind, and then his gaze softened and he placed a paw in my palm, just once, a brief touch, and turned back to his darling Doug. As he massaged Harry’s bony spine, he said, “
Gone with the Wind
? Scarlett O’Hara lost her home, family, that goofy nerd she loved, Ashley. And then she sort of gets it all back when she marries the guy with the mustache . . .”

“Rhett Butler,” I murmured.

“But then he realizes what a bitch she is and leaves her. It’s that ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’ scene. First Scarlett’s weeping and falling apart, and then boom, she’s made of iron. She’s going to keep rolling until everything works out. Her last line, remember? ‘Tomorrow is another day.’”

“Yeah. Right.”

“I don’t really like the movie. The glorification of the Confederacy is actually pretty creepy,” Doug said, rising and carrying Harry toward the door. “But Scarlett had a point. In fact, second heads-up . . . tomorrow’s the first day of school.”

“I know, I know,” I said, my stomach flipping as I thought of Max. It would be the first time we’d seen each other all summer. Of course we’d spoken on the phone. But to be safe, I never kept a cell for long, ditching the disposables in Lake Michigan at regular intervals and then activating a new one and blaming my lousy carrier. The fact that he’d been in Chicago for a day or two and we hadn’t spoken yet wasn’t unusual; actually, it made the anticipation of seeing him even greater. I sat up straight, feeling the encouraging nudge of something like hope, and said, “I can’t wait.”

“No jumping,” Doug said with a yawn. “I’m too tired to follow.”

Watching him shuffle away, I realized that he picked the wrong movie analogy. Instead of
Gone with the Wind,
my life was
Jaws,
dominated by the frenetic intensity of a great white shark.

Then again, tomorrow really was another day, and at least I’d be there to see it.

THE LESSON DRILLED INTO MY HEAD SINCE THE
day I was born—gently by my mom, urgently by my dad, in a singsong voice by Grandma Ottorina, with a raised eyebrow by Grandpa Enzo—was that a Rispoli never, ever draws attention to herself.

I know now that it came from our place in the Outfit; anyone who wasn’t on guard was, in the words of Grandpa Enzo,
una testa di nocca
—a knucklehead. We were demonstrative at home (no one can hug and kiss like a Rispoli) but retained poker faces in public. Holding our feelings close to the vest was an ingrained defensive tactic, and as my parents and Lou have drifted further away and sinister elements have crowded in, I’ve become even more insular and withdrawn. Any expression of emotion, especially on the street, feels like I’m begging to be attacked, which is how I was able to refrain from making a spectacle of myself on the first day of school.

I didn’t want to hold back. I wanted to explode but held my emotions in check.

I saw Max in front of his locker at the end of the jostling hallway and gritted my teeth trying not to spin into a running-screaming-hugging whirlwind.

He was California tan, brown hair a sun-bleached blond, and he seemed taller. And then he turned toward me with a smile that made me forget the last electrical, suicidal twenty-four hours. He eased through the crowd, and when he embraced me and didn’t let go, I wanted to cry. For an instant it felt like my family was at home and ice cream creatures were a silly nightmare. He looked down with his trademark grin, and before I could say anything, he leaned in and kissed me. The public display of affection set off internal alarm bells as a thought emerged—
This is probably as dangerous for him as it is for me
—but quickly faded as he wrapped his arms around me. “I’ve been waiting for two months to do that,” he said.

“Me too, for that to be done to me,” I said. “For you to do that. You know what I mean, right?”

“I always know what you mean,” he said with a smile, reminding me of the talk we had the evening before he left for L.A.

It had been a balmy night in June, just before dusk, and we’d ridden his motorcycle to Hollywood Avenue beach. Initially, we’d both been hesitant to start a real relationship. Max’s reason had to do with his parents’ divorce, which made him feel unsettled. And me? I was bottled up with dangerous secrets about my family and the Outfit; I couldn’t tell him anything for fear of putting him in danger. But then a couple of months passed and we kept talking, kept finding opportunities to be together, and soon we were a couple. Now he was leaving for the summer, and it was such an odd time for me, having endured the attacks of Elzy and Poor Kevin and then losing a connection to my family when Lou disappeared from the Ferris wheel. With Max about to leave, I’d never felt so alone. We sat on a blanket watching Lake Michigan turn gold from the setting sun, me hugging my knees, him with an arm around my shoulders. My feelings must’ve been etched on my face, because he glanced over and said, “Yeah. Me too.”

I put on a smile. “It’s only a couple months. You’ll be back really soon.”

He nodded silently, and said, “Hey . . . I stopped on Argyle Street and got a banh mi. I left it in the carrier on my motorcycle. We can dine by sunset.” He stood, touched my head, and walked away. As he did, the blanket buzzed. I moved it aside and saw his phone, which had slipped from his pocket. Against my better judgment, I lifted it and looked at a floating text box from someone named Chloe that read:

Still can’t believe ur going to Cali . . . so sad . . .

My gut felt like it was flooded with ice water, and the phone trembled in my hand. The suspicion I’d always had—that Max would dump me—made my index finger scroll up to the previous text, from Max to Chloe.

This has got to stop, Chloe. Not good for me or u.

And the previous one from Chloe to him:

Remember the lake? Remember the private beach we found? Just the 2 of us . . .

And I was about to look at the one before that when Max said, “Uh . . . are you reading my messages?” He stood over me, holding a paper bag, his brow crinkled.

I looked from the phone to him and offered it up. “Chloe can’t believe you’re going to California,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “She’s taking it pretty hard.”

“Oh . . . shit,” he said, reading the text and rolling his eyes. He dropped to his knees on the blanket, stared at the ground, and then wearily moved a lock of brown curly hair from his eyes. “Okay, look,” he said. “So . . . um . . . I cheated.” I nodded slowly and began to rise without a word because I’d cry if I spoke, and I refused to do that in front of him. Max grabbed my arm, but I pulled away. Then he did it again, harder, and I sat back as he said, “Not with her! I cheated with
you,
Sara Jane! I cheated
on
Chloe.” I thumbed away tears and looked into his face, pinched and troubled, as he said, “When you and I first met, I said I needed some time before we really started dating because of my parents breaking up. That was true . . . but not the whole truth.”

The other part was that he was still seeing Chloe, his girlfriend in the suburbs.

Even before he’d moved back to Chicago with his mom, his feelings for Chloe were changing—“fading,” as Max said—and then he met me again. “And that was it,” he said. “The whole ‘love at first sight’ thing . . . what does Doug call it in movies, the ‘world slows down’ moment? It wasn’t like that.” He shrugged. “But there was love in it, right from the start.” He held my gaze even as the hint of a blush touched at his neck. “And then there was more and more, and here we are.”

About a month after we met, he tried to end it with Chloe, but she’d gotten upset, made disturbing noises about hurting herself, and he backed off. “I should’ve gotten it over with, but to be honest, it was easier to let it linger,” he said. “The divorce, getting used to Chicago and a new school . . . Chloe was one more thing to deal with, and I didn’t. Instead I got closer to you and called her less and less. And then she ate a bunch of pills. I just . . . I didn’t think she was serious.” Luckily she recovered, and when the crisis was over, Max told her about me. Therapy helped Chloe move on, but now and then she started a text conversation, asking about Max’s life, talking about the past. He held the phone out. “Here, read the whole conversation. Call her if you want and ask about it. She’s sort of stalkerish but Chloe’s a good person. She won’t lie.”

I pushed it back. “Would you have told me if I hadn’t seen the text?”

He was quiet a moment. “No. Probably not.”

It was a disturbingly honest answer that made me sad and a little angry, but mostly curious. “Why?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t want you to think I was an asshole for stringing her along. I mean, I was, I admit that.” He sighed. “But not telling you about it doesn’t make it less true. Some things are just over, you know? They don’t have anything to do with now.”

I couldn’t have agreed less.

I’d learned the hard way that events of the past led directly to the present, and I was about to say so when Max spoke first. He touched my hand and I let him. “If anything existed between me and Chloe, if I was holding back or hiding something about right now, the present, then you’d have every right to hate me and not trust me. Because I wouldn’t be the person you thought I was. But that’s not what this is.”

That’s exactly what it was, but it wasn’t his fault.

My whole relationship with Max was based on one long lie by omission—how could I not expect him to have secrets of his own? It was the ultimate moment to tell him everything in a way that might save him from hating me, but I paused. Max must’ve interpreted my silence as deliberation, when in fact it was cowardice. Again, he spoke first, saying, “I’m a normal person, Sara Jane, with faults like anyone else. What I did to Chloe was wrong, but it had one good effect—it made me resolve never to lie to you. I promise.”

“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” I mumbled honestly, since I was the one who felt like a fraud. So I spoke about myself instead, adding, “Except . . . except it would be great if everything could always be up front and perfect, but it can’t be, because . . . because . . .”

“Because we’re not little kids. And this is real life,” he said.

I nodded slowly and stared across the lake as Max put his arm around me again. “So,” he asked, “are we okay?”

“Yeah. We are,” I said, happy to answer in the affirmative but aware that it was more than partly wishful thinking.

“You know I’m all in, right?” he said. “There’s no one else I want to be with. In some ways I know you better than any person in the world, and in others, there’s so much about you I don’t. It’s cool that we still have so much to learn about each other.”

“Yeah. So much . . .”

“Just promise me one thing while I’m gone, okay?”

I turned to him, resting my head on my knee. “What?”

“Have a really boring summer.” He grinned, placing a hand gently on my face and kissing me.

And now he was kissing me again, holding me tightly as kids streamed past on their way to first period, when a deep voice said, “Break it up, Romeo and Juliet. Get to class, now.” We turned to a large, stone-faced security guard, smiled weakly, and walked away holding hands. With cameras and metal detectors at every entrance, Fep Prep is run like a scholarly penitentiary. It was a Chicago thing, a big-city, urban thing after guns began popping up in lockers in the 1990s in even the best schools. The threat of random violence was regarded as inevitable, even if nothing ever happened, and at Fep Prep it hadn’t. Still, that didn’t affect the security rhythm of the school, which was basically locked down at all times. Beginning today, for almost a whole year, I’d be sheltered, watched, and protected seven hours a day.

Even better, Max and I would be together in that bubble of safety every day.

For the entire first week of school, I was the supportive, affectionate girlfriend he deserved. We met each morning at Bump ‘N’ Grind for espresso, ate lunch together, and hung out after class, and I even managed to have dinner with him in Greektown without looking over my shoulder every five seconds.

Most of all, I listened.

I’d been consumed by my secret life before he left for California, but now I gave him undivided attention. That’s how I learned his summer was spent splashing around a pool with his dad’s new stepsons (ten-year-old twins), and that after a couple of weeks he was thoroughly depressed. He’d left me behind to reconnect with his dad, but instead became a de facto babysitter. His dad left early for work each day and then, at around ten a.m., his stepmom slid on huge sunglasses and asked Max if he minded watching the boys. All he could say was okay, and she waved as she backed out in a Mercedes convertible and didn’t return for hours. She and his dad were good together; in fact, his father seemed so happy in a new life with a new family that Max felt like an interloper, and wondered what the hell he was doing there. Max being Max, he asked his dad using those very same words.

To his surprise, his dad apologized profusely.

It turned out that he and his wife hoped that time alone would help Max bond with his stepbrothers, and that she was actually a little intimidated by him. She’d stayed away each day longer than intended, nervous about being compared to his mom. In fact, she and the twins liked Max a lot, and he liked them, and once it was all out in the open they came together as a patchwork family. Max had important, overdue talks with his dad about the divorce, about his dad’s abrupt departure from Chicago, and about feeling deserted by him. As Max told me, they still had a few miles to go before things were okay, but by the time summer ended, it was actually tough for him to leave.

“Then I thought of you,” Max said, squeezing my hand, “and it was easy.”

I smiled, unable to repress a twinge of jealousy at Max having two families, or at least one and a half, while I had none. And then he asked me what I’d done all summer. At first I bobbed and weaved around the question like the boxer I am, explaining how the details would bore him, and that all I wanted was to spend time together. During that first week of school, I’d enjoyed healthy doses of peace and affection, and even the creatures receded (which should’ve set off alarm bells). I was lulled into thinking that maybe I could enjoy a semi-normal existence. So when Max asked again what I’d been up to while he was gone, I decided to tell the truth as well as I could. “I ran a lot,” I said, omitting that it had been from creatures, and added, “and I read a ton,” thinking of the countless times I combed the notebook. “Also, I hung out with Doug almost every day.”

Max nodded and asked, “What about your family?”

“Um, well, you know how summer is. People get busy,” I said with a shrug. “It’s like I didn’t see them at all.” He looked at me suspiciously, since it sounded like I was holding back information. I ran, read, hung out with Doug, and didn’t see my family? That’s it? The doubt in Max’s eyes, the idea that he had even the slightest negative thought toward me, was scary. I stumbled past it, asking too loudly if Doug told him what the theme was this week in Classic Movie Club.

“He didn’t mention it,” Max said, avoiding my gaze.

I took his hand and squeezed it like he does to mine. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Whatever it is, as long as we’re watching together, it will be great.”

“Yeah. You’re right,” he said, looking at me with a grin in place. “Or if not great, then at least interesting,” he added, “since Roger Ebert Jr. is in charge.” I’d handed leadership of the Classic Movie Club to Doug this year (Doug, Max, and I were still, pathetically, its only members), and he’d proclaimed that we would view films based on themes of his choice, instituted at his whim. In the past, his obsessions shifted between actors, genres, and directors, but now they were based solely on finding my family—basically, everything we watched was research. Of course, Max didn’t know this, and Doug would never give it away. Instead, he framed the series of three movies (the club normally met Monday, Wednesday and Friday) by theme. For the first week of school, it was “Disappearance.” We watched
The Lady Vanishes
from 1938,
Frantic
from 1988, and finally
L’Avventura
from 1960.