The Epidemic (27 page)

Reed moved to a place across town with Shep. He’d been staying at a Best Western downtown, but Marie wanted him to keep an eye on Shep since he’s only fourteen. But Reed says his roommate barely looks up from his phone, and when he does, it’s to be sarcastic.

“It’s like living with a younger version of me,” Reed says, yanking off his black jacket before tossing it on the chair. “Except terrible and not at all awesome. Please fucking save me,” he adds, and sits at a table near the window.

Aaron laughs, lounging back on one of the beds while I sit cross-legged on the other. “Sorry, man,” Aaron says. “I only got a double bed, and you look like a snuggler.”

Reed smiles. “Oh, I am.” He begins to sort our latest pile of vending-machine food on the table, picking through until he finds a pink Sno Ball. He tears open the plastic wrapper and takes a bite, flakes of flavored coconut dusting the chest of his blue Nike T-shirt. “I feel disgusting eating this,” he says with a full mouth. “I’ll have to find a gym later.”

“Wrong crowd,” I say. “In fact I don’t think Aaron has ever seen the inside of a gym.”

Aaron tsks, looking over at me like I’m crazy. “Please,” he says. “You think I get this good-looking naturally?”

“No,” I say, wide-eyed as if he’s wrong about the good-looking part.

Aaron cracks up and then asks Reed to throw him a bag of Doritos. As the two of them happily snack, I lie on my side, facing them. This is nice. I take a moment to enjoy it. I’ve lived
many lives, even if just short-term. I’ve met many people. On my last assignment I got a chance to hang out with regular people, and I liked it.

But here, now, I am myself. I’m a closer around other closers. I don’t think people can understand the freedom in that. These guys understand what my life is like, what my experiences are like. These are my people. These are my friends.

“What’s that about?” Reed asks, nodding at me. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

“No,” I say, smiling softly, “I’m right here. And don’t think I’m being weird, but . . . I’m glad we’re all together. I’m glad we’re all closers.”

Aaron and Reed exchange a glance, ready to play off my comment, but they don’t say a word. I think they realize it too. This is who we are, and together we don’t have to fake anything, pretend anything. Our souls can be stripped bare in the best kind of way.

Reed crumples up the empty cellophane packaging and tosses it into the trash. “You’re a nice person, Quinlan,” he says, licking the marshmallow off his fingers. “I’d like to say Hatcher doesn’t deserve you, but he probably does.”

“Naw, he don’t,” Aaron adds, and turns to give me a quick wink.

“Since we’re sharing,” I say, digging into a wound he opened earlier, “can I ask you something, Reed? You mentioned the other day that my dad tried to bribe you?”

Reed scrunches his nose, looking embarrassed. “Sorry,”
he says. “I shouldn’t have told you that. It wasn’t a huge deal, mostly just a passing mention. But on the bright side, it’s good to know I didn’t take him up on the offer, right? You would have certainly fallen in love with me.”

“Did he say why?” I ask, ignoring his joke because my heart aches at the depth of my father’s manipulation. “Why he thought I needed you?”

“Not really,” Reed says with a shrug. “He just said you were lonely and that he was worried. And honestly, that’s normal. What we do? That’s
not
normal. Not at all.”

“But why you?” I ask.

“Ouch,” Reed says, putting his hand over his heart. “Maybe he knows I’m a catch, Quinn. Jesus.”

I laugh, admitting the slightly insulting tone of my question. I realize that Reed probably doesn’t know my father’s true motives, much like I don’t. Like I never will. And of course it makes me think of Marie, and how Deacon’s right: She’s probably hiding something. Knowing my track record, I wouldn’t have seen it until it was too late.

“Let’s change the subject,” Aaron calls out. “The last person I want to talk about is your father.” He looks sideways at me to let me know he doesn’t mean that cruelly.

“Agreed,” I say. I take a moment to sigh out a topic-cleansing breath. “Okay, Reed,” I start. “What do you do for fun when you’re not on assignment? And please don’t say work out.”

“I work out.” He grins and leans back in the chair. He
stretches his legs so that his sneakers rest on the side of the bed where Aaron’s lying, the soles of his shoes not actually touching the sheets. “But, yeah. I do other things too.”

“Like?” I ask.

“How detailed you want me to get, Quinn?” he asks, as if daring me.

“Well, we’re trapped in this motel for a little longer, so I guess you could tell me all of it.”

Aaron sits forward, hitching up the side of his mouth like he’s waiting to hear something juicy. Life stories—we just can’t get enough of them.

As I figured, Reed comes alive at our interest, not exactly unattractive in his need for attention. It’s weirdly endearing.

“Okay, yes—there was a girl,” he says, as if that’s my real question. It isn’t, but no need to burst his ego bubble. “A few girls,” he corrects, “but only one that mattered.”

“Uh, they all matter, Reed,” I say, making sure he’s not about to go locker room on me.

He laughs. “Sorry, not what I meant,” he says, holding up his hands. “There’s only one girl that I
loved
.” His expression softens. “One I won’t forget.”

“Aw . . . ,” Aaron says, tilting his head when he looks at me. “My insides feel all tingly.”

Reed snatches a package of peanut butter crackers and throws them at Aaron’s head, purposely missing him. He’s smiling, though, knowing that Aaron has a girlfriend with whom he readily admits he is stupidly in love.

“I had a girl once,” Aaron says, pretending to sound forlorn. “But then I left her in Idaho, and I’m pretty sure that by the time I get back to her, she’ll hate my guts.” He looks at me. “Thanks, Quinn,” he sings out.

“Hey!” I say, feeling incredibly guilty. “She’ll forgive you. She always does.”

“Better be right,” he responds. “Enough about my relationship, though. I think Reed was about to get deep with us.”

“Whatever,” Reed says as Aaron chuckles. “Nothing left to tell. It’s over now. Instead, here I am stuck with you guys. Such is life.”

“That was incredibly vague,” I tell him. “I thought I was getting details.”

Reed’s expression falters as the closer part of him falls away. His pain shines through. “I’m not sure it’s the right story for the mood we want now,” he says, holding my gaze. There’s a touch of fear in his eyes, like after the volleyball game. Maybe it’s been there since.

Sometimes you can know a conversation is disingenuous, but you’ll buy into it anyway—like polite small talk. Like the way people will tiptoe around a subject they want to avoid. I once worked with a family who would change the topic of death to one of birth nearly every time. It was a tic, one I came to understand. They replaced the bad memory with a positive one. They adjusted.

Reed, Aaron, and I are here in a motel room, trying to forget, even though we obviously can’t. We’re trying anyway,
stubbornly. Reed’s story is going to be sad; it will pull us out of our illusion. But all at once I decide I want to hear about his pain. I want to
feel
it. I want to stop pretending.

“Tell me,” I say simply. Across from me Aaron’s expression grows somber, and the veil around us drops completely. Our motel room is dim and poorly lit, and these closers are sad and scared. We have nothing left but our past, and only a small bit of that actually belongs to us.

Reed swallows hard, nodding his chin like he agrees to go on. “She was my assignment’s sister,” he says. “And before you say anything—I know. Unethical doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

I’m not judging him. He has no idea that I thought I was in love with my assignment’s boyfriend. “Okay,” I say, not willing to delve into my own failings as a closer. Aaron doesn’t out me either.

“It didn’t start as anything,” Reed says, watching the toes of his sneakers. “In fact she was completely uninterested in the process. For the first two days she wouldn’t even sleep under the same roof. It was Sunday night, and I was leaving in the morning, when there was a knock on my bedroom door. When I opened it, she was standing there like her world had just collapsed. She asked if she could come in, and it was the first time I actually looked at her. I tried not to,” he says, “since I was supposed to act like her brother, but I thought she was beautiful.

“The minute I opened my mouth to talk,” he continues, “she asked me to stop. Asked me to be myself or she would leave. And . . . I didn’t want her to. It was right at the end of the assignment—that feeling, you know?” He taps his chest and
looks from me to Aaron. “That feeling like it’s all ending, you’re ending. It’s too fucked up to explain.”

“I get it,” I tell Reed, watching as he starts to unravel the carefully crafted exterior he’s shown us until now. “I’ve been there. Truly.”

He presses his lips in a grateful smile. “Katy and I ended up talking all night,” he continues. “I told her my real name, and she asked all sorts of questions about closers. I don’t think we mentioned her brother once. The next morning, before I left, I stopped at her door to say good-bye, but she was gone. She never wanted to be part of the closure; she’d already made her peace before I got there.”

Reed exhales. “I’d been home two weeks when she showed up at my apartment,” he says. “She’d tracked me down because I’d given her my name.”

“Dude,” Aaron says, shaking his head. “Closer 101.”

“Yeah, I know. It was stupid. I can’t believe Marie didn’t find out, to be honest. She must have been having an off week.”

“What happened after that?” I ask. “How did you . . . make it work? It’s a pretty bizarre set of circumstances.”

“The way all terrible ideas work,” Reed says. “We snuck around. At first we tried to be friends. But a few nights in the backseat of my car . . .”

“Ew,” I say, making him laugh. “I sat back there.”

“I’ve had it detailed since,” he jokes. “But for real, we had a good thing. Katy wasn’t a closer, but it was like she understood. It’s strange, but . . . I’ve been noticing that. Lately I meet people
who are good at disguising themselves—regular people. Although some seem to be getting weaker, a few others are getting stronger. Guess it all depends on how a person reacts to tragedy.”

“I’ve seen the same,” Aaron says. “It’s like there’s a divide between those who can hack it and those who can’t.” He looks over at me. “It’s like closers are predisposed to handle the disappointments of life. They’re trying to be like us.”

“This isn’t life,” I tell him, nodding toward the window. “What’s happening out there is a mass hysteria being fed by a delusional doctor.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Aaron says. “Or maybe our way of life is how they can avoid it. Never get attached—right, Quinn?” He says it like a mantra, one that we sucked at following. It’s our biggest failing and, at the same time, our greatest quality.

I turn back to Reed. “What happened to her?” I ask.

“Katy?” he says, seeming lost in his thoughts. “Oh, well . . . she died. She, uh . . . yeah. She died in a boating accident a few months later. Of course . . . she was on the boat alone. She . . .” He swallows hard and lowers his eyes. “She killed herself.”

My lips part in surprise, and I think about her poor family. They lost two children—how does one recover from that? Is that what will happen if the epidemic gets worse?

“I couldn’t go to the funeral for fear her parents would see me,” Reed says. “It would have compromised their healing, and I couldn’t make it worse for them.” His cheeks pale, and tears dull his blue eyes. “I loved her, you know,” he says quietly. “God, I
still
love her. We were going to leave town when I
finished my contract, use the money to go to college. She was going to be a teacher. The money was always for her.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, although I know it’s not enough, and I know it doesn’t matter if I say it. It doesn’t change a damn thing.

“I think the worst part was keeping her a secret,” he adds. “Even more so after she was dead. I was pulled from my next assignment, stuck in therapy by Marie for three weeks because they said I was acting erratically. Do you have any idea how hard it is to lie to them? To find a way to evade the chemicals in their truth tea? I did it, though,” he says. “Not because I had to—Katy was already dead. I lied because she was mine, and I didn’t want them to have her. She was my secret.”

The air in the room has grown heavy, and Reed drops his feet to the floor and leans forward, his elbows on his knees as he rests his head in his hands, his fingers shielding his tears. I realize then that he’s never told that story before; he had no idea how much it would hurt.

I get up and go over to where Reed is sitting and bend down to wrap my arms around his shoulders. He doesn’t hug me back, but he does turn his face against my side. We stay like that a moment; when he pulls back, his eyes are red and watery.

“We should have been friends sooner, McKee,” he says, looking up at me.

“We are now,” I say. “And at least now is real.”

Reed smiles sadly. “Sometimes.”

And the three of us fall quiet after that, alone in this little motel room. Lonely in the life that we’ve made for ourselves.

REED GOES INTO THE BATHROOM
and splashes water on his face while Aaron and I sit quietly in the room. I’m worried that Deacon hasn’t texted yet. I told Aaron about Deacon’s plan when he first arrived and it caused a permanent crease between his brows. But when I look over now, Aaron seems to read my thoughts and tells me to wait a little while longer before getting really worried. Luckily, I have my own plan on how to get information.

When the water turns off, I look over at Aaron and find him watching me. He waits a beat and then laughs to himself.

“You’re thinking,” he says.

“You’re right,” I tell him. Reed walks out of the bathroom, wiping a towel over his face, and notices our demeanor.

He stops abruptly and groans. “What are you about to
make me do?” he asks, and tosses the white towel back over his shoulder onto the bathroom floor.