What Curiosity Kills (10 page)

  His eyes are deepened and darkened by pupils dilated by the night to leave only an outline of brown. His lips are crimsoned but not cracked by the cold. He extends a hand, the palm of which is as dirty as I imagine the soles of his bare feet to be.

  Mags says to him, "Are you crazy? Nobody's coming out there with you!"

  Octavia says, "He wants Mary."

  "I know, but it's freezing outside. And now it's freezing in here! Nick, get in so we can shut the door."

  I ask him, "How did you get up here? The fire escape? Why?"

  Nick doesn't answer me, so why ask him about his clothes— or lack thereof? He knows what he's got on: a whole lot of nothing. His bare arm remains stretched toward me. He looks right at me as if my sister and the twins are not here.

  The room is flushed with icy air. Marjorie's teeth chatter, and she buzzes to make the chattering more pronounced. She wants me to hurry and make a choice. Am I in, or am I going out? I'm too frigid to budge. I'm stunned: at the temperature, at Nick's strange tolerance of it, his unorthodox arrival, his intensity. I'm embarrassed. Even though I'm wearing my pajama bottoms, my skirt is whipping around my hips in the wind.

  Nick speaks, and I see the clouds of his warm breath I'd imagined being close to. "Come out. I'll explain everything."

  
I'll explain everything
is what guilty people say in the movies. Usually, they are standing over a dead body or are with someone other than their spouse in their marital bed. You say it to someone you don't want to disappoint. You have a history with that person and you don't want that history to end. But Nick and I have never spoken until today. As Kathryn Ann would say about Nick, I don't know him from Adam. Nobody else in Mags's room knows Nick that well either.

  Behind him, the warped pages of the spy novel flap on the lounge chair. A gust of wind swoops the open book up and off the roof like a bird. The Speedo is swept into a neon orange ball in the corner. What if the wind takes me too? The terrace lights aren't lit. What if I step on something sharp, cut my foot wide open, and have to get stitches? What if a pigeon flies into my hair? What if there is a blanket of mice? What if ? What if? What if! What if a boy never again scales the side of a building to see me? I take Nick's dirty hand and follow him into the night.

  None of the girls stops me.

  Octavia takes hold of the terrace doorknob to close it. As she struggles with the door's heft against a rush of wind, Mags flicks off her bedroom lights as if she's giving us privacy—but I know it's really so they can spy on us without being seen. Marjorie yanks Mags's comforter off the bed, squeezes past Octavia, and tosses it over my shoulders. As the terrace door shuts, I hear Mags shout at her sister through the glass.

  "Hey! That's my comforter! It's gross out there. It's gonna get stained. What am I going to sleep under?"

  "What do you care, slob? We'll sleep in my room."

  Marjorie and Octavia drag Mags through the twins' shared bathroom to Marjorie's side. I don't overhear anything else from them. Mags's bedroom lights remain out.

  I can't read Nick's face because my eyes haven't adjusted to the loss of light from the apartment. I'm floating with him again—but this time in blackness. Despite the comforter, pajamas, wool skirt, and socks, the spot where his hand is connected to mine is the warmest part of my body. He lets go. My hand is instantly colder.

  The wind shoves me, and I worry I might tip over. I hug the comforter around my chest. I sense Nick move behind me. He lays his hands on my shoulders. He guides me to the lounge chair, where he sits and sinks into the plastic weave. Then, he pulls me into the cavern of his spread arms and legs.

  Nick doesn't get under the comforter with me. He holds me like I'm sitting upright in a sleeping bag. There is a fat, fluffy layer of feathers sewn into squares between my back and his chest. I am swaddled to my neck. Nick's arms keep the comforter closed in front of my body. I hold my own hands.

  I ask, "How are you not freezing to death?"

  Nick presses his palms into the comforter. My belly grows warm under the pressure. He says, "That's part of what I have to explain."

  "The turning?"

  He rests his chin on my right shoulder. That spot grows warm too, and the warmth radiates up my neck, ending at my earlobe with a gentle pinch. This must be what it's like to have my ear nibbled. Over the edge of the cement-brick wall of the terrace, skeletal treetops stretch from Fifth Avenue across Central Park to the West Side. Snow clings to rickety branches. If I weren't so nervous, I might consider it beautiful.

  Nick says, "I want to be with you when it happens. When it happened to me last summer, I was alone in Greece with my grandparents. They were in their garden, getting high with their friends. I was supposed to be taking an afternoon siesta. But I couldn't sleep and then I thought I was dying."

  "I'm going to feel like I'm dying?"

  "It doesn't feel good."

"What's it ?"

  "I could smell it on you at school—probably before you knew anything was wrong. Well, not wrong. Different? Special? Kala? Yiayia and Papou have words in two languages to avoid saying there's anything wrong with their only grandson. Doctors don't recognize it, so everything we use to deal with it is herbal. My grandparents are cool about sharing their pot, and we go to Naxos every summer to score nip."

  "Nip?"

  "What you found in her bag. Nip brings the turning out of you. Pot slows it down."

  Nip, pot, the turning—I'm not even listening. All I heard was a hole: Nick didn't say Ling Ling's name.

  I ask, "Your folks are okay with this?"

  "My parents don't know. Yiayia says if Mom found out, she'd send me for all kinds of medical tests. She says I'll outgrow it. It's a phase. She's never heard of it lasting more than five years. It's more common in Greece but still believed to be myth."

  "Like Zeus?"

  "No, not like Zeus. The turning is real."

  "So, I am sick."

  He gives me a squeeze, and I am oddly comforted, electrified, and frightened at the same time. He says, "I wouldn't say sick. I mean, you wouldn't think of a gay dude's gayness as sick. It's seasonal. Two weeks in January and then most of the summer. You can't totally suppress it, no matter how much you smoke. You have to let it out if you want to be normal most of the time. I can make it easier for you."

  I nod again, having no idea what Nick is talking about.

  It's like when my parents talked to Octavia and me about sex when we were kids. They were never specific. They talked of love but not mechanics. If we wanted details, Dad would say, "Ask your mother." Mom would say, "Look it up in the dictionary." That's how I learned that the word Ben Strong called a mean kid in the third grade is slang for the male orga
n
of copulation
, which means to engage in intercourse, which means
physical contact between individuals that involves the genitalia,
which brought me back to the first word I looked up. "Round and round," Mom said, "that's pretty much how it goes."

  Nick says, "New York is dangerous for people like us. Very territorial. Very us-against-them. If they find out about you, they'll make you pick sides."

  "What sides? Who are they?"

  Nick unwraps an arm and points. "That's they."

  From the fire escape, a body is lumbering over the terrace wall. The figure's limbs are long and lanky. I can't distinguish thighs from calves or forearms from biceps. Like Nick, the figure is dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. The shorts are cutoffs. Closing in on us, his vintage 1980s iron-on reads: I'm the boss
,
Applesauce!
His toenails are painted black. He's wearing yellow dishwashing gloves. The same pair that supposedly squeaked around under Mags's shirt. He is the deli owner's son.

  "Yoon." Nick calls him by name. He draws me closer. "You couldn't let me do this alone?"

  Yoon pokes the end of our lounge chair with his foot, jostles us.

  Nick sounds wary. "Dude, seriously. Go."

  Yoon spies the collar of my cartoon pajamas peeking out from my comforter cocoon. He smirks the smirk of a smartass. Like any smartass, he can't keep a snide comment to himself. His voice is baritone, slow like a yawn.

  "Hello, Kitty."

  He hooks his arms around my knees and yanks me out of Nick's tight hold.

  I land on my spine. The comforter softens the impact, but pain sears a line from my neck to my tailbone. The cement is covered with dead leaves and dirty snow-water. The air is mildewed. There is a wet rustling as Nick lunges over me and tackles Yoon.

  The boys roll across the terrace. Yoon's legs are a vise around Nick's thighs. Nick bear-hugs Yoon's chest, pinning his arms. Yoon rears back his head and swings his gaping mouth into Nick's throat. Nick releases him. He bats Yoon's face with loose fists. The boys scramble apart, get to their feet, lunge at each other, and roll again.

  I want to scream for help, but the fire ants have found me. They crawl up and out of my knee socks and take over every bit of my flesh. They are between my toes, behind my ears, and in every crevice in between. They scamper across my scalp. They bite. Their bites are unbearable. I twist and scratch inside the suffocating comforter. I'm trapped.

  The boys lean over me, say things—to me, to each other—I can't make out. My hearing is fading. I'm shrinking. The boys' faces get bigger and rise like moons.

  Yoon blinks. When his eyes close, they are chestnut. Open, they are emerald green. He smiles, parts his teeth, and unrolls a long, narrow pink tongue. He licks the tips of his incisors, which have grown past his lower gums to form fine points.

  He purrs, his voice velvet. And that's when he says what he says about us not being vampires.

Yoon's tongue is long and sandpapery. It curls under my chin, swipes the side of my face, wipes goo out of the corners of my eyes, and then goes into my ear. It tickles. I want more of it, even though I am not sure what just happened or how I got myself into a position to be licked—especially by the deli owner's son. My school skirt, knee socks, and pajamas are in a pile on the terrace. Yoon's shorts, T-shirt, and yellow gloves are piled alongside.

  I remember.

  Emerald eyes. Black mask. Copper face. White mouth. A blur of teeth and fur. A cannonball made out of cotton. Yoon has turned into the deli cat.

  And I have turned into a kitten.

  I wriggle away from Yoon but am cupped in Nick's human hands.

  Yoon is sitting on Nick's lap while Nick offers me to him for a bath.

  Nick says something to me I can't understand. English is foreign. He could speak Greek, and I'd understand it the same. He is using a soothing tone, saying my name a lot because it's the one word I recognize. "Mary, (fill in the blank with information on my officially turning). Mary, (fill in the blank with bullshit about how everything is going to be okay). Mary, (I'll learn to live with it).
Mary,
(insert what he previously alluded to about medicinal herbs and us versus them)."

  Yoon nibbles my neck. There is a tangle in the fur, and he tugs it loose with his teeth. He tugs too hard, and I squeak. My mew is minuscule. I could cry out with all my might, and Octavia and the twins wouldn't hear me. If I turn back into a girl—pleasepleaseplease, let me
turn back into a girl!
—I promise myself that I will be louder in school. Louder in life. I'll use an "outside voice" inside. To be heard, I'll need practice.

  "Mew!"

  Nick hears me. He grabs Yoon by the throat and shoves him. Yoon plunges backward into the plastic weave of the lounge chair. He bounces up, squirms, and rights himself, but a furry hind leg slips through two plastic strips. He jerks it free, gains his balance by placing his four feet wide apart on the aluminum frame. He sports the same perturbed look he had on when he straddled my open toilet.

  Nick has stayed human to make sure Yoon doesn't pick me up by the scruff of my neck and carry me off to his lair behind the potato chip rack. He places me in the cradle of his bare thighs. If I turn back into a girl—pleasepleaseplease—I am copping a feel.

  Settling onto my belly, I place my arms (no, my
front legs
) one on top of the other an inch below Nick's shorts. I flex my hands (no, my paws), and nails (no, claws) come out. In real life (I mean, human life), my fingernails are short because they're always in my mouth. I marvel at the length, sharpness, and translucency of my claws. I press them into Nick's flesh to test them. Nick clenches his thighs, and I rise an inch. I retract my claws, grateful I possess weapons that will serve me while my voice is weak.

  In between my hind legs, fit snugly together, is a tail. I have a tail: muscles and a length of bone I've never used. It might as well be pinned on like a paper donkey's. It lies limp because I don't know what to do with it. When Yoon licks the tip, it involuntarily flicks.

  Nick strokes between my ears with one finger. My ears! They're no longer on the sides of my head—they're on top. The space between them is so small that there is room for only two of Nick's fingers. He switches to two. He rubs the top of my head. He rubs his thumb under my chin. Above and below my face, there is heavenly petting. Nick could crush my skull if he wanted. But I trust him—just like that. Animal instinct.