Hugh’s calf tattoo flashes in front of my eyes as he walks, our school mascot—a raven—flicking with every other step. He’s got me hauled over his shoulder, my hip to his ear, my long hair almost reaching the grass as he carries me out past Gretchen Astor’s barn, into the woods behind. Plenty of hoots and hollers follow us: the guys urging Hugh to get some, the girls adding their own thoughts, none of them out of concern. My friends—at least, that’s what we call each other—watching me half-comatose and being carried off into the dark.
Hugh’s tat crosses my vision a few more times, and then he settles me gently onto a rock, the one we always use when the party is at Gretchen’s. I slip like water through his arms, sagging into him as he settles in beside me, his body as steady and sure as the boulder underneath me. No wonder everybody calls him “Huge,” although the girls are always asking me if there’s another reason, eager to know.
“You okay?” he asks.
I don’t have words, am past that point, but I do manage to nod. From the house comes another yell, someone emptying a beer over somebody else’s head, a splash as yet another person is pushed into the pool—a joke that never gets old . . . to them, anyway. They think he’s out here pounding me into the ground, taking advantage of the pretty drunk girl, dragging her into the dark. They think he’s the danger. The truth is, I’m safer with Hugh Broward than anyone else on earth.
I’ve always loved to be carried, and begged my father often when I was little. Arms up and open, trusting. Nobody ever tells me no. Not Dad. Not Huge. Not whoever carried me away from Tress Montor’s parents so many years ago. I don’t know who that was, just that my arms were too weak to wrap around them, my vision blurry, the blood running down the side of my head hot and sticky in the last of the late-fall heat, drawing mosquitoes.
One buzzes around me now, its call high and whiny. I smack at it, missing completely and hitting myself in the mouth, where there’s still a small, silver scar in the corner from my own teeth biting down when . . . when something. No one knows what happened the night the Montors disappeared, not even me—and I was the only one there. Me and whoever carried me.
“Your aim sucks,” Huge says, easily swatting the mosquito out of the air.
Everything sucks right now. My motor coordination. My limb control. My life. I start to slide again, slipping down past Hugh’s knees to the ground. He grabs my wrist, lowering me gently.
“Close?” he asks, and I nod.
He unbuttons my shorts, easing them down to my ankles, followed by my underwear. Then he walks away, far enough that I can’t see his silhouette, hear his steps crunching the dead leaves, or smell the faded scent of his cologne.
The whirling in my head slows, centers, focuses, like a cat that’s been circling prey, ready to pounce. It does, and the seizure comes, my hands clenching and unclenching in the dirt on either side of me, my feet grinding into the ground, pressing dirt into the silk underwear tangled around my sandals. Mom always details the seizures to me, after, even though I’ve told her that I am aware right before I have them, that I can see and feel and hear and taste every damn thing. Better than normal, even.
It’s during them that I can’t recall. A light turned off. A clipped reel from a film.
There are branches overhead, darkly black against the stars, the dead leaves rustling against my hair. I hear and see and feel everything tremendously right now, the world in high def until the focus fades to a pinprick and I’m going, I’m going, I’m going . . .
I’m gone.
The leaves will be in my hair when Hugh and I come back from the woods, that and the dirt on my back causing snide smiles. I usually come around with a burning taste in my mouth, the memory of my last sounds—guttural, helpless—sending a spike of embarrassment to chase all the misfiring in my brain. Sometimes the worst happens; this was one of those times. There’s warm urine between my legs, harsh and acidic, soaking into the forest floor.
I sit up, easing myself, shakily, onto the rock, pulling my underwear back into place, followed by my shorts. The first time Hugh was too mortified to take them down all the way, but he’s learned over the years. He comes when I call, settling beside me. I lean into him.
“You know . . . ,” he says slowly, a conversation we’ve had more than once starting all over again.
“There are medications,” I finish for him. “Yes, I know. I take them.”
“But they don’t mix well with drinking.” It’s his turn to finish my sentence. “Or with that other shit you do,” he adds.
“I do lots of shit,” I say. And it’s true. I’m a shitty person.
“So maybe cut it out,” Hugh says, an edge in his tone he’s not used with me before. One that cuts, sharp, like the smell of my urine, only just beginning to fade as a few cold, fat drops of rain start to fall.
“I don’t want to,” I tell him, taking him by the hand and leading him back toward Gretchen’s and the sounds of the party; shrill screeches as the rain starts to fall in earnest and the occasional yap of William Wilson, her seriously stressed-out poodle.
And Felicity Turnado doesn’t have to stop, doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do. That’s the truth. There’s a deeper truth, though. The why of it. A truth that I keep to myself, bound deep and dark, surfacing out of my mind in the still moments before sleep, crawling up, climbing out, finding light, whispering to me in the night.
Because if I stop drinking and drop the pills, if I take better care of myself and let good people love me and give my own love to those who deserve it, I’ll have everything that Tress Montor doesn’t. And I don’t deserve that.
Because I’m the reason she has nothing.
Chapter 3
Cat
My cousins come in the night,
Feline paws pattering
in the cool.
Piling onto my back, we give,
each to the other,
Warmth and memories—
both carried in blood.
They settle on me, curl against my belly,
our soft clicks
And rough tongues, filling the night.
They wish for what I have,
Food—roof—clean coat—fresh water.
I want what they are.
Achingly thin. Slip under the fence
A young one rolls, sleep making her reckless.
Slides down my pelt,
Pooling near my mouth.
Another feline’s bones in my teeth would be bitter.
So instead I lick, a mat
Separates under my will, like the rabbits who crack open
when they wander too close.
She is young, and warm,
blood close to the skin with sleep.
It doesn’t have to be spilled. For me
To smell the memories, best and last.
If I took her she would be
mother / rain
I huff, her pelt billowing under my breath.
Deeper is her last meal
still in her blood,
death mixing with her life, quiet as it fades.
warm / poison
A possum passes the cage, coat dripping from the wet grass.
Quiet and cold, blood not talking.
He is not my kin.
Or my meal.
Today the girl, in the sun, blood brought by wood,
a strong scent on the breeze,