Black Iris Read online

I gaped.

  “I’m not blind, Laney.”

  “Unbelievable.” My hand was on his shirt and I made it into a fist. “I’ve been throwing myself at you shamelessly and this is what you’re worried about.”

  “I believe you want this. That you want me. But there’s something off. You’re so closed up.”

  A tendon tightened along my jaw. It felt like barbed wire. “It’s hard for me to be vulnerable, okay?”

  “Did something happen? With another guy?”

  “You’re going to ruin tonight if you keep talking like this.”

  “I want to understand you.”

  “No you don’t.” I pulled him closer, my thighs to either side of his waist. “You want to fuck me.”

  When he spoke it was breathy. “You worry me sometimes. This all feels so . . .”

  He trailed off and I said, “So what?”

  “Calculated.”

  It’s surreal, watching the prey become aware of you.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Like you want to fuck me just to get something out of me.”

  “Oh my god. If you think I’m some gold-digging—”

  “Not money. Nothing that simple.” Armin touched my cheek, his eyes sad. “Your heart isn’t in this. You’re going through the motions with me. I know it, and I can’t stop wanting you.”

  I smiled bitterly. “You’re not supposed to see the puppet strings.”

  “What?”

  “Of course I’m manipulating you. I’m messed up. I don’t know how to do the emotional intimacy thing.”

  “You do it with Blythe.”

  I was spared from response by a burst of sound behind us. A door opened, voices carrying across the pavement. Armin’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “I am falling in love with you, Laney Keating.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Don’t say it,” I said miserably, looking away.

  “Why?”

  Falling for someone is like pulling a loose thread. It happens stitch by stitch. You feel whole most of the time even while the seams pop, the knots loosen, everything that holds you together coming undone. It feels incredible, this opening of yourself to the world. Not like the unraveling it is. Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It’s an undoing.

  “Because you deserve better,” I whispered.

  In the near distance silhouettes moved against the light, all strut and swagger. Armin touched my face with gentle restraint. So respectful of my boundaries. Of the edges of my craziness.

  “You don’t have to manipulate me,” he said. “I won’t lose interest simply because it’s difficult for you to open up.”

  “Maybe you should.” What the hell was wrong with my throat? All gnarled and dry, words coming out like splinters. “Maybe you should go now, before I do something horrible to you.”

  “The worst thing you could do is break my heart.”

  I’m going to, I said, but it caught in my windpipe, a tissue snagging on those splinters, tearing into a hundred shreds and leaving my mouth as dust.

  Someone laughed. We both turned.

  A group of guys passed us. Greek marble torsos, chiseled ivory teeth. Hair still wet from the locker room shower. They were only visible for a moment in the pool of light but that moment hung and dragged like a glitch. The one in the middle was blond, broad-shouldered, strolling with a viper’s sinister grace. Mr. I Have the Whole World on the End of My Dick. Breathing the same air I did.

  When you are this close, this fucking close to everything that gives meaning and purpose to your sad little life, it’s hard not to feel awe. To feel the threads of fate pulling tight and neat around your throat. So tight you can’t breathe.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  “Laney?” Armin said.

  The viper was laughing. His phone at his ear, his male-model face split with a glow-in-the-dark smile.

  I slid off the amp and stumbled. My head tilted heavily and if Armin wasn’t there I might have fallen.

  “Laney, what’s wrong?”

  I felt fuzzy at the edges, partially erased. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “Are you on something?”

  I shook my head. The group passed into shadow again, dissolving into the night.

  Armin stared after them. “Who was that?”

  Well, that’s easy.

  That is the boy who ruined my life.

  That is the boy I am going to kill.

  FEBRUARY, LAST YEAR

  The clearest sign of coming catastrophe is when all the bad shit in your life suddenly stops. You’re entering the eye of the shitstorm.

  On a winter morning in my senior year, my breath a wake of white smoke, my skin narco-numb from cold (also, narcotics), I walked into a high school that had miraculously forgotten I existed.

  My hair was growing out after the tragic pixie cut I got over break, shaggy now, almost cute, but the other day Brandt Zoeller had made a V with his fingers and stuck his tongue between them, so it wasn’t grown out enough. When I passed him—his whole entourage at his locker, the jock reek and Axe body spray enough parts-per-million to make me hurl—he didn’t say a word. None of them did. Their silence sent my hackles up, the way you miss an irritating noise in the first edgy minutes of quiet. You become so accustomed to being bothered that not being bothered is alarming. Inertia is the most comfortable state for all things, including pain.

  Zoeller watched me with those unblinking reptile-green eyes. Aside from the creeper stare, he was absurdly attractive. Another truism: the hotter they are, the better odds they’re an asshole. Romance novels at least get that right.

  I felt his gaze trail me down the hall.

  In English we were doing a poetry unit, and I was sitting in the last row, ankles crossed, staring out at a field of frosted grass glistening like tinsel, the sky a crumpled sheet of silver tissue paper, the world all wrapped up in ice and waiting for spring to tear it open when I heard the words that peppered my gauzy consciousness like 9 mm rounds.

  “The love poetry of Sappho.”

  I hunched inside my hoodie. Jesus, I prayed. Please don’t ask someone to read.

  Mrs. Thomlin recited a poem, blessedly short—“Awed by her splendor”—and moved on to Browning.

  It wasn’t until second period that I realized it was Valentine’s Day. There’d been hearts on everything for weeks. February is one long trailer for this fucking Hallmark holiday. They were milking it: buy your sweetie a box of chocolates, roses, or a special (PG-13) message you could read over the PA. Because this was high school, bastion of brain-dead pop culture parrots, most of the “special messages” were song lyrics. One girl had a sense of humor and dedicated a Bieber quote to her bestie. “Carpet munchers,” a boy said in the hall, and his friends snickered.

  I darted into the bathroom.

  A handful of preppy girls flounced out, ignoring me. I turned on the cold water and doused my face. When my eyes opened, Kelsey Klein stood beside me at the sink.

  I swallowed the first spike of an impending heart attack. Of course I was standing there looking like a drowned kitten when Kelsey showed up. Of fucking course. She slicked strawberry gloss on her lips, blew herself an air kiss, and glanced over.

  “Hey, Delaney.”

  My eyes bounced from her to my reflection, confirming it was actually me. Kelsey said hello to me. Kelsey did not freak out and run. Kelsey, who’d read the fucking poem I left (idiot, idiot) in her locker (moron) before Christmas, and signed (dumbass) with an L, which Zoeller somehow knew about because Zoeller knew everything, and which he’d quote to me sometimes, taunting.

  “Hey,” I croake
d.

  Smooth, killer. Real.

  Kelsey smiled. A lopsided one that made her left eye squint—just the left. Her genuine smile, the one she gave when she didn’t care how photogenic she looked. She tilted an apple cheek upward and made it a wink, a secret between me and her, conspiratorial. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she said.

  When the door closed behind her all I could think was, Awed by her splendor.

  I met Donnie at our usual rendezvous point by the water fountains.

  “You all right, Lane?”

  I shrugged, faking nonchalance. It’s strange being the big sister when you’re half the size of your little brother.

  “Zoeller bothering you?”

  “No. That’s the weird thing. He’s totally ignoring me.”

  Two sophomores passed, and one said coyly, “Hey, Donnie.”

  Donnie smiled down at his shoes. They giggled as if he’d said something outrageous.

  “I do not understand girls,” I said.

  “Aren’t you one?”

  I shrugged. I’d never felt like it. Never felt like anything, really. Girl, boy, whatever. Nothing quite fit. That’s what Zoeller and his mouth-breathing minions never got: I didn’t cut my hair because I wanted to look like a boy. I cut it because I didn’t feel like a girl.

  I shoved my fists into my hoodie. “Going to lunch. See you later.”

  Donnie touched my arm.

  “Happy Valentine’s, Rainbow Brite,” he said, prodding something into my chest.

  It was a Moleskine journal, sleek black leather, the pages crisp and cream white, thirsty for ink. Inside the cover he’d tucked a photo of us at Navy Pier. We sat on the dock, two silhouettes matted against a brilliant blood-orchid sunset, the light peeling away in lush petals and falling into the lake. Mom had taken that photo on one of her rare good days.

  I hugged him, letting go of the journal, only the fierceness of my hug suspending it between our ribs. It pulsed there like a shared heart between us.

  “Happy Valentine’s,” I said. I love you more than anything.

  Even lunch that day wasn’t horrible. Deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati’s. I flipped open the Moleskine and pulled out a Pilot rollerball. Nothing beats the purity of that first blank page. February 14, I wrote. Then I closed my eyes and absorbed the afterimage. Jock table: thug wannabes, roid-pumped bodies. Stoner table: sleepy smiles; Harlan, the boy I’d lost my virginity to freshman year. Emo/scene table: Donnie’s crowd, forward-swept bangs and eyeliner. Nerd/geek table: probably where I should’ve been if I weren’t such a pussy. Then me, a table all to myself, the loser table, while a figure approached—

  I opened my eyes.

  “Are you Delaney K.?” the boy said. His Adam’s apple looked like a chicken trying to peck its way out of his throat.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, helpless. Nerd/geek. They don’t do well with girls. Another reason why I was one of them.

  “Are you Delaney?” he said again. His eyes were desperate.

  “Yeah.”

  He thrust a hand out, almost aggressively. His voice cracked. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  A red rose in a clear plastic box, with a card.

  What the hell?

  I took it because it seemed like the kid would self-destruct if I didn’t, and he scuttled away. I scanned the cafeteria. This had to be a prank. Where was Zoeller?

  Nowhere. No one was paying attention to me.

  I sat there for a good two minutes, debating leaving my tray and the rose and walking out. This had to be a mistake.

  At least read the card, Laney. You know you’re curious.

  Shut up, brain, you asshole. You got me into—

  Wait, why are our hands tearing open the envelope?

  L,

  I can’t stop thinking about you. If you still like me, give me a sign. Come before 5th period, hall 2.

  Love,

  K

  I read it three times to make sure, then once more, to dull my disbelief. No fucking way. No way. But she’d looked at me in the bathroom, unfazed. Smiled. That smile she didn’t give strangers, the natural, imperfect one, the one that fucked me up in the first place, that made me think crazy thoughts like If I could fall in love with a girl, it’d be her. Those ifs are dangerous. You try them on in your head like dresses, so easy to slide in and out of. If I kissed girls, I’d kiss her. If we kissed, it’d go like this. At some point I dropped the if like a slip and just wore the feeling, nothing between it and my skin. When I kiss her. When it happens. All of it took place in my head, in silence, locked tight in skull bone and the frantic synaptic whispers between neurons, no clues popping out except the passive-aggressive haircut, the incriminating poem.

  That’s the problem with writers. Too much imagination.

  The greater part of me knew it couldn’t be real, but the hopeful part, which is more concentrated and condensed, rich in nine essential delusions, thought: It’s not all in your head.

  I dropped the rose into my bag, with the Moleskine.

  ———

  Mandatory guidance counseling should be covered by the Geneva Conventions. We’re captives, and it’s torture.

  Mr. Radzen—who said we could call him Jeff or Jay or Radz, but never Mr. Radzen—leaned back and propped his feet on the desk. He was fortyish, ex-jock turned coach, arms still ripped but abs gone soft with beer. His broom-handle mustache was straight out of Axe Cop. He drove a 1995 Sunfire (possibly a high school graduation present) and still listened to Pearl Jam.

  This was my guidance counselor.

  “So, Del.”

  He hiked his eyebrows in an attempt at flustered charm. Rumor was he’d banged half the cheerleading squad.

  “It’s Laney.”

  “Huh? ‘It’s raining?’ Speak up, hon.”

  “Never mind.”

  “We both know why we’re here, don’t we?” A smile spread beneath the mustache, making it quiver, like something furry and possibly alive. Sometimes I thought of the mustache as a separate sentience.

  “Why are we here?” I said, refusing to be complicit.

  “Our attendance has been a problem, hasn’t it?”

  Jeff liked to frame everything as if we’d both done it. We’d both skipped school. We’d both failed a drug test. We’d both written a murder/suicide fantasy and handed it in as a creative writing assignment.

  “Been missing work?” I said. “Back on the booze, Mr. Radzen?”

  He sucked in his cheeks. “Del, honey. Don’t jerk me around.”

  “That’s what this whole thing is. One big jerk-off.”

  “Looks like we’re doing better,” he said, shuffling papers. “Only one absence this month. That’s what I like to see. Improvement.”

  I hadn’t “improved” anything but my ability to hide how fucked-up I was. Here’s the therapy transcript from winter break, more or less.

  DR. PATEL: Mrs. Keating, I believe your daughter has borderline personality disorder.

  MOM: Dr. Patel, I believe my daughter has teenage hormones.

  LANEY: [Stares at the floor silently.]

  DR. PATEL: She’s suffering from acute dysphoria. I’ll prove it with my list of irrefutable symptoms.

  1. Unstable and/or intense emotions that are often debilitating, especially intense feelings of rejection (patient feels targeted by bullies at school, has no friends).

  2. Impulsive and/or self-destructive behavior to relieve emotional pain (e.g., substance abuse).

  3. Victimhood and fragmented self-image (patient says everyone hates her because she is “different” but will not explain how).

  4. Vindictiveness, manipulation, dissociation, thoughts of self-harm (patient may be a suicide risk).

  MOM: You described being a teenager. Being a teenager is not a persona
lity disorder.

  DR. PATEL: I understand your skepticism, but—

  MOM: I brought her in for cognitive therapy. She simply needs someone to talk to.

  LANEY: [But not you, Mom.]

  DR. PATEL: Yes, and we’ll do that, but in the meantime I would like to start her on an anti-anxiety medication—

  MOM: I don’t want that shit in my body. Her body.

  EVERYONE: [Awkwardly ignores the Freudian slip.]

  LANEY: I’m willing to try it, Mom. Anything that might help.

  And so they gave me free Xanax, which I’d already been abusing for months.

  Jeff was droning on about attainable goals and focus and strategy and other coach-speak, so I took an inventory of his desk. Framed photos, not of family but of vehicles: Jeff leaning “sexily” against the Sunfire; Jeff on a schooner; Jeff beneath a fighter jet with his arm around a uniformed airman. A wrestling trophy from the eighties angled to show Captive in Seat (me) Jeff’s HONORABLE MENTION. A ceramic trout with a swollen encephalitic head gaped at me, bearing the inscription BIG FISH IN A SMALL POND. I could not tell if it was ironic.

  “Hon,” Jeff said, “you’re not listening.”

  “Why the hell should I? You never listen to me.”

  The mustache twitched. It looked like it might run off.

  “You don’t want to hear my bullshit, I don’t want to hear yours.” I swung a foot onto his desk, perilously close to BIG FISH. “Spare me your community college psych degree. Why don’t we just sit quietly till our time is up?”

  The rose had gone to my head. Someone liked me. Finally, someone liked me. An impossible someone, a girl I was crazy about. None of this mattered anymore.

  Jeff stood and snapped the blinds closed.

  “You’re real hot shit, aren’t you,” he said behind me. “Real hot shit, Miss Princess.”

  My wolf instincts kicked in. Stay still. Observe.

  “You’ve got authority problems. Okay. Join the club. But that doesn’t give you the right to disrespect me, you spoiled bitch.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Take your foot off my goddamn desk.”

  I did, my heart beating fast.

  “Now say, ‘I’m sorry for disrespecting you, Jeff.’ ”