I can’t give her anything. I can’t give anyone anything anymore. My heart is empty and broken and useless.
The neon lights of the college district flash with technicolor temptation – pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores open late. I find what I’m looking for in a seedy club packed to the brim with sweat-stench and greasy bodies. I watch the crowd carefully from the bar, and pounce on the one man who slips a roofie into a brunette’s drink.
He is bleeding - his nose broken and his arm dislocated - when I am done with him. It takes forty seconds, and he punches back with equal fervor and splits my brow with his knuckles, hot blood oozing into my eyes. For those forty seconds it’s all static – I am a blank canvas, moving like Gregory taught me, punching and dodging like he taught me. Nothing is in my mind but moves and counter moves, observations and rapid calculations of how fast my opponent’s fist is moving, where it will land, how to sidestep and trip him so he’ll eat a precise stone step of the club. I am empty. Isis is gone. Sophia is gone. There’s only the taste of blood and anger and sweat, and the soundless roar of the beast in my head. But the roar is different, now. It is sharp and honed and precise. It is softer, yet more chilling.
‘When it asks to be fed, feed it promptly, and in small portions. It will never rebel, and you’ll never hurt anyone you don’t want to, as long as it’s fed.’ Gregory’s words echo. ‘As long as it’s fed, you are the master.’
The bouncers break us up, and as they lead me out I nod at the brunette, who gathered around to watch the fight with the rest of the club.
“Your drink was spiked. I suggest you take a cab home.”
She looks shocked, and her friends sniff at the drink in her hand. Her horrified face is the last thing I see before they dump me into the road. The beast gives me strength enough to stagger back to campus, and collapse in bed, the blind rage fading rapidly, cooling like lava hitting ocean water.
I am the master.
I will never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it ever again.
-8-
3 Years
48 Weeks
4 Days
Kayla understands everything because she understands nothing. She’s like a dry sponge that I throw buckets of water on. And sometimes piss. With copious sides of vinegar.
It’s a beautiful sight to see after a week of sporadic texts – her on Skype and me on Skype, both of us painting our toenails and talking at the same time.
“Isis, you’re killing me,” Kayla groans.
“Not literally, one would hope. Unless you want to be a zombie. I can dig being the only girl in the world to have a zombfriend.”
“I am not actually dead. What I am is disappointed. I can’t believe you and Jack aren’t just…like…”
I raise a brow, daring her to go on. She sniffs indignantly and then nearly tips over the green polish bottle with her sudden fist of rage.
“He left, and you left, and now you’re together in the same place and I told you so and why aren’t you taking this very obviously predestined opportunity to hook up like crazy monkeys?”
“Because, sweet Kayla, there is more to life than being a crazy monkey. Bizarre, I know.”
“Look, I just mean,” She grits her teeth and carefully adds a stripe of green to her big toe. “I just mean even if he is doing some weird Jack-like stuff, that’s never stopped you before! You were hitting on him constantly –”
“Actually hitting on him. With my fist,” I correct.
“ - when he was in the Rose Club, but now suddenly he’s slept with a girl for info and you’re all angry at him?”
“I – I –” I splutter concisely. “That was before!”
“Before what?”
“Before I –”
Kayla looks expectant. I wail.
“You know what I’m going to say!”
“Say it anyway,” She demands.
“No!”
“Yes!” She shouts.
“You present a compelling argument.”
“Isis, don’t get smart with me!”
“Fine! I like him. I like him, okay?”
“So you like him,” She leans back. “You want to make him lunch and hug him platonically once a year.”
“No, because then we would be in 17th century England.”
“That’s what like is,” Kayla continues. “Like is just so-so. It doesn’t really mean anything. Like, like me and you! I don’t like you. I love you.”
“Um.”
“In the way where you keep your pants on, ew. I love you and you love me and you also love Jack. In a different way.”
“Kayla –” I say warningly.
“In the hot way.”
“No.”
“In the ‘hug me until I run out of breath’ way.”
“Wrong.”
“In the ‘invade me with your penis’ way.”
I screech like a horrified fruit bat and slam the lid of my laptop closed. I can hear my own flustered, angry panting. I fling the lid open again and argue at the screen.
“There are no invading genitalia thoughts going on here.”
“Really?” Kayla asks airily, sanding her nails. “Because I can guarantee you Jack’s thought about it. Repeatedly. While jerking it.”
“Kayla! When did you get so – so –”
“Awesome? All thanks to your influence.”
I’m silent and stare-y.
“And Wren’s,” She relents. “He’s very informative and methodical. One time I got to hear a history lesson of the condom while I was putting it on.”
“Ugh,” I gag. “I don’t know what’s more miraculous – the fact he only did that once, or that Wren of all people in the conceivable universe has turned you into a sexpert.”
“All I’m saying is,” Kayla huffs. “If you want Jack to date you –”
“I don’t!” I harp. “I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t. I’m not dating anyone ever again.”
“If you want Jack to sleep with you –” She corrects.
“I DON’T. Why do people even say ‘sleeping with’? There is no sleeping involved! Sleeping is peaceful and nice and sex is like…the opposite of that.”
“You can’t say that,” Kayla fires back. “You’ve never had it.”
“I’ve had it once,” I defend, suddenly exhausted.
“That wasn’t sex and you and I both know it.”
“Look, it’s great that you’re all gung-ho about sex and me and Jack all at the same time,” I sigh. “But you’re forgetting the part in which I’m never touching a dude again. And he’s never touching me. Besides, Jack wouldn’t even like touching me.”
“He would.”
“I’m fat.”
“You are surprisingly not-fat.”
“I’m not as pretty as like…any other girl he could get. You’ve seen his face. He got you. He could get freakin’ Scarlett Johansson if he really wanted to.”
“And I’m sure Ohio State is just teeming with Scarlett lookalikes.”
“In black bikinis.”
Kayla sighs. “It’s hard, I get it. After everything that’s happened…I don’t know what it’s like, but it’s gotta be hard. And I’m sorry. But he really likes you, Isis. And you really like him. And you guys are like, really interesting together and you light each other up in a weird, symbiotic way. And life is short. Sophia taught us that. And I think you deserve a shot at each other before you write each other off completely out of misguided martyrdom.”
“Wow. ‘Martyrdom’. You might be the only one in the universe paying actual attention during college.”
“Shut up,” She flushes, and leans in to close her computer. “And don’t call me back until you’ve at least kissed him.”
I slam my face on the keyboard of my laptop and roll it around, groaning. Yvette chooses that exact moment to burst through the door and collapse on her bed, likewise groaning.
“My life is over.”
I get up and collapse next to her on the b
ed.
“Finally. Time to die.”
There’s a long silence of us just breathing into pillows, experimenting with suffocating ourselves. Yvette breaks first, coming up for air gasping.
“I’ve been sleeping with somebody,” she confesses.
“I know,” I look up. “I heard.”
Yvette goes red down to her skull earrings. “Sorry. I mean, shit, I’m not sorry. It was damn good.”
“Mind if I ask who?”
“Yes, actually. Very yes.”
I welcome the distraction. “It’s Steven. From Socio.”
“Wow,” Yvette claps. “Ten points to you for saying the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”
“Brett with the weird t-shirts.”
“Yes, because I want to turn my vagina into a gonorrhea culture lab.”
“Give me a hint. Like, at least seven hundred whole hints. In essay form, with citations and footnotes.”
Yvette screws her face up like she’s in genuine pain, and it’s then I catch a whiff of something unmistakable. Something musky and sweet and floral. Roses.
“Dia –”
“I’m gay,” Yvette whisper-interrupts, as though terrified someone will hear in the security of our own room. We stare at each other in stunned silence, and then I smile and punch her shoulder.
“Diana? You lucky piece of shit!”
Yvette’s eyes widen, as if she was expecting something worse. Shouting, anger maybe. Her eyes well up with gratitude, and in typical Yvette fashion she shoves her face into the bed so I won’t see it.
I stand. “C’mon, let’s go get ice cream to celebrate.”
She doesn’t move. I tug on her boot. She groans.
“Get up,” I insist.
“I can’t get up!” Yvette's voice is muffled by her pillows. “I’m gay!”
“You’re paying if you don’t get up in the next five seconds, Gay.”
Yvette peeks out of the pillow, looking like a scared child.
“I haven’t told my parents.”
“You don’t gotta,” I offer. “Not right away. We’ve still got six months before we drop out. When they ask why you flushed their twenty thousand dollars down the toilet, tell them it’s because you’re gay. Trust me. They’ll be more mad about the money than your girlfriend.”
Yvette smirks, wiping her nose.
“Or. Or you could just drop the bomb now. Over the phone. Drop all the bombs. Blow up your own house.”
Yvette laughs and punches me weakly on the knee. And then we share a sundae, and for a while I’m not the only one with problems. Yvette’s bravery reminds me of that. I’m not the only one who thinks love and sex is all sorts of weird and hard and scary.
If Yvette could confess to me she’s gay, if she could overcome that turmoil and life-changing revelation all on her own, then I can overcome what happened to me.
I can’t be as strong as her, but I can try.
I owe it to myself, and everybody who loves me, to at least fucking try.
I visit Mom over the weekend. The drive is long but the love is plenty – she comes out with a smile and wide arms that hug me close, and she’s cooked dinner for once. Pasta. The house is clean. The windows are open and the air inside every room is fresh instead of musty. Mom’s skin looks healthy, her eyes are bright. She can’t stop talking about work, and a new group of lady friends she met at yoga, and I just sit in my chair and eat quietly and absorb it all – all of her happiness, all of her change.
“Are you okay, sweetie? I’m sorry I’ve been blabbering, it’s just –”
“No, I’m fine. Don’t be sorry. I was just really hungry.”
“Are you eating at school well?”
“Three square meals a day. Comprised of doughnuts and regret.”
She laughs, and I smirk into a noodle.
“It’s been awfully quiet without you around,” Mom says. “So I’ve been trying to get out more. Do more things, meet more people.”
I flinch. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not here more, and I’m sorry I didn’t come last weekend, I was –”
“It’s alright. I don’t want to hear excuses. But, it was a promise, Isis. You promised me you’d come every other weekend. I know you’re busy, and it’s college, but I’m your mother. And I want to see you. I need to see you.”
“I’m sorry!” I clutch my fork. “I’m so sorry - ”
Mom gets up, sweeping over to pet my head and hush me in soft whispers.
“No, honey. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for needing you so much. You should be free, I have to let you fly away from me sometime. Other kids your age, other parents my age have all learned how to leave and let go but…but it’s harder for me. And that makes it hard on you.”
I swallow hard. Mom looks into my eyes.
“Sometimes I think bad things – dark things. And I go to Dr. Torrand and try not to think them so much. But they keep me up at night. And I don’t sleep. And I start resenting everyone – your father, Leo, even you - and it’s horrible. I’m horrible.”
I hug her back, tight and unending.
“We’re not horrible,” I whisper. “We’re just people.”
***
I watch Charlie do his homework, hair greasy and his face eternally frowning. He’s not the most intelligent agent, and he doesn’t think before he speaks, but he gets objectives done with startling speed and force. Where my style is to write lightly with a ballpoint pen, his is to press hard with a soaked paintbrush. We both get the job done, just in different ways. It’s why Gregory assigned us to each other, probably – two radically differing methods double the chances of success. In theory.
In reality, we get along as well as two wet cats in a stewpot can.
“What’re you staring at?” Charlie grunts, never taking his eyes off his paper.
“I wanted to thank you,” I say finally.
“Fuckin’ doubt that.”
“For sending Isis away at the barbeque. I was reluctant to do it myself.”
“You don’t say,” Charlie rolls his eyes. “You and her got history or somethin’?”
“Something like that.”
“Well keep it out of the mission. I don’t need your fuckbuddies screwing this up for me. A job like this means a damn promotion.”
I glance over at his desk. He doesn’t keep a lot of personal items, but he brought a framed picture of his grandmother, an old Japanese woman with a wrinkled, smiling face, hugging Charlie in front of a tiny noodle shop in what looks like foggy San Francisco. He sends the money he makes back to her – I did some digging into his file and his bank accounts. Orphaned at the age of three due to a racial hate crime, his grandmother took him in and raised him. Now that she’s nearly eighty and unable to work the store, Charlie is the one who keeps it running with the money he makes. He used to be in a Chinatown gang, until Gregory scouted him.
He’s weaker than me, even if he doesn’t act like it.
The people he loves are still alive, after all. And that is a weakness in and of itself. It’s why I will always be a better agent than him. Or, I thought I would be. Until Isis stepped back into the picture.
“She wasn’t a fuckbuddy,” I clarify, tempering the soft fire of anger that flares in my lungs. He didn’t mean it personally - his name-calling is a defense mechanism to keep from getting to know people, and consequently caring about them. It’s similar to Isis’ rampant jokes.
“Whatever she was to you, she was sure as hell jealous of Brittany that night. Kept giving her stink eye. Don’t let her get in the way of pumping Brittany for info, you got me?”
Jealous? Isis? That can’t be right. I’ve hurt her so bad, for so long – how could she feel anything but contempt for me? She’s smart enough to know when she’s chasing after a worthless cause. She would never pursue me. Not after what I’ve done to her.
I grab my coat and walk out.
The campus is quiet, night stars glimmering like discarded diamonds. My confused feet take me a
round the library, through the parking lot, and to a haughty granite fountain in the shape of a centaur shooting an arrow into the sky. I read the plaque - dedicated to someone’s dead something. I sit on the edge. I’m not the only one there, I notice.
I could walk away. I could leave her, on this starry night, and walk away. I could choose not to form this memory, not to engage. But I long for it. I miss the fights, the blows, the wit. I miss her, even when my every perfect, lifeless, and calculated plan demands I never speak to her again, in the interest of not hurting her further. But I am human. I am selfish.
And I let myself be human and selfish, like she taught me.
“Boo,” I say. Isis jumps, withdrawing her lazily-circling hand from the water.
“Fuckstick Central! Are you trying to kill me before I attain my final form?”
“Do tell,” I settle beside her. She’s wearing a soft-looking sweater and jean shorts. “What’s your final form? No, wait, let me guess – insane witch.”
“Cyborg empress,” she corrects with a dignified sniff. “Of a small yet filthy rich country.”
I laugh. “And what will you do when you’ve regained your kingdom, your majesty?”
“Oh, you know; improve schools, build better roads, form a harem of beautiful European boys, the usual.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really? I thought your type was more swarthy, more Eastern.”
“It was, until I learned it doesn’t actually matter what people look like on the outside, duh. Don’t you watch Dora the Explorer? Shit is straight informative. I’ve learned so much about treating people as equals. And like…backpacks.”
I smirk, and she hides her twisted smile in the crook of her arm.
“Alone in the middle of the night and hiding behind a studly centaur’s rump is no place for an empress,” I say.
“I wasn’t hiding,” she frowns. “Hiding is for babies. And ninjas.”
We graze our hands through the water, our ripples the only thing touching. Our fingers distort to albino snakes under the water, speckled by stars and moss.
“You wanna go somewhere with me?” She asks.
I look up. “Where?”
“Somewhere. Anywhere but here. Anywhere Sophia never got to go. Let’s go to the moon.”