He’s talking to her.
His hand is on her cheek, sliding through tears.
And she realizes it now.
Realizes that there will scarcely be a time when they roll together, unawares, and make love sleepily in the dead of a winter night, lingering on their dreams.
She’s broken.
Her muscles are like water.
And he’s there, lifting her shoulders, holding a glass to her lips, telling her to drink and swallow.
She can feel his fingers pushing the hair out of her eyes. Hear his voice in her ear. Smell his skin nearby. Taste the milk on her tongue, in her throat. And then slowly she sees shadows. Black and white, at first, and then his face, looking wild. His hair, flipping every which way. His cheeks flushed.
And she speaks roughly. “It’s okay,” she says.
But it’s not okay.
Because she wants him, and now he’s afraid to touch her like that.
He makes her eat.
Sits by the bed.
Waits for her sleep to come.
She finds him, awake, on the couch in the morning.
Sits in the crook of his body.
And they look at each other, both so very sorry and neither one needing to be.
Cabel, feeling helpless. Janie, trapped by her own ability. Despairing in their own minds for a while, until they can come to terms with the life that lies ahead. And each, in their private thoughts on this Valentine’s Day, wonders briefly if it should go on.
If they should go on.
Torturing each other unexpectedly, indefinitely.
“Cabe,” she says.
“Yes?”
“You know what always makes me feel better?”
He thinks a moment. “Milk?”
“Besides milk.”
“What?”
“When you hold me. Tightly. Squeeze my body like you can’t let go. Or lie on top of me.”
He’s quiet. “Serious?”
“I wouldn’t joke about that. There’s something about the pressure on my body that helps the numbness go away.” She waits. Hopes she doesn’t have to ask him point-blank.
She doesn’t.
DURBIN DAZE
February 15, 2006, 8:04 p.m.
Janie pulls into Mr. Durbin’s driveway.
Cabel’s parked half a block away with a pair of binoculars and a view through the side window of the great room.
Baker and Cobb are stationed.
Janie’s not wired.
No one expects anything to happen.
Not quite yet.
Mr. Durbin’s too smart to ruin it.
She grabs her books and walks to the front door. Rings the bell.
He opens the door. Not too quickly. Not slowly, either. Invites her inside.
She takes off her coat and hands it to him. She’s wearing jeans and a low-cut, see-through shirt with a camisole underneath—an ensemble that wouldn’t be allowed in school.
He’s wearing sweatpants and a U of M T-shirt.
Sweating.
“Just got done working out,” he says, draping a towel around his shoulders. He shows her to the kitchen table.
“Great house,” she says. “Perfect for a party.”
“Which is why I bought it,” he says. “I like having a place for the students to kick back and crash now and then.” He grabs a bottle of water, offers her one, and says, “You get organized. I’m going to take a three-minute shower. Be right back.”
Janie rolls her eyes as he walks out, and then suddenly realizes.
He’s gone.
She glides through the main floor, checking things out. She hears the shower running.
Two bedrooms and a bath down the hallway off the great room. An office beyond the kitchen area, with all sorts of science-type chemical charts and books and bottles. And a master suite, which is where he’s showering. She peeks in quickly. It’s a large room with a king-size bed and a few items of clothing strewn around. On the bedside table, a porn magazine.
She moves quickly back to the kitchen table when she hears the water shut off, and she’s sitting there, looking engrossed in her notes, when he returns. Now he’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, à la James Dean. All he needs is a cigarette.
He moves through the great room, closing blinds. Janie cringes internally, knowing that Cabel must be bristling right now. But Cabe promised Captain he’d be under control, and he knows he’s not allowed to be on the case if he’s not this way—he’s too close to it. Janie thinks he’ll stay put.
“Okay, kid, what seems to be the problem?” Durbin asks as he walks back toward the table. He sits in the chair next to her, running his fingers through his wet hair.
“Kid?” She laughs. “I’m eighteen.”
“S’cuse me. What was I thinking. Ahhh,” he says, leaning in to see her notes. “Poisonous gases.” He rubs his hands together gleefully. “How exciting, eh?”
She turns and gives him a look. “Well, it’s interesting. But I don’t understand how this”—she points with her pencil—“leads to this. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Hrm,” he says, and draws the pencil from her fingers slowly. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
He flips the paper over and scribbles equations expertly on the back side. Whistles lightly under his breath as he goes. Janie leans in, as if to see better, an inch at a time, until he’s slowing his pencil.
Making a mistake or two.
Erasing.
Shifting in his seat.
She stops moving, and she’s nodding slightly. Fully, completely, overwhelmingly enthralled by the scratching of his pencil.
She takes a sip of water from the bottle he offered, and her swallow is the only sound in the room.
She watches his Adam’s apple bob reflexively.
“Okay,” he says finally. He explains the half-page-long equation from start to finish, and she’s turned toward him, her elbow on the table and fingers in her hair, nodding, thinking, waiting.
“I think I’ve got it,” she says when he’s finished.
“Now, you give it a try,” he says, looking at her. He takes the paper and slips it under her notebook, brushing her breast with his forearm. Both pretend not to notice.
Janie pulls out a fresh piece of paper and begins from the initial equation. She leans over the paper, so her hair falls in front of her shoulder, and scribbles away. After a moment he draws her hair back over her shoulder. His fingers linger an extra moment on her neck. “I can’t see,” he explains.
“Sorry about that.” She flips her hair to the other side of her neck, and she can feel him looking at her. She hesitates in the middle of the process. Mulls it over. “Hang on,” she murmurs, “don’t tell me.”
“It’s okay,” he says quietly. He’s leaning over her, his breath on her shoulder. “Take your time.”
“I’m never going to get this,” she says.
His fingers touch her back lightly.
She pretends not to notice.
She calculates her moves, trying to get into the mind of someone who would welcome such advances. She decides that the someone would do absolutely nothing now, not wanting to risk a problem, and so she lets out a shallow breath and moves her pencil again, and then after a moment, dares a quick glance at him that tells him everything he wants to know.
“How’s that?” she asks, pointing to her work.
“It’s good, Janie. Perfect.” He lets his hand rest centrally on her back.
She smiles and looks at the paper a moment, and packs up her books slowly. “Well. Thanks, Mr. Durbin, for, uh, you know. Letting me barge in on your evening like this.”
He walks her to the door and leans against it, his hand on the handle. “My pleasure,” he says. “I hope you come by again sometime. Just shoot me an e-mail. I’ll make it work.”
She steps toward him, goes to open the door so she can leave, but he’s still holding on to the door handle. Trapping her. “Janie,” he says.
She turns. “Yes?”
“We both know, don’t we,” he says, “why you wanted to come here this evening.”
Janie gulps. “We do?”
“Yes. And don’t feel badly about it. Because I’m attracted to you, too.”
Janie blinks. Blushes.
“But,” he continues, “I can’t have a relationship with you while you’re my student. It’s not right. Even though you’re eighteen.”
Janie is silent, looking at the floor.
He tips her chin up. His fingers linger on her face. “But once you graduate,” he says with a look in his eye, “well, that’s a different story.”
She can’t believe this.
And then she can.
It’s how he keeps them quiet.
Blames them.
She knows what to say.
It’s the saying it that makes her want to puke on his shoes.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be,” he says, and she knows he wants her to be.
She waits for it. Waits for the line she knows is coming next from this egocentric bastard. She resists the urge to say it first.
“It happens all the time,” he says.
She manages to turn her cringe into a sad smile, and leaves without another word, although she’s tempted to follow the movie ending by crying out, “I’m such a fool!”
About four seconds after she pulls out of the driveway, her cell phone rings. She waits until she’s out of view of the house before she picks it up.
“I’m fine, Cabe.”
“’Kay. Love you.”
She laughs. “Is that it?”
“I’m trying to behave like a good cop.”
“He’s tricky. I’m heading home. You wanna stop by for the details?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m calling Baker now, and then Captain. I’ll see you at my place.”
Janie makes the calls and reports the events, and Captain makes sure she knows this is a classic case of “fucked-up authoritative egomaniac syndrome.”
She made up the term herself.
And then Captain says, “I’m not too worried about the chem fair trip since you’ll be with Mrs. Pancake all the time, but be very careful at that party, Janie. I’m guessing he gets off on getting the girls drunk, maybe taking advantage of them then, while the party’s going on. Keep your wits about you.”
“I will, Captain.”
“And do some research on date-rape drugs. I’ve got some pamphlets on it that I want you to read.”
“Yes, sir.”
9:36 p.m.
Janie arrives home, steaming with a new hatred for Mr. Durbin. What a manipulator. She’d like to get inside his dream sometime. Turn it into a nightmare.
Ten minutes later Cabel slips in and looks at her all over. Gives her a hug. “Your shirt smells like his aftershave,” he says, eyes narrow. “What happened?”
“I did my job,” she says.
“And what did he do?”
“Here. Sit here. Pretend you’re working on chemistry formulas.” She acts it out for him.
“Fucker.”
“And then he tried to tell me I was a bad girl to think he’d ever want to touch me. Even though he just did.”
Cabel closes his eyes. “Sure,” he says, nodding. “That’s how he keeps them quiet.”
“That’s exactly what I thought as he patronized all over me while leaning against the door so I couldn’t get out.”
Cabel paces.
Janie grins. “I’m going to bed. You can let yourself out when you’re through with that.”
February 17, 2006, 7:05 p.m.
Janie sits on the living-room floor of Desiree Jackson’s house for the study date. A handful of Chem. 2 classmates surround her. They get right down to work on formulas.
Whenever anyone brings up Mr. Durbin’s name, the other girls gush over him. Janie fakes it, easing questions about Mr. Durbin into the conversation as carefully as she can. But nobody has anything bad to say about him.
10:12 p.m.
Janie packs up her books and notes, sighs, and goes home with nothing new besides rave reviews of Mr. Durbin. Everybody loves the guy.
A night of studying, wasted. She knows this stuff by heart.
ROAD TRIP
February 19, 2006, 12:05 p.m.
It’s snowing.
Hard.
The chemistry students pack their project and their overnight bags into the fifteen-passenger van in the school parking lot while Mr. Durbin paces outside, his gloved hand holding a cell phone loosely to his ear. His hair is thick with snow. He talks in spurts, his words dying in the blustery wind.
Everybody tumbles inside the van, excited and nervous. The students congregate on the front three bench seats.
Except Janie.
Janie takes the fourth bench seat.
Alone.
Shivering.
Mrs. Pancake, shrouded in a full-length, lilac, puffball, goose-down winter coat, peers anxiously out the front passenger window at Mr. Durbin and the blowing, drifting snow.
“We should cancel,” she mutters to no one in particular. “It’s only going to get worse the farther north and west we go. Lake effect.”
The students speak in hushed voices.
Janie pleads with the weather to lighten up. As much as she hates these class trips, she knows she needs this one.
Finally Mr. Durbin blows into the driver’s seat with a gust of snow and freezing cold wind. He starts up the van.
“The fair’s secretary says it’s clear and sunny up north,” he says. “And the latest weather reports show this band of snow is isolated to the bottom half of lower Michigan. Once we get past Grayling we should have clear skies.”
“So we’re going?” Mrs. Pancake asks nervously.
Mr. Durbin winks at her. “Oh yes, my dear. We’re going. Put on your seat belt.” He puts the van into drive and plows through the snowy parking lot. “Here we go!”
The students cheer. Janie smiles and checks her backpack for supplies. She has everything she needs to get her through the next thirty-six hours. She pulls out Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, along with her book light, and dives in.
5:38 p.m.
It takes more than five hours to get to Grayling when it should have taken three. But at least the snow has stopped. The school van limps into a Wendy’s parking lot.
“Eat quickly and get back in here,” Mr. Durbin hollers. “We have six hours to go. We’ll have to set up early in the morning—they’re closing the gymnasium at midnight, reopening at six a.m. I suggest you try to get some sleep in, people.”
Janie perks up.
Stays far away from Mr. Durbin. She’s still pissed about the other night at his house, although she knows she has to get past her contempt. Funnily enough, Mr. Durbin seems to hover around Janie even more when she tries to avoid him.
He slips in step with her as they enter the restaurant, but she ignores him and heads for the bathroom.
Everyone else heads for the bathroom too.
Janie calls Cabel.
“Hi, uh, Mom,” she says.
Cabel snorts. “Hello, dear. Did you make it through the blizzard?”
“Yeah. Barely.” Janie grins into the phone.
“Anything yet?”
“Nope, not yet. We still have six hours to drive. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Hang in there, sweets. I miss you.”
“I—I love you, Mom.”
“Call me when you get a chance. If anything happens.”
“I will.”
“Love you, Janie. Be safe.”
“I will. Talk to you soon.”
Fifteen minutes later they are back on the road.
Nobody sleeps.
Figures, Janie thinks.
She takes a nap while she can.
12:10 a.m.
In the hotel room with Janie are three other girls. Stacey O
’Grady, Lauren Bastille, and Lupita Hernandez. The four of them chat and giggle softly for a few minutes, but growing tired, they fall into bed, the alarm set for 5:30 a.m.
1:55 a.m.
Janie is sucked into the first dream. It’s Lupita, her bed mate. Janie can feel Lupita, twitching in the bed next to her.
They are in a classroom. Papers fly around everywhere. Lupita frantically scoops them up, but for each paper she picks up, fifty more fall from the ceiling.
Lupita is frantic.
She looks at Janie. Janie stares back, concentrating.
“Help me!” Lupita cries.
Janie smiles encouragingly. “Change it, Lupita,” she says. “Order the papers to come to a rest in a pile. It’s your dream. You can change it.”
Janie concentrates on delivering the message to Lupita. Slowly, Lupita’s eyes grow wide. She reaches out her hands to the papers, and they float gently down into a neat stack on Lupita’s desk. Lupita sighs, relieved.
Janie pulls herself out of the dream.
Lupita is no longer twitching. She is breathing steadily, deep, calm breaths.
Janie grins and rolls over.
Waits patiently for the one she needs.
2:47 a.m.
It’s Lauren Bastille this time.
They are in a room of a house that looks vaguely familiar to Janie. Folding chairs are set up in a circle. People are sitting and standing all around. Some are laughing and falling over. Everyone is drinking some sort of pink punch; some dip their hands into the punch bowl and slurp.
All the people, except Lauren, look fuzzy. Janie can’t see any faces, no matter how hard she tries to focus.
Lauren dances in the center of a circle. Her shirt is off and she twirls it as she stumbles around, laughing, wearing just a black bra and jeans.
Someone joins her.
He strips his shirt off and grabs Lauren.
Everyone claps and cheers as the guy pulls Lauren to him. They kiss and grind as the music pounds in the background.
Hip-hop music.
Janie watches in horror as the guy removes Lauren’s clothing and shoves his jeans down to his knees. The guy pushes Lauren to the floor, falling on top of her, their drinks spilling everywhere, and the rest of the group begins making out and tearing off one another’s clothes. Then they pile up on top of Lauren until people are stacked to the ceiling. Lauren is screaming, muffled. She’s being crushed to death.