“My final client is paying for the room. We could order a dozen lobsters and she’d have to pay it.”
“Ah, the perks of sex-work.” I flop into the pillows. He doesn’t answer, absorbed in his laptop. “Hey, who was that tweed-guy, anyway?”
Jack shrugs. “Going by your description, I think I’ve met him.”
“Oh yeah? Where, at a gay club?”
“A bar. Where he beat the shit out of me.”
“That’s where you got the beaten-hamburger look?”
Jack nods. “He’s good. Trained, probably. Karate, if I had to guess by his forms and strikes.”
“And you’re just trained in bat, right? Not the billionaire playboy vigilante kind, but the baseball kind.”
“I took taekwondo until high school. He’s much better than me.”
“Someone sent me a picture,” I say. “Of your hand on a baseball bat, and a body –”
“I know. Wren told me about it. More accurately, he screamed it at me. In the library.”
“Wren? Screaming? C’mon, lying isn’t funny. Except when it is.”
“He was very worked up,” Jack ignores me. “Agitated. He’s a lot of things, and we have a complicated history, but he’s surprisingly loyal to the people he considers friends. Not that it mattered when he turned tail and ran that night, but still. It’s the thought now that counts. Reform and second chances and all that drivel.”
“You killed someone,” I say. There’s no fear behind it, now. I’ve shown him my scar, and he didn’t flinch. So if he says yes, I won’t flinch, either. His icy eyes flick up. There’s a long, languid silence in which I’m sure he can hear my thunderous, anticipating heartbeat from ten feet away.
“They staggered off the lakeside cliff to get away from me. I didn’t touch them, but I might as well have killed them. The other three recovered from their injuries.”
The months of pressure the mystery pushed on me lifts all at once. I feel like I can finally breathe again. He’s telling the truth – the guilt in his eyes is obvious. If it was a lie, they’d be clear.
He walked off the cliff. Jack didn’t kill anyone. Not really. But I’m sure he thinks otherwise.
“What…what about the body?”
Jack glares at me. “You’re not concerned? I killed someone. I’m a murderer, Isis.”
“You were defending Sophia. Just like you defended my mom and I from Leo. That’s what you do. You protect people.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it, and stares at the floor.
“Look,” I start. “I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. I know what it feels like to want to kill someone. I really do. I was going to try to kill Leo, when my mom first told me about what happened with her and him. I had it all planned out – I’d drug him with chloroform, and if that didn’t kill him, I’d slice his dick off with a butcher knife, and then his fingers, and then his throat. I dreamed about it sometimes. I wanted it more than anything. I wanted to make him pay for what he did to her.”
Jack looks up at me. I shrug.
“So yeah. I know what it’s like.”
There’s something like gratitude that flickers behind his eyes.
“So c’mon,” I press. “What about the body?”
“You haven’t told me some things. I can’t tell you some things. That’s how it works.”
“Fine. Fine. That’s fair. So the guy in the tweed wants to know where you dumped the body. But why?”
“Because he wants dirt on me,” Jack says slowly. “Blackmail. To, presumably, join his corporation.”
“Because you’re the perfect businessman already.”
“Because I am perfect, period.” He smirks. I throw the extra pillow and it graciously arcs over his laptop and hits him smack in the face.
“Thanks, physics!” I thumb up no one. Jack belligerently coughs out a feather and keeps typing.
“Wow, you’re super dedicated to that computery thing over there. Wow. I can’t stop saying wow.”
“Stop saying wow.”
“What are you wowing? I mean, doing?”
“Tracing the email address that sent you that picture.”
“Oh. Then what? What happens after you find him?”
“Then I blow him up,” Jack growls.
I raise an eyebrow.
“Crash his hard-drive,” He corrects.
“Slightly more legal,” I agree. “Alas, not as fun.”
The food comes, and the maid wheels it in and leaves after Jack gives her a tip, and I inhale everything little thing on the tray in less than five minutes.
“Jesus, woman, you’re going to choke.”
“Worth it!” I chirp, and slurp crème brulee. I start coughing massively.
“Choke quietly,” He turns back to the laptop, and mutters to himself. “There. Finally. This guy is ridiculously good. But if I run the byte scan, I can –”
He goes still, like a deer hearing a gun cock.
“I’m…dying…” I remind him from the general vicinity of the floor.
“The IP traces back to Good Falls, Florida. Your hometown,” He says. “Someone from your hometown sent you this. It has to be someone you know. Who do you know from back then that’s good at computers?”
My heart stutters, and I stop pretending to die and start actually dying.
“Isis? What’s wrong?”
I stare up at the hotel ceiling, debating how many steps it’d take for me to get to the toilet. I don’t wanna throw up on Jack again, no matter how marvelous the last time was. Jack’s face looms over my vision.
“Isis? You’re pale –”
“Him,” I say softly. “He won the state hacking championship for the middle school division every year.”
“Who?”
I thought he’d left me alone. I never thought the email could be him. An almost-year of silence convinced me I was free.
I grit my teeth and put my hands over my eyes, like it’ll block out the darkness. I knew the safety wouldn’t last long. It never does. The darkness always finds a way in, just like it has now.
“Nameless.”
-9-
3 Years
30 Weeks
0 Days
Jack tries to convince me he’ll do everything he can to block Nameless from contacting me again. But I know it won’t work. Jack’s good, but Nameless is much, much better. He always has been.
If Nameless can get access to a video in a federal vault, then he can get to me. If he knows about the video, he knows about Jack, probably through Wren. Not that Wren would ever tell him purposefully. Maybe he let it slip. Or maybe Nameless just tracked me all the way here, and somehow found out about Jack through the school’s computers. People talked about our war on the beat-up old Macs in the computer lab, I’m sure. Or maybe –
My stomach sinks, and the wonderful crème brulee taste goes sour in my mouth.
Maybe Nameless has had my email hacked all along, and he read my emails to Kayla about Jack.
“Wipe your old hard drive, just in case,” Jack says. “Get a new email address, and change the passwords on everything.”
“He’ll just break in again.”
“He won’t,” Jack says sternly. “He won’t. I won’t let that happen.”
“He’s been watching me this whole time,” I laugh. “I was so stupid. I thought I got away from him for good.”
“You will. You can. You just can’t give up. Work with me, okay? We’ll fix this together.”
“It’s no good,” I roll over. “He’s gonna torment me for my entire life. He’s always gonna be here, just like this stupid – this stupid fucking scar –”
I wrap it in the sheet so I don’t have to look at it. Jack walks over and unwraps it, pulling it to his lips.
“Listen to me, Isis. He won’t be with you forever. Someday, you’ll force him to leave, and he will, and you’ll be happier for it. The memories won’t go away, but they’ll become less clear as you make more.”
&n
bsp; I flinch. His eyes don’t leave mine.
“I want to help you make more, if that’s alright with you.”
“What about…Sophia?”
“She’ll always be a part of my life, and I’ll always support her. But I know now who I want. The truth is here, right now, staring me in the face and sitting on a hotel bed, wearing my shirt and looking ridiculously cute.”
My face heats like a brushfire. Jack stands.
“Let’s get some sleep. We can worry uselessly tomorrow.”
I nod. He turns out the light and takes a spare blanket from the closet, draping it over the couch and laying on it. I snuggle under the blankets and try not to feel guilty. I can’t fall asleep at all. It’s a repeat of what happened at Avery’s house, but this time, I’m not drunk, and I’m not as scared. It’s just the darkness, ebbing away at me. Nameless feels like he’s everywhere. And I’d give anything, do anything, to chase him away and feel safe again.
“It’s cold,” I say. I hear Jack roll over.
“Do you want another blanket?”
“No, um.” I swallow. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, second only to my first-grade spelling bee in which I spelled ‘fabulous’ wrong, and third to when I had my first period ever and bled through my pants and on the metal foldout chair during band class and had to attach the chair to my bottom as I walked to the bathroom so no one would see the damage. I gained a whole new respect for crabs and their walking style. Shit’s straight difficult.
“Can you –” I try to raise my voice, but it cracks. “Can you – please – I’m usually not this bad at talking,” I laugh. “This is so stupid. I’m sorry. Nevermind.”
I roll over and pull the blankets over my head so he won’t hear me whispering curses at myself. But then I feel a weight on the other side of the bed, and my lungs rapidly decide they want to burst. Jack’s voice is close.
“This?”
I pull the blankets off my head and nod, too furiously. Too eagerly. Jack laughs, low and soft. With my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I see him roll over and face away from me, pulling the blanket over him. His legs are just a few feet to the left, his back even closer. I’m shaking, but I pray to whatever god is listening that he can’t feel that through the bed. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea; that I’m afraid, and then leave. I am afraid - a deep-down, rock-solid fear burned into me by Nameless - but I’m not scared. I’m not shallowly breathing or panicky or jumping at every little thing. And that makes all the difference. It’s not chaotic fear – it’s orderly, and I know the causes for it. I can control it.
I reach out, slowly, and put my hand on his back. I feel his muscles tense under my fingers. When he doesn’t say anything, or move, I lean in and press my weight against him. He’s warm, warmer than a blanket. There’s a long pause as our breathing moves in and out of each other’s rhythm. And then finally, he speaks.
“You’re the most confusing girl I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah.” I smile. “Not sorry.”
“Good.”
***
The sun barges in and sits its butt on my eyes and the world is ending and I’m blind and everything is over. And then I roll over and see Jack’s face on the pillow and then everything is really over. Permanently. Because my universe explodes.
I make small screeching noises under my breath as I try to remember how I got here, in the hotel room. It all floods back at once and I’m more than a little mad at myself for giving in and staying here without a fight. Jack cracks one sleepy blue eye open. He runs his fingers through my hair idly as he groans.
“Who gave you permission to be conscious before six, and how can I end them?”
“Why are you touching me?” I whisper. “Is it really that fun? Because most people say it feels squishy and gross.”
He laughs and puts his hands over his eyes, stretching like a freshly woken cat who likes to arch its back.
“What do you want for breakfast? I can run out and get something, or we can call in. Check-out isn’t until one.”
“There was a café I saw on my way in last night. Looked really swanky and smelled permanently like bacon. You should go there. While I sneak out the window.”
“I think we should go together.”
“But I like you so much more when you are a generally enormous distance away from me.”
He rolls over and sits on his elbows, playing with a strand of my purple hair.
“That’s an incredibly contradictory statement considering what you did last night.”
“I touched your back! Stop making it sound sexual!” I gasp. “Did I just say sexual? Out loud? Without stuttering? Praise Jesus. Wait, does Jesus like people having sex? I keep forgetting who likes what.”
“I like you,” Jack murmurs. I elegantly fall off the bed. There’s a silence, and then I peek my head over the mattress and raise my hand.
“Uh, hello? Me here. I would preferably not like to be given a heart attack before I reach legal drinking age.”
“Did that really surprise you that bad?” Jack smirks. He pauses. “I like you.”
“Ah!” I put my arms up to shield myself.
“I like you.”
“Stop!”
“Oh, this will be fun.”
“I will kill you slowly,” I retort, but he’s already up and pulling his pants on. I set my entire facial region on fire involuntarily when I realize he slept in boxers. Next to me. And in the split second before he pulled his pants on there was a distinct bulge and I am dying, this is what dying is, you burn up and then the ashes blow away and someone gets them in their eye and they walk around with a red eye all day and their co-workers think it’s pink eye when really it’s just your dead carbon –
“Isis. Shhh.”
“You shhhh!” I hiss. “I’m having a fifteenth-life crisis here upon seeing a man’s junk for the first time.”
He pulls his jacket on and grabs his wallet off the nightstand.
“I’ll wait for you downstairs.”
“I’ll eat your firstborn!”
He shuts the door, and I’m alone. Alone but with him waiting for me downstairs. In a fancy hotel. For breakfast at a café. I pinch my feet and yelp when I don’t wake up. There aren’t any hidden cameras I can see, but then again if I could see them they wouldn’t be very good hidden cameras now would they? I don’t think this is a set-up, at least. It’s an impossible little dream probably, cooked up by my waking subconscious, but for now I’ll let it slide. For now I’ll go along with it. Me, the fat ugly girl, slept in the same bed as Jack Hunter, my nemesis, my rival, and now apparently something a little more than my friend.
And I felt safe.
Over breakfast, Jack and I talk logistics. He’ll keep an eye on Nameless’ IP, and I’ll do a thorough cleansing of my computer. When we’re standing in the parking lot with bellies full of bacon and toast, we linger. I shuffle my feet. I have no idea what to do. What’s a girl supposed to do to say goodbye to a boy she slept with but didn’t really sleep with? Is there a handbook for this shit? Should I write one real quick and mail it to past self? Does publishing even work that fast?
Before I can agonize any longer, Jack reaches his hand out and pats my head.
“You’ll be okay driving home?”
“Duh,” I feel miffed that he’d pat me like a child, but also weird and glowy on the inside in places I don’t even wanna think about. “I’m like a NASCAR driver. Minus the millions of dollars.”
“Shame, really. Imagine how many more people you could annoy if you were a millionaire.”
“At least ten whole people. And their grandmas.”
“Ah yes, the time-honored Blake tradition of annoying grandmas.”
“All it takes is like, a dirty pan and a cat without a pink, furry sweater on it.”
“Say hi to your mother for me.”
“You too. Um. If she still remembers me. Actually, don’t, it’s fine, I didn’t exactly make the best impression when I wen
t over there –”
“She remembers,” Jack insists. “She thinks you’re sweet.”
“Hah. Must’ve met my doppleganger. The one who doesn’t exist anywhere ever.”
Jack smiles. It’s not a bright smile, like the one I’d seen him give Sophia in the hospital once. But it’s warm and without ice, and that’s all I can ask for, really.
“You have my number,” He says.
“Yup. I’ll text if there’s issues. Tissues. Not tissues, tissues are disgusting and so are issues.”
He starts to walk away. I want to say a thousand dumb things at once – thank you, and I’m sorry you chose a shithead like me, and you deserve better, and drive safe, and be safe, and sleep well and eat well, but all the words and feelings come up in a jumbled mess and dissipate into the air as I open my mouth to say nothing at all and close it again.
***
“YOU WHAT?”
I hold the phone away from my ear to preserve my future hearing for eighty years to come.
“Slept. In the uh, same bed,” I whisper.
“YOU HAD SEX WITH JACK HUNTER?”
“Jesus Kayla, no, stop shouting, it’s indecent.”
“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S INDECENT – SLEEPING WITH JACK HUNTER!”
“We didn’t sleep together, idiot! Do I look stupid enough to ever touch that bag of germs?”
Kayla finally takes a breath. “That’s true. You can’t even say ‘dick’ without vomiting in your mouth a little. And sometimes, on desks. And small children.”
“That was one time, and that kid totally walked into the flight path of my vomit. It’s not my fault if he had no grasp of liquid physics.”
“But you totally slept in the same bed and, like, hello, isn’t that at least second base? Second and a half base?”
“Uh, like a second moon base?”
“Ugh, no! Nevermind, I’m not gonna explain really outdated sex terms to you.”
“For the last time! There was no sect…ional things going on, okay? I would never do that with your ex. Ever.”
“I would. With your ex. If you had one. If he was smoking hot. If you gave me your sure-as-hell approval, obviously. Which I totally give you, by the way, because, duh – it’s Jack Hunter! Someone in this school has to bed him before he gets to Hollywood or modelland or whatever and contracts a bunch of icky diseases!”