Charm & Strange Read online

  “Come on, Win. If you know something, spill it. They said an animal killed that guy. Whatever it was, it’s probably still out there.”

  “It probably is,” I echo. The rumors about an animal in the nearby woods have been whispered all over campus ever since that hiker was found dead out there, although the school hasn’t made an official announcement. The guy was a townie, not a student. Technically, they don’t have to say anything, but my gut says they’ll address the matter eventually. It’s an issue of public safety. Of course, it’s not a forest animal that I’m concerned with, but I did overhear a cop say the guy went missing weeks ago. Weeks. Now I can’t help but wonder if it happened during the last full moon.

  The back of my neck tingles.

  Now I can’t help but wonder if I had something to do with it.

  “Winston,” Teddy says, leaning closer. He wants to intimidate me.

  I stare back. We lock eyes and I don’t move. Not a goddamn muscle.

  It works. Teddy slumps in an act of submission, like a dog rolling on its back. But let’s face it, I’m not his alpha male and we both know it.

  “I can’t find Lex,” he whines. “He’s missing. I’ve looked everywhere.”

  Lex. Of course. That’s what this is about.

  “He’s not missing,” I say. “I saw him this afternoon.” Unfortunately I didn’t see him until after he shoved me in the back while I was pissing into the river. I think he took pictures of me, too. By now he’s probably uploaded them onto the Internet and is trying to register me as a sex offender.

  “You’re sure?” Teddy asks, and right then one of the cooks comes out and shouts that they’re closing in five and would we mind making sure there are precisely six chairs at every table. I shake my head. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking when he says this. An MMA event has broken out, right in the middle of the floor, complete with thundering body slams and flying furniture. It’ll be a plus if the chairs just make it through in one piece. But, hey, shoot for the stars, as my dad used to say.

  Ssssnap!

  In a flash, the past comes over me—

  getoverheredrew

  —and then it’s gone, then it’s taken a part of me with it. Sweat gathers on my brow. I turn back to Teddy, and I don’t think he’s noticed, but I feel dark. I feel used.

  “I’m absolutely sure,” I tell him. “I absolutely saw Lex.”

  “Yeah, well, he didn’t show up for band practice. He’s not in his room, either. I just checked.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is that the guy they found was…” Teddy licks his lips. “Lex knew him.”

  “How?”

  “He was at that party last year. You know the one I’m talking about.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. I recognized his picture on the news. The dead guy and his friend, they were there that night. At the Rite of Spring. I’m sure of it. Lex talked to them before he went back to the dorms and, you know—”

  “Right,” I say quickly, because I do know what he’s talking about and because I don’t want to reminisce about the time Lex Emil OD’d. Not again. He was my roommate for two years, and last April I saved his life. In return he’s made mine a living hell. “Well, what are you worried about? He’s fine.”

  Teddy shakes his head. “He’s different this year, Win. I can’t talk to him like I used to. He’s drinking again. Way too much.”

  I push away the queasy stitch that feels like guilt. I’m good at that by now. “Why are you telling me this? He hates me.”

  “It’s not hate! Lex just—”

  “Look, I don’t think you have to worry about Lex’s well-being unless he plans on roaming around the woods at night by himself.”

  Teddy’s laugh is genuine. “That sounds exactly like something Lex would do.”

  “He’ll be fine. Him knowing that guy, it’s a total coincidence. This is a small town, after all.” I leave the words unspoken, but the implication in my tone is and you should know. And he should, because Teddy’s not like the rest of us. He’s a day student, not a boarder. Meaning he’s a townie, too.

  Teddy’s staring at my plate, what’s left of my food, and he’s no longer twitchy. He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Hey, Win, you don’t still, you know, hurt yourself, do you?”

  “No,” I say, and I stay very calm, but inside I’m shaken. Yes, he’s seen my marks and bruises in the past, but he has no right to ask me something so personal. None. This school devours privacy, and rumors are like drops of blood in an ocean full of predators. So while I like Teddy in an easy kind of way, I can’t go there and confess my sins to him. I won’t. I mean, he’s Lex’s best friend, and if there’s one thing I know, when it comes to humiliating me, Lex Emil is always down for chumming.

  chapter

  four

  antimatter

  When you’ve been kept caged in the dark, it’s impossible to see the forest for the trees. It’s impossible to see anything, really. Not without bars.

  That’s what that Charlottesville fall was like, the one where I was nine and could still use my real name without fear. Back then I missed everything, even the most obvious clues, trapped as I was in a head filled with bleak and violent urges. So when Keith returned home from school one afternoon all worked up about animal rights, I felt more lost than enlightened.

  Playoff baseball blared on the television. Our father sank torpedo deep in his den chair, Braves cap on, beer in hand, work tie still hanging around his neck like a noose. From my position on the carpeted floor, I sensed more than saw him. His presence loomed large, all shadows and chill. I’d inherited his long nose and severe expression. His dark, dark moods.

  Dad held a tenured position at the university. I barely had words for what he did, but I knew it was important. And stressful. Phrases like “climate change,” “developing nations,” and “actuarial calculations” got thrown around when people talked about him. He traveled frequently. Drank even more frequently.

  I dangled a piece of freeze-dried liver over our dog’s snout. Pilot was a collie, purebred and from impeccable lineage. At least that’s what I’d been told, and it’s what I liked to believe. He’d flown to us on a plane as a puppy, all the way from Ireland, which was where my mother grew up. I wanted him to play dead, so I tried using the treat to lure him onto his side. My father threw me a scornful look. I put my hand down.

  “Get over here, Drew,” he said.

  I didn’t move. “Huh?”

  Dad’s eyes remained glued to the flat screen, but he patted the arm of his chair. “Get over here. I want to hear all about how you’re going to beat Midgins in the Fall Classic.”

  “Well, I—I’m not sure if I’m p-playing,” I said, although I was sure. The tourney was next weekend and my coach hadn’t even brought it up. Not after Soren. No way. I couldn’t be trusted.

  “What?”

  I went to stroke Pilot, but I was too rough. My fingers tangled in his fur. He yelped.

  “I just m-mean that I’m—”

  “Hey, did you know,” Keith piped up in a singsong voice, “that animals have rights, too?”

  “Like the right to vote?” My father glanced over to where Keith sat on the couch with homework spread all around him. Then he took a long swallow of beer. On the television, someone sang the national anthem in a warbling voice. Miles of patriotic bunting lay draped around the ballpark like a military funeral.

  My brother kept going. “How about the right not to be exploited or tortured for our consumption?”

  “Christ, Keith, where the hell is this coming from?”

  “You’re being condescending!”

  “No, I’m not. I just want to know where you’re getting these ideas.”

  Keith made a loud huff. “Lee did a presentation at school today about the living conditions at poultry farms. He showed video clips of how the chickens are treated. It’s disgusting. Beyond disgusting, Dad. It’s bad enough to raise these a
nimals solely for slaughter, but to keep them in those cages their entire lives, shooting them full of hormones…” He went on like this for a while. Dad nodded along as the Braves took the field, but I knew what he was thinking: Thanks a lot, Lee. Lee lived next door. He and Keith had struck up a friendship when Lee’s family moved in three years earlier. His family was Jewish, which still mattered in Charlottesville, but lucky for Lee, our family looked down on everybody—especially bigots—so we didn’t hold it against him. But he was a fat kid who hated all things physical, which meant he hated me. I decided right then and there that whatever stance Lee was taking on this whole animal rights thing, I was of the opposite view. Just because.

  I held out the dog treat again. Pilot picked his head up.

  “So let me get this straight,” my father rumbled. “You don’t object to the actual consumption of animals, right?”

  Keith hesitated. “Right.”

  “It’s how the animals are treated before they’re slaughtered that bothers you? Not the actual slaughtering.”

  “I guess.”

  “So the predator should respect the life of its prey? Am I understanding you? The lion should honor the zebra? It should feel empathy?”

  Now Keith looked furious. He was being condescended to. It happened all the time. Mom called it “the Socratic method” and said it was the way Dad lectured and the reason he could get so many people to see things his way. She also said it never paid to make him mad, but Keith seemed immune to the whole thing. Or more like allergic. “You know that’s not what I mean. We’re not animals. We’re human. We have certain responsibilities—”

  “We’re not what?” My father grinned, but he didn’t look happy. His face took on an eerie cast from the glow of the television. A major league leer. I shuddered.

  Keith shot a nervous glance in my direction. “Empathy’s not a bad thing, Dad.”

  “Really? Are you so sure? Even when it’s a matter of life or death?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Then what exactly are you talking about?”

  “God!” Keith exclaimed. “Am I the only one around here who gives a crap about anything but myself?”

  I tensed and waited for my father’s reaction. Even I didn’t like Keith’s tone.

  But nothing happened.

  After a moment, Keith dropped his gaze. “I mean, how hard would it be just to buy free-range chicken from now on?” he muttered. “’Cause that would be a great start.”

  “Free-range?” My dad gave a sharp bark of laughter, startling me. Pilot growled. The sound came from deep in his belly, and I buried my face in his snowy ruff. Inhaled his doggy scent.

  “Free-range,” he repeated. “Hell, sure, Keith. That we can do.”

  I growled, too.

  My dad swatted the arm of his chair one more time.

  “Get over here, Drew.”

  chapter

  five

  matter

  The directive is handed down the following morning: We’re not allowed in the back woods on the far side of the river anymore. This is expected and I’m not sure what took so long, but the entire student body is complaining and making idiotic arguments like how there’s a greater chance of dying in a dorm fire than being eaten by a wild animal so maybe we should all strip naked, cover ourselves in fire-retardant foam, and sleep in the parking lot.

  You know, just in case.

  But the headmaster is firm. There’s something out there, he tells us while we’re all crammed shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh in the dark shadows of the school’s creaking chapel. A bear. A cougar. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. No one knows. State wildlife experts will investigate. The matter should be resolved quickly, and our cooperation is appreciated.

  The platitudes and clichés spill from his mouth in rapid succession like the lame script of some poorly programmed android. I listen but learn nothing new. I do know the cops are in the woods again this morning. I know because I watched them trudge out there, real early, with their cadaver dogs and everything. But today’s forecast calls for rain, and this will wash away evidence, I guess. That’s too bad. I’d like the truth to be known as much as the next person.

  More, really.

  I feel restless. I do math inside my head. It’s been twenty-five days since the last full moon. That was during the first week of school, back in September, and I spent that night like others before it. I walked in the dark, alone. At curfew, I returned to my room, where I tossed and turned for hours. When I finally slept, I awoke to failure. I hadn’t changed. Again. Or so I thought.

  Now I don’t know what to think.

  I fidget. I long to leave. My elbow hurts and my hip hurts because I’m curled against the end of a pew, doing everything I can to avoid letting Brandon Black breathe on me. He smells awful, like some combination of scrambled eggs and designer body spray, and I have to inhale through my mouth because I’m this close to puking my guts all over the scuffed wood planks beneath my feet. I wrench my head to the right, and in an ocean of J. Crew and American Eagle, I spy the girl who looks like a boy sitting across the aisle and one row back. She’s wearing cargo shorts and leather sandals.

  She’s also staring directly at me.

  I nod. Her ears go red and she quickly faces forward. I follow her gaze. She’s not looking at the headmaster, I don’t think. She’s focused on what’s behind him—the Gothic wood carving that hangs above the altar. Supposedly, a group of students made it over a hundred years ago, back when the school was all girls. It’s dedicated to the founding headmistress. She’s the one who rescued this tiny clapboard chapel from demolition and had it moved piece by piece all the way up the mountain and reconstructed on the campus grounds. As the story goes, each girl chiseled a specific letter, one at a time. It must have taken them forever because the thing is huge. Today it’s kept well oiled, a massive mahogany glow that serves as the backdrop of every gathering we have in here, and although the school is secular, the quote is from Corinthians. It’s meant to be sacred, but it’s really just stupid.

  Love never faileth?

  Yeah, right.

  chapter

  six

  antimatter

  This I really didn’t understand.

  Our family was cultured. If and when we traveled, we spent our days visiting museums and galleries, our nights in theaters or lecture halls. We didn’t do rural. Which was why it didn’t make sense that an entire Saturday in late November had been set aside to visit Semper Liberi, a hokey-sounding animal preserve located in West Virginia.

  What I did understand was that it was a good two-and-a-half-hour drive to the place—a twisty ride that would take us into the depths of the Monongahela National Forest. I didn’t want to go, for numerous reasons. Besides the obvious car dilemma, I did not enjoy zoos or aquariums or anything related. The animals always smelled or hid, and I generally just didn’t care. But I had no say in the matter.

  I survived the road trip in the family Volvo by skipping breakfast and getting drugged up on Phenergan, the only medication with the power to suppress my motion sickness. It also knocked me out cold. Keith had to shake me awake as we pulled into the parking lot of the preserve. I flailed and tried to hit him. I wanted to continue sleeping. I wanted to remain unwoken.

  I stepped from the car into the frigid autumn air. A huge puddle of drool smeared across my cheek and all the way down my neck. The echo of familiar nightmares rattled in my head, and my limbs felt weak and unreliable. I lagged behind my family, shadowed by the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and lost in my own internal fog. A bitter wind howled off the hillside with locomotive force and I stumbled, once, twice, over the untied laces of my Nikes. But I caught myself. Kept going.

  Nothing looked real. Nothing felt right.

  I heard my name bounce around in the breeze like a Wilson double core on clay and looked to see Keith beckoning me with one arm. My brother smiled calmly, a beatific look. He stood at a split trail
head with beech and black cherry trees towering above him in their newly bare autumn glory.

  “Come on!” he called.

  “Why are we here?”

  “Come on,” he repeated. “We’re going to see the wolves.”

  We took the left-hand trail and hoofed it down into the dark woods. The sharp scent of birch oil hung in the air. My brother’s body fairly thrummed with excitement, and I struggled to keep up. I was no match for his long legs or bright-eyed eagerness.

  “You all right?” He ducked down once to squint at me. His red-brown hair flopped over his forehead, and he’d recently taken to wearing button-down shirts that reminded me of our father’s favorite students. The ones who stopped by our house to drink with him at all hours of the night. The ones our mother hated.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled, although this wasn’t quite true. Phenergan residue left me with a pounding headache and dry mouth, like playground sand, which I sometimes ate. “What did you say about wolves?”

  “They have them here at the sanctuary. Pretty cool, huh?” Keith jutted his chin in the direction of our parents. “It took forever to convince them to bring us. You know how Dad is with the whole animal rescue thing. I had to promise to get straight A’s and not convert you into a vegetarian, but I wanted you to see it.”

  So Keith had been to this place before? And coming again had been his idea? That was news to me. He shouldn’t have bothered. I was in no danger of becoming a vegetarian.

  We caught up with the rest of our family, and an overly friendly docent waved us into the visitors center. Siobhan immediately set to work on being hyper. She jumped up and down in an imitation of Tigger on a sugar high, and the movement made her ribboned pigtails bounce like mattress springs. Our mother, who had little in the way of patience, told her to stop about twenty times. When the docent launched into a boring speech about the history and mission of the preserve, I crept up from behind, took one of Siobhan’s honey-colored curls into my hand, and tugged.