Delicate Monsters Read online

  Even stranger, though, was how, at this very moment, this car with its echoes of death and decisions and life courses forever altered was the one place where Emerson had never felt so vividly alive. The top was down, he was curling through the valley up toward Calistoga and May was riding in the passenger seat beside him. She had her sandals off, feet tucked beneath her.

  A smile on her lips.

  Having her with him, so close and so perfect, was pure September bliss.

  Emerson stuck his arm into the breeze and grinned. Morbid, yes, but maybe that meant he could touch heaven from here.

  *

  This is not a date, he reminded himself as he held open the front door to the high-end creamery, which was the place May had suggested they stop for food. This is definitely not a date.

  A brass bell tinkled overhead as they entered. And it really wasn’t. A date. This was a class project, plain and simple, the same one everyone else in their Research Methods class had been assigned to complete: a visit to Calistoga’s Petrified Forest to gather information on carbon dating. Still, Emerson liked to think that he and May being partners meant something. They could’ve chosen other people, after all.

  Emerson took the shopping-for-food thing as another positive sign: she wanted to eat with him. He watched as May strolled the store’s narrow aisles, dragging her feet along the scuffed wood floor, humming under her breath and picking out things like organic cheese and meat and buttery, warm bread and even homemade ice cream with bourbon and cornflakes in it. Emerson loved the way the food smelled and he loved the idea of them picnicking together in the grass, but he felt a sick twinge of guilt over the amount of money he was about to spend. Why was it the simplest foods always cost the most? Another guilt pinch came from the knowledge that Miles couldn’t eat anything here. Well, maybe the meat, but surely even that had been cured or smoked or treated in some way his brother’s nervous system couldn’t tolerate. Then of course, thinking of Miles led to even more bad feelings. Damn.

  That kid.

  May turned around then. It was like she could read his mind. “How’s your brother?” she asked. The wire basket filled with their food swung from her arm like a metronome.

  Tick tock.

  Emerson shrugged. “He’s all right.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “People are saying he’s crazy.”

  “He’s not crazy.”

  “Well, they say he talks to himself and stuff.”

  “Maybe he does. I don’t know. Kid’s been sick his whole life. He’s probably lonely. He probably needs someone to talk to.”

  “Mmm,” May said as she drifted toward the cash register. “Isn’t that what a big brother is for?”

  *

  The Petrified Forest was part tourist trap, part natural wonder. Tucked away in a town known for its hot springs and mud baths sat this vast sloping park that featured hikes through groves of petrified redwood trees estimated to be over three million years old. According to the pamphlets the park owners handed out—only after the admission was paid, of course—a volcanic explosion was the cause of the petrification, a great magma burst freezing the giants like gods on a mountain and preserving them through the ages so that one day high school students could wander in pairs among the ferns and collect information with which to complete their class projects.

  Emerson parked the Mustang at the foot of a mossy oak tree and left the top down because the day was just that damn nice. He and May set about gathering up the food, their notebooks, pens, jamming everything into bags. May had a smartphone, too, so they could take pictures for their presentation, which would’ve been cool if only it didn’t make Emerson feel crappy about his own not-so-smart phone, which was the only thing he could afford.

  Crossing the gravel lot on their way to the main gate, they passed a handful of cars. Lots of SUVs, some out-of-state ones, and a few vehicles Emerson thought he recognized from school. Including a shiny black Jetta with a familiar bumper sticker on the back window. Black lettering on the logo. An S and a V intertwined. Su Vin.

  His throat went dry. Was that car Sadie’s?

  “What’s wrong?” May was staring at him, brown eyes wide with concern.

  Emerson blinked. Shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  He walked forward on stiff legs, and May followed. She didn’t ask any more questions and when they got inside and began the tour through the trees, Emerson longed to take her hand. Bump his hip against hers. Return her flirting looks and soft, dreamy gazes.

  But he didn’t.

  God.

  What was wrong with him? The moment was perfect and he was choking. Emerson had dated girls before, nothing serious, but he was no virgin. A senior girl had taken care of that when he was fifteen—a queasy one-off rutting in the bushes outside a postgame party that found Emerson too drunk or nervous to finish. It still put him ahead of a lot of guys, though, including Miles, who, at fifteen, didn’t even know sex existed. So there was no excuse for not chasing what his heart desired. Was it because May was black and he wasn’t, and they were out in public? Was he worried what other people might think? Or was it more than that? Sadie’s words from when they’d run into each other the other day had wounded him deeply. Worse, they’d gotten stuck inside his head like a crappy pop song set on repeat.

  So you like niggers now?

  I remember how you used to talk about them.

  Emerson cringed, embarrassed on his own behalf. More than embarrassed, he was mortified. But he’d changed since then, of course. He didn’t use ignorant words or say hateful things. Not anymore. Race wasn’t even something he thought about these days, because that’s what you were supposed to do. Pretend it didn’t matter.

  Still, maybe he was worried about Sadie, knowing she could be here, lurking in the shadows or around the next trail bend. The way she’d looked at him in the school hallway hadn’t been nice, sharp eyes sizing him up like a challenge. In fact, nothing he knew of Sadie was nice. But the worst part was, Emerson knew he hadn’t been nice when they’d known each other. That’s how they’d become friends, after all. Through simple sadism.

  His own.

  Right after their father’s death, when his mother had worked as a hospice care nurse for Sadie’s dying grandfather and couldn’t afford a sitter, Emerson and Miles had been allowed to roam the Su winery when they got out of school. Miles was little and pitiful then, wouldn’t leave their mother’s side, but Emerson had been different. Impulsive. Imperious. The new man of the house. Nine-year-old Sadie caught him pulling legs off a tree frog he’d found on the edge of the vineyard near the boggy creek that ran north to south through the property.

  “So you’re like that,” she’d called to him from the tree branch where she perched high in the air and spied on him.

  Emerson had leapt back and looked up, face burning with shame and righteousness. At his feet, the dying frog lay splayed out on the ground, its tiny detached legs coated in dust like they’d been rolled in Cajun rub or something meant to flavor them.

  “I’m like what?” he’d retorted.

  Sadie wriggled farther down the tree branch so that she was closer, but not so close that he could reach her. She wore pigtails and a Catholic school uniform.

  “Bad,” she told him. “You’re a bad person.”

  “Shut up. No, I’m not. You don’t know me.”

  “I don’t need to know you. But don’t look so pissed off. Nothing’s wrong with being bad. It’s like being honest or crying at the end of a sad movie. Sometimes it just happens.”

  Now, almost a decade later, as he walked through the Petrified Forest, it hurt Emerson to remember those moments, which were more his failures than Sadie’s.

  But maybe that’s what kept him from telling May his true feelings, from reaching out and touching her or letting her touch him. It wasn’t Sadie or society or other people that held him back. It was himself. His own guilty conscience.

  Maybe he still
believed what that little girl had told him all those years ago.

  chapter six

  “I need you to sign some papers,” Sadie said when she sat down to dinner. It was mid-September, a school night, and already the breeze from the veranda had turned chill and the air ripe with the scent of crush season. Autumn was here.

  “I need you not to tell me what to do,” her mom volleyed back.

  Sadie didn’t answer, and they got halfway through their meal—Sadie wolfing down a hanger steak, plate swirling with blood; her mother, gin and vermouth—before words were spoken again.

  “You going to class?”

  Sadie nodded.

  “You’d better be. I’m still paying that kid’s medical bills, you know.”

  “I just said I was.”

  “Prove it, then. Tell me what’re you learning.”

  “The art of war.”

  “What?”

  “Fencing,” Sadie said, and now her attention was starting to wander. From the table to the stars twinkling outside, bright dots in the vast valley sky. There were so many things she and her mother didn’t talk about. Like where her father was, and if he’d ever come back. Like whether Sadie admired or hated him for leaving in the first place.

  The phone in her pocket buzzed but Sadie knew better than to pull it out. It must be a text. From Wilderness Camp Chad probably. Turned out he lived in nearby Petaluma. He’d started up with her over the weekend.

  I’m home now. Wanna see you.

  Send me yr tits. I’m lonely.

  I’m not far. I can come to you. I gotta car. I’ll drive.

  Where u at girl? Don’t be a bitch.

  That last one had made Sadie smile. Had she ever been anything but a bitch to him? That had not been her intent.

  “Sadie!” her mom snapped. It was the type of tone that would’ve startled Sadie if she were the type of person who got startled. But she wasn’t. So she looked up. Let her hair fall slowly into her face.

  “Yes?” she said.

  Her mother, who was pretty and blond and Dutch milkmaid soft on the outside, but ill-tempered polecat on the inside, was not fooled. She could read an adolescent fuck-you like nobody’s business. “You’re not on drugs, are you?”

  “Alcohol’s a drug, Mom. We live on a drug farm.”

  “Don’t start with the drug farm thing.”

  “We’re practically terrorists.”

  “Jesus, Sadie. I just want you to graduate. That’s all.”

  “Well, wants aren’t needs, you know.”

  Her mother snorted. “Oh, please. You’re the one who said you needed me to sign something in the first place.”

  Sadie took her fork and stabbed at her steak remnants until juice splattered onto the tablecloth. “I have to see the school psychologist or else I’ll get kicked out. And until I’m eighteen you gotta say it’s okay.”

  “What psychologist?”

  “I don’t know. His name’s MacDougall or something. Maybe he’s Scottish.”

  “It’s a guy?”

  “It’s a guy.”

  “Whatever. Fine. I’ll sign the papers. But you’d better not tell him anything bad about me. Talk about your own problems.”

  “It’s therapy. I’m supposed to be honest.”

  Sadie’s mother sat back and laughed. “Yeah? Good luck with that.”

  *

  Sadie slipped from the house after dinner. For a cigarette.

  For her sanity.

  No one noticed. Gerald Corning, who managed the winery Sadie’s mother still liked to say was hers, showed up and even more drinks were being poured in the Su household. They’d probably be up all night if her mother’s low-cut dress and pushup bra were any indication. These kinds of things went both ways and Sadie could definitely read an adult fuck-you when she saw one. Her mother didn’t care about fidelity or Sadie’s father. In fact, she loathed him. She always had. It was no wonder he’d left.

  But did that mean he didn’t care about Sadie?

  Out in the cool autumn night, feet crunching on gravel, a blackness settled in her chest. One that wasn’t nicotine, but still felt dirty. Sadie was pretty sure she didn’t feel things like tenderness or love or compassion. At least, not the way other people did. Sure, she loved it when she got her way or when other people left her the hell alone, but she didn’t think that was the definition you were going to find in the pages of Merriam-Webster or anything.

  But the few moments in her life that she could describe herself as being at peace had all occurred in the presence of her father. Just brief moments, mostly during times they’d traveled together. His work took him all over the world and she’d last seen him seven months earlier, in Helsinki, a post-boarding-school-expulsion trip that Sadie spent flu-struck and feverish, huddled in their hotel room, trying not to die. When she was twelve, however, she’d gone with him back to China, his home country. Over a span of ten days they’d explored the bustling streets of Beijing and Tianjin, before moving south to Ningbo. There they’d ambled along the coast and made their way into the steep-pitched mountains, staying overnight in a forest where hot water bubbled up from the earth and the air smelled of licorice. Her father, Sadie had realized somewhere on that trip, was not a happy person. But he wasn’t trying to be happy and his not trying meant he wasn’t dissatisfied. At the time, this insight had pleased Sadie.

  It had made sense.

  Not too many things made sense to her anymore, though. Maybe that’s what her therapist would try and fix. Get her to be content with her discontent and not work so damn hard to make other people miserable just because she was bored. But in truth, being alone with her boring discontent sounded like a pretty shitty time, which was the reason she planned on driving Emerson Tate a little crazy now that he thought he was better than her.

  It was the reason she did a lot of things.

  Sadie wandered out to the main road and waited for cars to pass so that she could throw rocks at them. Ten minutes later no cars had passed, and she walked back up the drive to get her own Jetta. Once behind the wheel, she cut a left onto the two-lane highway and hit the gas. She drove due east and kept going and going until she reached a brand-new soccer facility that had been built during her absence. Fancy high-priced leagues played there. People who were too good to play at the high school or one of the local parks. People who believed grass could be a status symbol.

  Sadie parked on the side of the road and got out. The fields were deserted this time of night. A cyclone fence ringed the property, but Sadie found a gate on the far side that had been left unlocked. She slipped in and cruised around. A mesh bag of soccer balls sat unattended near one of the goal posts, and Sadie dragged the bag back with her through the open gate, down a steep embankment, right to the muddy edge of the town river. A late season algae bloom made the cool black current reek of rotten eggs and dog farts.

  Cigarette clenched between her lips and using the long blade of the jackknife she carried in her pocket, Sadie set about popping the balls one by one. Then she tossed them into the water. They bobbed away sadly, like the end of a minor tragedy.

  Brow sweating, chest heaving with exertion, she sat her butt down in the muck and longed for something else to destroy. The phone in her pocket vibrated again and this time Sadie pulled it out, exasperated sigh already building in her lungs in anticipation of whatever nasty thing Wilderness Camp Chad might say in order to get her to go out with him.

  But the message wasn’t from Chad. Nor was the one before it. They were both from Roman Bender. Emails, since Roman refused to own a cell phone and wouldn’t text for reasons Sadie had never understood.

  The first one read:

  *

  Hey. It’s me. I don’t want trouble.

  *

  Then maybe that poor kid whose life she’d fucked up so badly had waited for her to respond or else he’d simply struggled to come up with the right words, because his second email, sent a full forty-five minutes later, read:

 
*

  I just want to know why you did it.

  Please.

  *

  chapter seven

  Fencing class blues.

  Miles had them.

  The girl who’d somehow become his sparring partner lunged forward and hit him again and again. Miles stood stoically in defeat. Or what he thought was stoically.

  The girl yanked her helmet off in disgust. “You’re not even trying.”

  “How do you know that?” Miles asked. “How do you know I’m not trying? Maybe this is the best I can do.”

  “You don’t move.”

  Miles removed his own helmet and laid it gently on the floor beside his foil. “I need water.”

  The girl trailed after him, too close for his comfort. She was small, smaller than him, and wore her sweaty hair pulled back in a ponytail. Despite their default pairing, Miles didn’t know her name and didn’t intend to ask. What he did intend to do was shrink as far away as possible from her as they walked. He wanted to make sure they didn’t accidentally touch.

  She piped up again while he was bent over the water fountain. “I saw you puking behind the Dumpster at 7-11 this morning.”

  He turned to glare at her.

  She batted her eyes and smiled. Her cheeks had dimples. “I’ve seen you do it before, you know. You use a plastic bag. It’s cute.”

  He stood up straight. “I have food allergies.”

  “Is that what you call a hangover these days?”

  “I’m not hung over,” he said. “I’ve never been hung over in my life.”

  “Really? After that crazy thing you did last week, wandering around like a nut, talking to the sky, I thought you were pretty wasted. You should see a doctor about your allergies then. Find out what makes you sick.”

  “I know what makes me sick.”

  The girl cocked her head. “Then why do you keep eating it?”

  “Go away,” Miles mumbled. “I don’t want to talk to you.”