Delicate Monsters Read online

  I wish I could explain what it was like, that night in the snow, beneath the brightest stars and the fullest moon. I was surrounded by ice, no matter where I went, no matter what I did. It was terrible and it was beautiful, and I don’t remember everything—just the blood and the pain—but when I try and talk about that night, no one wants to listen. They either change the subject or ask if I’m feeling better, and it’s like I’m doing the wrong thing by not wanting to hold it all inside. Should I be embarrassed? I’m not. I’m not anything, these days, if you want to know the truth. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.

  Maybe that’s why you did what you did.

  It’s one of my theories anyway. That you wanted me to die because my life isn’t worth living. That you were punishing me for my weaknesses. I have a lot of theories, though, and I think I want to tell them to you. I also think you have to listen. Because unlike a science lab or a math proof or a miracle from God, there’s nothing in the outside world that can tell me if I’ve stumbled onto the truth. Only something that lives inside of you can do that.

  And only you know what that something is.

  —R

  *

  chapter twenty-two

  What were the origins of pain?

  Miles’s mind fluttered into wakefulness. He lay very still. He took stock of where he was. He was in his own room, pressed beneath the cool sheets of his bed. Moonlight drifted through the air, a lost traveler on a dark night, and Miles could see that Emerson’s bed was empty. He was probably on the couch beneath a pile of old blankets. That was where his brother always slept when he was ill or hurting. Or when he couldn’t stand Miles for reasons that were never, ever spoken out loud.

  Miles tried pushing himself to sitting. He groaned and fell back. Clutched at his side.

  Every part of him hurt.

  So much.

  He tried again. This time, he took a deep breath, braced for the pain and forced his body up, all the way, moving against the ache in his ribs and the sting of his muscles. Once on his feet, he shuffled across the room on stiff legs to the far window. There he leaned against the metal frame and stared out at the night.

  Midnight silence. Nothing of interest was out there—neglected trees, old cars, small pieces of trash rolling around in the breeze—but still, something both ancient and new stirred within him. Like the sweep and turn of a compass dial, Miles felt himself teetering on the edge of some temporal horizon, that narrowing border between now and yet-to-come.

  There was still a twist to the wind. There was still a slant to the sky.

  Like the origin of his pain, his truth was so close.

  It scratched and growled,

  it slumbered and snored,

  just a room away,

  all while the wind knocked

  and whispered

  get ready for your shine, boy

  get your soul good and ready

  the end is coming

  the truth’ll be here

  soon.

  chapter twenty-three

  Morning came in its inevitable way. A bright and bitter end.

  Dots of gray mist and pink haze crept over the eastern hills, lighting the room and stirring Sadie from sleep. She yawned and stretched, then crawled from her father’s armchair back upstairs for a shower. After she was scrubbed clean, Sadie stared at herself in the full-length mirror in her room for a few minutes, wet hair dripping all over the place. It was something she did a lot, eyeing her naked form from all different angles, wondering if she’d ever see anything different. Echoes of her father, perhaps: a hint of his warmth, his compassion.

  Sadie didn’t see any of that.

  She never did.

  Turning away from the mirror, she yawned again and rubbed her eyes. Her rest had been fitful—dreams about Roman needing things from her, God—and after putting on clothes and blow-drying her hair, Sadie craved coffee something bad. Making chit-chat with her mom in the kitchen while they pot-watched the French press felt unbearable, so she moved deftly to Plan B. This involved grabbing her school stuff, lifting a twenty from the pile of cash that had been set out to pay the house cleaner, and slipping from the house to her car before the sun could dry the dew-damp grass.

  She cranked the stereo and nosed the Jetta down the drive. A flock of wild turkeys huddled along the dirt shoulder, looking like the world’s ugliest clusterfuck. As she passed them, the birds gobbled and cooed and appeared to be in a state of great excitement. It took Sadie a moment to realize they were all watching a big tom strut his stuff right in the middle of the main road. His red throat thing was flapping in the wind, his tail feathers were spread wide, and did turkeys have balls? If they did, his were probably swinging like mad.

  Sadie didn’t bother honking. She just gunned the car forward.

  In town, the main square had a Starbucks. Two, in fact, including one with a drive-through, but Sadie hated Starbucks with a passion usually reserved for people who lied to her, bored her, or did something gross like picked earwax in public or chewed ice with their mouths open. So she headed out to a strip mall near the highway.

  The coffee shop next to the Motel 6 was decent enough, but the lot was crowded this early in the morning. Filled with wine reps and wine regret, no doubt. Sadie was forced to park outside the 7-11, which was how she ended up noticing the strange boy from her fencing class, who was crouched behind the Dumpster, puking into a plastic bag.

  Again.

  Sadie waited until she had an unlit cigarette and double vanilla latte in hand before marching over to gawk at him.

  “Ew,” she said.

  The boy twitched and looked up. His eyes were watery and pink, and despite the white Safeway bag he held tight in his hands, there were obvious flecks of barf on his crappy knock-off sneakers. Hole in the bag, apparently.

  Sadie thought about cracking a joke or teasing him or telling him straight out how damn pathetic and vile this whole thing was, but she noticed other things, too: a bandaged forearm, deep bruising on one cheek, the awkward way he held his ribs. Plus, there was something in the way the boy stared back at her—wide-eyed and sad and so very, very lost—that for the first time, in a long while, Sadie restrained herself.

  “You look like shit,” she told him. “Utter shit.”

  He nodded quickly, but his muscles bunched. Like he was going to make a run for it.

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t do that. Look, I’ll give you a ride, okay?”

  *

  “Don’t puke in my car,” she instructed when the boy had gotten settled in the Jetta’s front seat and they were back on the road.

  “I won’t,” he said firmly.

  True to his word, the boy rode like a well-trained dog, with his thin shoulders tensed and his nostrils flared and his shaggy blond hair flopping in his eyes and snaking down toward his collar. Sadie watched him out of the corner of her eye. God, he looked so young. Not that she was some advanced age, but he had the mannerisms of a child. Of something slight and fearful.

  “How old are you, anyway?” she asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Jesus. No one’s going to put out an Amber Alert or anything if I’m driving around with you, are they?”

  “Huh?”

  “How’d you get that bruise on your face?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine. Tell me what foods you’re allergic to, then. Why are you always getting sick?”

  It took the boy a moment to answer, and when he did, his words came slowly, as if he needed to handle them with great care. “I have sensitivities to gluten. Lactose. Soy, maybe. And onions. My allergist is still running tests.”

  Sadie laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it. She clasped her hand over her mouth, but it wasn’t like the boy didn’t notice. She was, after all, laughing at him.

  “Is that funny?” he asked.

  “Come on. Onions are pretty fucking funny. I mean, they’re onions. No one has to eat onions. Most peopl
e don’t even like them. It’s not like you’re a diabetic who’s allergic to insulin or something.” She pulled another cigarette out and stuck it in her mouth while the lighter warmed. “Tell me what you had for breakfast.”

  “Cereal.”

  She glanced over at him. “Gluten free?”

  “Fruit Loops.”

  “Oh, damn, kid. Living dangerously, huh? With cow’s milk, too, I bet. Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  The lighter popped out then, all glowing and red, and this time, when Sadie laughed, she thought she saw the boy’s lips twist into the very faintest of smiles.

  chapter twenty-four

  Guilt utilized its own kind of magic.

  This was Emerson’s realization when he woke up Tuesday morning on the living-room couch to find his stomach sour with post-whisky resentment, and both Miles and his mother already gone. Guilt didn’t manifest itself in the expected ways. It was trickier than that, capable of all sorts of transpositions and sleights of hand.

  He groaned and pulled himself up to sitting. Sleep hadn’t come easy for him last night. After the cops left, it took two more trips to the Mustang and the Johnnie Walker bottle before he was able to lie down and rest. Even then, when he finally shut his eyes, he hadn’t dreamed of May or Sadie or even his strange little brother who was apparently so danger prone he needed a guardian angel or one of those hermetically sealed plastic bubbles to help keep him alive.

  No, Emerson had dreamed about the cat. The tabby one with the blue suede collar with the bell on it. He’d dreamed about that damn creature all night long, as if some phantom recording device inside his head were rewinding and replaying the memory of him hitting it, over and over, until it was etched into his soul. Until it was distorted into something far more meaningful than it should’ve been.

  In some of the dreams, Emerson didn’t actually hit the cat. He was driving down the country lane with Trey and Giovanna in the car, but instead of staring at the crows, he saw the animal dozing in a patch of lazy sun, even before Trey yelled. In those dreams, he was able to honk and swerve at the last minute. The cat would scramble across the road, its wide belly dragging on the ground before vanishing into the bushes with a hot flash of its striped tail.

  But in most of the dreams, the cat still died, and what haunted Emerson wasn’t seeing its broken neck or glassy eyes or the dot of blood dripping from its nose. It was the sensation of holding its dead body in his hands. The slack weight. The riffling of soft fur in the breeze.

  The rush and the reverence that came with witnessing a life slip away into the ether for good.

  *

  “I heard about Miles,” Trey said when they met up in the hall before third period. “Fuck, man.”

  “Yeah.” Emerson threw his books into his locker. His jacket, too. It was early still, but already everything in the building felt hot and stuffy. Like he was choking. Like he could barely breathe.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s here. Somewhere. We don’t ride together.”

  “You should.”

  “I guess. He’s big on walking.”

  “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “He won’t say. Not even to the cops. I had to talk to them for a long time last night.”

  Trey leaned forward, dropped his voice to a whisper. “Giovanna said they burned him. With a cigarette or something.”

  Emerson winced. “Yeah.”

  “That’s sick. Like, seriously sadistic. Look, we’re going to find out who did it, okay? And then we’re going to kick their asses. Because he’s a kid. A fucking kid.”

  “I guess.” Emerson rubbed at his temple.

  “You guess?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, if he won’t say anything, maybe he doesn’t need us to kick anyone’s ass. Maybe that’s on him. For once.”

  “Bullshit,” Trey said.

  “What?”

  “I said bullshit. He’s just a scared kid. You know Miles. He’s always taking crap like that. What he says or doesn’t say doesn’t change anything.”

  “Well, maybe he doesn’t even know who did it.”

  Trey’s cheeks went flush. “What’s wrong with you? It’s your brother. It doesn’t matter if he knows. What matters is what those fuckheads did, and what we’re going to do when we find them.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” Emerson nodded his agreement wearily. He didn’t get where all of Trey’s anger was coming from and why it was coming at him. It wasn’t his fault Miles never fought back. But Trey had a point. You couldn’t qualify sympathy for an act of violence based on whether or not you liked the victim. Wrong was wrong.

  Right?

  “You okay?” Trey asked. “You look weird.”

  Emerson slammed his locker door shut. “My stomach feels like shit. I couldn’t eat this morning.”

  Giovanna bounced up to them then, smelling like bubble gum and Camel Lights. She hooked her arm through Trey’s and kissed his cheek with a smack. She didn’t ask about Miles. She didn’t ask about anything. Together, the three of them walked to their next class, which was Research Methods. Emerson girded himself inwardly, because May would be in there and he’d have to smile and play at being her boyfriend, which was what he’d wanted, only he hadn’t wanted it like this, full of secrets and stress and nightmares about dead cats.

  Stepping into the classroom, he glanced over at May’s desk. And froze.

  Seated right beside her, with her dark hair in braids, was Sadie Su.

  Neither girl looked up at Emerson. They were too busy with their heads together, staring down at something on Sadie’s phone and laughing.

  Emerson took a halting step backward, then another.

  “What’s he doing?” Giovanna said loudly, but Emerson ignored her, along with Trey’s questioning stare. He kept walking backward, kept bumping into people.

  When he reached the door, he turned and fled.

  chapter twenty-five

  Miles did his best to move through his Tuesday classes unnoticed, which was always his goal, but somehow the day had become one of people telling him how he should be feeling. Not the girl from fencing who’d given him a ride, thankfully, but pretty much everybody else.

  That must hurt.

  You must be so pissed.

  You’d better be scared, bitch. We’ll do it again.

  If that weren’t bad enough, all the extra attention meant people kept asking him things he would’ve refused to answer on a good day, much less now.

  How are you doing?

  Do you want to talk about it?

  Gonna snitch, fag?

  Who did it? Who hurt you? Who? Who?

  But the worst thing of all was that people touched him. The whole day long. What was it about being physically violated that invited more physical contact? Without even asking? Wherever Miles went, teachers squeezed his shoulders, patted his back. A girl in history class took his hand and rubbed the soft side of his forearm where the bandage and burns were. Horribly, this made tears spring to his eyes, hot and miserable, and when he was called to the principal’s office after lunch, the nurse there actually stroked his bruised cheek, with the back of her knuckles, like he was a baby. At that point, Miles had to excuse himself to the bathroom to throw up, and he stayed there, drooling and heaving over the sink like a dyspeptic dog until one of the office assistants came and knocked on the door.

  “You gotta go home if you’re sick,” she said when he came out.

  “What?”

  “If you’re vomiting or have diarrhea, you have to stay home from school for twenty-four hours. That’s the rule.”

  It was? Miles thought about this. “Well, then I’d never be at school.”

  The assistant frowned. “Look, there’s a virus going around. We don’t want it to spread.”

  “I don’t have a virus.”

  “Whatever, kid. I don’t make these things up.” />
  In the principal’s office, Miles told her exactly what he’d told the cops, which was nothing. No, he didn’t know who did it. No, he didn’t know why. It was the truth, in a way. Because it could’ve been anybody. And it could only have been him.

  It didn’t matter. He still ended up in a windowless room, sitting on an ugly couch across from the school’s therapist, who was some young guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a nervous habit of rolling his chair around.

  Miles did his best to stare intently at the floor, which was probably his own nervous habit—an act he did by pure instinct, like nail biting or hurting himself so that others couldn’t hurt him first.

  “I’m Dr. MacDougall,” the therapist said in this forced cheery voice, like he was trying to sell something not worth the price. “You can call me Tom.”

  Miles said nothing.

  “I’m sorry you were hurt, Miles.”

  He still said nothing.

  “I know it didn’t happen on campus, but Principal Abrams thought it would be a good idea for us to talk. About … the assault. About your feelings. About anything. Your mother agreed, too.”

  Miles let his head droop farther, down between his knees. “My mother knows I’m talking to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  More silence.

  Dr. MacDougall cleared his throat. “Anything you say here is confidential, you know. That means whatever we talk about stays between us. The only time I’d ever have to break confidentiality would be if you told me about any instances of child abuse or elder abuse, or if I felt you were planning to hurt yourself or other people.”