Lies That Bind Us(21)

So, nothing new there . . .

Brad looked older than he had. His auburn hair was cropped very close at the sides, and his forehead was higher than I remembered, but he looked more buff than he had been too, his arms long and muscular. He had blue eyes so bright, I had always assumed he wore colored contacts, though he claimed not to, and they flashed when he cracked wise, which was most of the time. There was something slightly skeletal about his face, like the skin had been pulled tight at the back of his head, so that when he smiled he got a manic look, eyes wide, teeth exposed like little chisels. Kristen’s hair was also short—amazingly so—cut to within a couple of inches all over. It should have made her boyish, but it only showed off those knife-sharp cheekbones, so she looked like the magical princess from some strange Japanese anime. She didn’t pulse like Melissa did, didn’t glow, and you might not notice it at first, but she really was exquisite.

“Oh my God!” said Melissa. “Your hair!”

“I know, right?” she said, ruffling it selfconsciously. “Too butch?”

“No!” said Melissa. “It’s fantastic. Very chic.”

“Makes it easier to deal with wigs. And I get recognized less off set.”

“That must get to be a drag,” I said, not really believing it.

“It’s mostly OK,” said Kristen. “But it’s nice not to feel like public property all the time.”

We had left the beach when Simon phoned from the road and waited for them in the hotel’s airy lobby. Our reconnections done, Brad made a pit stop to the men’s room, and we then climbed back into the Mercedes: Melissa in the front; me, Marcus, and Gretchen in the back; Brad and Kristen in the middle. It was tight, but the AC was cranked up and as soon as we were pulling away, Simon had “1999” blaring away on the stereo again, and everyone was whooping and singing, reveling in being there again.

“Can’t believe he died,” said Kristen, as the song finished. “I was sad about Bowie, but Prince? I couldn’t believe it.”

Marcus nodded. “A piece of my past,” he said. “I remember my mom dancing around to ‘Little Red Corvette,’ and I used to crank Sign o’ the Times all through college, remember?”

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly wistful.

The mood in the car had inverted in seconds, as if Prince’s death had cost us something we hadn’t noticed before.

“We need a new anthem,” said Melissa, scanning the iPhone’s playlist with determined focus. “You guys know any other good millennium songs?”

No one did.

I kept my eyes on the passing scenery to stave off motion sickness. Not that I could see much beyond the blur of color and shape.

“So, Jan,” said Brad, turning right on cue. “Contact lenses, huh? Looking eagle eyed. Nice.”

I colored. Beside me, Marcus frowned with bewilderment. He knew how bad my eyes were, but he also knew that I had an aversion to anyone—myself included—touching my eyes. I had tried contact lenses one time, and it had taken me twenty hellish minutes to get one of them in. I never got the other in and fled from the optician’s, weeping, the moment I had managed to get the first one out. Neither Marcus nor any of the others had noted my missing glasses.

“Just trying something new,” I said.

A stupid, unsustainable lie, but sitting there with them all, the Pluto, the black hole of the group, I just couldn’t say “No, I lost my glasses in the sea because I’m a pathetic, clueless, moron.” Marcus’s eyes narrowed doubtfully, but it was too late. I just couldn’t bear the idea that I’d tell them the truth and they’d laugh at me. Or that they’d stifle that honest impulse out of pity. That would almost be worse.

“Good for you!” Brad said.

“Thanks!” I replied.

The trees sped past: blobs of dull green and pale, sandy ground, illegible road signs like teasing question marks all pointing at me, Lying Jan . . .

How was I going to get through a week like this? I couldn’t see shit beyond about three feet. There was no way I would be able to sustain the pretense that I could function normally. I was used to covering my ass like that, keeping track of my various exaggerations, elaborations, and flat-out untruths so that I didn’t catch myself out, and generally I got away with it. And usually I was also careful about the initial lie, floating it only in situations where I knew nobody or was about to leave so that the chance of being exposed was minimal. This was different. A week in close quarters with people I knew pretending I could see? I could barely tell them apart!

I bit my lip hard, punishing myself till I felt the blood run.

Idiot. Pathetic, lying, idiot.





Chapter Eleven

My name. The voice in the dark—strange, sexless, sepulchral—says it and I clench every muscle. I can hear the tremble of my limbs in the miniscule shaking of the chain around my wrist, drawing myself together like some shell-less turtle.

“Jan.”

“Who are you?” I manage. “What do you want?”

The silence that follows lasts an age. All I can hear is the thin hiss from the corner that sounds dimly like radio static, and the stuttering quaver of my own breathing. The pinprick of green light doesn’t reveal anything more in the blackness, but then, I remember with a start, that might not just be the lightlessness of the room.