Whisper to Me(66)

I put my head in my hands, then I saw movement in the window of your apartment, and a moment later the door opened.

“Cass?” you called.

“Yeah.”

“You locked out?”

“Yeah.”

“Come up. We’re watching a movie. Some trash about a shark fighting an octopus. It’s awesome.”

I thought for a second. At least the voice would go, if I was with you.

I climbed the steps, and you opened the door wide for me.

“You okay?” you asked.

I nodded. “I got locked out.”

“But you’ve been crying.”

“I was upset about being locked out.”

You gave me a sympathetic look mingled with doubt. “Well, I’m sure your dad will be back soon,” you said.

That’s the problem, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. You ushered me in. You’d turned it into a dump, the two of you. Pizza boxes everywhere, stacked like Jenga. Beer cans, take-out menus. Clothes hanging from furniture to dry, or maybe just to hang there, I don’t know.

“It’s a mess,” you said. “Sorry.”

I shrugged. “Not my apartment. But don’t let Dad see it.”

“He doesn’t come up here.”

“He might.”

Shane, who was standing in the door to the living room, made an exaggerated scared face. “We’d better clean tomorrow,” he said.

“I can do it,” I said.

You frowned at me. “You want to clean our apartment?”

“I like cleaning,” I said. Also I didn’t like my bedroom, I mean the voice was always so loud there, and it had been better in the apartment. There were less memories there. Fewer memories. Damn autocorrect, underlining my words in green. “I can do it when you’re at work, the two of you.”

“Seriously, Cass, it’s gross, you can’t—”

“I don’t mind.”

“I say let her,” said Shane. “We can pay you in beer.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Pizza.”

“My dad owns a pizza restaurant.”

“Money.”

I thought for a second. “No. Books. Bring me books from the library. I’ll keep this place clean. Okay?”

You looked at me. “You can’t get books from the library?”

“No.”

You seemed confused by this. Of course now you understand why. “Uh, deal,” you said.

We went into the living room and watched the movie. It was stupid and also, as you’d said, awesome. I was sitting next to you on the couch. I could feel you, feel your leg next to mine, even though there was four inches of air between our skin, and clothes. It was still like we were touching, like our bodies were magnets, held close to each other—something in our molecules vibrating; buzzing.

There was a crunch of tires on gravel.

“Oh no,” I said. “Dad.”

I jumped up; ran to the door and pulled it open, started down the steps. I was on the bottom one when Dad looked up, his hand on the door of the Dodge as he closed it. He looked at me silently. Then he walked toward the door of the house. I thought: Maybe he’s going to go easy on me. Maybe he’s going to give me a break.

I followed him, and he stayed silent as he held the door for me, just like you had done an hour before with the door to the apartment, but also so very differently.

“Dad—”

“No, Cass. Don’t ******* even. What were you doing?”

“I forgot my key and—”

“You went out? At night? When you have a ****** mental illness and there’s a ****** guy killing ****** women in this town?”

“I—”

“I don’t care. And you went up there? When we’ve had a RULE, Cass, a goddamn RULE, since you were twelve ******* years old, that you don’t go in the apartment when it’s boys renting. What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He put his hand out and clasped it around my arm, tight enough to make me gasp. “On THIS ******* day of all days? THIS day? Did you even remember it was the anniversary? You have to be ****** kidding me. You don’t leave this ****** house again after sunset, do you hear me?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “Upstairs,” he said.

I started up the stairs. “Are you having fun now?” said the voice.





That night, I lay on my bed and imagined that I was a bird, flying above Oakwood. Same view as on the Ferris wheel. Looking down on the sudden small beauty of the town, embracing it with the outstretch of my wings, untethered from the ground.

Floating.

Inhuman trajectory and lift: carried higher by updraft of warm air, no effort at all, wings arched above me. The houses and streets dwindling, forming into fractal patterns, dissolving into distant abstractions of light; the dark mass of the ocean.

Floating on the air. Freed from all movement and decay, freed from the voice, blessed with a new perspective. The place where birds live: the same world but different, in the mirror of the sky, inverse to us as death is to life, hovering in the spaces where our roofs and cars and towers aren’t; in the gaps; in the blue brightness; a kind of heaven.