Nothing But Blackened Teeth(24)

Somehow, they believed us.

Phillip’s death was a mistake, said the doctors and the detectives, the reporters and the neighbours until, one by one, drained of conspiracies and condolences, they went away. At Lin’s behest, we skewered Phillip on a jut of broken timber, let what remained of him unravel, spread like Christmas lights. Lit a fire. Watched it burn.

There was nothing to find.

There was nothing found.

And all at once, it was over.

Phillip stopped being Phillip.

He became instead a closed casket and terse conversations, a house with every curtain drawn shut. Phillip’s mother wafted between her guests like a spectre, her beauty-queen face veiled, her hands gloved in velvet.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her.

Phillip’s mother, gorgeous even in despair, sobbed into my shoulder, while I prayed that her son’s ghost might find its way home. He had been his parents’ only son. Their sweet heir, their shining light, their hope.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I didn’t have breath for anything else.

His mother gave us three pairs of cufflinks, pretty as you please, identical wolf heads with dewdrops of opals for eyes. Because Phillip thought of us as his pack, she said. She gave me a box I recognized from Phillip’s nineteenth birthday. I’d put his shirt inside, the one he left behind in my dorm room. In it, she’d stacked his comic books: the mint-condition, first-edition ones he always said he’d give me. Insurance against a bad year, Phillip had insisted that winter’s morning, as we lay there under the sunroof, not together but not anything like friends. I could pawn them for all the Subway sandwiches I wanted, he said, and smiled like the sun came out for him alone.

“If you remember anything else. Anything else at all,” she said, pressing the box into my grip. “Tell us. We won’t blame you. We know bad things happen.”

We said nothing. After everything that had happened, how could we? We tucked the lie of Phillip’s death between Starbucks pick-me-ups and takeout dinners, Skype conversations and police interrogations, kept repeating its specifics until we almost believed it. Then, we tucked ourselves into our own lives, drifting until we were nothing but Facebook notifications to each other, an endless circuit of birthdays and likes and curated photographs.

I went back to school. Six months before, you couldn’t have put the idea in front of me without making me laugh. But after everything that had happened, I decided I needed a do-over. So, I went back to school. Oxford University, to be exact. Economics, with a minor in accounting. Neat numbers. Tidy things, unlike what happened so many months ago.

Lately, I’ve begun to wonder if the ohaguro-bettari followed us from the manor. I see her, sometimes. Or at least, I think I do. Reflected in the windows, her face as wan as mine. But it is always my reflection, the eyes smudged of definition, the mouth blotted in shadow so it looks like there’s nothing but blackened teeth.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS




Thanks to Ellen Datlow, first and foremost, for believing in this book when I couldn’t make heads or tails of its worth. It literally wouldn’t exist if not for you going, “I like this, but it needs a lot of work.”

To the team at Nightfire for this and everything else, and especially Kristin Temple for helping me survive bureaucracy.

To Michael Curry for being my long-suffering agent and indomitable supporter.

To Richard Kadrey, Ali Trota, Olivia Wood, Linda Nguyen, Shoma Patnaik, Gary Astleford, Chris Blake, and Brian Kindregan, I adore all of you. Thank you for being there throughout a rough year.