Rooms(27)

The voice came in again, sharp and clear, as if it was speaking directly into his mind: “He wrote a note! Little Shakespeare. Let’s hope he has better luck than . . . ” It faded out again.

“Shut up,” he said. Then again, a little louder. “Shut up.”

His heart was beating dry and frantic, high in his throat, like a moth’s wings.

It was weird. He had hardly felt anything in six months, except for a brief, gut-tearing desire to puke when his mom had come into the basement, where he’d been playing World of Warcraft, and announced that his father was dead. Since the accident he could barely even jerk off—although he did anyway, approaching it with grim determination, like a soldier in front of the firing squad, bracing for the inevitable explosion.

After two fumbling tries, he managed to sling the rope over the rusted pipe. He realized belatedly that he should have fixed the rope to the ceiling before making the noose, and he felt briefly annoyed with himself for screwing up something as simple, as elemental, as suicide. He should have used the gun after all—or better yet, just swallowed some pills. But that had seemed like a cop-out, somehow, even more than the act of suicide itself. An overdose was something that could be mistaken for an accident. He was hoping that his final act would mean something. That it would make Derrick Richards sit up and say, Jesus. I never knew Splooge had it in him.

Upstairs, the front door opened and closed with a loud bang. Trenton slipped. For a teetering second he was both falling and imagining that he had fallen—imagining his damaged ankle hitting the ground and snapping like a twig, imagining lying prostrate on his back underneath the noose until someone came and found him. He reached out and grabbed hold of an old wooden wardrobe, managing to right himself at the last second.

The basement door opened and Trenton’s heart stopped. It had to be Minna. He yanked the rope down from the ceiling pipe and thudded clumsily to the ground, feeling the impact of the short jump all the way to his teeth. He sat down on the stool just as an unfamiliar pair of sneakers came into view, pounding down the stairs.

“Oh!” The girl stopped short, still halfway up the stairs. Trenton felt the blood rush to his face.

She was pretty. Even with her face flaming red (which it was—at least she was embarrassed, too) and her hair cropped short and dyed some weird artificial black that was practically purple, she was pretty. She didn’t have a single pimple anywhere on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think . . . well, I didn’t think anyone was home.”

Trenton was doing his best to look casual, but he was also aware that he was sitting in the middle of a dark, dingy basement, under a single functioning lightbulb, holding a noose in his hands.

For a second the girl looked like she was going to bolt. But then she came two more steps down toward the basement. “Are you a Walker?”

Her smile was big and friendly and full of teeth that weren’t very straight. It had been a long time since a girl had smiled at him. “How did you—?” he started to ask.

“It says so on the mailbox.” She put her hands on the banisters and swung herself down the last few steps, landing neatly on the basement floor. She was no longer blushing. Trenton still felt like his skin might melt off at any second.

“Christ,” she said. “You guys ever clean down here?”

Trenton finally thought of something to say. “Um . . . who are you?” His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat.

“Katie,” she said, as though that answered his question. She waded right into the piles of old furniture and books and rolled-up carpets. While she had her back to him, Trenton coiled the rope quickly and stuffed it in between two cardboard boxes, hoping she wouldn’t see it.

“I’m Trenton,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked.

“Cool.” Katie bent down to scoop up a soccer ball and toss it to him. “You play?” Trenton was temporarily distracted by her butt, which was not so round as Angie Salazar’s but pretty close, and by the small hole in her jeans, which revealed that she was wearing cute red underwear beneath them. He barely managed to catch the ball.

“No,” he said. Then he blurted, “I can’t play anymore. I was in a car accident.”

“An accident, huh?” She was looking at him the way Dr. Sawicki, the shrink he’d been forced to see after his parents had finalized their divorce, had looked at him when he said he was doing fine—as if he were lying and she knew it, and he knew it, but she was too polite to point it out directly. Except Dr. Sawicki had normal brown eyes, nice eyes, like the eyes of a cow. Katie’s eyes were hazel, practically yellow. More like a cat’s.

Trenton wanted to ask her where she had come from, and what she was doing there, but he couldn’t find his voice. Katie turned away from him again.

“Look, Tristan—”

“Trenton.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” She nudged a roll of wrapping paper out of the way with the toe of a beat-up green Converse sneaker. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you. I can see you’re busy. Sitting on stools, playing with ropes. I get it.” So she had noticed. Trenton felt a rush of humiliation so strong it was almost like anger. She was laughing at him. “So I’ll just, you know, say good-bye and see you later—”

“Wait,” Trenton said. His voice sounded very loud, and the girl—Katie—paused at the foot of the stairs.