In Her Skin(36)

“Yes, Slade?” I reply, tilting to give him even more of my back.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“I should ask you the same. How come you’re awake?”

He shifts, hands jammed in pockets. “Sometimes I have business. Things I need to stay awake for.” He is wondering how much I saw or heard, and how much of that I am willing to share with the Lovecrafts. There has to be some kind of behavior clause people like the Lovecrafts make people like Slade sign.

I know what I must do. I’ve seen him run nonsense errands for you more than once—a Frappuccino, a run to the Apple store to fix your cracked screen. “Actually, I’m not okay. I really need an Advil. The Lovecrafts don’t have any in their medicine cabinet. Could you run to the CVS on Newbury for me?”

“You want me to go for you?” he asks, caveman-style.

“I’d go, but the Lovecrafts don’t want me going out alone. For a while, I guess. Until everything dies down.”

He rests his knuckles on his wide hips and straightens to his full height. “That’s not going to work, Miss Weir. You can’t leave, and I can’t leave, either. Not unless there’s a specific change in protocol.”

“Protocol?”

“Yeah.”

“How long did you serve before you started doing private security?”

Slade shuffles his feet. “I went Blackwater before I went PSD after ten months in Iraq.”

He stares at those shuffling feet as he says this, and although I have loads of respect for our soldiers, I do not have time to ask Slade to explain his acronyms, or to be sensitive to his reasons for not managing to stay in the army. Because I now know the Lovecrafts aren’t paying him to protect me. They’re paying him to keep me here. And the time has come to leave.

“Okay, then I think I’ll go lie down.”

I grab a canvas shopping bag on my way up the stairs, groping the rail like I’m blinded by a headache. When I reach the top, I peek down. Slade is hammering at his phone, planning his makeup sex. And if I’m right, Mrs. Lovecraft is going to walk through that door anytime during the next hour. I slam my bedroom door for Slade’s benefit and head straight down to Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft’s bedroom, a pretty place of calm greens and creams. This is one of my favorite rooms in the whole house, the bedroom Wolf and I would have if we were really a couple, but there is no time for daydreaming and I have a cruise to pack for. The Vendeem leaves Boston Harbor every Wednesday from May through August for Montreal. I have known this since I became Vivi Weir, and this is my escape. The tiny safe in this room is no use to me, since I ran out of time to learn the code. I take what I can take, which is limited to Clarissa’s pearls, the tacky Rolex Mr. Lovecraft never wears, and a wad of Clarissa’s “mad money” she keeps stuffed in her bra drawer. I head back upstairs to your room. It is dark and I leave it dark, ashamed to let your things see me. You keep your new laptop on the desk you never use. It’s worth at least $899. I slip it in the sack, which sucks for this purpose, and it also sucks for holding a tennis racket, but I throw it in anyway. Your diamond earrings are pushed through a ceramic jewelry tree. I whisper “I’m sorry” as I unscrew the backs and tuck them in my pocket. I move toward a vanity table with drawers made to hide tiny expensive things, and there are frames with pictures of Vivi that I’ve seen but never studied. You and Vivi next to a big, bronze teddy bear sculpture in front of a fancy toy store. You and Vivi on a picnic blanket with the Esplanade’s Hatch Shell in the background: Fourth of July, some year. Vivi’s third-grade class picture. Vivi cut out of your class picture, in a frame. Black-and-white Vivi eating free Ben & Jerry’s on National Ice Cream Day in an article in a newspaper called Back Bay Windows. I guess a shrine to Vivi is understandable. But the pictures of Vivi, right next door to where the real Vivi is supposed to be lying in bed? The opportunities for physical comparison day after day freak me out. I’m leaving not a moment too soon.

Downstairs, a door slams meaningfully. This is not the habit of elegant Mrs. Lovecraft, or even powerful Mr. Lovecraft, who saves his drama for the boardroom. I hear the muted jawing of Slade, and I need to get into my bedroom fast and hide this stuff or I am screwed. The bag swings and I wince as the laptop knocks into the door, but you are opening the fridge and slamming around and can’t hear me hiding a stolen stash under my bed. Your footsteps fly up the stairs, sounds like gunfire, and you explode in, wearing your school uniform, cheeks aflame, tears streaming. You throw back your head and scream, a sound that starts low and climbs higher and higher until I block my ears. It’s the scream of an animal injured. Then it is over, and you are holding your jaw.

“Temple,” I whisper. “What the heck?”

“Ansel Carter is a beast!” you rasp, fingers around your throat now, massaging wildly.

I am sitting on the bed, doing nothing, and you’re too worked up to notice how odd that is.

“Who?” Because there is no other reply.

“He accused me of plagiarizing!” You storm around my room, and if your eyes were focused and you didn’t have a hurt throat you’d see your tennis racket sticking out from under my bed.

“Ansel Carter?”

“Yes, Ansel Carter! My English teacher? And you know how? Not because he’s comparing my essay on Poe to some other text. Oh no. He accused me of plagiarizing because he said it was too sophisticated for me to have written it!”