Teeth(12)

I turn the letter over and look at the return address to see which one of my friends its from. And it says just “Diana.”

I hiss air out through my teeth. Goddamn it.

Rudy—

I am locked in my tower, awaiting your rescue.

But I’ll meet you at the door.

My mother typically cries in the bathroom most Tuesday nights, on the opposite end of the house. For your peace of mind.

Perpetually,

Diana

This is just great. This is exactly what I need in my life right now.

I want to get back under my quilt and sleep for a million years.

Although, in my admittedly limited experience, if a girl tells you her mother isn’t going to be around, it means she wants to have sex with you.

So I should be twitching. This should make me feel . . . something.

I’ve been stuck in one place for way too long. I don’t feel anything. All my thoughts these days are either profound or profane with nothing in the middle. Nothing normal. I’m contemplating the sea or I’m contemplating jacking off. Maybe sex is the answer.

It’s touching someone, at least.

And it’ll give me something to do on Tuesday, something to do besides listen to the screaming ocean, or finish my math problems, or draw more pictures of my brother or my parents or more of the ones hidden under the skinny mattress, the ones of girls from home with their shirts off and the ones of the fishboy and his healthy lungs and his tail. That’s something. It’s just something.



Dylan’s a fiend with puzzles nowadays. So even though it’s cold and almost dark, he and I are out here on the deck with all the pieces spread on the picnic table, because the puzzle’s so big there isn’t room for it inside.

Dad’s looking through the doors periodically and smiling at me, like it’s praiseworthy that I’m playing with my little brother, I don’t know. Sometimes I think they forget who I am and what makes me happy.

Dylan doesn’t solve puzzles like normal people. He concentrates on one piece at a time, always, like if he stares hard enough at it, he’s going to see the whole puzzle. Once he’s looked at a piece long enough, he sets it aside and starts over with another. And I’m chuckling at him, trying to fit two pieces together. Then he makes some noise of triumph, and I look up and he has half the puzzle finished over there. This kid is great sometimes.

Sometimes I wonder if he remembers before he was sick. It sounds horrible, but he was somewhat of an unremarkable part of my life then. I was crazy about him when he was a teeny baby and cuter than sin, even though I had to pretend that I wasn’t, because I was eleven and stupid. But then he got to the bratty toddler stage, and that’s when I was starting to spend more time out of the house, too, and he sort of became just an annoying blip on my radar, except when he would crawl onto my lap all sleepy and smelling like orange juice, and that part was okay. My parents worried about why he caught every cold and why he wouldn’t put on weight, but I didn’t, really. Worrying wasn’t my job.

And then practically overnight he stopped being a kid and became a walking tragedy. He’s the world’s smallest ghost.

He finds the piece he was looking for and holds it up with both hands. I say, “Good job, buddy,” and his face is like I’ve just fixed the whole world.





seven


ON TUESDAY I SCAN THE WATER ON MY WAY OVER TO THE MANSION, but there’s no sign of the fishboy. And once I’ve climbed the hill and the huge doors open up, he kind of flees from my mind. Diana opens the door in a very serious black dress, all of her hair piled up on her head. “Thank you for coming,” she says, in a voice I imagine a butler might use.

Then she grins, and the bridge of her nose wrinkles, and I realize she isn’t fully delusional, she isn’t some let-me-show-you-the-world lost girl and she isn’t Emily Dickinson with a sex drive, she’s just a teenage girl f*cking with me, and it’s been so long since I’ve been around anyone my age that I didn’t even recognize it.

Really, if she had sent a letter that said, Hey, want to hang out, would I even have come? Probably weirding me out was the right choice to get me here.

“You’re a tactical genius,” I tell her, shutting the heavy door behind me.

She says, “Don’t go thinking I’m all normal just because I know how to get what I want. I can get unfortunately batshit. It’s not cute. Make sure you’re not expecting cute. This isn’t Looking for Alaska.”

“What will your mom do if she finds out I’m here?” This is dirty talk, and I think she knows it.

But she just shrugs. “Probably nothing. But let’s pretend.” She grins. “I’ll give you a tour.”

That’s another code phrase I know. It means, we’re going to my room. This is going to be the easiest sex I’ve ever had. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Diana is leading me down this wide hallway with walls stacked with portraits. They’re so old and dusty that they almost look velvet, like those hideous pictures of dogs my grandmother has in her house in Tampa.

Diana says, “I hope you weren’t expecting me to show you around our splendid homeland.”

“Why don’t you leave the house?”

“Occasionally I do. It isn’t usually an option.”

“Oh.”