“So we lay low,” I said. “See how it plays out.”
Laney wrapped her small hands around a wooden chair. “And tell all the people we’ve promised to help that we can’t help them now.”
She stood very still for a moment. Then she flipped the chair over.
Everyone froze. Blythe clutched a bottle in her fist, light skittering over it as she trembled.
“This is on you,” Laney said, not looking at anyone. “You tell them that we can’t help. That we got their hopes up for nothing. That we lied to them.”
If that misgiving hadn’t taken root in me, I would’ve stayed silent. Cowed.
But now I said, “You lied to me.”
Her head swiveled slowly.
“You knew,” I said, trying to steel my voice. “You knew that I knew Crito.”
The others watched us, tense.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Laney?”
“Why do you think?” No rise in her tone. Totally calm. “Because I didn’t want you to worry. Not until I knew what he was up to.”
“So you sent this—this outsider after him.” Blythe’s word fit well. “You didn’t trust me to handle him.”
“I didn’t trust you not to make it personal. I didn’t trust you not to get emotional. Like you are right now.”
Her words stung like a slap.
“I’m not emotional,” I said, my voice quavering.
Perfect.
Laney shrugged. “This is what I mean. I’m sorry, Ren, but you’re off the Crito case. Cressida will take your place.”
“Laney—”
“Take some time to unwind. Clear your head.”
I watched her walk to the door. The air in her wake seemed to scintillate with cold. Before she left she paused, glancing back at me.
“And tell your roommate to be careful. Because you woke a sleeping dog. Now he’s hurt, and pissed off. And he’ll want blood.”
—3—
It was dawn by the time I got home. Soft lilac shadow filled the apartment, vines of sunlight curling through the pastel gloom as the city woke. Ingrid’s cat wove infinity symbols around my feet.
I washed the dishes in the sink. Took out the garbage. Fed the cat. Kept moving, moving. There was a rabid energy in me, an anxiety I hadn’t felt in ages. It wasn’t only the fact that I had twelve dollars in my bank account and owed seven hundred for this month’s rent. It wasn’t that I started recording a vlog and stopped it three, four times before finally giving up. It wasn’t that I’d fucked up Laney’s plans, got myself put on involuntary hiatus from Black Iris.
It was him.
That face from my past. A link to all I’d left behind.
To the girl I was.
I stood in the living room and stared at a painting hanging in a pool of pale sun. Vada and I used to geek out over myths, and one time I told her the legend of Caeneus. Weeks later I came home to a canvas wrapped in brown paper leaning against the front door. The note read For when it’s hard to keep your head above water. My hands shook as they tore the wrapping. In the painting a boy stood at the edge of the ocean, his back to a towering tsunami wave. Water slammed against him and sprayed outward in a halo of foam and salt, but he held strong. In the froth above him was a face, Poseidon screaming, dissolving, powerless. I cried for the first time in a year on T.
She’d titled it He’s Still Breathing.
The painting blurred.
Sunlight filled my tears, blinded me with liquid gold. Morning. Time for my daily dose.
I fumbled a packet of T gel out of the medicine cabinet, stripped my shirt off. Stared at the man in the mirror. Sometimes I still saw her—the girl I’d been born from, the body I broke through like a chrysalis. At my lowest, in my ugliest moments of sorrow and fear, she’d bleed through and I’d see the skinny chest crammed into a binder, the smooth cheeks flocked with fuzz. Not a girl. Barely a boy. Mostly a child, full of terror.
Still there, beneath the hard muscle and coarse skin. Still haunting me.
I unzipped my jeans. Cupped the bulge in my boxer briefs.
After all this time, part of me was still her. Part of me could still be hurt the way men hurt women.
You mean you never put it in? Crito had said. IRL, his name was Jay. I was standing in a hallway, hidden, listening to him talk. Her blowjob is that good, huh?
So?
So I’m just saying, it’s kind of gay. All she does is suck your dick and jerk you off. That’s so faggy.
Shut up, Jay.
C’mon, man. Look at her. She looks like a dude. You’re fucking a dude.
I said shut the hell up.
It always came down to this. This fucking broken part of me.
I sank to the edge of the bathtub. Water, all over my face. Couldn’t breathe.
“Hey, you.”
A hand fell on my shoulder.
Ingrid, my roommate. Touching me. Touching the wet testosterone gel on my shoulder.
I shoved her away, too hard. Then I was on my feet, turning the tap to hot. “Wash it off. Immediately.”
Her arm rose, as if she feared I’d hit her.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Inge? Wash it off.”