They say you can do anything if you have enough money, but it’s not supposed to be true. It’s just there to give us a little ambition, right? Assuming we want to become the next generation of doctors and teachers and Nobel Peace Prize winners. Not matricidal monsters. That’s what they tell us. The world’s your frickin’ oyster. Turns out it’s not always oyster season, and before you can blink, the shell snaps shut and it’s just you and a pearl in the ebbing throes of decay, seeping putrid, losing lustre, until you forget that it was ever beautiful at all.
Since we came here, I’ve spent so much time in this bedroom. It’s been my solitude. My safety. Mum thinks it’s weird that the place is littered with clock radios and cameras and whatever I can get my hands on in thrift shops, each pulled apart so I can see what’s inside; all in the hope that one day, I might progress from scientist to engineer. For the first month or so, I didn’t really have any friends, but I had machines—it was easy enough to see how they worked. Easier than I thought. Nobody would think this strange if I was a boy, but since I happen to own some breasts, it’s become a “coping mechanism.”
There is no coping mechanism powerful enough to get me through what she has done.
Mid-pace, I nearly trip over a half-assembled stereo and land palm-down on the bed, my knees scraping roughly against the wooden frame. I hiss. The air is suddenly cold on my dry, scraped skin, and the wounds themselves glow in red and orange, the way almost-cuts tend to do. Whimpering to myself, I sink down, wrap my arms around my knees and search for a citadel within my own brain to hide.
After a while, the soft beep of my cell phone rings out. I scrabble across the carpet to grab it from my desk, wincing at the pressure on my knees.
Dean.
I should have known. Does he have nothing better to do?
Sure enough, I peer up through the window behind my desk and there he is, stretched across his window seat. The glass is steamed a little, obscuring his face; he must’ve been there a while. There’s only ten feet or so between our houses—whomever arranged the windows and bedrooms must’ve had a decidedly more romantic notion of stalking than me. Ugh.
I press Accept on the phone, and try not to sigh. “Um…yeah?”
“You okay?” He turns in the window, finds the heap that is me, and offers a sympathetic smile. “I couldn’t help noticing that you look upset.”
“I’m fine.” But I’m not fine. And my voice is not fine. It sounds like it just went through a mincer.
“That fall looked kinda nasty.”
Crap. “I do that a lot. I’m clumsy.”
“You don’t look clumsy when you’re taking apart all your machines. You got a good eye for that, huh?”
“Maybe.” Isn’t there a cheerleader somewhere he’d rather annoy?
“I mean, it’s a little OCD, but it’s cute.”
“Right. Um. I think dinner’s ready, so….”
He rubs thick fingers through his hair; nervous or irritated, the glass is too steamed to tell. “Sure everything’s okay? Because I’m always here. You know. If you need to talk, or whatever.”
Well, since you asked, Dean, it just so happens that my mother told the police she saw Aeron Lore here on the night his mother was strangled, which means he got away with killing someone—ending a human life, bang, poof, gone—and we’re a couple million dollars of blood money richer. That nice little Hawaiian vacation we just took? It was funded solely by the death of an innocent woman and the lies we told to protect her murderer—and it is we, because I can’t un-know this. I’ll be a liar for the rest of my life. That’s the real kicker. We can never say anything to anyone. This conversation will never happen, ever, except inside my head.
“I don’t need to talk,” I mutter. “But…but thank you for your concern.”
He chuckles. “No need to sound so formal, English. We’re buds. Okay?”
We’re not buds. He’s spent way more time with me than I’ve ever spent with him. Watching. Waiting. Before he started talking to me at school, he’d probably seen me undress. Maybe he’d even seen me masturbate. Our house in England was set in grounds and I never had to worry about closing drapes or blinds; I hate that Dean makes it important to remember.
What can you gain from watching someone? Do you really learn anything useful, or do you just feel like a sleaze?
“Dean?”