Chapter 1
Of course I’d be the one at a frat party talking to a gay guy about how I don’t want to discuss my abstract art with his Sunday school class. If I was normal, I’d be slipping around on the beer-soaked floor while unfamiliar guys tried to curve their fingers around my hips. That’s what Mandy is doing.
But no, I’m explaining to Conrad why my latest art project is not an homage to Christ. “I know it looks like a circle and then a cross, but the red paint is meant—”
“Yes,” Conrad says. “The circle of life. Rejuvenation. Redemption. Reincarnation. Christ and the blood he gave for us. It was very moving.”
I am in no way shocked. Conrad disappointed his good-ol’-boy father when he came out. He disappointed his Baptist mother when he joined the Unitarian Universalist church. But he never disappoints God.
“Finding meaning in art is like finding meaning in life,” he continues. “It’s like finding God.”
Yes, Conrad, I got it. You. God. Besties.
I sigh into my beer. “It’s actually the symbol for O positive. People with that blood type can give to all positive blood types, but can’t accept that blood in return. And they can’t help their only outside donor, O negative. It’s made out of razors to symbolize how people bleed to help others, even those who can’t help them.”
Conrad scratches his temple.
“Um, okay Quinn. Yeah. That’s a really neat idea too.”
He’s just being polite. I don’t mind that one iota.
As I take another sip of liquid that passes for an alcoholic beverage, Conrad nods to the mash of riled up private parts attached to students on the dance floor.
“Looks like your freshman is having a good time,” he says.
“Yeah.” I smile. “I think he’s going to be okay.”
Danny is my adorable art department mentee. I’ve been on mentor overdrive because he had the misfortune, along with, oh, 20 percent of the school, of attending that party, the one in late August that no one likes to talk about. Though whispering about it, apparently, is just fine.
Some kids could shrug it off, but not Danny. The Monday after it happened, he shrunk into the corner of the art studio, elbows on his knees, like an old doll that was tossed and forgotten. As I knelt next to him, producing an expert mix of sensitively timed nods and distracting dirty jokes, my legs lost circulation. But it was worth it. He came around.
Now he’s living it up, swaying rather racily with a girl in my dance troupe. He even has a diaper covering his black hair. Yes. The frat pledges have to wear diapers.
Mandy jives her hips near him, smiling that sly smile—the one that means she knows she’s in control—as another diapered guy slides his fingers up and down the fabric of her dress.
Conrad taps my shoulder. “Why aren’t you out there getting your groove on?” He has a knack for using the corniest applicable sayings in any given situation. It might be my favorite thing about him.
I shrug. “Don’t feel much like dancing.”
“Or…” Conrad tilts his head. “Is it because you have only one man on your mind?”
I cannot raise my eyebrow high enough. “You know me better than that.”
Conrad grins. “Maybe this is the year you decide to settle down?” His eyes narrow. “Rashid’s a great guy.”
“I know, I know.” That’s part of the problem. It’s practically a fact: Rashid—nicest guy on campus. Hell, sweetest guy in the whole commonwealth of Virginia.
A couple days ago, as we walked home after grabbing a drink, leaves shivered in the cooling air and the sky grew darker. Heavy raindrops fell on Rashid and me as we pummeled through puddles to get back to my house. He studied me as I wrung out my hair on the porch. I watched the water creep between the crevices of the boards. His wet fingers glided along my damp cheeks. His pelvis pressed against my belly. He held on to my waist as he brought his mouth to mine.
I try to forget about how good that felt and concentrate on what Conrad is saying. Except he just continues to extol Rashid’s virtues. “…and he’s smart. Like genius smart.”
Like genius smart.
“Nothing is going on between us. It was a one-time thing.” I say it flatly, my palm doing a slow motion karate chop in the air. You know, to show I’m serious. “It was nothing.”
Conrad crosses his arms and frowns. Disapproval crashes over his face. “It wasn’t nothing to him.”
Fortunately, I don’t have to respond to that. A piercing female voice penetrates the hip-hop slamming through the speakers. The yell isn’t a fun “whooeee” kind of a yell, it’s an “I’ll cut you, bitch” kind of yell.
Natalie.
Her face burns red as she thrusts her fist in the air next to Danny’s head. He backs away, taking the diaper off his head and holding it at his chest with both hands as though he’s at a funeral.
He is paying respect to the dead.
Respect or no, Natalie’s rants against him continue. “You just let him leave! You let him walk out the door with the keys.”
The distance between them shrinks and the others around them are repelled, oozing out from the volatile middle. But they don’t go too far. They want to see this shit. A few pull out their phones to record whatever is about to go down. Knowing Natalie, it’ll be a show.
Danny looks at the ground and murmurs, “I’ve told you, I didn’t realize he was driving. I’m sorry.”
I sigh and turn to Conrad.
He nods. “We all need saving sometimes.”
I dash into the circle of people on the dance floor. “Natalie,” I say, and her hair seems to swish in slow motion as her heated eyes land on me. I hold my hands out and open my mouth, but nothing is there.
“You were there too,” she says. Despite all the logical things I had said to Danny, guilt still burns in my muscles. Yes, I was also at the party, the one people only whisper about. Unless you’re Natalie—then you shout about it. She tenses her fists. “You could have stopped him.”
“Natalie, I know nothing I can say can make up for your loss, but you—”
“No, it can’t,” she says, rolling her shoulders back and crossing her arms. Waiting for me to try anyway. But my breath is gone. I purse my mouth and take a step back. I bump into Mandy, who has been behind me the whole time. Of course. She’s always got my back.
“Look—” Mandy swipes around me and zeroes in on Natalie, “—Josh shouldn’t have driven that night. We’re all sorry he hit your sister, and if you want to find out wherever the fuck he is now and go yell at him, do that. But leave the rest of us alone.”
Natalie breathes in and holds it. No one speaks or coughs or so much as squeaks their shoes against the floor. We ignore the song bellowing encouragement for everyone to pick out a sex buddy.
Finally, Natalie speaks. “You come here for a few years and think you own the town. But all you do is ruin it. You ruin us.”
Cheers burst from the townie contingent of the crowd. Perhaps none of them realize they are, in fact, at a Poe University frat party.
Mandy leans in. “Poe didn’t kill Lynn. You need to deal with that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to deal with.” Natalie grabs Mandy’s wrist.
Not the wrist. Not the wrist.
“Come on, Mandy,” I say, bursting forward. “Let’s just go.”
Mandy stares at Natalie, but she pulls her wrist free and walks toward me. No one but me understands how hard that must have been for her.
Natalie pushes the issue. “You all share some blame. And this guy—” she points at Danny, “—took shots with him.”
Danny’s dark brows pucker on his otherwise slack face. “We thought he was walking home…” he says, the words limping along.
“Danny,” I whisper. He looks at me, but shakes his head. Mandy is already turned toward the door. I follow.
Natalie’s voice rises behind us, like she’s the victorious one. “Yeah, get out of here, and take this spic with you.”
Way. Too. Far.
I swish around just in time to see Danny’s crumpled, hurt face. Mandy blows by me to get to Natalie. She raises her hand and unleashes a slap that ricochets along the frat’s walls.
I rarely condone violence. Okay, I don’t condone violence. But a speck of warm pleasure hits me as the red blossoms across Natalie’s cheek.
But then, dammit, tears glisten along the rims of her eyes. I scrunch my face and look to the floor, focusing on the splashes of beer and chunks of mud here and there. I shake myself and tug on Mandy’s hand and whisper our mantra, “Don’t be afraid.” But it’s hard to speak loud enough to overcome the applause. Yes, people actually clap. Natalie has been on her tiring tirade for weeks.
As Natalie recovers, she lunges toward Mandy. A brother grabs Natalie’s arms, holding her back. My mind fumbles for ways to mediate this when the frat president motions to some guys.
That’s how Mandy gets escorted out.
It makes sense to pick Mandy. Politically, what frat president wants to kick out the grieving townie sister of the dead girl? Even if she is a racist. There’s already enough tension between college kids and Allan kids.
Mandy squirms away from the brothers as they take her toward the door. “At least let me finish my beer.”
“You need to leave now,” one brother says. Not as a directive. It’s just sound advice.
She smacks her red Solo cup into my free hand. “Drink this. I’ll meet you outside.”
I check on Danny first, but he’s good, surrounded by his pledge brothers. I look in the drink. I don’t want it. But Mandy stares at me as she’s pulled away. It’s the principle of the thing. So I take a big swig so she can see. But once she’s out the door, I set both our not-quite-empty cups on the counter.
As I follow Mandy into the cool September night, I rub my rosy pink flats against the grass. They’re sullied from the disgusting swirl of swill that pools on frat floors. We journey down a back road toward a much more civilized arena—the row of bars along Main Street, the height of the thriving, or not so thriving, social life in Allan. We crush over the pine needles until we get to the brick walkway. “Let’s just go to Sally’s,” I say.
Mandy rubs her eyes vigorously.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, my eyes just feel sort of, I don’t know, weird.”
I pull some eye drops from my purse.
Mandy looks to the sky and squeezes the liquid into her eyes. When she hands the drops back, her hazel irises look violet next to the purple stones on her necklace. Light rays can achieve mischievous feats.
“I shouldn’t have slapped her.” She circles her fingers around her wrist and whispers, “But I had to.”
“I know.”
Chapter 2
Fall air nips at our thighs as we try to pull our too-short dresses down, not out of modesty, of course. Just, well, it’s chilly. We hand over our IDs to the bouncer who likes ogling all the college girls. Every night it seems to be the same interaction. Sometimes I wish I could wear a sign that says, “Yes, I am really over twenty-one; no, a wink is not going to earn you a fuck.”
Once we get in, I linger next to the wooden bar as Mandy makes her usual lap, checking out our options. I nod to Sally. She’s big and warm and Jell-O-y with cheeks that look like she sat too close to the fire in the back of the pub. I don’t need to tell her what I want. She also knows that my face will turn green if I so much as smell a Jägerbomb. But that’s another story.
“Here’s your glass of pinot grigio, milady,” she says in a posh voice that’s especially endearing because she can’t quite kick that Virginia mountain accent nestled deep within her vocal cords.
“Why thank you, bar wench,” I say. It’s cool. I can say things like that to Sally.
She laughs and pops the top off Mandy’s Yuengling. Before I turn back around, glass crashes in quick pricks around my ankles. I set the drinks down and swivel. A girl has dropped her wine. Glass shards and liquid surround my feet.
“Shit, sorry,” the girl says before darting toward the bathroom. I get it, she’s embarrassed. I bend down into a careful crouch, given my short skirt. The wine soaks into the wood floorboards, becoming part of the bar. But the glass bits can’t just linger. I reach for one, ready to pluck it and its friends off the ground, when a man squats next to me.
“No.” He grabs my hand. “You could cut yourself. Let me get that.” His sharp green eyes match his shirt. Despite his crisp button-down, I can tell he’s a townie, an Allan original. It’s not any one thing, but the combination. He has a toothpick sliding out of the corner of his mouth and there are light grass stains on his knees, as though he’d been playing outside with a dog or small child. He smells like crickets and fire pits. He also has a sliver of dirt under his thumb, which presses into my hand as he pulls me up. I let him. I hold his rough palm for too long and he has to gently pull it away.
“Hey Sally,” he says. “Where do you keep your dustpan?” He’s got that Allan cadence too. It’s languid. There is no rush.
Sally fusses about how he doesn’t have to do anything, but he insists and leaves to retrieve the necessary tools. I’ll wait for him and offer to help. We can bend over the broken glass together.
“Quinn, come here,” Mandy calls. “We’re celebrating! Zachary’s going to be published in some super important science journal.”
I stare at the glass guy for a bit too long, imagining myself playing the role of a good little helper, until I rub my forehead and turn to join Mandy. She stands next to Zachary, her fling. Although maybe you can’t call it a fling if it’s lasted more than a year. He’s Rashid’s roommate (super smart science grad students stick together), and we met them out one drizzly, drunken night last fall.
Rashid is with them too, and when he sees me, his lips twitch into a grin. His gaze is deep. Penetrating.
Maybe that’s it. The way he looks at me? When I’m around him, I feel like the world is compressing. I haven’t figured out why.
Then again, odd things make me feel that way. Like small talk that crosses from harmlessly tedious to suffocatingly desperate. Or fluorescent lights in stores with heaps of useless products. Or that spray you get when you walk into a cosmetics department. Here’s perfume. It will make you a better person.
It’s those things that make me want to sit on the bathroom floor, cross-legged, letting the cold tiles infuse my legs with reality. I would run my fingers along the grout just to know it’s there, it’s real. I am real.
But nice, cute Rashid shouldn’t make me feel that way.
“Hey,” Rashid says. “How are you? Need a drink?” He nods to my wine. I haven’t taken a sip. It isn’t quite brimming, but the liquid is flirting with the edge, threatening to make a run for it.
“No thanks, I’m fine.” I turn to Mandy to make it a group conversation, but she and Zachary have shuffled over to a corner and started making out. Already.
“They’re confusing,” Rashid says.
They aren’t confusing. Not one bit. Mandy is about a 10 to Zachary’s 4-4.5 on an overcast day. And she likes him because, unlike some previous jerks, he adores her down to the last drop. He’s a fan of 100 percent of Mandy, not 76 percent and-can-you-please-work-on-that-last-24-percent? That trumps a lot of things—his rank of semi-cute nerd, if you squint, (as opposed to Rashid’s full-on hot nerd); his inability to hear the word tampon without snickering; and his habit of stating unnecessary facts. “The wall is painted blue.” Why yes, Zachary, it is.
But he brightens whenever Mandy’s around. And he can crack a joke about mullets like no one else.
Mr. Genius Smart, I mean Rashid, starts to say something with gooey eyes. “Why don’t we—”
He is blissfully cut off.
“Hey Rashid!” A girl bops me out of the way. A molecule of my wine slips to the floor. “Dr. Ferris said a few of the infected wood rats seem to be getting better.”
He nods. “Well, it’s too early to tell anything. We’re seeing some negative reactions with group D, though that is to be expected, considering the unusual nature of the project. Still, it was exciting to see a few improving.”
The girl starts to say something else, her shoulder sharpening, creating a wedge between Rashid and me, but he interjects. “Quinn, this is one of my students.” He puts some extra emphasis on student. Of course, she couldn’t care less about meeting me. As Rashid describes his research, she hangs on his every word, most of which I don’t understand. They’re the kind of words that would be italicized in text.
Back at the bar, the grass-stained guy has finished cleaning up the glass. He looks at me with those sharp eyes as he slowly drinks his lager. No rush. He listens to Sally, who points in my direction and says God knows what. She’s not only my friend, she’s my bartender, so she knows the best parts about me, like how I tip well (I may be a student, but my parents aren’t) and that I remember the names and birthdays of her three cats, two dogs and one ferret. But she also knows the worst parts about me. You know, like that Jägerbomb thing and how badly my mascara can smear on her sweater when I’m a crying drunk of a girl.
Rashid’s fingers touch my lower back and stretch toward my hip, sending a not entirely unpleasant shiver up my spine. The girl pulls her head back, like a turtle under attack. The composure leaves her face and she turns away, mumbling something about needing to catch up with a friend.
“So, you’re saving wood rats?” I ask.
“Sort of,” he says. “A bacteria has been causing a lot of problems among the population. They’ve been getting sick. We’re trying to see how we can prevent it.” His chin is high and his shoulders are back. “We may be on to something.”
“What’s the problem? Are they are all catching a cold?” I ask.
“No, a cold is a virus,” he says. “Viral infections, now that’s Zachary’s line of work. Well, mostly.”
“Mostly?” I tilt my head. His smile is thin but his eyes are wide. They swallow me up.
“There can be connections between bacteria and viruses. For example, some bacteria can fight viruses,” he says. “Some have been shown to strengthen immune systems, or fight off other kinds of infections, or even help destroy cancer cells. For example, scientists found that when they gave Wolbachia to mosquitos…” His mouth stays open for a moment before he shrugs. “It’s not really worth trying to explain.”
Scientific translation: he’s not willing to dumb it down for me.
I look at the ground. He probably thinks my daily schedule consists of frolicking among tulips and splashing paint against white backgrounds, but I could understand the dumbed-down version of his scientific escapades. Probably.
“Well,” I say, pushing my hair back and facing him again. “It’s nice to see you so happy. Sometimes I worry about you—walking around campus you look like you’ve got dozens of chemistry problems bouncing around in your brain.”
The corners of Rashid’s lips curl up. “You worry about me?”
I try not to smile but it prickles on my warm face. He continues, “Anyway, anyone can do the kind of stuff I’m doing.”
Right.
“But you,” he says. “Figuring out what to paint, knowing all those modern dance moves…”
“Yes,” I say. “Those are important skills. Much more marketable than, say, knowing how to cure cancer.” People like Rashid are useful to the whole world. He can save thousands, maybe millions. At least I’m useful to Mandy. We save each other.
“I’m not trying to cure cancer.” Rashid grins and rubs the back of his head. “Are you working on anything new? I still haven’t gotten to see the piece that’s a mash-up of toothpaste and toothbrushes all ‘swirled and swumbled together.’” He quotes me exactly, made-up word and all. I told him about that project six weeks ago, the first night of my senior year, when Mandy and Zachary “retired” to her bedroom early. We sat on the porch and drank pumpkin beer like it was fall, even though the Virginia fireflies were still out, blinking all around us.
“Yeah, well, it’s coming along. But mostly I’m focusing on my senior solo in my dance troupe. The recital is next week.”
“Oh, right. I have to teach a class that night, but if I can find any way out of it, I will.”
I wave my hand. “Nah, it’s nothing.”
He nods. Agreeing. This is good. But then he touches my elbow, directing me to some newly open seats in the corner. “I’ll get you another drink,” he says, noticing my wine is almost drained. “Just sit tight.”
Yeah, he says things like “sit tight.”
I wait in the dark corner and push away the corroding stress tied to the recital. My solo. It’s been hard to get it right. Our staff adviser, Rachel, has missed a lot of rehearsals to take care of her sister who has ALS. Their parents died last year in a car accident, and Rachel’s her only family left in town, so I understand that her sister really needs her, much more than I do. It has just meant that I’ve had to do even more to lead the troupe and bring out everyone’s talents. But it’s been fun to get creative. A few nights ago we wore glow-in-the-dark bracelets as we danced barefoot on the football field at midnight.
The nook I sit in is so narrow that when Rashid comes back with our drinks, our knees knock if one of us shifts. He crosses his legs, putting his ankle on his knee, and some dirt from his boot gets on my bare thigh.
“I’m sorry,” he says, planting both feet on the hardwood floor and using his hand to rub the mud off my leg.
“Smooth, Rashid, smooth,” I joke.
“What?” His grin is broad. His teeth look good.
“You did that on purpose.”
His hand is still on my thigh. “I swear I didn’t.” His grip goes from perfunctory to on purpose. “But I’d do it again.”
I’m too caught up to resist when his lips meet mine. Our tongues glide ecstatically against each other, until I check myself. I pull back and push his collarbone with my thumb. “I don’t think we should do this.”
His deep brown eyes digest his surroundings. Digest me. His body is tense. “I don’t understand.”
“Rashid, I just…I think we want different things.”
He sighs and his muscles relax. He leans in. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he says. “I’m not just messing around. I’m serious about you.”
Yeah, and that’s the problem. It’s my senior year. All I want to do is mess around. If Rashid wants more, I should let him go.
“I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.”
See, I am not cruel.
I am, however, weak.
I haven’t removed my hand from his shoulder. He takes that for the not-so-subconscious sign it is. He slides me closer to him. “Fine, let’s go out for a non-serious dinner this week. Maybe at Geni’s?”
Shit, not Geni’s. It’s Allan’s only French bistro. Candles, tablecloths, waiters who put their hands behind their backs as they methodically describe the specials. It’s the only place my dad can stand to go when my parents visit.
“I don’t think Geni’s is—” Before I can finish, Rashid is kissing me again. I’m caught up in his mouth and his fingers in my hair when Mandy’s voice breaks my concentration.
“Quinn,” she says. I pull away. Her face is like stone. I spring up, downing my wine. Waste not, want not.
Rashid gets up too. “What’s wrong? Can I help—”
“No. Zachary’s just being a jerk,” Mandy says. But softly. That’s bad.
“See you later,” I say to Rashid. His previously firm shoulders fold in on themselves. I occupy myself with rubbing Mandy’s back. We enter the cool night.
“Things were fine, normal,” she says. “He was looking at me, just staring at me, you know, and then he stopped smiling and he looked like I’d said I ran over his cat or something. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he needed to go. I tried to ask him why, but he just walked out on me. He left me, Quinn.”
“He can be an idiot sometimes,” I say. While he isn’t always the most socially aware, something gnaws at my throat. Just getting up and leaving? That’s not like Zachary.
Mandy stops and looks at the sky. She closes her eyes. “He just left.”
I clutch her shoulders. People are walking around, the semi-late crowd still barhopping, the responsible partiers getting a hot dog at Joe’s before turning in. A few kids rubberneck to see why we’ve stopped.
“Look at me,” I demand. She focuses. “He’ll probably apologize profusely tomorrow. Until then, don’t you give another thought to him, you understand?”
She laughs. “Yes, sir. Aye aye.” She often jokes, when I get all no-nonsense, that I should have been an army captain. You know, one of the ones who can’t hold a gun to save her life and would much rather have paint all over her trousers than mud and grass and shit.
“That’s right. Now give me fifty and meet me in the canteen at 0500!”
“Thanks, Quinn.”
As we walk home, she nudges me in the ribs and gives me a hard time about making out with Rashid, despite all of my proclamations to her that the other night had been a one-time thing.
Okay, fine, I guess now it’s a two-time thing. But whatever it is, it’s done now. Really.
Chapter 3
My eyes pop open as the scream shudders out of our bathroom. Sunlight smacks against the shadows in the collage on the ceiling above my bed. I flop off my mattress, tripping over sheets to get to Mandy.
“What’s wrong?”
She clasps both sides of the sink and leans close to the mirror. Her nose kisses the glass.
“You okay?” I ask again. I step forward and put my hand on her shoulder. Her head droops and she stares at the drain in our sink. She turns to me.
“My eyes,” she says. “What happened to my eyes?”
Purple. Her eyes are purple. It’s not a trick of the light like I thought last night. Full-fledged brilliant violet irises are surrounded by crinkled, worried skin.
“Are you wearing contacts?” It’s a dumb question. If she had purchased and put purple cosmetic contacts in, she’d probably remember.
“No.” She clutches her hair. She doesn’t call out my stupid question, which is not like her. Maybe she had even asked herself the same thing. When you have no idea what’s happening, even inane questions deserve their place.
I cup Mandy’s chin so that I can get a better look at those irises while trying to tame my own wild heartbeat.
I take care of Mandy because she takes care of me. Like the time someone snuck tequila in the sangria and I ended up with my knees on our puffy pink bathmat, praying to the porcelain god as Mandy rubbed my back and ordered me to drink water.
When that jerk Jason broke up with me over a blush brush (I left it in his dorm, accidentally, so obviously I was purposefully encroaching on his space), she was also there for me. She blared one of my favorite country songs, stood on my bed and played an air banjo.
I took care of her when she lost the sophomore class presidency. She curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed, raw, bare teeth skidding against the ground as tears slid over her lips. I lay on the bed, my chin over the edge, just listening and tossing down the occasional tissue. When she was ready, I blasted some old-school Snoop Dogg and, in my baggiest clothes, did a beep-bop hip-hop thing that I can assure you was actually pretty slammin’, considering I’m a rich white girl.
But I don’t think my rapping talents will save her now. “Well, how do you feel? Do your eyes hurt?”
“They felt weird last night,” she says. “But they’re fine now. I feel completely fine!” Her exasperated tone doesn’t match the sentence.
Finally, after staring into the violet streaks surrounding her pupil, I render my verdict. “You should go to the doctor.” I say it like a pin prick. Zip. Bang. Done.
Mandy pinches her nose and sighs. “Thanks, that’s a big help.”
I cross my arms. “We could look it up , but that’s weird. I’d go to the clinic.”
“They aren’t going to be able to fix this,” Mandy snaps. The air between us crackles. I sigh and reach my arms out. Mandy’s head lolls around. “Will you come with me?” Her voice slips and slides with a fear I didn’t realize she could possess.
“Of course,” I say.
We pull on some clothes and head to the little college clinic. First we have to get by Jared. He’s this creepy religious guy with sandy white hair who thinks it’s his job to tell everyone how awful they are. This morning, he stands in front of the clinic holding up a poster of what I think is a bloody fetus (I don’t look long enough to confirm) as he blesses us and tells us to make the right decision. I don’t even think they perform abortions at the clinic. He’s just assuming since we’re college girls with a health problem we must be preggers.
He clasps his hand over his chest as we get closer. “Your eyes,” he says, his shoulders rising in fear like he’s some kind of wild animal. “It’s happening.”
Mandy’s aforementioned eyes narrow and her mouth opens. I grab her elbow. “Just ignore him,” I whisper.
Of course, the clinic staff also thinks we’re pregnant. After seeing Mandy’s purple eyes, a woman escorts her back to an examination room. Then the woman asks me how I am and if I would like to pee in a cup.
“I haven’t had sex in months and, don’t worry, my bathroom trashcan has gotten properly filled with tampon wrappers right on time,” I say with a sparkling smile. This is not a lie. Rashid and I had kept it pretty tame.
The nurse tilts her head and raises an eyebrow, because of course twenty-two-year-olds never know what they’re talking about. “Okay,” she says. “You can wait over there.”
I take a seat, but I’m slightly bristled from the implication that I must be sexually irresponsible. My body is also fidgety with worry. So I get up. I lean over the bowl of condoms in the waiting area and sheepishly put one in my pocket. I sit down and then get up, hesitantly, and get another one. I do this ’til the nurse eyes me.
I sigh. “I just don’t know. I mean, do you think six is enough for one night out? Especially as there’s a limit to how many times you can use one, I think. I read that somewhere …something about how you can turn it inside out and use it again, but only once…” I trail off, finger and thumb against my chin as I look to the ceiling in deep, perplexed thought.
“Very funny,” the nurse says before she goes back to her paperwork. Her lips tense, as though she’s fighting to keep a laugh in. She’s not so bad.
I walk over and lean my elbows on the panel and scrunch my eyebrows together. “It’s nothing, right?”
“What’s nothing?”
“The purple eyes. I mean, she feels fine, so she is fine, right?”
To her credit, the nurse doesn’t hold my previous sass against me. Her shoulders relax and she smiles softly. “I’ve never heard of a condition with purple eyes. But our bodies are funny. Some people’s eyes change color a little over the course of their life. Some products, like eyelash enhancers, can also affect eye color.”
“Like allergic reactions?” I ask.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Thanks.” I return her graciousness by leaving her alone until Mandy comes out from the backstage of the clinic a half an hour later.
Their verdict is similar to mine: We don’t know shit. Go to the emergency room. Okay, they might not have used that exact phrasing.
Fortunately, Allan is pretty tiny, and the hospital is only eight blocks from the clinic. And it’s not like Mandy’s actually injured, or even feeling crappy. In fact, she says, aside from being wracked with worry, she feels pretty good. So we walk. We pass adorable shops that sell knickknacks that are cute enough to buy even if they serve no function. We pass townhouses and people reading the Saturday morning paper in wicker chairs on their porches, steaming mugs of coffee cupped in their hands. We smell autumn the way you can only smell autumn when you’re in an ancient mountain town surrounded by flourishing forests. Mold and wet brick and burning wood.
“I met a cute townie last night,” I say.
“A townie?” she says, face forward. Mouth straight. “What’s his name?”
“Well, I guess I didn’t actually meet him.” I fold my arms in on myself and rub the outside of my elbows. “I was just trying to distract you.”
She huffs a small laugh. “Thanks.”
We’re quiet the rest of the way.
Allan’s population tends to be more inclined toward antiquing than risky behaviors, so the wait at the ER is not long. Unfortunately, Mandy’s worry has rattled to new levels. I venture into the depths of the ER with her so she won’t be alone.
The nurse who processes Mandy and the doctor who eventually comes into the examining room seem only mildly curious about her condition.
“Well,” Dr. Brown says, “there are several reasons why eye colors might change.” She paces, as though we are a conundrum. “I have heard of melanoma changing iris color, but not to purple.” She shakes her head. “No, not to purple… And then, of course, there is Fuchs Heterochromic Iridocyclitis.”
“Ah yes, Fuchs,” I say. Her face brightens and I can tell she is about to pounce on me with even more medical jargon, until I sway my head and squish my lips to the left side of my mouth.
“Well, yes, of course, you probably haven’t heard of that.” She continues droning on about another disease, Horner’s something, until I can’t even decipher her self-directed mumbles. Finally, she talks to us. “Well, it could be connected to an autoimmune disease or a viral infection.” She walks to one end of the room and back. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she says as though she has had a eureka moment—but her big grand decision is just to run a battery of tests.
When she takes one final look at Mandy’s eyes, seeing past the purple into the worry, the human submerged in Dr. Brown comes out.
“We’ll figure out what’s going on,” she says, confident. “It’s possible it’s just a startling, but natural, change in eye color. Nothing to worry about. But please do contact me if you begin to experience anything else unusual. We’ll need to know about any additional symptoms.”
“Yes, of course.” Mandy nods, and I can tell from her voice that she’s already feeling a little better. Maybe this is all nothing. Maybe everything is peachy keen.
Chapter 4
After the hospital trip, Mandy lies on her bed eating Krizzles, this saccharin-y fruit candy, not caring that the little cardboard boxes litter her comforter. Purple emanating from the cardboard boxes, purple glistening from her eyes.
“You okay?” I ask her, and sit on the foot of her bed.
She fishes a few more Krizzles out of a box and deposits them in her mouth. Krizzles are Zachary’s thing. (“Krizzles are fruit flavored.” Why yes, Zachary, they are.) He eats them as he cooks, or watches science documentaries, or lies around our couch reviewing his research notes.
“Yeah, I guess I’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ve eaten enough Krizzles I’ll have a sugar rush soon and want to clean the whole house.”
I scoot back on her bed, leaning against the wall and hugging my knees. “That’s not a horrible idea. I can get you Pixy Stix and then we can really have some fun.”
She throws the conquered candy box against the wall so it can bounce into her wastebasket. She puts her hands on her head like she’s pulling back her hair, but the hands don’t pull, they just stay near her temples as she looks at the ceiling.
“I hate this.”
Tears swell against the bright-red lining of her lavender eyes. She shifts up. “Quinn, you know how I don’t like it when things happen to me.”
I’ve heard this often.
One time freshmen year we were grocery shopping—okay, we were buying beer with her fake ID and I was responsible for the chips and salsa and other snacks. Anyway, Mandy started acting forceful, weird. She wouldn’t let me make any decisions. I was feeling pretty mellow and didn’t want to get into a spitfire fight next to a bunch of fresh mangos, so I let it go. But when we got back to the dorm kitchen, as I sliced the mango for her (a peace offering), I oh-so-gently inquired, “What the fuck was that shit about?”
She had sighed and rolled her shoulders but finally explained that she had seen a woman who looked like her mom. Not in coloring or features, but in mannerisms and aura. The woman had this long list, typed, and she kept picking up a pack of hotdogs, looking at it, then moving back, picking it up again, hesitating as she looked at the list, then the label. The list. The label. The list. The label.
“So, she’s got a touch of OCD,” I said, shrugging.
“No,” Mandy said. “It’s not OCD.”
Mandy never wants to end up like that woman, or like her mom. And one way to not end up that way is by doing things instead of having things done to you. Things don’t happen to Mandy; Mandy makes things happen.
But this mysterious purple eye condition doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of respect for Mandy’s life philosophy.
“Well,” I say, knowing what might work to rustle Mandy out of this funk. “Let’s see what Wisey has to say about all this.” I stand on her bed and get the stuffed owl, her childhood toy, from its revered spot on the top corner of her shelf. My stuffed cat, Churchill, still resides on my bed. I like that Mandy wasn’t too grown up to bring her lovey to college. But she is too grown up to let it serve its original function. Comfort.
I flap Wisey’s wings and begin my best owl impression. I’ve pulled this out before. It’s very lame, but it usually works. “Whoooo knows better than yoooou what is happening? Whooo has gorgeous lavender eyes? Whooo has an awesome best friend? Whooo should stop pouting and go out tonight?”
“It’s me, it’s me.” Mandy says her requisite response, but it’s dry. Her bleary eyes focus on the ceiling.
I flop back on the bed and plop Wisey into my lap.
“I’m not sure if I want to go out tonight. Maybe I need to escape for a while, just get away from…everyone,” Mandy says.
“Me tooooo?” I ask.
She smiles and takes Wisey, uncharacteristically spooning him. “No, Wisey, I would never leave you behind.”
I shrug. “Well, if you want to stay in, I get it—but then can I borrow that purple dress?” In three ninja-like moves I’m up, grabbing the dress out of the closet and twirling it in front of me. “I mean, it doesn’t match my eyes, you could really own this dress, but…”
“You’re right.” Mandy zips up. I’m not sure if it’s the product of my obvious attempts at manipulation or if the sugar from the Krizzles has started coursing through her veins. “I should go out tonight. I should just own this.”
We debate what I should wear and settle on a red dress that flirts across my upper thighs. I may not be super tall, but I have dancer legs worth showing off. We also share different kinds of perfume—effectively making us a smorgasbord of scents.
But as we walk to Sally’s, I’m still the overprotective roommate. I make sure to walk in between her and the two Allan cops who simultaneously leer at us and tell us—as we use our indoor voices outside—that if we talk any louder they will write us up for a noise violation. Jerks. I also tell Mandy to look out for steps and trip-inducing disturbances along the brick path that, admittedly, she has probably been aware of for three years now.
But what really annoys her is me asking about five and a half times if she’s okay. The half is because, at the door, she cuts me off and swings around, saying in an emphatic whisper, “If you ask me one more time if I’m okay, I’m going to clock you.”
I raise my hands in defeat.
“Okay,” I say. “Calm down.” Mandy lets out a deep exhale. The kind where you can tell her frustration has been jangling in her insides. She steps toward the door, pulling her ID out to show the bouncer.
I tap on her shoulder. “Oh, but Mandy, one more thing—are you sure you’re okay?” I duck as her handbag comes swinging as fast as a carnival ride toward my head. But she can’t hide her smile while she does it.
Zachary is smack dab in the middle of Sally’s. He calls Mandy’s name as though his life depends on it. He looks at me. “You’re out tonight too.” Why yes, Zachary, I am.
I raise my eyebrow at Mandy. “I’ll be okay,” she says, and turns toward him. I am no longer the beloved-yet-annoying friend. I’m the third wheel. I leave with little fanfare.
I curl onto the edge of the bar. The picture I took of the exterior of the pub last spring rests above the line of liquor bottles. I used Photoshop to give it a spooky effect. Deeper shadows than are natural in a normal black-and-white image. I got it framed and gave it to Sally before I went home for the summer. She had clutched both it and me to her motherly bosom as she thanked me. “Now my bar has some real class.”
I’m so soaked in that memory that a voice jostles my thoughts. “Sally told me you took that picture.” The guy who cleaned up the broken glass last night saunters up to me and takes a deep sip of his lager while he waits for me to respond.
“Yeah, I did,” I say.
“It looks…eerie,” he says. A slow smile splays across his face. I wonder if he’s the type of guy who would care to know about the way I manipulated the photo. Probably not.
Not sure what else to say, my hands grow slippery on the edge of the wood bar, which I am now clutching. Fortunately, Sally swoops in. “Pinot?” I nod.
“Can you get me another one of these?” the broken-glass guy asks as he settles onto the stool next to me. “And put that pinot on my tab.”
Sally gives me a look, daring me to say no. I wave my hand. “Thanks but no thanks. I got this.”
This is Sally’s cue to nod and go get the orders. That’s the dance. Because random older guys offering me drinks happens at a pretty high clip. I mean, I’m decently cute. I have these big, round, almost cartoonish eyes, and I tan easily. My chestnut hair, while limp, is not entirely devoid of shine. And, of course, dancing has some positive side effects on my figure. But the real reason I get so many strange men who want to buy me a drink, more than the blonde sorority girls or the hot townie MILFs, is because I just look so darn friendly. I’ve tried to fight this, but it persists. It’s fucking annoying.
And, despite Mandy telling me to just take the drinks and run, I don’t always know what the guys think that drink buys them. So Sally rings up separate checks, and maybe I chat with the guy and maybe that chat leads to kissing, or making out, or more. But I can also decide I don’t need to say a nugget of a sentence to the guy making the offer. That’s the control you get when you buy your own drink.
But, this time, Sally doesn’t go off and ring up separate tabs. Instead, she talks to the glass guy. “Luke, honey, can you do me a favor and get those empty pitchers from that table over there?” She points at a table all the way across the bar. He narrows his eyes but shrugs and walks away. Sally focuses on me. She leans onto the bar, her hands in a fist and arms in a triangle. The faded dragon tattoo creeping out of her cleavage is hard not to look at, but I manage.
“Quinn, honey, I get it, you’re independent. But Luke—” she tips her forehead to the glass guy, who turns around with a skeptical look before resuming his journey, “—he’s just about one of my favorite people on God’s earth, and he isn’t thrilled to be back in Allan and hasn’t had the easiest time of things. So, basically, you’d be doing me a personal favor if you let him buy you a drink and listened to a few of his jokes. You don’t have to laugh, just listen. Understand?”
I’m shocked at Sally’s bluntness, but, as always, her voice is raspy and sweet all at once. She’s not attacking me. She’s looking out for this guy, Luke. And, honestly, I want to shoot the shit with any guy that Sally likes this much. And I wouldn’t mind touching those rough palms again.
“Of course,” I say.
She gets our drinks before he comes back and once he does, I pick up my wine. “Thanks for the drink.”
He clinks with me and takes a sip. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” There’s something sad in his voice that makes me want to find an emotional salve, which I imagine would probably be some kind of chocolate peanut butter concoction.
“It’s nothing personal, it’s just—” I start.
“No, I get it.” His hand flip-flops a coaster between his thumbs and fingers as he stares into the line of bottles of whiskey and whatnot. “I’m Luke, by the way.” He reaches his other hand out, like we’re business partners. I go with it.
“I’m Quinn.”
Those hands. They’re the kind of rough and wild hands that hold truths. And, like last night, I want more than the tactile glimpse the handshake gives me.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Quinn.” I love the way he says my name. With his southern accent it sways more toward the Q, the n’s are uphill.
“So, where have you been?” I ask.
He tilts his head, sort of like a puppy would do if you hide a tennis ball behind your back. “Ah, you mean…your whole life?”
I’m only semi-successful at stifling a girlish giggle as he watches me with playful eyes. “No, I mean, Sally said you’re back in town. From where?”
“So she told you all that?” he says.
All that? I’ll have to ask Sally about it later. He gulps down a significant amount of beer faster than you should outside of race-themed drinking games and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“She just said you were back.” I mirror him and take a big swig of wine that should be savored. But this is getting awkward.
Apparently he doesn’t agree. He climbs onto the seat next to me. “Yeah, I was in Richmond for a few years.”
“Richmond’s a nice city. I lived there for four years growing up.”
“Oh?” he says. “Why did you leave?”
“My dad’s job.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No,” I say, remembering some pretty not-fun middle school years. Though that likely shouldn’t be blamed on the city.
He smiles. “Well, I do. I loved it. But…” His chest expands. He swallows more beer. “Well, shit happened, and it made sense to come home.”
Silence. My nail digs into a little knot in the wooden bar. He flops the coaster some more.
“So, are you from around here?” he asks, squinting as though he knows it might be a stupid question.
“No, I’m a senior at Poe University. The Fightin’ Black Birds!” I crook my arm in exaggerated school spirit.
“Passion and Purpose.” He recites the school motto. “Anyway, I figured you for a student, but the wine threw me off. Aren’t undergrads supposed to drink Natty? Smirnoff for special occasions?”
“No.” I roll my eyes in feigned exasperation. “It’s Miller High Life, the champagne of beers, for special occasions.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he says. I get a little lost looking into his amber lager.
A woman across the way laughs this high-pitched sort of maniacal laugh. It’s so loud, we both turn.
“She’s been here before,” I explain. “Every time I hear her, I want to go Wiiiiiiipe Ouuuut.” I laugh to myself mostly because I’m not sure he’ll get it, but then he starts humming the rest of the surfer song. I stop gripping the edge of the bar.
We discuss the best surfer songs, from the Beach Boys to Weezer. We decide we’re both authorities on the subject because, even though we haven’t surfed, we have been to the beach and we agree that the best beach meal is peanut butter and jelly with French onion chips and a Coke. I’m close to finishing my wine, having taken too many quick swigs. “Want another one?” He’s already signaling to Sally.
Mandy is across the bar, deep in conversation with Zachary. Her forehead is wrinkled and she isn’t smiling. But her concerned look isn’t so severe it would warrant a rescue. I don’t see anyone else I know well enough to latch on to. I look back to Luke.
Sally smirks as she places two fresh drinks before us.
“You going to let him pay for this one too?” she teases. I shrug and say sure. “Good girl,” she says. It’s not condescending; she treats all her favorite customers like they’re her favorite pets. “Have you told Luke about the beer you and Conrad made? Luke loves himself a good lager.”
Before I can respond, she’s off pouring shots.
Luke leans into me. “You made a lager?” He smells like mowed grass and smoke. Not nicotine smoke, s’mores smoke. His breath is in my ear. Hair stands at the back of my neck and my lips part.
“Yeah, I made a lager,” I say, once I’ve gathered myself. I should add the caveat that I am more like Conrad’s sous chef. I’m there for moral support and to help him with tasks that are easier to do with two people, like bottling.
“That’s cool,” he says, as though there’s a permanent ellipsis on the end of his slowly drawn words.
The two glasses of wine, along with the pre-party drinks Mandy and I had, bubble in my head. Rashid bumps in my brain. He’s a serious sort of guy. The kind you want your parents to meet and you can imagine, possibly, way down the line, being with in a field on a checkered blanket, a boxed diamond ring tucked away in the picnic basket.
But Luke is raw and real and present. And he comes with a grade-A Sally endorsement. He’s the kind of guy I should mess around with. The kind of guy who it isn’t cruel to flirt with. I mean, he’s a townie. I’m just some college girl to him.
So that’s why I ask, “Do you want to try it?” I’m not usually a daring, bold sort of girl, but I place my hand on his shoulder. My thumb glides along his toned muscles.
Our bodies close in. He nods. “Yeah.” His breath is heavy.
“It’s at my apartment, but it’s just a couple blocks away.”
His hand moves to my hand on the bar. The condensation from his beer lingers on his palm and it’s cold. I shiver. He pulls away, forehead furrowed. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
We finish our drinks mighty quickly. I’m sure it has nothing to do with our plans. As Luke pays, I rummage around the bar looking for Mandy. But she is nowhere. She doesn’t answer her phone. I bite the inside of my cheek, but swallow any anger. She must have just forgotten to tell me she was leaving.
I walk back toward Luke. As he says goodbye to Sally, her playful expression winnows away. She reaches her hand to his. She holds it for a second, hard enough that the knuckles on her fleshy hands get a little white. He squeezes back. They’re clearly having a moment. I want to ask about it, but not as much as I want to leave it pure, unhindered. “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle,” Sally says. “You know that.”
“Yes ma’am,” Luke says. She releases his hand. She looks at me as she talks to Luke. “I’m sure you’ll like Quinn’s beer. It’s some of the best in Allan.”
We exit and Luke looks good in the moonlight. Despite the cold, warmth flushes through me. I swallow as his hand finds the small of my back. We pass the Methodist Church. There’s a large balcony three stories up, latched on to the sanctuary. “I’ve heard you can see the whole town from up there,” I say.
“You can,” he says, and laughs. “When we were little, my sisters and I used to crumple up bits of the program and throw ’em off the balcony after the service. We made it snow.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t like snow?”
He shrugs and bares a bashful grin. “The old, serious sorts didn’t like it when paper bits got in their hair. Our mom would get real mad.” As he looks up at the church, the humor leaves his shoulders. His mouth is straight.
The rest of the walk is weirdly quiet. And, given how I thought it started off, oddly devoid of physical contact. The mood has slithered away.
When we get to my house, I usher him past the peeling red paint on the fence and the abundance of honeysuckle in the front yard. I push him quickly through the messy living room that has a bunch of half-spent candles and a shaggy orange carpet. In the kitchen, I open a bottle of the lager for us to split.
He points to a photo of Main Street during a sudden rainstorm my freshman year. Students are holding book bags over their heads, running to the cute shops and cafés for shelter. Some people are standing under awnings, clutching their valuables: recent purchases and small children. “Is this, the one with the crazy guy in the middle, another of your pictures?” Luke asks.
I remember thinking, before I pulled out my camera, how I loved that there was one guy who wasn’t fleeing. He just stood in the middle of the rain and let it fall on him. He spread his arms and looked to the heavens and opened his mouth as though only this sudden rainstorm would quench his thirst. After I took the picture, I ran up to him.
That’s how I met Conrad.
“Yeah,” I say to Luke, pointing at the crazy-looking guy in the middle as I grin. “We’re enjoying his beer recipe.”
Luke laughs. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay.” I step closer to him to show it. He looks at me as though I’m an abstract painting and he’s trying to discern the artist’s intent. He moves slowly but it feels quick. He puts the beer down. His hand is on my hip and his other hand runs through my hair. I place my hands on his shoulders and try to tame my breaths, until I realize his breaths are fast, eager too. We mirror each other again. Just as I close my eyes, ready to taste him, we hear it.
The crashing of glass. Outside. A muffled noise that sounds like a yelp. A scream.
Mandy.
Chapter 5
I push away from Luke and run through the kitchen to the back door, toward the sound. Luke’s heavy steps are close behind me.
The dim lantern on our patio table makes Zachary’s bewildered, madman expression even more off-putting. He’s usually so put together, so in control. Hell, he’s the kind of guy who actually follows the instructions on the side of frozen dinners. You know, taking it out and stirring it midway. But now, he holds a broken bottle by the neck as he shakes. The dim light punctuates the beads of blood that glisten off the jagged edges.
“Shit,” he mumbles when he sees me. “She’s bleeding.”
Mandy’s arm is red with blood, not just the lighter red blood you get when you scrape a knee, but the deep, dark maroon that comes when something has cut closer to your core. The patio is littered with glass shards and some brown liquid that must be liquor. As I step forward tentatively, Luke circumvents me.
“Are you all right?” he asks Mandy, before drawing back. “Your eyes…”
Her eyes aren’t just purple, they’re bright, like the moonlight has caught them at just the right angle.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re purple and my arm is bloody, but I’m fine,” Mandy says. Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary curls his shoulders, folds his arms and looks to the ground. Luke steps toward him, close enough that his height and the mass of his shoulders are a clear advantage. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear: I could fuck you up.
“It was an accident,” Zachary whispers. He sets the bottle on the table.
“We were just playing around,” Mandy says. “We were joking and then I got hurt. That’s all there is to it.”
Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary finally takes two steps back and runs both hands through his hair. Mandy sighs to the sky and Luke tenses his jaw. “Luke,” I say, “if Mandy says it was an accident, it was an accident.” Luke doesn’t know Mandy, so he doesn’t know about Mandy.
“Where is your bathroom?” Luke asks. He’s bobbing slightly on his feet, ready to sprint.
“Right after the kitchen,” I say as he lunges back inside.
The wooden steps up to Conrad’s apartment creak. He has hovered in the one-bedroom apartment above our two-bedroom since sophomore year. And he’s coming down. I’ll have to be quick. I say it hushed to Mandy, but not so hushed that Zachary can’t hear. It’s hard to keep my tone level. “It was an accident, right?”
“Quinn, you know I would never—” Zachary starts, but I raise a hand to him. I look at Mandy.
“It was an accident,” she says, her chin high and her eyes cold. But I had to press it.
Conrad pops his head around the corner. “Hey, I thought I heard…something. Everything okay?”
As he walks toward us, he sees that it’s not.
Luke bursts back onto the patio.
“What happened?” Conrad says, touching Mandy’s shoulder.
Mandy mumbles again how it’s nothing. But her flesh is still erupting in jagged lines. Conrad pulls out his phone. “I’ll call 911.”
“No!” Mandy, Zachary and Luke say in unison, but with varying levels of urgency.
Luke raises his eyebrow at the other two, then turns to Conrad. “She won’t need an ambulance,” he says. “But while you have that out, can you take a picture?” He gestures to Mandy.
“No…what?” Mandy says as Conrad aims and shoots.
Luke bends down, ignoring Mandy’s huffs as he dabs her arm with a wet towel. “I put some soap on this, so it might sting,” he says.
“Why did you ask him to take a picture?” she asks.
“You might need it later,” Luke says, his eyes shifting to Zachary.
“Okay, whatever,” Mandy says. “Thanks for all this, but I’m fine.”
Luke sets down the towel and picks up some bandages. I didn’t even know we had bandages. He wraps them around her arm with astonishing speed.
“You’ll be fine,” Luke says, swift and steady. “But you probably need stitches, and a doctor will need to get the shards of glass out.” He’s stiff. Stern. I barely recognize him for the guy he was back at Sally’s. All heavy, sexy breathing and playful eyes.
Mandy sighs. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“I don’t know, Mandy, that looks pretty bad,” Conrad says.
“Miss, you’re going to—” Luke starts.
“Miss?” Mandy says, the skin around her eyes rumpling as she stares at him. Then she turns to me. “Quinn, who the fuck is this guy?”
I close my eyes for a second. I crouch in front of her, putting my hand on her knee to steady myself. “This is Luke. He’s a guy who’s helping you. And you’re going to listen to him, and we’re going to the hospital.”
Mandy looks to the stars and sighs. She looks back at me. “Okay, let’s go.”
Conrad squeezes Mandy’s shoulder. “You let me know if you need anything, anything at all.”
Mandy nods.
We head out. Zachary follows.
“I think you’ve helped enough,” Luke says, flexing his knuckles.
Zachary clenches his fist, but says nothing. When we’re out of earshot of our house--
away from Zachary and making our way across the damp bricks and the four blocks to the hospital—Luke says, “I know it may be frightening, but when you’re ready, I would strongly urge you to file a complaint for assault. Guys like that rarely stop—”
“Oh my God.” Mandy holds both her injured and healthy arms out. I tap her shoulder and shoot her a “be nice” look.
She pinches her lips and looks at Luke. “I appreciate your help…but you don’t know what happened.”
“What did happen?” Luke asks, cool as butter.
“I told you, we were just playing around.” She crosses her arms.
This still strikes me as odd. I run my hands along my purse strap. But I won’t get anything out of her now, in front of a stranger.
When we get to the emergency room, a nurse processes her. He looks at her arm. He removes the soaked bandages. As they unravel, he frowns. He mutters something about it being a lot of blood for the wound. I ask him what he means. He won’t elaborate.
I rub my thumb along my lower lip as he cleans her arm. I don’t know if it’s because the blood is dissipating, but her wound does look better. Just streams of blood running along her skin, instead of a gushing mess. I remember a guest at one of my parents’ parties going on about war injuries while he shoveled caviar into his mouth between words. He said sometimes you think you’ll die, but it’s just blood and smear and your mind roiled. Maybe Mandy’s was like that. All bluster.
That must be it.
As Luke sits in the waiting room—he insisted—I go with Mandy into the examining room. She sits on the mattress and leans against the wall, specks of blood seeping onto the white paper spilling from a spool at the top of the bed. Her fingers twiddle against each other in her lap.
“What happened?” I’m prodding her when she’s already upset, but I don’t care. I keep my shoulders straight.
“Oh nothing.” She shakes her head.
“I want to believe you…”
Mandy stares at me, violet eyes bright and biting. “You know I’d never let a guy hit me. Not again. I’m not like that.” Her voice shakes. I imagine her past experiences jostling around in her throat. I’m one of the few people privy to those past experiences.
Dr. Brown enters the room with the nurse. “Back again?” She raises her eyebrows. “And on my shift too? Well, let’s have a look.” She wipes away the blood on Mandy’s arm with a sterile cloth. The cuts sprawl across her skin.
She pushes back on her wheelie stool. “These aren’t too bad. We’ll just clean them up and you’ll be on your way in no time.”
The nurse touches her arm. “That’s so strange. I swear it looked worse before.”
Dr. Brown shrugs. “Sometimes small cuts can cause a lot of blood.”
The nurse dabs on some ointment and crisscrosses a few bandages. We get some instructions for at-home care. We’re set.
Luke said he would wait for us but I didn’t really expect him to, so I’m surprised to see him leaning forward in one of the lime green chairs, reading his phone. He springs up when he sees us.
“Everything okay?” he asks. “How many stitches did you need?”
“None.” Mandy says it sharp and proud, like she is somehow to credit for not needing stitches.
Luke squints and rubs the back of his head. “Really? None?” He looks past us to the nurse. “Bill, what about the glass?”
Luke knows the nurse’s name? Do all townies just know each other? Bill responds, “She must have got lucky. The cuts are shallow and clean.”
Luke paces from one row of waiting room chairs to the next. “Well, you might still want to file a complaint against that guy.”
“No,” Mandy says. “I told you it was an accident. Anyway, what’s it to you?”
“Mandy,” I say, “he’s just trying to help.” I shoot a sideways glance at Luke with the most apologetic drippiness I can muster.
“Whatever,” Mandy says, giving Luke a good glare before she jerks her head to the door. “Let’s just go home.” Her footsteps pound against the tiles as she leaves.
My influence has runneth dry.
“I’ll be right there,” I say.
Once she’s out the door, I look back at Luke. “Thanks for your help.”
Luke’s mouth is twisted, and he’s looking past me as he scratches his neck below the ear. “I really thought she would need stitches.”
I shrug. “Well, it’s not like you’re a doctor or anything.”
He doesn’t respond. Maybe he is a doctor? No, he’s too raw, too working-class and rusty.
I head to the door.
“Quinn,” he says, his eyes finally focused on me. “I’d like to see you again.”
“I’ll be around.”
“I don’t like to rely on chance.” He holds up his phone. “Can I get your number? Maybe I could come back sometime to have a few more lagers.”
“You’re greedy, aren’t you?”
“Very.” He grins.
I don’t want to commit to anything. But I also don’t want to be rude. Whatever is going on with Mandy, he was helping. And I want to kiss that grin. Later. So I give him my number, but don’t ask for his.
He touches my shoulder before I can turn away from him. His voice is low, serious. “Be careful around that guy, Quinn. I know Mandy said it wasn’t what it looked like. But in my experience, things are usually exactly what they look like.”
I hope you have enjoyed this sample of HEARTSICK. Please keep reading by purchasing the ebook:
Of course I’d be the one at a frat party talking to a gay guy about how I don’t want to discuss my abstract art with his Sunday school class. If I was normal, I’d be slipping around on the beer-soaked floor while unfamiliar guys tried to curve their fingers around my hips. That’s what Mandy is doing.
But no, I’m explaining to Conrad why my latest art project is not an homage to Christ. “I know it looks like a circle and then a cross, but the red paint is meant—”
“Yes,” Conrad says. “The circle of life. Rejuvenation. Redemption. Reincarnation. Christ and the blood he gave for us. It was very moving.”
I am in no way shocked. Conrad disappointed his good-ol’-boy father when he came out. He disappointed his Baptist mother when he joined the Unitarian Universalist church. But he never disappoints God.
“Finding meaning in art is like finding meaning in life,” he continues. “It’s like finding God.”
Yes, Conrad, I got it. You. God. Besties.
I sigh into my beer. “It’s actually the symbol for O positive. People with that blood type can give to all positive blood types, but can’t accept that blood in return. And they can’t help their only outside donor, O negative. It’s made out of razors to symbolize how people bleed to help others, even those who can’t help them.”
Conrad scratches his temple.
“Um, okay Quinn. Yeah. That’s a really neat idea too.”
He’s just being polite. I don’t mind that one iota.
As I take another sip of liquid that passes for an alcoholic beverage, Conrad nods to the mash of riled up private parts attached to students on the dance floor.
“Looks like your freshman is having a good time,” he says.
“Yeah.” I smile. “I think he’s going to be okay.”
Danny is my adorable art department mentee. I’ve been on mentor overdrive because he had the misfortune, along with, oh, 20 percent of the school, of attending that party, the one in late August that no one likes to talk about. Though whispering about it, apparently, is just fine.
Some kids could shrug it off, but not Danny. The Monday after it happened, he shrunk into the corner of the art studio, elbows on his knees, like an old doll that was tossed and forgotten. As I knelt next to him, producing an expert mix of sensitively timed nods and distracting dirty jokes, my legs lost circulation. But it was worth it. He came around.
Now he’s living it up, swaying rather racily with a girl in my dance troupe. He even has a diaper covering his black hair. Yes. The frat pledges have to wear diapers.
Mandy jives her hips near him, smiling that sly smile—the one that means she knows she’s in control—as another diapered guy slides his fingers up and down the fabric of her dress.
Conrad taps my shoulder. “Why aren’t you out there getting your groove on?” He has a knack for using the corniest applicable sayings in any given situation. It might be my favorite thing about him.
I shrug. “Don’t feel much like dancing.”
“Or…” Conrad tilts his head. “Is it because you have only one man on your mind?”
I cannot raise my eyebrow high enough. “You know me better than that.”
Conrad grins. “Maybe this is the year you decide to settle down?” His eyes narrow. “Rashid’s a great guy.”
“I know, I know.” That’s part of the problem. It’s practically a fact: Rashid—nicest guy on campus. Hell, sweetest guy in the whole commonwealth of Virginia.
A couple days ago, as we walked home after grabbing a drink, leaves shivered in the cooling air and the sky grew darker. Heavy raindrops fell on Rashid and me as we pummeled through puddles to get back to my house. He studied me as I wrung out my hair on the porch. I watched the water creep between the crevices of the boards. His wet fingers glided along my damp cheeks. His pelvis pressed against my belly. He held on to my waist as he brought his mouth to mine.
I try to forget about how good that felt and concentrate on what Conrad is saying. Except he just continues to extol Rashid’s virtues. “…and he’s smart. Like genius smart.”
Like genius smart.
“Nothing is going on between us. It was a one-time thing.” I say it flatly, my palm doing a slow motion karate chop in the air. You know, to show I’m serious. “It was nothing.”
Conrad crosses his arms and frowns. Disapproval crashes over his face. “It wasn’t nothing to him.”
Fortunately, I don’t have to respond to that. A piercing female voice penetrates the hip-hop slamming through the speakers. The yell isn’t a fun “whooeee” kind of a yell, it’s an “I’ll cut you, bitch” kind of yell.
Natalie.
Her face burns red as she thrusts her fist in the air next to Danny’s head. He backs away, taking the diaper off his head and holding it at his chest with both hands as though he’s at a funeral.
He is paying respect to the dead.
Respect or no, Natalie’s rants against him continue. “You just let him leave! You let him walk out the door with the keys.”
The distance between them shrinks and the others around them are repelled, oozing out from the volatile middle. But they don’t go too far. They want to see this shit. A few pull out their phones to record whatever is about to go down. Knowing Natalie, it’ll be a show.
Danny looks at the ground and murmurs, “I’ve told you, I didn’t realize he was driving. I’m sorry.”
I sigh and turn to Conrad.
He nods. “We all need saving sometimes.”
I dash into the circle of people on the dance floor. “Natalie,” I say, and her hair seems to swish in slow motion as her heated eyes land on me. I hold my hands out and open my mouth, but nothing is there.
“You were there too,” she says. Despite all the logical things I had said to Danny, guilt still burns in my muscles. Yes, I was also at the party, the one people only whisper about. Unless you’re Natalie—then you shout about it. She tenses her fists. “You could have stopped him.”
“Natalie, I know nothing I can say can make up for your loss, but you—”
“No, it can’t,” she says, rolling her shoulders back and crossing her arms. Waiting for me to try anyway. But my breath is gone. I purse my mouth and take a step back. I bump into Mandy, who has been behind me the whole time. Of course. She’s always got my back.
“Look—” Mandy swipes around me and zeroes in on Natalie, “—Josh shouldn’t have driven that night. We’re all sorry he hit your sister, and if you want to find out wherever the fuck he is now and go yell at him, do that. But leave the rest of us alone.”
Natalie breathes in and holds it. No one speaks or coughs or so much as squeaks their shoes against the floor. We ignore the song bellowing encouragement for everyone to pick out a sex buddy.
Finally, Natalie speaks. “You come here for a few years and think you own the town. But all you do is ruin it. You ruin us.”
Cheers burst from the townie contingent of the crowd. Perhaps none of them realize they are, in fact, at a Poe University frat party.
Mandy leans in. “Poe didn’t kill Lynn. You need to deal with that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to deal with.” Natalie grabs Mandy’s wrist.
Not the wrist. Not the wrist.
“Come on, Mandy,” I say, bursting forward. “Let’s just go.”
Mandy stares at Natalie, but she pulls her wrist free and walks toward me. No one but me understands how hard that must have been for her.
Natalie pushes the issue. “You all share some blame. And this guy—” she points at Danny, “—took shots with him.”
Danny’s dark brows pucker on his otherwise slack face. “We thought he was walking home…” he says, the words limping along.
“Danny,” I whisper. He looks at me, but shakes his head. Mandy is already turned toward the door. I follow.
Natalie’s voice rises behind us, like she’s the victorious one. “Yeah, get out of here, and take this spic with you.”
Way. Too. Far.
I swish around just in time to see Danny’s crumpled, hurt face. Mandy blows by me to get to Natalie. She raises her hand and unleashes a slap that ricochets along the frat’s walls.
I rarely condone violence. Okay, I don’t condone violence. But a speck of warm pleasure hits me as the red blossoms across Natalie’s cheek.
But then, dammit, tears glisten along the rims of her eyes. I scrunch my face and look to the floor, focusing on the splashes of beer and chunks of mud here and there. I shake myself and tug on Mandy’s hand and whisper our mantra, “Don’t be afraid.” But it’s hard to speak loud enough to overcome the applause. Yes, people actually clap. Natalie has been on her tiring tirade for weeks.
As Natalie recovers, she lunges toward Mandy. A brother grabs Natalie’s arms, holding her back. My mind fumbles for ways to mediate this when the frat president motions to some guys.
That’s how Mandy gets escorted out.
It makes sense to pick Mandy. Politically, what frat president wants to kick out the grieving townie sister of the dead girl? Even if she is a racist. There’s already enough tension between college kids and Allan kids.
Mandy squirms away from the brothers as they take her toward the door. “At least let me finish my beer.”
“You need to leave now,” one brother says. Not as a directive. It’s just sound advice.
She smacks her red Solo cup into my free hand. “Drink this. I’ll meet you outside.”
I check on Danny first, but he’s good, surrounded by his pledge brothers. I look in the drink. I don’t want it. But Mandy stares at me as she’s pulled away. It’s the principle of the thing. So I take a big swig so she can see. But once she’s out the door, I set both our not-quite-empty cups on the counter.
As I follow Mandy into the cool September night, I rub my rosy pink flats against the grass. They’re sullied from the disgusting swirl of swill that pools on frat floors. We journey down a back road toward a much more civilized arena—the row of bars along Main Street, the height of the thriving, or not so thriving, social life in Allan. We crush over the pine needles until we get to the brick walkway. “Let’s just go to Sally’s,” I say.
Mandy rubs her eyes vigorously.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, my eyes just feel sort of, I don’t know, weird.”
I pull some eye drops from my purse.
Mandy looks to the sky and squeezes the liquid into her eyes. When she hands the drops back, her hazel irises look violet next to the purple stones on her necklace. Light rays can achieve mischievous feats.
“I shouldn’t have slapped her.” She circles her fingers around her wrist and whispers, “But I had to.”
“I know.”
Chapter 2
Fall air nips at our thighs as we try to pull our too-short dresses down, not out of modesty, of course. Just, well, it’s chilly. We hand over our IDs to the bouncer who likes ogling all the college girls. Every night it seems to be the same interaction. Sometimes I wish I could wear a sign that says, “Yes, I am really over twenty-one; no, a wink is not going to earn you a fuck.”
Once we get in, I linger next to the wooden bar as Mandy makes her usual lap, checking out our options. I nod to Sally. She’s big and warm and Jell-O-y with cheeks that look like she sat too close to the fire in the back of the pub. I don’t need to tell her what I want. She also knows that my face will turn green if I so much as smell a Jägerbomb. But that’s another story.
“Here’s your glass of pinot grigio, milady,” she says in a posh voice that’s especially endearing because she can’t quite kick that Virginia mountain accent nestled deep within her vocal cords.
“Why thank you, bar wench,” I say. It’s cool. I can say things like that to Sally.
She laughs and pops the top off Mandy’s Yuengling. Before I turn back around, glass crashes in quick pricks around my ankles. I set the drinks down and swivel. A girl has dropped her wine. Glass shards and liquid surround my feet.
“Shit, sorry,” the girl says before darting toward the bathroom. I get it, she’s embarrassed. I bend down into a careful crouch, given my short skirt. The wine soaks into the wood floorboards, becoming part of the bar. But the glass bits can’t just linger. I reach for one, ready to pluck it and its friends off the ground, when a man squats next to me.
“No.” He grabs my hand. “You could cut yourself. Let me get that.” His sharp green eyes match his shirt. Despite his crisp button-down, I can tell he’s a townie, an Allan original. It’s not any one thing, but the combination. He has a toothpick sliding out of the corner of his mouth and there are light grass stains on his knees, as though he’d been playing outside with a dog or small child. He smells like crickets and fire pits. He also has a sliver of dirt under his thumb, which presses into my hand as he pulls me up. I let him. I hold his rough palm for too long and he has to gently pull it away.
“Hey Sally,” he says. “Where do you keep your dustpan?” He’s got that Allan cadence too. It’s languid. There is no rush.
Sally fusses about how he doesn’t have to do anything, but he insists and leaves to retrieve the necessary tools. I’ll wait for him and offer to help. We can bend over the broken glass together.
“Quinn, come here,” Mandy calls. “We’re celebrating! Zachary’s going to be published in some super important science journal.”
I stare at the glass guy for a bit too long, imagining myself playing the role of a good little helper, until I rub my forehead and turn to join Mandy. She stands next to Zachary, her fling. Although maybe you can’t call it a fling if it’s lasted more than a year. He’s Rashid’s roommate (super smart science grad students stick together), and we met them out one drizzly, drunken night last fall.
Rashid is with them too, and when he sees me, his lips twitch into a grin. His gaze is deep. Penetrating.
Maybe that’s it. The way he looks at me? When I’m around him, I feel like the world is compressing. I haven’t figured out why.
Then again, odd things make me feel that way. Like small talk that crosses from harmlessly tedious to suffocatingly desperate. Or fluorescent lights in stores with heaps of useless products. Or that spray you get when you walk into a cosmetics department. Here’s perfume. It will make you a better person.
It’s those things that make me want to sit on the bathroom floor, cross-legged, letting the cold tiles infuse my legs with reality. I would run my fingers along the grout just to know it’s there, it’s real. I am real.
But nice, cute Rashid shouldn’t make me feel that way.
“Hey,” Rashid says. “How are you? Need a drink?” He nods to my wine. I haven’t taken a sip. It isn’t quite brimming, but the liquid is flirting with the edge, threatening to make a run for it.
“No thanks, I’m fine.” I turn to Mandy to make it a group conversation, but she and Zachary have shuffled over to a corner and started making out. Already.
“They’re confusing,” Rashid says.
They aren’t confusing. Not one bit. Mandy is about a 10 to Zachary’s 4-4.5 on an overcast day. And she likes him because, unlike some previous jerks, he adores her down to the last drop. He’s a fan of 100 percent of Mandy, not 76 percent and-can-you-please-work-on-that-last-24-percent? That trumps a lot of things—his rank of semi-cute nerd, if you squint, (as opposed to Rashid’s full-on hot nerd); his inability to hear the word tampon without snickering; and his habit of stating unnecessary facts. “The wall is painted blue.” Why yes, Zachary, it is.
But he brightens whenever Mandy’s around. And he can crack a joke about mullets like no one else.
Mr. Genius Smart, I mean Rashid, starts to say something with gooey eyes. “Why don’t we—”
He is blissfully cut off.
“Hey Rashid!” A girl bops me out of the way. A molecule of my wine slips to the floor. “Dr. Ferris said a few of the infected wood rats seem to be getting better.”
He nods. “Well, it’s too early to tell anything. We’re seeing some negative reactions with group D, though that is to be expected, considering the unusual nature of the project. Still, it was exciting to see a few improving.”
The girl starts to say something else, her shoulder sharpening, creating a wedge between Rashid and me, but he interjects. “Quinn, this is one of my students.” He puts some extra emphasis on student. Of course, she couldn’t care less about meeting me. As Rashid describes his research, she hangs on his every word, most of which I don’t understand. They’re the kind of words that would be italicized in text.
Back at the bar, the grass-stained guy has finished cleaning up the glass. He looks at me with those sharp eyes as he slowly drinks his lager. No rush. He listens to Sally, who points in my direction and says God knows what. She’s not only my friend, she’s my bartender, so she knows the best parts about me, like how I tip well (I may be a student, but my parents aren’t) and that I remember the names and birthdays of her three cats, two dogs and one ferret. But she also knows the worst parts about me. You know, like that Jägerbomb thing and how badly my mascara can smear on her sweater when I’m a crying drunk of a girl.
Rashid’s fingers touch my lower back and stretch toward my hip, sending a not entirely unpleasant shiver up my spine. The girl pulls her head back, like a turtle under attack. The composure leaves her face and she turns away, mumbling something about needing to catch up with a friend.
“So, you’re saving wood rats?” I ask.
“Sort of,” he says. “A bacteria has been causing a lot of problems among the population. They’ve been getting sick. We’re trying to see how we can prevent it.” His chin is high and his shoulders are back. “We may be on to something.”
“What’s the problem? Are they are all catching a cold?” I ask.
“No, a cold is a virus,” he says. “Viral infections, now that’s Zachary’s line of work. Well, mostly.”
“Mostly?” I tilt my head. His smile is thin but his eyes are wide. They swallow me up.
“There can be connections between bacteria and viruses. For example, some bacteria can fight viruses,” he says. “Some have been shown to strengthen immune systems, or fight off other kinds of infections, or even help destroy cancer cells. For example, scientists found that when they gave Wolbachia to mosquitos…” His mouth stays open for a moment before he shrugs. “It’s not really worth trying to explain.”
Scientific translation: he’s not willing to dumb it down for me.
I look at the ground. He probably thinks my daily schedule consists of frolicking among tulips and splashing paint against white backgrounds, but I could understand the dumbed-down version of his scientific escapades. Probably.
“Well,” I say, pushing my hair back and facing him again. “It’s nice to see you so happy. Sometimes I worry about you—walking around campus you look like you’ve got dozens of chemistry problems bouncing around in your brain.”
The corners of Rashid’s lips curl up. “You worry about me?”
I try not to smile but it prickles on my warm face. He continues, “Anyway, anyone can do the kind of stuff I’m doing.”
Right.
“But you,” he says. “Figuring out what to paint, knowing all those modern dance moves…”
“Yes,” I say. “Those are important skills. Much more marketable than, say, knowing how to cure cancer.” People like Rashid are useful to the whole world. He can save thousands, maybe millions. At least I’m useful to Mandy. We save each other.
“I’m not trying to cure cancer.” Rashid grins and rubs the back of his head. “Are you working on anything new? I still haven’t gotten to see the piece that’s a mash-up of toothpaste and toothbrushes all ‘swirled and swumbled together.’” He quotes me exactly, made-up word and all. I told him about that project six weeks ago, the first night of my senior year, when Mandy and Zachary “retired” to her bedroom early. We sat on the porch and drank pumpkin beer like it was fall, even though the Virginia fireflies were still out, blinking all around us.
“Yeah, well, it’s coming along. But mostly I’m focusing on my senior solo in my dance troupe. The recital is next week.”
“Oh, right. I have to teach a class that night, but if I can find any way out of it, I will.”
I wave my hand. “Nah, it’s nothing.”
He nods. Agreeing. This is good. But then he touches my elbow, directing me to some newly open seats in the corner. “I’ll get you another drink,” he says, noticing my wine is almost drained. “Just sit tight.”
Yeah, he says things like “sit tight.”
I wait in the dark corner and push away the corroding stress tied to the recital. My solo. It’s been hard to get it right. Our staff adviser, Rachel, has missed a lot of rehearsals to take care of her sister who has ALS. Their parents died last year in a car accident, and Rachel’s her only family left in town, so I understand that her sister really needs her, much more than I do. It has just meant that I’ve had to do even more to lead the troupe and bring out everyone’s talents. But it’s been fun to get creative. A few nights ago we wore glow-in-the-dark bracelets as we danced barefoot on the football field at midnight.
The nook I sit in is so narrow that when Rashid comes back with our drinks, our knees knock if one of us shifts. He crosses his legs, putting his ankle on his knee, and some dirt from his boot gets on my bare thigh.
“I’m sorry,” he says, planting both feet on the hardwood floor and using his hand to rub the mud off my leg.
“Smooth, Rashid, smooth,” I joke.
“What?” His grin is broad. His teeth look good.
“You did that on purpose.”
His hand is still on my thigh. “I swear I didn’t.” His grip goes from perfunctory to on purpose. “But I’d do it again.”
I’m too caught up to resist when his lips meet mine. Our tongues glide ecstatically against each other, until I check myself. I pull back and push his collarbone with my thumb. “I don’t think we should do this.”
His deep brown eyes digest his surroundings. Digest me. His body is tense. “I don’t understand.”
“Rashid, I just…I think we want different things.”
He sighs and his muscles relax. He leans in. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he says. “I’m not just messing around. I’m serious about you.”
Yeah, and that’s the problem. It’s my senior year. All I want to do is mess around. If Rashid wants more, I should let him go.
“I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.”
See, I am not cruel.
I am, however, weak.
I haven’t removed my hand from his shoulder. He takes that for the not-so-subconscious sign it is. He slides me closer to him. “Fine, let’s go out for a non-serious dinner this week. Maybe at Geni’s?”
Shit, not Geni’s. It’s Allan’s only French bistro. Candles, tablecloths, waiters who put their hands behind their backs as they methodically describe the specials. It’s the only place my dad can stand to go when my parents visit.
“I don’t think Geni’s is—” Before I can finish, Rashid is kissing me again. I’m caught up in his mouth and his fingers in my hair when Mandy’s voice breaks my concentration.
“Quinn,” she says. I pull away. Her face is like stone. I spring up, downing my wine. Waste not, want not.
Rashid gets up too. “What’s wrong? Can I help—”
“No. Zachary’s just being a jerk,” Mandy says. But softly. That’s bad.
“See you later,” I say to Rashid. His previously firm shoulders fold in on themselves. I occupy myself with rubbing Mandy’s back. We enter the cool night.
“Things were fine, normal,” she says. “He was looking at me, just staring at me, you know, and then he stopped smiling and he looked like I’d said I ran over his cat or something. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he needed to go. I tried to ask him why, but he just walked out on me. He left me, Quinn.”
“He can be an idiot sometimes,” I say. While he isn’t always the most socially aware, something gnaws at my throat. Just getting up and leaving? That’s not like Zachary.
Mandy stops and looks at the sky. She closes her eyes. “He just left.”
I clutch her shoulders. People are walking around, the semi-late crowd still barhopping, the responsible partiers getting a hot dog at Joe’s before turning in. A few kids rubberneck to see why we’ve stopped.
“Look at me,” I demand. She focuses. “He’ll probably apologize profusely tomorrow. Until then, don’t you give another thought to him, you understand?”
She laughs. “Yes, sir. Aye aye.” She often jokes, when I get all no-nonsense, that I should have been an army captain. You know, one of the ones who can’t hold a gun to save her life and would much rather have paint all over her trousers than mud and grass and shit.
“That’s right. Now give me fifty and meet me in the canteen at 0500!”
“Thanks, Quinn.”
As we walk home, she nudges me in the ribs and gives me a hard time about making out with Rashid, despite all of my proclamations to her that the other night had been a one-time thing.
Okay, fine, I guess now it’s a two-time thing. But whatever it is, it’s done now. Really.
Chapter 3
My eyes pop open as the scream shudders out of our bathroom. Sunlight smacks against the shadows in the collage on the ceiling above my bed. I flop off my mattress, tripping over sheets to get to Mandy.
“What’s wrong?”
She clasps both sides of the sink and leans close to the mirror. Her nose kisses the glass.
“You okay?” I ask again. I step forward and put my hand on her shoulder. Her head droops and she stares at the drain in our sink. She turns to me.
“My eyes,” she says. “What happened to my eyes?”
Purple. Her eyes are purple. It’s not a trick of the light like I thought last night. Full-fledged brilliant violet irises are surrounded by crinkled, worried skin.
“Are you wearing contacts?” It’s a dumb question. If she had purchased and put purple cosmetic contacts in, she’d probably remember.
“No.” She clutches her hair. She doesn’t call out my stupid question, which is not like her. Maybe she had even asked herself the same thing. When you have no idea what’s happening, even inane questions deserve their place.
I cup Mandy’s chin so that I can get a better look at those irises while trying to tame my own wild heartbeat.
I take care of Mandy because she takes care of me. Like the time someone snuck tequila in the sangria and I ended up with my knees on our puffy pink bathmat, praying to the porcelain god as Mandy rubbed my back and ordered me to drink water.
When that jerk Jason broke up with me over a blush brush (I left it in his dorm, accidentally, so obviously I was purposefully encroaching on his space), she was also there for me. She blared one of my favorite country songs, stood on my bed and played an air banjo.
I took care of her when she lost the sophomore class presidency. She curled up in a ball at the foot of my bed, raw, bare teeth skidding against the ground as tears slid over her lips. I lay on the bed, my chin over the edge, just listening and tossing down the occasional tissue. When she was ready, I blasted some old-school Snoop Dogg and, in my baggiest clothes, did a beep-bop hip-hop thing that I can assure you was actually pretty slammin’, considering I’m a rich white girl.
But I don’t think my rapping talents will save her now. “Well, how do you feel? Do your eyes hurt?”
“They felt weird last night,” she says. “But they’re fine now. I feel completely fine!” Her exasperated tone doesn’t match the sentence.
Finally, after staring into the violet streaks surrounding her pupil, I render my verdict. “You should go to the doctor.” I say it like a pin prick. Zip. Bang. Done.
Mandy pinches her nose and sighs. “Thanks, that’s a big help.”
I cross my arms. “We could look it up , but that’s weird. I’d go to the clinic.”
“They aren’t going to be able to fix this,” Mandy snaps. The air between us crackles. I sigh and reach my arms out. Mandy’s head lolls around. “Will you come with me?” Her voice slips and slides with a fear I didn’t realize she could possess.
“Of course,” I say.
We pull on some clothes and head to the little college clinic. First we have to get by Jared. He’s this creepy religious guy with sandy white hair who thinks it’s his job to tell everyone how awful they are. This morning, he stands in front of the clinic holding up a poster of what I think is a bloody fetus (I don’t look long enough to confirm) as he blesses us and tells us to make the right decision. I don’t even think they perform abortions at the clinic. He’s just assuming since we’re college girls with a health problem we must be preggers.
He clasps his hand over his chest as we get closer. “Your eyes,” he says, his shoulders rising in fear like he’s some kind of wild animal. “It’s happening.”
Mandy’s aforementioned eyes narrow and her mouth opens. I grab her elbow. “Just ignore him,” I whisper.
Of course, the clinic staff also thinks we’re pregnant. After seeing Mandy’s purple eyes, a woman escorts her back to an examination room. Then the woman asks me how I am and if I would like to pee in a cup.
“I haven’t had sex in months and, don’t worry, my bathroom trashcan has gotten properly filled with tampon wrappers right on time,” I say with a sparkling smile. This is not a lie. Rashid and I had kept it pretty tame.
The nurse tilts her head and raises an eyebrow, because of course twenty-two-year-olds never know what they’re talking about. “Okay,” she says. “You can wait over there.”
I take a seat, but I’m slightly bristled from the implication that I must be sexually irresponsible. My body is also fidgety with worry. So I get up. I lean over the bowl of condoms in the waiting area and sheepishly put one in my pocket. I sit down and then get up, hesitantly, and get another one. I do this ’til the nurse eyes me.
I sigh. “I just don’t know. I mean, do you think six is enough for one night out? Especially as there’s a limit to how many times you can use one, I think. I read that somewhere …something about how you can turn it inside out and use it again, but only once…” I trail off, finger and thumb against my chin as I look to the ceiling in deep, perplexed thought.
“Very funny,” the nurse says before she goes back to her paperwork. Her lips tense, as though she’s fighting to keep a laugh in. She’s not so bad.
I walk over and lean my elbows on the panel and scrunch my eyebrows together. “It’s nothing, right?”
“What’s nothing?”
“The purple eyes. I mean, she feels fine, so she is fine, right?”
To her credit, the nurse doesn’t hold my previous sass against me. Her shoulders relax and she smiles softly. “I’ve never heard of a condition with purple eyes. But our bodies are funny. Some people’s eyes change color a little over the course of their life. Some products, like eyelash enhancers, can also affect eye color.”
“Like allergic reactions?” I ask.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Thanks.” I return her graciousness by leaving her alone until Mandy comes out from the backstage of the clinic a half an hour later.
Their verdict is similar to mine: We don’t know shit. Go to the emergency room. Okay, they might not have used that exact phrasing.
Fortunately, Allan is pretty tiny, and the hospital is only eight blocks from the clinic. And it’s not like Mandy’s actually injured, or even feeling crappy. In fact, she says, aside from being wracked with worry, she feels pretty good. So we walk. We pass adorable shops that sell knickknacks that are cute enough to buy even if they serve no function. We pass townhouses and people reading the Saturday morning paper in wicker chairs on their porches, steaming mugs of coffee cupped in their hands. We smell autumn the way you can only smell autumn when you’re in an ancient mountain town surrounded by flourishing forests. Mold and wet brick and burning wood.
“I met a cute townie last night,” I say.
“A townie?” she says, face forward. Mouth straight. “What’s his name?”
“Well, I guess I didn’t actually meet him.” I fold my arms in on myself and rub the outside of my elbows. “I was just trying to distract you.”
She huffs a small laugh. “Thanks.”
We’re quiet the rest of the way.
Allan’s population tends to be more inclined toward antiquing than risky behaviors, so the wait at the ER is not long. Unfortunately, Mandy’s worry has rattled to new levels. I venture into the depths of the ER with her so she won’t be alone.
The nurse who processes Mandy and the doctor who eventually comes into the examining room seem only mildly curious about her condition.
“Well,” Dr. Brown says, “there are several reasons why eye colors might change.” She paces, as though we are a conundrum. “I have heard of melanoma changing iris color, but not to purple.” She shakes her head. “No, not to purple… And then, of course, there is Fuchs Heterochromic Iridocyclitis.”
“Ah yes, Fuchs,” I say. Her face brightens and I can tell she is about to pounce on me with even more medical jargon, until I sway my head and squish my lips to the left side of my mouth.
“Well, yes, of course, you probably haven’t heard of that.” She continues droning on about another disease, Horner’s something, until I can’t even decipher her self-directed mumbles. Finally, she talks to us. “Well, it could be connected to an autoimmune disease or a viral infection.” She walks to one end of the room and back. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she says as though she has had a eureka moment—but her big grand decision is just to run a battery of tests.
When she takes one final look at Mandy’s eyes, seeing past the purple into the worry, the human submerged in Dr. Brown comes out.
“We’ll figure out what’s going on,” she says, confident. “It’s possible it’s just a startling, but natural, change in eye color. Nothing to worry about. But please do contact me if you begin to experience anything else unusual. We’ll need to know about any additional symptoms.”
“Yes, of course.” Mandy nods, and I can tell from her voice that she’s already feeling a little better. Maybe this is all nothing. Maybe everything is peachy keen.
Chapter 4
After the hospital trip, Mandy lies on her bed eating Krizzles, this saccharin-y fruit candy, not caring that the little cardboard boxes litter her comforter. Purple emanating from the cardboard boxes, purple glistening from her eyes.
“You okay?” I ask her, and sit on the foot of her bed.
She fishes a few more Krizzles out of a box and deposits them in her mouth. Krizzles are Zachary’s thing. (“Krizzles are fruit flavored.” Why yes, Zachary, they are.) He eats them as he cooks, or watches science documentaries, or lies around our couch reviewing his research notes.
“Yeah, I guess I’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ve eaten enough Krizzles I’ll have a sugar rush soon and want to clean the whole house.”
I scoot back on her bed, leaning against the wall and hugging my knees. “That’s not a horrible idea. I can get you Pixy Stix and then we can really have some fun.”
She throws the conquered candy box against the wall so it can bounce into her wastebasket. She puts her hands on her head like she’s pulling back her hair, but the hands don’t pull, they just stay near her temples as she looks at the ceiling.
“I hate this.”
Tears swell against the bright-red lining of her lavender eyes. She shifts up. “Quinn, you know how I don’t like it when things happen to me.”
I’ve heard this often.
One time freshmen year we were grocery shopping—okay, we were buying beer with her fake ID and I was responsible for the chips and salsa and other snacks. Anyway, Mandy started acting forceful, weird. She wouldn’t let me make any decisions. I was feeling pretty mellow and didn’t want to get into a spitfire fight next to a bunch of fresh mangos, so I let it go. But when we got back to the dorm kitchen, as I sliced the mango for her (a peace offering), I oh-so-gently inquired, “What the fuck was that shit about?”
She had sighed and rolled her shoulders but finally explained that she had seen a woman who looked like her mom. Not in coloring or features, but in mannerisms and aura. The woman had this long list, typed, and she kept picking up a pack of hotdogs, looking at it, then moving back, picking it up again, hesitating as she looked at the list, then the label. The list. The label. The list. The label.
“So, she’s got a touch of OCD,” I said, shrugging.
“No,” Mandy said. “It’s not OCD.”
Mandy never wants to end up like that woman, or like her mom. And one way to not end up that way is by doing things instead of having things done to you. Things don’t happen to Mandy; Mandy makes things happen.
But this mysterious purple eye condition doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of respect for Mandy’s life philosophy.
“Well,” I say, knowing what might work to rustle Mandy out of this funk. “Let’s see what Wisey has to say about all this.” I stand on her bed and get the stuffed owl, her childhood toy, from its revered spot on the top corner of her shelf. My stuffed cat, Churchill, still resides on my bed. I like that Mandy wasn’t too grown up to bring her lovey to college. But she is too grown up to let it serve its original function. Comfort.
I flap Wisey’s wings and begin my best owl impression. I’ve pulled this out before. It’s very lame, but it usually works. “Whoooo knows better than yoooou what is happening? Whooo has gorgeous lavender eyes? Whooo has an awesome best friend? Whooo should stop pouting and go out tonight?”
“It’s me, it’s me.” Mandy says her requisite response, but it’s dry. Her bleary eyes focus on the ceiling.
I flop back on the bed and plop Wisey into my lap.
“I’m not sure if I want to go out tonight. Maybe I need to escape for a while, just get away from…everyone,” Mandy says.
“Me tooooo?” I ask.
She smiles and takes Wisey, uncharacteristically spooning him. “No, Wisey, I would never leave you behind.”
I shrug. “Well, if you want to stay in, I get it—but then can I borrow that purple dress?” In three ninja-like moves I’m up, grabbing the dress out of the closet and twirling it in front of me. “I mean, it doesn’t match my eyes, you could really own this dress, but…”
“You’re right.” Mandy zips up. I’m not sure if it’s the product of my obvious attempts at manipulation or if the sugar from the Krizzles has started coursing through her veins. “I should go out tonight. I should just own this.”
We debate what I should wear and settle on a red dress that flirts across my upper thighs. I may not be super tall, but I have dancer legs worth showing off. We also share different kinds of perfume—effectively making us a smorgasbord of scents.
But as we walk to Sally’s, I’m still the overprotective roommate. I make sure to walk in between her and the two Allan cops who simultaneously leer at us and tell us—as we use our indoor voices outside—that if we talk any louder they will write us up for a noise violation. Jerks. I also tell Mandy to look out for steps and trip-inducing disturbances along the brick path that, admittedly, she has probably been aware of for three years now.
But what really annoys her is me asking about five and a half times if she’s okay. The half is because, at the door, she cuts me off and swings around, saying in an emphatic whisper, “If you ask me one more time if I’m okay, I’m going to clock you.”
I raise my hands in defeat.
“Okay,” I say. “Calm down.” Mandy lets out a deep exhale. The kind where you can tell her frustration has been jangling in her insides. She steps toward the door, pulling her ID out to show the bouncer.
I tap on her shoulder. “Oh, but Mandy, one more thing—are you sure you’re okay?” I duck as her handbag comes swinging as fast as a carnival ride toward my head. But she can’t hide her smile while she does it.
Zachary is smack dab in the middle of Sally’s. He calls Mandy’s name as though his life depends on it. He looks at me. “You’re out tonight too.” Why yes, Zachary, I am.
I raise my eyebrow at Mandy. “I’ll be okay,” she says, and turns toward him. I am no longer the beloved-yet-annoying friend. I’m the third wheel. I leave with little fanfare.
I curl onto the edge of the bar. The picture I took of the exterior of the pub last spring rests above the line of liquor bottles. I used Photoshop to give it a spooky effect. Deeper shadows than are natural in a normal black-and-white image. I got it framed and gave it to Sally before I went home for the summer. She had clutched both it and me to her motherly bosom as she thanked me. “Now my bar has some real class.”
I’m so soaked in that memory that a voice jostles my thoughts. “Sally told me you took that picture.” The guy who cleaned up the broken glass last night saunters up to me and takes a deep sip of his lager while he waits for me to respond.
“Yeah, I did,” I say.
“It looks…eerie,” he says. A slow smile splays across his face. I wonder if he’s the type of guy who would care to know about the way I manipulated the photo. Probably not.
Not sure what else to say, my hands grow slippery on the edge of the wood bar, which I am now clutching. Fortunately, Sally swoops in. “Pinot?” I nod.
“Can you get me another one of these?” the broken-glass guy asks as he settles onto the stool next to me. “And put that pinot on my tab.”
Sally gives me a look, daring me to say no. I wave my hand. “Thanks but no thanks. I got this.”
This is Sally’s cue to nod and go get the orders. That’s the dance. Because random older guys offering me drinks happens at a pretty high clip. I mean, I’m decently cute. I have these big, round, almost cartoonish eyes, and I tan easily. My chestnut hair, while limp, is not entirely devoid of shine. And, of course, dancing has some positive side effects on my figure. But the real reason I get so many strange men who want to buy me a drink, more than the blonde sorority girls or the hot townie MILFs, is because I just look so darn friendly. I’ve tried to fight this, but it persists. It’s fucking annoying.
And, despite Mandy telling me to just take the drinks and run, I don’t always know what the guys think that drink buys them. So Sally rings up separate checks, and maybe I chat with the guy and maybe that chat leads to kissing, or making out, or more. But I can also decide I don’t need to say a nugget of a sentence to the guy making the offer. That’s the control you get when you buy your own drink.
But, this time, Sally doesn’t go off and ring up separate tabs. Instead, she talks to the glass guy. “Luke, honey, can you do me a favor and get those empty pitchers from that table over there?” She points at a table all the way across the bar. He narrows his eyes but shrugs and walks away. Sally focuses on me. She leans onto the bar, her hands in a fist and arms in a triangle. The faded dragon tattoo creeping out of her cleavage is hard not to look at, but I manage.
“Quinn, honey, I get it, you’re independent. But Luke—” she tips her forehead to the glass guy, who turns around with a skeptical look before resuming his journey, “—he’s just about one of my favorite people on God’s earth, and he isn’t thrilled to be back in Allan and hasn’t had the easiest time of things. So, basically, you’d be doing me a personal favor if you let him buy you a drink and listened to a few of his jokes. You don’t have to laugh, just listen. Understand?”
I’m shocked at Sally’s bluntness, but, as always, her voice is raspy and sweet all at once. She’s not attacking me. She’s looking out for this guy, Luke. And, honestly, I want to shoot the shit with any guy that Sally likes this much. And I wouldn’t mind touching those rough palms again.
“Of course,” I say.
She gets our drinks before he comes back and once he does, I pick up my wine. “Thanks for the drink.”
He clinks with me and takes a sip. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” There’s something sad in his voice that makes me want to find an emotional salve, which I imagine would probably be some kind of chocolate peanut butter concoction.
“It’s nothing personal, it’s just—” I start.
“No, I get it.” His hand flip-flops a coaster between his thumbs and fingers as he stares into the line of bottles of whiskey and whatnot. “I’m Luke, by the way.” He reaches his other hand out, like we’re business partners. I go with it.
“I’m Quinn.”
Those hands. They’re the kind of rough and wild hands that hold truths. And, like last night, I want more than the tactile glimpse the handshake gives me.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Quinn.” I love the way he says my name. With his southern accent it sways more toward the Q, the n’s are uphill.
“So, where have you been?” I ask.
He tilts his head, sort of like a puppy would do if you hide a tennis ball behind your back. “Ah, you mean…your whole life?”
I’m only semi-successful at stifling a girlish giggle as he watches me with playful eyes. “No, I mean, Sally said you’re back in town. From where?”
“So she told you all that?” he says.
All that? I’ll have to ask Sally about it later. He gulps down a significant amount of beer faster than you should outside of race-themed drinking games and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“She just said you were back.” I mirror him and take a big swig of wine that should be savored. But this is getting awkward.
Apparently he doesn’t agree. He climbs onto the seat next to me. “Yeah, I was in Richmond for a few years.”
“Richmond’s a nice city. I lived there for four years growing up.”
“Oh?” he says. “Why did you leave?”
“My dad’s job.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No,” I say, remembering some pretty not-fun middle school years. Though that likely shouldn’t be blamed on the city.
He smiles. “Well, I do. I loved it. But…” His chest expands. He swallows more beer. “Well, shit happened, and it made sense to come home.”
Silence. My nail digs into a little knot in the wooden bar. He flops the coaster some more.
“So, are you from around here?” he asks, squinting as though he knows it might be a stupid question.
“No, I’m a senior at Poe University. The Fightin’ Black Birds!” I crook my arm in exaggerated school spirit.
“Passion and Purpose.” He recites the school motto. “Anyway, I figured you for a student, but the wine threw me off. Aren’t undergrads supposed to drink Natty? Smirnoff for special occasions?”
“No.” I roll my eyes in feigned exasperation. “It’s Miller High Life, the champagne of beers, for special occasions.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” he says. I get a little lost looking into his amber lager.
A woman across the way laughs this high-pitched sort of maniacal laugh. It’s so loud, we both turn.
“She’s been here before,” I explain. “Every time I hear her, I want to go Wiiiiiiipe Ouuuut.” I laugh to myself mostly because I’m not sure he’ll get it, but then he starts humming the rest of the surfer song. I stop gripping the edge of the bar.
We discuss the best surfer songs, from the Beach Boys to Weezer. We decide we’re both authorities on the subject because, even though we haven’t surfed, we have been to the beach and we agree that the best beach meal is peanut butter and jelly with French onion chips and a Coke. I’m close to finishing my wine, having taken too many quick swigs. “Want another one?” He’s already signaling to Sally.
Mandy is across the bar, deep in conversation with Zachary. Her forehead is wrinkled and she isn’t smiling. But her concerned look isn’t so severe it would warrant a rescue. I don’t see anyone else I know well enough to latch on to. I look back to Luke.
Sally smirks as she places two fresh drinks before us.
“You going to let him pay for this one too?” she teases. I shrug and say sure. “Good girl,” she says. It’s not condescending; she treats all her favorite customers like they’re her favorite pets. “Have you told Luke about the beer you and Conrad made? Luke loves himself a good lager.”
Before I can respond, she’s off pouring shots.
Luke leans into me. “You made a lager?” He smells like mowed grass and smoke. Not nicotine smoke, s’mores smoke. His breath is in my ear. Hair stands at the back of my neck and my lips part.
“Yeah, I made a lager,” I say, once I’ve gathered myself. I should add the caveat that I am more like Conrad’s sous chef. I’m there for moral support and to help him with tasks that are easier to do with two people, like bottling.
“That’s cool,” he says, as though there’s a permanent ellipsis on the end of his slowly drawn words.
The two glasses of wine, along with the pre-party drinks Mandy and I had, bubble in my head. Rashid bumps in my brain. He’s a serious sort of guy. The kind you want your parents to meet and you can imagine, possibly, way down the line, being with in a field on a checkered blanket, a boxed diamond ring tucked away in the picnic basket.
But Luke is raw and real and present. And he comes with a grade-A Sally endorsement. He’s the kind of guy I should mess around with. The kind of guy who it isn’t cruel to flirt with. I mean, he’s a townie. I’m just some college girl to him.
So that’s why I ask, “Do you want to try it?” I’m not usually a daring, bold sort of girl, but I place my hand on his shoulder. My thumb glides along his toned muscles.
Our bodies close in. He nods. “Yeah.” His breath is heavy.
“It’s at my apartment, but it’s just a couple blocks away.”
His hand moves to my hand on the bar. The condensation from his beer lingers on his palm and it’s cold. I shiver. He pulls away, forehead furrowed. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
We finish our drinks mighty quickly. I’m sure it has nothing to do with our plans. As Luke pays, I rummage around the bar looking for Mandy. But she is nowhere. She doesn’t answer her phone. I bite the inside of my cheek, but swallow any anger. She must have just forgotten to tell me she was leaving.
I walk back toward Luke. As he says goodbye to Sally, her playful expression winnows away. She reaches her hand to his. She holds it for a second, hard enough that the knuckles on her fleshy hands get a little white. He squeezes back. They’re clearly having a moment. I want to ask about it, but not as much as I want to leave it pure, unhindered. “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle,” Sally says. “You know that.”
“Yes ma’am,” Luke says. She releases his hand. She looks at me as she talks to Luke. “I’m sure you’ll like Quinn’s beer. It’s some of the best in Allan.”
We exit and Luke looks good in the moonlight. Despite the cold, warmth flushes through me. I swallow as his hand finds the small of my back. We pass the Methodist Church. There’s a large balcony three stories up, latched on to the sanctuary. “I’ve heard you can see the whole town from up there,” I say.
“You can,” he says, and laughs. “When we were little, my sisters and I used to crumple up bits of the program and throw ’em off the balcony after the service. We made it snow.”
“Sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t like snow?”
He shrugs and bares a bashful grin. “The old, serious sorts didn’t like it when paper bits got in their hair. Our mom would get real mad.” As he looks up at the church, the humor leaves his shoulders. His mouth is straight.
The rest of the walk is weirdly quiet. And, given how I thought it started off, oddly devoid of physical contact. The mood has slithered away.
When we get to my house, I usher him past the peeling red paint on the fence and the abundance of honeysuckle in the front yard. I push him quickly through the messy living room that has a bunch of half-spent candles and a shaggy orange carpet. In the kitchen, I open a bottle of the lager for us to split.
He points to a photo of Main Street during a sudden rainstorm my freshman year. Students are holding book bags over their heads, running to the cute shops and cafés for shelter. Some people are standing under awnings, clutching their valuables: recent purchases and small children. “Is this, the one with the crazy guy in the middle, another of your pictures?” Luke asks.
I remember thinking, before I pulled out my camera, how I loved that there was one guy who wasn’t fleeing. He just stood in the middle of the rain and let it fall on him. He spread his arms and looked to the heavens and opened his mouth as though only this sudden rainstorm would quench his thirst. After I took the picture, I ran up to him.
That’s how I met Conrad.
“Yeah,” I say to Luke, pointing at the crazy-looking guy in the middle as I grin. “We’re enjoying his beer recipe.”
Luke laughs. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay.” I step closer to him to show it. He looks at me as though I’m an abstract painting and he’s trying to discern the artist’s intent. He moves slowly but it feels quick. He puts the beer down. His hand is on my hip and his other hand runs through my hair. I place my hands on his shoulders and try to tame my breaths, until I realize his breaths are fast, eager too. We mirror each other again. Just as I close my eyes, ready to taste him, we hear it.
The crashing of glass. Outside. A muffled noise that sounds like a yelp. A scream.
Mandy.
Chapter 5
I push away from Luke and run through the kitchen to the back door, toward the sound. Luke’s heavy steps are close behind me.
The dim lantern on our patio table makes Zachary’s bewildered, madman expression even more off-putting. He’s usually so put together, so in control. Hell, he’s the kind of guy who actually follows the instructions on the side of frozen dinners. You know, taking it out and stirring it midway. But now, he holds a broken bottle by the neck as he shakes. The dim light punctuates the beads of blood that glisten off the jagged edges.
“Shit,” he mumbles when he sees me. “She’s bleeding.”
Mandy’s arm is red with blood, not just the lighter red blood you get when you scrape a knee, but the deep, dark maroon that comes when something has cut closer to your core. The patio is littered with glass shards and some brown liquid that must be liquor. As I step forward tentatively, Luke circumvents me.
“Are you all right?” he asks Mandy, before drawing back. “Your eyes…”
Her eyes aren’t just purple, they’re bright, like the moonlight has caught them at just the right angle.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re purple and my arm is bloody, but I’m fine,” Mandy says. Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary curls his shoulders, folds his arms and looks to the ground. Luke steps toward him, close enough that his height and the mass of his shoulders are a clear advantage. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear: I could fuck you up.
“It was an accident,” Zachary whispers. He sets the bottle on the table.
“We were just playing around,” Mandy says. “We were joking and then I got hurt. That’s all there is to it.”
Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary finally takes two steps back and runs both hands through his hair. Mandy sighs to the sky and Luke tenses his jaw. “Luke,” I say, “if Mandy says it was an accident, it was an accident.” Luke doesn’t know Mandy, so he doesn’t know about Mandy.
“Where is your bathroom?” Luke asks. He’s bobbing slightly on his feet, ready to sprint.
“Right after the kitchen,” I say as he lunges back inside.
The wooden steps up to Conrad’s apartment creak. He has hovered in the one-bedroom apartment above our two-bedroom since sophomore year. And he’s coming down. I’ll have to be quick. I say it hushed to Mandy, but not so hushed that Zachary can’t hear. It’s hard to keep my tone level. “It was an accident, right?”
“Quinn, you know I would never—” Zachary starts, but I raise a hand to him. I look at Mandy.
“It was an accident,” she says, her chin high and her eyes cold. But I had to press it.
Conrad pops his head around the corner. “Hey, I thought I heard…something. Everything okay?”
As he walks toward us, he sees that it’s not.
Luke bursts back onto the patio.
“What happened?” Conrad says, touching Mandy’s shoulder.
Mandy mumbles again how it’s nothing. But her flesh is still erupting in jagged lines. Conrad pulls out his phone. “I’ll call 911.”
“No!” Mandy, Zachary and Luke say in unison, but with varying levels of urgency.
Luke raises his eyebrow at the other two, then turns to Conrad. “She won’t need an ambulance,” he says. “But while you have that out, can you take a picture?” He gestures to Mandy.
“No…what?” Mandy says as Conrad aims and shoots.
Luke bends down, ignoring Mandy’s huffs as he dabs her arm with a wet towel. “I put some soap on this, so it might sting,” he says.
“Why did you ask him to take a picture?” she asks.
“You might need it later,” Luke says, his eyes shifting to Zachary.
“Okay, whatever,” Mandy says. “Thanks for all this, but I’m fine.”
Luke sets down the towel and picks up some bandages. I didn’t even know we had bandages. He wraps them around her arm with astonishing speed.
“You’ll be fine,” Luke says, swift and steady. “But you probably need stitches, and a doctor will need to get the shards of glass out.” He’s stiff. Stern. I barely recognize him for the guy he was back at Sally’s. All heavy, sexy breathing and playful eyes.
Mandy sighs. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“I don’t know, Mandy, that looks pretty bad,” Conrad says.
“Miss, you’re going to—” Luke starts.
“Miss?” Mandy says, the skin around her eyes rumpling as she stares at him. Then she turns to me. “Quinn, who the fuck is this guy?”
I close my eyes for a second. I crouch in front of her, putting my hand on her knee to steady myself. “This is Luke. He’s a guy who’s helping you. And you’re going to listen to him, and we’re going to the hospital.”
Mandy looks to the stars and sighs. She looks back at me. “Okay, let’s go.”
Conrad squeezes Mandy’s shoulder. “You let me know if you need anything, anything at all.”
Mandy nods.
We head out. Zachary follows.
“I think you’ve helped enough,” Luke says, flexing his knuckles.
Zachary clenches his fist, but says nothing. When we’re out of earshot of our house--
away from Zachary and making our way across the damp bricks and the four blocks to the hospital—Luke says, “I know it may be frightening, but when you’re ready, I would strongly urge you to file a complaint for assault. Guys like that rarely stop—”
“Oh my God.” Mandy holds both her injured and healthy arms out. I tap her shoulder and shoot her a “be nice” look.
She pinches her lips and looks at Luke. “I appreciate your help…but you don’t know what happened.”
“What did happen?” Luke asks, cool as butter.
“I told you, we were just playing around.” She crosses her arms.
This still strikes me as odd. I run my hands along my purse strap. But I won’t get anything out of her now, in front of a stranger.
When we get to the emergency room, a nurse processes her. He looks at her arm. He removes the soaked bandages. As they unravel, he frowns. He mutters something about it being a lot of blood for the wound. I ask him what he means. He won’t elaborate.
I rub my thumb along my lower lip as he cleans her arm. I don’t know if it’s because the blood is dissipating, but her wound does look better. Just streams of blood running along her skin, instead of a gushing mess. I remember a guest at one of my parents’ parties going on about war injuries while he shoveled caviar into his mouth between words. He said sometimes you think you’ll die, but it’s just blood and smear and your mind roiled. Maybe Mandy’s was like that. All bluster.
That must be it.
As Luke sits in the waiting room—he insisted—I go with Mandy into the examining room. She sits on the mattress and leans against the wall, specks of blood seeping onto the white paper spilling from a spool at the top of the bed. Her fingers twiddle against each other in her lap.
“What happened?” I’m prodding her when she’s already upset, but I don’t care. I keep my shoulders straight.
“Oh nothing.” She shakes her head.
“I want to believe you…”
Mandy stares at me, violet eyes bright and biting. “You know I’d never let a guy hit me. Not again. I’m not like that.” Her voice shakes. I imagine her past experiences jostling around in her throat. I’m one of the few people privy to those past experiences.
Dr. Brown enters the room with the nurse. “Back again?” She raises her eyebrows. “And on my shift too? Well, let’s have a look.” She wipes away the blood on Mandy’s arm with a sterile cloth. The cuts sprawl across her skin.
She pushes back on her wheelie stool. “These aren’t too bad. We’ll just clean them up and you’ll be on your way in no time.”
The nurse touches her arm. “That’s so strange. I swear it looked worse before.”
Dr. Brown shrugs. “Sometimes small cuts can cause a lot of blood.”
The nurse dabs on some ointment and crisscrosses a few bandages. We get some instructions for at-home care. We’re set.
Luke said he would wait for us but I didn’t really expect him to, so I’m surprised to see him leaning forward in one of the lime green chairs, reading his phone. He springs up when he sees us.
“Everything okay?” he asks. “How many stitches did you need?”
“None.” Mandy says it sharp and proud, like she is somehow to credit for not needing stitches.
Luke squints and rubs the back of his head. “Really? None?” He looks past us to the nurse. “Bill, what about the glass?”
Luke knows the nurse’s name? Do all townies just know each other? Bill responds, “She must have got lucky. The cuts are shallow and clean.”
Luke paces from one row of waiting room chairs to the next. “Well, you might still want to file a complaint against that guy.”
“No,” Mandy says. “I told you it was an accident. Anyway, what’s it to you?”
“Mandy,” I say, “he’s just trying to help.” I shoot a sideways glance at Luke with the most apologetic drippiness I can muster.
“Whatever,” Mandy says, giving Luke a good glare before she jerks her head to the door. “Let’s just go home.” Her footsteps pound against the tiles as she leaves.
My influence has runneth dry.
“I’ll be right there,” I say.
Once she’s out the door, I look back at Luke. “Thanks for your help.”
Luke’s mouth is twisted, and he’s looking past me as he scratches his neck below the ear. “I really thought she would need stitches.”
I shrug. “Well, it’s not like you’re a doctor or anything.”
He doesn’t respond. Maybe he is a doctor? No, he’s too raw, too working-class and rusty.
I head to the door.
“Quinn,” he says, his eyes finally focused on me. “I’d like to see you again.”
“I’ll be around.”
“I don’t like to rely on chance.” He holds up his phone. “Can I get your number? Maybe I could come back sometime to have a few more lagers.”
“You’re greedy, aren’t you?”
“Very.” He grins.
I don’t want to commit to anything. But I also don’t want to be rude. Whatever is going on with Mandy, he was helping. And I want to kiss that grin. Later. So I give him my number, but don’t ask for his.
He touches my shoulder before I can turn away from him. His voice is low, serious. “Be careful around that guy, Quinn. I know Mandy said it wasn’t what it looked like. But in my experience, things are usually exactly what they look like.”
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