Black Iris (29 page)

“But you fucked him instead.”

“Because I wanted
you
. That part of you that was in him. That part of you that belongs to me.”

My mouth stayed shut but a door opened in my mind, and I went inside, closed it, and screamed.

“And for what?” Blythe said, rounding on Armin. “You never stopped with her, you goddamn liar.”

“I was in love with you both,” he said. “And you betrayed me. You’re the liars.”

“Take a good look in the mirror, mate. Then go fuck yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself, Blythe. You wonder why men become this way. Look what you did to me, after all I did for you.”

“You never accepted that I couldn’t love you the way you loved me.”

“I could’ve accepted it if you were honest. But you cheated, and lied, and twisted my mind into knots, and now I’m just as fucked-up as you two.”

She stood and kicked her chair into the shadows.

My insides were all mixed up. I felt queasy.

“It’s over, Lane,” Blythe said. “Let’s just go.”

I fixed my stare on a candle flame. “This is why you wouldn’t hurt him.”

“I didn’t want to hurt him because we have a history, and it’s messy. It was just sex. It meant nothing.”

“Your words mean nothing, you fucking cheater.”

That torn place inside me burned, alcohol seeping into the wound. Valentine’s. After I’d gone home with him, because I missed her. Because I wanted to feel some tenuous connection to her through him.

I should have known. No one really changes.

“All that stuff about the police,” I said to Armin. “How I had to cut contact or she’d lose her visa. All lies. You wanted her for yourself.”

“Exaggerations, not lies. And it was for her sake, not mine. I didn’t want her dragged deeper into our situation with Zoeller.”

“You made me believe I was protecting her by giving her up, you selfish fuck.”

Armin shook his head. “Do you realize how hypocritical this is, when you two were cheating on me?”

“You’re the hypocrite,” I growled. “You cheated, too. God, both of you make me sick. Go fuck each other forever. You’re disgusting.”

Blythe flung her hands up. “Christ, everyone here has fucked everyone else. It’s a bit absurd to freak out over it now.”

“Then why did you hide it?” I said. “Because you knew it’d hurt me.”

“You hurt me, too. The only thing that mattered was your bloody revenge. Not me.”

My hair hung in my eyes. I must have torn at it unaware. “Is that why you did it? To hurt me back?”

“Maybe I did, yeah. Maybe hurting you felt good.” Her voice lowered. “Maybe I loved you so much I couldn’t stand seeing you with anyone else.”

“You don’t know shit about love. You’ll fuck anyone and throw them away. You’re a total cliché, Blythe. The bi slut who cheats on everybody. Maybe your mom was right.”

Her eyes were furious, but she didn’t rise to the bait.

“Let me tell you what I know about love, little wolf. It’s craziness, like he said.” She grabbed the back of a chair, knuckles white. Her tone was fervent. “It’s a dream. It’s a drug. I craved you more and more and no matter how much you gave me, it was never enough. I don’t know who I am anymore without you. I don’t know which day it is, which planet I’m on. Every hour feels like three a.m. and the night never ends. There’s only darkness, and you. You’re the last bright thing left in this world.”

Something thudded dully in my chest, like a fist hitting a bruise, over and over.

“Love is mania, Laney. It’s ecstasy. It’s everything. And I may be a fucking cliché, but I know I love you.”

I needed more tequila. A lot more.

“What have we done to each other?” Armin said quietly.

I pushed my chair back. My fingers wouldn’t hold the gun right. “None of this matters anymore. It’s over. It’s done. Which one of you is it?”

They were both silent. Armin looked exhausted, that bone weariness, an ache in the deepest, darkest parts of the body. Depression. A black lethargy that oozes from your marrow, your DNA. But Blythe brimmed with pain, her body wound tight, her face fearful, hopeful, hurt. It was torture to look at.

“Which one of you is blackmailing us?” I said.

I’d gone into this thinking it had to be Hiyam. But now it was clear we each had a motive.

Armin knew this was coming. Blackmail could be his bargaining chip. Drive a wedge between me and Blythe, turn us against each other. I could nail him with a hate crime and ethics violations but he could retaliate against both of us with the revenge spree.

Blythe, as always, was harder to decode. She sounded sincere, but she always sounded sincere. Maybe she wasn’t a bad liar—maybe love blinded me to her lies. I couldn’t trust myself with her. Blackmail could be a way to prevent me from hurting Armin, whom she still cared about,
and
keep me for herself. Tie both of our hands.

Of course, there was another possibility: the two of them, together . . .

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, reading my face. “It’s not like that. I swear.”

“Why should I believe a word you say?”

“Because you hid things from me, too, you bloody hypocrite. It doesn’t mean this wasn’t real.”

“For all we know,” Armin said, “it’s you, Laney.”

“What?”

“Is this another part of your elaborate revenge? Make us doubt each other, question everything we ever said, or felt?”

“I’m doing that myself right now,” I said.

Blythe kicked another chair.

“I won’t fight you.” Armin sighed heavily. “Do what you need to do. Turn me in, tell the police. I’ll take full responsibility. I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I don’t want you to ever be hurt again. You didn’t deserve this.” His head turned partway, those sooty eyelashes lowering. “Just don’t hurt Blythe. Please.”

“I’d never hurt her. No matter how much she hurts me.”

“Goddammit,” she said, and made a tiny sound of rage, a half scream.

The cool calm in me was long gone, shattered like glass. I was emotional and it’s dangerous to make irrevocable decisions when you’re emotional. But I didn’t have a choice.

“Blythe,” I said.

I tossed her the gun, safety on. She caught it nimbly.

“Keep him here. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Armin rose, alarmed. “No. Laney, please, no.”

I went to the door. Pulled my keys from my pocket, crushed them into my palm till it felt like they’d break skin.

“She’s going after Hiyam,” Armin said. “Don’t let her do this, Blythe. Laney, my sister had nothing to do with it. I’m the one you should hate.”

“Oh, I do. But now we play process of elimination.” I glanced at Blythe. “Show me if you still deserve my trust.”

I thought of the first night in the cab, the furtive thrill in her eyes when I passed her the oxy. She’d sensed it, instinctively. Us versus him. He was my prey. And she’d been with me every step. In a nasty way, her fucking him made this even sweeter. Made it hurt him more.

She wrapped both hands around the gun.

“Sit down, Armin. I know where the safety is on this thing.”

Relief flooded my veins, powerful as a drug.

Good girl
, I mouthed.

I turned my back to them and opened the lock.

“I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about. Just try to refrain from fucking him again, Blythe.”

And I left them there, in that room filled with their shadows and our shared past.

———

Driving always cleared my head.

I got on a westbound expressway so I could go fast, followed the trails of taillights, a rush of neon blood streaming out of the city. No new plan yet. I’d been sure one of them would crack and confess, but their reactions and my intuition said otherwise. He’d been blindsided by the ecstasy. Like I’d been blindsided by Blythe and him—God. Every time I thought of it my mind filled with images, the way they’d touched during the threesome, so knowing, so tender.

She was faking it, I thought. The way I’d faked with him.

I was in love with you both.

Not true. He didn’t love me. And we didn’t love him, either.

How the fuck could I love someone who’d hurt me so much?

The speedometer crept over 80 mph. I took the next exit for Naperville.

One way or another, I had to eliminate Hiyam as a suspect, and for that I’d need a weapon. Zoeller’s gun. It’d be good to see him again, let him know I’d taken down his old master.

I parked in the lane behind his RV.

He was out of the hospital but not back in school. Still needed assistance bathing and getting dressed and resisting the siren song of suicide. I climbed the ladder to the sunroof he’d leave unlocked for me. Open.

No one inside.

The trailer was cold, as always. Walls lined with books. The
place on the shag rug where I’d gone down on hands and knees and let him fuck me. My fingers curled into my palms.

No gun.

I searched everywhere. Found the spare keys to his safe but it didn’t contain anything useful. Drugs, notebooks. Zoeller’s serial killer diaries. The poem I’d written for Kelsey, which I set on fire and dropped in the sink. Burned discs and thumb drives, probably full of videos. His treasure trove of blackmail fodder.

Hmmm.

I hunted through the trailer again and found a messenger bag, reopened the safe and swept all the discs and drives inside.

Always plan ahead.

Where the hell was that gun?

I couldn’t go up to the mansion. Parents, witnesses. Screw it. Get the baseball bat and head back to the city.

We’d stowed it in the crawl space at my old house. It was going on one a.m. Dad and Donnie would probably be asleep.

I started the car.

Our house was dark and still. Good.

I crept into my room, into the crawl space I knew so well, sized just right for a small monster. But the bat wasn’t there.

Shit. Maybe Donnie had to move it. Dad talked lately about selling the house. He might’ve gone poking around, cleaning things up for a real estate agent.

If Donnie wanted to hide something, he’d hide it in the garage. Dad never went in there anymore.

I backed out, a fine layer of dust glimmering on my coat.

Since Mom died no one had touched the garden. It was wild now, weeds and predatory flowers killing everything delicate and uncertain. No irises this year.

No irises ever again.

I slipped the spare key from the top of the doorjamb and fit it to the lock, but it was already open.

Sometimes my dreams were like this. Walking into the garage unassumingly. A shadow turning, looming. Her screaming white face.

I froze in the doorway. “Mom,” I said as quietly as I could.

“Laney,” came the answering whisper.

I almost ran. My overstimulated brain took a second to process it. Then I stepped in, squinting. “Donnie?”

I fumbled at the wall. The light sputtered on.

He was sitting on the workbench in jeans and a jacket. His shoulders slumped, face flushed beneath a tumble of hair. He’d been crying.

My heart softened. “What are you doing out here?” I said, moving closer.

No answer.

This is how much I love my brother:

I didn’t notice the glint of metal to either side of him till I was two feet away, arms raised, ready to embrace.

I looked at the bat. I looked at the black shine of Zoeller’s gun. Then I looked at his face.

“Oh my god,” I said. “Please don’t.”

I didn’t move. Someone who’s suicidal can startle easily.

“I love you,” I said. “More than the world. Please don’t leave me.”

His eyes glassed over. “I saw you, Laney.”

And I loved him so much it took another delayed moment to really hear what he’d said.

I saw you.

All the tension went out of my body in an instant.

When we’d come home from the hospital we’d climbed into the rafters together to cut down the noose. We didn’t speak, and for a while I didn’t think of it as the thing that had killed Mom but only rope, rope that was hard to cut with my right hand stiff and bandaged. Her presence was still there. Removal
of the body doesn’t change that. Any second she’d peep in the window, lift an eyebrow. Everything else was still the same. Motor oil on cement, the cool, spooky scent of rain and raw wood. My brother with his sinewy adult body and baby face, his hair always in his eyes. The round earth beneath us, tilting, turning slowly, taking a dose of sun. It was all still the same so why wasn’t she here? If she was really dead there would have been some outward proof. Apocalypse, disaster. The world would change. My hands stopped working then and I dropped the blade. I let myself dangle and fall to the garage floor, crumpling where I landed. Donnie came to sit with me on the cold concrete, our arms wrapping around each other, and we cried for a long, long time.

I stood now in the same place we’d sat, where the noose had hung, and lowered myself to the floor. I was so tired, suddenly. So tired. Of all of this.

“What did you see?” I said.

“Everything.”

I thought of the morning she died. Me texting him with no response.

“The pills,” I said.

Donnie nodded.

In my typical way, I thought: How can I control this? What can I lie about? But part of me, knocked loose by Blythe and Armin, thought also: Confess. Get the truth out.

That’s the real poison, truth. Keep that shit inside and you’ll see. You’ll wither and die.

I pressed my palms to the gritty cement. Felt the faint white scars lacing the back of my hand, the dimple inside my lip where Kelsey’s dad had hit me. A tiny arrowhead on my shoulder where Blythe had bitten too hard. I felt so old. Nineteen going on a thousand.

Scars tell a story. My whole life was written on my body.
How are you supposed to leave the past behind when you carry it with you in your skin?

My mother never believed in forgiveness. Hold it all in as hard as you can. Hate what you can’t control. Rage at the world, at this endlessly disappointing life.

How exhausting it was to hate.

I didn’t ask,
What do you know? When did you find out?
I didn’t look for ways to hedge around the truth, shield myself.