Delicate Monsters (14 page)

*   *   *

When Miles next blinked, he was outside, walking in the hot sun with sweat pouring down his back, his thighs. He didn't know where he was or how he'd gotten here or even what time of day it was, but clearly he'd skipped forward in time and stayed there. From the way his shimmery stretch of shadow lay long across the road in this weird October heat and the sky appeared to be darkened, he guessed it was late afternoon.

Far later than it had been.

At least he wasn't being followed again. Miles turned around and around. He was out in the valley somewhere, on the shoulder of the main road where people went wine tasting and apple picking. But how did he get out here?

Why couldn't he remember?

There was a winery up ahead. He put his hand over his brow and squinted. He could make out the white hand-carved road sign, but the lettering was too small to read from a distance. But somehow Miles already knew what it would say before he got there.

Su Vin

Family owned and operated

Est. 1996

Hours of operation: 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily

This is fate, he told himself, because it was and because it had to be. Because it made a terrible sort of sense that the one place he'd avoided for the past eight years would be the place that now held the answers he sought.

Miles turned down the main drive of the public entrance to the winery. There was a sepia glow to the afternoon sun. It lit up the leaves on the trees like daylight stars, and everything felt burnt around the edges. Miles kept walking and walking, and no one stopped him. He walked past the tasting room and the sales office. He slipped into the fields on the north side of the property.

He knew where he was going.

Exactly.

It was late season, postharvest, and most of the grapes were gone. All that remained were reedy brown vines wrapped around wire, a sight that made his heart squeeze with mourning. Sad, it was sad not to see life growing. When Miles reached the muddy creek bed, he headed east. His shoes sank and squelched with each step.

From there it didn't take long.

The underground bunker had been built on what was now an untended portion of the property, behind the rotting hulk of the vineyard's first pressing machine. It was hidden from sight due to the way shade from the neighboring oak trees fell, and the fact that crab and timothy grass had grown up and over the bunker doors. As Miles approached, he saw that someone had thrown a chain around the whole thing to keep strangers from crawling down there.

Or to keep people in.

His legs trembled.

Maybe he couldn't go through with this.

Go,
the wind whispered,
go go go go,
and Miles glanced behind him. Then above. The sky was melting, rays of color dripping through the clouds like light refracted from a prism being held underwater.

Miles bent and took a rock to the rusted padlock. It fell away easily. His fingers worked and tugged the chain, pulling the links free. He tossed the whole thing into the grass, then sat back on his haunches.

Sweat ran down his face. It stung his scrapes and bruises from where he'd been hit, and the saltiness dripped into his mouth. Miles stared at the double doors that lay in the ground.

(Dorothy doors)

Was this it then? Was this the moment he'd seen in his vision? That bloody scene of sacrifice and pain? A whimper lodged in his throat, because Miles wasn't sure he was ready for the end, for this all to be over. He just felt
so scared.
But then the words from the Bible his mother would read to him when he was tiny and ill and sick in bed tumbled through his mind like a lullaby.
Go; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves,
she'd say, and that's when Miles remembered that suffering could have a purpose. That
he
could have a purpose, too. So he reached with both arms and yanked opened the bunker doors.

A rush of cold air hit him. It smelled like spiders. He stood on the edge of the cement stairs that led down into the blackness, and a rare shudder of surety ran through him because he suddenly knew. He
knew
.

Sometimes to end things, you had to go back to the beginning.

Only it wasn't his end he was facing.

It didn't have to be.

With this revelation, both freeing and true, a puff of fear floated from his shoulders, like the tiniest spark of earthly magic. Miles stood tall as he took his first step into the dark cellar. Then the next. He kept going and going, descending deep into the earth.

Wolves to the lamb,
the wind whispered as it followed, swirling at his feet in its twisting, taunting way.

But sometimes, he whispered back, “Lambs to the wolf.”

 

chapter twenty-eight

Where was Miles?

It was a different day but Emerson and May were spending the dwindling hours of their afternoon together again, this time at his apartment as a result of her inviting herself over. Emerson thought he was okay with that, for the most part—his mother was working late—but he had no idea where his brother was.

Which was both weird and totally normal.

“Do you ever go to his grave?” May asked. She was standing by the desk in the room he shared with Miles, and her eyes were sad. He'd been telling her about his father. About how he'd died and how he missed him.

“Nah. Not really. My mom doesn't like to go. Last time I went I was thirteen. I went by myself after school one day, and I got really angry. Told him I hated him and everything. Stupid. It was stupid of me.” Emerson felt twitchy, which meant words were spilling from his mouth like air. He liked having her here, he really did, but he couldn't stop thinking about the fact that his apartment was gross. And claustrophobic. And didn't have air conditioning. And smelled like bad pizza, thanks to the restaurant next door. It was hard to relax with those kinds of thoughts spiraling through his head. She'll see through me, he thought. She'll read my mind.

She'll
know.

Only May didn't seem to know. That was the thing. She had no idea. She just walked around and touched a few items that were on Miles's side of the room, running her finger along a stack of books, including a worn copy of
Watership Down
and a tattered paperback titled
Microbe Hunters.
She paused to inspect an old charcoal drawing of dead birds, something Miles had done as a child and hung on the wall but had never taken down. It was creepy as hell, and Emerson asked him once what it was about.

“I saw it,” Miles said dreamily. “I saw it in my head, and it came true.”

Emerson turned his attention back to May, steeped in the way her presence pooled around the room like liquid. The way the fading sun lit her skin with a rosy glow. It was like she was from another century. Another world.

“What was he like, your dad?” she asked.

“He was a good guy. That's why I was so mad, I guess. But I mean, he could be kind of a hardass, too, sometimes.”

“Were you close?”

“Sure. Sort of. I mean, my brother was really tight with him. I'm more of a mama's boy. But my dad, he was outgoing, you know? That's what I remember most. Always wanted to tell you everything when he was really into something. Like cars. Or horse racing. Or brewing beer. Once it was snowflakes.”

“Snowflakes?”

Emerson nodded, then sat down on his own bed. Wiped his hands on his jeans. “Miles had this book when we were kids, and our dad used to read it to us. Over and over. It was about this guy a long time ago who set out to photograph snowflakes. He wanted to prove that they were all different, you know? Unique. But I guess it's not an easy thing to do, taking pictures of snow. Especially back then, with those old cameras: they got hot, melted all the flakes. But this guy was obsessed. He dedicated his whole life to the snowflakes, spent all his money on different equipment, just to get those images. Just to prove they existed.”

“What happened to him?”

He shrugged. “I don't remember. I think he got pneumonia and died.”

“That's depressing, Emerson.”

“Most things about my dad are. In hindsight, at least.”

“My cousin killed herself,” May said. “Last year.”

He looked up at her, at the shadows falling across her lovely face. “I'm sorry. That sucks.”

“She was only twenty-two. She wanted to be a doctor, and she'd just gotten into med school. Harvard.”

“Jesus.”

“I know. She took a bunch of pills when she knew her parents weren't going to be home. They live out in Illinois, near Chicago. Her mom was the one who found her. The thing is, her family got the coroner to say it was an accidental overdose on her death certificate. Because they were embarrassed, I guess. Or ashamed. But I know she did it on purpose.”

Emerson shivered.
Ashamed.
He hated that word. To him, it brought up images of red-faced kids and scolding parents. Of his brother's own whipped-dog cower. But was shame the reason Emerson had been lied to about his father's suicide? Worse, was it the reason
he'd
never asked anyone about it, even after he'd found out the truth?

“How do you know she did it on purpose?” he asked May.

“I know because she'd tried before. She told me about it the last time we saw each other. She'd taken pills twice, and they didn't work. She even told me why. But I didn't tell anyone. And now … now I can't tell.” She turned and met his gaze. “You're the first person I've talked to about it, actually.”

Emerson got up from the bed and walked over to her. Put his head on her shoulder. Held her close.

She stroked his back.

“Don't hate your dad, Em,” she whispered. “He made a mistake doing what he did, and he can't ever take that back. It's a sad thing, the not being able to take it back. It's the worst.”

He kissed her.

*   *   *

Ten minutes later they were on his bed fooling around. Her skirt was up and his jeans were down, and Emerson wasn't worried anymore about the heat or the pizza smell or how claustrophobic his room was. He thought maybe this was it, and she was his, and all the things he'd been worried about really weren't that important in the grand scheme of things. Wrong was wrong, sure, but if no one knew about the wrong thing he'd done, what was the harm?

But then May had to go and say, “So did Sadie send you those pictures?”

And Emerson went from feeling turned on to feeling like the worst person in the world. The kind of guy who'd stopped caring when his little brother got sick or hurt, because he was sick and hurt all the time. The kind of guy who used the girl he liked in ways that demeaned her. The kind of guy who cut the legs off frogs and the heads off birds and—

“She doesn't have any damn pictures,” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“She's funny, that girl. Her sense of humor is dry.”

“I didn't know Sadie had a sense of humor.”

“Oh, she does. She makes me laugh. Did you know her dad makes documentaries? From all over the world. We watched one in history last year. It was about Huaorani teenagers.”

“I don't like her,” Emerson said plainly, and more than anything, he wanted to kiss May on the mouth again and have her kiss him back, but now the guilt was spilled between them, like an ocean. And he still couldn't swim.

“Em?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Why me?”

He stared at her. “What?”

May lay on her back, arms stretched above her head as she stared at the ceiling, which was made of that terrible popcorn material, all gaudy and cheap, dotted with specks of fake gold. “I was wondering why you liked me. Other girls like you, you know. You play sports. You could have anyone. Some cute blond cheerleader, maybe.”

“Forget blond cheerleaders. I like you. You're prettier, anyway.”

“Oh, come on. White guys don't think like that.”

Emerson's heart beat faster. What did she mean? She
was
prettier. That was the truth. Cheerleaders were girls like Trish Reed, beauty marred by pettiness and snobbery. Besides, desire wasn't about thinking. It was about
wanting
. What you couldn't have. What you were driven to conquer. “Well, maybe those other guys, maybe they're racist or something.”

“Oh, hush.” May turned and pressed a finger to his lips. “Everyone's racist. Me, you, everybody. That's just how it is.”

“You really believe that?”

“I know that. It's the world we live in. And knowing
that's
the only way to change things. Pretending to be something you're not's the worst, don't you think? If all the pretending does is trick you into believing you're different than who you really are.”

Emerson didn't answer. Maybe it was the world they lived in—his own mom proved that fact—but he didn't think it was up to him to change things. That was something other people did. People who cared. People who wanted to be remembered for their actions.

May moved her finger down from his lips, running it along his jaw, his neck, his chest. “But there are white guys out there who make a fetish out of being with girls like me, you know? The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. I don't like that. I don't want you to want me that way.”

“I don't want you that way. I mean, maybe I am racist or something. Hell, I don't know. I've definitely done things in my past that I'm not proud of. But what you said, about a fetish, that's not how I feel.”

“Good,” she said, smiling.

“The sweeter the juice?” he asked.

“So I've heard.”

“Is it true?”