Delicate Monsters (21 page)

Rightly so.

Emerson swiped his arm beneath his nose. “I made him sick once, too.”

“Come on,” Trey said. “Don't.”

“More than once, really. All those times he went to the hospital, I think it was because of me. Not literally. Like,
I
didn't actually make him sick every time, but I think he did it to himself to get away from me. Sometimes he'd get physically ill just from me talking to him. He'd start gagging or his stomach would act up, and I don't know, it made me
more
mad when he'd do that. That's fucked, isn't it? It's really fucked.”

“Don't do this. It's not your fault.”

“But it
is.
I used to yell at him, Trey. Hit him. Shove him. Tell him when he did stupid shit, which was always. Probably other things I can't even remember. Told myself it wasn't a big deal at the time. But I think I knew. I always knew.”

“You're his brother. Your dad was gone. You had to do that shit, man. My dad does worse to me now. He's an asshole.”

Emerson sighed. “I found this notebook of his yesterday. He used it for drawing, I guess. It was hidden in this drawer in our bathroom. You know what else was in there?”

Trey shook his head. “Mmmm, tell me there was at least one naked chick in that notebook. With, like, really big titties.”

“No titties.”

“Dicks?”

“No dicks, either. There was nothing like that. But under the notebook Miles had all these pills, not just bottles, but whole
boxes
of them, and there were old syringes and plastic containers filled with some kind of mold. I don't even know where he would get that kind of stuff. But he might've been using it for years. He might've been, I don't know, really screwing himself up. Because of me.”

Trey sat up. Stared at him with sleepy eyes. “Are you saying Miles was doing drugs?”

“No,”
Emerson said. “That's not what I'm saying at all.”

“Then what?”

“Fuck. Never mind. I'm too fucked up.”

They sat in silence again, Trey still smoking and staring at the roof of the car. Emerson still drinking himself into oblivion. His head was spinning already, round and round, a slow sickly loop of regret.

Miles.

May.

Sadie.

The cat.

“Trey?” he said.

“Huh?”

“You ever do something bad? Something you regretted but couldn't take back?”

“What kind of bad?”

“Really bad.”

Trey was quiet for a moment. Then: “Yeah.”

“What did you do about it? How did you deal with, you know, the guilt?”

Trey made a fist. Ghost-punched the air in front of him. “What the hell do you think I did? I fucking said I was sorry.”

 

chapter forty-two

Sadie was frustrated by everything and everyone at the moment. This included stupid Roman Bender, because the last time she'd heard from him, he'd told her that she should know where to find Dumpster Boy.

Only she didn't know.

Not even after going down into that cellar and seeing what Miles had done and the kind of help he so clearly needed.

Not even after spending the whole weekend searching for the kid—scouring the far corners of the vineyard, driving through town, looking everywhere.

This not knowing bothered Sadie. It pricked her worse than sand in her bed or a zit on her ass, and it was the reason she chose to spend most of her Monday lingering around the school office, eavesdropping and hoping to learn something new. Her efforts paid off; she was able to find out that the boys who'd beaten up Miles had come forward to the police that morning. From what she could gather, they were sophomores, a pair of them. Both lacrosse players, both known for their thuggish, entitled ways—destined, no doubt, for years of Ivy League grandeur, hopefully highlighted by episodes of binge drinking and subsequent contraction of the herpes virus.

No one, however, seemed to think the two boys had anything to do with Miles's vanishing. Sadie didn't think so, either, but she still couldn't help but wonder if they knew what it felt like to be hurt. And frightened. And terrorized. Like Charlie Burns, she had a feeling they didn't. She had a feeling that once someone was seen as a victim, it was hard for people to see them as anything else. It made sense the same would hold true for the victimizer.

But maybe she'd always known that.

Dr. CMT caught her hanging around after lunch and mistook her presence for something it wasn't.

“You're early, Sadie,” he said. “I'm afraid our appointment isn't until three.”

“Fuck off,” Sadie snapped.

“Excuse me?”

“I know what you did. You've been talking to the cops about Miles. Telling them things he told you in private, making them think he hurt himself. Some therapist you are. You can't even keep your dumb mouth shut.”

“Now, wait a minute.” His cheeks went pink. “I can assure you I didn't do anything that wasn't required of me by law.”

Sadie snorted. “Oh, please. I saw you on the news. Talking to that lady reporter about how
concerned
you are. Acting like your cock spun gold. You love the attention. Don't pretend you don't.”

“Maybe we should talk about this in private.”

“Maybe we shouldn't. I'm not talking to you about anything. You're an asshole. A lying rat bastard asshole.”

“Sadie—”

“Leave me alone!” she screamed, and everyone turned to stare. Dr. CMT, whose cheeks had gone even pinker, just dipped his head, raised his hands, and backed away, retreating to his scummy prison cell of an office.

When he was gone, Sadie set her jaw and ignored the staring. She turned on her heel, then walked straight out of the building. She already had plans to drive out to Petaluma to see Wilderness Camp Chad after school, but she yanked her phone out and texted him that she was coming over now.

Sadie didn't care if she got kicked out for ditching class.

She didn't care if he did, either.

The drive wasn't far. Petaluma was an agricultural town that sat to the west of the wine country, closer to the ocean. At some point in time, it had dubbed itself “Egg Capital of the World!” which was about all anyone needed to know about that. Chad's family owned a farm out there. They had a red barn and everything, complete with egg-laying chickens, goats, and even a small donkey. It was disgustingly wholesome. When Sadie got there, she and Chad took their clothes off in the second-floor hayloft to fool around in the god-awful autumn heat.

She inspected his naked body. Not the part he wanted her to, but his wrists. Those pink lightning-streak scars.

“I don't like you,” she told him, lying back in the straw.

“I know that,” he said.

“I'm serious. I don't like one damn thing about you.”

“Girl, don't be mean.” He nuzzled her tits and kissed her bare stomach. Moved his mouth lower. And lower. “Can't you just enjoy this one thing without being mean?”

 

chapter forty-three

“Emerson,” May whispered. “Why don't you ever let me?”

It was late Monday afternoon, day scraping against evening, and the two of them lay together on her bed again, their bodies tangled in the sheets. It was almost like a do-over of a week ago, when everything was normal and this whole thing with Miles had never happened. Emerson had sobered up since the morning, for the most part, and like the last time they'd been here, he'd made her shiver and gasp with his hands. But also like last time, he wouldn't let her touch him.

It still felt wrong.

It felt wrong, he realized through a sick throbbing in his head, because things
weren't
totally normal a week ago. They'd just been a different kind of bad. Secret bad.

“It's not you,” he whispered back, pushing her hand away, although he could still see the hurt in her eyes.

“Is it Miles?” she asked.

“
No.
You make me feel better about that. God, when I'm with you, it's the only time I feel better. I swear, May. Without you, I'd be lost. I'd be insane.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don't know. Maybe … I'm just really sensitive?” Emerson felt his cheeks burn with the lie, but he'd read about it online. Some guys really were sensitive down there. So much so, it was painful to have anyone else touch them. It took this whole process of gradual habituation for them to be able to enjoy sex. Emerson thought if he could convince May that this was his problem, then he could focus on making her feel good.

And maybe his guilt would go away.

Finally.

May perked up at this response, this acquittal of her blame. “Sensitive. Like it hurts?”

“Yeah.”

“So does that mean you can't—”

“No, well, I
can
. But only by myself.”

“Oh,” she said brightly. “Then show me.”

“What?”

A sly grin crept across May's lips. “I want to see you do it.”

Emerson's heart raced with panic, but how could he do anything other than what she was asking? He couldn't hurt her more than he already had. He couldn't make her feel like
she
was the problem.

So he sat up.

He pulled his boxers down.

The air felt cool against his skin, and Emerson's mind tingled with a strong sense of
rightness
. Maybe this was it, then. Maybe this was his moment of absolution. After all, this is what started the whole thing in the first place: a brief act that any guy, anywhere, did countless times, over and over, without care, without consequence. An act that seemed small if you squinted at it just right, but that had become big enough to swallow him whole.

So he would do it now. For her.

And it would be okay.

Or not.

“What's wrong?” she asked after a few moments of her watching and him failing, and that's when Emerson realized there
was
care behind his actions. Intent, too. There always had been. It was just a truth he hadn't been willing to see. A desire he hadn't been willing to want. But what Emerson was willing to see or want wasn't the point. Behavior was what mattered.

The mind would follow.

Emerson looked at May. Beautiful May, with her delicate turn of her ankle.

With her ice slowly melting.

“Close your eyes,” he said gruffly.

“What?”

“Close them. And lay on the floor. Play dead.”

“Em—”

“Play like you're dead.”

May stared at him, and she wasn't frightened or upset or offended. Her eyes were full of wonder and trust and everything good he didn't deserve.

She got up and lay on the floor for him. She closed her eyes.

She played dead.

Then there.
There.
That was what he needed.

The rush.

The reverence.

Every damn bit of it.

But who was he in that moment? Tingling and rare, Emerson didn't know. Didn't need to know. Like that night at the party, up in the bathroom, he was just so
present
. He was so much. He was high, then low. He was naked and nerves, fever and bliss. Then he was every molecule sparkling and reaching, reaching, reaching for a goal so dazzling and perfect, it almost didn't matter that when it was over, when his heart pitched back down from the heavens, he found that the blackness was right there inside of him again. As if it had never left.

Because it hadn't.

And then Emerson
did
know.

He knew the lies he'd been telling himself.

He knew what he had to do.

So he went to May, and he told her.

Everything.

 

chapter forty-four

The next morning, Sadie thought she actually caught a glimpse of Dumpster Boy on her way to school. She drove past the coffee shop and the Motel 6, and she could've sworn she saw him there, crouched behind that nasty 7-11 Dumpster. Sadie swung a hasty U-turn—illegal, of course—but by the time she circled around and pulled into the lot, the place was deserted. There was no one.

Nothing.

After that, she got to fencing class early, quickly changing clothes and showing up first in the gym. But he wasn't there, either, and it was clear no one expected him to be. Sadie stood alone, arms folded, and glowered at each of the faces surrounding her, those flat expressions of laziness and disinterest. She wondered if any of them actually knew the missing boy had been in their class, or if they were all too dumb and self-absorbed. The PE teacher didn't even say anything. He just stood there, rubbing his bleary eyes, and pointed for Sadie to partner up with a senior girl.

It was as if Miles had never existed.

A gray cloud hovered over Sadie the rest of the morning. She didn't feel like herself, which she hated, but in feeling that way, she recalled a gloomy piece of advice her father had given her in their Finland hotel room, back in February, the very last time they'd been together.

“The most dangerous lie in America isn't a political one,” he'd told her, as he stood by the plate glass window, gazing down at the frigid Helsinki skyline. “It's the lie that who we are is some fixed self-determined truth. That there's some absolute
us
-ness in our character that's unchangeable and real, and that we have an obligation to be true to this us-ness, no matter the cost. As if who we are could exist in the absence of other people. We're no more eternal than a single star, Sadie. Remember that. We shine. We burn out. But together, we can light the sky.”

“Well, I'm not all that American,” Sadie had replied, because she'd lived abroad. She'd traveled the world.

But whether her father agreed with her assessment or not, she didn't know, because unlike that afternoon in the kitchen when she was a little girl and he'd begged her not to be so cruel, he didn't bother answering her. He'd simply settled in the chair by the window and closed his eyes.