Inland (15 page)

WHEN I WAKE UP
with my throat swollen, my breathing shallow, my body hot and stiff and aching, I feel almost relieved.

“It’s just the flu,” my father says, but his worried eyes tell me that he’s trying to convince himself, too. He feeds me three small, brown pills, then nods with cautious confidence twenty minutes later when my temperature drops and I close my eyes.

“Just the flu,” he repeats, but continues to hover. Crisis, my father knows. But the flu, just the flu, is unfamiliar territory.

He puts a palm to my forehead. “Do you want me to stay? Maybe I should stay. It would be difficult to work from home, but I might—”

I struggle back toward consciousness long enough to give him a thumbs-up and a weak smile.

“Go,” I croak. “I’m fine.”

When I fall asleep, it’s with gratitude—that for a little while, just for today, I won’t have to pretend that everything is fine.

—

People tell you to fake it until you make it, as though such a thing were possible. As though pretending comes easy, as though you could role-play your way through every day, every minute, and never let the mask fall from your face. I’ve tried so hard to press myself back into the space where I used to fit, the life that came before that day at the pool. I’ve spent weeks ignoring the teasing darkness that lurks just out of sight in the corners of my mind. I’ve pretended that normal is in reach, so close that I’m already there. I’ve laughed at Jana’s jokes; I’ve leaned into Ben as he strokes my hair and chatters happily about the prom plans he’s already making; I’ve written letters to Nessa, and I tell myself she won’t notice that I’m once again holding things back. Even though she hasn’t answered. Even though I can feel the lies of omission pressing out from in between the lines, blotting out my words like an ugly, silent stain.

Sometimes, I’ve even come close. I convince myself that nothing has changed. Sometimes, the hours pass and I feel just like I did in those first golden weeks, just as stable and unexceptionally well, just as anchored in the ordinary life that’s all I’ve ever wanted. But as I sit at lunch or in Jana’s car or across from my father at the quiet table, I feel it stir and flutter. I feel myself sink away, inside, and then yearn to sink even deeper.

I hear an old woman’s rasping voice, making threats I don’t understand.

I hear the crashing of waves.

As I fall into a fevered sleep, my phone begins to buzz. I pull the covers over my head. I sink down, down, down.

—

In my dreams, I am floating somewhere beneath my life, looking up from a distance. I see my friends, elbowing in the lunch line; my father, eyes glazed and glued to his BlackBerry’s screen; Ben, talking about some new song that all of us have to hear. I hear snippets of conversation, trivial arguments, so much chatter that will be forgotten in a matter of minutes. The whispering thing, the voice that is mine and yet not quite mine, whispers encouragements in my head. It tells me that this is the truth of who we are. That these connections are as tenuous and drifting and meaningless as the broken strands of spiderweb that wave in glistening fragments from the trees beside the river. The dark thing creeps out of the shadows, the tide inside me rises, something peels back out of sleep and peers out at the world through my eyes. It laughs at my fear of being different. How, it asks, could I care so much for these small, petty people? How could I have ever wanted to be loved and accepted as one of them? How could I have thought I’d be happy in their laughably impermanent lives, pretending to share their shallow concerns? And even as part of me recoils at my callousness, another part looks out through my unveiled eyes and sees: they are as insignificant in their pathetic rushing as ants carrying crumbs to feed their queen. There is more than this. I am more than this.

I need only let it in, to listen closely, and then I’ll understand.

I wonder if this is what Nessa hears, when she talks about hearing the call of her life. If this is what it sounds like, the voice that hammers and demands, so loud and urgent that it seems to be coming from under a trapdoor inside your own brain. I wonder what it will tell me, if I let myself give in.

I dream that I am hurtling through the darkness, clutching my mother’s hand, and wake up gasping. I dream that we aren’t alone. Shadows chase us down into the deep, pale faces with huge, glittering eyes loom out of the dark below me. A hundred pale hands reach up to clutch me, and someone—some
thing
—rears up and calls my name out of its black and wide-open mouth.

“Callie,” it coos, in a voice made of raw meat and shredded metal. “Come down,
come down
.”

My phone buzzes again. I rear up out of sleep to clutch it. There are ten messages, each more worried than the last, asking if I’m okay. Words from the people who would hold me, trap me, keep me close between two narrow walls and make me breathe the stale air. I stumble across the room, gasping, and open my dresser. I shove the phone deep into a drawer.

I close my eyes
again.

I drift.

Somewhere behind my eyelids, my mother’s voice whispers,
Come down.
I open my arms beneath a starless sky, and tumble headfirst into the crashing dark.

Everything feels wrong.

Everything feels right.

“I’M SORRY,” I SAY.

It’s not the first time. I reach for him, try to slide my hands over his shoulders and draw him close to me, but he ducks away and stares. His brows are knit together, slanted down. His face is worry, painted over with anger.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” he cries. “Not just me, Callie. Everyone! After what happened, we all thought—I mean, you couldn’t even text me? You couldn’t even answer your door?! I stood out there and knocked for thirty minutes!”

I know.

I heard him.

I heard him, and I hissed through my teeth, and dove back down into the dark.

“It was just the flu,” I mumble.

Ben huffs with exasperation and turns away, saying, “I have to go to class. I’ll see you later.”

He doesn’t kiss me good-bye.

He doesn’t believe me.

I’m not sure I do, either.

—

I had woken on Sunday morning with my fever gone, my sheets soaked in sweat, no sense of how much time had passed. I came out of the haze to the sound of my father, tapping at my door, calling, “Callie? Can you eat some soup, do you think?”

I’d guzzled one bowl sitting up in bed, then peeled back the bedclothes and gone for seconds myself. My body felt tired but strong, as though I’d emerged victorious after hours of fighting an unseen foe in the dark.

It wasn’t until I passed a calendar on the wall, stopping to pinpoint the date in my head, that I realized I’d lost four days.

—

“He’ll get over it,” Jana says, and shoves a plateful of french fries across the table. “And in the meantime, you’re gonna eat these and you’re not gonna argue. You look like a fucking skeleton.”

I smile weakly and look across the courtyard. The rest of the group is huddled protectively around Ben, helping him nurse his grudge. Shanika scowls and makes a show of turning her back, while Mikah shrugs apologetically before reluctantly turning around.

“They’ll get over it, too,” she adds, reading my mind. “They’re just protective of their baby, you know. He’s like the kid brother they never had. It’s fine. Eat.”

The day is overcast, but the rain has held off; everyone has taken lunch outdoors, hedging their bets that the sky won’t open. I reach for a fry but don’t eat it, staring at one of the brick walls, trying to will back my memory of the last half week. The missed messages. The sound of Ben knocking frantically at the door. The discovery of my phone, inexplicably stuffed deep in my sock drawer, its battery drained to nothing from buzzing with worried alerts. I know I put it there, just as I know that I chose not to answer its insistent noise, just as I know that I lay in bed, half-conscious, and closed my eyes to the sound of Ben’s pounding at the door. I know, but I don’t know why; if I had a reason, it’s been washed from my consciousness, without a trace left behind.

It doesn’t make sense, and I say so.

What I don’t say, don’t tell, is how right it felt.

“You were delirious,” Jana says, shrugging, and starts in on the fries herself. “Honey, come on. You can’t keep beating yourself up about something you barely remember doing when you were sick as a dog and pumped full of drugs. I mean, I had oral surgery last year, and I was so hopped-up on Vicodin that I called Corey and told him I wanted to take his virginity.”

I guffaw. “You did not.”

She widens her eyes in mock seriousness. “Did too. You can ask him. I scared the kid to death!” She laughs. “Of course, I also told him I was the Grand High Empress of a roving band of pirates and that I’d been teaching my cat to speak Spanish, so he didn’t take it too seriously.”

I laugh in spite of myself. Jana nods encouragingly.

“Look, Ben knows you’re sorry and you didn’t mean it. He’s just being a drama queen because he doesn’t like admitting you scared the pants off him.”

“Was he really worried?”

She laughs. “Like a Jewish grandma.” She chortles, but then looks over her shoulder and frowns. “Just hang in there, okay? I know it sucks, but hey, that’s just because you guys love each other.”

I look miserably across the courtyard again; Ben looks back at me, holds eye contact for a moment, but then frowns and looks at the table.

“He doesn’t look like he loves me.” My voice sounds dark, harsh, but I can’t help myself. “He looks like he hates my guts.”

“Pfffft.”
Jana snorts. “Give him five minutes. Maybe an hour, at worst. I guarantee you, he’ll be all over you again by tomorrow.”

I shake my head.

“C’mon, Callie!” she cries, exasperated, then shoots me a devilish look. “It’ll all be fine tomorrow. You know,
tomorrow
?” Her voice is getting louder, gaining pitch, gaining traction, and she begins to sing: “The sun’ll come out, tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar thaaaaaat . . .”

And as she leaps onto the picnic table and begins serenading me, I look across the courtyard once more, and see Ben watching me. His mouth twitches, just a little.

I shrug.

And he smiles.

—

The afternoon is thick and humid as we cross the parking lot, hand in hand. When we reach Ben’s car, he stops and presses me back against the passenger-side door, standing on tiptoe to kiss me.

“Oh, darling. Let’s never fight again,” he says, putting on a posh English accent and a mock-serious look. I feel a rush of gratitude for this moment, for the empty, unscheduled afternoon, for Ben’s professed inability to stay angry at me. Even if it weren’t me, I think, he’s too forward-looking, too eager to move on to the next thing, to ever hold a grudge.

“All right,” I say. I lean in, I let the heat settle over me, I feel his hands climbing my back and feel momentarily self-conscious at the sweat that’s soaking my shirt.

When I pull away, he looks disappointed.

“Callie?”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m kind of . . . it’s really hot.”

He looks at me, worry falling like a shade again over his brow, and swallows.

“Look,” he begins, and then pauses. I watch him gulp again, and realize that I’m watching him ready himself to ask a question he suspects he’d rather not know the answer to.

“Look,” he says, again, “can you just tell me? I mean, was this another panic attack thing? Is that why you wouldn’t talk to anyone, why you didn’t want to see me?”

I feel a surge of irritation and try to cut him off. “I told you, it was just—” But he doesn’t stop.

“Because you need to know that nobody cares about that. And even if they did, I wouldn’t care about it. But if we’re going to be together, you can’t shut me out like this.”

He stops, looks at me for reassurance. I wish I had more to give, wish I had a better explanation.

“I was just sick.”

He looks at me, and I see hope flicker in his eyes before getting pushed away—by realism, by intelligence, by his inability to fool himself. His shoulders slump.

“It’s not just this time,”
he says, quietly. “You’ve been different ever since that day at the pool. Things just don’t feel the same, and I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to push you. But if you don’t want this, or if this is about something I did, I’d just rather you told me—”

“No,” I break in, so sharply that he falls silent. I grab hold of him, to reassure him, except it feels more like I’m trying to steady myself. To convince myself.

“No,” I say, my voice softer. My face has grown hot, there are knots twisting in my stomach. I don’t know how to tell him, I
can’t
tell him, that when I look at him, everything feels exactly the same and yet utterly, horribly different. That the sight of him makes me feel like I’m being ripped in two.

But I try. I try.

“I do want this,”
I whisper. “But sometimes, it’s also like I don’t. I feel like I’m not supposed to, like it’s not right, somehow. And it scares the shit out of me. You, and this relationship—it’s like it doesn’t belong to me, and I know it, and someone is going to make me give it back.”

In the moments that follow, I watch him watching me and feel my heart racing at double time, feel the tension arc out from my center and send tremors through my lips, my fingertips, my knees. I’ve spoken the truth out loud, and I’ve never been more terrified.

He reaches up to stroke my hair.

“Okay,” he says. “Well, I’ll tell you what. Maybe it’s not meant to be. Maybe you’re not meant to ever have friends or a boyfriend or anyone, ever. Maybe fate wants you to die alone, surrounded by thousands of cats.” He pauses, and smiles, but his eyes are serious. “But I’m telling you right now, I don’t believe in fate. And furthermore, if that’s what fate has in mind for you, then it can kiss my ass, because I’ve got better ideas.”

He reaches past me to open the car door, and I sink into the passenger seat at the gentle pressure of his hand.

“Now, you and I are going on a date. Anywhere you want, as long as we can be back before Alan Twaddle, PhD, freaks out and calls the police. Okay?”

And as he looks at me, as I gaze back at him, I feel it.

The breath of a shadow of a remembered dream, the strange mix of fear and longing and sudden, reckless want.

The air moves with a sigh over my body. My breath comes to a shuddering standstill in my throat.

And inside me, the sleeping thing buried under my heart stirs just a little and whispers,
Yes.

“Okay,” I say.

“Tell me.”

I do.

Now,
says the voice inside, purring and settling deeper in.
Now, you are beginning to see.