Kiss Kill Vanish (20 page)

“What's your event?”

“Five hundred freestyle.”

“Ugh, really?”

“What?” I say. “You don't have the stamina for it?”

He fits his goggles onto his head. “You did
not
just question my stamina. Screw chivalry. I'm using my legs.”

“No cheating. And no letting me win.”

“Deal. We need a wager.”

I fit the silver goggles onto my head and test their suction. Perfect. “Sure.”

“The loser has to perform CPR on the winner.”

“Nope.”

“The loser has to swim an extra lap naked.”

“You're going the wrong direction here. I change my mind. No wager.”

“Don't pretend you've never swum naked.”

“So, ten laps, freestyle, right?”

“What do you think I was wearing when you texted me earlier?”

“Stop talking.” I stand up and put my hands on my hips.

He stands too.

“Are you ready to be humiliated by a girl?”

He smiles.

I step up onto the starting block, place my left foot out front, and bend down so my chest touches my thigh.

He joins me.

I grip the edge of the block, and when I glance in his direction, all I see is the slope of his shoulder covering his face.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Who counts?”

“Me.”

“No, me.”

“Then why'd you ask me if you already knew you were going to do it?” he grumbles.

“Okay, we do it together.”

“Five . . . four . . . ,” he starts.

I join him on three. By two my muscles are burning with excitement, dying to uncoil. I've never been so psyched to get pummeled. I just need to try so hard it hurts.

“One.”

We spring. His body is beside mine in the air, but when we slice through the water, he's already beyond me. Underwater I'm a missile, but when I surface for that first breath, he's even farther ahead. For a while I keep up, or not quite keep up, but hold a respectable gap between us. But by the fourth lap his half-pool lead becomes three quarters, and every muscle in my body is exhausted. I'm getting sloppy—my arms are chopping through the water with more violence, but I don't see him again until he laps me. And then laps me again.

When Marcel pulls his body from the pool, I still have three lengths to go, but I don't stop or slow down. He's watching. The least I can do is lose with style. My whole body screams for oxygen, but I force myself to sprint the final stretch. But only a few strokes from the wall, I suck a mouthful of water into my lungs. It feels like fire burning me from the inside out, and I collapse sputtering against the end of the pool, too disoriented by the exhaustion to even pull myself up.

Hands grip my arms.

They squeeze too tight, and my mind falls back into memory.
Why is someone always grabbing and pulling and pushing me?
These hands pull me out of the water and onto the ledge, but they don't let go of me right away, so I use my last ounce of energy to twist away from them. “
Get away from me!
” I yell, and wrench myself free.

Marcel lets me squirm away.

I sit on the ledge, sputtering until I've stopped coughing up pool water. When I finally open my eyes he's sitting on the bench, staring at the clock. Hundredths of seconds, then tenths of seconds, then whole seconds disappear as we both stare at it.

It feels like one of us should apologize. But not him.

“What's the matter with you?” he finally asks. He sounds more curious than angry, so I don't come back with an insult.

“Lots of things.”

“I was just trying to help you.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I got a little water in my lungs, that's all. I'm fine. I'm sorry,” I say again. “I was just startled and a little oxygen deprived.” I stand up and everything spins, but I don't sit back down. “Good race,” I mumble.

“Good race? A couple of seconds ago you were screaming at me for trying to help you.”

“I didn't want your help.”

He stares at me and I shrink. “What happened to you?” he asks.

“Lots of things.”

My chest still hurts. If I could just catch my breath and calm down, I'd deflect his questions, but I can't. Weak, out of shape, tired—I don't know what I was expecting when I dove in. My diet of chocolate and water can't be doing much for me, either.

“You look pale,” he says. “You should sit.”

I don't argue, but I don't go sit by him on the bench either. I sit back down by the pool and let my legs dangle. I try leaning back on my palms, but my arms are too shaky to support my weight, so I slump forward instead.

My legs have changed color. It's the light. I look up to the skylight and see that the sky beyond has turned from black to purple. There's a hint of orange at one edge.

Marcel sees it too. “Morning.”

“Morning.”

We stare at the new sky for a few seconds before I say, “Thanks for not letting me win.”

“You're welcome. I think the loser is supposed to give the winner CPR, but if you're not up for it, I'd be willing to reverse that.”

“I'll pass.”

“Are you sure? I'm really good at it.”

The purple is being bled out of the skylight frame, and the orange is surging. “This would be a nice way to watch the sunrise if it wasn't so cold,” I say.

He gets up and grabs two towels from the equipment closet. “At the risk of getting myself shoved again, here you go,” he says, tosses one to me, and sits down beside me.

“Thanks.” I wrap it around myself.

He lies back to see the sky better, and I do the same. We watch the battle of orange and purple. Orange wins, and then a splotch of pink appears, threatening to spill over the whole skylight.

“Sort of gory,” I say. “For a sky, I mean.”

“I guess.”

We watch a little longer before I decide to say it after all. “I wish you hadn't paid my rent.”

He pauses. “Okay.”

“I mean thank you, but I wish you hadn't. I can't pay you back.”

“I wasn't expecting you to.”

“I know,” I say, “but it put me in a weird spot.”

“There's no weird spot. It's forgotten. If you want to feel weird about it, fine, but I'm not going to.”

“I don't
want
to feel weird about it. I—”

“Don't worry,” he interrupts. “I won't do it again.”

I take a giant breath, feeling better and worse.

The pink is fading. It's not being forced out by anything else, but a warm yellow behind it is waiting for it to dissipate entirely.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I need you to answer honestly. I don't want the answer you think you should give.”

I shiver beneath my towel. What's one more promise I can't keep, one more lie? “Okay.”

“Did he ever talk about me?”

I hesitate. Telling him yes would be the nice thing to do. But the truth? “Not a lot, but sometimes.”

“Did he hate me?”

“He didn't kill himself because he hated you.”

“That's not what I asked.”

I sigh. “Why would you think he hated you?”

“You won't answer. That means he hated me.”

“No. Brothers fight. They piss each other off. I don't think he hated you.”

I count several of Marcel's measured breaths before he speaks again. “Then why did he do it in my bathroom? Why didn't he do it in his bathtub?”

I turn my head. He's only inches away, still staring up at the sky, and from this angle his cheeks are sunken. His features look even sharper, his lips bluish.

He saves me from answering. “So I would be the one to find him.”

The snapshots of memory—Lucien's bloated body crusted in filth, the stench of vomit, the pain-twisted features, the
plop
of the water—pile up and fan out like photographs tossed onto a table before me, a montage of horror. “Did you?”

He turns his face to mine. His eyes are bloodshot from the chlorine. “Yes.”

I should have realized. I should have thought about it longer and seen that someone had to find him after I left, and that someone would, of course, be Marcel. Pity and guilt sit on my chest. My head is too heavy to lift, and I have to blink back tears, but even blinking is too much effort.

Heartless. It's cruel not to tell him that I don't even think Lucien killed himself, but I have to be heartless.

Except maybe I can be a little less heartless.

I roll onto my side, pull my arm out of my towel, and rest the back of my hand on his cheek. It's soft and cold. I pretend I don't notice him shudder, but it makes me wonder how long it's been since anybody touched him.

Beyond that shudder, he doesn't respond, so I don't have to pull away. He just lies there, glowing under the yellow satin sky. I wipe the drop of water from his jaw with the backs of my fingers, and he doesn't flinch or reach for me.

His not reaching for me—it makes abandoning heartlessness okay. It's only temporary. I prop myself on my other elbow, lean in and press my lips to his cheek. It isn't stubbly like Emilio's, but smooth and smells like chlorine. The kiss is long enough to feel his jaw clench beneath my mouth, but he doesn't pull away.

Without a word, I stand. He watches me wring the water from my hair and rewrap my towel, then sits up.

“I'm going to change,” I say.

“Me too.”

I'm standing naked in the first of two changing rooms in the pool house, shivering as I pull underwear and bra over goose-pimpled skin. I was slow in the shower, but it was so gloriously hot and the steam was so saturating, I couldn't make myself get out until I felt sure I could never be cold again.

Except now I'm cold again. The hook on my bra is bent and requires steadier hands than I have at the moment, so I'm fumbling in frustration when I hear the sound. It's soft, but I'm sure. It's my phone. I abandon the clasp so I can dig through my clothes before my brain registers that something is wrong. The ring was too soft. It takes me a moment to make sense of it all, to remember that my phone isn't in this bag. It's next to my purse. And my purse is where I left it: on the bench by the pool.

I fumble faster, give up on the bent hook, pull on my sweater, and slip into my pants, but not before I drop them on the wet tile and half soak them. I wiggle into the wet pants and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, because Marcel is in the other changing room getting dressed, and if he isn't still there, if he's out by the pool, he wouldn't answer my phone. He wouldn't.

I skip socks and boots and run out to the pool deck. Marcel is sitting on the bench, already dressed, my purse beside him.

“Hey,” I say, but I'm so flustered and breathless, the word barely comes out.

He doesn't answer. He's staring at the black rectangle in his hand. My phone.

“Did my phone ring?” I stammer.

He ignores the question, turning the phone over and over in his hand. When he finally does look up, the rawness from before is gone. Vulnerability is a memory. “Who the hell are you?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

F
ight or flight. I remember learning it in biology. It goes like this: I sense danger and my adrenal glands secrete adrenaline, which increases heart rate, dilates pupils, and tightens muscles, all preparing my body to attack or run. But I have to choose which one.

Attack or run, attack or run, attack or run.
I have to choose.

I've already run. I've been running for months, and I'm not any further from danger. It's liquid, filling my thoughts and my dreams, following me into my apartment, through the streets of Montreal, and into Soupe au Chocolat, bleeding into the cracks of my mind. It chases me everywhere, and I feel it in everyone. In Lucien. In Emilio. In Marcel.

Flight failed.

“What are you doing with my phone?” I demand shakily.

“It rang.”

I walk toward him with long strides, my hand outstretched. “Give it to me.”

“You didn't answer my question. Who are you?”

“I didn't say you could touch my phone,” I say through gritted teeth, and reach for it, but he stands quickly, holding it out of my reach.

He snorts, and a wild, cruel look takes over his face. “And what would you do if I dropped it in the pool?”

I jump for it, but he's too tall and I hit my jaw on his collarbone when we collide. I feel his left arm wrap around me, pinning me to his chest, and when I arch my head up, he's staring down at me. Chlorine has turned his eyes red and puffy, but the rest of his face is all hard lines. Bone and veins and muscle. His arm tightens around my back, and panic explodes inside of me. He's too strong. I can't think.

“I'll give you your phone back. Just stop lying, and tell me who you are.”

I try to wriggle free, and he flings the phone. My heart plummets—now Emilio can't reach me—before I see it was a trick. His hand made the motion, but he didn't let go. A mean smile stretches across his face. “Would that break your little heart,
Valentina
?”

I make another pointless lunge, but the end of his swimmer's arm is miles away.

Frustrated, I go limp. If I could, I'd slump all the way to the floor, but Marcel's grip is still forcing me upright.

“Don't worry,” he says into my ear. “I told Emilio how well I was taking care of you. Wait—should I not have told him about the kiss?” He laughs. It's mocking and angry, and I can feel my blood getting hotter and hotter. I wriggle, but his grip only gets tighter, and he's still laughing.