Zippered Flesh 2: More Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad (29 page)

“Stephanie?”

He had brought her clothes, gripping them in a fist that wanted to tremble, to touch her, to help her, but when he offered them to her, she closed her eyes and didn’t move.

“Stephanie, he said if I asked you out, he’d quit picking on me. He scares the shit out of me and I’m tired of getting my ass kicked and creeping around worrying that he’ll see me. So I agreed, like an idiot. I’m sorry. I really do like you, even if I wasn’t sure before. I do like you and I’m so sorry this happened. I swear I didn’t know.”

There was an interminable period of silence that stretched like taut wire between them, and then she opened her eyes.

Dark.

Fire.

Slowly, she reached out and took the clothes from him.

“Wait for me in the car, I don’t want you looking at me,” she said coldly, but not before her fingers brushed the air over his hand.

“Okay,” he said and rose.

She stared, unmoving.

“I am sorry,” he told her and waited a heartbeat for a response.

There was none. He made his way back to the car and stared straight ahead through the windshield at the endless dark sea, ignoring the sinuous flashes of white in the corner of his eye. Echoes of pain tore through his gut and he winced, wondering if something was broken, or burst.

When the car door opened, his pulse quickened and he had to struggle not to look at her.

“Drive me home,” she said and put her hands in her lap, her hair, once so clean and fresh now knotted and speckled with sand and dirt, obscuring her face. “Now.”

And still the smell of lavender.

He started the car and drove, a million thoughts racing through his mind but not one of them worthy of being spoken aloud.

When they arrived at her house, the moon had moved and the stars seemed less bright than they’d been before. There were no voices, no basketballs whacking pavement, but the breeze had strengthened and tore at the white plastic bags impaled on the railings. Stephanie left him without a word, slamming the car door behind her. He watched her walk up the short stone path with her head bowed, until the darkness that seethed around the doorway consumed her.

Still he waited, hoping a hand might resolve itself from that gloom to wave him goodbye, a gesture that would show him she didn’t think he was to blame after all. But the darkness stayed unbroken, and after a few minutes, he drove home.

He awoke to sunlight streaming in his window and birds singing a chorus of confused melodies in the trees.

A beautiful morning.

Until he tried to sit up and pain cinched a hot metal band around his chest. He gasped in pain. Gasped again when the pain unlocked the memory of the night before, flooding his mind with dark images of a half-naked, scared girl and maniacal giggling.

The clanging of a bell.

oh god

He wished it had been a dream, a nightmare, but the pain forbade the illusion. Real. It had happened and the light of morning failed to burn away the cold shadow that clung to him as he recalled his cowardice.

Jesus, I just sat there
.

When his mother opened the door and spoke, startling him, he exaggerated his discomfort enough to convince her to let him stay in bed. He endured her maternal worrying until she was satisfied he wasn’t going to die on her watch, and then cocooned himself in the covers.

When she was gone, he buried his face in the pillows and wept.

I just sat there
.

He wondered if Stephanie had gone to school today, or if, even now the police were on their way to Dean’s house, to question him. The momentary thrum of fear abated with the realization that he had done nothing wrong. Freddy and Greer were the ones in trouble if the authorities were brought into it. And still he felt no better. Doing nothing somehow made him feel just as guilty as if he’d been the one holding her down, or pawing at her breasts, mocking her.

He wanted to call her, to try to explain without panic riddling his words, without fear confusing him, but knew he’d lost her.

But what if I hadn’t lost her?
he wondered then.
What if Freddy hadn’t interrupted us and we’d ended up having sex? What would that mean today? What would that
make
us?

He saw himself holding her hand as they walked the halls at school.

He saw himself holding her close at the prom as they danced their way through a crowd grinning cruelly.

He saw the look of need in her eyes as she stared at him, the possessive look that told him he was hers forever.

He heard the taunts, the jeers, the snide remarks but this time they wouldn’t be aimed at Stephanie alone. This time, they’d be aimed at him, too, for being the one to pity her. For being blind to what was so staggeringly obvious to everyone else.

What the fuck is
wrong
with me?

Pain of a different kind threaded its way up his throat.

He didn’t like the person his feelings made him.

He didn’t like who he was becoming, or rather, who he might have been all along.

I just sat there
...

As the light faded from the day and the shadows slid across the room, Dean lay back in his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Watching.

Waiting with rage in his heart.

For tomorrow.

“Mr. Lovell, we missed you yesterday,” a voice said, and Dean paused, the only rock in a streaming river of students.

The main door was close enough for him to feel the cool air blasting down from the air-conditioner, the sunlight making it seem as if the world outside the school had turned white.

Dean turned to face the principal, a tall, rail-thin man who looked nothing like his son. Small green eyes stared out from behind rimless glasses. His hands were behind his back, gaze flitting from Dean’s pallid face to the object held in his hand.

“Yeah,” Dean muttered. “I was sick.”

“I see,” Principal Greer said, scowling at a student who collided with him and spun away snorting laughter. “Well, this close to exams, I would expect you’d make more of an effort to make classes.”

“It couldn’t be helped.”

Greer nodded. “Where are you going with that, may I ask?”

Dean lingered, his mouth moving, trying vainly to dispense an excuse, but finally he gave up and turned away. He walked calmly toward the main door.

“Excuse me, Mr. Lovell, I’m not finished with you.”

Dean kept moving.

“Mr. Lovell, you listen to me when I’m talking to you!”

Now the scattering of students in the hallway paused, their chattering ceased. Heads turned to watch.

The doorway loomed.

“Lovell, you stop
right this minute!
”

Dean kept moving.

“You ... your parents will be hearing from me!” Lovell sounded as if he might explode with rage. Dean didn’t care. He hadn’t really heard anything the old man had said anyway.

The hallway was deathly silent as he passed beneath the fresh air billowing from the a/c, and then he was outside, on the steps and staring down.

At where Fuckface Freddy was regaling two squirming girls with tales of his exploits.

“I swear,” he was saying, “the bitch told me she got off when guys did that. I mean ... in a goddamn
bowl
for Chrissakes! Can you believe that shit?”

It took four steps to reach him and when he turned, he squinted at Dean.

Sneered.

“The fuck
you
want?”

Dean returned his sneer and drew back the baseball bat he’d taken from his locker.

He expected Freddy to look shocked, or frightened, or to beg Dean not to hurt him. But Freddy did none of those things.

Instead, he laughed.

And Dean swung the bat.

His parents, talking. He lay in the dark, listening. They were making no attempt to be quiet.

“Did you talk to him?”

“I didn’t know what to say. He says he’s sorry.”

“Sorry? He gave the guy a broken jaw, a busted nose, and a concussion! Sorry isn’t going to cut it.”

“He was upset, Don.”

“Oh, and that’s supposed to get him off the hook, huh? Did you ask him what the hell he’s going to do now? Greer
expelled
him. You want to appeal against that? Just so our darling son can beat the shit out of the next guy who’s dumb enough to cross him? Everyone gets upset, Rhonda, but not everyone pisses away their future by taking a bat to someone. I can’t wait to hear what that kid’s parents are going to do. They’ll probably sue the ass off us.”

“He says the guy was picking on him.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Well, I don’t know ... you go talk to him then.”

“I’m telling you ... if I go up to that room, it won’t be to talk.”

“Then talk to him tomorrow. He’s obviously got some problems we didn’t know about. You being angry isn’t going to help anything.”

“Yeah, well, jail isn’t going to do him much good either, now is it?”

He lay in the dark, listening.

Smiling.

Over the next few days he was dragged to meetings, and heard the tone, but none of the words. Voices were raised, threats were issued, and peace was imposed. There were questions, different faces asking different questions, all of them threads connected to the same ball:
Why did you do it, Dean?

Had he chosen to answer those blurry, changing faces in all those rooms that smelled of furniture polish and sweat, he would have told them:
I just sat there
. But instead he said nothing, and soon the faces went away, the slatted sunlight aged on the walls and there was only one voice, a woman, speaking to him as if he were a child, but still asking the question everyone wanted to ask and which he refused to answer because it belonged to him, and him alone.

“Dean, I want to help you, but you have to help
me
.”

That made him smile.

“Tell me what happened.”

He wouldn’t.

“Tell me why you did what you did.”

He didn’t, and when she shook her head at some unseen observer, standing in the shadows at his back, he was released. No more faces, no more voices, just his parents, expressing their disappointment, their frustration. Their anger.