7 Souls (16 page)

Before it all started
.

“The physics test—of
course
. But—but, holy shit, that’s—”

“It’s
today
, Scott. Come on—will you
wake up
, damn it? Snap
out
of it! This is
serious.”

“Serious,” Mary repeated, as the memory came into focus. Her mouth tasted like blueberry Pop-Tart. “Right, I was—you were supposed to meet me—I forgot that we were—But—”

She was gazing around Scott’s bedroom, squinting through the dust motes at the East Side morning sky beyond the plate glass. She had never been here, of course. Probably,
no
girl had been here,
ever
. Posters around the room showed fantasy girls, all pretty and skinny with big chests, all drawn or painted or digitally rendered, pubescent dreams frozen and reproduced in rows across Scott’s walls.

“Scott!”
On the phone, her voice was louder—her impatience was growing. To Mary, it was the voice of the happiest, most carefree girl in the world. “Scott, I’m trying to remember last night—what
happened
last night, I mean. I’m blacking out on some of it and I can’t remember if I met you after dinner or—Hello?”

Mary could hear the world’s squeakiest sneakers beyond the bedroom door. Mrs. Sanders was moving around. Mary really didn’t want to deal with her again.

I have to get out of here
, she thought. The cell phone was warm in her hand, its amber light blinking.
I have to get out of here right now
. It was nearly an animal impulse; her spinal column felt electrified and her breathing was getting faster. Her bare feet were cold from the parquet floor.

Mary slapped the phone shut. A flush was coming over her face and her vision was darkening; she clenched the edge of the desk with Scott’s fat fingers and tried to clear her head. Frantically looking around at the mess strewn around the floor, she saw a pair of nearly new Adidas along with a tangle of T-shirts and the pleated pants that Scott always wore. Mary had managed to get her balance, but she was still stumbling since Scott’s arms and legs were so different from hers—she banged her elbow against the desk’s edge and felt a dull pain spread through her arm.

I’ve got to get out of here
. She was close to panic as she picked Scott’s loose khaki pants up from the floor and began pulling them on, reeling back against the bed, getting the pants on over the loose gray sweatpants and reaching for Scott’s familiar-looking near-virgin Adidas running shoes.
Why does he even wear these?
she thought distractedly as she fumbled with the laces, impatiently tangling Scott’s sweaty fingers around them.
He never runs, anywhere
.

But she had to. It was like the times that Mary would end up collapsed somewhere, at the end of a party, on a sofa or along the edge of a well-made bed, the room reeling drunkenly around her, and she would think,
time to rally—
she would understand that Joon was gone and Amy was gone and she was going to have to make it out of there, wherever she was, alone. She would picture the obstacle course: getting to her feet, finding her coat, putting on her coat, checking if she had both earrings, then propelling herself down an unfamiliar corridor to a big front door, past whatever drunken people were still there, and outside. Then an elevator and a lobby and a sidewalk and a taxicab and she would be home, her ears ringing, the party sounds fading behind her.

Time to rally
—she was doing it now, stone-cold sober, in the bright morning light, and it was exactly the same: stumbling out into a strange corridor, trying to find her way to the front door. The apartment was huge—Mary glimpsed a concert grand piano through one doorway and a kitchen table with a pitcher of grapefruit juice and an unfolded
New York Times
through another.
Got to get out of here, got to get out of here
, she was thinking over and over, her heartbeat clicking in her ears again as she propelled Scott’s heavy body toward the giant front door.

“Wait! Don’t leave!” Scott’s mother called out, from somewhere in the vastness of the apartment. Mary froze, cringing. She could hear the basketball-court sounds of Mrs. Sanders approaching. Frantically, she started fiddling with the brass knob on the front door. “Scottie, wait!”

Mary finally got the door open as Mrs. Sanders appeared behind her. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said, holding out Scott’s red backpack—Mary noticed its familiar Harry Potter and Dandy Warhols stickers. “You’re not going anywhere without this.”

Mary tried to speak, but couldn’t quite get herself to make any coherent sound. She reached out and took Scott’s book bag—it felt much heavier than she’d expected—and catapulted herself out of the Sanders apartment, pulling the heavy door closed behind her as fast as she could.

L
EANING AGAINST THE SMOOTH
mahogany walls of the descending elevator, ears popping as chimes indicated the floors, Mary wondered if she had lost her mind. All her thoughts were going in tight little circles, faster and faster, as the elevator dropped toward the ground. It was obvious that she wasn’t dead; she had already figured that out, but she was beginning to accept that she had gone crazy somewhere along the way.
Somebody help me
, she thought, pressing her sweat-covered forehead against the glossy wood wall. It was all so real: she could smell the lemon in the polish that somebody had used not that long ago to bring out the expensive mahogany glow, which right now showed Scott’s fat, reddened face, reflected back at her from inches away.
Help me, help me; I want to wake up
.

The elevator suddenly stopped and a quivering jolt shook her bones. Another chime rang out as the big wooden door rolled open. If she was dreaming, the dream was amazingly realistic
—impossibly
realistic.

“All right, my man Scott,” a loud male voice called out—Mary saw what looked like a United States Marine in a crisp uniform and cap but was actually just a sallow-faced Manhattan doorman. Stumbling out of the elevator, she noticed a red shaving nick on his pale chin, above the starched white broadcloth collar. “What’s the matter—tough day ahead?”

(
Tough day)

What was it about that phrase? It reminded Mary of something. The memory seemed very recent; it flashed into her head all at once, vividly: she could feel a pain in her shoulder and fatigue through her body—she remembered standing in a cold, brightly lit reception room talking to a woman with a headset, a woman she knew.

(
Tough day)

“T
OUGH DAY?”

“You have
no idea
,” Scott agreed.

Two weeks ago, Scott was coated in dried sweat (not an unusual sensation for Scott, unfortunately and lamentably), facing Sheila, the receptionist at McDougall Sanders Construction’s worldwide headquarters on the forty-fourth floor of the Blakeman building on Sixth Avenue. Expensive air-conditioning chilled the sweat in his hair and on his arms and back.

“What are you
carrying?”
Sheila asked, squinting critically at him while reaching for the phone headset. It must have been easy to see why Scott was covered in sweat: his book bag was stuffed. As it happened, he was carrying
two complete loads
of books—his own and somebody else’s. The book bag’s straps were cutting into his shoulders like knives. The pain was exquisite; Sheila could see it in his face.

“Don’t ask,” Scott had told her. Sheila laughed politely.

Because I can’t explain
, he had finished, privately. He never could explain, ever. It was the curse of his divided life. His experiences were unique.

To Scott’s friends (using the word lightly; Scott thought of them as “the math guys” or “the sci-fi guys” or “the comic-book guys,” manfully weathering the inevitable
Simpsons
reference), Scott was a good gamer, a fair comic collector and a way-cool Star Wars fan (not to mention the builder and owner of an airplane fleet to fill a modeler’s heart with lust), but he had done something heroic, something amazing, something they all worshipped him for.

He’d become friends with Mary Shayne.

Scott Sanders had actually managed to score a
friendship
with the most jaw-droppingly, smokingly, sickeningly, desperately hot girl at school; the one who you
tried
not to stare at … honestly, how hard you tried … but it was impossible. She was Megan Fox. She was Aeon Flux. She was Angelina Jolie (back when Angelina was young and wild). She was Wonder Woman. She was all of them at once, and she was
real
, right in front of you during physics class, every day; you could talk to her (if you dared); she breathed the same air as you. It was insane, unbelievable; there was just no way to handle it. She was the heroine in whatever book you were reading in English, when the teacher was droning on about the Romantic Age in literature and reciting Shelley or Keats.

She’s just normal
, Scott would tell his friends, to their constant frustration.
It’s just like talking to anyone else. And
no. I
certainly won’t introduce you, like
, ever,
so stop asking
.

And that was why nobody understood. Spending those fleeting moments with Mary was bliss, was ecstasy, not because she behaved like a “babe”—whatever that meant—but because she was a normal person. The eye candy was unbelievable, nearly religious, to be sure; but, in the end, they were
friends
.

What Scott wanted more than anything else was to be real friends with Mary—to be part of that crowd, that living, breathing Abercrombie & Fitch ad that surrounded her like drone planes around an aircraft carrier. He knew he didn’t fit in; he didn’t have the look you needed in order to become part of that particular club, the one everyone at Chadwick hated and disdained and desperately wanted to be part of. Scott didn’t care about clothes or gossip or sports or any of that, but he still thought his friendship with Mary might be the entry ticket he needed. If he kept getting closer to her, then he figured he would start being accepted by her crowd.

Dude, you do her fucking homework
, Brian Anderson had sniped, when Scott had shyly admitted his ambitions.
Don’t kid yourself—you’re part of her pit crew, nothing more than that. In three months you’ll never see her again
. But Brian was just jealous; that was obvious. Mary was a good friend.

Mary’s personality wasn’t bad either, was the thing. It wasn’t
spectacular;
she was no Rachel Maddow, that was for sure. And she obviously had no patience at all; everything had to be done for her. But she was funny. She could be clever. And she said interesting things, sometimes, when she wasn’t so busy playing the starring role in her opera. (Scott figured that Mary’s life was too grand for soap opera—he’d long ago decided that she was the epicenter of a full-on opera, with expensive sopranos and tenors and the kind of thousand-dollar ticket that his dad gave his mom for Christmas.) It was exactly like what happened with movie stars: if you knew who they were, then you knew whom they dated, who broke up with them, whom they’d gone home with, accepted, toyed with, refused, pined after, dumped. You knew it all. You couldn’t help it; even if you didn’t
want
to follow the story, you had to, because they did it all in front of you. The more attractive and popular the kids were, the more they played out their biggest scenes in plain sight, right in front of you when you were at your locker or trying to get by. It was the world as a stage.

But Scott couldn’t blame Mary for that, either. So she was the star of the show. Who wouldn’t want to be the star? It’s always the best role: you get to laugh and cry and fight and kiss and everyone’s on your side; they’ve all got your back.

And Mary was a
great
star. She played it to the hilt. She didn’t solve her problems—she experienced them; she
reacted
to them, grandly. If life was a Broadway show, Mary would get all the big numbers—the Tony-winning songs people wanted played at their weddings. Mary’s problems were epic. They became global projects everyone was encouraged to participate in.

Which was why Scott was carrying a two-ton book bag that day.

Scott had agreed to come down here, to West Fifty-second Street, walking the whole way, because it was part of the deal to keep Dad happy. He had to walk because his father wanted him to “observe” the buildings that flanked the wide avenues on his way down, noticing their facades, their “footprints,” their “zoning envelopes”—all the perfectly boring details of the Manhattan real estate market that his father insisted he pay attention to. He’d tried to get out of it, once or twice taking the subway rather than walking, but he’d never gotten away with it. His dad would always quiz him about the buildings he’d observed on the way, and he just couldn’t bring himself to fake it. Today, even with a two-ton book bag, he’d walked the full thirty-six blocks—and here he was, dutifully pushing the heavy glass door that opened into the enormous mahogany-faced conference room where Dad was about to present to a client. Scott had agreed to assist, but he wished he could be
anywhere else
. And, of course, “anywhere else” just meant one place—the real destination he was headed, after this meeting—Mary Shayne’s Upper West Side apartment.

Mary had been absent from school that day. Scott had noticed immediately; he caught himself strolling down the fifth-floor hallway where Mary’s homeroom was, casually glancing at the crowd flocking out of the room as the bell rang, and not seeing her. When Scott’s cell phone blasted “Femme Fatale” that noon, he rejoiced, forcing himself to be cool and to nonchalantly answer on the second ring. Mary had sounded awful—the hoarseness of her voice created an alarmingly sexy effect that he almost complimented her on, before getting a grip on himself. Mary outlined her request—she needed him to get several of her books out of her locker (Scott wrote down their titles and her locker combination number, straining to hear over the crowds in the Chadwick corridor) and bring them to her house after school. Could he do that?