Crazy Love You (28 page)

I shook my head. “I can't.”

“Hey,” said my dad. His voice filled the restaurant. “Eloise, get away from my kid.”

“Don't get attached to her,” she said. She was speaking quickly, fiercely. I leaned into her. “If you do, she'll intertwine herself with your life. You'll get to the point where you won't be able to tell the difference between her feelings and yours. She's not your friend, not really.”

“What the hell are you doing?” My father's voice boomed, bouncing off the linoleum floors and the drywall. “I could have you
arrested
for talking to my son.”

“Nick,” she said when he came to stand beside our table. She closed her eyes as if to summon her patience. “Calm down.”

“Don't poison his mind the way you poisoned hers.” His face was red, and his hands were shaking. What did he mean? He reached down and pulled me roughly up from my seat.

“Dad . . .” I said.

“
Shut up
, Ian,” he said. Then to Eloise: “Stay away from my family.”

“Ian,” said Eloise. “It's important that you don't give her too much power.”

My dad raised a quaking finger at her. “
Don't
talk your craziness to him.”

“Please . . .” started Eloise.

But my father was dragging me out of the shop. I tried to tell him what she'd said, ask him why he was so angry. But he didn't want to talk. In the car, my dad drove home, mouth in a tight line, hands gripping the wheel hard. He didn't say anything until we were in the driveway.

“That woman has been a scourge on this town,” he said. He brought the car to a stop in front of the house. “Stay away from her. You hear? You have enough problems without that witch filling your mind with more garbage.”

“Okay,” I said.

It was too late anyway for any warnings from Eloise Montgomery. I was already deeply, painfully attached to Priss. The truth was, even then, I'd have been lost without her. She was my most helpless addiction. And I had no intention of staying away from her, even if I had understood what Eloise meant. She'd been talking to me as if I was an adult. But I was just a kid, lonely and sad. And Priss was all I had.

A dim gray light washed in around the window blinds. My head was heavy, filled with fog. I heard the words Eloise Montgomery had uttered more than a decade ago ringing in my ears. But I hadn't really heard them when she'd first uttered them. Like so many things I didn't want to deal with, I'd buried her advice and warnings deep. Anyway, I had just been a kid. What good advice was ever seized upon by an adolescent boy?

I lay still, listening to my childhood home, still in the clothes I'd been wearing yesterday. There was a large rust-colored water stain on the low ceiling. It looked like a mushroom cloud, burgeoning, spreading, a quiet, deadly mass. I was the last man in the postapocalyptic world of my life.

A leaden fatigue dragged at my limbs, and I felt as if I could lie there forever, never moving again. The thought of it was almost a comfort. I imagined myself slowly starving to death in my twin bed, my corpse rotting, becoming one with the cheap mattress. Who would miss me? Megan for a time, and my mother. Then I thought of Megan's news—a baby, our child. I pulled myself to standing and went downstairs, the wooden stairs creaking beneath my weight.

“Priss?”

I tried to flip on a light, but there was no electricity. Of course not. The bill had been automatically deducted from my account, which was, of course, overdrawn. I tried not to think about it—any of it. I still hadn't heard back from my agent or from Zack, in spite of leaving repeated messages. What did it mean? My life, the one I'd had just a few days ago, seemed so far away. I was in a capsule orbiting the earth, no way to go home. I felt the childish urge to weep and pressed it back, but just barely. I know. What a pussy.

My phone sat silent on the countertop in the kitchen. There were no messages, and its charge was running low. I stared at it, willing it to ring. But no. No one was calling because I didn't exist.

Beside my phone was an orange bottle of blue pills, standing at attention like a little soldier. What was it? Ritalin? Adderal? Ruffies? Where had it come from? I didn't recognize it from my personal stash. Whatever it was, I needed something. I couldn't just be me right now. I took two—then popped another for good measure. You might be wondering: What kind of fool takes unidentified prescription pills? Answer: Someone who would rather be
anything
but who he was.

I didn't know how long it would take the police to find me up here in The Hollows, but my guess was that it wouldn't be long. Assault on a police officer, arson—I would get blamed for both of those things. There must be a manhunt under way already. I probably had twenty-four hours at the most. I didn't know if anyone had seen me pull into town. But the odds were high that someone had noticed. In The Hollows, someone was always watching, seeing what you didn't want them to see. What would I do when the police came? Turn myself in? Run? Suicide by cop? Lots of options, all of them bad.

“Priss,” I called again.

I remembered now walking right past her last night, without even acknowledging her. I could hardly stand the sight of her.

“Like this is my fault,” she'd said as I moved my stuff in from the car. At first, I wasn't biting. I didn't have the energy for an argument. She sat on the couch, put her feet up, and crossed them at the ankles, making herself at home.

“It's not so bad here,” she said. “Quiet.”

“Don't get comfortable,” I snapped. She had always known just how to push my buttons, to hook me right in. I had no choice but to engage with her. She put her hands behind her head, fanning out her arms like the wings of a cobra. “It's scheduled for demolition. I'm tearing this fucker down, leveling it.”

Her smug smile had faltered a bit. It wasn't what she expected from me. It didn't take her long to recover.

“And
then
where will you go?” she'd asked. She looked at me with low lids, a nasty smile. “Back to the loft? Or were you planning on moving in with
Megan
? How
are
those wedding plans coming along?”

I wanted to leap on her, take her neck in my hands, and squeeze until her eyes grew red with blood and her body went limp in my grasp. Instead, I closed my eyes, drew in a deep cleansing breath.
I can let the rage pass through me. I don't have to hold on to it, use it. I can release it.

“What's wrong?” she said. She pulled her face into a little pout. “Trouble in paradise? Megan starting to get a clue as to what a hopeless screw-up you are?”

“Don't say her name.”

“Meganmeganmeeeegggaaan.”

I felt the clutch in my solar plexus, the clench of my fists.

“What did you do to that cop?” I asked. I barely had a voice; it sizzled in my throat.

She tilted her head to the side, twirled a strand of that fire hair.

“Nothing,” she said. “Bought you some time.”

“You burned down the apartment.”

“
I
did?” she said. “That's funny. When are you going to grow up, Ian? When are you going to stop blaming everything on me?”

“When you stop fucking up my life,”
I said. But the words came out as a roar, angry—no, hysterical, impotent. The rage was building, a heat that was growing from my gut, rising up my throat like reflux. I couldn't control it. Who was I kidding? I'd never been able to control it.

She rose and the very earth seemed to rumble beneath us. She was the queen of rage. I was just her apprentice.

“Did you think you could just be done with me?”

Her voice was just a whisper, but it seemed to come from everywhere, from the walls and the ceiling, from the air. I felt the vibration of her anger in my nerve endings, an electric tingle. She flung out her arms. The whole house shook, photographs rattling on walls, cups chattering in cupboards, drywall shivering.

“Did you think you could just be done with this house, this land? We
belong
to this place, and it belongs to us. We don't get to go anyplace else, not forever. Our bones belong here.”

“No,” I said. I thought of the graves out back, the old house where I first saw her. “You, maybe. But not me.”

The rumbling all around us grew louder, an oncoming freight train, a tornado, a hurricane.

“There is no
you and me
,” she said. Still that horrible deafening whisper. “There is just
us
. We're one.”

“No,” I said again. I moved closer; I wasn't backing down. Not this time. “Megan is my
us
. She's pregnant, Priss. She's having our baby. Whatever our problems are right now, that will bind us.”

She stared at me, and for a moment there was a flicker of something on her face, something so young, so afraid, so very sad. I realized I had always seen it in her, had always known on some level that she needed me as much as I needed her. A deep urge to comfort and protect her bubbled up through my rage like a cooling blue spring.

I took a breath and sank down onto the couch.

“Let me go, okay?” I said. “Please.”

And then the storm was on us, the world shaking, shattering, the roar of it deafening. And Priss, screaming, burning. I ran from her, up the stairs, into my childhood room, and slammed the particleboard door while the house rattled and shook all around me and then went silent as a tomb.

When I went back downstairs, she was gone. How had she gotten there? Where did she go? You might be wondering about the logistics of Priss. The truth is this: I don't understand them myself.

•  •  •

She only has as much power as you give her
, my mother had warned me once. That, too, was starting to make a kind of sense. All of this information I had in my head; it was floating around in there, amorphous, not taking shape, not always accessible. But as with any addiction, you have to hit rock bottom, lose everything to finally start paying attention to the advice people have been trying to give you. You can't hear it until you're ready to do something.

I'd say if there was a rock bottom, I was lying on it.

I'd all but lost Megan. I had been evicted from my apartment, was virtually penniless. I would certainly be accused of assaulting, possibly killing, a police officer. (Was he dead? Had she killed him? I had no idea.) I would definitely be accused of starting the fire I'd seen burning in my apartment. In a million years, no one would ever believe it wasn't me. Not even Megan. Especially not Megan. I just kept seeing the look on her face in the park, the surprise, the hurt. I was about as fucked as a person could be.

Still, because I was a screw-up of epic proportions, there was a kind of inertia. Might have something to do with the mystery pills. The world was a bit foggy, not quite solid. I sank again onto the couch and a cloud of dust erupted, causing me to cough and sneeze in loud, angry shouts.

Then there was silence again, the sound of my own congested breathing. What would I write for myself? Something had to happen. I had to take action. But I couldn't. In my real life, Priss was the instigator, the avenger, the doer. I was the angst, the do-nothing, the doormat, the impotent worrier. It was true in the book, too. It was why I couldn't write the ending I wanted for Fatboy. Because he couldn't make a move without Priss. He was just the puppet on the end of her strings. But not me. I am not Fatboy. I had to do something. How long did I sit there thinking that?

There was a light knock on the door then, and I stood frozen as if I'd just heard a sonic boom. The silence expanded and my heart was beating in my throat. Who was it? Megan? The police? After a moment, I moved carefully over to the window and saw a white Prius parked in the drive. Another knock.

“I know you're in there.”

It was a woman's voice, soft but somehow strong. I flung the door open, thinking that it was Megan for some reason even though it didn't sound anything like her. Desperation plays tricks on your mind. But it was Eloise Montgomery, looking older and smaller—it had been over ten years since last I'd seen her and the decade had taken its toll. She looked even more tired than I was.

I took a step back from the doorway and watched as she moved slowly inside. I shut the door.

“You didn't listen to me,” she said. It seemed like she was continuing the talk we'd had ten years ago, like somehow I'd summoned her to finish the conversation my dad hadn't allowed.

She clutched a cheap-looking pleather pocketbook to her side, her gaze demanding acknowledgment. I lifted my palms in a gesture of haplessness. She bored into me, seeing, assessing. I'm not sure what kind of judgment she made, but she finally let me go, her eyes scanning the room.

“I can't really blame you, I guess,” she said. “You were just a kid. Your father's son. He never listened either.”

I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing. She walked around a little, her bony fingers glancing on the edge of the couch, a picture frame, the mantel. Somehow her presence in the house made it look even more dumpy and worn down.

“But you're really in deep now.”

She seated herself in the chair by the window, smoothed out her simple black skirt, and tugged at a threadbare blouse. The psychic business must not be as lucrative as I would have imagined.

“She's angry,” said Eloise. “I can feel it everywhere.”

I could have written that line. That's what the Eloise character would have said in my book. Of course, in my story, she's a fraud because everyone is always trying to rip Fatboy off. They are always trying to strip him of his meager accomplishments. And they usually succeed.

“I don't have any money,” I said. “I'm seriously broke. So if this is the moment where you tell me you can ‘clear' the house, or exorcise my demons, or show me how to walk into the light or whatever, you can just skip it.”