Save Yourself (27 page)

“This morning. We left it okay, you know? I mean, I was bummed, but whatever. If she doesn’t want to get married yet, we won’t get married. But she still didn’t want to—you know. Do it. Said she didn’t feel like it.”

Patrick felt an unpleasant sting of gladness. “Maybe she didn’t.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah, but Caro almost always feels like it. I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but it’s true. You remember she had that flu right after New Year’s?” Patrick nodded. “The night before she got sick, that was one time she didn’t want to. And then a couple weeks ago, I think she was mad because I wouldn’t take her to that stupid cemetery. It’s not like we have sex constantly. I mean, half the time we’re both too damn tired to even think about it. But most of the time, she’s pretty up for it. Until this morning.”

“You proposed and she turned you down,” Patrick said. “Maybe she felt like it was weird.”

“No. Something’s up. She’s hiding something. I love her so much it makes me sick to my stomach, you know? The thought of her with some other guy—I don’t even like thinking about her ex-boyfriends. Guys say the whole if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-will thing and they
sound like psychos. But you find yourself in that position, you start to understand.” He dropped his beer can onto the concrete step and brought the heel of his sneaker down on it hard. Patrick thought that he’d probably heard the crack of beer cans being crushed in the womb. It was a primal noise, heavy with all twenty-six years of his life.

“You going to do something stupid?” Patrick said, careful to make his voice light.

Mike laughed. “Yeah, I’m going to do something stupid, all right. I’m going to play it cool, let her get it out of her system.” He leaned down and disengaged one of the remaining beers from the plastic rings. “No point asking her about it. She’d just lie.”

“Caro’s not a liar.”

“Try asking her about her mother sometime. She’s a psych nurse. No, wait—she’s a social worker. No, wait—she’s sick, she’s got lupus or arthritis or that chronic fatigue thing. I think the night we met she told me she was dead. Not that I care, I really don’t. She could tell me the sky was made of Silly Putty and French fries and I’d believe her. I love her, that’s all. I really love her.”

Patrick looked at his brother. Mike’s cheeks were unshaven. His shirt was spotted with oil and paint and god knew what else. The way his shoulders slumped and his hands hung slack between his knees made Patrick think of the old man, and with that came a sliding-on of weight, like he was betraying everyone, everywhere, in the whole world, just by being himself.

“I know you do,” he said.

“When you love somebody, you don’t just give up on them when they do bad things. You fight for them.” He didn’t look at Patrick but there was a faintly self-righteous note in his voice that made Patrick wonder if he was still talking about Caro. He didn’t ask.

She came to see him at work, that night and the next: on her way home from the restaurant, in the weird nowhere-time of the night shift, Mike at home sleeping before an early morning punch-in. Wearing her restaurant clothes, white blouse and black skirt, she
leaned across the counter toward Patrick in his candy-striped Zoney’s shirt, their four hands laced together on the scarred Plexiglas surface. They talked. When they were done talking, on Sunday, he took her into the storeroom and they made out for a long time before she had to go. On Monday they didn’t bother with the storeroom; she just came behind the counter. If anybody had ever bothered to review the security footage, Patrick would have been fired, but he didn’t worry about that. It was the night shift. There was nobody in the world but the two of them.

TEN

“Get up,” Layla said.

It was—when? All Verna knew was that the sky had been light and now it wasn’t; she’d heard noises in the house and now it was quiet. Layla stood next to her bed, holding Verna’s boots. She was dressed to go out.

Her voice was grim but not unkind. “You can’t just lay here. You have to get up.”

Verna turned her face to the wall but Layla wouldn’t leave. Finally, creakily, Verna managed to pull herself out of bed. Hard fists of pain throbbed everywhere the girls had hit her, and drawing air into her lungs was pulling against an incredible pressure. The world was full of glue.

But every time she faltered, Layla’s hands were there: pushing her into the bathroom, brushing the tangles out of her hair—after Mother picked her up from school she’d taken a shower but hadn’t been concerned with things like combs—and getting her dressed and into her boots.

“What day is it?” Verna said, dully, as Layla pulled out of the driveway.

“Wednesday. Don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything.” Layla turned the car toward town.

Verna wondered where they were going. The lost time bothered her. “Nothing at all?”

Stopped at a red light, Layla tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. “What do you want to hear? Neither Kyle Dobrowski nor Calleigh Brinker was struck by lightning. Jared Woodburn failed to tell me to ask you to the prom. The cafeteria served tacos.”

Verna said nothing.

The light changed and Layla gunned it, sending the car jerking too fast through the intersection. “Yeah, Vee. Everybody’s seen it. The world is full of liars and assholes and the only people worth anything are us.”

What was left of Verna’s spirit crumpled inside her.

“Reactions from theatergoers were mixed.” Layla bit savagely at the words as they left her mouth. “But the girls who clucked their tongues and said ‘oh, poor thing,’ watched it just as many times as the guys who asked me where my little sister learned to suck a dick like that.” She paused. “A couple of people told me you ought to go to the police. Your would-be boyfriend was one of them.”

The police. The mental image of Calleigh Brinker and the others being led handcuffed into the police station with their RHS volleyball sweatshirts pulled up to hide their faces brought Verna a dim burst of satisfaction. Like when the guy who killed Ryan Czerpak had been arrested and they’d all cheered. But Verna also remembered how hollow Rachel Czerpak’s face had grown by the time that guy was sentenced. How Danny quit talking in Worship Group, how their two surviving kids became as watchful and nervous as squirrels. And the drunk had pled guilty. Calleigh would never plead guilty to anything. There would be a trial, there would be testimony. The video would
be evidence. They’d bring a television into the courtroom, or one of those computer projectors, like Mr. Guarda used. Her father would be there. He’d see it, he’d watch it—she could imagine his face—the disappointment—

“Should I?” Verna said.

Layla sighed. “Dad will make it a
thing
, Vee. He’ll send that goddamned video to every news site and talk show he can find. Save the children, and all that shit. Never mind how you feel about it.”

Verna imagined her father:
This particular issue is bigger than whether or not Calleigh Brinker made you suck off a banana, Verna. It’s about all of the girls and all of the bananas in America. You have to stand up for them, to bear witness. It comes down to everyday battles like this and everyday people like you
.

Verna did not want to stand up and bear witness for all of the girls in America. Verna wanted to die.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Wise decision. Sadistic fucks like Calleigh Brinker have been working their special kind of magic since we came down from the trees, or left the Garden, or whatever. They’re not new and they’re not going anywhere. The only way to protect yourself is to separate from them. Make yourself strong so they can’t hurt you.”

“Where are we going?” Verna said.

There was a pause. And then, “Justinian’s.”

Justinian lived downtown, in a dingy brick house squeezed between a tae kwon do academy and a bar. “His mother works nights,” Layla said, letting herself in through the unlocked front door. The inside of the house was plain, nearly undecorated except for the scented candles on every surface—the place smelled like a mortuary—and a few ceramic figurines, mostly birds. The beige carpet was studded with cigarette burns. The walls were deep shades of red and brown, and the curtain rods looked like wrought-iron spears.

Verna could barely imagine Justinian having a mother, let alone
living here with her and her collection of scented candles and bird figurines. “What’s she like?”

“His mother?” Layla shrugged. “Nice enough. She does whatever he wants. I think she’s a little in love with him, actually. Not that he minds. He says every overlord needs a minion. This way.”

From behind a door off of a winding, unlit hallway, Verna heard music playing. As they grew closer she smelled cigarette smoke and incense. Then the door opened and Justinian stood there: tall and gangly, black-clad as always. When he saw them he didn’t smile. “Good,” he said. “Come in.”

They did. It was like moving from a cave into a smaller, darker cave. The walls of Justinian’s bedroom were painted black and the room itself was immaculate, almost ascetic. The bed was neatly made, the black comforter taut and lint-free. All of the spines of the books were pulled forward to form a perfect line at the edge of the bookshelf. Philosophy, mostly. Lots of Nietzsche. Arranged like relics on the top of the bookshelf were two stubby red candles, a rosary, and a small wooden box. A chrome chain was wrapped around one of the bedposts. When Verna realized what it was, she cringed.

Justinian followed her gaze. “The dog collar is a joke. Layla bought it for me last year. That didn’t start with you, you know. Look.” He unwrapped it and put it in Verna’s hands, where it felt unpleasantly greasy. She wanted to drop it but it seemed to cling to her. He put his hands over hers. They were warm.

“Just a thing.” He took the chain and wrapped it around her wrist, fastening the clasp. “It can’t hurt you. See?”

Verna nodded, although the heavy feel of it made her shudder. He dropped her arm and the chain clinked as it slid to rest against her hand. Layla, meanwhile, had taken off her coat and hung it carefully in the closet, removed her boots and placed them next to the door. Now she was sitting, motionless, on the very edge of the bed, as if she was afraid she’d muss the comforter. Her hands were smoothing the
cloth beside her, almost nervously, and Verna could see her toes curling and uncurling inside her tights. She clearly knew this room, what to do with her coat and her boots, but the way she held herself didn’t seem entirely comfortable.

“Come on, Vee,” she said, and patted the bed next to her. “Sit down.”

Verna did. Justinian crouched on the floor in front of her and put his palms on her knees. “I saw the video,” he said.

She stiffened.

“All of it. What they did, what you did.” His Siamese eyes bored into her. She couldn’t look away. “The world is destroying you, Verna. Your way—your dad’s way, being nice and meek and compliant—it isn’t working. It’s making you powerless and weak. Other people take advantage of that weakness and the result is pain. The result will always be pain.” He looked at Layla. “Right?”

Layla nodded. He nodded, too. “Your dad’s way got your face splashed across the Internet with a banana down your throat. The Internet is forever, you know. That video will find you wherever you go. Every guy you meet, every job you have. Some sicko in Arkansas is probably jerking off to it as we speak.”

He was right. She knew he was. She could imagine the sicko in Arkansas. She could see him, as clearly as Justinian had seen what happened in the second-floor bathroom. Someday, years from now, Verna would walk into a party or a restaurant or a college classroom and someone she’d never seen before would gasp and say,
Oh my god, you’re Banana Girl!
It didn’t matter if she went to the police or not. The police couldn’t help her. For the rest of her life, Banana Girl was all she would be, ever. And that life would be a ruin, a wasteland.

All at once, Verna blazed with a deep, all-consuming anger, unlike anything she’d felt before. There was no soothing this fire, no talking it gently into subsidence. She wanted to be back in the bathroom. She wanted to fight. She would have to fight for the rest of her
life and she hated herself for not having fought then, when it counted. She pictured Calleigh Brinker’s face and wanted to claw it like a cat. Mar that pure, milky surface. Make the blood flow.

“Time to try something else,” Justinian said, softly.

It was hard to bring herself back to the present, to look at him. “Like what?”

“Does anybody mess with me, Verna? Does anybody try to hurt me?” She shook her head. “That’s right. You know why? Because they’re scared. Because I have power and they know it. My way works. Their way”—and somehow, he managed to include the entire rest of the world with a simple jerk of his head—“doesn’t. When you do things their way, you get hurt and humiliated and used. Layla knows. Layla has tried.” He turned to Layla, who was still sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap. “Haven’t you?”

Layla nodded slowly. “Justinian is right,” she said. “His way works.”

Verna thought of the effortless glide in Layla’s walk, the impermeable barrier of strength that seemed to surround her. Layla had always been confident but something had taken that raw confidence and molded it into armor. Dad talked a lot about God’s armor, shielding you from the world; about being protected by your faith, and the conviction that the things of this world were unimportant. But Verna’s body, her life—they were not unimportant. No matter what happened after she was dead, this was the place she was now; these experiences were the ones she had to endure. Whatever she had to do, whatever Justinian’s way turned out to be, it couldn’t be worse than being beaten to your knees in a high school bathroom and having a banana shoved down your throat.

In Layla’s face she saw love and sympathy and worry and grief. In Justinian’s she saw only love.

“How?” she asked.

He had a knife: a small, silver knife with an elaborately worked handle that looked as if it had been looted from a pagan tomb. His hands, as they rolled up her sleeve, were gentle but determined, like a
doctor’s. With the knife, he made a small, shallow cut on the meaty part of Verna’s arm, well away from the veins. The pain surprised her but faded quickly. A thin line of blood welled up from the cut and for a moment, the three of them sat and watched the line grow fat and shiny. Verna felt an alien satisfaction.