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I rolled over to face the door. Henry stood there, shoes on and pants buttoned. A shirt-swoosh later, he was fully-dressed, and I was fully crying in my quiet way. Henry looked down at me, and I wondered what that look meant, now unable to read him at all. I closed my eyes and saw myself consuming what might have been a baby girl named Amelia (we could have called her Amy). And I saw Preston, all alone where I had left him.
I opened my eyes, and Henry hadn’t left. I sat up with the sheet pulled to my chest in the fashion of a PG-13 movie.
“Why would you tell me all that?” he asked. “You don’t even know me.”
Silent, trying to blink away ugly and embarrassing tears, I searched myself for an answer. Any I could find rang false — Oh, I saw that you make your bed and keep your CDs organized, so I figured you were a nice guy. The entire night ran through my head, from M&Ms at sunset to unanswered phone calls and panic attacks. When the answer came to me, it did so in an unspectacular fashion — not suddenly appearing, but drifting lazily into my head.
“Because I don’t know you,” I said. “Who the hell else am I gonna tell?”
Silence hung between us. I waited for him to say something, to tell me not to cry, or to come back to the bed, or even to smile.
Henry looked at me and said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I didn’t turn away, scorned. I kept staring at him and wondering what my face looked like in this moment of utter stupidity. Neither of us said another word until Henry put his hand on the doorknob.
“No,” I said. “I’m stupid. I’m sorry. I’ll go. This is your room.”
His flat expression faltered for a moment; his eyes and mouth turned down, and I saw a glimpse of something like guilt. Realizing you’ve fucked the crazy person can inspire such reactions.
“This isn’t my room,” he said, and despite the irrelevance of that detail, I couldn’t look at him anymore.
He left without my notice, joining the noise outside. I dressed in a quick, guilty way and found myself standing alone in the middle of a stranger’s bedroom, staring at a window I couldn’t jump out of. The stars had come out, and I couldn’t help but be struck by an obvious fact: though more seemed to dot the sky here, they were the same stars hanging over the city. Rural Pennsylvania had charmed me with its whimsy, and though those charms still stood, I had forgotten a problem consistent between the two dissimilar locales: human beings, myself included, and their endless errors.
I couldn’t be too angry at myself. He was an asshole — wasn’t he? I hadn’t been expecting epic romance, only a little human decency. Or had he been the normal one, a young man in search of a college-party fling, only to be faced with a crazy person babbling over devoured fetuses and family strife? In the aftermath of our encounter, that uncertainty sent my head spinning.
Before I could scream, or cry, or throw everything in every direction, the phone rang. I stooped and picked up the receiver without thinking of the consequences. Sometimes, the random insanity of living with a brain none of the school psychologists could ever break into allows for an unexpectedly fruitful split-second decision.
“Charlie?”
The music outside grew quieter.
“Prest-o,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the smile from my voice. “You haven’t vanished, right?”
“Not yet,” he said from the other end. “How about you?”
“The opposite,” I told him, without being sure what that meant. I didn’t much care for the bed anymore, so I sat down on the floor with my legs crossed beneath me. “Is She around?”
“Buying groceries. Feel free to speak freely.”
I couldn’t. Not at first. Any question I could ask seemed sure to invoke an unwanted answer. Any answer I could give him would only make him disappear a little more. But the need to know started an itch beneath my skin. I asked before I had to scratch.
“How is he?”
Preston hesitated. “He’s messed up, but he’ll survive. I think so, anyway. The hard part is over, and no one’s ever going to find out about it. Dave just needs some time to process.”
“I feel like shit,” I said. “I should be there to help you with all this. I’m the big sister.”
“Don’t,” he said, his voice turning the simple word into a command. “You’re out there doing what you need to do, for you. I can take care of things here. Besides, I think this thing with Dave, and the girl, and his friend with the bat — it’s probably the worst thing I could possibly have to deal with, right? All uphill from here.” He laughed, but the sound rang hollow. I saw an imagined flash of Dave, crying on the floor, and Preston, looking on at a grisly scene. I started worrying and couldn’t stop.
“Can we talk for a while?” I asked, because I had started to cry again without knowing why, and the music had gotten louder, and I couldn’t see the stars from my new vantage point on the floor. “About anything?”
He said yes. Of course he did.
Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, when my tears had taken a break and my hands had ceased with their panic-shakes, I posed to Preston my usual request.
“Promise me you’ll be there when I get home,” I said.
He promised.
I didn’t believe him entirely, but I believed him enough for that night. We stayed on the phone, and I forgot which 90120 character Henry had resembled, and then I forgot his face entirely.
I didn’t forget the faces of Dave or Preston, as I had left them — young, basically boys, fucking-up but not entirely fucked. I decided to keep that image in my head for when the bad thoughts came, or the anxiety-shakes, or the nights when I couldn’t get out of an unlocked bedroom — and for the inevitable day when they, too, would vanish.
About Jonathan Persinger
