Читать книгу Dark Rooms - Lili Anolik, Lili Anolik - Страница 9

The last time I saw Nica before she died was on the way back from the tennis courts of Chandler Academy, the private boarding and day school in Hartford, Connecticut, where we were both students and our parents were both teachers. It was a Friday in April, a few minutes past five o’clock. Practice had just ended.

Nica was in front of me, walking fast, head down, racket bag rhythmically slapping her hip. Her skirt was pleated and short, rolled at the waist to make it shorter still. As she bent to retrieve a fallen sweatband, I glimpsed an underside of thigh, tan and smooth-muscled, a flash of cotton, too, hot pink like a lick of flame. I called her name once, then again. She didn’t turn around, though, until I put my hand on her arm.

Stopping, she stared at me, eyes slow-focusing in her head. “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know it was you.”

“Who else would I be?”

“Good question.” With a blink, she turned, started walking again. “Mr. Schaeffer said he was going to stick around, run drills for anyone who wanted to work on overheads.”

“Yeah?” I said, struggling to keep pace.

“I figured you’d want to.”

I was the team’s number one player. Had beaten out Nica for the spot. As far as mechanics went, she was the superior. Her strokes were sharper, crisper, cleaner, landed deeper in the court and with greater penetration. But I was a little faster and a lot more willing to scrap. If the rally became extended, she’d almost always go for the kill shot, hit something with verve and ambition that sailed just past the baseline; whereas I’d push the ball back to the center of the court, wait for my opponent to make the mistake. Basically, I was better at tennis the same way I was better at school, which is to say, I wasn’t. I was just a grinder and a grubber. She had too much style to do either.

“My overhead doesn’t need work,” I said, the breeziness of my words undercut by my strained tone.

She nodded distractedly.

I came clean. “Actually, I pulled a muscle a little bit hitting serves. Thought I’d give it a break.”

This time she didn’t bother to nod, and for a while we walked in silence.

Trying again, I said, “So, are you going to that party tonight with Maddie?”

“Unh-uh.”

“I thought I heard you say you were.”

She looked at me. “You were listening to our conversation?”

I shrugged: an admission.

When she was quiet, I snuck a sideways glance at her, scanning her expression to see if she was mad. She didn’t appear to be, though, just thoughtful, eyes downcast, fixed on the moving patch of ground in front of her. Since her mind was so obviously elsewhere, I watched her more openly than I normally would have dared. She looked different lately, beautiful as always but sloppily so, uncared for—hair in a crooked ponytail, feet slip-sliding in untied sneakers, lips chapped and swollen.

At last she said, “I only told Maddie that to get her off my back.”

And that’s when I understood. It wasn’t me Nica had been trying to avoid. “Maddie was bugging you?”

“Wouldn’t take no. You know how she is.”

I wanted to shake my head, say, How? But instead I lied, nodded. That familiar feeling of disconnectedness, the sense that people were mysterious to me in a way they weren’t to each other, descended. Before it could turn into full-on depression, I shook it off. Said, “If you’re going to be home tonight, I could help you with your French paper. I know it’s due Monday and—”

“Donnez-moi un break, okay?”

“What do you mean?” I said, surprised. “Why?”

“Because I’m not going to be home tonight.”

I half laughed. Of course she wasn’t going to be. Of course she wasn’t.

“And neither should you,” she added.

“But I always go to bed early the night before a match. You know that. And tomorrow’s is a big one.”

We’d reached Houghton Gymnasium by this time, were standing at the rear of the building, a few feet from the entranceway to the girls’ locker room. It was private here, and the late sun was mild. I tilted my head back to feel its warmth. A faint breeze was on the air, and when it blew, I could hear the clink of rope against metal flagpole. Nica turned to me. Slowly she lifted her right hand, brought it to her left nipple, then shook it rapidly back and forth: titty hard-on. Titty hard-on was a favorite gesture of hers and Maddie’s. It was meant to convey excitement—sexual—but, coupled as it always was with blanked-out eyes and a bored expression, was actually meant to convey the opposite of excitement—of any kind. So, basically, it was a put-down.

“What’s that for?” I asked, hurt.

“You’re already in college, Grace. Have been since forever.”

Not since forever. Since mid-December. I’d applied early decision to Williams. Nica, a junior, would apply to colleges next year. “So?”

“So you have no excuse for being well-rested anymore. Maddie invited you to the party, too, you know.”

Trying to act casual, as if my interest was low, “Maddie said that? She said I was invited?”

“She implied it. Same thing.”

It wasn’t. Not remotely. I flattened the corners of my mouth to show Nica I wasn’t fooled, but otherwise let it go. Then I said, “If you’re not going to the party with Maddie, where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Hot date?”

She smirked.

“Guess you and Jamie are giving it another shot, huh?” Jamie was Jamie Amory, Nica’s boyfriend of two years, her ex-boyfriend of two months.

I tried not to look relieved when she said, irritated, “How many times do I have to tell you? Jamie and I are over.”

“So it’s a mystery man.”

That smirk again.

“Not that much of a mystery. I know he likes to brand his girls.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it hit. Nica’s jaw dropped. “How?”

“X-ray vision,” I said. And when she just looked at me, “I was brushing my teeth this morning. You came out of the shower in a towel. You reached up to open the medicine cabinet. I saw your armpit.” The tattoo inside her armpit, specifically. An arrow, bloody-tipped.

Groaning, she said, “I’m going to have to throw out every bathing suit, tank top, and sleeveless dress I own now, aren’t I?”

“Or stop shaving under your arms.”

“Gross.”

I wanted to ask her who the guy was, but I didn’t want her to tell me only because I’d asked. I looked at her. She was staring off into the distance, worrying a shred of dry skin on her lip with her front tooth, like she was making up her mind about something. There was a shard of gold in her left iris, which, in certain lights and at certain angles, turned the eye from dark hazel to pure green. That was happening now.

Finally, her gaze came back to me. “I probably won’t be in till late tonight. Can you cover for me with Mom and Dad? Tell them I’m staying over at Maddie’s?”

“That depends. Will you answer my questions when you get home?”

She held up her hand, three fingers raised: Scout’s honor.

I pretended to think it over. “Fine,” I said, with a sigh.

She nodded her thanks, then opened the side pocket of her racket bag, pulled out her cigarettes, her zebra-striped Bic.

“Come on, Nica, we’re still at school,” I said, peering around anxiously as she lit up.

She exhaled. “Relax. We’re alone. Want one?”

I made a scoffing noise, a show of waving away her minuscule smoke cloud. “Those things are going to kill you, you know.”

She considered what I’d said, then shrugged. “Like I want to live forever.”

She started laughing. And a second later, to my surprise, I did, too.

I woke up the next morning from a bad dream I couldn’t remember—there and gone, too fast to be pinned down—drenched in sweat, heart pounding. Immediately I was struck by the conviction that something was wrong.

Nica.

I threw off my blanket and ran across the hall, opening her door without knocking. The room was in its usual state of full-scale squalor: unclosed drawers, unclean laundry, undusted surfaces, uncapped pens, lip-gloss tubes, soda and nail-polish bottles. The comforter was pulled down on the bed, and I could see the ghost of Nica’s body imprinted on the sheets, the pillows flat and dented. The fleece I’d borrowed from her earlier in the week, returned yesterday, though, was still at the foot, neatly folded, label facing up, which meant she’d slept someplace else. Looking at it, I told myself what I was feeling was anger. If she got caught by Mom and Dad, she’d not only get herself in trouble, she’d get me in it, too, since I’d lied to cover for her.

I stood there for a minute, absently rotating my shoulder, limber after a night’s rest and pain-free, trying to think what to do next. My cell vibrated in my pocket. I whipped it out, hoping it was her. It wasn’t. Just the weather update I had sent to my phone hourly on game days. No missed calls either, so I called her. Voice mail picked up. At the beep I said, “Thanks a lot, Nica,” in a tone that was angrier than I felt, the anger from before, if anger was ever really what it was, having already dissipated, replaced by unease. But why, I wondered, unease? There wasn’t anything weird or out of character about Nica spending the night in a bed that wasn’t hers. She sneaked out all the time. Maybe then it wasn’t her I was uneasy about. Maybe I was uneasy because I was supposed to play an important match in a couple hours. Telling myself that must have been it—prematch jitters—I slipped a sweater on over my pajamas, headed downstairs.

The house was quiet, and my footfalls seemed to echo on the stairs. I could hear an appliance in the kitchen—the microwave, bleating plaintively because someone stuck something in it, forgot to take the something out. And then another sound—a tapping, faint. Not Dad. He’d be at Chandler, supervising morning detention. Not Mom, either. She’d be in her darkroom, working. Had already been there for hours, no doubt. Besides, this wasn’t her kind of noise. Too furtive, too cautious. There it was again. I stood, rigid, ears aching with the effort of listening. And then, suddenly, I realized: Nica, trying to attract my attention without attracting Mom’s. She wanted me to let her in. I flew down the last step and into the kitchen.

It was empty, no one behind the back door. On the other side of the window above the sink, though, was a slender rhododendron branch, knocking against the pane with the breeze. I stared at it, trying to remember if I’d seen Nica take her keys with her yesterday, until the microwave sounded again, and I reached for its handle. Sitting on the rotating glass tray was the bowl of Grape-Nuts and soy milk Mom ate most mornings. I started for the darkroom, about to duck my head in, tell her breakfast was ready. Then, anticipating the way her face would go hard and flat, the snap of her voice, if I interrupted her, broke her concentration, I stopped. I turned instead to the back door, thinking Nica might be outside, waiting until Mom went upstairs to shower.

But the backyard was as empty as the kitchen, not a soul. It was a beautiful morning, though, the sky a deep blue streaked with wispy white, the sun a rich, buttery yellow. I stood there, the rays gently pressing down on my skin, seeping into it, warming it, and breathed in the daffodil-scented air. Through an open window, the sounds of the Wheelers, our next-door neighbors, eating breakfast floated lazily toward me: the murmur of their voices, Mrs. Wheeler, pregnant, asking Mr. Wheeler to bring her her calcium supplements and a glass of orange juice; the soft scrape of a chair leg against tile; the suctiony pop of a refrigerator door; and then the jounce and slosh of a juice carton being shaken. I could hear the delicate wing beats of the sparrows, fighting for space on the perch of the bird feeder dangling from the yard’s lone tree. Somewhere far away, a car engine revved to life, and, beyond that, the dim drone of a lawn mower.

I started walking through the grass, its sweet-smelling wetness sticking to my ankles and feet, over to the fence at the far edge of the property. Our house was owned by the school, and though not quite on campus, very close to it, separated only by a graveyard and a line of trees. When the trees weren’t full, you could see clear across the graveyard to Endicott House, Jamie’s dorm. They were full now, though, so the view was obscured.

I slid between two posts and entered the tiny woods. As soon as I did, the sunlight and warmth and snatches of family dialogue fell behind me. Inside, everything was green and black and cool and dank, dark with the stench of dampness and shadow, of ferns and fungus. The scrub pines surrounding me had branches growing every which way, tangling together in a sooty snarl that blocked out the sky. Their bark looked mean, rotten, and when I touched it, it crumbled under my fingertips, dry as a scab. Something caught in my throat and I shivered. Wiping my hands on my pajama bottoms, I quickly began walking the thousand or so feet to the other side.

When I reached it, was standing at the edge of the graveyard, I made a scan of the horizon for Nica’s fast-moving form. Many a dawn would she slip out of Endicott in one of Jamie’s sweatshirts, the drawn hood concealing her hair and most of her face. Cutting through the rows of tombstones and markers, she’d steal in our back door, undetected, except by me, watching from my bedroom window. She and Jamie weren’t a couple anymore, but there was a better-than-even chance that the new guy, with whom she’d obviously spent the night, was also in Endicott. That or Minot, the other guys’ dorm.

I didn’t see Nica as I was hoping to, though. Instead, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement or color. Only when I turned around, no one was there. Suddenly I noticed how quiet everything had become. Motionless, too, the leaves and trees perfectly still, not so much as a whisper of a breeze on the air. I closed my eyes. My ears filled with the beating of my heart, the in-outs of my breaths, the contraction of my throat muscles—sounds, I realized, that were always there but hidden, tucked away under every other sound—each shift, throb, flutter magnified, made significant, by the deep silence around me. And then a branch snapped and my eyes flew open. Pulling the old cardigan tight around my chest, I turned, started back to the fence.

That’s when I heard the police siren in the distance. It ripped into the morning, tearing it in two. For a moment I froze, transfixed. Then I began to run, but heavily, the way you do in nightmares, my limbs clumsy and strange, my feet sinking into the spongy earth, catching there, everything ground down and in slow-motion, and all at once I understood that I was in a nightmare: last night’s, the one I couldn’t remember but now, suddenly, in flashes, could. Still, I hauled my body along, through the trees, over the fence, toward what I knew—knew because it was there, all of it, in that piercing mechanical wail, knew because it was prophesied in my dream, as elusive as a scent, a shadow, a ghost, knew because it was written in the very blood flowing through my veins—would be as bad as it gets.

As I reached the sidewalk in front of my house, I spotted the cruiser with the siren. It was whipping around the corner of Upham, wide into the right lane of Fiske, rear tire bouncing off the median strip. An unmarked sedan followed seconds later. No swirling cherry lights, but I could tell it was a cop car nonetheless. No mistaking it for anything else. And watching the two vehicles cut sharp rights onto Schofield, the street the graveyard entrance was on, I felt my legs buckling, collapsing beneath me. I dropped first to my knees, then to all fours, the shock of certainty hitting me: Nica was dead.

My sister was dead.