Читать книгу As I Descended - Robin Talley - Страница 10
ОглавлениеLily watched Maria make her way shakily toward the bathroom. This might be the only chance the two of them got to talk all night.
Lily reached for the dresser to steady herself so she wouldn’t have to deal with her crutches and hopped toward the bathroom on her right leg. Delilah reached out to help, giggling. “Give me your hand!” Delilah squealed.
Lily slapped her away. Delilah and the others laughed.
Lily smiled. They could think it was a joke if they wanted.
“Princess is totally going to hurl, man,” Austin told the others. “At least she’s got her roommate to hold her hair back.”
Good. Lily followed Maria into the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink and the shower full blast. Hot water—it was already cold enough in that tiny room. The others would think Lily had the water running so they didn’t have to hear Maria throwing up, and Lily and Maria could talk without having to worry about the sound carrying. Lily shut the bathroom door, turning the lock. The heavy brass bolt looked like it had been rotting in the deep brown wood for the last three hundred years.
Maria sat on the edge of the bathtub next to the door. Lily lowered herself next to her, trying not to grimace as her muscles clenched.
She was tired of everyone’s stupid stories. The obnoxious blind girl Lily roomed with before Maria used to talk about ghosts, too. She even dreamed about them. She’d wake up panting in the middle of the night. Once Lily had to hobble over to her bed and shake her until she woke up. She’d been gasping so much Lily was afraid she was going to stop breathing.
Lily had been having nightmares all her life. People didn’t need to make such a big deal about them. She never had.
She leaned into Maria’s shoulder and rubbed her hands together. Their room was always cold, and the bathroom was especially freezing. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Maria looped her arm around Lily’s back absently.
“Swell party.”
“Tell me about it.” Maria took another swallow of beer.
Lily took the can out of her hand and put it on the sink. “How many of those have you had?”
Maria shrugged. Lily smiled uneasily.
It had been Lily who’d suggested the two of them become roommates. That was the summer before last year, when her old roommate finally graduated. There were no other disabled students left at Acheron, so Lily could’ve had a single room, but she asked Maria to move in. They were only casual friends back then, because Maria was a jock with a string of popular ex-boyfriends and Lily was neither of those things. Even so, something about Maria had always struck Lily.
It wasn’t just that Maria was gorgeous. It was more the way she looked at Lily. Like she was really looking at her. Really listening to what she had to say.
Maria was the only one in their class who looked at Lily like she saw a girl who happened to be holding crutches. Not a pair of crutches that happened to be holding up a girl.
Lily waited a full minute to see if Maria would start talking, but she didn’t say a word. Instead she played absently with the tail of Lily’s braid and stared straight ahead, as though mesmerized by the mildew forming in the cracks under the sink.
It was eerily reminiscent of how she’d looked the night before. Staring into that empty corner of the ceiling, like there was something up there only she could see.
“Can we talk about last night?” Lily finally said. “Please?”
Maria shrugged again.
“I barely even remember what happened,” Lily said. “Was that real? Because I know I didn’t move that thing myself. And I don’t speak Spanish.”
Maria slowly turned to face her. “What difference does it make?”
Lily laughed without humor. “It said something to you, didn’t it?”
“So?”
“So? What did it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please don’t lie to me, Ree.”
“I’m not lying.”
Lily took Maria’s hand and squeezed it. Maria squeezed back.
Maria had a thing about holding hands. She could do it for hours and never get tired. Sometimes she even liked it better than kissing. When you were holding hands, she said, you knew it wasn’t about sex. It was about liking somebody and wanting them to know it.
Last year Maria had been in charge of a fund-raising drive for the student council. They were supposed to raise $5,000 for a women’s shelter in Lennox. Maria started calling Acheron alumni and made their goal with her very first call, to a lawyer in New York who said she was delighted to hear Acheron was finally trying to do some good in the community. The lawyer wrote a $5,000 check then and there, and everyone celebrated the end of the fund raiser.
But then Maria raised their goal to $10,000. She made more phone calls. She organized parent receptions and car washes. The council members grumbled about how much work they had to do, but no one worked harder than Maria, even though it was the middle of soccer season. They raised $12,000 for the shelter in the end—and the girls’ soccer team lost the league championship qualifier to Birnam. Maria said the fund raiser didn’t have anything to do with it, but Lily suspected that if the team had won that game, Maria would’ve looked a lot better to the Kingsley committee.
Maria was sweet, no question. Sometimes, though, that sweetness got in the way of her getting what she deserved.
“I looked up the Spanish,” Lily told her. “It said you were going to get whatever you wished for most.”
Maria shook her head.
“It did,” Lily said. “Didn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
“Then come on, Ree!” Lily squeezed her hand. “You should be happy! Whoever it was—Jesus or Satan or my great-grandpa James—it said you’re winning. We’ll get to be together next year!”
Maria shook her head again. “You know how much I want that, but none of this means anything. It’s done.”
“It’s not done until they announce the actual winners. That won’t be until after Christmas break. It’s barely even November. We’ve got time to change things.”
“But it’s too late to—”
“Don’t you want to come to the same school as me?” Lily shook her head. She loved Maria, but she could be so frustrating sometimes. So willing to accept things the way they were. When Lily always saw the way things could be. “Don’t you want to win, Ree? Isn’t that what you’ve wanted your whole life?”
That wasn’t fair to say, and Lily knew it. Of course Maria wanted to win.
The Kingsley Prize was half the reason Maria’s parents had sent her to Acheron instead of one of the day schools near their house in McLean. Everyone knew an Acheron senior always got a spot on the list, and it would look good for Maria’s mother if her daughter won the most prestigious scholarship in the state.
Lily hated to picture Maria at some boring, lesser college, like Cornell or UVA. She’d be wasted someplace like that. Someplace where she wouldn’t be challenged.
Someplace where she might meet someone she liked more than Lily.
But it wouldn’t be that way. Lily wasn’t going to let it.
“At least try, that’s all I’m asking,” she begged Maria. “Don’t make me go all the way to California without you just because you didn’t want to try.”
“I tried.” Maria stared down at the floor. “I’ll try again. I’ll keep trying. Maybe if they’d made me soccer captain I’d have had a chance, but—”
“Wait.” Lily frowned, thinking. “The Kingsley Prize. Homecoming. Soccer. Maybe there’s a way to do all of that.”
Maria’s heart pounded. The air in the bathroom was starting to feel way too much like the old dining hall had the night before.
That strange sensation hovered at the edges of her consciousness. The feeling that she and Lily weren’t the only two people here.
“Hang on.” Lily pulled her phone out of her pocket. Maria watched over her shoulder. She was texting Brandon. Asking him when the athletics department had scheduled the fall round of drug testing.
“What are you doing?” Maria said. “What difference does that make?”
“It’s just an idea.”
Lily’s phone buzzed right away. Apparently, Brandon was still awake, hanging out alone in his room while his friends were all down here. It made Maria sad to think about.
According to his text, the testing was scheduled for Wednesday. If they told anyone where they got the info, Brandon would get suspended for sure, and—
Lily shut off the screen.
“Wednesday,” Maria said.
Lily and Maria gazed at each other. Suddenly Lily’s plan became clear.
Maria had always regretted not turning Delilah in. She’d be soccer captain right now if she’d told on Delilah and Coach Tartar. She might even have been in the top spot on the list this morning.
Was this . . . her second chance?
“If Delilah comes up positive on the drug test—”
“Then she’s off the team, and on probation too,” Lily finished. “Maybe even suspended.”
Last year two seniors had tested positive for pot a month before graduation. They’d gotten suspended for three weeks. They both had to take incompletes for the year and make up the credits over the summer.
“It’ll go on her permanent record,” Lily said. “The prize committee will find out. It would go on her college applications too.”
“And that means—”
Maria’s heart was still pounding. But with excitement this time.
Delilah was high right now. Right on the other side of that door. How perfect would it be if she got herself kicked off the team, kicked out of first place in the senior class, kicked off the list of Kingsley finalists?
Lily was right. It should have been Maria the whole time. All of it should have been hers. With Delilah out of the way, Maria could have everything she’d ever wanted.
This was too good to be true.
Wait.
“Hang on,” Maria said. “Today’s Saturday. How long does oxy stay in your system?”
Lily picked up her phone again and Googled. It wasn’t easy to find the answer. They had to go to a bunch of different sites, and they all seemed to say different things. Most said you’d test positive for oxy about three or four days after your last dose.
“Three or four days,” Lily said.
“Three or four days.”
“So if she took the stuff tonight—”
Maria counted. “Wednesday is four days away. It might work.”
“It’s five days away, counting today. “
“So we’re screwed.” Maria leaned over the edge of the tub and put her head between her knees. It was all over before it had even begun.
“Unless she does it again right before the test,” Lily said slowly.
That sensation was prickling along Maria’s neck again. The feeling of being watched.
“She won’t.” Maria kept her head down, her eyes fixed on the floor. “We have practice every day this week. She never parties the night before a practice.”
“She might if you asked her to. Hasn’t she been pestering you to go with her into town?”
“Ugh, yes.”
Delilah loved going into the decrepit little town next to campus. In Lennox, the teenagers wore “Jesus Saves” T-shirts, the storefronts had been boarded up for the past decade, and a redneck with a bottle tucked into a brown paper bag sat on every other stoop. Going into town and goofing off while the townies watched with hatred in their eyes had always been one of Delilah’s favorite activities, especially when she could do it with Maria.
Lately Delilah had been getting sentimental about school ending. She kept talking about how she was going to miss her friends so much. Even though, as far as Maria could tell, Delilah didn’t have any real friends.
That, Maria thought, was why she did oxy. Because it made her feel like she loved everyone.
Maria was pretty sure Delilah didn’t know how to love anyone at all, except maybe herself. She’d feel sorry for her . . . if she didn’t hate her so much.
“Tell her you’ll go out Tuesday night,” Lily said. “To that sketchy bar by the Kroger. They never card. I’m out of oxy until next month, so I’ll get some from Austin. Once Delilah sees you have it she won’t be able to say no.”
“Yes, she will. The night before a practice when the league championship is three days away? She will.”
“Well, if she does, then when she goes to the bathroom you put it in her drink.”
Maria’s head jerked up. “I what?”
Lily’s face was so calm it was scary. “You’re not doing anything to her she doesn’t do to herself every weekend already.”
Maria closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see that look on Lily’s face anymore.
This was crazy. It was beyond crazy—it was insane. Resenting your friend was one thing. Drugging her was something else.
“But—no,” Maria said. “I just can’t.”
Lily said something else, but Maria didn’t hear her.
There were rules. Laws. The world was set up a certain way.
Maria’s mother was a politician. All her life, Maria had been trained to be the model daughter. Speak when spoken to, keep your hair combed, and don’t break the rules. Or, if you do break the rules, don’t let anyone catch you.
The problem was, Maria never really understood the rules. She didn’t get why everyone cared about them so much. She just knew that if she acted like she did, most of the time she got what she wanted. If she studied long enough, she got an A. If she practiced hard enough, she won the game. If she worked hard to raise money for charity, her name moved up the ranks for the Kingsley Prize.
And most of the rules were pretty simple. You didn’t kick puppies. You didn’t say mean things to little kids.
You didn’t put things in people’s drinks.
“I can’t do that.” Maria spoke each word slowly, carefully. “I can’t just drug someone.”
“She’s drugging herself right now! If the test were tomorrow, the same thing would’ve happened, and you would’ve been fine with that.”
Maria’s head was spinning. She didn’t know if it was the beer, or Lily’s words, or that strange, otherworldly humming in her ear.
She wasn’t supposed to think this way.
But what Lily was saying made sense. Too much sense to ignore.
This might be the last chance she got. The only time she could beat Delilah.
Lily was right. She always was.
They weren’t doing anything to Delilah she wasn’t already doing to herself.
“Besides,” Lily went on, “this is what the spirits said would happen anyway, right?”
It was hard for Lily to stake her whole life on something an old piece of wood off eBay told her. But if that was what it took to make Maria take this seriously . . .
Maria was staring at the floor again. Lily laid a soft hand on her cheek and turned Maria to face her.
Lily swallowed, but she didn’t let her face change. She couldn’t let Maria see her uncertainty.
She couldn’t let herself feel bad about this, either. Guilt was a weak, useless feeling. Guilt got in the way.
Delilah didn’t go around feeling guilty for the things she’d done. She just enjoyed what she’d gotten from them.
“Look,” Lily said. “When you show it to her, she’ll probably take it. You won’t have to do anything except have a drink and pretend to be nice to her. Everything will work itself out from there.”
Maria stared into Lily’s eyes. Lily held her gaze.
She’d never been able to look away from Lily’s eyes for long.
Maria didn’t say anything for a long time.
Finally, she said, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Maria leaned her head on Lily’s shoulder. She kissed her, right at the place where her T-shirt collar met bare skin. Lily made a contented sound.
“Think about what it’s going to be like, Maria.” Lily’s voice was slow and rhythmic. Maria loved it when she said her name that way. “Not having to worry about her getting in our way. Then next year we’ll never have to see her again. It’ll be just the two of us, in California, away from all these awful people. We can do whatever we want.”
“Just the two of us,” Maria echoed.
She pictured it. Sitting on the lawn of their college campus, holding Lily’s hand, where anyone could see.
Next year they could finally really live.
If they could just skip the part between now and then, Maria would be perfectly, deliriously happy.
She lifted her head and kissed Lily’s lips.
Usually Maria was careful when they kissed. She knew Lily’s legs hurt more than she let on. If Maria got carried away, if she was too reckless, she might wind up hurting her somehow.
Tonight Maria forgot about being careful. They both did. Maria loved Lily so much in that moment she wanted to fuse them together until they never had to be apart again.
Their kisses were hard and fast, the mist from the shower clinging to their hair and making their skin slippery. This was the kind of kissing that didn’t stay in one place. The kind where lips and tongues and voices and breath all got mixed up.
They kissed so long they forgot what they’d been thinking. They kissed so long they forgot how to think altogether. Every word they’d spoken vanished into the steam from the shower. Nothing mattered but this feeling.
Maria loved kissing Lily more than anything. More even than the feeling of winning.
Sometimes Maria would find herself sitting in Advanced Calc at ten in the morning thinking about this feeling. About the way their bodies fit together. The sensation of Lily’s skin against her own. The way it felt when it was dark, and they were alone, and all the layers that separated them in the light—the rules and the lying and the loneliness—were gone. When it was just the two of them, connected in a way Maria had never known was possible before.
She pressed her lips into the curve of Lily’s neck, the soft place just above her collarbone, and Lily giggled, a soft giggle reserved just for moments like this. Usually, Maria was anxious to tell the world about what she had with Lily, but sometimes she was glad to have these moments all to herself.
Maria slid her arm around Lily’s waist, under her shirt, and had her bra unhooked before either of them remembered half the senior class was just on the other side of the door. Then, for a frantic minute, even though they remembered, they didn’t care.
Things might have gone further if something hadn’t slammed into the wood behind them. Both girls leaped up, remembering the knocking from last night. Lily was scrambling to fix her shirt when Ryan whispered loudly through the door, “Hey, Princess, you done hurling yet? Or can you take a break while I piss?”
Maria turned off the faucets. “You asswipe,” she hissed back. Laughter echoed from the other room.
Without the rush of water, the room seemed empty. Whatever feeling she’d had before, of something in the room with them, it was gone now.
But Maria remembered.
She remembered everything. What they’d said. What she’d agreed to do.
First, though, she had to go back out there and smile at everyone. Fake her way through the rest of the night and another three days. Pretend to still be normal.
When she was pretty sure she never had been.
