3. Reverberation

THREE

Reverberation

He wasn't there.

Not that day and not the next. Apparently, Nicholai Fell only worked at the school three days a week. I didn't even have his plant anymore. I had left it at Duke's trailer. I needed to go and get it. I needed his presence around me so that I could keep my food down again. So that I could hate myself just that little bit less.

I made my way to Duke's early in the morning, but nobody answered the door. I rapped on the kitchen window and then peered inside, trying to catch a glimpse of the plant. Instead, I saw a naked man with a tattoo coiling from his thigh to his stomach. The window framed his midsection. I thought it was a snake, but that was only because of the way it opened as it neared the groin, maws widening, fangs visible. There was some part of my brain that found it ironic. Almost hilarious.

A snake was about to bite his dick.

His erect dick.

If he was trying to say that his penis was a reptilian predator, the effect was lost on me. It just looked like it was in danger.

The figure bent down, and Duke's face replaced my view of the snake, reminding me he had another snake tattoo on his neck. He arched a brow at me, motioning to the front door. I met him there and was glad he had put on pants before opening it.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"I need my plant." I peered around him, pointing to the little bonsai on the table. It was entirely untouched, and so was the table. I suspected that he didn't often eat meals there.

"Oh." He scratched his short hair before running his hand over his jaw. "I was wondering where that came from."

"Where what came from?" a girl asked, appearing beside him.

She had messy red hair and cute freckles, but there was a sour look on her face. I didn't have to wonder why. She was in her underwear, and I was at the door.

"Never mind." Duke stepped in front of her, reaching over to the table for the plant. "Give us a minute, Angie."

I had no idea whether the girl obeyed him or not because Duke was quick to shut the door behind himself as he stepped out, forcing me to step backwards.

I tipped my head toward the bedroom window. "That your girlfriend?"

"Yeah." He was rubbing his jaw again. "Why?"

"No reason." I took the plant from him. "Thanks. See you."

"Wait." He grabbed my arm before I could walk off.

I turned, and our eyes met. He wanted something. It was evident by the way he waited. I didn't say anything. His grip on my arm tightened, and then he was drawing me away from the window. He moved so suddenly that my sandals became tangled, tripping me up. He caught me by the arms, lifting me free of the shoes. He turned, releasing me once I was caged against the outside of the trailer. I looked down at our feet in the dirt, peering around the leaves of the bonsai. I couldn't drudge up any fear or excitement.

There was nothing.

"Why do you keep wearing these dresses around me?" he asked, his hand digging into the curve of my waist. "I see you walking past every morning, every afternoon. Are you doing it deliberately?"

He was pressing against the bonsai's porcelain pot. It seemed like a flimsy barrier.

"No," I answered. "The path goes past your plot. I live here, too."

"I don't care."

The words were barely out of his mouth before he was kissing me. This time, it was gentle and persuasive. It thrilled him, I could tell. The suspense. The mystery. Who was I? Would we get caught? When he broke away, he was breathing roughly. I remained the same. I glanced down, realising that he had somehow knocked the plant out of my arms. The pot was in pieces, the soil spilling into a pile.

"Duke? Where the hell did you go?" Angie was calling out to him.

It sounded like she was leaning out of the door, or maybe she had her face against one of the windows. Duke swore quietly, disappearing without a backward glance. I could hear him talking to her, ushering her back into the trailer, giving her excuses. I fell to my knees, silent tears tumbling over my chin. I wasn't crying because of the kiss but because of the plant.

I was devastated. Furious. It felt like a sign. I would never be one of Nicholai's immaculate plants. He would never be able to tame the hurricane of memories that twisted at my mind and filled my chest with cement. I punched the side of the trailer in my fury, and the sound seemed to raise a new torrent of questions from Angie, which Duke worked to quieten.

" Is that who you were with last night ?" she screamed, her fury gradually raising to match my own.

Apparently, Duke had a problem.

But I had participated.

Did that mean that I had a problem, too?

I gathered the plant, holding my dress out and scooping the soil into it. I left the pot because it sounded as though Duke was holding Angie back from barging out and confronting me. I ran the rest of the way to my RV and blew inside with all the chaotic energy of a tornado. I didn't know what to do with the plant, so I dumped the soil into a cracked bucket that had been hiding in the cupboard beneath the sink. I re-planted it and gave it a cup of water. And that brought me to eleven o'clock in the morning. I wasn't even halfway through the day.

Satan was nowhere to be seen.

I searched the gardens for him but gave up as afternoon crawled around. I began walking toward the train tracks like I would go to school, even though it was a Saturday. I told myself that I wasn't lost, and then I turned in the opposite direction to school in an attempt to prove it. An hour later, I found myself at the library. I had been there before, of course—I was eighteen, and I had lived in this town my entire life. I didn't have many friends anymore, but that was because they didn't know what to do with me, just like my teachers and Shel.

Some of my friends had visited me before I was put into the institution. I didn't remember the visits, but Shel told me about them. She told me that I snapped, that I screamed obscene things and frightened my friends away. That's why they weren't my friends anymore. It was a year ago, but they had not forgotten. I had left my mark on these people, somehow. A year of space, of silence, and they were still afraid of me. Time had only festered the rumours, building up my infamy into a Frankenstein's monster, piece by fetid piece. I could only assume that the carcass of my reputation was why nobody wanted me to go to class anymore. Someone had told the school about my obscene shouting. Everyone knew about how unstable I was.

Maybe they knew other things, too.

I signed out one of the library laptops and tucked myself away in the Young Adult section. It was always empty because the librarians considered the Young Adults to be children, as evidenced by the toddler-safe plastic table and chairs pushed up against the window. The Young Adults wouldn't be caught dead in there. I typed homicide victims into the search bar and then immediately backspaced over the words, replacing them with Why do people kill? Before I could hit Enter, another question began forming beneath my fingertips. It formed by way of me backspacing the letters I had carelessly typed out. One by one, I stripped them away until only the first word remained, garnished with a question mark.

Why?

I stared at the word for a long time. It was hosting an audition in my mind, casting the leading question of my life. Each option seemed more dramatic than the last, until the final combination clicked into place.

Why me?

I snorted, rolling my eyes. So melodramatic . It was easy to delete my question, and then there only seemed to be one thing left to search. One thing that would spur me to actually click the button.

Nicholai Fell.

His face appeared instantly: square-jawed, shadowed-gaze, intense and arresting. It was incongruous, even in the search results of his own name. I suspected that the image he presented was jarring no matter where he went or where his face appeared. I clicked on the icon and then navigated to the associated article. It was his profile at Stanford because he had just finished his PhD and had already been awarded a part-time position as a research professor in the School of Psychiatry. In a short section beneath the main profile, it was noted that Doctor Nicholai Fell was leading a new study on teenage deviance. I supposed it explained why he was slumming it at a public school several hours outside of Palo Alto, if nothing else. He was doing research on small-town deviants. The best kind of deviants. I pulled a piece of scrap paper from the pile on the plastic table and grabbed one of the colouring crayons that had been tipped neatly into a cup beside the paper, noting down Nicholai's email address. I navigated to a new tab and typed in a new search.

Teenage deviance .

Drugs. Pregnancy. Cyber-attacks. Rape. Alcoholism. It was his pamphlet shelf in digital form. I exited the search and logged into my email account, drafting up an email before I could stop myself or think twice about it—not that I was in the habit of thinking twice about things. Or once.

Were you a teenage deviant?

I sent the email, and then stared at the screen—specifically, at the return email address. It stated my name clearly. Nicholai would know that I had researched him. Maybe this was wrong. Unethical. I didn't really think he would mind, though. He wanted to help me, probably more than he usually wanted to help the constant stream of kids that dragged themselves into his office. I had seen it in his face.

He had chosen me.

How long would it be until he started to regret his choice?

I packed up my things, returned the laptop, and walked until my legs began to ache. It was nearing sunset, but I had the lighthouse in my sights, and I didn't want to stop until I reached my goal because it felt good to have a goal. See? I knew where I was going this whole time . I was going to the lighthouse. I planned it this morning as soon as I woke up. The thing that happened with Duke? It was just a brief detour.

The area was empty of people, probably because the wind had kicked up a notch. It bit at my cheeks and whipped my dark lavender dress against my legs. It was fall, but the beach anticipated the winter. I could feel the season change in the harsh, dry breeze, in the way the waves chopped up and down, licking at the air the way only icy water seemed to be capable of. Perhaps there was a storm brewing.

I huddled in the lighthouse doorway for a little while, watching the waves, cuddled up against the weathered wood until something furry brushed against my legs.

"Satan?" I blinked, my vision a little blurry as I tried to bring the cat into focus. He wasn't hissing. He was winding between my legs, brushing up against my calves, scratching his back against the hewn wood of the lighthouse door. Eventually, he sat, curling into a ball, huddled up in the doorway just as I was, watching the waves just as I did.

Was he a hallucination?

Unsettled, I pushed away from the door and left him behind. I walked along the beach until the cold wind numbed my aching body, and then I started for the strip, ignoring the shocked looks that were tossed at me by the people I passed. I didn't know why they were staring. Eventually, the pain in my legs grew to be too much, and I sat down on a bench outside one of the restaurants. Most of the places had closed for the night, but this one remained open. The dull, generic music floating from the open door was the perfect way to numb my mind.

A couple walked past me, the woman giggling softly. Her coat flapped open, one of the buttons brushing against my knee. She cast me a quick look—as though to apologise—but I wasn't paying any attention because Nicholai Fell was standing there. Staring at me .

"Jen, do you mind waiting in the car?" He was speaking to the woman beside him with the flapping coat, though he never took his eyes from me.

"A patient of yours?" she whispered.

I thought it was rude of her. I was right there.

"Go on," Nicholai urged, watching as she nodded and started away before he sat down beside me.

He pulled out his phone, dialled a number, and waited a few seconds before muttering an address. When he said, "Now, please." I assumed that he was calling me a cab. Somehow, he had known not to call my aunt and uncle. Maybe the school had been informed that I lived on my own, or perhaps he thought I was in some sort of trouble. He tucked his phone into his pocket and stood, shrugging out of his jacket. I felt it settle around my shoulders as I stared at the ground, and then he had my chin in his hand. He turned my face, examining me, wordless. His eyes seemed darker—more mysterious—out there in the cold. Out of his office. Out of the light of day. His jaw was tense.

"Do I need to be worried about you, Mika?"

What an odd question.

" Would you be worried?" I laughed as I said it. I sounded a little unhinged.

"Did you follow me here?"

I drew back, and his hand dropped to his lap. His eyes stayed intent on mine, emotion swirling just below the murky depths. Everything about him seemed so clear, so clean, so transparent. It was a lie. His eyes promised a vastness to rival the sea, a ripple of deep midnight blue with threads of colour that promised a vibrant life beneath the surface… but it was a lie . I was sure of it.

There was nothing calm or vibrant inside him. He just wasn't that sort of person.

"No." I turned away from him. "Do people really do that to you?"

"It has happened. Where are your shoes?"

I glanced down, swallowing a wince. My feet were a mess. Had I left the RV without shoes? I must have. Oh well. All part of the plan.

"Someone grabbed me. I tripped. He lifted me out of my sandals."

"Why did he grab you?"

"I suppose he wanted to kiss me."

There was a brief silence, and then he settled back, his arm stretching along the back of the bench. I could feel the heat of his body. He was only a few inches away. He seemed to be relaxing … but I paid more attention to Nicholai Fell than I did to any other human being these days, and I knew he was great at pretending. He was even better at pretending than I was .

"Did you want to be kissed?" he asked.

I whipped my head toward him, an image of his shelf of pamphlets flashing into my mind.

"It isn't as simple as that." I didn't want him to fit me into one of his topics on teenage deviance . He wasn't allowed to push my experiences into a box, to categorise my feelings like an online survey on social anxiety.

One of his dark brows inched higher, his mouth tightening into a firm line. "Isn't it?"

I grew angrier, and that insipid word popped straight back into the forefront of my mind. Why ? Why him? Why did he have to sit there, knees slightly parted, perfectly formed muscles evident beneath his pale green dress shirt, while my feet bled against the ground? Why did he have to stare at me with frightening eyes and immaculate features while I desperately scrambled to bury whatever pain I might have once felt beneath the numb remains of who I was now? He still smelt amazing—like the frigid breeze that had been whipping at me all evening. Every inhale with him sitting so close only reminded me of the sharp, icy sting against my bare arms and legs. I didn't understand why it had to be him trying to help me.

I closed my eyes against the image he presented, pulling his jacket tighter around myself.

"Want isn't so simple." The words slipped right out of me as my body began to shiver. I wanted that smell, that feeling of pain. I wanted him to move closer. Everything about him was pristine, undamaged, unblemished, and it annoyed me and intrigued me in equal measure. It annoyed me because it intrigued me. "Sometimes I want to scream at night," I admitted quietly. "Just to tear the silence apart. Just to feel that shiver in the air—the after-effects of something having happened. Sometimes I can't stand it. The darkness, the silence. It's so heavy, like one of those promises you're sure you can't keep, you know? It feels like death."

He stretched his legs out, his dress shoes edging into my tunnelled vision, pulling me back to his presence and away from the spiralling panic that had been moments away from clawing at me.

"You're wrong." He spoke softly, unassumingly, as though he wasn't outwardly invalidating my feelings. He leaned toward me, the arm that had been resting on the back of the bench shifting, landing over my shoulders. "That's what life feels like."

He had lowered his voice to a whisper, probably because my cab was pulling up to the curb. The warmth of his breath spread over my neck, causing another shiver, and then he was standing, his body heat abandoning me altogether. He offered me a hand. I didn't take it. I was developing a dependence on him already. I knew it, and I didn't want to encourage it. I needed to take care of myself. I handed his jacket back without looking at him.

"Take care of yourself," he said, watching me hobble to the cab.