‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘But you said that this is the way it has to be.’
When we left the closet, the halls were empty. Sixth period had started.
The theatre door swung towards us, and Scarlet emerged.
‘Oh hey,’ she said. ‘Where did you guys come from?’ She seemed a bit distracted, which I imagine was because of opening night.
‘We were in there,’ Win replied, indicating the closet. The hallway was a dead end, so there was really no other place we could have come from.
‘Why were you in there?’ Scarlet asked. She didn’t seem suspicious, just curious.
‘Because Annie wanted to run through her lines and it was the only space where we could be alone,’ Win lied. Wow, I thought, he’s quite good at this. But then, I could easily imagine several scenarios in which Win would need to lie to a father like Charles Delacroix.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble remembering your lines? I would have run through them with you,’ Scarlet insisted.
‘No, you’re busy being the lead. I’m just a witch. I didn’t want to bother you.’ I was no slouch at lying myself.
‘Chief witch,’ Scarlet said. ‘I’m so proud of you, Annie. I could explode!’ And she was proud of me, I could tell, and for whatever reason, this nearly made me want to cry. Because despite the circumstances of my life, I had had no shortage of love. My sister loved me. My brother loved me. Nana loved me. It even seemed that this boy, this Goodwin Delacroix, loved me. But proud of me? I was unaccustomed to anyone being proud of me. Most anyone who might have been proud of me had died long ago.
I should devote a word or two to the play. It was a school play, maybe slightly better than most because Mr Beery expended significant time and effort into making us not be terrible and because the school was, as I have mentioned, well funded. Scarlet was the best one. (You probably guessed I would say this, but it doesn’t make it not so.) As for my role? The best thing I can say for myself is that I was the only witch who did not have to wear a wig. My dark, curly hair was deemed witchy enough, and, looking back, I’m not sure that my hair wasn’t the sole reason I was given the role of Hecate.
X I I I
. i tend to an obligation (ignore others); pose for a picture
O
VER CHRISTMAS BREAK,
Win and I took the train to Albany to visit Gable Arsley in the rehab centre. I had told Win that I was fine to go by myself as it might be strange for my new secret boyfriend to accompany me on a visit to my badly injured ex-boyfriend. Win argued that he knew the area better than me, and I relented. Whatever. It was a long train ride, and the Hudson River, murky and shallow, didn’t make for much of a scenic view anyway.
Christmas Eve, Gable had sent me a message asking me to come. I suppose Christmas had put him in a contemplative mood or maybe he was lonely. He had written that he had had a lot of time to think since he’d been ill and he knew he’d behaved badly towards me. His doctors thought he might be ready to return to school soon, and he’d like to know that everything was all right between us before that happened.
I had visited the Sweet Lake Rehabilitation Centre before because Leo had been briefly sent there after he’d been injured. It was a nice place, as much as any of these types of places can be considered nice places. I’ve visited my share of hospitals and rehabilitation centres, and the main thing that terrifies me about them isn’t anything you see there, but the scent. The chemical-cleanser smell, sweet and awful, covering up illness and weakness and death. Ironically, there was no lake by Sweet Lake, just a big cavern of dirt where a lake or pond must once have been.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ Win asked when we got to the lobby. We were far enough away from home that we felt we could hold hands, but now I didn’t want to in case Gable’s parents or siblings or friends were nearby.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘I think I should go with you. Isn’t he the same boy who tried to force himself on you?’
I shrugged. ‘Honestly, Win, I don’t know who he is any more, but my gut tells me that you in the room will only make him’ – I searched for the right word – ‘irritated. Besides, I’m tough. I’ve been taking care of myself for years.’
‘I know you’re tough. That’s one of the things I like best about you. I just want to make life easier for you sometimes.’
‘You do,’ I said, and then I kissed him quickly on his nose. I’d meant to leave it at that, but then I kissed him again, on the mouth.
Win nodded. ‘All right, tough girl. I’ll be waiting out here for you. If you’re gone more than a half-hour, I’m coming in after you.’
I gave my name to the receptionist at the desk and she gave me Gable’s room number, 67, and pointed me down a corridor.
I knocked on the door.
‘Who is it?’ I heard Gable say.
‘It’s Anya,’ I said.
‘Come in!’ His voice sounded odd in a way that I could not quite pinpoint.
I opened the door.
Gable was seated in a wheelchair that faced the window. He rolled around, and I saw his face. The texture was pocked in some places and still raw in others, and a strange patch of skin was sewn from his left cheek to the corner of his mouth – it was this skin graft that was slightly impeding his speech. There were bandages around some of his fingertips. And his body looked extremely thin and weak. I wondered why he was in a wheelchair and so my eyes drifted down to his thighs, then to his knees, then to his foot. Yes, foot – there was only one of them. The right one had been amputated.
Gable watched me look at him. His grey-blue eyes were still the same. ‘Do you find me repulsive?’ Gable asked.
‘No,’ I said honestly. The circumstances of my life had not allowed me the luxury of being squeamish around injury.
Gable laughed – a tinny, flat sound. ‘Then you’re a liar.’
I reminded Gable that I had seen worse things in my life.
‘Yes, of course you have,’ Gable said. ‘The truth is, I repulse myself, Annie. What do you say to that?’
‘I can understand why you would feel that way. You’ve always cared so much about appearances. Like that day at school . . . I know you hated having the spaghetti sauce on your shirt more than anything else’ – I paused to look at Gable and he nodded and, oddly, even smiled a little at the remembrance – ‘but how you are now . . . No one can deny that you are much changed, but I suspect it isn’t as bad as you think.’
Gable’s laugh came out as a wretched bleat. ‘Everyone says I shouldn’t say such things, but not you. This is why I love you, Annie.’
I did not feel the need to reply. He was still a liar.
‘For a long time, I wished I had died,’ Gable said. ‘But not any more.’
‘That’s good,’ I replied.
‘Come closer,’ Gable insisted. ‘Come sit on the bed.’
Through our exchange, I had been standing by the door. Even though Gable was confined to a wheelchair, I was still wary of him. Bad things happened when the two of us were alone.
‘I won’t bite,’ he said, kind of like a dare.
‘All right.’ As there were no available chairs, I walked to the bed and sat down.
‘Do you know why I lost my foot? Sepsis. I’d never heard of it. It’s when the body starts shutting down and attacking itself. I also lost three fingertips.’ He waved his damaged hand towards me. ‘But they say I’m lucky. I’ll walk again and even dance. Don’t I look like a lucky, lucky boy?’
‘Yes, you do.’ I thought of Leo and my mother and my father. ‘You look like someone who survived something awful.’
‘I don’t want to look that way,’ Gable said. ‘I detest survivors.’ He spat out the word
survivors.
‘My father used to say that the only thing a person needed to be in life was a survivor.’
‘Oh, spare me the pearls of wisdom from the criminal! Do you think I have any desire to hear anything your father had to say?’ Gable asked. ‘The whole time I was with you, it was
Daddy this
and
Daddy that.
Your father’s been dead a million years. Grow up, Anya.’
‘I’m leaving,’ I said.
‘No, wait! Don’t go, Annie! I’m unfit for company and I’m sorry.’ Gable’s voice was whiny and babyish. I suppose I pitied him.
‘The thing is, you’re still handsome,’ I said. And he was. His skin would heal. He’d learn to walk again and then he’d be the same old awful Gable, hopefully a tiny bit kinder and more empathetic than the previous version.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes,’ I assured him.
‘You’re a damned liar!’ Gable roared. He rolled himself towards the window. ‘I’ve thought of you every day, Annie,’ Gable said in a quiet voice. ‘I waited every day for you to come on your own, but you never did. I thought you would have, considering you had some role in my fate, but you never did.’
‘I’m sorry, Gable,’ I said. ‘We weren’t exactly on the best of terms when it happened but I did mean to come. I don’t know if you heard but I was sent to Liberty. And then I was ill myself for a while. And then I just lost track of time, I suppose. I should have come.’
‘Should have. Would have. Could have. Didn’t.’
‘I really am sorry.’
Gable said nothing. He was still facing the window. After several seconds of silence, I heard him sniffle.
I walked over to him. There were tears running down his ruined face.
‘I treated you so badly,’ Gable whimpered. ‘I said terrible things about you. And I tried to make you . . .’
‘It’s forgotten,’ I lied. I’d never forget what Gable had almost done, but he had been punished enough.
‘And you loved me! The way you used to look at me. No one will ever look at me like that again.’
I hadn’t loved him, but it seemed cruel and beside the point to mention that now.
‘And you were my only real friend. None of those other people meant anything to me. I’m ashamed,’ he said. ‘Can you ever forgive me, Annie?’
He was truly pathetic. I decided that I could indeed forgive him, and then I told him so.
‘I’ll need friends when I’m back at Trinity. Can we be friends?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He reached out his ‘good’ hand for me to shake and then I shook it. He pulled me towards him and the move was so unexpected that I stumbled into him. That was when he kissed me on the mouth. ‘Gable, no!’ I stood and pushed his wheelchair away from me hard enough that the back handles banged against the window.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘I thought we were going to be friends again.’
‘I don’t kiss my friends on the mouth,’ I said.
‘But you leaned into me!’ he sputtered.
‘Are you mad? I tripped!’
I turned to walk away and, with surprising speed and force, Gable aimed his wheelchair at me. I was knocked over on to his hospital bed. At that moment, Win ran into the room and pushed Gable’s chair away from me.
‘Get off of her!’ Win yelled.
Win raised a fist towards Gable’s face.
‘Don’t! You’ll hurt him,’ I said to Win.
Win lowered his arm.
‘Who the hell is this?’ Gable asked.
‘My friend,’ I replied.
‘The kind of friend you kiss on the mouth, I’m betting,’ Gable replied. ‘Yes, now this makes sense. What’s your friend’s name? You look familiar.’
Win and I exchanged looks.
‘My name is Win, but you can think of me as Annie’s friend who doesn’t like men that force themselves on women.’
Then we left.
I didn’t speak to Win until we were on the train home.
‘You shouldn’t have burst in like that,’ I said.
Win shrugged.
‘I had it under control,’ I assured him.
‘I know you did, lass. You’re the toughest girl I know.’
‘“Lass”? Where did that come from?’
‘I don’t know. I just felt the urge to call you that. Does it bother you?’
I thought about his question. ‘It’s kind of girly but, no, I guess not.’ I put my head in the crook of his arm. ‘Were you waiting out there the whole time?’
‘Yes, I suppose I was.’
‘Gable will figure out who you are, and once he does, everyone will know about us,’ I said.
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad?’ Win said. ‘I wouldn’t care if people did know. Besides, Gable could decide to keep the information to himself.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Well . . . to blackmail us or something?’
‘Maybe.’ But I knew that blackmail wasn’t Gable Arsley’s style. Blackmail required planning, patience. Gable was all impulse.
When we got off the train in New York City, the paparazzi were waiting for us. ‘Hey, kids! Look over here! Smile!’
‘I guess Gable figured it out,’ Win whispered to me.
‘Anya, is that your boyfriend?’
‘He’s my friend from school,’ I yelled out. ‘We’re lab partners.’
‘Yeah, right.’
The pictures were everywhere by the next morning. They’d gotten one of us kissing as we left the train. The headlines were all something like ‘Star-Crossed Lovers?
Bravta
Princess and Asst. DA’s Son Find Love in the City’.
Win called me in the afternoon.
‘Are you calling to break up?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he replied, a bit amused. ‘My dad wants you to come to dinner tonight.’
‘Was he angry?’
‘He never asked me not to date you. He asked you, remember?’
‘So, you mean he’s mad at me? I think I’d rather not come, thanks.’
‘Are you scared? That’s not like you.’
I asked him what time I should be there.
‘Seven,’ Win replied. ‘I’d come get you if you didn’t mind another photo session,’ he joked.
‘Why do you sound so damn happy?’
‘Hmm. I suppose I’m sort of glad people know you’re my girlfriend.’
‘What should I wear?’ I asked gruffly.
‘I’m partial to that red dress of yours,’ he said.
I put on my trusty red dress and took a bus to Win’s house. It was a much nicer apartment than the salary of the assistant DA (or the DA for that matter) could afford. Either Win’s mother had made a killing in farming (possible), or there was family money.
Charles Delacroix opened the door before I even had a chance to ring the bell. He’d been waiting for me. He seemed significantly smaller inside this apartment than he had that day at Liberty and on the boat. It was as if he had the ability to expand or contract as the situation required. ‘You’re looking well, Anya. Much better than the last time we met.’