Teach Me (20 page)

sting

Stop.

I fall back, shuddering. Suddenly conscious of how far it’s gone, how much I’ve done. I cross my arms, hugging them to my chest, digging my fingernails into my skin in rage, in shame.

Is this true? Is that what I’m doing? Turning Schuyler into someone else I can hate?

He’s sitting up now, away from me, hands fumbling at his shorts. I wish I could see his face better. I don’t know what to say. There is nothing I can say.

Neither of us speaks. I crank the engine. The headlights are defined by hurtling slashes. I’m almost afraid to drive, but we can’t stay here; the parking lot is filling with runoff.

I dare to glance at Schuyler. He’s staring straight ahead, lips tight.

“Why would I ever hate you?” I say. “Why?”

He shakes his head violently, throwing off flecks of shine.

“Please, Schuyler. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Can you? Can you forgive me?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“Do you know—?” He stops.

“What?”

“Do you know how important you are to me?”

“I—”

“Did you know that? Did you know how tough this has been? For me? I know you just want to be friends. I’ve always known it. So I did anything I could just to be around you.”

“Hey, I’m—”

“But I won’t take it like this. It can’t be like this. You’re just trying to make me into him. You don’t really feel that way for me.”

“Schuyler.”

“Two years ago you kissed me—it meant everything to me and not a damn thing to you. It was just fun for you.”

“That’s not true!”

“Just something new to try. Maybe it wasn’t even fun, I don’t know.”

“No. No, really—”

“And then the other day in your room—I think you would’ve killed me if you could have when you kissed me. It’s something I’ve always wanted, but all you wanted was to get back at him through me.”

“I’m sorry, Sky, I’m sorry.” I haven’t called him
Sky
since the seventh grade. He doesn’t like it.

We listen to the rain.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I—I guess I was afraid of losing you. I didn’t want to lose you,” I say.

“Lose me! How could you lose me?”

“As a friend, I was afraid it would mess everything up.”

“So what has changed?”

“Everything! Everything has changed.” I start to cry. The tears are warm on my face, but I’m so cold. Schuyler puts his hands out to me. I don’t know if he wants to hold me or push me away. We touch each other’s fingers, trying to find a comfortable middle place.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry about what he did to you. It’s going to be okay, really.”

I’m not sure of this at all. I brush my eyes and take his face in my hands. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. I’ll tell them the truth, it was all my idea, I made you do it.”

“That’s not true. Don’t lie for me. I wanted to help. I was right there too.”

I take his hands. “Okay. Then we’ll go through this together. Together. Whatever happens.”

I lean over and kiss him lightly on the cheek. He lets me.

mechanical death

We’re heading home.

Whose home, I’m not sure.

I try to talk Schuyler into letting me drop him off; he won’t.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m always here.”

“Okay.”

Rain is beating the road ahead of me. I can barely see; we’re crawling along. Here and there cars have pulled over to the shoulder, emergency lights flashing.

“Damn,” Schuyler says.

“Quarter.” I sniff.

“Not funny. Be careful.”

I watch the flashing cars go by. “I’m taking it easy. If I keep going this slow, nothing can happen, right?”

“I don’t like this.”

All I can see on the windshield are fat circles expanding and vanishing, replaced by new ones faster than I can think.

“I should have replaced these wipers.” They sure aren’t squeaking now.

“I don’t think anything could help in a rain like this.”

The sky is utterly black. A lightning bolt shivers in the air between two shoals of thunderheads, stitching them together, hanging in the air for an unnaturally long time.

We drive forever. It’s hard to find my street. My heart is in my throat as I pull alongside the driveway. Nothing there but Dad’s pickup and Mom’s Bug. No cops, no green Honda. Are they already in bed? I should’ve called. Mom’s cell is standing in the ashtray, the ringer turned off. What did they do to deserve a daughter like me?

“I don’t want to go home,” I say.

“What do you want to do? What can we do?”

“I can still drop you off. Tell him nobody else was with me.”

“No. I’m sure he saw us together.”

“I bet he wouldn’t recognize you. You want me to drop you at home? Come on.”

“No.”

“It figures,” I say.

“What?”

“That it would end like this, one big messed-up downer. I was feeling so good back at the Chan Auditorium.”

“Be honest.”

“Okay. I was scared to pieces. But so what? We pulled it off, didn’t we? Perfect. Now the rain, the dark—it makes everything bad, doesn’t it?”

“That’s because everything
is
bad.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t do anything.”

“Oh, sure. You’re going to stop, right? You want to stop?”

I swipe wet hair from my face as I think about it. “As Country would say, hell, no. But it’s over. It’s got to be.”

He squeezes my arm. “Let’s run away.”

“Oh, come on, Schuyler.”

“Really. How much gas do you have?”

A truck suddenly lumbers across our field of view. Its glistening blue panels could be the hull of a freighter. I’m going so slow, there’s no possibility of a collision; still, it’s like a wall appearing from nowhere. When it’s gone, when we’re breathing easier again, I check the gas gauge.

“Quarter of a tank. You’re not serious.”

A lock of Schuyler’s hair has slipped down over his eyes. He pushes it back. “Who says?”

“Where would we go?”

“I hear Madagascar is charming this time of year. The children eat hissing cockroaches for treats.”

“Not funny.”

“I don’t feel funny. In fact, I’ve never felt less funny in my whole life.”

“I feel flat. I feel like a flatworm must feel.”

Schuyler scratches at his hair. “
Arthurdendyus triangulatus
or
Artioposthia triangulata
?” he says gloomily.

“Aren’t those the same thing?”

“I don’t know. The ones from New Zealand. That project we did.”

I’m becoming hypnotized by the wipers. I’m hunched over the wheel, my chest almost against Wilkie’s horn. There is hardly any traffic now, but this is worse—there are no brake lights to follow. We’re in a submarine.

“Talk, just keep talking,” I say.

“About anything?”

“I’m a flatworm,” I say. “I have two simple ganglia instead of a brain. You can cut me into segments; I’ll grow new copies of myself. I’m parasitic. That’s all I can think about. Attaching myself to another person and living off him.”

“Mr. Mann?”

I can’t think of how to respond. I’m too busy listening to my mind.

“The male flatworm has a copulatory center in his last abdominal segment. Remember? But there is an inhibitory center in the ganglion that holds the copulatory center in check. It’s simple. You don’t need a female flatworm to make him want to screw. You can cut off his head with a razor blade. Once he loses his head, the copulatory center is released. Mechanics.”

“So you think all men are like that? Mechanical? Is that what you think about me?”

I wait to answer and then don’t answer. I ask a question instead:

“Do you want to live forever?”

Schuyler thinks in watery shadows. “Maybe we will,” he says. “Maybe science—”

“I think we already do.” I’m clutching the steering wheel very hard, face straight ahead, hands pale. “Not in the body, but in the germ plasm.”

“George Wald,” Schuyler says. “I knew this flatworm jazz was going somewhere familiar. His writings.
The Origin of Death
—”

“Every creature alive today is part of an unbroken line of life stretching back to the first primitive organism to appear on the planet three billion years ago. That’s what he said. That’s immortality. All the immortality we can hope for.”

My voice is getting higher, hands gripping more tightly. Go on.

“All that time, our germ plasm has been living the life of single-celled creatures, reproducing by simple division. All that time, that germ plasm has been making bodies and throwing them away when they die. What was it Wald said?
If the germ plasm wants to swim in the ocean, it makes itself a fish; if the germ plasm wants to fly in the air, it makes itself a bird. If it wants to go to Harvard, it makes itself a man.
Something like that.”

“Nine.”

“So what are we here for, Schuyler? Just to make sure the line of life isn’t broken?”

“Nine.”

“Is that all we are? Tiny little chunks of one big, unbroken life? So do we really matter at all as ourselves?”

“Nine!”

He’s grabbing at the wheel.

“What?”

“Car!”

It’s coming straight at us, headlights jiggling in the lines of rain. The two of us wrestle Wilkie Collins to the side and the green car passes.

Green.

I see the color in the moment when the car slides past in the reflection of our headlights. The rain has washed away the world of shapes, identifications, but the green smear is still visible. Then it’s gone.

Green.

“It’s him,” I say.

growing season

Schuyler flinches beside me.

“Who? Mr. Mann? How do you know?”

“Come on!”

I can’t make the turn here; there’s a median, but I can’t see it. It would be too easy to drive off the road. A little farther I find a break in the grass defined by the flow of water rushing through the gap. There must be six inches of rain pouring across the road in this place. I swing Wilkie around like a boat. “There!”

I’ve made a 180; the green car is not very far in front of us.

I can see Mr. Mann’s brake lights, that’s all: two receding red eyes. No other car is visible. It’s only possible to move at about ten miles an hour, especially in the low spots. The road is filling with water. I can’t see the wake we’re making, but I hear it rubbing aggressively at the bottom of the doors. I’ve never driven in water like this.

“What are you going to do?” Schuyler says.

“Follow him.”

“But it’s a flash flood! Don’t you see that water? Come on, Nine. Enough! Let it go for tonight. Pull over onto some high ground.”

“No. I’ve got to see.”

“See what?”

“Where’s he going! My house? Sunlake?”

“What does it matter? I don’t like this. Please leave him alone. It only matters if he’s bringing the cops, and nobody else was with him.”

“It matters.”

Schuyler settles back into the seat, resigned to whatever I’m going to do. “You’re obsessed,” he says quietly. With the rain, I don’t hear him; he has to repeat the words.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I say.

“You even admit it!”

“Sure, I do. Except you’re wrong. I’m focused. There’s a difference. That’s what I do, Schuyler. I focus. I don’t know any other way to do it. There!”

This is a very weird chase. It’s majestic. Slow. We’re close now, a couple of car lengths behind. Enough for my headlights to wash over his trunk. But I’m only aware of a metallic green rectangle and the silver line of bumper floating away from me.

We’re coming to a place with large blocks of watery, cube-shaped lights. An intersection. It must be. But where?

I can see the stoplight now. It’s hanging at a forty-five-degree angle in the wind. Mr. Mann and I move so slowly, the light changes from green to red to green again by the time we get there. I’m in danger of losing him if he makes it through the light first.

“He’s turning,” Schuyler says.

“Where?”

“I can’t see. But his blinker’s on. Turning left.”

One of the bright cubes of light is shaping itself into a Texaco station.

“Sunlake! This must be Zeirdt Road.”

“So he’s going home.”

“Yeah!”

I put my blinker on ridiculously and sidle over to where I think the turn lane might be. It’s impossible to tell, there’s so much water.

“So you know where’s he’s going,” Schuyler says. “Maybe it’s okay. Let’s go home.”

“No.”

The turn is stately and harrowing—the intersection is a double trough crossing four lanes of traffic. In the troughs the rushing water must be more than a foot deep.

“Don’t!” Schuyler says.

Wilkie shudders and balks, splattering the windows with spray. Mr. Mann is out of the deep place first and gains some distance. The other part of the road must be higher, up in the dry. I’m back to following the red eyes, but at least I can tell where the road is again.

“If I can trust him,” I say.

“What?”

But I can’t speak.

Something white is blooming on either side of Mr. Mann’s car. From here it’s impossible to tell what the blooming things are. They blossom and fall away, blossom and fall away again, like white smoke from the NASA test stands when they fire the shuttle engines. There’s something frightening about them.

Just as suddenly, the white things stop, fall away one last time. I don’t see them anymore. Mr. Mann is pulling away again, the red eyes getting smaller. I put on a spurt of speed.

“Wait. No,” Schuyler says. “Stop.”

I see what he must have seen. The red eyes are swinging in a smeary arc; they disappear after a quarter turn, are replaced by twin white eyes.

He’s turning around.

“Stop!” Schuyler says. “Turn around, now!”

“He’s coming!” Coming straight at us

The whole landscape is jiggling and dark. I have no street-lights here to gauge the boundaries of the road. I can only assume he’s staying on his side. I steer away from the center for what I think is the width of one car.

“Stop!”

“I won’t hit him, Schuyler. Besides, we’re going so slow, it wouldn’t be much of a crash. Want to play chicken?”

“Not the car, the—there!”

He’s terrified. Not warning me about Mr. Mann; he’s warning me about the white things. I intuit the word before he can actually speak it:

Water.

That’s what the white things were. Water so deep it was raging over Mr. Mann’s door panels. We must be coming alongside the swamp. The swamp behind Sunlake. The swamp that winds between the cypress trees. This part of the road is completely flooded. How deep, I don’t know.

We hit the flooded part with a smashing roar.

Water fountains around us like foam hitting the prow of a ship. The water is jetting so high, I can only see white out the windshield.

Schuyler makes a noise; I don’t know what to do. Some knowledge surfaces inside me. My father’s half-remembered words, something about the points getting wet in the engine. You can’t stop or you might never start again. You’ll be trapped in the flood. I plow ahead.

All my attention is on getting us through the water. I lose sight of Mr. Mann’s headlights. I’m forcing the car forward on pure telepathy now.

“Nine!”

I see the headlights again. Moving inexorably, suddenly much closer. I fight the wheel hard to the right and there’s a feeling of leaving the earth, a craft flying with no night instruments.

The swamp.

We’ve left the road.

The twin fans of illumination from the headlights rear up, then land on a broad, swirling surface. The weight of what is happening, the horror of it, settles on me in an instant with the intensity of a dream.

In the middle of the air, in the microsecond of the car’s crashing, I again see the truth: There is no control. It’s a myth. Whatever happens, happens.

Wilkie’s hood enters the flood first. Water explodes over our bouncing roof, drowns the world. Wilkie rebounds for a moment, lights jerking crazily. I see the shiny wet branches of trees. Our heads hit the ceiling with a sound of tearing fabric.

We’re falling now.

There is no sense of a bottom, only a bouncing motion, then a settling.

How deep is the water here?

Moments.

I’ve had them before like this.

Falling from a tree and catching myself. Losing traction on a hill and finding a root to hold. Sliding down a roof until my toes catch in the rain gutters.

None of those moments ever lasted as long as this. Time is broken into slices so small, they are tiny beyond measure. I have plenty of time to understand that the Last Bad Thing has come; my life is over. But a decision confronts me:

Give myself over completely or fight?

But fighting is silly, stupid, impossible. We’re still moving forward. There’s a great shuddering slam of metal against something immovable. My forehead smacks Wilkie’s steering column. My eyes flash with lights. I don’t know what’s happening to Schuyler. One of us screams in pain. Maybe both.

We’ve struck something. One of the trees?

I feel blood oozing down my forehead. Everything is as dark as anything can ever be. Wilkie’s lights are gone; we’re sliding down the base of the tree into deep water.