The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (9 page)

I wasn't cold; I had brought Tanya's boyfriend's thick jacket. I fumbled around in the pocket and found a big, dirty knife, which I opened and closed to make myself feel safer. I thought about walking back, but if I got lost I would absolutely have freaked out. I though about going under the branches into Zachary's house, but I didn't know what to expect and for some reason that scared me more than the darkness.

He came out then, looked around and whispered, “Jen."

I stood up. I was so relieved that I didn't even hesitate. His eyes were red-rimmed, like he had been crying. He extended one hand to me.

"God, it's scary out here,” I said.

He put one finger to his lips.

He didn't ask me why I'd followed him; he just took my hand and led me further into the forest. When we stopped, he just looked at me. He swallowed like his throat was sore. This was my idea, I reminded myself.

"Sit down,” I said and smiled.

"You want me to sit?” He sounded reassuringly like himself.

"Well, take off your pants first."

He looked at me incredulously, but he started to do it.

"Underwear too,” I said. I was nervous. Oh boy, was I nervous. Mostly I had been drunk all the times before, or I had done what was expected of me. Never, never had I seduced a boy. I started to unlace my work boots.

"I can't,” he said, looking toward the faint light.

"You don't want to?” I took one of his hands and set it on my hip.

His fingers dug into my skin, pulling me closer.

Why are you doing this?” His voice sounded husky.

I didn't answer; I couldn't. It didn't seem to matter anyway. His hands—those juggling hands that didn't seem to care what he was thinking—fumbled with the buttons of my jeans. We didn't kiss. He didn't close his eyes.

Leaves rustled and I could smell that rich, wet, storm smell in the air. The wind picked up around us.

Zachary looked up at me and then past my face. His features stiffened. I turned and saw a white horse with muddy hooves. For a moment, it seemed funny. It was just a horse. Then she bolted. She cut through the forest so fast that all I could see was a shape, a cutout of white paper, still running.

I could feel his breath on my mouth. It was the closest our faces had ever been. His eyes stared at nothing, watching for another flash of white.

"Do you want to get your stuff?” I said, stepping back from him.

He shook his head.

"What about your clothes?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I'll get them,” I said, starting for the tree.

"No, don't,” he said, so I didn't.

"Let's go back.” I said.

He nodded, but he was still looking after where she had run.

We walked back, through the forest and then the graveyard, back, back to the comforting stink of urine and cigarettes. Back to the sulfur of buses that run all night; back to people who hassle you because you forgot your work boots in the enchanted forest where you cursed your best friend to live a life as small as your own.

I brought Zachary back to Tanya's. She was used to extra people crashed out there, so she didn't pay us any mind. Besides, Bobby was over. That night Zachary couldn't eat much, and what he did eat wouldn't stay down. I watched him, bent over her toilet, puking his guts out. After, he sat by the window, watching the swirling patterns of traffic while I huddled in the corner, letting numbness overtake me. Bobby and Tanya were rolling on the floor, wrestling. Finally Bobby pulled off Tanya's shorts right in front of the both of us. Zachary watched them in horrified fascination. He just stared. Then he started to cry, just a little, in his fist.

I fell asleep sometime around that.

When I woke up, he was juggling books, making them seem like they were flying. Tanya came in and gave him a tiny, plastic unicorn.

"Juggle this,” she said.

He dropped the books. One hit me on the shin, but I didn't make a sound. When he looked at me, his face was empty. As if he wasn't even surprised to be betrayed. I felt sick.

Three days he lived with me there. Bobby taught him how to roll a joint perfectly and smoke without coughing. Tanya's boyfriend let him borrow his old guitar and Zachary screwed around with it all that second day. He laughed when we did, but always a little late, as though it was an afterthought. The next night, he told me he was leaving.

"But the unicorn's gone,” I said.

"I'll find her."

"You're going to hunt her? Like one of those guys in the tapestries?” I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “She doesn't want you anymore."

He shook his head, but he didn't look at me. Like I was the crazy one. Like I was the one with the problem.

I took a deep breath. “Unicorns don't exist. I saw her. She was a horse. A white horse. She didn't have a horn."

"Of course she did,” he said and kissed me. It was a quick kiss, an awful kiss really—his teeth bumped mine and his lips were chapped—but I still remember every bit of it.

That fall, I took my stuff and went back to my foster home. They yelled at me and demanded to know where I'd been, but in the end they let me stay. I didn't tell them anything. I went back to school sometime around Halloween. I still read a lot, but now I'm careful about the books I choose. I don't let myself think about Zachary. I turn on the television. I turn it up loud. I force my dinner out of cardboard boxes and swallow it down. Never mind that it turns to ash in my mouth.

In Vodka Veritas

Wallingford preparatory has two tracks. One is for kids who want to get into the good colleges that private boarding schools—even ones in New Jersey—are supposed to help you get into. The other track—the one not mentioned in the brochures—is for rich kids kicked out of public schools. It's probably been that way since before they let the girls in, back when this place was just the one building that's boarded up on the edge of the campus. Put on a jacket and tie every day and all sins are forgiven.

I've been at Wallingford five years—since I got expelled from the seventh grade for making a knife in metal shop. But I wasn't being psycho like the girls here think. If some asshole jock threatens to jump me after school because I made him look stupid in homeroom, I'm not going to just take the beating like a good little geek. My skinny ass wouldn't have exactly won in a fair fight, so I didn't play fair.

My mother says that I don't think about consequences until it's too late. That might be true.

But seriously, most of the reasons why Wallingford girls think I'm crazy are stupid rumors. Like it wasn't my fault that after the school trip to France, everybody said I brought back the head of some guy who got into a motorcycle accident on the Rue Racine. Come on, anybody who believes that is a moron! How would I have gotten a head through customs? They won't even let in some Anjou pears. And painting my fingernails black is a cosmetic choice, not a symbol of my eternal devotion to Satan. It's also one of the only things I can do to get around the dress code—make-up is allowed and the handbook doesn't specify only on girls.

Yeah, so I guess you picked up on my lack of school pride. Want to know what Wallingford is really like? Each year, they have a fundraiser to restore Smythe Hall—that boarded-up eyesore I mentioned earlier—and each year the only thing that gets built is an addition on the Dean's house. That's also why we have to have our prom in our own banquet room. Sure, it's better than a gymnasium, but the public school kids get to dance and eat rubbery chicken in the ballroom of a Marriott.

It's not like I don't do any extracurricular activities, though. I'm the founder and president of the Wallingford gaming club—The Pawns. Our shtick is to break into empty classrooms and project Playstation games on the whiteboard or jerry-rig Doom 3 tournaments with our laptops. Sometimes we even go old-school and play paper-and-dice Dungeons and Dragons. It's my job to decide. That pretty much makes me Lord of the Losers. Which is great if you want a Phantom Blade with a Fiery Enchantment, but not so great if what you want is a date to the prom.

Luckily, my best friend, Danny Yu, V.P. and secretary of the Pawns, doesn't have a date either. There are many reasons why I love Danny, but the biggest one is that he's the only person at Wallingford as crazy as me.

Like one time, when he was home sick, he saw some daytime talk show that had a bunch of KKK members on and gave out the official website. So Danny flips open his laptop and sends them an email:
I am very interested in starting my own chapter of the Klan. Can you tell me what thread-count sheets we should wear?
A half hour later, he sends another one from a different account:
Do you believe that white bread is racially superior to other breads?
They never emailed him back.

Come on, you can't blame that shit on DayQuil. That's plain genius.

So it's the week before prom and we've already been shot down a couple of times. We're in Latin class and we're supposed to be translating something about Dionysus. He's going over our seriously limited choices instead.

"I could ask Daria Wisniewski,” he says. “She likes comics."

"She has that creepy doll with the goggles she takes everywhere. Odds on her putting it in a matching prom dress and bringing it along."

"It could be your date, then,” Danny says. “Perfect."

"What about Abby Goldstein?” I list off the reasons this is a good idea on my fingers. “Hot. Redhead. Talked to me twice without actually needing to."

"Dude, she'd never go out with you. Not even if she had a nasty fetish and you were the only one discreet and desperate enough to take care of it."

"Very vivid—that fantasy of yours. Weird that it's about me, though."

"Boys,” says Ms. Esposito. She's tiny, shorter than a sixth-grader, but not someone you want to piss off. She drinks coffee all day long out of a thermos that has a French press built right into it. “How about you tell me what the Bacchanalia were?"

I stutter something, but Danny turns nonchalantly on his chair and smiles his most ass-kissing grin. “The festivals of Bacchus, called Dionysius by the Greeks. People got drunk and had big orgies."

Some of the class laughs, but not Ms. Esposito. “He was called Dionysius by the Romans and Bacchus by the Greeks, but otherwise essentially correct. Now, can anyone tell me what the Maenads were?"

We can't.

"No? Well, if we're going to continue reading the story of Orpheus, it's important to know. It was said that the mysteries of Bacchus inspired women into an ecstatic frenzy that included intoxication, fornication, bloodletting, and even mutilation. They would tear those not engaged in celebrating Bacchus limb from limb."

The class is silent.

"Xavier, can you read the first paragraph in Latin?” Ms. Esposito asks. She looks satisfied, like she knows she can freak us more than we can freak her. As Xavier starts to read, Danny turns to me.

"Let's not go,” he says.

I'm still thinking about wild women, streaked with mud and dried, black gore. In my mind, it's kind of hot. “What?"

"Let's get into our rented tuxes, take pictures with our parents, pretend we're off to get our dates, score a bottle of booze and do something dumb, something different.” His kiss-ass grin has not faded and I realize something about that smile. It's kind of smug. Charming but smug.

I'm torn. On one hand, it sounds like a pretty good plan. On the other hand, it's a plan I didn't come up with. “Let's break into Smythe Hall. Do some urban exploring right on campus."

"Genius.” His grin widens into a smile and the naked, crazy girls fade from my mind.

The night before we're supposed to go, Danny calls me. “Um, dude. I feel like a dick, but I have a date. I'm going to the prom."

I'm in my dorm room, downloading torrented episodes of
Veronica Mars
and googling the old school. I was going to tell him that there were photos on Weird NJ of the place. I was going to tell him that supposedly someone remembered having a prom there. I had maps and everything printing in color off my inkjet.

My hamster, Snot, runs on his wheel and I hear only the clack, clack, clack of the wire because I'm not speaking. Snot's been hiding the choice bits of seeds from his food bowl for the last half hour but now he's finally decided to kick his night into high gear. Lucky him.

"Who?” I ask.

"Daria,” he says. “She asked me, man. And she has a friend who could go with you—"

I don't wait to see who the spare friend is that Daria Wisniewski's willing to throw in to sweeten the pot. I don't ask if it's her stupid doll. I just hang up the phone.

He calls back twice, but I just let the phone buzz. I look at the tuxedo hanging on the door of the closet. Inside, underneath the floorboard I pried up myself, is the half bottle of Grey Goose left from the ones I took from a pile of my parents’ corporate gifts during the holiday break. Now it seems like there isn't nearly enough.

My roommate left for his dad's house this afternoon. He and his date are taking the SATs in the morning and then going straight to prom. I'm not sure if he thinks that's like foreplay or what. Anyway, I'm glad he's not here, because my eyes burn like I just got dumped.

I know I'm not supposed to cry over a guy standing me up. So I don't. But I have to practically break my knuckles against the brick wall outside my window to manage it.

By the time I get to the abandoned part of the school on prom night, I'm already drunk.

The good thing about living at a private school is that you already know how to break into places. You learn how to break into other guys’ rooms to take their hot cocoa mix and soup cups. You learn how to break into unused classrooms because that's the only place you can really set up a bunch of computers for a tournament. If you're like Danny and me, you learn how to grappling hook out of your dorm room and break into the cafeteria because sometimes what you really need is a sandwich.

So, basically, I take off the hinges. No problem if you're sober, but it takes a while for me and I have to set down my bottle. Then I almost knock it over. It makes a hollow sound and scrapes over the concrete. I snatch it up by the neck and stumble inside, leaving the door just leaning there, sagging from the knob.