Isaac
You’re doing it, I thought. You’re walking away from Willow, just like you promised yourself you would. How’s it feel?
“It fucking sucks,” I muttered.
It was a twenty-minute walk from the maze to the Fords’ house. Twenty minutes under a sun that was getting warmer with every passing day. It shone so brightly over Willow when she emerged from the hedge maze. The cold pallor of her skin the other night was gone and she looked fucking radiant with the sun in her hair and a smile for me. All for me.
How did I let this happen?
I hefted my backpack higher on my shoulder and reaffirmed my vow: I would give her Hamlet and nothing else. She’d give her Ophelia to me and that’s how I was going to get out of Harmony.
And I had to go.
The other night I hadn’t been able to sleep, as usual. I’d gone downstairs for a snack, but froze halfway through the living room. Brenda and Marty were in the kitchen, talking in low voices. I was about to backtrack when I heard Martin say my father’s name. I froze then, listening.
“…showed up at Nicky’s Tavern… Made one hell of a scene… Cursing Isaac out… Telling everyone he has a faggot for a son…”
Dad was arrested and spent the night in the drunk tank. The humiliation of it cut me to the bone. Not because of the gay slur—I was used to that. Pops wasn’t only the town drunk now, but the town’s ranting bigot as well. Our names back in circulation among the town gossips. I prayed Sam Caswell hadn’t been at Nicky’s that night. He and I did Angels in America two summers ago and he’d had felt so empowered by the experience, he came out to his friends and family. Now my dad was ruining that too.
God, I had to get out of Harmony, I thought as I walked, and lit a cigarette.
But Willow… Maybe, after I made my fortune like the heroes do in the stories, I could come back to Harmony.
The thought stopped me cold in the bright sunshine. In all the years of plotting my escape, coming back had never factored in.
“Shit,” I muttered as I blew smoke out my nose. I was finally on the verge of getting out for good and I meet the one thing that could bring me back. The universe had a sick sense of humor.
Fuck that, I’d focus on Hamlet. I’d take all these thoughts about Willow and give them to Hamlet. He could pine for her and regret their separation. He could be angry at her father and murderous toward her brother. Keep all this shit onstage, where words written hundreds of years ago could speak for me.
That evening, when rehearsal began at seven, Willow wasn’t at the theater.
Neither was Justin.
“We’ll give her a few minutes,” Martin said.
Twenty minutes later and still no sign.
A heavy feeling settled into my gut. I reached for my phone to text Willow, but she buzzed me a text first.
Isaaaaaaaaac I’m outside and OGM I am sooooooo drunk :D:D:D
“Oh, shit.” I grabbed my leather jacket off the back of a chair. “It’s her. I’ll be right back,” I told Martin.
I stood on the sidewalk outside of the theater, looking up and down the street in both directions. Finally, half a block away, in front of the liquor store, I saw her. She was standing with the group of guys—older men, not high schoolers—and laughing loudly.
I covered the distance between us in about three seconds. “Willow.”
“Isaac,” she cried, her face lighting up the way drunk people do, as if they hadn’t seen you in ten years. “Oh my God, you’re here.”
She slung her arms around my neck and I smelled a sharp bite of whiskey on her breath.
“You guys, this is Isaac. Isn’t he beautiful? He is so beautiful.” She placed her palm on my face and patted my cheek. “He’s a genius actor. He’s Hamlet. You see that big sign up there?” She jabbed a finger in the general direction of the HCT marquee with HAMLET coming soon in black lettering. “That’s him.” She smacked my chest with her hand. “He’s our Hamlet.”
“Willow, what are you doing?” I eyed the three guys who watched her with amusement.
“With the help of these fine gentlemens, I am purchasing some beer,” she said, with slow and careful enunciation.
I looked at one of the guys. He shrugged. “She gave my buddy fifty bucks for a six-pack of Heineken.”
“And you think it’s cool to buy underage girls beer?” I slipped my arm around Willow’s waist to hold her up. “Come on, let’s go.”
“No,” She pushed herself away from me, stumbling slightly. “I am not leaving here without my beer.” Her angry expression melted into joy as another guy came out of the store with a black plastic bag. He stopped when he saw me watching him darkly.
“No, no, no.” Willow wagged a finger at me. “No one tells me what to do.” She took the plastic bag from the guy and peered inside. “Oh, yes. Perfect.” She chucked him on the shoulder as if they were old buddies. “Keep the change, my friend.”
The guys moved on, laughing and shaking their heads.
“You gave him a fifty for twelve bucks’ worth of beer?” I asked.
“So what?” she said. “Back home I drank more than fifty bucks’ worth of my dad’s million-year-old Scotch, I’ll tell you that right now.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” I said, her whiskey breath wafting over me. “Willow, what happened? What is going on?”
She gave me a funny look. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m getting trashed.” She started to rummage in her plastic bag trying to wrangle one of the beer bottles out of its container. “You want one? Nobody likes to drink alone.”
“Not here, Jesus,” I said and took the bag away from her.
Her happy drunk face morphed instantly into anger. “I told you, no one is telling me what to do. Give me the beer or I’ll start screaming.”
“You’re drunk enough.”
As fast as it had come on, the anger now disappeared and her face crumpled. “You don’t get it, Isaac,” she said, gripping me by my jacket. “I need to get away from all of this.” She waved her hand over her head, as if trying to dispel a dark cloud of thoughts or memories.
A cloud of what? Put there by who? I looked into her wide, frightened eyes and recalled black X’s on her skin, and a deep fear uncoiled in my gut.
It’s bad. Whatever it is, it’s fucking bad.
“Please,” she begged. “Just take me somewhere.”
I looked back at the theater, then back at her, torn in two.
“The cemetery,” Willow said, her glassy eyes lighting up. “Take me to the cemetery. It’s really old right? Hundreds of years old? I want to go there. Please.” She firmed her voice. “It’s my choice. I’m getting wasted with or without you.”
Shit. Helping her get drunk felt like exactly the right thing and exactly the wrong thing to do. But if she were intent on going on a bender, better I was with her.
“All right, let’s go.”
She hooked her arm in mine like we were going to take a stroll down the boulevard. I fished out my phone and texted Marty:
Willow’s not feeling well. I’m taking her home. I won’t be back.
His reply came a minute later. Take care of her.
I walked Willow to my Dodge pickup and helped her inside, then climbed behind the wheel. She was already trying to dig into the bag.
“You have to wait until we get there,” I told her. “No open containers. Try not to get me arrested, please.”
Then I can spend a night in the holding tank, just like my old man. Wouldn’t he be proud?
“I don’t want you to be arrested,” she said with drunken solemnness. “That would truly suck.”
I had to chuckle, despite myself. Willow laid her head back against the seat, her eyes closed, smiling and humming to herself. Her hair was loose, falling almost to her waist in long blonde waves. She wore a black, tight-fitting, long sleeved shirt. It highlighted the swell of her breasts and the elegant curve of her neck.
She was the most exquisite girl I’d ever seen, even drunk off her ass. But she was drunk, which altered my attraction. Put any physical desire on the back burner. My job was to take care of her and that’s it.
And try not to get puked on.
“How much did you drink?” I asked. “What was it, Scotch?”
“Mm.” Her head lolled toward me. “My father, unbeknownst to him, genuinely… I mean generously let me partake in his stash.”
“How did you get downtown?”
She snorted wetly. “There’s such a thing as taxis. Even in little Harmony, you know. So many things here you don’t see.”
“I’ve lived here my entire life,” I said. “I’ve seen everything.”
“With your eyes, yes. But there’s so much more…”
She leaned forward to rummage in the back pocket of her jeans and came up with a small wad of cash. “My mother genuinely… Generously supplied me with funds for this little excursion. Here.” She peeled off three twenties and stuffed them in my jacket pocket. “Gas money, courtesy of Madame Holloway. So you can drive her daughter all over and see the sights.”
“I don’t want your money.” I tried to give it back to her and she pushed my hand away, so I left it on the seat between us.
I pulled onto the street in front of the cemetery. It had no parking lot, and only a squat, brick mortuary, closed for decades, stood in front of the plots.
Willow was opening the door before I even had the truck in park. I ran around to the other side to help her. As I put my arm out to steady her, she gazed up at me.
“You really are…so handsome.” The drunken slur of her words was changing from silly to serious. Her thoughts diving deeper. “Beautiful,” she said, “but not in a girly way. No. In a manly way. The way a man can be beautifully a man. This…?” She grazed her fingers over the stubble on my jaw, then traced my eyebrows. “And here…” Her touch gently trailed over my cheekbones, mindful of the still healing gash.
I closed my eyes under her touch; a rush sweeping through me as if I’d pounded a shot of Scotch myself.
Don’t do this to me.
“And here,” Willow whispered, her fingertip tracing my lips. “And your eyes, Isaac.”
I opened them to her, standing so close to me, so beautiful…
“Do you know what I thought the first time I saw you? That your eyes were like the stormy sea off Nantucket in winter. Cold and wind-tossed but deep. But they’re not cold now…”
She inclined her head toward me. She was going to kiss me. And if she hadn’t been drunk, it would’ve been the most perfect moment of my life.
I turned my head away and held her by the shoulders. “No, Willow. We can’t.”
“We can’t,” she echoed. Her face clouded over. “No truer words, right? I want a beer.”
“Only one.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” she snapped. “Remember?”
I bent to pull two Heinekens out of the bag. “No, but you can get alcohol poisoning. And that’s not going to happen.”
She pouted but made no further protest.
I pointed to the small brick building. “Let’s go behind the mortuary before someone sees us.”
We took a small gravel path around the mortuary where a single light still glowed yellow, probably to keep out trespassers. Crickets chirped a never-ending cacophony in the trees that surrounded the cemetery. They were the only boundary marking this place. No gates or fences, no formal entrance or exit. Just an uneven patch of earth. A black sea where tilted tombstones bobbed on the surface. According to the small placard on the mortuary wall, some graves dated as far back as 1830.
“This is perfect,” Willow said, as I opened two beers with my keys and handed her one. She took a long pull from her beer, as if it were a potion she desperately needed.
“Drink slow,” I said. “You don’t—”
She grabbed at me then, one hand clutching her beer, sloshing it, and the other gripping my shirt. She hauled me toward her. Her lips crashed against my cheek, trying to find my mouth. Her breath smelled of expensive whiskey and cheap beer.
“This is how I can do it,” she whispered between the frantic kisses that both set my blood on fire and repulsed me. I wanted her more than anything, but not like this.
“Willow…”
“This is how it’s done, right? Drunk and delirious and you can just take me, Isaac. It’ll be okay this way.”
“No…”
“Like before,” she said, nipping at my neck and then slumping against my shoulder. “This is how I can do it. Probably the only way I can do it now.”
A shadow of a thought slid down my spine like a cold sliver.
“What do you mean? Do what?”
“You know what,” she said. “Do I have to spell it out?”
“Yeah, you do, Willow. What are you saying?”
“What am I saying?” she wondered. “I’m saying it, aren’t I? I’m telling the story. Why? Because I like you, Isaac. So much and it’s so fucking sad, isn’t it? I want to be a normal girl who likes a boy and that can never ever, ever happen. Not for me.”
“Why not?” I asked, my mouth whispering the words while my muscles tensed to brace myself for the answer.
“Because once upon a time…” Willow’s head lolled and her bleary eyes were heavy with alcohol and shadows. “I had a party. There was dancing. We danced like sex and I felt sexy. And grown up. And he wanted me. He was older and hot and popular and he was paying attention to me. His name was Xavier.”
She hooked a finger up her sleeve and pulled it back to reveal a swarm of little black X’s covering every inch of her pale skin.
“X marks the spot,” she said. “They’re on my arm right now but I can put them everywhere.” Her voice quavered. “He touched me everywhere.”
She pulled the sleeve down and slumped against the wall while my entire being stared at her, vibrating with terrified anticipation. What she had yet to tell me.
Willow took a sip of her beer and then contemplated the bottle. “I drank beer that night. Out of a cup. I didn’t drink much but I guess I didn’t need to. Xavier put something in it…”
“Jesus…”
“I don’t know what he used. Everything turned murky. My memories broke apart and shattered. Now I only remember the night in bits and pieces.” She glanced up at me, half-remembered, fragmented pain filling her eyes. “I remember everyone had gone home and he stayed to help me clean up. He was being so nice. Thoughtful. Let me get you something to drink, he said.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Then I remember being upstairs. In the bedroom.”
I held my breath. My heart crashed against my chest, over and over.
“They say you’re supposed to tell the truth,” she said, opening her eyes. “But what if you know it happened but you don’t remember how? I remembered the dancing. I wore a short skirt. I drank. And I went with him upstairs without a fight.”
“Goddamn. Willow…”
“I didn’t say yes,” she said, her watery eyes holding mine desperately. “But I can’t remember saying no. Not with my voice. I had no voice. But inside…” She shook her head. “Inside, I was screaming it.”
The words hung in the air, terrible and unwavering. I swallowed hard, a jagged lump of pain and rage and helplessness. I fought for words. Something to say or do that would make this untrue. I wanted to wake her up from this nightmare. Grab her and take her far away. Get in my truck and start driving.
I want it to never have fucking happened…
The helplessness was a vice around my goddamn neck. I wondered how Willow endured it. Day after day. All day. All night. How was she still standing here? Drunk and wracked by pain, sure, but she was here.
She shrugged and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “That’s it, isn’t it? I didn’t say yes, but I can’t remember saying no. Not out loud…”
“What happened after?” I said through gritted teeth.
Tell me the fucker’s in jail right now. Getting his shit beat in every day of his life.
Willow shrugged again, a terrible, hopeless gesture.
“The next morning happened. I had a headache that felt like my brain was trying to break out of my skull. I burned my torn underwear. I scrubbed the blood out of the sheets. I took a scalding shower that lasted forty-five minutes. I tried to erase all the evidence and make like it never happened.”
“You didn’t tell anyone,” I said.
“Tell someone…” She shook her head. “Impossible. Tell the police that Xavier Wilkinson, the son of a multi-billion dollar company’s CEO drugged and…and…raped me?” A choked sob paralyzed her for a second over that word, and she swallowed it down. “My dad would lose his job. They’d send an army of lawyers after us. We’d be broke. Not to mention I’d have to explain what I was wearing and what I was doing. How much I drank and who saw me dancing with him, bumping and grinding in front of everyone like I wanted it.”
“But—”
“No, there’s more,” she said. “We’d been flirting all summer. I’d met him at a Fourth of July party in the Hamptons. We started texting. And the texts turned…more. They went too far and until I…” She tried to meet my eye and couldn’t. “I sent him a picture. Of me. Topless. He asked me to and I did. Now he has it. He still has it. He’ll show everyone if he hasn’t already and I…I…”
She bent suddenly and vomited the night’s alcohol all over the cement. I hurried to her and held her hair back while she heaved. Knowing the violent purge had more to do with her story than the liquor she’d drunk.
When there was nothing left, she pushed me away and sagged against the wall, drained and tired and gasping.
I paced. Fire coursing through me, my hands balled into fists and my heart pounded hard. Blood thumping between my ears and clouding my vision red.
“Fuck.” I whirled and slammed my fist into the wooden mortuary sign, splitting my knuckles and scraping them raw. “I’ll kill him. Where is he now? I’ll fucking kill him.”
Willow spit a bitter laugh out. “Oh, will you? You’ll kill him? Or beat the shit out of him? Will that fix everything?”
“I just… I have to do something…”
“Will that make you feel better?” She wiped her chin with the back of her hand. “Yeah, well, good for you. But what about me? When do I get to feel better? Never. I get to carry this memory in my brain and this filth on my body forever. A chronic disease and there is no cure.”
“It’s not your fault…”
“I know, but can’t you see? It doesn’t matter. It’s not my fault but it doesn’t matter. Because it’s too late. Too late. You can beat the hell out of him, or punch more signs until your bones break. But I’m still going to be right here.” She jabbed her finger at the puke-splattered ground, tears brimming in her eyes. “I’m going to be right here, for always. Right here.”
The realization dawned in her, like watching a horrible tragedy unfold right before her eyes.
“Fuck…” she whispered. The tears spilled over her red cheeks. Her lower lip trembled and her breath started to come in short puffs. “Fuck. Fuck.” She hurled her bottle at the ground where it shattered in glittering green shards, then left the path and began stomping unsteadily up the hill, into the cemetery.
I followed in silence. I had no words she needed to hear. She was going to release some of the rage and agony and my job was to let her do it and be there for her after.
“Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.”
Her voice rose louder and louder, clawing the sky ragged. “Fuck you,” she screamed. “Fuck you! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!”
Her last cry imploded, along with her body. Her knees buckled and just in time, I caught her and held her, but carefully. Neutral. How could she want a man to touch her ever again?
But Willow dug at the lapels of my jacket, pressing herself to me, trying to get in. I wrapped her up. Pulled her close. Made my armor her armor. Her blonde hair spilled over my hands and I made fists in it, holding her so tight. Christ, I’d envisioned touching her hair a thousand times but not like this.
Never like this.
I held her, trying to absorb her pain. Even a little. I’d have gladly taken all of it. I could feel it shaking her bones apart. Even if her mind didn’t remember more than a few drugged flashes, her body remembered everything. It was in her cells. In her soul. Every moment of that violation was ingrained into her. Imprinted on her.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
She wept against my heart, sucking deep, ragged breaths between each sob. The sobs tapered to shudders. Then a deathly stillness with her voice a croak against my chest:
“I want to go home.”
I stroked her hair. “I’ll take you.”
“But where is home?” Willow wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt, looking around the cemetery. The crooked rows of old headstones, some canting to the side and smudged with age. “God, I’m so tired.”
She slipped through the circle of my arms, sinking to her hands and knees. She lay next to a grave, curled up on her side and pillowed her head on her arm.
“Willow…”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said, closing her eyes.
“But…here?”
“Yes,” she said. “Us dead people, we rest in graveyards.”
“You’re not dead,” I said, crouching down. “You’re not dead, Willow.”
I won’t let you die.
“Not all of me,” she said, sleepily. “But a part of me is dead and gone. And I’ll never get it back.”
And that hit me in the heart a thousand times harder than her screaming rage at the sky.
I moved closer to her and slowly, carefully, curled up behind her, spooning her. I moved as close as I dared, still hesitant to touch her. But she let me curl up against her, let my chest press against her back and my knees tuck behind hers. Her thick hair was soft on my cheek as I wrapped my arms around her. She melted against me and I thought she’d fallen asleep when her voice rose into the warm, quiet night.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Christ, Willow, there’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m sorry I can never be the kind of girl you want.”
You already are the kind of girl I want.
The words lodged in my throat. Wanting to spill out, yet they remained locked behind my teeth. A backwards stage fright. I had no problem letting playwrights speak for me when I performed for strangers. This girl in my arms made me feel closer to my true self than I could ever remember.
Willow heaved a final sigh. At last she slept, in as much peace as she could find on the ground between headstones. Only then was I brave enough to whisper it.
“You’re the girl I want, Willow.”
I said it as me, as Isaac Pearce. Not a line in a play written by someone else. Me.
“You’re it. You’re the girl. I don’t want anyone else.”
She sighed again and settled deeper against me. And that’s how we slept. The old dead and the new, with the sun rising and a morning mist coming to settle over us all.