Chapter Five
3 Years, 45 Weeks, 0 Days
I’ve come to the very original and unique conclusion that leaving home sucks ass. No one else has ever, in the history of humanity, come to this conclusion. No one except me. I am special.
“Isis, we’re late!”
And late. I am very late.
Being late doesn’t deter me from being proper about farewells, though. As Mom starts the car, I stand in the doorway and breathe in the musty air of eighteen years’ worth of angst. I didn’t spend all eighteen years here, but all the shit that happened in the last year and a half made it feel like that long.
Good-bye, little room.
Good-bye, girl I used to be.
I hug Ms. Muffin close and pet Hellspawn one last time and leave.
Mom drives slowly and carefully. I sip ginger ale and watch the highway flash by. Suddenly, a terrifying thought hits me upside the head with its sweaty palm.
What the hell did I do with my teenage years?
I didn’t volunteer or play sports. I didn’t become a radical warrior princess on my sixteenth birthday, complete with a talking cat and magically appearing clothes. Hogwarts didn’t even send me a letter, and I haven’t actually forgiven them for that. Wait until I go to London and find Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters and slip through to the other side and unleash my rage. I’ll make Voldemort look like a sock puppet. And I’ll make out with Draco. And I’ll train a bunch of house elves to fan me and bring me grapes—
I stop when I realize I’m writing mental Harry Potter fan fiction on my way to college. Focus! I need at least seven whole focuses if I’m going to make a fabulous impression. Or any impression at all. I’d rather make a bad impression than no impression.
As Mom pulls onto the exit, I sigh.
I didn’t even kiss a boy. For realsies, anyway. Not-drunk.
I did other things. I held hands and hugged. Nameless pretended real hard to be nice using hugs and hand-holding. Once or twice he even hinted he thought I was pretty. But it was an act, just to build me up before he tore me down. And it was all before the big it. Little it. It’s not even worthy of a prefix. It’s just “it.”
I have to leave that behind, too. There’s no room for that. Not if I want to move on with my life. I’ve done my best to bury it, ignore it until it goes away, and it’s sort of worked. I got far enough to sleep in a bed with Jack without freaking out. So I’m getting better, and that’s real good to know.
It gives me a little bit of hope where there used to be none.
Jack helped me realize that I’m not unlovable. I’m not hopeless.
I’m not all ugly.
Or maybe I realized it on my own.
Either way, fighting with him helped me realize lots of stuff. I grew up all kinds of ways.
A sharp pain radiates in my chest, but I brush that dirt off my shoulder and watch Mom’s smile.
“There’s the sign, sweetie. Get the map out, will you?”
Ohio State University looms in white lettering on a big sign on the side of the road. I pull out the brochure map and direct her onto the campus. Trees and rosebushes bloom like crazy, the emerald-green lawn dappled with buttery late-afternoon sun. The buildings are all old brickwork, ivy sprawling across windows, and Roman columns. The dorms are shabbier, but just as big. Hundreds of students are walking around, their parents walking with them, or standing outside the car and hugging them one last time, or helping them carry baggage into dorms.
Mom parks and gets out, and my stomach drops with excitement as I fumble with the door handle. This is it. This is how my childhood ends. Not with a bang, but with a silent scream.
I finger the cigarette burns on my wrist and make sure my sleeve is covering them. I take it back. My childhood ended a long time ago.
Mom can’t really pick up my heavy suitcase or backpack, so I drag them up the stairs and she follows. The room is tiny and whitewashed and on the second floor, right next to the fire escape. There’s no carpet, just cold tile, and the beds are so high up they seem made for, at the very least, Hagrid. Two beds are tucked into opposite ends of the room, a window glaring between them. Two desks are just beside the beds, with ass torture implements of the highest caliber—wood chairs. Two closets wait to be filled with shoes or condoms or failed exams or whatever else college kids fill empty spaces with. Broken dreams, maybe.
My roommate has already claimed the left side, so I plop my stuff on the right. Mom fusses around with the bedsheets she packed and makes my bed. I watch her work, knowing I’ll miss the sight of her doing little things like this. I inspect my roommate’s closet—a guitar, lots of army surplus jackets and hiking boots. She’s littered her desk with silver jewelry—studs, rings with skulls, necklaces with spiked orbs of death. Yep. We’ll get along just fine.
Mom finishes the bed, and we walk downstairs and sit on the lawn, soaking in the sun. Mom holds my hand, stroking it with her thumb.
“I’m sorry, Isis,” she tries.
“For what? Not birthing me a week or two earlier? I so wanted to be a Gemini. None of this Cancer nonsense.”
Mom smiles wryly. “No, not that. For…I don’t know. I feel like I didn’t do a very good job. But I suppose every parent feels like that.”
I squeeze her hand. “You did the best you knew how. We both did.”
She nods and squeezes back. “I’m just glad I could be with you for your last year at home. Even if…even if it was difficult.”
I know what regret looks like now. I saw it in every line of Jack’s face at the funeral. I’ll never forget what it looks like, even if the Zabadoobians abduct me and bleach my brain. Mom wears it like a shawl, lightly but drawing it taut. I throw my arms around her and bury my head in her shoulder.
“It’s okay. I had fun. It was hard, but I had fun and I learned stuff, more stuff than I ever learned in my life, so I’m real happy I came to live with you. Thanks for being the best mom ever.”
She puts one arm around me and into my hair and starts crying.
“I love you, Isis.”
“I love you, too!” I laugh, the tears springing up. “I’ll miss you.”
I’ll see her more than Kayla, but it still stings. I’m about as good at good-byes as Tarzan is at wearing clothes.
At least Leo’s in jail. She’ll be safe for a few years.
Mom insisted on giving me the old VW Beetle for college. She’d been wanting to get a different car for a while, and this gave her the perfect excuse. I see her to the Greyhound bus station and wave as it pulls out of the lot. I watch her with a sinking heart that sort of dovetails into a swoop, then lifts up as I drive back to the school again.
I’m alone.
Nobody knows me at Ohio State. I have to start all over. Hundreds of freshmen stream past me on the sidewalks, trampling the green lawn and my pure maiden heart as they look right through me. I’m more faceless than Emperor Palpatine before he took his hood off. A massive banner over the huge glass-walled library reads Welcome Buckeyes!
“More like welcome fuck-eyes,” a voice to my left groans. A girl with seven earrings in one ear and a round, stocky face stands beside me. She’s heavy and tall and powerful, her hair dyed bright pink and shaved on the sides. Her combat boots and flannel shirt tell me everything I need to know. Badass supreme. I simultaneously want to be her and fight her just to be able to say she punched me. She blinks hazel eyes thick with eyeliner at me.
“Uh, what?” she says.
“Was I thinking out loud? I do that sometimes. The doctors say it’s probably mild Tourette’s, but I say it’s a higher evolutionary process of humanity. Someday the entire world will be like me and it will be rad.”
The girl’s pink eyebrows shoot up, and she laughs. It’s a full, rich laugh, like stew instead of the giggly soup of most girls. She holds out her hand.
“Yvette. Yvette Monroe.”
I shake it. “Isis Blake. But my friends call me Crazy. Or Idiot. Sometimes both at once.”
Yvette smirks. “That makes two of us.”
It’s then I recognize one of the fabulous skull earrings she’s wearing. There’s another pair in my dorm.
“This is going to sound slightly stalkerish, but I can’t help but notice you’ve decapitated Jack Skellington and put him on your ears.”
“What can I say?” Yvette shrugs. “I like bones.”
“So do I, actually, because our skeletons support a massive interconnected muscular structure, and without them we would be blobs of flesh. Also we wouldn’t have middle fingers to flip people off with. Are you in room 14B?”
Yvette’s eyes widen. “Yeah, so you’re—”
“My roommate!” I screech. A passing guy winces and flips me off. I loudly inform him he has his skeleton to thank for that. Yvette seems pleased. She thumps her arm across my shoulders and I sink about two inches into the soft dirt.
“You first,” she says, leading me back to our dorm.
“First for what? A three-legged footrace? Because I’ll have you know I only have one really good leg, the other is kind of unshaved and unsexy—”
“First to spill your life story. Where are you from?”
“Uh, Ohio. Or I mean, no. Florida! Yeah, that’s the one. I grew up there, then moved here senior year. What about you? Oooh, let me guess—hell. You’re from hell.”
“I am definitely from hell. Hell, Kansas.”
“I like uncooked ramen noodles and driving like a maniac,” I continue.
“I hate everything except bacon and pickles. And I don’t drive.”
“One time in third grade I stuck candy up my nose to impress a boy. Spoiler: he was not impressed.”
Yvette looks impressed, then sighs.
“I started smoking because it’s the first year of college and I already know I’m going to drop out.”
And it’s her honesty that kills me. It’s the way she says it—all frank, undramatic, modest honesty. Something I never had. Something I should’ve had. Something that, if I had, would have saved someone’s life, maybe.
“My friend killed herself,” I say. Yvette looks over at me for a second, a minute that stretches into what feels like an hour and I never want it to end, because she’s seeing me instead of looking through me like everyone else in this place. Yvette opens the door and we walk in, and she gestures to her bed.
“This is my half. That’s your half.”
I nod, and she smiles, pink hair lit from behind by the sunlight.
“Let’s get some fucking food.”
Fact: college is great.
I know this primarily because they serve clam chowder next to pizza, and gyoza next to burritos, and there is dessert every. Single. Night. If you so choose. And I hella so choose. Sometimes. Sometimes I eat a salad like a Grown-up™ because that’s what I am now, I guess.
My Hagrid bed is pretty shitty, comfort-wise, but the terrifying thought of rolling off the five-foot drop at night keeps me securely in the middle and under the covers always. Yvette snores, and blasts Metallica when she does her homework, but otherwise we’ve been getting along fine. Better than fine. She’s snarkier than me, sometimes, which is worthy of at least four Nobel Prizes, and she’s smart. She isn’t Jack smart or anything, but she’s not Jack dumb, either. She’s always hard and a little angry, but she laughs louder and gets angrier faster than anyone I’ve ever known, except maybe Kayla when I tell her she’s pretty.
But Yvette’s openness is a refreshing change from last year’s secrets and passive-aggressiveness. She doesn’t bring up Sophia’s suicide, even though I told her about it the first day. She’s not the type to pry, and I adore her for it. She smokes on the fire escape sometimes, and sometimes I go up there with her and try to smoke, but it usually ends with me puking, so we stop that right quick.
I’ll tell her more about Sophia in my own time. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep it inside, like I kept Nameless. But I won’t let it fester this time. I won’t let it hurt me. I won’t hold on to the hurt like a ball of shattered glass ever again. Some shitbaby jerk taught me better than that.
My classes are great but sort of easy, in that weird, beginning-of-semester way. I mean, four teachers assigned ten-page essays due next week, but forty pages is a febreeze for me. I used to write twenty pages in my radical-yet-whiny pubescent diary on the daily. The only thing that’s really hard is focusing, because the classrooms are huge auditoriums, sort of, which could easily be converted into gladiator rings if we moved the teacher’s desk and got rid of the chairs, and really, the bland walls would look so much better with swaths of blood across them and also the lights are so bright, do they shine the lightbulbs? How do you shine a lightbulb so high up? Can their janitor fly?
Next to me in our seats in the very back, Yvette informs me janitors cannot fly. Vampires, however, can.
“Vampires are gross,” I determine.
“Have you even read Twilight?”
“I’ve read so many things that are not that.”
“It was the best. The vampires were the best. The make-outs were the best.”
I shudder. Yvette, in her flaming skull T-shirt and ripped jeans, sighs like a fancy princess dreaming of boys.
“Imagine having sex with a vampire.”
“Imagine going to church and praying to your lord and savior,” I offer a counter-point.
She laughs and goes back to Tumblr on her laptop. The best part about college, I’ve decided, is the professors don’t give a shit whether you pay attention or not. Short of dropping an F-bomb super loud out of nowhere, they ignore all the internet surfing and texting that goes on. We’re paying to be here, not the other way around. It’ll be different when labs come around, but right now it’s Shangri-la, and please do not talk to me about labs, because the thought of me around combustible chemicals is so exhilarating I have to fight to not pee myself constantly in anticipation. Long live science. Long live explode-y things.
Mom calls every night, because that’s what moms do. That, and like, sighing. But Mom’s always sighed a lot, because she’s sad mostly, but also because having a borderline nutso daughter like me would be trying on any mortal human’s soul. Except, like, Beyoncé, but we all know she isn’t mortal at all and also she has Blue Ivy who I hate because it’s so unfair because Beyoncé was supposed to be my mom.
“Beyoncé’s music is terrible,” Yvette offers as we walk to dinner.
“Ah yes,” I say. “Let me just mark that down on this neat little list I keep titled The 25 Reasons Why You’ll Be Joining Me in the Eternally Agonizing Lava Pit Portion of Beelzebub’s Kingdom.”
“You talk to yourself so much. Is it like, a birth defect?”
“It’s a side effect of the radioactive waste my mother bathed in while pregnant with me, yes.”
Yvette opens her mouth to say something else, then closes it and turns the color of a ketchup sandwich—white on the edges, red in the middle. I follow her gaze to a group of girls, but before I can pinpoint which fly lady has her attention, Yvette snaps out of it, clearing her throat and grabbing a bowl for soup.
“Anyway,” she says with much difficulty. “There’s a music showcase down at Weigel Hall. It’s mostly sweaty dudes dicking around with drums and Alice in Chains covers. You should come and educate yourself on the merits of true music.”
“Wait, whoa, are we just gonna ignore the fact that you—”
Yvette suddenly repurposes a decent amount of soup as floor cleaner. “That I what?” she snaps.
“Uh, nothing. Never mind. Yeah, I’ll come. Is there a cover fee, or?”
She relaxes visibly. “It’s free. I’ll see you at seven, then?”
I answer with a mean air-guitar riff, and she smirks and leaves. I take my pizza slice out onto the balcony, where the dying sun paints everything in pale golds and silvers. The tree shadows grow long, tangling in the shadows of passersby and untangling again.
And that’s when I see him.
I try hard not to see him. I really do. My brain gives a sputter, and I forget how to swallow. My skin crawls, hot at first, then so terribly cold I might as well be in Alaska. I start sweating, and my eyes dart around, looking for all the exits off the terrace—the stairs, the back stairs, through the cafeteria and out the door. I don’t even think about it, I just do it. I’m reacting instead of thinking as I pick up my plate and dump it in a whirling flash; two seconds is all it takes, two seconds and the terror has a complete and total hold over me as I dash inside the cafeteria and watch him approach through the window.
Curly, dark brown hair falls into his eyes. Steel-colored eyes, a blue so dark you can’t see the light through them. The color of swords and the ocean, both terrifying, both sharp; both can kill you. He killed a little part of me. His eyebrows are thick and his mouth pleasant, and if you squint he could be in a British boy band, maybe, possibly. The freckles on his nose are still there, the freckles I’d written stupid poetry about. He’s taller than I remember—taller than most of the boys here—and his biceps are huge; he’s been lifting and it’d make any girl swoon, but it just makes me want to barf. All I want to do is puke, right here, all over the potted plant I’m hiding behind. But above the panic-static that’s currently turning my brain to mush, another part of me screams silently.
What! The! Fuck! Is Nameless! Doing! Here!
Here, of all places, here, of all goddamn colleges. It has to be a joke. He has to be visiting a friend or something. He can’t be enrolled here, learning here, sleeping within the same ten miles of me. He can’t be. He just can’t. I came here to avoid him. I moved to an entirely different state to leave him behind, and now he’s found me again. No, shit, there’s no way he’s here just for me. It’s a coincidence. His shitty, threatening emails earlier in the year were just last-gasp effort taunts, his way of—of—of what? Somewhere in the back of my mind, my sessions with Dr. Mernich—the psychologist I saw after Leo’s assault—stick with me, burning dark and hard. Triggered. His way of triggering me. He wanted me to remember. And now he’s going to get to see me remember. In person.
“H-Hey, are you okay?”
I look up. A girl with honey-colored hair and huge gray eyes behind glasses blinks at me. She smells faintly of musky roses. My stellar powers of observation alert me to the fact she has a chest even bigger than Kayla’s and a thick, soft belly, but I barely register it through my haze of panic.
“I’m decidedly not okay,” I say, my voice thin and high.
“Yeah, you look like crap.” The girl covers her mouth, then whispers, “Um, not in general. But right now you look sick, is all. Bad-sick. Not, um. Rad-sick.”
Rad-sick. I can feel the literal stars beginning to gleam in my eyes as history unfurls, and I discover the only person on the planet Earth who may have beaten me, Isis Blake, in making stupid puns. And having fabulous curves. And smelling like roses. But then I remember I’d been in the midst of undergoing a mild panic attack.
“You are really cute and all,” I say quickly, “but I’m currently facing down the fact that my ex-boyfriend goes to this college, which is extreme grossness. You probably don’t want to stick around for something that’s the same level of gross as, like, a vat of Nickelodeon slime, so if you could just leave so I can get back in the mood of being terrorized helplessly, I’d appreciate it.”
Glasses Girl frowns and searches the crowd. “He terrorizes you? I’m so not down with that, fry-slice. Which one is he?”
“Oh, he’s the one with the hellish, menacing aura barely concealed beneath a mask of vague antisocial tendencies and abs, and he’s currently walking into this very room and oh my God I have to go. To space.”
I dart out the back door just as Nameless pushes into the cafeteria. I gulp twilight air and my steps are so big and frantic I almost trip. Glasses Girl steadies me by grabbing my elbow.
“Hey, um, seriously, do you want me to take you to the infirmary?”
I consider her for a long moment. “You know, that would be lovely. But first, I’m going to puke on your shoes, so you probably won’t want to do that, or even be remotely nice to me anymore.”
“Okay.”
I unceremoniously puke on her shoes. When I’m not making attractive hurling noises anymore, the girl laughs.
“I’m Diana. These are my roommate’s shoes. She’s a bitch.”
“Oh man.” I wipe my mouth. “I love messing up bitch-shoes. I’ve done it so often. Mostly to this one stupid pretty boy. And now you. Not that you’re a stupid pretty boy. Or maybe you are. Um.”
There’s a thoughtful pause. Diana looks thoroughly informed of her own gender.
“I’m Isis.”
“Nice to meet you, Egyptian goddess of fertility.” Diana smiles.
“She was full of magical spells and almost always naked, which is cool except for probably sand in her hoo-ha, but I’m not actually into marrying my own brother—side note: grody—and if I had Isis’s banging magic powers—pun totally intended—I would be hexing dudes, not sexing them, and I’d definitely not stay here for four years to figure out what I don’t mind doing to make money until I die and oh God I need to lie down.”
So I do. On the sidewalk. Diana watches me with unmistakable morbid curiosity.
“Your puke puddle is right by your head,” she points out helpfully.
I wrinkle my nose and scooch five feet sideways into the grass. And the grass turns into a hill and I’m rolling and it smells like earth and new fresh green sproutbabies, and when the world stops spinning and I stop moving and Diana teeters down the hill asking if I’m okay, bringing that soft smell of roses with her, I start laughing.
All the terror in my chest was spun out by the rolling fall. It broke the hard, icy grip of Nameless. The smell of the sun-warmed ground and the feel of grass tickling my butt reminds me it’ll pass. He’ll pass. He’ll die, also, someday, and then I’ll really be free, but it’s not the end of the world. He’s here. I’m here. But we’re different people now. I’m stronger because of everything that’s happened. Because of him, and the pain. But mostly because of Sophia and Jack and Kayla and Wren.
I want to be happier. Happy like Sophia is now. Happy like I want Jack to be now.
Even if they’re both gone. Even if they’re all gone.
Even if I’m all alone.
Diana watches me laugh, smiling, and sits beside me. It’s then I confirm my suspicions—only a total weirdo would continue to hang out with someone who puked on her shoes, then rolled down a hill like a sugar-high hamster and laughed about it. Diana could be a serial killer. Or a genuinely nice person. Both the sort of people who shouldn’t be hanging around yours truly.
“You’re crying,” she says offhandedly, picking a dandelion and blowing the fuzz away. I wipe my face.
“I’ve been doing it a lot lately. Because, you know. Crying is fun, if you think about it like Splash Mountain for your eyes.”
Diana giggles. I stand up, brushing grass off my sculpted abs.
“Anyway, it’s been great, but I must go and contemplate the fact that I might be losing my fucking marbles.”
Diana shrugs. “I think you’re just scared. It’s scary—college. We can do anything. We can fail or flunk, or drink or smoke or have sex, and no one cares. We’re not kids anymore. There’re no parents here. Whatever happens in our future happens because of the choices we make now. That’s really scary.”
I watch her face. She hugs her knees.
“And seeing exes you haven’t seen for a long time is scary, too.”
I lose all will to leave and flop down beside her. The last thing I want to be right now is alone. We watch the sunset rip through the sky with fire and velvet.
“Boys are weird,” Diana concludes sagely.
“I don’t know anything about boys except they make weird noises sometimes,” I say.
“That’s called speaking.”
“Oh.”
Diana squints at me. “If he did something bad, I can punt him for you.”
“You usually go around offering to punt people?”
“I have four little brothers. It’d be a shame to let my talents go to waste.”
It’s my turn to chuckle. Voices make me jump. I shoot a wary look up the hill, but it’s just a crowd of loud, obnoxious girls shrieking as they pass.
“I really didn’t wanna live constantly looking over my shoulder again.” I sigh. “It was shitty in Florida, and it’ll be shitty here.”
“I would say ignore him, but I guess that’s easier said than done, huh?”
I nod. Diana picks at a blade of grass. I’m about to say something deep and profound and possibly life-changing when Yvette’s clear, strong voice cuts between us. A guitar case is strapped to her back, pink hair matching the sunset.
“Oyyyyy! You coming to the show or what, numb nuts?”
I stand, shakily. I shoot one last look back at the cafeteria. The choker of thorns around my neck is gone now. He’s gone. I’m safe. Diana stands with me, and I smile at her.
“On a scale of one to duh, how much do you like music?”