Drowning Instinct(8)
Author: Ilsa J. Bick

―Yeah.‖ David started piling notebooks into my arms. ―I just hung around in case you needed, you know, help getting to your next class.‖

―No, I‘m good,‖ I said, as the second bell rang. ―But I‘ve got to go. See you, okay?‖

―Wait.‖ David grabbed my elbow. ―You won‘t get there in time if you go that way.

Come on, we‘ll take a shortcut through the cafeteria.‖

This time, I didn‘t argue. We pretty much jogged down the stairs and into the lunchroom, which already had a sprinkling of kids in small knots, drinking coffee and munching doughnuts. Someone shouted at David, but he waved them off and then we were blasting out of the lunchroom and into a side corridor.

―Okay,‖ David said. He was panting a little, and his dark hair was mussed. ―You go all the way down the hall, last door on your left. I have to go upstairs now, but I‘ll be back in time to take you to your third period class. And we‘ve got the same lunch. Sit with me and I‘ll introduce you around.‖

―I don‘t need an escort,‖ I said as he started for a narrow stairwell.

―Yes, you do,‖ he said over his shoulder. ―You just don‘t know it yet.‖

7: a

Honors English, second period: I blew through the door after the tardy bell. Of course, the only seats left were in front. I scuttled into one closest to the wall. Everyone ignored me, which was fine. The teacher, Dewerman, was nowhere in sight. Most everyone was chatting with someone else except for one girl two rows back who didn‘t look away.

She was pretty in a sporty kind of way, with a long blonde ponytail, good skin, and preppy clothes, the kind of girl who might be either a cheerleader or captain of the soccer team.

When my eyes skipped over her, she turned to whisper something to another girl, who shot a glance, made a face, giggled, and whispered something back.

I looked away. A survival tactic I learned on the psych ward was how to quickly size up potential enemies or garden-variety badasses. Ponytail did not like me, that was clear. Fine. You don’t bother me, I won’t bother you. But I wondered what I‘d done to tick her off. Unless she disliked new kids on general principle.

My gaze skimmed the walls. Dewerman liked posters, the ones with celebs urging you to read, and art reproductions: Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso. Behind his desk and snugged along the wall to my left were three bookcases crammed with hardcovers and paperbacks, arranged alphabetically. My eyes ran over the spines—and then the title of a very familiar book hooked my gaze like the business end of a steel barb.

Oh shit. My stomach bottomed out. My eyes cut away, but the title was burned onto my retinas the way the sun scorched if you looked too long. Relax; he doesn’t know; no one here does; just let it slide. . . .

―Welcome back, boys and girls!‖ Dewerman barreled in, an enormous mug clutched in one paw. My God, Bob, every single adult in this place was this major addict. Dewerman was this bearded 1960s throwback: a Teletubby in tie-dye, suspenders, and thinning hair scraped back into a stringy gray rat. ―All right, let‘s roll.‖

He did the attendance drill. Ponytail was Danielle Connolly, which fit. I gave my prepared Hi-I’m-Jenna spiel and was about to sit back down when Dewerman shot me a curious look. ―Your mother owns a bookstore? Is it MacAllister‘s?‖

―Uh.‖ Why had I mentioned the store to begin with? I knew he had the book. It was like I was daring him to put two and two together. I could‘ve lied. Maybe I should‘ve. But, instead, I said, ―Yeah.‖

―Well, I‘ll be damned.‖ Dewerman bustled over to the bookshelf, fingered out the paperback I‘d recognized and held it up. It was one of the reissues because THE

COMPLETE UNEXPURGATED EDITION OF THE SHATTERING NOVEL screamed from the cover. Because, of course, Dewerman was a fanboy.

b

A little sidebar, Bob, because you don‘t look like the bookish type. That‘s not a slam, it‘s just . . . well, it‘s probably a fact. If I were directing the movie of your life, I figure you must‘ve been a star athlete in high school, probably football. Ten to one, you were angling for a scholarship, only you messed up your knees or back, and that‘s why you became a cop. Only I bet you got bored or sick of standing by while EMTs scraped people you knew—friends, old drinking buddies, maybe a girlfriend— off the pavement. Maybe you cut one too many people out of crushed cars. You had to think that, hell, making detective‘s got to be better. Break-ins, assaults, drug deals, but not a lot of bodies. You had to think that there just aren‘t many homicides this far north. Maybe one or two a year, tops.

Of course, at the time, you hadn‘t met me.

Anyway . . . my grandmother was Stephanie A. MacAllister. To everyone else, my mom‘s mom was this brilliant writer who started sleeping around when she was ten.

Honestly, Bob, if you believed her, Grandma MacAllister had sex with just about everything but a gerbil and then wrote about it. Give her enough time, she might have figured out the gerbil, too.

Of course, the book— Memoirs of a Very Good Girl—was banned and burned and trashed, so just about everyone read and talked about it. My mom always says there is no such thing as bad publicity. By the time she was thirty-five, Grandma MacAllister had made a fortune, started a pretty famous artists‘ colony, opened up her bookstore, discovered new talent, promoted reading, blah, blah, blah. She never wrote another book. I never asked why because I hadn‘t been born when she hanged herself from a sturdy wooden closet dowel in a swank New York hotel the night she won some award for lifetime achievement.

She left the store to Mom, which pissed off Grandpa—he of the drunken, chain-smoking, torch-the-house rampage. Mom used to be a poet and did pretty well.

Although after Matt was gone, she bought up all the copies of her one collection she could find and burned them in this giant bonfire in the old, pre-McMansion backyard.

After Grandma died, Mom poured everything into the bookstore. That hummed along fairly smoothly until 2003, which is when Matt left. Since then, sales have crashed, publishing has cratered, and Mom and the store . . . well, it‘s like handing a bucket to a bulimic, Bob. No matter how much you vomit, the bucket‘s never quite full enough.

c

As Dewerman rambled on, my back began to burn, and I felt the wings of my skin grafts, the ones between my shoulder blades, straining to tug free. My throat tried to close against the memory of thick, acrid smoke. Until that instant, I had been the new kid, a nobody, just another transfer. Only my teachers knew anything about my little episode, but no one had made the connection to my gerbil-screwing, sex-crazed grandmother. Now everyone would look her up, if only to suck up to Dewerman.