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I ran a safety pin above a match and lined it up above the ear holes she already had. Lila bit her lip, but she didn’t cry out, even though I saw her eyes water. She just dug her fingers into the corduroy striping of my pants as I pressed. The metal pin bent a little, and I wondered if I was going to be able to get it all the way through, when it suddenly went with an audible pop. She made a strangled sound, and I carefully closed the safety pin so that it hung like a fancy formal earring at the very top of her ear.
Then she dipped the cotton swabs in vodka to wipe away the blood and poured us a gagging shot apiece. Her hands were shaking.
“Happy birthday,” I said.
I heard steps outside the door, but Lila didn’t seem to notice them. Instead she leaned in. Her tongue was as hot as a match on my ear, and it made my body jerk in surprise. I was still trying to convince myself that it had really happened when she stuck out her tongue and showed me my own blood.
That was when the door opened and Lila’s mother walked in. She cleared her throat, but Lila didn’t step back. “What’s going on in here? Why aren’t you ready for your party?”
“I’ll be fashionably late,” Lila said, a smile threatening at the corners of her mouth.
“Have you been drinking?” Mrs. Zacharov looked at me like I was a stranger. “Get out.”
I walked past Lila’s mother and out the door.
The party was in full swing when I got there, full of people I didn’t know. I felt out of place as I stalked to my seat, and my ear throbbed like a second heart. Overcompensating, I tried to be funny in front of Lila’s friends and wound up being so obnoxious that some boy she went to school with threw a punch at me in the men’s room. I pushed him, and he gashed his head on one of the sinks.
The next day Barron told me he had asked Lila out. They’d started dating around the time I was being escorted from the hotel.
* * *
According to my GPS, Barron’s new place is a row house on a street with cracked sidewalks and a few boarded-up apartment buildings. One of his front windows is missing most of its glass and is partially covered with duct tape. I open the screen door and knock on the cheap hollow-core door beyond. Paint flakes off on my hands.
I knock, wait, and knock again. There’s no answer and no motorcycle parked nearby either. I don’t see any lights on through the newspaper taped up in place of blinds.
There’s a basic lock and a dead bolt on the door. Easy to get around. My driver’s license slid through the gap unlocks the first. The dead bolt is trickier, but I get a wire from the trunk of the car, thread it through the keyhole, and rake it over the pins until they all stick at the right height. Luckily Barron hasn’t upgraded to anything fancy. I turn the knob, pick up my license, and walk into the kitchen.
For a moment, looking at the laminate countertops, I think I’ve broken into the wrong house. Covering the white cabinets are sticky notes: “Notebook will tell you what you forgot,” “Keys on hook,” “Pay bills in cash,” “You are Barron Sharpe,” “Phone in jacket.” A carton of milk sits open on the counter, its curdled contents gray with cigarette ash. Butts float on the surface. There’s a pile of bills—mostly student loans—all of them unopened.
“You are Barron Sharpe” doesn’t leave a lot of room for doubt.
His laptop and a pile of manila folders cover the card table in the center of the kitchen. I slump down on one of the chairs and glance over the files—legal briefs from my mother’s appeal. He’s made notes in ketchup-red marker, and it finally occurs to me that this could be the reason he dropped out of school. He must be managing the case. That makes some sense, but not enough.
There’s a composition notebook sitting under one of the folders, marked February to April. I flip it open, expecting to see more notes on the case, but it looks a lot like a diary. At the top of each page is a date, and beneath it is an obsessively detailed list of what Barron ate, who he talked to, how he was feeling—and then at the bottom, a bulleted list of things to be sure to remember. Today started:
March 19
Breakfast: Protein shake
Ran 1 mile
Upon waking, experienced slight lethargy and soreness in muscles.
Wore: light green buttoned shirt, black cargo pants, black shoes (Prada)
Mom continues to complain about the other inmates, how much she’s suffering without us, and her fear that, basically, we’re out of her control. She needs to realize that we’re grown up, but I don’t know if she’s ready for that. As we get closer and closer to the trial, I worry more about what life’s going to be like when she comes home.
She says that she’s enticed some millionaire and is pinning a lot of her hopes on him. I have sent her clippings about him. I’m worried about her getting herself in trouble again and I honestly can’t believe that this man has no idea who she is—or that if he doesn’t, that he’s going to remain ignorant. When she does get out of jail, she is going to have to be more circumspect, something I’m sure she’s not going to be willing to do.
I can’t remember faces from high school. I ran into someone on the street who said he knew me. I told him that I was Barron’s twin and that I went to another school. I must study the yearbook.
Philip is as tedious as ever. He acts as though he is resolved to do what is necessary, but he isn’t. It’s not just weakness but a continual romantic need to believe himself manipulated against his will instead of admitting he wants power and privilege. He sickens me more each day, but Anton trusts him in a way that Anton will never really trust me. But Anton believes I can deliver, and I doubt he can say that about Philip.
Maybe the money we get will be enough to control Mom for a while. By the time this is over, Anton’ll owe us everything.
The notes for today stop there, but glancing back over the past few weeks, I can see that he recorded random details, conversations, and feelings as though he expected to forget them. I open the laptop gingerly, not sure what other weirdness I’m going to discover, but it’s set to sleep, with the page showing my YouTube debut.
The raw footage was taken with a cell phone, so the quality is grainy and I don’t look like much more than a pale, shirtless blob, but I wince when I look like I’m losing my balance. I hear someone yell “jump” in the background, and the angle swings toward the crowd. In that moment I see her. A white shape near the scrubby bushes. The cat, licking her paw. The cat I was chasing in my dream. I stare at the video and stare at her, trying to make some sense of how a cat from my dream—a cat that looks a lot like the cat that has been sleeping at the foot of my bed—could have really been there that night.
