WARNINGS: This chapter contains references to violence and to a childhood trauma.
…
"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
It was well past five a.m. by the time Michael got back to his apartment that night.
The door slammed behind him, though his neighbors could attest that he always shut it gently, even during the day. Michael peeled off his clothes and cut straight to the bathroom, turned on the hot water in the shower and stepped right under it.
Pain flashed to his brain and stole his breath as the shower spray hit his bruised face. He could feel his skin loosening under the hot water where the blood had caked, under his nose, on his lips, down his chin.
He couldn't remember if he'd run into anybody on the way back.
If so, he must have been a sight to behold, and it was no wonder no one had tried to give him a hard time or get a laugh out of the scrawny kid with a bloody face.
Surely, if someone had been tempted to try, they would have stopped dead at the unleashed fire in Michael's eyes.
The burning water was not burning enough.
He inhaled deeply and his lungs were on fire, the air blasting through the pipes of his broken nose and he felt when he released his breath, smoke might come out, as if he had turned into a dragon.
Motionless, teeth ground tight, he stayed there until he was out of hot water and the spray turned lukewarm. He caught the handle and stopped the flow before it had time to run cold.
There was no room for thoughts in his head.
Ever since Lincoln's fist had smashed into his face, Michael hadn't been thinking, hadn't been himself. His mind was filled with one image alone – red – and every nerve in his body was concentrated on staying in control.
The night was blurring past and present, there was no time, no space. Only red.
Only blood.
Michael kept his eyes closed. He could hardly feel the reality around him, the concreteness of the wet tile beneath him as he sank to his knees, holding his head in his hands.
He started rocking back and forth, trying to soothe away what he no longer remembered to be a memory.
He couldn't only see the blood, even with his eyes closed. He could taste it. Smell it. Feel its cold sticky kiss on his face.
At no point did he think he needed to go to bed and get some sleep, or that he needed to get to school. His chores as a janitor always made him arrive a couple hours before everyone else.
But none of that entered Michael's brain just now, because he was no longer a seventeen-year-old high school student.
He was a small boy, strapped tightly into a child car seat. Broken glass everywhere. The smell of death and gasoline.
His cheek, pressed against the tarmac, red with his parents' blood; it had had time to cool by the time help arrived.
Shivering inside the shower cabin, Michael's mind longed for sleep, for one minute of rest, but there came no sweeping darkness to force him out of the horrors he usually managed to keep at bay.
So Michael did what any child would do, if a monster crept in at night and cracked his bedroom door open: he stared unblinkingly at the chilling eye of what made him drunk with terror, and he waited for the monster to go away.
…
Sara got straight home after school that day, with a feeling of foreboding inside her chest. Gretchen had been the same honey-sweet shade of gentle with her, and Sara didn't know what she resented most. That Gretchen found her too stupid to know that something was up, or that though she did know, she couldn't bring herself to cut the girls out of her life without further evidence.
After all, what had Gretchen done, really? Nothing. So how could Sara walk up to her and say, I can feel you're angry at me, that you're playing games, and so if you don't mind, you'll stop or I'll leave.
But what really made it hard for Sara to focus all day, what filled her with dread and anticipation, was Michael's empty seat in every class.
He'd even missed PE, and the coach's disappointment not to see his best swimmer almost pushed her over the brim.
All day, she thought she'd just leave, play sick for the day, and go see what this was about.
It was horrible to wait in complete uncertainty. Half a dozen times, she had the reflex to want to text him or call him on his cell phone, but she remembered that they had never exchanged phone numbers.
So, at the very second that the ring chimed for the end of class, Sara jumped to her feet, scrambled her books from her table and rushed for the bus stop. There was a glint of malice in Gretchen's eyes, watching her, and she didn't want to risk her trying to slow her down.
The great Tancredi house was empty, Frank wouldn't be home from work for several hours and so Sara hurried to the garage, grabbed the keys for the spare car they kept shiny and scarcely used all year long, and she started to roll down the same direction where she and Michael had walked yesterday night.
At the time, it didn't occur to her to think this was the single most rebellious thing she'd ever done, that the reason why her father didn't use this car much – it was a Bentley – was that it was such an expensive and rare edition, but Frank Tancredi had never thought to keep the keys somewhere Sara wouldn't find them, so absurd it was to think she would ever want to take it out for a ride herself.
It was strange how faster the car could go than their two legs. When Sara recognized the building, it felt like she'd only been driving for a minute. It had been like a dream, going from her father's house to Michael's street, and when she got out, her knees wobbling, she still felt like the place she was walking into was more dream than real.
There was no security at all in Michael's building. She had noticed that last night. Just a broad wooden door, which she pushed open, and then, threw herself into the staircase. He lived on the sixth floor, no elevator.
Then it was no wonder she was breathless when she got to his door and started knocking. The first few times came out as such a terrified pounding, she rectified herself in mid-course to try to give a more appropriate, moderate knock.
But there was nothing on the other side of the door. Only silence.
"Michael," she called out, without thinking. "It's me."
A moment that seemed a glimpse of eternity went by as she stood alone, facing the wooden door, her lungs on fire, her cheeks colored from climbing the stairs, her hair tousled.
There was the sound of some movement inside. She could picture Michael getting up from the sofa he must also use as a bed, then take a few steps toward the door.
It slid open without ceremony, and Sara realized he mustn't have locked it.
Then he stood before her, and her jaw slackened despite herself. Stop it! She thought, the part of her that had deeply integrated the fact that when people had scars or nasty-looking wounds, staring was always rude. But it was beyond her to stop.
First, the look on her face was one of sheer horror, before compassion flooded in, unheeded, a warm wave of affection because it was Michael, beneath the blood-stained eye and burst nose, the quiet boy from school who never bothered anyone, who never asked anyone for anything.
"Oh!" She cried.
He opened his mouth, maybe to speak. She didn't know what on earth he could have wanted to say. For some reason, she couldn't imagine him going for any of the easy answers – It's not as bad as it looks, or The other guy looks worse.
But she never gave him time to go through with whatever he was planning to go with.
Instead, crude instinct took control and, before Sara could feel surprise at her own boldness, she threw her arms around him and held him to her, hard enough to knock the breath out of them both.
She heard a stifled groan seep from his throat at the suddenness of the contact. It had never struck her until this second how tall he really was. Sara was tall herself, had been hit by puberty early and towered over the bunch of her classmates at least until high school. It was more of an advantage than anything else, as it discouraged a great deal of boys, shorter than her, from asking her out on dates.
Stupid things like that mattered to kids her age.
But Michael was at least one head taller, as she had to stand on tiptoe to rest her head in the crook of his neck.
After a moment, he put one arm around her shoulder blades, and she felt suddenly very small.
It was the first time she was held by a man.
Though his embrace was somewhat stiff, it was not awkward. She could feel the warmth of his body through his clothes and for the first time, standing close enough to breathe him in, she realized just how much she liked him.
He smelled like early mornings, like ground coffee and libraries. Sara had never tasted coffee before but thought it smelled like a dream, like the glimpse of a new and adult life that would unwind for her in due time.
Even before Michael wrapped an arm around her himself, a feeling of complete rightness and freedom swamped Sara's whole being. She felt she had never been around someone she understood so well yet knew so little, someone that it felt so absolutely right to touch.
They didn't move for a long time, standing on the threshold of his apartment, Sara's feet still into the hall.
At some point, he said, "Your hair smells like cherry blossoms."
His tone was so factual, she drew back, wanting to laugh, but the sight of his face immediately sucked all the humor out of her.
"My God, Michael. Your face."
Blood brimmed the white of his left eye in a strange sight, unlike the image Sara had of violence. In films, they showed actors with a black eye, but never that disturbing, intrusive red.
Michael took in her words, her silent shock and compassion, he took all of it steadily, without moving.
Obliviously, she thought again that his brother would have shrugged it off if he had been in his shoes.
And the thought of Lincoln filled her with sudden anger, taking over the rest.
"Did Lincoln do this?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
It surprised her he would be so forthright. And it was too much, for her to know it for certain so quickly, to imagine Lincoln could actually be so violent to his own brother. The boy who sat docilely with her in the library while she helped him with his homework. Her friend.
"Oh," she said, "the brute."
Suddenly, she wanted to slam her fists into the wall, to hammer every surface she could reach with tiny punches until this wildfire had evacuated her system.
"The vicious brutish caveman!"
"I wonder if that's the names girls usually use to insult boys."
"Why aren't you in the least angry?"
"I am," he said. That pacified her instantly. "Come in." He moved aside and soon, they were both sitting on the couch, one of the very few pieces of furniture in his minuscule apartment. "I think he must have followed us out of the Beehive," Michael said. "He waited until you'd gone back to your house before he came to me."
Sara's mind worked despite her will. She thought of how she had sneaked into her father's mansion, terrified of making a noise, then eaten some sliced bread, her stomach knotted at the thought of what would happen the next day at school, with Gretchen.
And all the while, Michael had been bleeding on the pavement?
"How did you get home?"
"I walked, of course."
Sara was going to launch herself on some other wild rant about what a despicable ape Lincoln was when Michael cut in, surprisingly calm. "Do you want some pasta?"
"I – what?"
"I haven't eaten all day. Didn't think what time it was. I think I should probably eat. Are you hungry?"
Sara was going to answer no out of polite habit when she realized she was half-starved herself, having eaten nothing at breakfast and barely managed a couple of bites for lunch.
"Yeah. Sure."
Michael sprang to his feet and got some water boiling in a small pot.
"I missed the whole day at school, then," he said.
"Yeah."
"Hum." He took it in with grave seriousness. "I'll call tomorrow. Try to explain."
"If they only take one look at your face –"
"That's rather going to be a problem, I think. Maybe they'll fire me."
Sara's mouth opened in shock. "The school?"
"I mean, as a janitor."
"Oh."
He poured in half a pack of spaghetti into the pot and started stirring.
"I'm sure – maybe they'll be understanding," she said. But that sounded lame. Sara wondered if she should say Michael could get another job, that plenty of families hired kids to mow their lawns or such things, that she'd talk about him around her neighborhood.
For a flashing second, she actually imagined him working for her father, replacing their seventy-year-old gardener. It was easy to picture him on a lawn-mower, shirtless, or walking around the garden cutting hedges with a great pair of sheaths, his eyes secretly following her, as at the auditorium.
When she came out of her reverie, she realized Michael's blue eyes were staring fixedly at her, and she hurriedly feigned a deep interest in the cracked polish over her fingernails.
He she just been fantasizing about Michael? Did that count as a fantasy?
After a while, Michael gave her a bowl of spaghetti and a fork. He ate his own lunch standing up by the counter, looking deep in thought. Sara was so hungry she ate it all, although it was bland – no cheese, no butter or olive oil, no tomato sauce. Just pasta and salt.
"I can't believe Lincoln would do something like that," she said. It was easier to speak her mind looking at her bowl of spaghetti.
Michael was silent for such a long time, she thought he wasn't going to answer at all. Her remark felt stupider with each passing second.
Then, he said, "I told you it was nothing special, the fact that Lincoln hates me. Maybe it is a little special."
He sounded ashamed, like he'd lied to her. She looked up at him in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"A lot of people hate me because I don't fit in, and Lincoln hates me. But he doesn't hate me because of that. Maybe he thinks he does, but I don't."
"What do you think?"
His plate was empty, and he put it on the edge of the sink. "I think I'm a reminder of what's darkest about him," he said. "I think when he looks at me, he sees what he's most ashamed of. Not me as such. Lincoln's always been jealous but it wasn't all bad between us, before. He used to sit on the floor with me and do jigsaw puzzles. He'd get annoyed that I managed better than he did, but he'd laugh, too, and we'd play sometimes. We didn't like the same games but I humored him and he humored me back."
He paused. Sara wanted to egg him on but her tongue was lead in her mouth. To picture the both of them as boys, as Michael was describing, was unhinging somehow.
"It all changed when our parents died."
When he didn't go on, she couldn't help but prod him, "How?" She said. "Why?"
"I suppose, because we both reacted to it in different ways."
"But that's not – you're his little brother. You're the only family he has left."
"I'm a reminder," Michael said.
Sara fell helplessly silent. She wanted to say that that made no sense, that he and Lincoln should have become closer as a result. But why? Because that was how movies and books said it happened?
Then, Michael spoke again, and Sara forgot her thoughts altogether.
"I was in the car with them," he said. On a matter-of-fact tone, but with some surprise showing on his face. Like he couldn't understand what thread of logic had led him to this statement. "My parents, during the accident. I was in the car. Lincoln doesn't know that. I mean of course he knows it, but he forgot. I remember. I remember policemen taking me home, after the accident. I hardly had a scratch on me. I remember how Lincoln looked at me, when he understood I was all that was coming home to him, and I think right there and then he hated me, for being alive, or maybe for being there inside that car when he was at home, waiting.
"He became like a wild animal. He broke out of our sitter's grip and threw himself on the floor, he beat his fists on the ground and he screamed, he screamed like he was broken mad. And I think he was enraged because I wasn't. That he hated me because his pain was ugly, and mine was inside. And I knew, right from this moment, that Lincoln and I would never understand each other, because we didn't speak the same language."
Sara felt like a stone statue on the couch. There was nothing to say. Nothing smart, nothing appropriate. Nothing right.
"Michael –"
"I know that's what it is," he said, like he thought she was going to try to persuade him it wasn't. "I could see it when he first saw me at school. That he's still burning with that same anger and shame. He doesn't know it, doesn't want to know it, but that makes no difference. Underneath the surface, he's still screaming his heart out in grief and to him, my silence is intolerable."
Sara got to her feet. She didn't think. There was little distance to break before she reached him, it was such a small room. Soon, she was standing very close to him, and she put her hand over his, leant against the counter.
"I'm sorry," she said.
There was a while of silence.
"Do you hate him?" She asked.
"No. I just wish he'd leave me alone. I think that's all I've ever wanted from anyone, and all would be fine with me if I could just be alone."
"And me?" She was barely conscious of saying the words.
"You're alone, too," he said. "I see it. You're around people but never really with them. That intrigued me."
"Is that why you kept staring, at school?" She felt disappointed somehow.
"Maybe," he said. "No."
"Then why?"
"I don't know," he was honest. "What do you think?"
She was going to say she didn't know, either, but instead said, "I think sometimes we see people and they draw us, inexplicably, before they've even spoken a word."
His eyes were like blue abysses, unlimited depths. When he looked at her like that, Sara felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice, only the fall would be a delight. Inevitable.
"Yes," he said finally. "I think so, too."
His hand felt warm under hers.
If she looked back on this, later, maybe she would think it would have been logical for him to kiss her, but at the moment her head was void from doubt and expectations.
She touched his cheek with her other hand. The skin didn't look bruised but he flinched slightly at the contact.
Their bodies were almost touching again, as they had when she hugged him in the doorframe.
"You should go to a hospital," she said.
"No money," he answered.
Sara suddenly wanted to scream. A flash of anger flew to her brain when she realized how much money she had, still she couldn't offer to drive him to the hospital and pay for his bill, because she had no bank account, no savings of her own. Her father had never seen the point in giving her a regular allowance. Instead, he bought her what she wanted and she asked for little; her books on medicine were costly but good investment to his mind. She had no other expensive hobbies. When she went out with the girls, he gave her a fifty dollar-bill like it was a penny and she was grateful, that was all.
It struck her that Michael's money was entirely his own, earned, not given. If he wanted to help a friend, he would do what he could to do it, all by himself; he wouldn't need to ask anyone for anything.
"Are you going to come to school tomorrow?"
"Of course," he said. "I didn't mean not to go today." Honestly, for a while there Michael had completely forgotten that school existed. "Your skin is soft."
Sara was so surprised she drew back a step. Until he acknowledged it out loud, she only thought of how soothing the feel of his hand was under hers, the smoothness of a cheek he probably didn't shave yet; it didn't really strike her what they were doing until he said it.
"I should be getting back," she looked at the door. His own eyes were still fixed unashamedly on her. "My dad will be home from work soon."
"Sure. I'm happy you came."
The absolute honesty in his voice filled her with such a brutal wave of affection, she nearly threw her arms around him again.
But she had spoken the truth.
It may be all right for her to come home late one night, even if her dad had noticed; she was a teenager after all. But if he came home on the next day and she was gone, the Bentley gone – that might actually get her in trouble.
"Thanks for lunch," she said, couldn't think right at this second what else to say.
"My pleasure. Did you walk here?"
"No."
He said he'd walk her to her car and Sara felt like she was floating through the flight of stairs, like she and Michael had stumbled into space.
Nika had told her that being in love felt like having butterfly wings in your stomach. Sara thought it felt like flying but with no wings at all, just like walking into a dream, where all everyday life concerns felt remote.
She couldn't say yet whether she liked it. It was too strange, a little disturbing; Sara liked keeping both feet on the ground, and there was something frightening about how everything she used to care about seemed to have shrunk to the size of a thimble. Med school felt far away, and the drive to learn all the bones in the human body was drifting peacefully astray down the ocean of life, while she was headed –
Where?
She couldn't say.
But there was little time for her to linger on the frightful fact that Michael had become so important so fast, because as they stepped out of his building, shock punched into Sara's chest at the sight of her father's Bentley, thrashed, the outside rearview mirrors left and right ripped off, a hole spreading cobweb patterns across the windshield.
"Oh no," Michael said, reading the expression of horror on her face. "Is this your car?"
"But –" Sara couldn't believe this. She kept thinking, This is not happening, and she was sure at some point she would open her eyes and the car would be brand-new, reality would apologize for its own rudeness and she would drive it home safely into the garage, her father never knowing she'd taken it.
"Nice cars don't have good longevity prospects in this neighborhood," he said. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize that's what you'd used to come here."
Past the initial shock, Sara tried to react like a responsible adult. Deep breaths. Except she couldn't play the adult now, because if she had been one, this wouldn't have been her father's car, she wouldn't have borrowed it without asking, and she wouldn't be in trouble.
"Oh God," she said. "My dad loves this car."
Michael nodded in silent sympathy. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Hide me in your apartment forever?"
He gave a genuine laugh that made the whole affair feel worth it to Sara, broken car and all.
"Really," he said, "I think I'd like that."
She realized she would too and pretended to look at the damages.
"But that wouldn't do you any good. It might actually make things worse. Things will be all right," he said. And it felt strange, coming from a boy whose face looked like it'd been through a boxing match. "Parents forgive."
Sara let out a plaintive sigh at the sight of the Bentley. As she had never given her father a reason to ground her before today, she supposed she would have to take Michael's word for it.
…
It was Sara's first serious scolding, and her father was at least as embarrassed to be delivering it as she was.
"I don't know what took over you," he said.
The clock in the living room had just struck half past seven. Normally, they'd be having dinner, sitting silent opposite each other; she couldn't remember the last time anything had come to disturb their routine.
"I'm sorry," she said.
She'd apologized over three times in the past two minutes, but instinct told her self-deprecation would be the best attitude to adopt.
"I shouldn't have taken the car. It's just there was – an emergency."
"Yes," he sounded exasperated, "you told me. The boy who got in a fight." He sighed and started massaging the ridge of his nose. A good thing they didn't go through this a lot, Sara thought, because Frank Tancredi seemed to have had enough of scolding his daughter for a lifetime. "You know, I really don't get where this is coming from. You've always been such a good kid, Sara. Now, you get home late, you steal the car to go after strange boys?"
Sara opened her mouth to protest but ultimately closed it. First, she'd wanted to say Michael wasn't strange, but he unquestionably was, and she didn't see herself explaining the attraction of that to her father.
"I didn't even know you dated boys," he said.
"I don't. I mean – it's recent."
"Well, Sara, I don't see what else I can do, given the position you're putting me in."
Sara steeled herself; of course, she knew what was coming, but it felt surreal, like she was watching it happen to an actress in some movie.
"You're grounded," he said. "No more hanging out with friends after school, no more parties, and no more boys. I don't want you dating if it's going to take your head away from your studies like this."
"But dad –"
It wasn't that she wanted to sound like a protesting teenager. Honestly, she was just going to make the reasonable argument that she was a free individual, nearly a grownup, and her father simply couldn't tell her what kind of relationships she was allowed to have.
Only when Frank interrupted her did she realize how it sounded, "We aren't negotiating, Sara. You've always had your freedom, and now you can't be trusted with it, I have to do something about it. I don't like it any more than you do."
Sara stared blankly at him. There was no room for anger in her astonishment.
After a while, she volunteered, "Do you want me to go to bed without dinner?"
He considered this. "That doesn't seem like a good idea. You didn't even have any breakfast. Maybe you could take dinner up to your room?"
Sara hurried to do just that, without pointing out this sounded much more like a reward than punishment.
And so Sara sat cross-legged on her bed and ate some mushroom risotto that their cook and house-cleaner, Dolly, had left ready on the cooker this afternoon. It was actually a good evening, taking some distance from the craziness of school and Gretchen and Lincoln punching Michael. Sara opened her biology book in front of her and read all throughout dinner, and she felt at home, at peace.
Before sleep, she wanted to write Michael about what had happened – not in a complaining way, of course. Michael had it too hard for her not to feel embarrassed to complain to him about anything. But she could have passed it off as humorous, somehow; 'Guess who's been grounded and sent to bed early like a twelve-year-old?' It was a little unfair, though, considering she'd been the one to suggest that last one to her father.
Besides, she couldn't text Michael and she would have to wait to see him tomorrow, at school.
Sara let out a sigh.
If things were going to go on like this, they were going to need to trade phone numbers at some point.
…
End Notes: Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Let me know what you think will happen next and what characters you'd like to see in the story. I'm open to suggestions.