She lay next to me in the dark of the cabin. The windowblinds cast a ladder of blue shadows on the sheets covering our legs. She lay with her cheek on her pillow, and her hair was curled from the humidity.
With her eyes closed she said: "Cody, what's wrong with your brother?"
"What do you mean?" I said, tired.
She poked me in the ribs with her index finger and the long nail of her index finger. "Did you forget already?"
"The stories?"
"That was bad enough. Writing about his friends like that. One of those stories had me in it, you know? I almost gagged when I read it."
"They were just stories, Bailey."
"Just stories," she repeated, opening her eyelids. She propped herself up on one elbow, tucking some loose strands of hair behind her ear. "If you ask me, he should've been expelled."
"They were school assignments. Drama class, remember?"
She poked me in the ribs again, then she punched me in the ribs. I laughed and scooched away, toward the edge of the bed, and she laughed and followed me to the edge of the bed and clasped her arms around my midsection.
"It's not just that," she said, "it's the way he talks to me."
As she spoke I reached down and placed my hand on top of hers. Her hands were folded just above my waist. She had her fingers knitted, and with her thumb she was tracing little circles in my skin. I could feel a tightness in my stomach as she lay holding me like that.
"You were there, the other day," she went on, "at breakfast, when he started talking about that dream he had. What a creepy thing to say. Who knows what he might've said if you hadn't been there."
"Zack has some problems," I said. "It's been hard for him, being away from Mom."
"He'll never make it into a good school."
"I know."
Under the sheets she slipped one bare leg between mine and pressed her foot to my shin. The bottom of her foot was cold and the cold felt good in the hot air of the cabin. I closed my eyes. Then came a loud sucking sound from across the room, and I could feel the air rushing toward the door. I picked my head up to look as the door swung outward.
Black Star
Part I
"I'll kill you, Zack," Cody was saying. "I swear to God I'll kill you."
Kirby had him pinned to the wall. He twisted Cody's arm behind his back and jerked him away from the wall. There was blood on the wall where Cody's face had touched, and I saw blood running down his face as Kirby steered him away, down the hall.
I stood watching them go. Kirby wore a black T-shirt with white letters on the back that read, "Black Lives Matter." Cody looked very small walking next to him. At the end of the hall they turned and went up the stairs and disappeared, Cody still yelling.
My right eye felt like it was swelling up inside my head, and I could feel blood inching down the side of my face. I reached up to wipe it away.
"Zack, come with me," Moseby said, standing in the doorway. I had almost forgotten he was standing there, and hearing his voice startled me.
We went back into Bailey's dorm. It was empty now, quiet, and all my clothes and most of hers still lay in a pile at the foot of the bed. Moseby walked around the pile and went into the bathroom and turned on the light. I fished out my boxers and pulled them on in the dark, then I sat down along the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom.
After a while Moseby came out carrying a wet handtowel. He tossed it to me and I caught it in my lap and balled it up and pressed it to my eye.
"How old are you now?" he asked, standing in the doorframe. I could hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights in the bathroom behind him.
"Nothing happened," I said. "It was too hot."
"Good."
I lowered the towel from my eye and reached up with two fingers and pried my eyelid open from the bottom. Everything was blurry. Everything stung badly. Seeing blood on one side of the towel, I turned it over and pressed the clean side to my eye again. The towel was very cold.
"You're not even sixteen, are you?" Moseby said.
"I'm sixteen."
"I've known you and your brother since you were twelve years old."
"It's been a long time."
"No, it hasn't."
With my good eye I looked up at him, and I saw that he was looking at the floor.
"It hasn't been very long at all," he said. "It's like that with kids. They're this tall and you think you know them." He held out one hand, about waist-high. "But you don't really know them. You'll see one day."
"What are you saying?"
"I don't know what to say. I'm supposed to say something smart, something authoritative. I'm supposed to make a moral judgment. But I'm not surprised, and honestly I don't care. I don't care who said what or who kissed who. You'll lie awake tonight thinking everyone cares, but I don't care. Truthfully, I only care about one thing: making sure the passengers aboard this ship feel safe."
"I won't talk to Bailey anymore," I said. "I won't talk to Cody anymore either."
Moseby shook his head. "You won't be here, Zack. You can't be here, not after this. Tomorrow morning I'll make some calls, and by the end of the week you'll be back in Boston. That's where we part ways. Whatever happens next is up to Carey."
He breathed a small sigh, then he reached his arm around the doorframe and switched off the light in the bathroom. The whole cabin fell dark, and I watched his shadow glide past me, around the bed. I could feel his footsteps through the carpet.
"Get your clothes," he said from the door. "I'm taking you back to your dorm."
Once I had gotten dressed we went out into the hallway and Moseby locked the door and I followed him up the stairs to the main deck. As I climbed the stairs I wondered if Cody and Kirby might be waiting for us at the top, but they were gone. We went around the back of the houses and all the light was gone from the sky and I could hear music playing on the upper deck. When we reached the stairwell that led down to the boys' dorms, Moseby stopped and waved me on ahead. At the bottom of the stairs was a big metal door with a window in it, and the door made a loud squeaking sound as I opened it. Moseby followed me through, and I led him down the quiet empty hall to my cabin.
"Go to bed," Moseby said in a low voice, standing very close. "I'll be back in the morning. Until then, stay here. Obviously you won't be going back to class. Understand?"
I was still holding the wet towel to my eye; my head was throbbing and my eye hurt and I just wanted to lie down. My free hand trembled as I slipped my keycard into the slot and turned the handle.
Moseby grabbed my elbow. "Understand?"
"Yes," I said, squinting up at him. My voice caught in my throat as I spoke.
He stood looking back at me, gripping my arm. Then he let go and I went inside and shut the door and stood listening on the other side. His shoes made a soft clipping sound on the polished wood floor as he walked away, back toward the stairwell.
When he was gone I clambered onto my bed and buried my face in my pillow. I let the towel drop to the floor by the nightstand, and I lay there in the dark and the quiet for a long time, wide awake.
The clock showed 4:57 when I finally got up and wobbled to the bathroom. The lights were bright in there and the buzzing sound reminded me of Bailey's dorm; it reminded me of what had happened.
After flushing the toilet, I went to the sink and let the water run. I looked at my face in the mirror. My hair was thick with sweat and it all lay flat against my skin. A dark blue bruise curved around the bottom of my right eye, and my eyelid was red and swollen. I reached up with both hands and pried it open, then with two fingers I wiped away the huge glob of crust that had clotted in the corner of my eye. Everything was blurry on that side, and the light made it sting and the pain ran all the way back to my neck, down into my shoulder.
Cupping my hands beneath the faucet I splashed cool water on my face, then I dragged my wet fingers through my hair.
"Dear Mom and Cody," I murmured to myself as the water dripped from my chin and my bottom lip and swirled pink around the drain. "I'm sorry I had to do this. I'm sorry I disappointed you."
I dried my face on a towel and trudged back out into the bedroom. On the desk across from my bed was a red spiral notebook; I opened it to a blank page and started scribbling down words:
For these three reasons and others I have decided to end my life.
1. The embarrassment I have caused myself, my friends and my family is more than I can tolerate. What I did last night was wrong, and I knew it was wrong. It was impulsive, and the idea of getting away with it excited me. Since I was very little, I have had a hard time controlling my impulses. But after last night, I see now that this problem is only getting worse, and I do not know how to stop it other than by killing myself. If I were to go on living, I could even face legal consequences for what I have done. This way, I am sparing my family the pain and financial burden of having to deal with court dates and legal fees. More than anything, I hope that Bailey is not traumatized by what happened, and I hope that her relationship with you, Cody, will stay strong.
2. At this point it is clear that I will never amount to anything in life. Up until now, there was always some hope that I might get my grades up and graduate and get into a decent school back home. But thanks to my actions last night, I have been expelled from Seven Seas High, and I will never go to college. Additionally, I have no practical skills, and I have never taken school seriously. Throughout my life, I have pushed all my friends away from me, I have never been able to hold a steady girlfriend, and my behavior has strained my relationship with my family. Mom, you have already sacrificed so much for me, and I cannot accept a future where you are forced to continue sacrificing in order to take care of me. In fact, I hope that with time you can just forget about me.
3. Cody, you deserve an identity of your own. As twins, we have always been compared to each other, and I know this hurts you as much as it does me. You are nothing like me, and I am nothing like you, but because we look alike we are always grouped together, like two sides of the same coin. As much as I picked on you when we were younger, you have always been better than me, and for many years now I have been living in your shadow. I wish I knew what it felt like to be you, to have a bright future ahead of me, but my life has been a false start, and for that reason it is time for me to step aside. You do not deserve the burden of being my brother, and I do not deserve the good fortune of being yours.
When I was finished, I signed my name and closed the notebook and sat with my head down, elbows on knees, palms covering my tired eyes. "Love, Zack," I said to myself.
Outside the air was sticky, the sky a smear of pale purple. In bare feet I crossed the main deck to the café and the juice bar. The stairs to the upper deck had been gated off for the night, but the gate was low, and no one was around to stop me from hopping over it.
Spanning the upper deck was a shallow swimming pool surrounded by lounge chairs, two tennis courts, an open-air garden and a small amphitheater. From the back of the theater you could see one of the radar towers; at the base of the tower stood a big white building covered with ladders and scaffolding, and sprouting from the top was a huge satellite dish, facing west.
I went along the high cement wall surrounding the theater, following it until the floor bowled away to make room for seating. When I could go no further, I bent my knees and jumped and scrambled up the side of the wall. First my arms went over, then my shoulders, then my hips. Then I sat straddling the wall, one leg on either side, breathing hard. Beneath me was a sloped overhang that curved down to meet the main deck, and from where I sat I could see another small swimming pool and the peaked glass roof of the rec center far below.
Spreading my palms flat on the wall, I pulled my knees up and bent my head down. When my feet were back under me, I pushed myself upright and stuck my arms out for balance. Walking straight-legged, I crept along the wall until I stood above the stage at the front of the amphitheater. Far off on the horizon I could see a faint splotch of yellow light coloring the sky. The wall rose higher as it curved around the back of the stage, giving way to a shelf of white sheetmetal that jutted out toward the radar tower.
I swung my legs down, feeling my heart bang against my ribs. It was at least a ten-foot drop; not enough to kill me. But if I could make it across to the tower, and if I could walk out across the scaffolding, the only drop would be into open air and into the ocean hundreds of feet below.
A gust of wind sent my hair whipping out behind me. I turned my head, squeezing my eyelids shut as the wind batted at my ears. When I reopened my eyes I was gazing down into the amphitheater behind me, and a man in a black shirt was walking down the center aisle, nearing the stage.
"Which one are you?" Kirby said. "The good one or the bad one?"
He stopped just short of the stage and hung his hands on his hips, looking up at me. In the dark I could just see the whites of his eyes.
"Come on, let's get down from there. You white boys be killing me."