Wicked Hunger (16 page)

“That’s it, huh? I don’t believe you, Van. No one ever just…”

He stops himself this time, but the damage is already done. Abandoning Noah to the harsh absurdity of my table of friends, I stand up and make for the exit, racing to the outside before my tears can fall. I burst through the doors and round the corner. My body falls against the rough bricks of the building. Their prickly surface digs into my back and keeps me from sliding down.

I have maybe ten seconds of peace before I hear footsteps. Hope that it’s Noah come to cheer me up is dashed when Ketchup comes around the corner. His tortured expression is a far cry from the hostility he was just shoving down Noah’s throat. His mouth opens, but he can’t seem to figure out what he wants to say.

“Nobody ever just wants to be my friend, right?” I ask. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“Van, I didn’t mean…”

“Yes you did, because it’s true.” I take a deep breath. My ragtag group of friends all owe me. Every one of them is my honest to goodness friend now, but they never would have had anything to do with me if I hadn’t saved their lives. I give up and slide to the ground so I can wallow.

“I didn’t mean to sound like such a jerk,” Ketchup says. He sits down next to me. “I thought you were lying, that you didn’t want to admit you had to rescue someone else, that he was only there because he felt like he had to be.”

That familiar stab of rejection buries itself in my chest. “I wasn’t lying,” I manage to whisper.

“You didn’t save him?”

I shake my head. “He saved me, actually,” I say without thinking.

“What?” Ketchup demands.

I try to backtrack, but Ketchup will not let this one go. Finally, I give in and tell him about what happened in the alley. Well, I tell him as much as I can. Ketchup is stunned at the tale of me getting mixed up with a trio of chollos. He doesn’t bat an eye about me fighting, and he doesn’t look for evidence of bruises or cuts. He doesn’t seem to know whether to be angry or grateful when I mentioned Noah breaking up the fight. In the end, the only emotion that sticks around in Ketchup’s eyes is sadness.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Shame makes me look away. “It was stupid to walk home. I was embarrassed, and I was fine anyway.”

“But…”

I hold up a hand, not willing to discuss it anymore. Ketchup grunts in annoyance, but doesn’t press the issue. Instead, he goes back to the original topic. The skepticism is clear in his voice when he says, “And now he’s your English partner? Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“I know. I was worried at first, too, but he hasn’t pulled anything. I even offered to let him off the hook and do it alone, but he said no.”

“Van, I don’t know Noah very well, but he’s been here a few years. He’s heard the rumors and stories. He knows about your…interesting past. How can you be sure of his motivations?”

I shrug. Admitting Noah’s biggest motivator for ignoring the vicious stories constantly circulating about me is because he likes me is not something I want to discuss with Ketchup.

“Are you sure he isn’t after something?” Ketchup asks. “Van, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Is it really so hard to believe someone might just like me?”

“By someone, you mean a guy,” Ketchup says, jealousy sneaking back into his voice. When I don’t answer, Ketchup knows the answer is yes. He sighs and leans his head against the wall. “Noah likes you?”

“I think so. Is it that surprising?” I ask.

Ketchup is quiet. His hand moves slowly to take mine, and for once I let him. “Is it surprising that a guy thinks you’re beautiful and amazing?” he asks softly. His hand tightens around mine. “No, it’s not surprising. Everyone should be able to see that about you. Everyone should see you like I do.”

Tears that have nothing to do with anger build in my eyes. They scare me because I know their source, and I know I won’t be able to hold them back. “Ketchup, please,” I whisper.

“It’s not true,” he says as if he didn’t hear me.

He doesn’t continue. I’m forced to ask, “What isn’t true?”

“What I said about nobody wanting to be around you unless you save them. I wanted to be with you long before you saved me.” He smiles and leans closer to me. “In fact, the only reason you had to save me was because I was already hanging around you when that car lost control.”

I try to block out his words, but they’ve already sunken deep into my mind. I lie to myself every day, trying to convince myself that Ketchup is only here for the protection I provide and the loyalty my rescues require. I’m so convincing, everyone else believes it. The only one I can’t fool is myself. No, I’m not the only one who can’t be tricked. Ketchup will never give in to my make believe, no matter how hard I try.

“Why Noah?” Ketchup asks. His anguished voice breaks my heart.

“Because he likes me without needing a reason,” I say simply, honestly.

“Do you like him back?”

I shrug unconvincingly. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Ketchup seems to take my answer as a sure sign of my feelings for Noah. His voice cracks when he asks, “More than me?”

“I…” My throat seizes up, and I can’t speak. I turn my head into his shoulder and hide from him. Ketchup’s hand sweeps up my back and tangles in my hair. He presses me closer to his chest. My body trembles as I take in a deep breath. “Ketchup, I can’t be with you. You know that,” I whisper.

As he shakes his head, I expect his usual argument, the same one he’s thrown at me a million times before. He surprises me this time. “I know you think that, but it doesn’t matter right now. I just need to know.”

He pauses, and I can see his free hand clench into a fist. “Do you like him more than you like me?”

“No.” It’s an honest answer, but the sudden hope that fills Ketchup’s eyes scares me and I rush to clarify. “But maybe I should give him a chance. If I can’t be with you, maybe it’s time
…”

“No,” Ketchup says angrily.

My face crumbles. “Ketchup, it’s not fair of me to keep doing this to you. I can’t be with you. You shouldn’t waste your time waiting for me.”

“You’ll keep seeing him, then?” Ketchup demands before I can convince him.

“Yes.” Tears slide down my cheeks when Ketchup shudders. “We have our project to do…” I say, not convincing in the least.

“But that’s not the only reason. You
want
to see him again.”

“Part of me does,” I admit.

The tension in his body tells me exactly how he feels about my answer. He is bursting, dying to ask me, tell me, demand that I don’t do this. He wants to stop me from ever seeing Noah again. I can feel it pouring off of him, but he doesn’t ask. Never. He would never ask me to do that.

Instead of what he really wants to say, he says, “I’ll wait.”

I can’t stop my tears from falling in earnest. They cascade down my face. “Don’t,” I beg him. “I don’t want you to wait.”

“I’ll always wait, Van. I love you.”

It must kill him to walk away, then, but he does it. He leaves me to cry, not out of vengeance, but again, because he knows that’s what I want. Ketchup always gives me what I want in the end. I only wish I could do the same for him. What I can give is so paltry in comparison. I wait until the click of the door hits my ears before whispering, “I love you, too.”

Then I drop my head to my knees and sob.

Everything after lunch is a blur. I don’t speak to Ivy or Noah. I know I won’t get the chance to confront Zander until I get home from work tonight, so I force myself to focus on going to the senior center with Ketchup after school. A quick text message to Grandma explaining my plans to “volunteer” are met with happy approval. I, on the other hand, am sick just thinking about it. What if Ketchup is right?

It is with trepidation that I cross the parking lot to Ketchup’s car after school. When I finally make it to him, his subdued demeanor lowers my eyes.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod and slip into his SUV. The drive is quiet at first. After about ten minutes, I can’t stand it anymore. “Ketchup, I’m sorry about earlier.”

When he looks over at me, his smile is faint, but genuine. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything. I had no right to act the way I did. Forgive me?”

“I don’t need to. I’m the one
…”

“Van,” he interrupts, “I know this situation sucks. I don’t understand it, at all, but I want you to know I’m here for you, no matter what. Nothing else needs to be said right now.”

I have the feeling what he means by that last line is that he doesn’t want to talk about me hanging out with Noah anymore. There are still plenty of things that need to be said—mainly me apologizing for being such a horrible friend to him. But I don’t say anything else. I should make myself pull away from him, quit torturing him. It’s the right thing to do, but I can’t. Deep down, I cannot get rid of the hope that one day things will change and I can live the life I want, with the person I want. Ketchup must feel the same. The sense of relief that settles around me may be false, but I hold it close until we pull up to the senior center.

We walk in together, with Ketchup greeting friends of his late grandfather and me following along behind, not sure whether or not this is going to work. Ketchup leads me deeper into the center. He pauses at a plain wooden door. Even with it closed, I can hear voices, several men arguing.

“This is the unofficial ‘Vets Room,’” Ketchup says. “I’ve known these guys a long time. I’ve heard their stories dozens of times. All three of them served in the front lines in Vietnam. They’ve never talked much about the actual killing they did, but they’ve talked about what it was like over there. If you’re right about what the weird taste means, these guys should cause the same effect.”

“But what if it doesn’t? Even around Zander it doesn’t happen all the time.”

Ketchup puts his arms around my shoulder and reaches for the door knob. “Then we’ll come back again, just to make sure. We’ll come back as many times as it takes, okay?”

“Okay,” I say quietly.

Ketchup opens the door and I brace myself. I even find myself holding my breath until I can’t stand it anymore and breathe. When I do, the air smells faintly of tobacco and arthritis cream, but that’s it. I’m pulled out of my contemplation when I am poked with a cane. I jump back at the hard nudge and glance over at the source.

“Who’s this pretty little thing?” a wrinkled old man asks.

Ketchup grins at his elderly friend. “This is my friend, Van.”

“Van?” one of the others hollers. “What kind of name is Van?”

“It’s short for Vanessa,” I offer. The old man scowls at me. I try not to laugh.

Not wanting to be the center of attention, I tug Ketchup toward a couch. He follows with a smile, asking the three gentlemen how they’re doing. That inspires a whole round of complaining from each of them. Ketchup takes it all in gracefully. When they are done complaining about aches and the complicated nature of Medicare, their interest turns back to me.

“Why’d you bring a girl here, anyway?” the guy whose name turns out to be Gus asks. He’s also the one who poked me. “This is a gentlemen’s club.”

The other two mutter similar complaints, but Ketchup fends them off. “Hold on now. I bring someone new you all can tell your stories to, and you’re complaining? Every week you three complain that no one new ever comes to visit you.”

When the three look sufficiently chastised, I ask to hear a story. Apparently they instantly forget their qualms from a few seconds ago, because suddenly all three are tripping over each other to be the first to tell a story of
way
back when
. Their fighting in the war never comes up, but I actually find myself enjoying their tales. The two hours I had to spare before heading off to work go by much more quickly than I expected. Before I know it, Ketchup and I are saying our goodbyes.

Ketchup is saying goodbye with his hand on the door when it hits me. I can barely even stand when the taste slams into me. My hand clutches at Ketchup’s arm. His eyes snap over to me, and his goodbyes wrap up half a second later. The door is pulled shut as I double over. Before I can collapse, Ketchup has his arms around me.

“Van, are you okay?”

My hand flies up to my nose and mouth in an effort to keep the taste away, but it’s already seeped into me. All I can do is breathe and wait for it to pass. Ketchup holds me until I start breathing normally again. My head falls back against his chest in relief. Alone in the hallway, nobody notices the two of us sitting on the floor. I’m grateful for that. I need a few minutes before I’ll be able to stand up.

“It happened again,” Ketchup says, a statement, not a question. “I was really hoping it wouldn’t.”

So was I.

“It means you were right,” I say quietly. The grief that inspires is a heavy weight to bear.

“Maybe not. It could mean something else.” The hope in his voice is faint, and we both know he is wrong. Ketchup’s head rests against mine as his arms tighten around me. His voice is small when he asks, “Who?”

“Who did Zander kill?” Tears well in my eyes. “I don’t know, but there have been nights lately when he hasn’t come home until really late. I don’t know where he’s going, or what he’s doing, but I found blood on one of his shirts this morning. What if…what if he ends up locked up like Oscar?”

That can’t happen. Not only can I not bear the idea of losing another brother, there are more complicated reasons I can’t have Zander taken away from me.

There was a time when I was little, six or seven, that Mom and Dad sent the boys to summer camp for two weeks. It was the first time they had been away from home for that long and they were so excited to go. I was excited to have Mom and Dad’s attention to myself for two weeks. They were only gone two days when I started to get sick. At first Mom thought I had eaten something bad when my stomach started hurting. Two days later, she thought it must have been a nasty flu. Then the fever started. The doctors prescribed antibiotics, but they didn’t help. My brothers had been gone a week when Mom called Grandma in a panic.

The next thing I knew, Zander and Oscar were home and I felt a million times better. Nobody bothered to explain anything to me, but I heard Grandma tell Mom and Dad that they couldn’t separate us for so long. She claimed she didn’t know why we had to stay in contact with each other to keep the sickness away, but she made my parents promise they would never keep us separated like that again.

She said it would get better with age, but the most we could ever go without being near each other was a week before our bodies would start shutting down. The staff at Peak View can’t understand why Oscar always feels so much better physically after we visit him. Once a week is the most often we’re allowed to see him, and as hard as it is to sit in that room with him sometimes, it kills us both to know he spends most of his days sick and begging for contact.

What will happen if Zander is locked up and I can’t get to him often enough? What will happen to me?

***

Going to work and forcing myself to make it through two classes is torture. I am exhausted when the last dancer finally leaves. I trudge through the front door and scan the parking lot for Grandma’s Volvo. The sight of Zander’s truck sends a whole wash of emotions through me. Anger tops the list, but fear and disgust are there in pretty large concentration as well. It takes me a few minutes to collect myself and climb into the truck.

Before I can say a word, Zander says, “I know you’re pissed at me, but this needs to wait until we get home. It’s not safe while I’m driving.”

The fact that he is right makes me nod. Not knowing how to even start keeps me from saying anything. As we drive, I struggle to figure out what to say to him. What happened today is eating away at me, but how do I accuse Zander of killing someone? There is still some lingering hope that I’m wrong. If I break open something like that, it can never be taken back. Reluctantly, I hold onto the topic of murder and focus on my anger at Zander over Ivy instead. It builds quickly as I relive our conversation from that night. By the time we make it home to an empty house, I am ready to let him have it.

Zander stops and faces me when we get to the living room. “Okay, go ahead.”

“That’s it?” I fume. “Go ahead? No explanation?”

“Just say what you want to say, and then I’ll explain. You’ll never let me get through it without yelling at me anyway,” Zander says.

His calm frustrates me more than I can even say. “Fine. If that’s the way you want to do this, then fine.” I take a deep breath and unleash every ounce of the frustration and anger that has been building over the last two days.

“What in the hell were you doing with Ivy Saturday night? Are you crazy? I told you I wouldn’t stop hanging out with Laney because of Ivy and you acted like I was insane! You got
mad
at me for not bailing on my best friend! I’ve spent the last week trying to find ways to vent my hunger so I don’t kill her, and you’re taking her out to dinner? She
is
dinner for you! You want to kill her! Why on earth are you putting yourself in that kind of situation? That’s not getting used to her, that’s suicide!

“One slip and you’ll be wiping her blood off your hands! Don’t you understand that? I can’t lose you too! I love you. You’re all I have left. How can you do this to me? What if you get sent to prison and I can’t visit you? What if you get sick? What if you die? You laugh at me because I think there’s something wrong with her, but I’m trying to protect you! I don’t want to see you locked up like Oscar, or worse. I’m doing everything I can to make sure she doesn’t hurt you, and you’re playing right into her hands! Why, Zander? Why are you doing this?”

I have to suck in a huge breath of air after my tirade. It lodges in my chest, held in anticipation of Zander’s answer. Given what I found out today, I am more scared than ever that Zander will kill Ivy. I can’t let that happen. Silence slithers through the air between us. It tightens around my throat and chokes me until I start to fear I’ll pass out. Zander stares at his feet, not answering.

“Why?” I ask again. “Why would you put your life, our lives, at risk like this?”

His lips finally part, but I’m not prepared for his answer. “Because I’m in love with her.”

“What?” I shriek. My left eye starts twitching. It’s never done that before, and for a moment it’s all I can focus on. It’s all I will let myself focus on. I must have misheard him. He can’t have really just said what I think he said. As if he knows I’m doubting my own ears, he repeats it.

“I’m in love with her, Van.”

“No,” I say. My head starts shaking back and forth. “No, no you’re not. You can’t be in love with her. You’ve only known her for a week. She’s not…you can’t…it’s just your hunger that wants her. You’re not thinking straight, Zander.”

My brother stands up and walks over to me. His hands on my shoulders fail to calm my mounting hysteria. “Van, it’s not my hunger. It’s me.
I
want her.”

“But…you want to kill her, too.”

“Yes,” he says through clenched teeth, “but I can handle it.”

“I don’t understand. How did this happen?”

Zander shakes his head wearily. “I don’t know. When I ran into her in the parking lot that first day, I stood there wanting to crush her windpipe, and suddenly I couldn’t stop staring at her lips. I realized how beautiful she was, and I wanted to protect her.”

I shove his hands away from me and fix him with my glare. “You’re the one you’d be protecting her from. Do you even realize that?”

“Of course I do!”

“No, this is stupid, Zander! You’re going to hurt her. You have to stay away from her.” It’s the advice he’s given me dozens of time, now coming out of my mouth. It’s a strange feeling, a flip-flopped kind of déjà vu I don’t like in the least. Even more disturbing is my usual retort spilling over Zander’s lips.