I Am Grey Read online

The truth was there in the picture, even though it had been taken so long ago. My own smile, even then, was a mockery: a forced, unnatural shape. My dark-blonde brows were just a notch too low for the expression of happiness that was supposedly plastered onto my face. I couldn’t look at it anymore, but I didn’t want to be hasty and throw it away. That would look too much like a temper tantrum, and I needed to take care of myself now. I turned it off and shoved it into the cutlery drawer.

  One day ago …

  “Hey—girl, can you hear me?”

  The tears made it hard to see, but I knew that someone was hovering over me. I scrubbed my hands over my face and tilted my head back … and back. The man was tall, his hair greying. He had a kind face, blotched by age and sun and love. The kind of love that stuffed your stomach and clogged your arteries. I was sure that he would die with a bloated belly and a joke on his lips. Famous last words.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I didn’t know what I was apologising for. I seemed to be a burden on people no matter where I went, so the words came easily to my lips.

  “Visitors aren’t allowed in here after 10pm,” he informed me gently. “Can I call someone for you?”

  “I live here.” I struggled to my feet, looking around.

  I had no idea how I had even gotten there, to that particular part of the trailer park. To the covered courtyard area with a vending machine and a short bookshelf filled with faded and bent paperbacks. Borrow shelf, a sign read, with something scribbled beneath it that I couldn’t make out. I didn’t remember walking there. I had no idea why I was crying.

  “You do?” The man was shocked. “Which lot?”

  “Eight?” I answered him with a question, since I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “The Bunty lot?”

  “Fred and Shel are my relatives,” I told him, scrubbing my hands down my face again. “They’re lending me their RV for a year.”

  “By yourself?” He looked sceptical, but also seemed to realise that he hadn’t yet introduced himself, because he held out his hand. “I’m Tom, by the way, Tom Summers. This is my park.”

  “Mika,” I mumbled, briefly shaking his hand before retreating to the pathway. “Mika Grey.”

  “You come to me if you need anything.” He seemed concerned, following after me for a few steps. “We’re the last lot—just follow the pathway ’round to the back, and we’re there, the last lot before the train tracks.”

  I nodded. “Okay, thank you.”

  He didn’t mean it.

  They never did.

  1

  Maybe And Might

  Nicholai

  People used to tell me that everything would be okay. When they found Elspeth, she was blue in the face, with a belt tied around her neck. They told me that she was still breathing and that she would be okay. As they lowered her into the ground a week later, they all patted my back and told me that the worst was over. Her suffering was over. She was happy now; at peace.

  The rest of us would be okay.

  Except that the rest of us weren’t okay. My mother fucked everything up in her desperate attempts to feel okay. She confused all the advice: the pill scripts, the lists of activities to soothe her panic and anxiety. She mixed the wrong prescriptions and fell asleep in the relaxing bath that some idiot had told her to take.

  I found her floating there several hours later, lavender-scented candle wax still ripe in the air, a teacup of diluted whiskey on the counter.

  Things were never going to be okay. Not if people sat back and did nothing—hoping beyond hope and believing beyond rationality, writing their ‘odd jobs’ lists and mapping out their weight-loss goals while the whole world went to shit around them. You had to work hard to survive. To survive all of the pain and the fury that gradually built up with the full hellish spectrum of human experience.

  I wasted the eight years after Elspeth’s death with my head thumping against a parade of textbooks, studies, and bound collections of statistics. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the science of saving people from themselves. I scoured every known study out there about abnormal disorders. I watched session tapes until my eyes were red. I skipped sleep, I refused to eat, and I drove my professors and supervisors crazy in my quest to fast-track my degree. Not a single professional—not the old philosophers, or the modern psychiatrists—could tell me what I should have done differently. What I could have done to save her. Them.

  It’s not your fault. The same consolation over and over again. There’s nothing you could have done.

  Eventually, I graduated from learning to practising, but it was all a waste, because I still didn’t know. I was still losing. I was losing friends, friends of friends, and complete strangers. I lost a student in my first six months of social work at the school. Around me, they were dropping like flies, and I was losing hope.

  Maybe they were all right. There’s nothing I could have done differently, because the reality was that a person needed to save themselves, and there was nothing I could really do. Nothing any of us could really do. Our only hope was to stand by on the side-lines, waving our pathetic flags of support every day and fearing the shrill sound of the phone every night.

  But …

  There were times when I couldn’t accept that.

  Like when she walked into my office.

  Mika Grey.

  She had the same look about her. The one I’d seen on Elspeth’s face. I couldn’t shake the sick premonition that it was only a matter of time before the need to chase pain would start up inside her, driving her to change, to slip into that cupboard of psychology that flipped the world into a game of chance.

  This might help.

  This might change everything for the better.

  You might survive this.

  I might be able to save you.

  The difference was that Mika didn’t have anybody. She wasn’t anybody else’s Elspeth. Nobody wanted her, and nobody was going to stop her when it started to happen. Maybe it was time to throw it all away: everything that I had learned. All the certificates, the university awards, the half-finished books and my clusterfuck of a thesis. Everything that I had wasted my life on, leading up to this moment.

  To the one person that really needed me. The one person I might actually be able to save.

  I was only a month away from finishing my time at the school, and only days away from handing in my thesis. I had a job lined up at the centre in town, the same one that I had been interning at for the past year. Everything was set in concrete. The life I had been working towards was right there, within grasp, but then … so was Mika Grey.

  Her skin was too pale, her eyes too bright. She looked feverish, her lips flushed and her hands shaky. I wasn’t even sure that she realised. She had slipped into my office like a pale shadow, already a year older than the other students, but looking like they scared the crap out of her … until she spoke, and I heard the complete lack of fear in her voice.

  It was toneless, smooth as silk, a little deeper and huskier than I had expected. She didn’t talk much. She pressed her fingers to her rosy lips as soon as she spoke, like she could feel the words. Fuck, what had she said? It wasn’t good that she distracted me. I had never looked at any of the students in that way—hell no. I wasn’t that fucking desperate. There were plenty of women my own age who were happy enough to crawl into my bed. There was just something about her. She was both completely closed-off and completely aware. Her large, unblinking eyes were taking in every minute detail of my office. She was glancing at things I hadn’t even noticed. She stared at my plants for an abnormally long amount of time, a tiny crease appearing between her eyebrows.

  She was so fucking beautiful, and yes, it made me itch to touch her, to drag her out of this miserable place and taste her sad, pouty lips, but it also broke my heart. And here I was, thinking that the useless organ had shrivelled up a long, long time ago.

  It was time to throw away all the rules.

  2

  Al
one

  Mika

  Routine was the only thing keeping me going anymore. That was why I crawled from the u-shaped couch the next morning, drank a glass of milk, and stepped into my clothes for the day. It was why I followed the path to the train tracks, and then followed the train tracks three miles to the field behind the school. It took me one hour and forty minutes. These things weren’t necessarily part of an established routine, but I could pretend that they were. I could pretend that there was a purpose to them.

  It didn’t take long before one of my teachers noticed that I was there, sitting in a classroom … pretending. I hated him for making the ruse known to me, but I hated him a little less when I found myself once more in the councillor’s office. I made sure to check his name on the door this time. Mr. Nicholai Fell. His eyes were brighter, but so was the sun. It slanted over his features, turning the blue of his irises to liquid. It made me thirsty, so I asked him for a glass of water. There was a water cooler in the corner of his office, by the door. His eyes flicked to it, and I stood to get the water myself before he could stand.

  “I won’t ask how you’re feeling,” he told me.

  I finished one plastic cup and filled it again. I was so thirsty. No … dammit, I was hungry. Literally starving. I had ordered pizza the night before, but it hadn’t sat right in my stomach, and I had vomited it up almost immediately. I filled my cup a third time and then went back to my seat.

  “Why?” I was genuinely curious.

  Everyone who spoke to me asked me how I was feeling. It was the extent of my conversations with people these days, and since I never knew how to answer them, those conversations didn’t last long.

  “Because it doesn’t matter. It’s okay if you feel nothing at all.”

  My shoulders sagged a little, and I had to place the cup on his desk before it slipped from my fingers and splashed against the ground. How did he know? Did I look as numb on the outside as I felt on the inside?

  “I can’t sleep in the bed.” I searched his eyes, desperate for a drop of wisdom; a hint of meaning. He still looked too young, but I had the oddest desire to sit on his windowsill and have him care for me, as though I were one of his immaculate plants. Maybe he could make me immaculate, too. “I can’t bear to go near it, and I don’t know why.”

  “Where do you sleep?” He didn’t even look surprised at my admission. He only leaned back in his chair and considered me, his eyes heavy on mine.

  I couldn’t look away. I no longer had the strength to.

  “On the couch.”

  “Are you eating?”

  “A little.”

  “Why do you think you can’t sleep on the bed?”

  “It doesn’t seem right.”

  “What isn’t right about it?”

  “Being comfortable. Being comfortable doesn’t seem right.”

  He watched me, letting my answer soak into both of us, and then he pushed his chair back and stood. He moved to the windowsill and gestured for me to follow him. He was taller than I had expected—his bicep was in line with my head, and his button-down was tight enough to display the fact that he was toned with a perfect amount of muscle—he looked strong, even. He didn’t belong in that office. The sunlight fully engulfed him now, drenching him in light and causing me to shy away. He was a caged wonder. A fallen angel in this concrete box for weeping victims.

  “I want to go back to class.” My voice was abrupt, accusatory.

  He reached out, but didn’t touch me, merely opened himself to me, his palm displayed. “Come here, Mika. You were staring at my plants earlier. Let me tell you about them.”

  I considered his offered palm, and then I shook my head. “No.” I walked out without a backward glance.

  He let me, because he didn’t know what to do with me. None of them did. I was past the point of discipline, past the point of ultimatums or incentives. I was angry, because Nicholai Fell didn’t belong. I was angry because he had managed to make me angry, and I was angry because I didn’t spiral at all that night. I didn’t black out. I remembered everything. I went to sleep consciously and I woke up consciously. I managed to keep my breakfast down.

  I skipped the first two classes the next day, because Nicholai was busy with other students. When he caught me sitting outside his office, he dismissed the other student waiting, telling her that he would see her next week, and then he waved me in.

  There was a little plant on his desk. He pushed it toward me, toward my chair.

  “It’s called a bonsai,” he told me.

  I knew then that I was wrong. He knew exactly what to do with me.

  When I didn’t reply, he continued telling me about the plant.

  “Bonsai actually refers to the method, not the tree—it means tray planting. It’s the method of creating a miniature tree by snipping the roots and shaping the foliage to match your design. I can teach you, if you like.”

  He wasn’t too young anymore. Now he was too smart.

  “Is the little tree going to fix me?” I picked it up, drawing it into my arms, even as I moved for the door. I didn’t want to be around him anymore, but I was going to take the immaculate little tree-plant, because I liked it.

  He stood, moving from around his desk to open the door for me. He smelled like the snap of a frigid ocean breeze—not exactly a relaxing scent. I hugged myself against it, fighting the desire to breathe him in. He was wearing a blue shirt today, fitted—like the last one. It reflected in the blue of his eyes, turning him into something striking again.

  “You don’t need fixing, Mika.” He was staring down at me, because I wasn’t moving.

  “If you want to help me, then don’t lie to me.”

  He winced, the spasm moving over his features almost too quickly for me to catch. I enjoyed the crack in his composure, until one of his hands settled on my shoulder. His skin was rough, and it burned. It struck me once again that he didn’t belong. What kind of social worker had hands that rough? Who the hell was he?

  “Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you how to trim the leaves, okay?”

  There was a genuine question in his eyes, but when I didn’t answer, it dissolved. He looked at his hand, removed it, and sucked in a short, subtle breath.

  “Thanks for coming in today.”

  I left, my heart racing. Why was my heart racing? I didn’t want to care, so I skipped my next class and waited out the rest of the day on one of the back fences, by the bus stop. My little tree-plant was in my lap, and I stared at it, touching the small leaves.

  “Hey chica—what are you doing out here?”

  I glanced up over the leaves to a worn leather belt. There was a guy standing there, flanked on either side by two more. They all wore tanks and faded jeans. Two of them had open button-ups tossed over the tanks. The guy who had spoken to me had light brown eyes, the kind that always looked so much deeper than the usual, darker shade of brown. The kind that looked like light shining through glass. There was a scar on his neck—a thick one, puckered and white.

  “Nothing,” I muttered.

  “Nothing?” He quirked a brow, sharing a look with one of his friends. “We were about to skip last period, you wanna come hang out with us?”

  This is the part where you run back to school, a little voice whispered to me. This is the part where you realise you’re spiralling again.

  I shoved the voice away, getting down off the railing and adjusting the plant under my arm. “Fine.”

  “Name’s Marcus.” The guy didn’t seem surprised, but his friends did. They hadn’t expected me to agree. Marcus motioned to the one on the left. “This is Smith, and Duke—my brothers.”

  Now that he mentioned it, an age difference became visible. Duke was the oldest; he had brown eyes just like his brothers, with a crew cut and a tattoo snaking up the back of his neck. Marcus must have been the middle child. Smith was slighter, shorter, possibly even younger than me. That would put Marcus at a year younger than me, and Duke at a year or more my senior.
He shouldn’t even be in school anymore, but then again … I shouldn’t have been either. They walked me to a car parked in the student lot, and I got into the back with Smith. It was a beat-up sedan, painted yellow. I wasn’t sure of the make.

  “Duke doesn’t go to school,” Marcus told me, twisting around in the front passenger seat to talk to me. “He lives around here, so we skip class to hang out sometimes.”

  I turned to the window, mumbling some kind of affirmation, just to prove that I was listening. Marcus kept talking. He told me about his sister, Jean, who also went to our school, and asked me if I was the Grey girl. The one who got taken out of school for a year while the police tried to figure out who murdered those people. I told him yes. He asked if those people were my parents. I told him yes again. He asked if I was in a mental institution. The words stuck in my throat. Smith decided that he was interested then, and asked me what a murder looked like.

  “Red,” I mumbled. “It looks like red.”

  “That’s enough,” Duke snapped from the driver’s seat. “Stop asking her about it, you dicks.”

  They drove to Summer Estate Trailer Park, and I opened my mouth to ask them how they knew where I lived, but they cruised straight past my RV and toward the back of the park, closer to the train tracks, but on the opposite side to the owner’s lot. Duke’s place was one of the bigger, more permanent trailers. They pulled onto the grass, despite the sign hammered into the sidewalk reading: No Parking. I got out of the car and stared at Duke’s trailer, wondering at the coincidence.

  “It’s not much,” Marcus muttered, standing beside me as Duke unlocked the front door and disappeared inside. “But it’s his—he owns it—and that’s pretty cool.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Sure.”

  “Let’s go inside.” Smith found my other side, pressing on my back.

  The interior was similar to mine, with a kitchen and living area in the centre, and a doorway at the other end, giving a glimpse into a bedroom. There was a set of bunk beds on the other side. Duke had his head in the fridge, and when he withdrew it, there was already a beer in his mouth, the top of the bottle clenched between his teeth. He handed one off to Marcus, and one to me.