Page 2 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Levi strong-arms him out of the way and tilts the screen to a better angle. While Crane readjusts the padding of his sports bra and zips up his jeans, Levi inspects the feed of the manager’s office, the two of them in the dark surrounded by files and old boxes and cleaning supplies, then the front lot, then the hive.
Levi says, “New girl, huh?”
Crane is not the best person to greet a terrified and potentially unwell stranger, but better him than Levi. Levi talks about putting down defectors the same way hunters brag about bagging deer. He drinks toomuch. He’d been dishonorably discharged and only ever mentioned it to bitch about getting caught; what he did, Crane refuses to ask, but when he comes home with blood on his shirt, it’s hard not to mull over the possibilities.
In comparison, then, Crane is the safer option. The boyish half-androgyny of twenty months’ testosterone therapy—sparse facial hair, yesterday’s eyeliner, almost-but-not-quite flat-chested, and a little too feminine around the mouth—places him squarely in the territory ofnot a threat, probably. It’s just the dull stare and unblinking silence that throws people off and, well. This person will have to deal with it.
The girl is halfway across the parking lot when Crane steps out to meet her.
She’s barefoot and glassy-eyed, one tank top strap slipping off her dirty shoulder. Hasn’t showered in a while, given the state of her hair. The shitty fluorescent lights make it difficult to tell bruises from shadows. She’s limping too. Feet are bleeding.
She walked here, then. From where? The closest town is a few miles up the mountain, but if she was from Washville, he would’ve recognized her.
She sees him and stops.
He waits a moment to see if she starts talking. She doesn’t.
Down the gravel driveway, on the easternmost stretch of West Virginia’s Corridor H, a truck grumbles past, headed toward the state line. To one side of them, there’s old forest; one minute’s walk to the other, the condemned livestock exchange. Nobody else for a good long while.
Crane’s stomach hurts. He’d been in her place once, three years ago. Creeping too close to his eighteenth birthday, drunk for the first and only time in his life in the high school parking lot, striking matches and letting them burn out. He’d accepted a spot at a top state school earlier that year—majoring in political communication—and graduatedsalutatorian that morning. The packing list for his dorm was taped to the fridge, and while his classmates kicked off the rest of their lives at the school-sponsored YMCA grad party, there he was in the dark alone, trying to figure out the logistics of self-immolation.
All his childhood prayers had fallen through. There’d never been a car accident or building fire to do the hard part for him. Time was up. Childhood was over, the real world was knocking on the door, and he was tired. He was too scared to die, but he needed it to stop, and it was then or never.
But even after years of fantasizing and hoping and begging God, he still didn’t have the guts to do it.
That’s when the swarm found him. Because that’s what happens: it finds you. By the time it makes you an offer, it already knows you won’t say no, and then you end up in front of a strange building, hours from home in the middle of the night, with blood in the back of your throat and burns on your fingertips.
Same story every time, it seems.
Crane takes one cautious step forward, then another. The girl in the parking lot wavers, looking warily over her shoulder like she’s thinking of running. Nope. She made her choice. Running won’t do her any good.
He clicks his tongue to get her attention and holds up a bottle of water.Here, the gesture says.
“Who—?” she says, sounding sick, like she has a head cold.
The bottle gets a shake.Come on. For you.
She blinks, then picks her way through the sharp gravel to accept it. It takes a few tries to get the bottle open, but when she does, she sucks it down like she hasn’t had a drop for days. When she has to stop to wheeze for air, she pours some onto her face. She splutters, blinking, and aha, there she is. Wild with hunger and confusion. Alive.
She starts to cry.
He’d cried too.
“Thank you,” she sobs, “thank you,” and Crane stands in the dark, looking past her to the road and rubbing the scar on his wrist, because he can’t stand to look someone in the eye.
If he’d actually gotten the guts to do it that night, to actually set the match to something instead of shaking it out every time the flame licked his fingers, how would it have gone?
His burning—Sophie’sburning, the brown-haired girl in a Forever 21 dress, the sweet female-thing that had existed in Crane’s place for so many years—had been premeditated to a degree worthy of institutionalization. She knew she wanted only the face to burn. That was the most bang for her buck, or more accurately, the most visible damage in the least amount of time. She also knew she was a coward, and did not have the willpower to go up in stoic silence like a monk or the activists lighting themselves up in rows on the Capitol steps. The face was enough; it would have to do.
Maybe she would’ve siphoned gas from the car’s tank to smear across her cheeks, or the liquor she’d been choking down would work. The logistics weren’t important. What’simportantwas that she burned. The scars would be permanent, and she would be free. She’d already written a speech in her Notes app for her future doctor, explaining exactly why she didn’t want reconstructive surgery. It’s expensive, she’d say, and extra stress on a delicate part of a human body, and it’s not worth it, andI don’t want you to do it, please don’t fix it, if you fix it I’ll do it again, I’ll do it again I swear I will.
She’d say,I’m sorry I didn’t have the words to say it any other way.
Crane leads the girl inside, turns off theOPENsign, and locks the door. She’s worse up close. White face discolored like it’d been beaten in, fingers bloody and broken-nailed. Her feet track a red-brown mess.
Is Levi still in the office? Thank god. Give her a second to get it together without him.
“Sorry,” she sniffles. “You probably just mopped, too. I’m Jess.”
