Page 8 of Together We Rot

“Yeah.”

Elwood Clarke.

CHAPTER FOUR

ELWOOD

Time twists out of reach, seconds and minutes drifting downstream. My own thoughts are held underwater, drowned by the heavy bass and the veil of gyrating bodies. I’m not sure if I’ve been standing in the corner for twelve minutes or twelve hours.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

The thought loops in my head, over and over. I heard it first when I was wadding my pillow under my blanket.

Again, when I was fiddling with the latch on the window, desperately trying to gently pry the thing open. Once again when I was darting out into the trees. The car wasn’t far from the outskirts of my backyard. Headlights off, nothing but the quiet thrum of the engine.

I can’t believe I’m doing this, I’d told them, and they’d laughed.

“Here. Want to try a keg stand?” Lucas breaks away from Kevin and slouches over me.

Lucas is the emperor moth of our group. I’ve got one pinned above my dresser back home. Its wings are like sunlight melting through the trees. Orange spilling into a woodsy wash of brown. Impressive and confident and totally at odds with me and Kevin. Kevin’s an emerald swallowtail. Metallic UFO-green paths streaking across each wing. And then there’s me. I’m more like an eastern comma—wings a smoky, burnt brown shriveled like autumn leaves. Something that blends in and hides. Something you miss unless you really stop to look.

Lucas gestures to an enormous-looking barrel on the floor, a funnel, and a long tube interlocking the two. “If you’re feeling up to it—”

I hate the way his expression peels back when he talks to me. Each time he forgets who I am—treats me like Kevin or anyone else—but then pulls back. Remembers.

“I want to,” I say, even though the guilt has already soured my stomach. All I want is to be tucked back in bed. Warm from the blanket thrown around me, not from the burning flush of my cheeks.

One night before everything changes.

I rip the bottle from his hand. He’s already downed a quarter of it and the glass is still warm from his sweaty palms. There’s a twisting serpent across the label, a scaly print stretching from one end to the other. In my mind I’m wrapped in foliage, teeth grazing against an already bitten apple. This isn’t my first sin of the night, but each one is a shot into the night sky, explosive and heaven bound.

The liquid doesn’t burn this time. It rolls down my throat, bitter. A full-bodied mix with the lingering stench of wheat. I want to spit it out, but I know I can’t, so I drink and drink and drink.

Done.

I shake the bottle for more, but all I get is the rush of my own sticky, hot breath. Trapped air and the hollow ring of an empty bottle.

I drop it. It shatters. I decide then and there that I love the sound of broken things. The thud of something whole, followed by the splintering crack of it breaking into tiny, impossible pieces. Never to be put back together, but it’s okay. Crushed glass looks like stardust.

“You’re really going to drink all that and do the keg?”

I nod. Or I think I do. I don’t know. All I know is I need to wash this out of my system for good. “Is that really Elwood Clarke getting shit-faced?” Brian Schmidt breaks away from his girlfriend’s mouth to sneer my way. He’s less of a butterfly and more of a cockroach. His left hand combs through his over-yellow bangs. “I thought his wild Friday nights were him reciting Bible verses for fun.”

If he only knew how many lived in my mind. My father made me memorize hundreds, and when my tongue tripped or the words failed me, he’d beat the line into my skin.

My nail carves a crescent into my palm as Brian doubles over in laughter. This will pass soon enough when I’m shipped away. All of it. The stilted day-to-day interactions, the “playful” jabs in my ribs from Brian and his lackeys on my way to class, the constant desire to melt into the floor. My vision blurs and I see Brian molt: hideous expression smeared away, eyes wide and mouth agape, blood dripping, dripping, dripping. The roar of the party fades and my thoughts scream like a biblical swarm of locusts.

Before I can focus, there are arms on my legs. Lifting me up and up until I’m staring down at the floor, suspended in midair over a keg. I hold the tube to my lips.

One gulp. Two. The sound of my name comes from all sides. It doesn’t last—the letters dissolve, reshaping in the air to form something else. They chant the new word again and again and I think they’re telling me to drink so I do and—

“Way to go, Elwood!” It’s Kevin. He’s beaming at me like this was some sort of contest, like I won something. Maybe I did. Maybe my reward is the tipsy sensation prickling beneath my skin, the strange buzz of happiness overtaking my fear.

When they lower me back down, my legs feel like jelly and Brian’s no longer even a speck on my radar.

I laugh. It’s suddenly so easy to laugh. The anchor I’ve been tethered to forever has been torn loose. Bright lights catch on the broken bottle still on the floor, throwing color like a kaleidoscope. That’s what a group of butterflies are called. A kaleidoscope. I’ve always loved that.

“Hey, look, she came.” Kevin paws at Lucas’s shoulder and Lucas’s jaw hits the ground. “I didn’t think Veronica would show up.”

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