Chapter Text
Familiar by now, the sleeves that cover his wrists. A particular kind of sleeve, long and thick, too, enough to obscure the recognizable bulk of the cuffs. “It’s not that we don’t trust you,” They assure him- carefully, because they would not like, even in such a controlled environment as this, to anger him. “It’s the Hyde we need to be careful around.” As if he and the monster are two completely separate people.
He is no longer so certain of the distinction. Once, he remembers, he and the monster were distinct selves, halved or cleaved by certain uncrossable lines. He can no longer access that separation, which he once visualized like a dark chasm, opening. Now there is only mire, confusion, a haze that may indicate either fusion or eradication. He is not sure which one he would prefer. He does not think the monster is gone.
Today they are quiet, focused. He shifts more often than he normally does, and with ease and calm they move his body back where it was before. One of the lab technicians makes a quiet soothing noise, the kind of absentminded tsk one would emit towards a dog or infant. Tyler closes his eyes.
At noon, they break for lunch, although it is not called this but rather the ‘nutrition period’. The workers file into the cafeteria, which Tyler is not admitted to. It would not do for him to think of himself as one of them, which he is so evidently not. Instead, a meal is brought to him on a white plastic plate. He eats it alone, in a room with mirrored walls. If he asks for more, it is brought to him, in decreasing portion sizes.
When he was first brought here, he used to ask for more and more and more, and eat none of it; he would throw it at the mirrored walls until they ran with smeared food. No wonder, Tyler thinks, no wonder they see him as a child.
It is not so bad, anymore. It was at first. At first he missed- well, things, things from a normal life. Sunlight. The leaves crisping and curling and drifting in great cinderous drifts, come autumn. Days heavy and solemn with cloud, days to curl up with a battered book. The simple and pure pleasure of being alone, entirely alone, with coins in your pocket and nothing to do. Ice cream, melty in a waffle cone- he missed ice cream with a strange and intense passion.
It is not so much that these longings have lessened - they have not, particularly in the case of ice cream - as he has grown to understand he doesn't deserve anything. He does not deserve books or money or ice cream. Eighteen people will never see the sun again; why should he? This being said, he would like ice cream, and makes this fact known frequently.
Once, one of the lab techs smuggles in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s for him: Cherry Garcia. Tyler hates cherries. He eats it anyway, because it seems ungrateful not to, and throws up afterwards. What he forgets is that there are cameras monitoring his every move. The lab tech does not bring him ice cream again.
Lunch today is undersalted and minimally processed, as all his food is. Potatoes, boiled and mashed. Steamed broccoli. A chicken breast. The utensils are compostable, which Tyler appreciates- what with all the tests and facilities, his carbon footprint is probably astronomical, he tells the lab techs. None of them laugh.
Tyler eats the potatoes, prods at the broccoli, and does not touch the chicken. After half an hour, the plate is taken away, the lab techs file back in, and the tests resume.
They place soft suction cups on his skin. He is familiar with this one by now; it is causes him discomfort, but not real pain, which is the case for most of these tests. One of the lab techs, his favorite, is concentrating. Her hair is dyed pink. She wears glasses.
Tyler tells her: “Tomorrow is the last day. Of this.”
“Is it?” She says, distractedly. He doesn’t know her name. “Already?”
“Six months,” Tyler says, watching her face. “That was the deal.”
She places another suction cup. “I guess you’re right,” She says, and her voice is aimed to placate: gentle, agreeing. “Just, wow. Time flies, huh?”
All the suction cups are fixed to his skin. One of the other techs crosses the room to fiddle with the machine near his head. Tyler flexes his hands inside the cuffs.
His favorite lab tech looks at his face and attempts a smile. “Anything you’re looking forward to, after this?”
Tyler shifts. One of her hands presses into his shoulder. “Taking a bath,” He tells her. “I used to like taking really long baths.”
It’s true. There is no bathtub here, only a shower spigot with no temperature regulation knob; it streams out lukewarm water at an unsatisfactory rate.
“Yeah,” She says, watching him carefully. “You must miss that, huh.”
They do not have a bathtub because they are afraid that he will lower his head under the water and not come up. Tyler wishes he could reassure them that the possibility is unlikely, but he cannot because he does not know how true it is. There is so much that lies unspoken, in these white paneled rooms.
He remembers his bathroom in Jericho. There were two in the house. The one closest to his room had a shower only, and he used that most often, but the master bathroom had a clawfoot tub, free-standing, huge. He remembers opening his eyes underwater, the scream that came rushing out muffled by the weight of the water.
“You ready?”
He nods.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, they start packing away the equipment. He remembers then that it is a Tuesday, which means he gets to go outside. This is a new practice, implemented because of his good behavior. A bulky security guard escorts him outside. He is followed, unobtrusively, by four government agents in civvies. The street he walks is long, and shadows fall across it.
He passes a coffeeshop, and hesitates before he goes inside. He does not have any money.
He goes in anyway, pushing the door open. The smell of roasting coffee floods him, drowning out all other impressions. It’s a Starbucks on a pedestrian street in a nameless American city; it’s not exactly artisanal. A furious desire rises in him anyway, surprising him with its force; he wants, desperately, a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee he has paid for with his own money, the passage of the cup from the barista’s hands to his unmediated by any inoffensive lab technicians in starched white coats.
Tomorrow is the last day, he reminds himself, and inhales slow and deep. In rushes the coffee-smell, which is more than coffee-smell, which is also sugar and pastry and herbal tea and expensive perfume and cheap perfume, which is also click of laptop keys and buzzy chatter and seasonal pop unobtrusive in the background. These days are lucid, but despite that they cannot help blurring together, falling into each other like a deck of shuffled cards- this is distinct, fresh, burning, branding. A life like this has, somehow, fallen out of his reach.
A girl sitting by the door makes eye contact with him; her face tenses in surprise, and then she is lifting her phone. The shining black aperture of the camera lens floods him with unease. He backs away into the door.
The next day, the last day, begins much like any other. He wakes when the alarm rings, on his government-issue cot. His room is four cement walls and a cot in the corner with scratchy sheets. There is a small nightstand, with a glass of water and a copy of Little Women.
Tyler wonders, as he always does, who exactly made the book selection. He never much liked Louisa May Alcott, but he has read the book twenty times already, out of sheer boredom. He finds Meg boring, as he suspects he is supposed to, and Jo vaguely likable but uninteresting. His favorite character is Amy, who has a lethal streak of venom running through her that he can appreciate. Venom and pragmatism in conjunction with desire; he is only too familiar.
A security guard comes to fetch him. A new one: balding, with a torpid face like a plank of greased wood. He locks Tyler’s cuffs together so his hands are bound in front of his body; this is standard procedure. Then he grips Tyler’s shoulder with searing force.
“Outcast freak,” The man mumbles. Tyler feels the bruise begin to form on his shoulder. This is not standard procedure. “Fucking psycho. Heard about you.”
“I’m meant to go in for lab,” Tyler tells him. He keeps his face blank. “Soon. In, like, five minutes. So if we could-”
“Trying to tell me what to do, huh,” The security guard grunts, and this could go badly, Tyler is already visualizing the exact shade of gray that will creep around the edges of his vision when this meathead wraps his fingers around Tyler’s throat, but then one of the lab techs pokes her head around the corner and says, irritated: “What are you doing? Galpin’s needed in lab.”
The security guard relaxes his fingers, and Tyler grins at him, wide; he jerks his shoulder away, still grinning. The lab tech leads him away, and he feels the curious rubbery pressure of her warm latexed hands on his wrists.
When he’s in lab, they strap him onto a gurney. Tyler keeps his body still. This doesn’t happen every day, but it’s happened enough that he knows what to expect. They wheel him up into the irradiant sun of a white overhead light; he closes his eyes before he sees stars. A needle is inserted into his arm; he feels a cool liquid suffuse.
Someone swabs his other forearm with an alcohol wipe, and one of the medical students comes over, clad head to toe in surgical scrubs. There’s a tray with glittering silver instruments on it. A wash of revulsion and fear goes through him.
Tyler attempts to sit up, but whatever they’ve slipped in his veins renders him sluggish; he hardly rises an inch before hands are pressing him back down. He hears someone say don’t worry, and then he remembers nothing more.
When he wakes, he is lying on his cot, wearing clean clothes: a textureless white t-shirt and dark pants. There is a feeling of tenderness in his forearm; he flexes it, and watches as the neat line of black stitching ripples. There is a lump under his skin. They’ve microchipped him.
Like a dog, Tyler thinks, and presses his hands into his eyes. He doesn’t really mind the chip, he thinks, but there is something so pitiful about this life, dressed by foreign hands, his food chosen for him.
In his mind, he sees her, her dark hair splitting into two neat braids on either side of her thin neck, her pinstriped arms, the deep shadows of her eyes; she would not let anyone insert a microchip into her body; she would not, or could not, be made docile.
Tyler is different. Pliancy seems to come naturally to him.
Today is the day he is going to leave.
They take him to a dark room. He sits and talks with the government officer in charge of the operation; he does not know her name. She tells him that he is considered high-risk; there will be monthly check-ins, and he will be carefully monitored. One of her aides hands him a large yellow envelope, which she says is a dossier containing all of the legal information pertaining to him. He should read it, especially the fine print; violations of the regulations within may result in his incarceration.
“Cool,” Tyler says, meeting her stare with a blank face. He’s been down this road already, but pissing off authority figures is infinitely better than the alternative.
“The Nevermore term has started already,” She goes on to say. “A few important stipulations. First, the team at the lab has prescribed you a regimen of medication to ensure that the, ah, unfortunate tragedies of last year do not reoccur. The full list is on page 2 of your dossier.”
Tyler opens the file and pages through immediately. He stops on the list, which is so long that they’ve had to abbreviate. Haloperidol, clozapine, risperidone. The names are familiar to him now, after a month of medspeak. Antipsychotic drugs.
“Taking the medicine will be a responsibility entrusted to you,” Government Agent tells him, eyes boring into him. “The psych evaluator seems to think you are trustworthy; I reserve my own opinion. If you do not take the medicine, either purposefully or on accident, there will be consequences. Additionally, if you continue to experience symptoms of psychosis or anger, you will inform the appropriate authorities, and your dosage will be adjusted.”
“Take the pills,” Tyler summarizes. “Got it.”
“Secondly, you will see a clinical psychiatrist weekly for a month, then bimonthly for two months, and then monthly for six months. As the only therapist in the area was killed last year by yourself, you will be commuting.”
Before he can help himself, Tyler flinches. The government officer stares at him.
“It’s alright,” The government officer says, dryly. “She wasn’t qualified for this, anyway.”
Tyler looks away.
“Thirdly,” The government officer says, “You may have noticed the chip located in your arm. It monitors location, heart rate, and other vital signs. Any attempts to remove it will be met with severe consequences. Any suspicious movements or data will be regarded as evidence in a court of law. Do you understand?”
Tyler smiles, tightly. He says yes.
The backpack he brought with him when he came - thinking, foolishly, that he would be able to keep it - lies in one of the white rooms. It contains tightly balled clothes, books, his phone, his earbuds.
Feeling strange, as if he is pulling on a skin that is too big for him now, he shrugs on one of his old sweaters, steps into his favorite pair of battered jeans. His phone lies dead, the charger coiled next to it; he shoves it into his pocket and reaches up to free the collar of his shirt from the V of the sweater neckline.
There’s also a book in his bag, the flap creased irreparably; he turns it in the light. His eyes fall across the title on the spine: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. He remembers now bringing it as a joke, thinking of transformation, of monstrosity. Yes, the skin he inhabits is too big for him now; it hangs loose about him, its sensations new and unfamiliar.
But everything is unfamiliar now.
He takes the train to Nevermore, a privilege he is shocked to be allowed. He had envisioned an armored car, just like how he’d left it, but he suspects that even the government would like to cut costs on transportation.
The station is full of smells and sounds; he flinches away from the swiftly passing bodies. Coarse wool, stained tiles, grit and greasy pastries served from a to-go window next to the ticket kiosk. The smell of cheap watery coffee, which he inhales greedily from a paper cup. He goes to the bathroom by himself, a luxury: his face in the mirror is pale and ordinary, the skin under his eyelids papery and bruised, his curls greasy, his cheeks colorless. He look a little sick, maybe, but generally normal. Still, the sight of his face in the mirror shocks him; he has not seen a mirror in six months.
He takes an exorbitant amount of time to wash his hands, and barely makes the train. He secures a seat next to a window and closes his eyes, leaning his head against the glass, but then someone’s sleeve brushes against his arm and he opens them again. Just a passing woman; she does not even look back at him as she crosses the aisle. He is being paranoid again.
Across the aisle, a man’s leather loafers tap on the floor, rhythmically. Tyler’s mind counts the beats before he can stop himself. Long tap, short tap, rat-tat-tat, long tap again. What does it mean? Is someone trying to send him a message? His fingers are trembling. He needs to write this down. What does it mean? He’s scrambling in his bag, searching for a ballpoint and a scrap of paper, when his fingers brush the cool orange plastic of the pill canister. He pauses.
He did not used to experience these sudden, seizing bouts of anxiety, he knows, but they are habitual now. Moving slowly, Tyler unscrews the cap of the pill bottle, and removes one white pill. He closes the bottle, keeping the white pill on the tip of his index finger, and places it with meticulous care on his tongue. He has a plastic water bottle in his bag, but he swallows the pill dry. It passes uneasily down his throat.
Across the way, the man’s shoes stop tapping.
*
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tyler says, eyeing the woman across from him. “I was under the impression that she killed you.”
Larissa Weems blinks back at him. Inverse Snow White, Tyler thinks, hair as white as snow, lips as red as blood. But there’s something so coiffed about her. The nameless surge of class resentment rises silken from the depths; sinks back under the surface.
Principal Weems says, in plummy, well-bred tones of exquisitely European disdain: “And I was under the impression that you would be serving out the remainder of your life in a maximum security prison. Circumstances change. As I’m sure you’re aware.”
She punctuates this by raising a mug of coffee to her mouth and taking a swift, bracing swallow; Tyler watches her throat move, the pale crepelike skin around her neck, and sees the imprint of her lipstick on the ceramic rim. Something flickers in him; he feels nauseated, suddenly. Images flash through his mind, too fast to be tangible: a woman’s hands on him, her lipstick on an empty water glass in his living room, lingering long after her departure.
He says, more brutally than he means to: “Do you want an apology?”
Her mouth thins. She says: “Those to whom you most owe an apology can be found in the Jericho Cemetery, if you wish to pay your respects. But that’s beside the point. Mr. Galpin, I am required by law to feed you, house you, and clothe you for the period of one school term. But make no mistake: if I hear a single report of violence, you are no longer welcome on Nevermore grounds.” She pauses. “I did not want you on this campus, I will admit. I argued against it. Strenuously.”
“Evidently,” Tyler says, blankly. Those to whom you most owe an apology can be found in the Jericho Cemetery, if you wish to pay your respects. It floods his mind, rebounding from wall to baseless wall, over and over, resounding, frightening in its intensity. He cannot help his recollections, which rise from the most disgusting parts of him: blonde hair streaked with gore, a woman’s terrified shriek, the small and pitiful sight of a human hand floating in a jar.
Tyler thinks back to the sandwich he bought at the train station: whole wheat bread and ham, streaked with marbley fat. He suddenly feels so intensely nauseated that he has to close his eyes.
“Mr. Galpin,” Principal Weems says. He feels a heavy hand on his arm, and looks up to see her manicured nails on his forearm. She is sliding a freshly printed sheet of paper his way; he takes it blindly, crumpling it with the force of his grip. “Your schedule for the semester. We have placed you in the standard classes. With the exception of Physical Education, for obvious reasons. For the sports period, we will be placing you in the only class available in that period: Honors Literature.”
Tyler nods.
Principal Weems rises. She’s wearing a jacquard pantsuit, and her collarbones are laden with a truly magnificent necklace: Tyler averts his eyes from the statement opals and experiences a moment of acute homesickness for his barren cell in the government surveillance facility. Weems says: “Due to the circumstances, we have placed you in a room by yourself, with no roommate.”
Tyler nods, and Weems pulls a folded map from a drawer. She says, tightly: “Here is a map of the campus. Ordinarily, we would place you with a student tour guide. However.”
No one felt comfortable enough around him, Tyler translates; fair enough. He says: “Got it.”
Weems walks him to the door. Her red nails shine liquidly on the wooden door frame; her narrow eyes fix on him: wary, their flash a warning.
That’s when Tyler hears it, distantly, from courtyards away, so faintly he is not sure if he’s imagined it: a girl’s bark of laugher: surprised, sharp. It sails through the air like a whip; he reacts as if electrified.
And then, even fainter, another girl’s voice, laughing too. The strange, distant sound of her name being called in tones of disbelief and amusement, joyous, carefree; although he cannot hear it, he can anticipate her response: deadpan, the humor hiding in her blank, black-eyed stare. Tyler’s throat closes in on itself.
“I will see you at 6 o’clock, outside your dormitory. Good day,” Principal Weems says, with no small amount of venom, and closes the door in his face. The echoes of laughter are fading now, their resonance disappearing like a pool of water shrinking under hot sun. Yet he hears it still, as if her laugh has colored the air, saturated it in fact to a measure irreversible.
The map falls from his nerveless fingers. When he bends to pick it up, he realizes his hands are shaking.
He finds his room after much meandering. The Nevermore campus itself is not wholly unfamiliar to him; he recalls the crypt, the gates. But he hasn’t been in the residential areas, or the classrooms really. It takes him over half an hour to find his room, located in a deserted building. There’s a sign that says NEVERMORE STUDENTS DO NOT ENTER; he double-checks his map, and comes to the conclusion that the danger obliquely referred to by the sign is, in fact, his presence.
He climbs the stair; they creak and moan under his feet. The whole building smells of mildew and disuse; it’s a sour, dank, neglected smell. The room marked as his is at the top of a spiraling staircase; when he pushes the door open, he is met with total darkness.
His eyes take only a second to adjust. There are in fact two enormous windows at the head of the room, but the light is totally blocked by thick dusty curtains. There’s one bed in the left corner, an ancient fourposter with velvet hangings, and a desk on the opposite side.
His steps disturb the sediment of dust that has settled on the floorboards, leaving ugly streaks on the wood. He crosses the room heedless of this, and pulls the curtains to the side. The windows, he discovers, unlatch with little effort, and he pushes them wide open. Fresh, clean, cold air rushes in; his shoulders relax, and he leans over the sill, inhaling and exhaling slow.
So no one wants him here; fine, he thinks, that’s fine. They’re trying to get rid of him; that’s fine, too. He didn’t ask to be here, his stay at Nevermore is by court mandate. He’ll get through it, somehow. He’ll prove to them who he is, maybe, or maybe he won’t. It doesn’t matter.
And afterwards? The whole of his future stretches. A golden road, unrolling before him. Nevermore nothing but a blot.
At 6 o’clock, Weems arrives at his deserted building and escorts him to the dining hall. They say nothing to each other. His heart is beating fast like a rabbit’s.
The dining hall has glass windows yellow with interior candlelight, and laughter, and sound. He hears the clash of plates and utensils and chatter. His stomach swims; he feels awash in hunger and separate from it, too.
When he walks through, the chatter stops. It is comical, like a knife cutting through the talk, or a sudden freeze. The principal has her manicured talons in her shoulder, steering him to the front of the hall, and all he can see is eyes, staring eyes, curious, disgusted, fascinated, afraid.
“Students of Nevermore,” Principal Weems says. “Please welcome Tyler Galpin to our ranks.” The grimace on her face communicates her trepidation.
He shifts a little on his feet. The air is like water, dense with hushed voices, and the scrape of forks and spoons resuming their clattering dance. Roast chicken, tomato soup. Again the swimming feeling in his stomach, as if he is drowning in his hunger and thus unable to comprehend or act upon it. And then he sees her.
She is halfway across the hall, and her spine is like an obelisk, perfectly upright. He sees her dark head, her shining hair. Her hair isn’t in braids- it hits him like a punch to the gut, somehow. She’s not in braids. The image he’d saved up for months, the image that swam before his eyes every time he closed them, is wrong, incorrect. Time moves without meaning to. Life goes on. He was behind bars for six months, and during that time she was shaking her hair out of those neat plaits, small wiry fingers deftly uncurling. He can picture it, the look in her eyes as she does it.
Under the reddened, hazy light from the chandeliers, her hair looks liquid, flowing over her shoulders without pause, a flood of crackling black. But there’s a curl to it, too, it’s not pin-straight. He should have guessed, Tyler thinks. She is uncagable, incorrigible, and her hair has a curl to it, sinuous as she turns her head, sliding down her spine.
Tyler’s been standing, watching her, for too long. He knows she can feel his gaze, because her narrow shoulders are squared, braced. He can see the shape of her scapulae through the charcoal-black Nevermore wool. He cannot see her face.
And then she turns, and meets his eyes with pinpoint accuracy, in one smooth motion like a bird of prey rearing to strike. The look in her black eyes is almost bored, droll. She arches a brow, crimps her mouth, and tilts her head to the side. His hands are flexing by his sides. Then she turns away, and her hair slides over her shoulder. Dismissal.
There’s blood in his mouth, from biting at the side of his cheek until the skin tore. He doesn’t stay for dinner.