My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Author:Kate Elizabeth Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

When he does contact me, it’s an early-morning call, the phone ringing beneath my pillow, sending a vibration across the mattress that sounds in my dream like the drone of a motor on the lake, the rough muted hum I’d hear when swimming underwater as a speedboat passed. When I answer, I’m still in the dream, tasting lake water, watching the sunrays cut through the dark, all the way to the rotten leaves and fallen branches, all that endless muck.

On the phone, Strane exhales a shaky breath, the haggard kind you take after crying. “It’s all over,” he says. “But know that I loved you. Even if I was a monster, I did love you.” He’s outside. I hear wind, a wall of sound garbling his words.

Sitting up, I look to the window. It’s before sunrise, the sky a gradient of black to violet. “I’ve been waiting for you to call me.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I had to read about it in the newspaper. You could have told me.”

“I didn’t know it was coming,” he says. “I had no idea.”

“Who are these girls?”

“I don’t know. They’re just girls. They’re nobody. Vanessa, I don’t know what this is. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have done.”

“They’re saying you molested them.”

He’s quiet, probably taken aback to hear the word come out of me. I’ve been gentle with him for so long.

“Tell me it’s not true,” I say. “Swear to me.” I listen to the white noise of the wind.

“You think it could be true,” he says. It isn’t a question but a realization, like he’s taken a step backward and can now see the doubt that’s begun to sidle up alongside the limits of my loyalty.

“What did you do to them?” I ask.

“What are you imagining? What do you think I’m capable of?”

“You did something. Why would they say this if you didn’t do anything?”

“It’s an epidemic,” he says. “There’s no logic to it.”

“But they’re just girls.” My voice cracks, a sob chokes out, and it feels like observing someone else cry, a woman playing the role of me. I remember my college roommate Bridget saying, after I first told her about Strane, Your life is like a movie. She didn’t understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn’t agree to. She meant it as a compliment. Isn’t that what all teenage girls want? Endlessly bored, aching for an audience.

Strane tells me not to try to make sense of this, that it’ll drive me crazy. “What is this?” I ask. “What is it?” I need a scene to slip into, a description of where they were in the classroom, behind his desk or at the seminar table, what the light looked like, what hand he used, but I’m crying too hard and he’s telling me to listen, to please stop crying and listen to him.

He says, “It wasn’t the same with them, do you understand? It wasn’t like how it was with you. I loved you, Vanessa.

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