Jeff Lindsay - Dexter by Design

Cody shook his head and whispered something. I leaned a little closer to him. “What?” I said.

“Both feet” he said.

“It's just an expression” I told him.

He looked at me. “Stupid expression” he said.

Deutsch had moved across the room, calling for quiet, getting all the kids together, and they were now assembling in the front of the room. It was time for Cody to jump in, even if it was only with one foot at first. So I stood up and held out a hand to him. “Come on” I said. “This will work out fine.” Cody didn't look convinced, but he stood up and looked at the group of normal boys converging on Deutsch. He pulled himself as straight and tall as possible, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay” and marched over to join the group.

I watched him push carefully through the crowd to find his spot and then stand there, all alone and being as brave as he could be.

This was not going to be easy —not for him, and not for me. It would be very awkward for him to try to fit into a group that he had nothing in common with. He was a tiny wolf trying to grow lamb's wool and learn to say, “Baaa!” If he howled at the moon even once the game was over.

And for me? I could only watch, and possibly give him a few pointers in between rounds. I had gone through a similar phase myself, and I still remembered the terrible pain of it; realizing that this was all and forever something for the others and never for me that laughter, friendship, the sense of belonging, were things I would never really feel. Even worse, once I realized that I was outside all of it, I had to pretend to feel it, learn to show the mask of happiness in order to hide the deadly emptiness inside.

I remembered the dreadful clumsiness of those first years of trying; the first horrible attempts at laughter, always at the wrong time and always sounding so very inhuman. Even speaking to the others naturally, easily, about the right things and with the right manufactured feelings. Slowly, painfully, awkwardly learning, watching how the others did these things so effortlessly and feeling the added pain of being outside that graceful ease of expression. A small thing, knowing how to laugh. So very inconsequential, unless you don't know how and have to learn it from watching others, as I did.

As Cody would have to do now. He would have to go through the whole vile process of understanding that he was different and always would be, and then learning to pretend he was not. And that was just the starting point, the first easy leg of the Harry Path. After that things got even more complicated, more difficult and painful, until an entire artificial life was built and hammered into place. All fake, all the time, with only the short and far-too-rare intervals of razor-edged reality to look forward to —and I was passing all this on to Cody, that small and damaged creature who stood up there now so stiffly, watching with such intense focus for a hint of belonging that would never come.

Did I really have the right to force him into this agonizing mold?

Merely because ” had gone through this, did that truly mean he had to? Because if I was honest with myself, it had not been working terribly well for me lately. The Harry Path, a thing that had seemed so clear, clean and clever, had taken a turn into the underbrush.

Deborah, the one person in the world who should understand, doubted that it was right, that it was even real, and now she lay in the ICU while I floundered around the city slaughtering the innocent.

Was this really what I wanted for Cody?

I watched him follow along through the Pledge of Allegiance, and found no answers there. And so it was a very thoughtful Dexter who eventually tottered home after the meeting, with a wounded and uncertain Cody in tow.

Rita met us at the door, a look of worry on her face. “How did it go?” she asked Cody.

“Okay” he said, with a look on his face that said it was not okay.

“It was fine” I said, sounding a little more convincing. “And it will get much better.”

“Has to” Cody said softly.

Rita looked from Cody to me and then back again. I don't I mean, did you, did you ... Cody. Are you going to keep going?” Cody looked at me and I could almost see a small and sharp blade flashing in his eyes. “I'll go” he said to his mother.

Rita looked relieved. “That's wonderful” she said. “Because it really is -1 know that you'll, you know.”

“I'm sure he will” I said.

My cell phone began to chirp and I answered it. “Yes” I said.

“She woke up” Chutsky said. “And she spoke.”

“I'll be right there” I said.

I don't really know what I WAS expecting when I GOT to the hospital, but I didn't get it. Nothing seemed to have changed. Deborah was not sitting up in bed and doing the crossword puzzle while listening to her iPod. She still lay motionless, surrounded by the clutter of machinery and Chutsky. And he sat in the same position of supplication in the same chair, although he had managed to shave and change his shirt somewhere along the way.

“Hey, man!” he called out cheerfully as I pushed in to Deborah's bedside. “We're on the mend,” he said. “She looked right at me, and she said my name. She's gonna be totally fine.”

“Great” I said, although it didn't seem clear to me that saying a one syllable name meant that my sister was rocketing back to full, unimpaired normality. “What did the doctors say?” Chutsky shrugged. “Same old shit. Not to get my hopes up too high, too soon to be sure, autonomic nervous blah blah blah.” He held up his hand in a what-the-hell gesture. “But they didn't see it when she woke up, and I did. She looked into my eyes, and I could tell. She's still in there, buddy. She's gonna be fine.” There seemed to be very little to say to that, so I muttered a few well-meaning and empty syllables, and sat down. And although I waited very patiently for two and a half hours, Debs did not leap out of bed and begin to do calisthenics; she did not even repeat her parlor trick of opening her eyes and saying Chutsky's name, and so I finally tottered home to bed without feeling any of Chutsky's magical certainty.

The next morning when I arrived at my job I was determined to get to work right away and find out all I could about Doncevic and his mysterious associate. But I barely had time to put my coffee cup down on my desk when I received a visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Gone Terribly Wrong, in the person of Israel Salguero from Internal Affairs. He came wafting silently in and sat in the folding chair across from me without a sound. There was a sense of velvet menace to his movement that I would have admired, if it had not been aimed at me. I watched him, and he watched me for a moment, before he finally nodded and said, I knew your father.” I nodded and took the very great risk of sipping my coffee —but without taking my eyes off Salguero.

“He was a good cop, and a good man” Salguero said. He spoke softly, fitting his way of moving so silently, and he had the slight trace of an accent that many Cuban-Americans of his generation had. He had, in fact, known Harry very well, and Harry had thought highly of him. But that was in the past, and Salguero was now a very respected and very feared IA Lieutenant, and no good could come of having him investigating either me or Deborah.

And so, thinking that it was probably best just to wait him out and let him get to the point, if there was one, I took another sip of my coffee. It did not taste nearly as good as it had before Salguero had come in.

I would like to be able to get this thing cleared up as quickly as possible” he said. “I'm sure that neither you or your sister have anything to worry about.”