Paula DeBoard - The Drowning Girls

“Why are you here?” Danielle asked.

“I live here. Why are you here?”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not feeling so great. I need a private bathroom.”

“Ewwwww...” she groaned, waving me past.

I locked the bedroom doors behind me and surveyed the scene. My clothes were draped over a chair, where I’d left them last night. Liz’s pajamas were balled next to them. I’d made the bed haphazardly this morning, and the duvet hung low on my side. Nothing looked out of place, nothing looked as if it didn’t belong. But I wasn’t the most observant guy under the best of circumstances. I was the wrong person for this sick little game.

I pulled back the sheets, running my hand under the pillows and along the foot of the mattress, gingerly, as though I was away at summer camp, feeling in my sleeping bag for a snake. I opened my nightstand drawer, then Liz’s, rifling through the junk that had accumulated there in only a couple of months. I was beginning to feel queasy, imagining Kelsey in our room, touching our sheets, holding the tube of K-Y Jelly in Liz’s nightstand. I bent to the floor, lifting the bed skirt. Nothing. I rifled through my dresser, upsetting the folded stacks of boxers, the balled pairs of socks. Nothing. I was more careful with Liz’s dresser. If she came in the room right now, or Danielle did, how would I explain myself?

But there was nothing.

Fuck.

Maybe it was there, but I just didn’t know what I was supposed to find. What would an obsessed teenager leave in the bedroom of a man three times her age? A folded love letter, a heart drawn in lipstick on the vanity mirror?

She was sick—that was it. She was a sick person, this was a sick joke. And somehow I was the punch line. I’d fallen right into it.

I flushed the toilet twice before leaving the master suite, and called, “All better now,” as I passed Danielle’s room.

She was lying on her bed, reading a book, and she grimaced at me. “Seriously? TMI.”

* * *

I didn’t see Kelsey again that day, but I jumped every time someone passed in the hallway. In the dining room, I chose a seat with my back to the corner, like a character in a gangster movie. I wasn’t going to be surprised by her again.

That night in bed, Liz ran her hand down my back in a quiet invitation, and I rolled over to face her. I slid my hands beneath her top, helped her wriggle out of the bottoms. But I wasn’t able to shut out the image of Kelsey in this very room, invading what had been a sacred space. Eyes closed, I could picture her in detail—the long line of her legs, the pink scar on her kneecap. When I opened my eyes, I had a vision of her standing just over Liz’s shoulder, smiling that teasing smile.

“Hey,” Liz said, sliding off me, her skin clammy with sweat. “What’s wrong?”

I claimed exhaustion, which was true. I’d hardly slept the night before, and my mind had been racing, endlessly, around the same track. I’d pawed through our room like a cat burglar sniffing out a dirty secret.

“You’re sure that’s it?” she asked, and when I glanced at her, she’d gone still, as if she were holding her breath, waiting for my reply.

Tell her.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

* * *

From that point on, I resolved not to look at Kelsey, not to talk to her, not to give her the slightest acknowledgment. School started, which meant that five days a week, she was out of sight until four thirty. After that, I locked my office door, citing a call to make, business that couldn’t be interrupted.

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