sarah 2
* * *At work the next day one of the kids puked on the patio beside the pool. Sarah took a picture of it and sent it to Leigh with the caption: “This is what I actually do.”
Leigh answered: “Gross. I’m out back if you want to come by after.” She sent back a picture of a large swimming pool, partly shaded by trees on the right, surrounded by a white patio. Behind it was a wide lawn. At the bottom of the frame were Leigh’s small white toes: she was sitting in a lounge chair.
The houses seemed to be a quarter mile apart in Leigh’s neighborhood. This was partly true and partly an illusion of the geography: the road twisted and turned and climbed as it meandered through this section of town, which was undeveloped except for these homes. Leigh’s was marked by a short brick pillar, on top of which sat a white mailbox.
Her parents must have been well off indeed to afford all this. Sarah didn’t know much about them other than they were scientists—neuroscientists, according to the articles after their deaths. Now, at 24, Sarah recognized that this kind of money meant private sector. She recalled that they were older than the other parents in the neighborhood; they probably didn’t have Leigh until their mid 30s, which, when there were two of you with nice jobs, was enough time to save quite a bit. Sarah remembered Mr. Truman as a quiet man with a kind smile and big Coke bottle glasses. She had no memory of Mrs. Truman.
The driveway made a buttonhook as it approached the house and ended at a triple garage. From there a flagstone path led to the back yard. Sarah parked and followed it around; it ended at a low white gate, beyond which was the pool area.
Leigh was there in a lounge chair, under the shade of a large umbrella. She was wearing a sheer black single-piece bathing suit, her skin almost startlingly white in contrast. In her lap was the tablet again, something that seemed to be her constant accessory.
“Hey,” she said. Her hair was shoulder length, nearly jet black, and tied back neatly at the nape of her neck. Large black sunglasses made her eyes inscrutable.
“Hey there.”
“You want a drink? I made margaritas.”
“Eh.” Sarah waffled. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that Leigh had access to whatever she wanted, but it was only 4pm. “I’m good, thanks.”
“That’s ok. They say it’s good to drink alone. Especially when you’re underage and going swimming?” She cocked her head as if trying to remember.
“Oh god,” Sarah laughed. “Ok.”
“Salt or no?”
“Salt. Thank you.”
Leigh raised herself off of the chair and put the tablet down with a flourish that evoked an old Hollywood starlet—Audrey Hepburn, maybe. She padded into the house while Sarah wandered over to the pool. It was long, crystal clear, lined with sky blue tiles with white whirlygig patterns on them. There wasn’t another house in sight and nothing to hear but birds and summer insects.
She took off the oversized T-shirt she wore to and from work. Then, after a moment’s consideration, her jean shorts too. It was still hot even though it was late afternoon, a good fifteen degrees hotter out here than it was at the indoor pool where she’d been working. Underneath was her red lifeguard’s uniform.
When Leigh returned she stood and stared at it.
“That is so hot,” she said.
Sarah grinned, but felt a sudden blush. She turned her head away to hide it, pretending to be surveying the yard.
“Sorry,” Leigh smirked. She sat. Sarah sat on the opposite side of the table and tried a sip of the margarita. Woof, strong stuff. Good though. A pleasant warmth spread through her belly. She rubbed some of the salt off of the edge of the glass with her thumb and flicked it away.
“So you live here all by yourself?”
“Just me and me. I had a cat but they’re too needy.”
Sarah could not tell if this was a joke or not so she just smiled.
“I hardly even go in most of the house,” Leigh went on. “The cleaners vacuum it once a month. I usually sleep in the computer room now because I got tired of going up and down all those stairs all the time. I mean, if it was an apartment, a big flight of stairs in the middle of it would be a liability.
“It’s pretty much how I want it.” She took a sip of her drink. “I turned the office into a screening room.”
“Screening room?”
“Like a little movie theater.”
“Get out.”
“You get out, it’s my house.”
“Do you have anything good?”
“I have…” She pretended to think. “Everything that’s ever been recorded on digital media.”
“Pretty in Pink?”
“Woman, you are a guest here.”
“Sorry.” She’d been half kidding; it was an easy guess that Leigh didn’t go in for girly stuff. At least not archetypally girly.
Leigh took a long pull from her margarita, winced, stood, and stretched, intertwining her fingers above her head. There was an easy grace about her. She put her sunglasses on the table, walked over to the edge of the pool, raised her arms above her head again, and dove in, leaving almost no splash.
Sarah sipped her drink and enjoyed the breezeless heat.
Fifteen seconds passed and Leigh did not reappear.
Sarah stared at the pool.
Twenty seconds. Twenty-five.
“Leigh?” She got up, uneasy. Thirty. She walked to the edge of the pool.
Leigh was at the bottom, her arms and legs slightly spread. She wasn’t moving.
It was a trick. Obviously. Sarah waited. Forty seconds.
Sarah dove in, gliding quickly to the bottom. Leigh did not react to a touch on the shoulder. Sarah slipped her right arm under Leigh’s, reached across her chest, and pushed off from the bottom. A few kicks brought them to the surface, and a few deep strokes to the edge. Leigh was limp, her head nodding against her chest. Sarah reached the edge and gripped it with her left hand, holding Leigh with her right, keeping her head out of the water.
Leigh raised her head and smiled over her shoulder.
“Sarah Buchanan, you saved me.”
Sarah was breathing hard from the effort. “That’s not funny,” she said.
“It was a little funny.” Leigh made no effort to support herself in the water; she just hung there. Her skin was slick and warm. “I had to know if you were for real.”
“Why, you planning on drowning a lot?”
“Maybe.”
Sarah let her go, and Leigh let out a yip of laughter before the water cut it off.
After an hour or so they moved inside, towels wrapped around their waists. The kitchen was expectedly nice, the appliances brushed steel. A large island took up half of the room; on it sat a blender, a cutting board, and other margarita making supplies. To the right, down a single step, was an open living area that had a tidy, unused look.
“You wanna watch a movie?” Leigh asked as she walked around the island. She began to pull things from the fridge for the next round. “It’s pulp movie night. Actually every night is pulp movie night, so.”
“Yeah. What’s showing?”
“This.” She wiped her hands on a towel, touched her tablet a few times, and slid it across the island. On it was an overexposed photo of three teenagers. The one in front Sarah recognized as the prince in her favorite Disney movie, Enchanted: James Marsden. He was much younger in this picture. “Teenagers discover something strange happening in a small town. It’s probably nothing,” Leigh pretended to read from the synopsis.
“Sounds good.”
“Probably not, actually, but whatever. Sometimes I don’t want to watch something good, sometimes I want to watch something I don’t care about.”
Sarah nodded. “Could I use your bathroom?” The drink had caught up with her.
“Down that hall on the left.”
She went down a long cool hall, simultaneously looking around and trying not to be nosy. There was a picture of Leigh’s father, then another of him holding Leigh. There’d been one of him in the living area too. None of her mother so far.
When she came out Leigh was putting the finishing touches on the next round. They went back down the same hall, past the bathroom, to a door on the right. It opened on a dimly lit room—dimly lit by design, Sarah saw, with indirect lighting on the walls like a real movie theater. The seats were were two attached recliners in the middle of the room, flanked by a small end table on each side, and a drink holder in the outside arm of each. The far end of the room was dominated by the screen, which took up the upper two thirds of the wall. The projector was against the back wall.
“Glad I had them put in two seats,” Leigh said. “I asked for one but the guy gave me a funny look, and I was only seventeen at the time and felt stupid, so I said, ‘Oh, uh, no, I meant two.’” She affected a high-pitched voice as her younger self.
They sat and she touched her tablet a few times. The screen lit up bright white.
“You can do everything with that, can’t you?” Sarah said.
“Just about.” She touched it again and the movie began, showing the Metro Goldwyn Mayer logo with the roaring lion in the center. The lights dimmed slowly as it did, going out completely about 30 seconds later. Credits in an ominous font began to draw themselves across the screen to cheap-sounding music.
“I hate when movies start with 5 minutes of credits,” Sarah said, sipping her drink. She was starting to feel pretty buzzed. Well, it was Friday night. Evening. Whatever.
“Me too! It makes me rage.”
Sarah thought that that was the most enthusiastic thing she’d ever heard Leigh say. She smiled. She felt pleasant.
The movie opened on two teenagers making out in a car. Because of course it did. Sarah and Leigh both sniggered. Apparently a little alcohol and a pool party was all it took to turn her into a preteen. The house was so big and just so much to look at, though, and meeting and being so constantly surprised by Leigh, it did have that feeling of summer newness that she hadn’t felt since she’d worn braces.
“Issee… is he—the good guy?” Sarah said, slurring slightly.
“Dunno.”
The teenage boy character’s eyes lit up red. He grabbed the girl by the head and ended her life violently. Sarah shrieked and looked away.
“Ew,” Leigh said. “Sorry, I didn’t know this was that violent.”
“S’ok.”
After some more brief action the movie switched to something Sarah recognized as The Boring Part: the introductions of the main characters in a teenage horror flick. Her attention began to wander immediately, even though the main good guy was portrayed by James Marsden. She discovered that she didn’t really like the young James Marsden as an actor. At that age he was still being cast as a generic pretty boy; Hollywood wouldn’t discover his sense of humor for another 10 years. Leigh must have felt similarly, because she began to touch her tablet.
Sarah began to feel what could best be called sloppily happy.
“M’ glad I bumped into you,” she said, looking over at Leigh.
“Me too,” Leigh said. She seemed distracted, though. She occasionally looked up from the tablet to glance at the screen, but didn’t look at Sarah. Her manner became almost cold.
“I’m sorry you’re an orphan. But Batman was an orphan and he turned out ok,” Sarah said, and her face turned red the moment it finished leaving her mouth. Oh god. “Ohshit, I didn’ mean—” Oh god. What was wrong with her?
“It’s ok,” Leigh smiled.
Where the fuck had her internal censor gone? She put her drink down, spilling it slightly and cursing herself for that too.
“I’m a fucking disaster,” Sarah said, trying to wipe it up.
“Really, it’s ok.” Leigh put a hand on hers to still her fussing. “Batman’s a pretty intense guy though. I wonder how he would have turned out without Alfred.”
“M’sure he woulda been fine. He’s Batman.”
“Mm.” She patted Sarah’s hand. “I gotta pee. I’ll bring a towel back.” She padded out, looking like an elegant ghost in her black bathing suit. So cool and confident. Her body somehow suited her personality.
When Sarah looked back to the movie, her vision doubled.
Whoa. She squeezed her eyes shut then opened them as wide as she could for a moment. Too much too fast. She was such a lightweight. It had been a long time since she’d drank, too. She was going to embarrass herself in front of Leigh if she didn’t get her shit together now.
But despite willing it not to be with all of her mental strength, the room began to spin. Little half turns to the left that kept snapping back. She laid her head back against the cushion and let her eyes droop to half mast and unfocus. She knew from bad drunks before that this was better than closing them—if she closed them she might get sick. She wasn’t feeling sick, though. She felt nice. Just so tired.
She tried to lift her head to get back into the game but it didn’t want to go. The recliner was really nice. She felt like she was being pushed slowly but inexorably down through it. Down, down.
The moment she forgot to keep her eyes open they closed, and awareness left her.
It was the last clear memory she had of that night.
As she would realize later, though, things continued to happen.
Confusion. Confusion and movement.
“...hold on to me…”
Sarah’s head lolled against her chest. She was upright though, pressed against someone. A girl. Leigh. Her arm was around Leigh’s shoulders, most of her weight resting there. Leigh’s arm was around her waist, helping to hold her up. They were back in their bathing suits, their towels discarded in the movie room, and their skin touched in many places.
Sarah liked the feeling of Leigh’s body against hers. It was warm and soft and fit perfectly there, under her arm.
“...here we go…”
They were moving. Or rather, Leigh was moving and Sarah was holding on as best she could, which was not very well. If Leigh hadn’t been gripping her arm she would have quickly slithered to the floor.
She greyed out.
Then: they were standing by an open door; beyond it stairs led down into darkness.
“...with both arms…”
Sarah missed whatever had been said to her, but Leigh illustrated it by taking Sarah’s other arm and draping it over her shoulder, so that Sarah was clinging to her neck with both arms. Floppily. Her breasts smooshed against Leigh’s upper arm; the fronts of her thighs rested against the outside of Leigh’s. It was nice. Sarah thought that she would like to kiss her, and wondered if Leigh would mind.
“Here we go.”
They were going down the stairs, very slowly. Leigh took one step, braced herself, then eased Sarah down to her level, gripping the railing tightly with her free hand all the while. Then repeated the process. She was so strong! Sarah put her face against Leigh’s neck and greyed out again.
Lights, bright lights.
“Nnn!” Sarah complained. They were in a wide space: the basement or the garage, she was in no condition to guess.
It looked like a lab or an operating room. Bright fluorescent track lighting lit the room; the surfaces were all stainless steel or white. There large thing in the middle that looked like an elaborate dentist’s chair. It was flanked by the kind of large, round, positionable lights seen in operating rooms. Low white cabinets lined the walls. There was plenty of other stuff, but Sarah only barely processed it. She burrowed her face in Leigh’s neck making complaining noises.
“Sorry,” Leigh said. She flicked a switch and the wicked track lighting went away. Clinging to Leigh as she was, Sarah could feel her chest vibrate when she talked. She smiled at this.
Moving, moving, god, when would they stop moving?
Finally she was placed on a reclined surface. The dentist’s chair she had seen from across the room, probably, although she’d already forgotten it.
She passed out again immediately.
Sharp, stinging pain on her arm.
Sarah yelped. She tried to pull her arm away but it was held down. The shock caused her to jerk to a sitting position, momentarily overcoming her stupor.
She looked down in time to see Leigh depress the plunger on a syringe, the needle of which was in the vein on the inside of Sarah’s elbow. She held Sarah’s arm tightly by the wrist.
It was over in a flash. Leigh removed the needle, flicked it away, and released her wrist, which Sarah quickly pulled against herself.
“Leigh what was that?”
“Nothing,” Leigh said. “It’s ok.” She smiled.
“Was that a needle?!” The sheer unreality of it left her at a loss for words.
“No,” Leigh said, standing. “Nothing happened. Just relax.”
Sarah blinked at this blatant contradiction. She opened her mouth but found that in her state she didn’t even know how to proceed. That was a needle. She knew she’d seen a needle. There had been pain. There was a mark. Was Leigh a junkie?
She started to get up, but Leigh grabbed her by the arms and held her against the chair. Her dark eyes were suddenly stern.
“Get off of me.”
“Shh.”
“Leigh get off—”
Sarah tried again and failed to get up. The ease with which Leigh was overpowering her was embarrassing. It was partly the position; the chair was reclined at a forty-five degree angle and Leigh was standing over it, holding Sarah firmly by the biceps.
And it was partly how utterly inebriated Sarah was—and now, finally, she let herself admit that it wasn’t just the alcohol. There had been something in her drink, something like a date rape drug. Sarah was a lightweight but she didn’t go all floppy and unconscious over one and a half drinks. She let out a cry of frustration as she struggled to get out from under Leigh’s gripping hands.
Then whatever had been in the needle hit her, and hit her hard.
It was like her head had been dunked into warm water, complete with the sound muffling. Everything went slow and unreal.
“There.” The chair reclined until it was flat like a bed. Leigh slithered up onto it, her knee pushing between Sarah’s now-unresisting legs. Her flesh and the material of her bathing suit were a soft pressure. She kissed Sarah on the lips, open-mouthed.
Sarah made a helpless noise and tried to turn onto her side, to do anything.
But another wave of whatever had been in the syringe rolled through her, and this time she was knocked out cold.