Who We Are Instead Read online

  Who We are Instead

  Kyla Stone

  Paper Moon Press

  Contents

  Who We Are Instead

  Books by Kyla Stone

  1. Lena

  2. Lena

  3. Lena

  4. Lux

  5. Lena

  6. Lux

  7. Lux

  8. Lena

  9. Lux

  10. Lena

  11. Lux

  12. Lena

  13. Lux

  14. Lena

  15. Lena

  16. Lux

  17. Lux

  18. Lux

  19. Lena

  20. Lux

  21. Lena

  22. Lena

  23. Lena

  24. Lux

  25. Lena

  26. Lux

  27. Lena

  28. Lena

  29. Lux

  30. Lena

  31. Lux

  32. Lena

  33. Lux

  34. Lena

  35. Lux

  36. Lena

  37. Lux

  38. Lena

  39. Lena

  40. Lena

  41. Lux

  42. Lena

  43. Lux

  44. Lux

  45. Lena

  46. Lux

  47. Lux

  48. Lena

  49. Lux

  50. Lena

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Beneath The Skin Preview

  One

  Two

  Three

  Who We Are Instead

  By Kyla Stone

  Paper Moon Press

  Atlanta, GA

  Copyright © 2017 by Kyla Stone

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover design by Clarissa Yeo

  Book formatting by Frostbite Publishing

  First Printing February, 2017

  ISBN 978-1-945410-04-8

  Paper Moon Press

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Created with Vellum

  Books by Kyla Stone

  Beneath The Skin

  The Good Sister: A Novelette

  Who We Are Instead

  To those whose battle lies within.

  Your scars may not be visible,

  But you are still a warrior.

  Never give up.

  “There was a star

  riding through the clouds one night,

  and I said to the star,

  ‘Consume me.’”

  -Virginia Woolf

  1

  Lena

  “What happened?” I ask. My hands tremble as I rinse the developer tray in the stainless-steel sink and stack it on the shelf.

  A security officer stands in the doorway, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. He’s slender, with pinched, watery eyes and a narrow face.

  I’m the only student in the university’s darkroom. I’d just finished the last print when the officer knocked on the door. I switch off the red safelight and blink against the harsh, florescent light. The darkroom smells like fixer and developer, chemicals as familiar to me as a favorite perfume.

  “Miss McKenna,” the officer says, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry. I must inform you that your father had a heart attack. He’s in critical condition at St. Joseph Medical Center.”

  My own heart constricts. I put my hand on the processing sink to steady myself. My gaze lands on the enlarger work stations against the far wall. I would have spent the rest of Wednesday afternoon working at one of the stations, bent over the easel. Not anymore. “Thank you for telling me. I need to go home.”

  The officer looks at me like he’s prepared for tears, hysteria, and now he’s got no idea what to do. But I won’t lose it. Not today. I can’t. I’ve known this was coming for years. I’ve known it like how you can sense a storm by the electric charge in the air. Still, the pain swells up inside me. I fight it down. I have to. I move to the counter to gather my things.

  “Miss? That’s not all. Your sister has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Ran away, is what I was told.”

  Fear jolts up my spine, followed by a cold, dull anger. Not again. I stare down at the counter, at the small square faces gazing up at me from the rows of negatives. They’re all of children at a playground, an assignment for Advanced Portraiture II. They don’t matter now. Nothing here matters now. I leave the negatives, the solutions, the printed photographs drying on the rack. I take only my camera.

  The officer touches my shoulder. “My condolences.” He mumbles something about the Women’s Dean collecting my father’s hospital information.

  “Thank you.” My breath catches in my throat.

  Everything seems far away. Things are tilting, swirling in and out of focus. I concentrate on the officer’s face. His skin is pale, almost translucent. Veins web his cheeks, a large one throbbing at his temple like a blue worm. I’d photograph his face in color, in a cool, natural light to capture the delicate netting of blue, his veins like scaffolding propping up his features, threading skin to bone.

  One breath in, one breath out. Stay. In. Control. I clutch the base of my camera, the black strap wrapped around my wrist. I walk past the closed classroom doors of Berman Hall, the job openings and graduate school advertisements stapled to faded bulletin boards. I walk past posters advertising The Art Institute of Florida banquets and theatre productions and the large framed student photographs lining the walls: one the stark shadow of a chair, another a gritty close-up of an orange, another a girl with a lampshade pulled over her head.

  My heart thuds in my ears, drowning out the drip of the drinking fountain, the low rumble of professors’ voices through the doors, the steady rustling of warm, restless bodies.

  My legs are stiff and heavy. They’re harder and harder to control, to order one foot to lift and push forward, then the other. My mind is trapped in a thicket of fog. Is Dad okay? How bad is it this time? Where is my sister? Is she safe, just being typical wild and crazy Lux? Or has something worse happened, something my brain won’t let me even contemplate? It’s hard to think. To focus.

  I stop suddenly. My advisor. He needs to know. I pivot back toward the teachers’ lounge and enter his office, knocking on the opened door. Dr. Jack Wells sits ram-rod straight in his office chair. He squints at me behind the sheen of his glasses.

  I tell him what I know. The words sound alien, like they’re coming from someone else.

  “When do you plan to return?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, relieved he didn’t apologize or offer up empty condolences I don’t know how to respond to. Not from him, anyway. “A few days? A week maybe, I don’t really know. I have to find my sister. She’s done this before—run off. But not like this. Never like this.”

  Dr. Wells nods and scrapes a hand through his black hair. “You’ll fall behind in your studies.” His face is long and lean, his skin the color of walnuts. His eyes are quick and dark like a raven’s, absorbing everything, even light. My mentor is the best professor of photography in the Southeast. “What about the competition?”

>   I tighten my grip on the camera strap. “I’ll be back by then.” The gallery competition for the Central Florida Metropolitan Museum of Art is huge. The finalists’ prints will be displayed next to the likes of Annie Liebowitz and Steve McCurry. The winner receives a $10,000 grant and an internship plus stipend with Photography magazine. With Dr. Wells’ guidance, I’ve made it through the preliminary rounds. I’m a semi-finalist. This could make my career.

  He frowns. “The committee needs to see your submission by March 10th. That’s only two months away. If you make it as a finalist, the gallery is April 8th. You must be present to win. Are your prints prepared?”

  “They will be.”

  “Do you have a ticket yet?”

  My heart stutters. No, of course I don’t. How much is it going to cost? I try to remember my bank account balance. It won’t be enough.

  The hard lines of his face soften. “You can reimburse me later. Just get back as soon as you can.”

  I nod. It’s all I can do.

  “I’ll call the dean with the ticket details. I hope your father is okay. I truly do,” he says with a rare kindness.

  It’s going to undo me. I grit my teeth, shoving back the emotions hovering at the edges of everything, the grief creeping up my throat. “Thank you.”

  I get to the Dean’s office somehow, obtain my father’s hospital information, and hurriedly pack a few bags. My roommate, Sarah, is still in theatre practice. I send her a quick text to let her know where I’m going. There’s no one else to tell.

  I take an Uber to the airport. I don’t look back at the Art Institute of Florida’s Tampa campus rapidly fading from view, its square, squat buildings casting long shadows in the brilliant white sunshine, the palm trees rustling in the breeze. If I did, I might not have the strength to leave.

  On the plane, I try to read my book, Gregory Heisler’s 50 Portraits, but the sentences keep jerking on the page. My gaze won’t settle on more than two or three words before sputtering off in some other direction. I can’t find a comfortable position because I’m stuck in a middle seat. On one side, an overly muscular WWF wannabe keeps slinging his bulk across my armrest. On the other side, a snoring business-type pokes me in the ear with the zippered end of his giant-sized pillow. The air is hot and stuffy and smells like salted peanuts. The grinding drone of the plane’s engine bores into my brain.

  I stare out the oval window across snoring Pillow Guy, into the cold blackness and the wheeling fleet of stars. How am I going to do this? How can I keep things together, take care of everything? At school, it’s simple. Everything is easier. The scholarships, the grades, the friends (acquaintances, really). I imagine all the things I’d normally be doing now, dinner in the cafeteria with my roommate Sarah, a meeting with the photo editor of the university newspaper. Then more studio time in the darkroom unless Sarah dragged me out with her theater friends. I can see her so clearly, slouched on her bed with a script in her hands, chewing a pen while she practices her lines.

  It’s all frivolous, meaningless. The only things that matter are already gone or almost gone. Already put aside in my safe, tidy compartment of lost things.

  Except they aren’t gone, not even all that lost: my father may be dying in a hospital bed, my sister roaming the streets, ribbons of smoke trailing behind her, stalking circles of lamp light like an alley cat. And then the house I grew up in, crouching silently, empty but breathing, rattled with tremors, the shivers of guilt, of loneliness, of secrets. Like a living thing.

  2

  Lena

  Once the plane lands at Kalamazoo International Airport, a taxi brings me to the hospital. We pass trees stacked with ice and snow-swamped telephone poles. Pedestrians scuttle in and out of restaurants and grocery stores, drawing their coats and scarves against the cold.

  The freezing temperatures are a shock to my system. It doesn’t matter that I grew up in Southwest Michigan; three years in Florida has thinned my blood. I pull my sweatshirt tighter around myself, shivering as I stare at the streams of dull, dirty cars flowing past the taxi’s window. Hundreds, thousands of lives, all rushing to somewhere, to anywhere but here.

  I pay the driver and dash inside, ducking my head against the snow drifting down from the iron-gray sky. At the front desk, a male nurse gives me directions to the third floor. I lug my suitcase into an elevator crowded with children clutching flowers and hand-drawn get-well-soon cards. They laugh and push each other. The boys battle with flower swords. I should’ve stopped by the house first, at least to drop off my luggage and grab my old winter coat. I’ll have to go home sometime, just not now, not during these long, fragile minutes when everything must be held together so carefully. The elevator rises, the yellowed leather suitcase pressing against my leg.

  The elevator stops at the second floor. Pediatrics. The cluster of children pour out of the elevator. One calls, “Yoo-hoo! Trinity, we’re coming!”

  The doors close. I watch the lit numbers above them. There were no hospitals eight years ago. There was only the silent house. Then the funeral, the coffin and the gravestones and the soft weeping above the birds chirping and the breeze rustling the trees. After the funeral came the visitors. Family and friends invaded the house, bringing their hunched shoulders and covered casseroles, their whispered apologies and awkward, pitying attempts at conversation.

  I played the role of hostess perfectly, smiling and taking their dishes, two tin-foiled turkeys, meatballs in a Crock-pot, plates of muffins and croissants. I hung up jackets and sweaters, murmuring and nodding as they tried to convey their horror and sorrow. I handed out tissues, made sure everyone had enough food. Had they tried the potato salad? I made sure the raspberry punch didn’t run out, taking plates and setting them carefully in the sink, then on the counters when the sink filled. I scraped the uneaten broccoli, chunks of gravied chicken, and crusts of bread rolls into the trash. All the while, the palpable grief in the house was so thick and heavy, I could barely walk through it, could hardly breathe.

  The elevator dings and I step out, suitcase wheels jerking over the space between the elevator and the floor. I follow the room numbers through double glass doors and down a long beige hallway. All hospitals have that peculiar smell of bleach mixed with something aged, maybe rotting.

  I remember how Dad wept in great, gasping sobs. I’d never seen him cry before. I was embarrassed for him. Lux, who was nine, sat in the hallway, knees pulled up beneath her chin, eyes glazed. I can see her so clearly, scrunched up in her pink silk dress with the tiny daisies all over it, the one Mom had loved. Lux stared at the wall as if transfixed. She didn’t cry, speak, or respond to anyone. After awhile, people just stepped over her in their suits and dark dresses on their way to the bathroom, as if she wasn’t even there.

  I find room 315 and enter before I can think about what I’m about to see, what I am or am not prepared for, what I’ll feel.

  What I feel is a sickening vertigo, my stomach wrenching up into my chest. “Oh, Dad.”

  Jacob McKenna lies in a too-small, metal-framed bed, the blue hospital blanket barely covering his immense body. Tubes run through his nose. An IV connects him to the humming machines crowding around the bed.

  My father opens his eyes and attempts a smile. The structure of his face seems to have crumbled before the onslaught of weight and the violence of the heart attack. His flaccid cheeks are shiny and gray with fatigue, his chin retreating into the bulging rolls of his neck. The skin around his eye sockets is loose and puffy, folded inward half over his eyelids. His lips are a cracked grayish blue, and the right side of his mouth sags.

  “Are you all right, Dad?” I ask, though he’s not all right; far from it. The bleeping machines and the shocking white of his skin tell me as much. Everything is a glaring, alarming white: the walls, the floor, the papery curtain pulled between my father and the patient on the other side of the room. From the corner, the TV screen gazes at me like a black, blind eye.

  He tries to raise his head, but
the strain is too much. His head falls back against the pillow, making a pffft sound.

  “Never mind, don’t talk. I’m sorry. Just rest. You need to rest.” I stand next to the bed, one hand on the metal rails. There’s a blue plastic chair in the corner, but I can’t sit down. My spine is a rod of steel—if anything bends or gives way even slightly, my bones will shatter.

  “Are you comfortable? Do you need medicine? More pillows? Are you cold?” I don’t expect him to answer, but I need a chore, a task, something to do, some way to help, to try and fix this, the unfixable. Helplessness washes over me in waves.

  “I’m fine.” Dad’s hand slips off the bed rails. His baritone voice, normally rich and deep like an opera singer, is gruff, raw. “Just . . . tired.”

  “Are you sure you should be talking? I mean, maybe I should ask a doctor first . . .”

  “I’m glad you’re home, Gingersnap.”

  My heart clenches at the familiar nickname, the one my father coined for me after Lux was born with a head of flaming hair an even deeper red than mine. He called Lux Strawberry Shortcake. Over the years, her name shortened to Shortcake. Mine stayed the same. I clear my throat. “What did the doctors say?”

  “Just another attack.” Dad wheezes, grimacing. “This one a bit worse than the others.”

  I avert my gaze from the blinking machines, the zigzag pattern of his heart rate. Dad suffered three heart attacks in the last six years. Each time, the doctors said he wouldn’t survive the next one. Each time, he promised to do better. “I’m glad . . . I’m glad you’re still here.”

  “Me too.”

  The silence stretches between us, nearly unbearable. “Dad, where’s Lux?”

  He grunts. “She’s around.”

  “Is she at home?”

  “Not yet.”