The Zero Night

22

“This is a hell of a lot better than calculus,” Zach Larsen told Cat as he passed her the joint.

She took a shallow hit and followed it with a deep breath of sweet, cool air. She thought about old men doing math, and something about that image made her giggle. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Leibniz and Newton must have been stoned when they came up with differential equations.”

“No kidding,” Zach said. “You’d have to be.”

Cat didn’t feel stoned herself, just pleasantly mellow, as if the moon and stars were brighter and closer than they usually were. It was past midnight. The two of them lay on their backs on a blanket spread across the green grass of midfield in the UMD football stadium. Zach had a student maintenance job there, so he had the keys to get them in. Empty bleachers looked down on them from both sides of the field.

“It’s a pretty night,” Cat murmured.

“Yeah. Look at all the stars. See that really bright one there? I wonder what that one is.”

“It’s a planet,” Cat replied. “That’s Jupiter.”

“Is it? You know that?”

“Yup.”

“You know about stars?”

“Some.”

She’d taken an astronomy course during her senior year in high school, and Stride had bought her a telescope. They’d spent hours on the beach behind the cottage mapping the sky. Most of what Cat read or saw, she typically remembered. She extended one arm and pointed out half a dozen constellations.

Zach shook his head in awe. “Wow. Calculus. Astronomy. Is there anything you can’t do?”

Cat smiled. He was flattering her, but she didn’t mind. His right hand grazed against her left hand, and she wondered when he would make his move. He’d looked embarrassed suggesting they go to the stadium instead of studying math, and the location, the stars, the blanket, the joint, all had make-out session written all over them. She knew that he had a little crush on her, but she wasn’t interested. Maybe some kissing if the joint put her in the mood, but nothing more than that. They were both freshmen, but Zach was two years younger than she was, and Cat liked men, not boys.

Of course, Zach knew all about her past. Everybody did. The incident with the Hollywood actor who’d tried to rape her two years earlier had landed Cat on the covers of magazines and splashed her personal life across the internet. So far, reactions to her arrival on campus had run the gamut. Some people didn’t care, some considered her a MeToo hero, some thought she was an attention-seeker, and some treated her like a kind of exotic zoo animal. That was Zach, who seemed tongue-tied whenever he was around her.

Zach was young, but she had to admit that he was also sweet and handsome. He had a shy smile and warm blue eyes. His blond hair sprouted up from his head like a weed, and his ruddy face was still a little broken out. He had the thick neck and limbs of a football player, but not the grace or speed to make the team. He’d actually apologized about that, as if Cat cared about such things. Apparently, Zach’s lack of physical prowess had been a big disappointment to his father. Cat had known plenty of men like that, and she didn’t like them.

“I beat your girlfriend on Wednesday’s test,” Cat said. “She didn’t look too happy.”

“Delaney’s not used to anyone beating her,” Zach replied. “In high school she was the valedictorian, you know.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, I never met anyone smarter than her. Not until you, I mean.” He propped himself up on one elbow on the blanket. “And you know, Delaney’s not my girlfriend anymore. We broke up.”

“Too bad. She’s really pretty.”

“Yeah. She is. But I mean, so are you.”

Cat took the joint from Zach’s hand again and took another hit. “How long did you guys go out?”

She watched his mouth crease into something that was part smile, part frown. It was obvious he still had feelings for Delaney, even if they weren’t together. Cat wondered if Zach’s crush on her was mostly a substitute for his ex-girlfriend.

“We went out all through high school,” he said, “but we’ve known each other since kindergarten. As kids, we were best friends. Then I guess our hormones kicked in around the same time, so we started dating. We were together all the time. My folks only live a couple of miles from where her house was.”

“Was?”

Zach hesitated. “Yeah, she’s not there anymore. Delaney’s mom killed herself a couple of years ago.”

“Oh, shit!” Cat exclaimed. She sat up on the blanket with her legs crossed. “I had no idea. I feel bad for her.”

“Yeah, that sucked.”

“I lost my mom, too. I mean, I was a lot younger than she was. I was only six. And my dad killed my mom, and I know suicide’s different. But loss is loss. I should talk to her.”

Zach shook his head. “It won’t do any good. Delaney doesn’t talk about it.”

“Is that why the two of you broke up?” Cat asked. “Because of what happened to Delaney’s mom?”

Zach lay back on the blanket. His face looked like a ball of confusion as he stared at the sky. He didn’t ask for the joint back, so Cat smoked it herself.

“I have no idea why we broke up,” he said quietly after a while.

“Well, losing somebody messes people up.”

“I know, but it wasn’t that. It happened before.”

“She broke up with you before her mom’s suicide?”

Zach nodded. “Yeah. One day everything was fine, and the next day — boom. She said she didn’t want to see me anymore. We were done. Not boyfriend-girlfriend, not even friends. She didn’t come to my house again, not once. At school, I kept pestering her to tell me what had happened, because I figured I must have done something to piss her off. She said that it wasn’t me, but I didn’t believe her. But I never figured out what went wrong between us.”

“When did her mom kill herself?” Cat asked.

“Delaney broke up with me on a Friday. It was a week after that.”

“Were there problems between them?”

“No, they were always really, really close. But it wasn’t easy for Delaney, because Mrs. Candis had a big drinking problem. Half the time when I was at Delaney’s house, her mom was drunk. Delaney would tell me stories that were just wild. Her mom would throw up, have blackouts, get the shakes. Strangers would take her home, and Delaney would find men in her mom’s bed. Really bad stuff. But no matter what Mrs. Candis did, Delaney wouldn’t hear a word against her.”

Cat stretched out on her back and stared at the sky again. “I think Delaney was lucky to have you.”

“That’s what she used to tell me. She said I was her rock. I always figured we’d get married. I mean, we never talked about it, but it was just sort of understood between us, you know? But then she dumped me.”

“Did you have an argument or something?”

“No. There was nothing like that. We’d just had a great weekend together. Everything was fine. Then the next day she started giving me the freeze-out. Ducking my calls. Ignoring my texts.”

“Shit,” Cat said.

“Yeah, it really hurt. But it was a couple of years ago. I’ve moved on.”

Cat didn’t think he’d moved on at all.

“What happened that last weekend?” she asked.

Zach shrugged. “Why do you care? You don’t even know her.”

“Well, it sounds like we have some things in common. Plus, come on, Zach, you’re still in love with her, right? That’s pretty obvious.”

“I don’t know,” he replied wearily, as if he’d asked himself that same question many times. “My dad keeps telling me to forget her. He says she’s a mental case like her mom. He says I should get laid. He says once I do that, I’ll stop thinking about Delaney.”

Zach’s face flushed as he realized what he’d said. Cat shifted so that she was sitting up again. Her jaw hardened.

“Was that the plan for tonight?” she asked acidly.

“No! I didn’t mean you.”

“Did you bring condoms?”

“I... well... yeah—” he stuttered and then closed his eyes. “Shit.”

“If you think I’m easy because of my past, you’ve really got it wrong,” Cat told him.

“I don’t think that. I swear. I only brought condoms because my dad, well, he always says, be prepared. But I didn’t take you out here to have sex, Cat. I like you. You remind me of — well, you remind me of her.”

Cat shook her head. “Wow, you’re really bad at this.”

“I know. I need to get past her. I just don’t know how to do that. Not until I know what the hell happened.”

Cat relaxed and settled back on the blanket again. “Well, there must have been something. Trust me, we girls can lose our shit over little things.”

“I know, but there wasn’t anything!” Zach insisted. “Delaney went camping with us that weekend. Me, her, my folks. We all had a great time.”

“Delaney’s mom didn’t come with you?”

“No, she stayed home. Mrs. Candis never liked my dad. She thought he was crude. Which he is. Plus, Delaney said whenever she was away, that was when her mom used to really go nuts on the booze. So I guess Delaney knew what she’d come home to on Sunday.”

“What happened on the camping trip?” Cat asked.

“Nothing. We fished. We hiked. Mom grilled the fish, and Dad drank too much beer. Typical trip. We stayed at the campsite Friday and Saturday, and then we went home on Sunday afternoon. I asked Delaney to stay for dinner, but she said she’d better check on her mom. So my dad drove her home, and that was that. No arguments, no nothing. When she was leaving, Delaney gave me a kiss. Everything was fine. Then the next day, she wasn’t at school. Same thing on Tuesday. I kept texting and calling, and she didn’t answer, and I was starting to freak out. By Wednesday, she was back, but she kept avoiding me. By Friday, I finally cornered her outside class and said I wouldn’t leave her alone until she told me what was going on. That’s when she broke up with me. Just like that. She said it was her fault, not mine, but she couldn’t see me anymore.”

“She didn’t say why?”

“Nope.”

“Did you talk to any of her friends?”

“Sure. They were blindsided by it, too.”

“Have you talked with her at all since then?”

“I went by her place a couple of times the next week, but she asked me to leave. I pestered her with texts and shit, and she blocked me. My dad told me I should knock it off and leave her alone. But none of it made sense to me. I mean, you’re a girl. What am I missing?”

Cat leaned across the blanket and gave him a little peck on the cheek.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I can tell you one thing.”

“What?”

“You should listen to what Delaney told you. Whatever happened, I don’t think it had anything to do with you. This was about her. And maybe her mom, too. And it was big.”