Paper Tigers Read online

  Stupid. This was so stupid. She flipped the cover shut, and left it on the counter.

  CHAPTER 5

  When Alison unlatched her door for the grocery deliveryman, an unfamiliar face stared at hers. Chubby cheeks instead of sharp cheekbones, lank hair instead of a bald head. His eyes widened. She shook her hair forward, covering as much of her face as possible, and fought to keep her hands by her sides.

  “Where’s Sam?” she asked, holding the door halfway open.

  “He has the day off.”

  “Will he be back next week?”

  “They changed our schedules around, so I’ll be the one delivering to you. Least until they change it again. Can I bring these bags in?”

  Alison nodded and stepped out of the way, wincing at the stiffness in her knee, and crossed her arms over her chest. He left the first set of bags on the floor next to the coffee table, and went back out for more.

  When he returned, he added the bags to the pile, and handed her the delivery form. His gaze lingered on her face as she scrawled her name. She thrust the paper toward him, turning her right side away.

  “I’m Tyler, by the way. Were you in a fire?”

  “Thank you for carrying all the bags inside,” Alison said. Each word tasted like gravel in her mouth.

  “My sister was, too. It took her a long time before she could leave the house, but once she did, it got easier. Just saying,” he said.

  As soon as he was gone, she shut the door hard enough to send an echo through the room, but his words persisted.

  “It got easier.”

  Sam never said anything but hello and goodbye. Sam never asked questions or offered advice. Tyler was wrong.

  It didn’t get easier. Not for her.

  She put her head in her hands and grimaced. She should’ve met his eyes. She should’ve at least tried instead of cowering like a kicked puppy. How was she ever going to move forward if she didn’t keep taking steps, even if they hurt? It wouldn’t be easy, she knew that, so why in the hell didn’t she try harder? Next time, she’d look him in the eyes. She would.

  She held the words tight, hoping she’d be strong enough to keep their promise.

  The last of the groceries put away, Alison sat down with her laptop. Her fingers pecked at the keyboard and black text filled the screen, each ugly phrase a nail from her casket of living death. She lifted her hands from the keyboard with a heavy sigh and flexed her fingers. Tiny cramping pains stabbed her from the inside out, her muscles twitched, and her fingers reflexively curled inward. Before the fire, she’d kept all her poetry in notebooks; after, she’d torn them all up, hating the inherent shape of her words even more than the careful, neat handwriting.

  Maybe one day she’d write out all the rage and the pity and find some peace. She skimmed the page.

  Or maybe not.

  She hit delete until the cursor ate all the words away. Inside, a cold ache twisted, a strange, trembling hurt without the black and grey of real pain in its depths.

  She opened a browser and scanned the job listings. She suspected many of the work from home options were scams but found a few that appeared legitimate. None of the jobs meant anything, though. The world didn’t need another telemarketer and the job she wanted, she couldn’t have. Not now. She could finish the three semesters needed to get her degree online, but becoming a teacher was a once-was dream. She’d send the children screaming out into the hall and plague their nightmares. Or she’d be the teacher whose name children dreaded seeing on their schedule. She doubted she could find a school that would hire her anyway, even with her two years of experience as a teacher’s assistant.

  Miss Reese, Miss Reese, come see what I made! Come see!

  She curled in a ball on the sofa, her hands tucked under her good cheek. When tears slipped from her left eye, she made no move to wipe them away, too lost in the ebb and flow of the storm within.

  Her eyelids grew heavy, slipping down over one real eye and the other, crafted from some sort of plastic, as hard as glass, yet more durable. She’d opted for the eye and all the reconstructive surgery when she still thought they held the power to turn her into something else, something close to a normal girl. The doctors never lied, but their ideas of improvement and repair ended up a far cry from her own. She didn’t need to be beautiful; she wanted people to be able to look at her without fear or cringes. She wanted to be able to look at herself the same way.

  She smelled something sweet and sharp. Not a phantom, but real. And too close by far. She stumbled into the kitchen (Half-asleep? Half-awake? Half-away in a Monstergirl fugue?), her hands limp at her sides.

  George’s album still lay open on the counter, amid a haze of bluish-grey smoke. She heard laughter, low and enigmatic. Then another laugh, higher-pitched, a feminine trill of blonde perfection. More voices, hushed and distant. Murmurs of conversation. Music in the background.

  “She plays beautifully, doesn’t she?”

  The clink of glasses.

  “Not yet, but soon, I think.”

  A whisk of rustling skirts.

  “Always nice to have a new guest, don’t you think?”

  Another laugh, George’s laugh. Softer, meant for no one else to hear.

  “Won’t you join us?”

  Goosebumps pebbled Alison’s left arm as she waved her right hand through the smoke. Tendrils of grey curled around her fingers and thumb. She exhaled and the smoke dispersed, taking away the laughter and the voices. Another plume of smoke crept from the picture—a semi-transparent snake that coiled in a spiral below her palm. Thin wisps encircled first her thumb, then her index and middle fingers. They touched the air where her ring finger and pinkie should be and created gauzy finger shaped outlines in the air.

  “We’re waiting…”

  Alison jerked her hand back. The smoke held the shape, then puffed away. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  But she reached for the album again, stopping when the shape of her hand fell across the page. A shadow with five fingers. She took several deep breaths. Two of her fingers were gone, gone, gone, burned away to useless char for the snipping.

  Her vision clouded with the color of plums. She knew this Muse well. Purple screamed hello when the fire began its heated kiss. Shrieked when the doctors descended with their scalpels and needles. Purple trembled and shook with fear. Purple’s voice was never quite as loud as the others, but far more insistent. Purple kept her from meeting eyes, from taking steps, from trying.

  Alison grabbed the photo album without pause (no need to linger for shadows and shade, for waiting imaginary voices) and threw it in the trash can.

  Gone, gone, gone.

  “Photo albums don’t talk,” she said, her voice too loud.

  Lonely in isolation—what her make-believe George wrote in his journal. Lonely enough to dream up lives for dead faces, yes, but lonely enough to hear them speak? More proof her isolation wasn’t healthy. She knew she was hiding (it wasn’t a crime and surely anyone would understand the why), but she wasn’t strong enough yet to face the world, and she was too afraid. Knowing was half the battle, though. She simply needed to find the armor to help her withstand the fight.

  Before she went to bed, she took the photo album out of the trash can, dusted it off, and put it back on the shelf. An overactive imagination was no reason to throw it away.

  PART II

  THE TIGER BITES

  She sits in her prison alone and the time ticks slowly by. Hours into days into months. She waits for the sun to set then emerges like a moth to wander through her neighborhood cloaked in shadows and scarves. She doesn’t see many people, but when she does, she hides her face, turning her chin down.

  She walks and walks, remembering what it felt like to walk in the sun, to walk into the stores instead of looking through dark windows. She remembers when she wasn’t afraid of people looking, of their eyes, when she could meet their gazes with her own. She remembers forever and ever inst
ead of ugly, love instead of solitude. The memories hurt more than the scars and when she returns to her house, she locks the doors, encases herself in pity and loneliness, and wishes for something more.

  How she wishes…

  CHAPTER 6

  Alison sat in the examination room, wrapped in a soft gown, with her hands folded in her lap. The door swung open and Dr. Simon came in, all white coat and perfect teeth. Her stomach twisted. She put on her careful smile.

  “Hello, hello,” he said, his voice bouncing off the walls and ceiling. “How are we today?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine is not as good as good, but better than bad, I guess. Have you had any problems or abnormal discomfort? Noticed any tightening or more constricted movements?”

  Alison shook her head and stared over Dr. Simon’s shoulder. A long, thin crack in the wall marred the yellow with a jagged line of white. He parted the back of her robe, tracing his fingers along her skin; when his hands traveled from scars to real flesh, Alison twitched away with a hiss.

  “Sorry, my hands are cold,” he said. “Now bend forward slightly and lift your arm please.”

  The top of the crack, an exclamation point of drywall stress, almost met the ceiling; the bottom disappeared behind a small clock with a round face and a red second hand moving with tiny, staccato ticks.

  “Mmm-hmm, okay, you can drop your arm.”

  His shoes made tiny squeaks on the tiled floor as he rounded the table, blocking her view of the clock and the wall crack. She closed her eyes when he folded down the robe. Fingers poked and prodded, moving across with even, gentle pressure—her upper arm, her shoulder, collarbone, then down, down where her body curved in instead of out, where she appeared neither feminine nor masculine, but a thing. Alison turned her head to the side.

  “Lift your arm again, please,” Dr. Simon said. He lowered her arm. Placed his hand under her chin, turning her face in his direction. “Any problems with the eye?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good, good.” He stroked his hand along her jawline. “I’m noticing some tightening here. Can you open your mouth?”

  The skin stretched, like taffy at the tearing point.

  “A little more. Have you had any problems?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm.” His fingers rubbed back and forth. “I want to keep an eye on this. Please call me right away if you notice any change at all, no matter how minor, to your facial movements, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “Okay. Even if you don’t notice anything, I’d like you to come back in a month, as well, so I can take a look.”

  “A month? Do you think—”

  “Yes, a month.”

  Alison nodded and stared down at her hands.

  “Okay, jump down and walk for me.”

  Alison limped across the room, then back to the table. Dr. Simon nodded. “Good.” When Alison sat back down, he linked his fingers together and rested them on his abdomen. “I ran into Dr. Rothmann the other day. He said you’re not seeing him anymore?”

  Alison gripped the gown in both hands. “No, I’m not.”

  Dr. Simon leaned back against the sink counter. “Alison, I’ll be blunt. I’m not sure if that’s a wise decision. With injuries such as yours, it helps to have someone like Dr. Rothmann. Now, if you’d like to see someone else, I can give you a referral. Dr. Rothmann is considered one of the best when it comes to helping burn patients, but there are several others I know and trust to give the same level of care.”

  Alison focused her eyes on the lines across his forehead—three of them, with an even deeper furrow between his brows.

  “With injuries such as yours.”

  Her fingers clenched even tighter. Dr. Rothmann, he of the bushy eyebrows and calm, gentle voice, wore the same expression when she’d told him she intended to stop the sessions, but the fault didn’t belong to her. He broached the topic she told him she didn’t want to discuss. From the beginning, she’d been clear, and he said he understood, but he lied. He lied and brought it up anyway when he decided it was time to discuss it, forcing her to think about it for one brief moment before she shoved it back down in the deepest, darkest part under the scars.

  “Face it, acknowledge it, and move past,” he said. But he didn’t see the look. The revulsion. He didn’t see any of it, but most important, he didn’t follow the rule, the simple rule. She didn’t need help dealing with an old ghost; she needed help figuring out how to live.

  “That would be fine,” she said to Dr. Simon, giving him the careful smile again; when he turned around for his pad and pen, she let the smile go.

  “I also wanted to ask if you’ve given any more thought to the surgery we talked about,” he said, over his shoulder. “I do think we can improve the appearance of the facial scarring.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’ve thought about it. I’m not interested.”

  He turned back around and handed her the paper, meeting and holding her gaze.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll respect your decision. You can go ahead and get dressed.”

  After he left the room, Alison sat with her arms wrapped around her body. Reconstruction meant scalpels, stitches, stretching skin, and pain with no guarantee of improvement, and what if something went wrong and they made her worse? She shuddered. They couldn’t make her whole again no matter how many times they tried. The hope wasn’t worth the suffering.

  On her way out, she crumpled the list of psychologists penned in Dr. Simon’s looping scrawl and threw it in the trashcan below a mound of paper towels. They couldn’t help her. Only she could do that.

  Arms crossed over her chest, she huddled in the back corner of the hospital shuttle van. Two women with grey, cotton candy hair and tissue paper skin spoke in quiet tones several rows ahead. The van bounced over potholes, its wheels thrumming not far beneath Alison’s feet, a hypnotic sound lulling her into a hazy half-awake state.

  It slowed down for a light and a bright yellow school bus stopped alongside it. Alison turned her face away from the window and sank down even further in her seat. Even through the windows, she heard laughter, but it was safe, not mocking. She closed her eyes as a memory rushed in. Standing at the edge of the playground while the class ran around. Seeing Olivia struggling to climb the jungle gym. Offering to help. Then biting back a laugh as Olivia stomped one foot and said, “No, Miss Reese, I can do it myself.” Olivia hadn’t done it that day, or the next, or the next, and she’d rebuffed every offer of help. Even a first grader knew that sometimes no one else could help you find your way.

  When the van arrived at her house, Alison exited quickly, avoiding the driver’s eyes. Once inside, she stripped off her scarf, sunglasses, gloves, and coat and fetched George’s photo album before she sat down on the sofa with a soft sigh. She stretched out her hand, nodding at the truth in the shadow—three fingers and a hand with an odd, sloping edge.

  With the edge of the paper held between the tip of her index finger and thumb, she flipped the page back to the inscription and traced her fingers over the letters.

  “Paper tiger, paper tiger, swallow me whole,” she said, her voice a soft near-whisper.

  Her vision blurred. The ink smudges turned into amorphous blobs of violet. High-pitched music notes trilled, like the tinny sound from a child’s wind-up jewelry box. Phantom music. Smoke music. Dusty music motes floating in the air, bereft of a sunbeam.

  Her shoulders slumped. The tune played on and on, soft and sweet. A spinning ballerina, moving round and round. And in between the notes, a soft murmur of voices. Children’s voices—a nursery rhyme.

  “One, two, three, tigers at a time.”

  Little girls twirling, their pink-yellow-white-lavender skirts flying up and out, all ruffles and eyelet.

  “Four, five, six, tigers in a line.”

  Chubby hands linked together and the children sang and laughed and sang.

  “Seven, eight nine, stripes in the night.”

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sp; Hair like spun silk, gold and dark. Cookies and talcum powder.

  “And when it’s ten, the tigers bite!”

  Laughter, laughter. Rising.

  Alison turned the page, her hand a heavy weight, and the laughter slipped back into the page. George’s eyes stared at hers, good humor in the dark depths. A teasing sort of humor. A feline sort of humor. She blinked. Once. Twice. The music shifted and changed. Piano notes replaced jewel-box. A mournful song of love and loss and empty rooms. Tree branches rattled against glass windowpanes; the sound of bones tap-tap-tapping “let us in.”

  “Let me in,” Alison said.

  The notes paused.

  “Let me in and make me whole.”

  The notes resumed, laced with melancholy. They slipped in between her thoughts and hovered in her ears. She held out her right hand, covered George’s face with her palm, and closed her eyes. The song vibrated through her bones and prickled her skin.

  Voices again. Speaking, not singing. Adult voices engaged in quiet conversation, their words slurred at the edges. Glasses clinked together. Footsteps. Sturdy men’s shoes on a dark wood floor, their soles clicking in-between the music notes. Pins and needles exploded into life beneath her skin. The warmth traced spirals in the places where fingerprints used to hold their shape. The music swelled to a crescendo, all the notes blending one into another. Her hand lifted, pushed by the secret heat, and then dropped back down.

  A cool breeze wafted over her fingertips and palm, and rough callused fingers curled around her own, stroking and tugging.

  “Come in,” a husky voice said.

  The hand tugged harder, pulling her in? Down? A thumb stroked her palm, a soft, tiny arc of movement. The edge of a fingernail scraped against the side of her pinkie finger.

  She opened her eyes.

  Her hand no longer rested on George’s photo. Her hand no longer rested on anything, but in. Inside the photo. Inside the album. In with the laughter and the music and the nursery rhymes. Inside with a hand wrapped round her fingers. She yelped, jerked back her arm, but neither the album nor her hand budged. Her skin held no indentations. It sat atop the photo as though severed at the wrist and glued to the surface of the paper.