That. Aislyn freezes. That’s.
He reads the horrified acknowledgment of reality in her shock, and grins. “And we both know you’ve never done anything with any guy, let alone any big fat jungledicks. I’ve seen your type. Good Catholic girls, too scared to do shit. Wanna know a secret? Nobody likes virgins, Aise. It doesn’t make you pure or special, just a shitty lay whenever somebody finally gets around to you.” His hand, already tight enough that she’s going to have to struggle to break his grip, pulls her down a little. “Daddy’s Girl, still living at home. Never had a boyfriend. But you want to leave, don’t you? You dream about having a real life. You want to get away from this shitty island. Be somebody. Right?”
“Let go of me,” Aislyn says again, but this time it’s weak because some of what he’s said has struck entirely too close to home. She’s shaking, too, and she hates it, because he can feel that. But she is surprised to realize, in a sudden epiphany, that she isn’t shaking out of fear. He’s said a lot of things that are accurate, but—
this shitty island?
Her hand twitches in his, and he tightens his grip in response. He thinks she’s trying to get away. She isn’t.
Shitty?
“So here’s your ticket,” he says, bumping his hips up so that his erection bounces in obscene suggestion. “Your dad just looooves me. But you don’t want to be his anymore, do you? Be your own woman; suck my dick. Or we can even get started on grandkids for him, if you want. I got a fat creampie all ready up in here.” He grins and then fumbles at the drawstring of his pants, trying to tug them down. “Or if you’re really committed to the virginity thing, anal’s good, too. Doesn’t hurt at all.” He laughs.
He’s revolting. Aislyn cannot understand why her father has befriended this creature, brought him home, put him up in their house. Or, rather, a part of her is especially shaken because she does understand why: because on some level, her father is this man. She cannot imagine Matthew Houlihan being this crass with her mother, or else her maternal grandparents would never have let Kendra marry him—but beneath her father’s veneer of traditional respectability, he is also a beer-swilling, controlling boor. Aislyn loves her father; of course she does, but Conall is right on one level: her whole life, Aislyn has had to scrape and struggle to maintain her own emotional real estate. If she doesn’t leave this house soon, her father will snatch it all up and double the rent on anything he doesn’t want her to feel.
Conall is very, very wrong, however, about something important. He thinks that the meek, shy girl that her father has described, and whom he is currently terrorizing, is all there is to Aislyn. It isn’t.
The rest of her? Is as big as a city.
“I told you,” she says to Conall, finally jerking her hand free, “to let. Go.”
On the last word, a sphere of pure force balloons outward from Aislyn’s skin. It presses Conall into the lounger and then—as he inhales in shock—bodily lifts both him and the lounger, then flings them all the way across the pool deck. Man and furniture smash through the wooden fence amid a clatter of splinters and the snap of boards and one strangled, belated, “What the fuuuuuck?”
Aislyn straightens at once, her eyes going to the cameras edging the pool area. “‘Everything that happens everywhere else happens here, too,’” she murmurs quickly. It is her father’s favorite saying. “‘But at least here people try to be decent. Try to be decent.’”
Something ripples around her. An edit of perception. The recording-lights on the cameras flicker a bit. And as Conall struggles to his feet, covered in leaves from the neighbors’ euonymus hedge and bits of shattered wood from the fence, staring at Aislyn in something like terror, she glares at him. “I wasn’t here,” she snaps. Then she steps over his mess and walks out of the yard.
She doesn’t know where she’s going. It doesn’t matter where she’s going. She’s got no money and no ID, and can’t go far anyway because she’s walking in puffy slippers shaped like dolphins. But as she walks, her limbs moving with tight, brisk efficiency, her jaw full of tension, she feels the island, her island, editing perception around her. No one notices or pays attention to a lone young woman walking down the middle of the street (because her street has no sidewalks). It’s not that they don’t see her, the drivers of the cars that pass, or the neighbors who chance to look outside after hearing a loud noise from the Houlihan house. It’s just that, as they notice her, something else catches their attention. A movement in the trees, a car rolling past with speakers blaring, a bus in the distance stopping on screechy brakes. The front door of the house opening as Matthew Houlihan comes out with a sawed-off shotgun in one hand, heading around to the side of the house where the fence has been shattered. He doesn’t see Aislyn, either, even though she’s only maybe twenty feet away in that moment. He sees what she wants him to see. Everything that happens everywhere else happens on Staten Island, too, but here people try not to see the indecencies, the domestic violence, the drug use. And then, having denied what’s right in front of their eyes, they tell themselves that at least they’re living in a good place full of good people. At least it’s not the city.
And at least Aislyn is not at this very moment being raped by a man in whom her father sees himself. This, and the fact that she’s heard her father make fun of rape victims, is why she doesn’t bother to tell her father what Conall did. This is why, if her father checks the video feed from the cameras, he’ll see an indistinct figure—not Aislyn—standing by the pool, who then gets into a struggle with Conall, and runs away after bodily throwing Conall through the fence. Evil comes from elsewhere, Matthew Houlihan believes. Evil is other people. She will leave him this illusion, mostly because she envies his ability to keep finding comfort in simple, black-and-white views of the world. Aislyn’s ability to do the same is rapidly eroding.
This is why she stops on the corner with her head down and her fists clenched and her shoulders tight. She’s sucking in breaths to try to get a hold of herself, and trying not to cry. It’s late enough that the street that winds past her neighborhood is quiet. A car passed a moment ago, and the next one coming is at least a mile behind it. Here, in this liminal silence, Aislyn can be afraid and angry and bitter about all the forces that have conspired to make her what she is. She can wish for better. She can—
The car that’s been coming along the road for the past minute or so reaches her. It’s going slowly, and as it gets closer, it slows more. Finally it stops right before her, the driver leaning over to roll down the passenger-side window. Aislyn tenses, bracing herself for the catcall or solicitation.
The man inside is ferociously lean, dark-haired, and something other than white. He’s got a lit cigarette held tightly between his lips as he stares at her for a moment. Then he says, “Staten Island?”
She jerks upright—and for an instant the world changes. High-rises wheel past, buses squealing between them, docks and piers bristling into a defensive configuration. Before her looms a foreign, neon-bright skyline so immense and building-studded that it casts her into shadow. And then it is only the thin brown man again, who is staring at her with narrowed, cynical, knowing eyes.