Another Little Piece (19 page)

“Logan, why are you telling me this?” Of course, I knew, but I had to ask. Had to hear the worst of it.

“Because I want our future to be together.”

I wished I hadn’t made him say it out loud.

In that moment Annaliese’s love for Logan felt like a curse. And I knew that no amount of being nice to him was going to end that curse. I had two choices. I could either tell him straight out that I was never going to have any interest in him, or I could be with him, for my last few days. Be his girlfriend. And if for some reason the redheaded boy was wrong and life didn’t end at eighteen, then maybe we’d be together forever, through college, and kids, and whatever else.

If the last few hours with Dex hadn’t happened, maybe I would’ve forced myself to be with him. Both of us doing penance by being with the other. But that was no longer an option.

And then it got worse. Logan bent until he was down on his knees in front of me, and grabbed hold of one of my hands still wrapped around the books. They went crashing to the ground, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I love you, Annaliese. Be with me.”

It was ridiculous. Absurd even. But neither of us was laughing.

I took my hand away. With Logan kneeling I was finally able to reach the front door. He didn’t stop me as I slipped my key in and then eased the door open. Only as I crossed the threshold did I have the nerve to answer him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling those words in every part of me. “I don’t love you. And I never did.”

I didn’t wait for Logan’s answer. Stepping back, I closed the door in his face.

NAMED

I waited.

Long after Logan leaned on the doorbell while softy calling out to an Annaliese who didn’t exist anymore. Long after I watched his slow retreat, the way he looked shrunken in defeat, walking along the sidewalk to his car parked at the curb a few houses down. Long after he sat in his car—for so long that I began to feel afraid—before finally starting it and then, with a clash of gears and a stomp to the gas pedal, racing off down the street. Long after it was quiet and I knew he wasn’t coming back, and long after I wished he would so maybe I could tell him no some kinder, better way.

That was when I opened the front door, just wide enough to scuttle out on hands and knees, grab the schoolbooks still scattered on the porch, and pull them back into the house with me.

I carried them up to my room. Not with any real intention of doing homework, but more to give the appearance of having done it. A small gift for the mom and the dad. A small lie.

History, biology, and algebra. They were all thick and heavy textbooks. I dumped them on the desk. Algebra bounced off biology and fell to the floor, its pages spread open in surrender. I grabbed it one-handed, letting the pages flutter, and a bit of white paper drifted out from between them.

Everything inside me froze. It was just a torn piece of paper with a bit of writing on it. It might have been a note from the teacher. Except I knew it wasn’t.

“Run!”
I heard the
brujas
echo in my head. I wanted to, but it would be like running from the sunrise. Some things we are not meant to easily escape.

There was a watermark on the back side of the paper. I focused on it, believing it was the less harmless option. Holding the paper at an angle, I tilted it this way and that, but it was like trying to read underwater; the words wavered before my eyes and never quite came into focus. It was an address. Maybe. I could just barely make out Albion, NY. I wondered if that was near, and if it meant something. Really, though, I was stalling.

I flipped the paper over. The handwriting was familiar. Horribly so. Dark and crabbed and deadly serious. It didn’t ask, it coolly commanded. This wasn’t Eric. It was the one above him. Above us both. The
brujas
called him their brother. Eric referred to him as the Physician. I was too afraid to call him anything at all.

Lacey Lee Beals. Oklahoma
.

She will arrive. Prepare
.

I knew what it meant. This was the next girl I was meant to take. Worse yet, I knew exactly who she was. The girl from the trailer at the edge of nowhere. A cigarette in her mouth, and baby brother on her hip. I’d thought she’d looked about my age.

I realized now that her name had also been on the paper along with Annaliese’s name. I’d chosen Annaliese, and when that hadn’t quite worked out, I’d followed a feeling to Lacey’s door. I’d gone right toward option B without even knowing it. And now here she was again.

I looked down at the paper. It wavered before my eyes, and I saw other papers. Other names. The roaring began, and instead of holding back, looking for an escape, I threw myself into it.

A FINE EDGE

The wind blows my hair into my face, making it difficult to see. Impatiently, I push it back, wanting to get this finished before the lunch bell rings. Turning my back to the wind, I flick the lighter and then, cupping my hand, hold the bobby pin steady in the bluest part of the tiny flame. When it’s hot enough, I drop the lighter. Then, keeping the wooden razor handle steady, I scratch the letters
y
and
n
.

Jaclyn is now official.

“Hey, Senorita, finally done with that?” He lounges by my side. White teeth, white skin, white hair. I call him the albino, but it doesn’t bother him the same way that Senorita does me. I’m not going to fight with him today, though. Tomorrow I will be someone else, and soon after, he will be too. Then we’ll find new names to call each other.

“It’s nice out today, isn’t it?” I turn my face to the wind. It smells like spring.

He snatches the razor from my hand. “Jaclyn this time, huh?” His forefinger runs down the list of names. There are seven of them now. “Ooh, I remember this one. She was musical. Very sexy.”

Musical. That’s one of his jokes. At my expense.

The girl had played piano, but I couldn’t. He told me to relax, let the body take over and do what it knew. This worked for him. Every body he took over he owned completely. The football star could still throw the ball, the artist knew how to sketch, and the musician could strum his guitar. It never worked that way for me. The body I was in never quite fit. He didn’t really care though. He liked to watch me struggle to explain. As for the piano-playing girl, he didn’t miss the music at all. He thought the grand piano at her house had been a sexy prop. We’d stretched out on top of it.

“It’s not believable,” I’d told him. “No one would really make out there.” He didn’t listen, said we were setting the scene. But then, he wasn’t the one with the hard wood digging into his spine. Anyway, it worked. Her mom flipped, and we ran away, hand in hand, never to be seen again.

“Must be nice to have a choice.” His voice has that whiny tone. I know it well.

I hold in a sigh. I want my razor back. Last night I sharpened it to a fine edge so that it will glide through flesh and saw through bone with only the slightest bit of pressure. But I let him hold it, let him look, and try to be conciliatory. I tell him the truth. “I hate choosing.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. You hate to choose. Once the choice was always mine, and I gave it up for you.”

I only half listen. You spend enough time with a person and you start to repeat conversations. We’ve had this one many times before. He knows I dread that slip of paper arriving in my locker. Two names, and I must pick one. It’s made so simple too. The two possibilities are presented like fresh lobster in a tank, claws bound. My only job is to boil the water.

But sometimes the girls are different. I meet them and feel a connection. Jane was the first one like that. When I met Jane, it was like she was me. Or it felt that way. I didn’t have to choose her. The choice was already made. When I am these girls, I feel a little bit less like an impostor. A bit more like my real self. That’s why I scratch their names onto the blade handle, beneath my own. I remember all the girls, no matter how much I want to forget. But the ones on the blade . . . I remember them like I remember Anna—as if they are still a real part of me.

It’s been several years since I felt that connection, but it was there once more when I met Jaclyn. And that’s why I’m adding her name below Evie’s.

Sensing my waning attention, he flips the blade out. I’d known he would eventually. Drawing blood is what interests him. “And now I just follow your or the Physician’s lead. Like a dog on a leash.”

“People are looking. Put it away before it gets taken.”

“Here,” he says, holding it out to me, leaving only the blade to grasp. “Or you could use one of those plastic knives from the cafeteria, let Jaclyn cut into you with that.”

I don’t hesitate. If he’s been born to cut, then I’ve been born to bleed.

Before I can grab it, he whips the blade away, neatly folding it back into the handle that hides it so well. He drops it into my lap, and then in one of those quicksilver changes that regularly flicker through him, he reclines on the bench, laying his head on my knee.

His blue eyes stare straight up into mine and are free of any hint of malice.

“Anna,” he says, his voice soft and low like a little boy’s. “Don’t you love me at all?”

Tenderly, I run my fingers through his hair. He turns in to my touch like a kitten, nearly purring.

I once thought I loved him. But really I loved the thought of being loved. And he’s the same. He needs to be loved. Desperately needs to be loved. It’s what we have in common. It is what binds us. And it is what makes us hate each other. We are two people who only want to receive love and have no idea how to give it.

“No, Franky,” I say at last, “not even a little bit.”

He jerks away from my touch, sitting up, so that I am no longer looking down at him. And then he kisses me. A hard and passionate and completely loveless kiss.

I kiss him back. He is my boyfriend after all, and all the other kids having lunch outside on this almost-spring day are watching. Tomorrow they need to believe that we’ve run away together, just two crazy teenagers in love. It’s a fairy tale, but easier to believe than our bodies crumbling to dust and disappearing completely.

And tomorrow I will be Jaclyn. Her ultraconservative mother doesn’t believe in letting her daughters date. It’ll take him a while to get around that one. And while he does, maybe I’ll finally figure out a way to stop being anyone at all.

ROAD

RIDE

“You can tell me anything,

you know that.”

Mom says this.

And it’s true.

But what does it help

to tell her

the awful thing

I am wishing for,

when I already know

what she’ll say?

“Remember when you

wished for a pony?

Your sixth birthday

you wanted nothing else.

Please, please, Mommy.

You begged and pleaded

until we found a pony

for your party.

And when the pony came,

you cried.

He was ugly and smelly

and not at all

what you thought

he should be.

Nothing we said

could convince you to ride.”

She’s told this story before

and always with the same

lesson at the end:

“Be careful what you wish for,

make sure it’s what you truly want.”

But I am not six years old anymore

and I know exactly

what I wish

and exactly

what I want.

I’m ready to change that

story’s ending.

I’m ready for a new

lesson.

This time

I’m ready to ride.

—ARG

ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE

The dad came home sometime after midnight, and in the morning he woke me for school. I had to remind him it was Saturday. He ended up taking me out for breakfast instead. He didn’t seem to notice that I mostly pushed the food around my plate. I couldn’t eat, even though I was starving. A young couple cuddled together in a booth near the back had caught my eye when we first walked in, and suddenly the hunger stirred once more. I tried to ignore it. Tried to pretend everything was normal. It was nearly impossible. The hunger no longer growled—it was starting to roar.

“There’s this great little bakery down the street from my work,” the dad said, interrupting my thoughts. “I can order a cake Monday morning, and pick it up on my way home. Anything you want. They’ll make it.”

It was the first hint he’d given me about the mom’s condition. She was an old-fashioned make-it-from-scratch type of person. No way would she choose to order a cake instead of making one. Which meant that she didn’t have a choice. She was so sick, she couldn’t bake.

I asked the dad for half chocolate, half white. I didn’t know what would happen to me on Annaliese’s birthday. But if I was there or not, I wanted the mom to have her chocolate.

By the time we finished breakfast, the hunger had finally subsided, and I could tell the dad was itching to get back to the hospital. He kept checking his phone. I told him to go, that I would do homework or whatever. He left, promising to be back later. Much later, I figured.

Still, I didn’t waste time. I hurried over to Dex’s. But my knocks on his crooked door went unanswered. Feeling lonely and rejected, no matter how irrational it was, I crept back home and crawled into bed. Amazingly, I slept vision-free. Most of the day was gone by the time I woke, and I fought the urge to run back over to Dex’s to see if he was home yet.

Instead, I found my way back to the computer. This time I typed
Annaliese Rose Gordon
into the search box. I hesitated for a moment, then also typed
Jaclyn
. The two were connected, I was certain of it.

And I was right. Another girl had disappeared on the same night as Annaliese.
TWO GIRLS GONE MISSING
. The headline was hauntingly familiar. This girl wasn’t friends with Annaliese, though. Didn’t even live nearby. She was from a small town in the middle of Ohio. Turned out there was no connection between them. Or that was what the police concluded when the mother, still covered in her daughter’s blood, confessed.

The girl’s name was Jaclyn. Her mother confessed to cutting the heart right out of her daughter’s chest. That was what she said. Except she didn’t have the body or the heart. Both were still missing.

For a long time I stared at the picture of Jaclyn. And at the spelling of her name, exactly the same as the one I remembered scratching into the wooden handle of the razor blade.

I’d been Jaclyn. The memory at the locker with the twin sister had been real. And the name on the razor. Jaclyn was different, though. The other girls ran off with a boy and were never heard of again. But Jaclyn’s mother found her. The flash of silver, slicing toward my forehead.

My fingertips found the spot where the metal point had crushed through bone to find brain matter. That had been Jaclyn’s mother behind that pickax. Somewhere in the transfer from being Jaclyn to becoming Annaliese, something had gone wrong.

I needed to know how the mother had found them. How I’d found Jaclyn, and then Annaliese after her. Mostly, though, I wanted to see if Jaclyn’s body had been found. If she hadn’t turned to dust, then that was a first I wanted to repeat.

My eyes felt sticky after staring at the computer screen for so long, but there was something else I needed to do. I pulled up a few maps, and when the dad called at ten o’clock that night to check on me, I was ready.

The mom had to stay another night, he said, but he would be home shortly. They didn’t want me spending the night alone again. The lie I’d prepared came easily: I’d talked to Gwen earlier and she’d asked if I wanted to stay at her place tonight. She could pick me up and drop me off tomorrow. No problem. The dad should stay with the mom.

The dad sounded so relieved, like a prisoner on death row who’d been granted a reprieve. He asked me once if that was what I really wanted to do, and when I replied in the affirmative, he said something about Gwen being a “good kid,” and then assured me one more time that the mom was “fine and can’t wait to see you tomorrow.” A few minutes later we exchanged good-nights, and then I was free.

I headed straight into Dex’s arms.

“You like late-night drives, right?” I said after we finished our hello kiss.

Dex shook his head. “Negative. Not anymore, anyway. I think the other night cured me of leaving home anytime after midnight.”

“Oh, right.” I could feel my master plan crumbling away without the cornerstone of Dex driving us to support it.

“Hey.” He bent forward so he could see my face straight on. “What’s up?”

“This is gonna sound crazy, but I need to go to Ohio. Like, right now. The mom will be out of the hospital tomorrow afternoon, and I need to get there and be back before she comes home.” Dex was already nodding, and I knew he would take me without any further information, but it only felt fair to tell him a little more. “It’s about the things I see, about who or what I am.”

“Who you
used
to be,” Dex corrected me quietly. Then quickly switching gears, he checked his watch. “Also, Ohio is a big state. Which one of its many exotic locales are we heading toward?”

I grinned, relieved he was willing to go along so easily. “A small town about an hour north of Columbus.”

Dex nodded. “Okay, so we need to get to mid Ohio and back before noon. It’s gonna be tight.”

“Tight, but doable,” I said, ready to pull out the maps I’d printed as proof.

“Then let’s do it,” Dex said.

Ten minutes later we were on I-90 heading west. And suddenly doubt crept in. No, it didn’t creep. It busted in, kicking the door down SWAT-team style. The plan on paper had been one thing, but now in action it felt bigger. Less in my control. Time was ticking away, and instead of going off on this wild goose chase, I could be with Dex in his beanbag chair, getting the most of life out of every inch of Annaliese’s body.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

Dex grabbed my hand. “Hey, no freaking out. Whatever it is we’re going to Ohio to do, I have a feeling it’s the right thing.”

The combination of his hand and his words steadied me. They gave me courage too. “My birthday—or Annaliese’s—is Monday. It’s some kind of deadline, I think. See, the thing is, Annaliese isn’t the first girl I’ve taken. The one before Annaliese was a girl named Jaclyn. She went missing on the same night as Annaliese. It said in the newspaper article that her birthday was only two weeks away. I think that I have to take another girl by Monday or else . . . Or else I don’t know what.”

Again, I was prepared for Dex to pull away. Even though he’d demonstrated his steadfastness over and over again, I still couldn’t completely trust it. Now he proved himself once more.

At the next exit he turned off the thruway and parked at the far corner of a truck stop.

“Backseat conference,” he said. Then he opened his door, stepped out, and entered the car once more—into the seat directly behind his. I followed his lead, and a moment later we were snuggled tight.

“Look,” he said, as he pulled my razor out from his coat pocket. “I was sort of examining this for clues earlier today, and I noticed something, so I thought I’d bring it and show you.” Dex turned the razor in his hand, so that the list of names stared straight at me. Lightly, his finger traced down the list. “All these names you can tell were scratched into here—”

“Burned,” I corrected. “Or branded, or something like that. It was a hot bobby pin.”

Dex nodded, as if this made sense. “Okay. Well, all these names look like they were done by the same person. The letters are formed the same kind of way. But this last one—”

I snatched the razor from his hand. “Don’t.”

A tense silence wedged its way between us.

I didn’t know why I’d grabbed the razor from him. Maybe it was that I’d imagined it wrapped up and tucked away somewhere safe. It had never occurred to me that Dex might be studying it and seeing things in it that I wasn’t ready for him to see. He wouldn’t understand that though. Dex gave up his secrets so easily. They weighed on him but didn’t eat into him, constantly taking tiny bites, the way mine did. His secrets were told; mine were extracted.

Or maybe that was all rationalization. We all lived with our secrets in different ways.

“I’m sorry,” I said, holding the razor out to Dex.

He pushed it back to me. “No, I’m sorry. My mom always says—well, she texts actually—to stop wanting to fix everything. She says that sometimes she complains to blow off steam. It’s not an SOS or a cry for help. She just needs someone to listen, not a white knight coming to the rescue.”

Just like that, the little threads of anger that had been pulling at me fell away. “I love that you come to the rescue. That you want to fix things. I just . . .” I leaned into Dex, needing him solid and warm and close as I let a little more of the truth out. “That razor, it . . . I use it to . . . I—
it
—cuts my heart out. The next girl I’ll become slices it from my chest, and then . . .” Coward that I am, the truly stomach-turning part of my confession gets stuck in my throat. Lamely, I finish, “That can’t be undone. I’m not fixable.”

“Well, let’s try.” Dex tilted backward, taking me with him. I wrapped my arms around his neck, wanting every possible bit of myself to connect with every possible bit of him. Dex must have been thinking the same thing, because he shifted, angling us into even more of a reclined position. I moved to let his long legs find space on either side of me, and then I fell back onto him, pressing my chest against his and sealing our lips together with a kiss.

Dex yelped.

I jerked away.

“Ow, shit.” He reached toward his chest. My razor was there. And a growing circle of blood was spreading across his T-shirt. With a surprisingly steady hand, I pulled the blade from Dex’s flesh. It was only half open; it hadn’t cut him deeply. Even in the dark car I could see that clearly. But it could easily have parted his flesh and slid straight into his heart. The thought of that was enough to pierce mine.

The razor fell from my hand and thudded against the floor mats.

“Hey, Anna.” Dex struggled to sit up and put his arm around me. I scooted away. “Anna, I’m okay. See? Just a flesh wound.”

He held up his shirt, baring his thin chest. The razor had left a crescent-shaped cut. Blood continued to run steadily from it.

“This is not your fault, okay? It was an accident. And I was the one who brought the blade, so if it’s anyone’s fault—which it isn’t—then it’s mine. And look, I’m not even bleeding anymore.” Dex pulled his shirt away. The blood flowed. “Okay, well I am still a little bit. But again, my fault. My family is known for our watery blood.”

I said nothing. I knew it was time to confess everything. To tell Dex the full bloody history of that blade. The full bloody history of me. I couldn’t. I looked away from him.

“Anna, come on.” Dex’s fingers grazed my chin, nudging it up until our gazes met. “Here’s the plan. I am gonna find a bathroom and stop bleeding. I think that will make you feel better. Then I am going to buy several bags of junk food. That will make me feel better. Then we are going to get back on the road and drive to the middle of Ohio. And this whole”—Dex waved his hand around—“incident will never be spoken of again. Unless you want to speak of it, then we will. Or if you want to write ballads of it. Or put together a
Jeopardy!
-style quiz about it where we’ll both have to answer in the form of a question. Any of those things. Okay?”

I still couldn’t get any words out, but I nodded. It was enough for Dex. He kissed my cheek and then jumped out of the car.

Alone, I could feel sobs threatening. But I didn’t want to be a snotty mess when Dex returned so I shoved some breath strips into my mouth and focused on inhaling the stale car air and replacing it bit by bit with my minty-cool exhalations.

Slightly calmer, I was ready to deal with the razor. I suppressed the urge to open the car door and chuck it out into the darkness. Instead, I carefully wiped the blood from the blade and pushed it back into the handle. Turning it in my hand, I could now see what Dex had been trying to show me. Someone else had carved the name
Annaliese
. It was so obvious now that I was looking at it. The curve and curls and hope were gone.
Annaliese
was written straight and hard and angry.

I knew that writing. I had just seen it on a tiny slip of paper. The Physician. He had put Annaliese’s name there. There had been girls every year. So many girls. I had only added six of them to the razor, though, along with Anna. The Physician had added Annaliese’s name for me, and I had no idea what that meant. Maybe it meant nothing at all.

I pushed the razor into my coat pocket, past all the other odd bits, not wanting to risk it cutting into someone else. I dug everything else out. A cough drop, a button, and a crumpled napkin with caramel-colored streaks that suggested it had been used to mop up coffee. Trash, tucked into a pocket and forgotten. Except even as I thought this, I pulled the wrinkled folds of the napkin open, looking for the writing I somehow knew would be there. It was another one of Annaliese’s spitball poems, but this one hadn’t been hidden so much as left behind.

Road trip with my best friend, Gwen

That was all I had time to read. A roar went off inside my head. I clenched the napkin tightly, not wanting to lose it. And then I was carried away.

IN PERSON

The automatic doors swoosh open, mechanically welcoming, oblivious to my hesitation. A few stuttering steps later, I am in the dank lobby of the Colonial Inn. There is no guesswork involved in finding the two girls who are waiting for me. Gwen and Annaliese stand side by side, the only other people there.