“I'm not looking for an apology.” Something in April's tone was unsettling.
“Then what?” Zoe sat up.
“I want you to come see something.”
“Right now?”
“Now.”
“What it is?”
“Just come.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“No, just come.”
“Fine.” Zoe flung the covers off and put her feet on the floor. April didn't move. “Could you at least wait downstairs so I can get dressed?”
April wasn't dressed. She was still in her pajamas, the same purple nightgown she'd been wearing the morning after the Beckoners broke the windows.
April and Shadow waited
for Zoe on the front step. April looked pale, dark half-circles under her eyes, which were red, like she'd been crying.
“What's this about?” Zoe pulled on a sweater Alice had borrowed from Harris and hadn't returned in the break-up. “Are you okay?”
“Follow me.” April led Zoe up the path, her muddy slippers leaving wet tracks on the cement.
“Where are we going?”
April's silence was unnerving, almost creepy.
“What's going on?”
Zoe clomped along behind her in her gumboots, each step thunking in the early morning quiet. They stopped at the tall fence behind April's place. April pushed open the gate.
Zoe brought her hand to her mouth and gasped. A female mannequin with a noose around its neck swung listlessly from
the branch of the apple tree below April's room. It was dressed in a stretched-out sweater and thin cotton pants, just like April on any given day. The blonde hair had been made limp and stringy, just like April's. It was even wearing the same yellow canvas shoes she wore every day, the kind sold for five dollars at the Budget & Bargain store across the street. A steak knife was stabbed into its chest where the heart would've been if it were real. A note drenched in fake blood was stuck to it. Zoe closed her eyes, unable to move.
“Did you know that today is the Day of the Dead?” April crossed the muddy garden and stood under the mannequin. “In Mexico, they build shrines to their dead people and celebrate all day, painting their faces like skeletons. Dancing in the street, partying.”
“April, you have to call the cops. This is sick.”
“Mexicans love their dead people. My dad says it's ungodly.”
“What are you talking about?” Zoe followed her into the yard, tryingâand failingâto keep her eyes off the grisly thing. “What has that got to do with this? Where are your parents?”
“My dad's sleeping off a night shift. Mom and Lewis are at the daycare. They didn't see it.”
“Go get your dad!”
“No!”
“Then we'll go get your mom. Or my mom. We have to tell someone. April, this is a crime, I'm sure of it. Go wake up your dad.”
“No.” April ripped the note away and handed it to Zoe, the fake blood staining her fingertips. Written on it, in Heather's neat slanted writing was, “Do us all a favor, bitch.”
“I would never, ever kill myself.” April grabbed the paper back. “Do you know why? Because that's exactly what they want.” She crumpled it up and ground it into the mud under her slipper.
“That was evidence, April.”
“That was a
joke
. A prank. That's what the cops would say. Or maybe they'd say I brought it on myself, huh? That I must
have a target on my back and go around handing out arrows for people to take their best shot.” April gave the mannequin an angry shove. It swung stiffly, its hair like a veil, hiding its eyes.
“I didn't mean you deserve
this
,” Zoe said. “No one deserves this.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I don't know, April.” Zoe hugged herself. It was so cold, a damp cold much worse than the dry cold up north. Each word spoken was bathed in a wet translucent cloud. It was so cold, it seemed harder to speak. “What do you want me to say?”
“I don't want you to say anything.” April reached up and grabbed the knife, wrenching it out of the plaster. Zoe winced. “I want you to help me get rid of it before anyone else sees it. And I don't want you to tell anyone. Especially not Leaf.” She gripped the molded feet and pulled with all her weight. The neck snapped, dropping the body at their feet, the head swinging like a gruesome piñata. “Not anyone. Promise you won't tell anyone.”
Zoe stared at the head: the wide-open eyes with long unlikely lashes, the mouth in a fashion runway pout.
“Promise!”
“I promise, April. Okay?” The promise was like lead. Zoe's shoulders slumped with the weight of it. This was not right. In the movies, this would've been the time when the kids who'd been struggling to figure things out on their own go for help. This was the climax. This was when the cops come and take it from there. This was the end. This was when the theme music swelled up and the credits started rolling. Only April wasn't going to let that happen, not yet.
The wind was oddly
warm as they broke apart the mannequin and stuffed it into black garbage bags. Zoe had to jump on the knees to break the legs. She snapped the arms in half over a boulder, all the time wondering if this was what it felt like to break a real person. The crack of bone. The resistance. It felt wrong.
Zoe had suggested tipping her whole into the garbage, but April had refused. Zoe understood; if they'd left her whole, the horror would be bigger, an unintentional homage to all the murdered women found in dumpsters everywhere. If they left her whole, Zoe would think of her like that, lying on top of the trash, eyes wide open. This way it was somewhat finished.
The broken body bits fit into four bags, which they carried, two each, over to the bin behind the Budget & Bargain store. April tossed the bags in, one at a time. Zoe stood aside, hands clasped behind her back, feeling as though they should say something funereal.
“You're the Christian,” she murmured. “Say something.”
“She's not real.” April heaved the last bag over the edge. “She has no soul.”
April wiped her hands on her nightgown and walked away.
“Sorry,” Zoe mumbled at the closed dumpster. “Rest in peace.” She followed April across the road. The two girls went their separate ways in an eerie silence, without so much as a good-bye.
Zoe went to school
early that day, to finish one of the extra assignments Mrs. Henley had given her and April that was due that class, and to take her mind off the mannequin. The last person she expected to see was Beck, but there she was, sitting cross-legged on Zoe's desk, a cup of coffee in each hand. Zoe had smelled the coffee from the hall and had known it was Beck. She could've turned around, but she didn't. She balked at the door, heart pounding. Beck glanced up at the wall clock.
“Aren't you early.” She said it like an accusation.
Zoe didn't answer. She wondered if she bolted, would Beck come after her alone? It wasn't like Beck to work alone.
“I guess you would have to come in early, what with all that babysitting, and whatever else it is you do with your time. What do you do with your time?” She held one of the paper cups in Zoe's direction. “I got it the way you like it, honey and cream.”
That coffee was like that cigarette on the second day of school. A peace offering. A test. Only now Zoe knew better. Beck knew Zoe knew about the mannequin. Take the coffee, and it would be an apology as well as a symbolic approval about the mannequin. Don't take the coffee and it would only be a matter of time before Zoe would look out her own bedroom window and see her own suicidal mannequin, with two black braids and a knife in her chest. What would her note say? “Traitor? Dog lover? Do us all a favor, bitch?”
Zoe's initial fear morphed into a tenuous anger.
“That's my seat, Beck,” Zoe said, much to her own surprise. Zoe could tell Beck was taken aback too, by the way she pulled back her head, as if avoiding an insect flying at her.
“Gee, Beck, thanks for the coffee.” Beck was still holding the coffee out to her. “That's really nice of you.”
Zoe sighed. “That's my seat.”
“So it is.” Beck shimmied off the desk. “It's all yours.”
Zoe took her seat and pulled the grammar text from her pack. She flipped to the index, trying to look studious.
“So, Zoe, what'd you do last night? Hang out with the man in black? What's his name? Autumn Wind? Maple Tree?”
Zoe turned to a random page and tried to read, but the words blurred. She waited for Beck to throw the coffee at her, dump it in her lap, over her head, down the back of her shirt. “I don't know who you're talking about.”
“Yes you do, the guy in the Ramones shirt, who thinks he's better than everybody else?” Beck set down the coffee and yanked the book out of Zoe hands. She let it drop onto the floor with a bang. “Freak boy? Blue hair? Newspaper geek?”
“His name is Leaf.”
“Leaf, how could I have forgotten?” Zoe could taste Beck's sarcasm like it was a vapor filling the room. “So, you still a virgin?”
Zoe leaned down to pick up the book, but Beck stepped on it. Zoe stared at Beck's boots, the scuff marks, the worn leather.
She considered grabbing Beck's ankle with both her hands and pulling her off her feet. She relished the idea, Beck sprawled on her back in a pool of coffee, hopefully unconscious from cracking her head on a desk on the way down. Maybe she'd stay that way. That'd be nice.
“Shut up, Beck.” There was that flare of anger again, illuminating Zoe's black cavern of fear. “Just shut up. Just stop talking. Shut up. Shut up.
Shut. Up.
”
“Whoa.” Beck took a sip of her own coffee. “Where'd that come from, huh? Feel better now?”
“I saw what you did.” Zoe closed her eyes for a second to get rid of the image of the disembodied head swinging in the noose. “April showed me.”
“Showed you what?”
“You know what.”
“No. I don't. Tell me all about it.”
Zoe sighed. “You're so innocent, aren't you?”
Beck toasted herself with the two coffees. “Always.”
“Sure, you and Charles Manson.”
Beck's self-satisfied smile melted into a slack-jawed glare. She set the cups on the desk and leaned forward, pushing up Zoe's sleeve, poking the scar.
“Don't think you can get away from this so easily, Zoe. I have an investment in you.”
“You have nothing on me.” Zoe wrenched her arm away. “Leave me alone.”
“Never. You came in formally. You leave formally. I choose when. I choose where. I choose how bad.”
“I'm not afraid of you, Beck.”
“Yes, you are. And if you're not, you should be.”
“Why did you do it?”
“What?”
Zoe had been about to ask about the mannequin, but instead she said, “Why did you initiate me?”
“It was a mistake.”
“But why?”
Zoe sensed Beck's mood change, like the space between them had widened without either of them moving.
“That's none of your business.”
“Who initiated you?”
Beck swallowed.
Zoe wanted to make a slice across Beck's perfect surface. She had the blade too. She knew who'd initiated Beck. She knew what had happened to her. She could only imagine what it would be like with a father like Mr. Wilson. As much as Zoe wanted to hurt her, she couldn't bring herself to do it so brutally. Besides, if Beck knew that Simon had told her, it would just put Simon in Beck's scope. He would be annihilated.
“Can I have my book back?” Zoe said instead of all the other things she could've.
“Get it yourself, bitch.” Beck kicked the book, sending it skidding under the desks as the first bell rang. “That was your last chance, Zoe. You blew it.” She picked up her own coffee and then Zoe's, and then she tipped them both into Zoe's lap.
Zoe didn't even flinch, she'd expected it so completely. She calmly got up and left to change into her gym shorts. Behind her, Beck laughed a little too forcefully, a little too loud and a little too long.
Zoe was surprised to
see April there when she went back to class. If the mannequin had been an effigy of her, Zoe would've stayed home, pretending she was sick, anything to not face Beck. Zoe smiled at April as she took her seat, making sure Beck saw.
A couple of minutes into the lesson, while Mrs. Henley was busy writing something on the board, Beck twisted in her seat and sneered at April, hanging her head to the side, holding up an imaginary noose and sticking out her tongue like someone being strangled. Mrs. Henley turned around, mouth open, about to explain something, and then she saw Beck.
“I saw that, Rebecca.” Her eyes narrowed.
“Saw what? I was stretching.”
“I don't believe you.”
April bolted from her desk and ran out of the room.
“April! Where are you going?” Mrs. Henley called after her.
April didn't stop. She tore down the hall to the stairs at the other end, her footsteps fading fast.
“Beck, gather your things and take yourself to Mr. Seaton's office. Immediately.”
Beck turned red, from the scoop of her T-shirt up her neck like a thermometer, until her cheeks blazed. “Tell me what I did that's so bad.”
“I do not answer to you, Rebecca. Gather your things.”
“My name is
Beck
.”
“Your name is
Rebecca
.”
“Okay,
Jane
.” Beck whipped her bag from under her seat and shoved her books into it. “You can keep this.” She balled up her worksheet and chucked it. Mrs. Henley caught it with one hand.
Now it was Mrs. Henley's turn to go crimson. “I suggest you pick another time and place to have your little temper tantrum, Rebecca. It's very unbecoming.”
“Well, I pick now.” She stormed up the aisle. “Deal with it,
Jane.
”