Authors: Susan Vaught
Stuff inside me cracks.
You’re dying you’re gonna die this is it you’re dead Freak, dead dead dead and you can’t do anything about dead.
My knees bash into the dirt and thorns and I puke a big bitter wad of the nothing in my smashed belly. Air. Need to breathe. Can’t breathe. My chest is broken. My guts must be broken. My arms fold around my ribs and I’m trying to see who, to see what, but I’m seeing spots and stars and hearing a muffled
mmm-mmmm-mmmmmm
sound a lot like Drip trying to yell when somebody’s got a hand over his mouth and—
“Did you think it would be that easy, you frigging freak?”
A kick lands on my ass, launching me forward, face to
the dirt right next to thorns, oh God thorns almost in my eyes and I wad up and keep my arms wrapped around my ribs because that voice—
That was Roland’s voice.
“What the hell was that, back at the VFW, jumping me in front of my mom?” He’s talking like a sad, sarcastic teacher, giving a lesson. “You dissed me in front of people. Did you think I’d let you get away with that?”
He kicks my back so hard and it hurts so bad I don’t know how I’ll ever move again and I can’t see anything but dark because I can’t can’t can’t breathe and I’m thinking how in books and movies bullies always cave when you stand up to them but those are bullies maybe just normal bullies not alphabet bullies with flat, dead eyes and flat, dead souls and he kicks me again and he kicks me again and I don’t try to fight back because I think I’m dying but I don’t want to die and it won’t help. I’m prey, not a predator. I don’t kick. I get kicked and Roland’s saying, “Go on, Freak. Squeal. Cry like a baby. But if you tell anybody about this, I’ll kill you.”
Kick.
I barely feel it now because there’s just too much pain so there can’t be any more and I am crying but at least I’m not squealing so that’s got to count for something and he’s laughing at me but I really don’t care about that because he’s not kicking me again he’s telling Drip that Drip’ll die if he squeaks a single word. “You’ll die,” Roland says.
“You know I’ll do it. The two of you—it would be like sticking pins in bugs.”
I hear the sound of fist hitting gut, only this time it’s not mine and then Drip’s in the dirt next to me, holding his belly and moaning and Linden shoves him over so he falls in the thorns.
He’s got his face turned away from me but I can tell he’s hurting and he’s crying like me but he’s not squealing either even though thorns are poking into him everywhere and he’s bleeding.
“Losers,” Roland growls, and he sounds exactly like Bastard because maybe he is Bastard. Maybe all these years I’ve had Roland in my head. “Don’t
ever
talk to me again unless I talk to you first—and don’t
ever
touch me again. I’ll beat your head in.”
I don’t move. I squeeze my eyes shut. The tears I can’t do anything about. The wheezing I can’t do anything about. I think I’m lying in my own vomit but that’s okay because hey that’s what losers, do, right?
Drip’s not moving, either. We both know better. If we start yelling for help they’ll beat us worse before anybody gets here—or they’ll run away and wait and beat the hell out of us later. That’s how it goes. That’s how it is. They didn’t leave any marks on our faces. They’ll act innocent. They’ll say we fell. Everybody knows how clumsy Drip can be. Or maybe he and that freak got in a fight and beat on each other. We weren’t even with them,
officer, come on. We fought with them and went our own way before they ever went into the woods. Everybody saw that, right?
Stupid freak. Such a pathetic freak. No hope for losers like you. Losers are losers are losers forever. Don’t you wish you could be a winner just once a winner but can freaks ever really win anything after all?
Underbrush crumples and cracks as Roland and Linden head off, maybe to go back to the VFW, maybe to search, maybe to hide and wait for us somewhere else and finish the killing job. I keep still until I can’t hear them anymore.
Sunshine…
Sunshine…
Sunshine…
Her name echoes in the distance, from dozens of different voices, in my head and out of my head and real sunlight touches my cheeks and heats my tears and I keep lying still because I’m scared and I’m a loser and I don’t know what to do. Why does everybody but me know what to do?
I know sometimes it gets bad because it gets really bad for me but we can’t let that stop us we can’t let that kill us right because even though we’re alphabets we’ve got a right to live we’ve got a right to be happy and I think we can be happy Jason if we try if we want to I think we can all be happy together and
“Freak.” Drip sounds bad. Really shaky. “Can you move?”
I don’t want to move. I don’t want to stop thinking about Sunshine and seeing her in my mind and if I died right here that would be mostly okay because I’d be seeing her like this. I don’t move because of that, and because I’m scared and a big coward and a huge baby and everything hurts and I’m lying in the dirt in a bunch of bile I puked and I’m afraid if I move somehow something will get worse.
“Seriously,” Drip says. “Can you move or should I go get help?”
“No help,” I mutter, and the air moving up through my chest and throat to make my words—that hurts. “They’ll kill us. You heard them.”
Drip goes quiet. Then he starts to cry. Then he starts to sob. Then I know I have to move, so I do and when I straighten on the ground to try to stand, stuff in my chest and middle crunches and I want to scream but I can’t scream so I don’t.
It hurts. I can’t do this. But I have to do this.
Loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, loser, freak, freak, FREAK…
I manage to sit up and realize I’m sitting right next to Drip, who’s crawled himself out of the thorns and his arms are bleeding and his fingers and his hands and he’s covering his face and he’s crying. His skinny shoulders shake from the force of it.
“My fault,” he blubbers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Freak. I thought—”
My teeth grind against the pain as I lift my arm and get it around him to interrupt him. “Stop it. It’s not. You can’t help that they’re mean.”
“Shouldn’t have trusted them.” More sobs. “Should have listened to you.”
“Yeah, well, mine’s the alphabet nobody listens to, so that’s not your fault, either—kind of like you’re the alphabet nobody’ll trust to carry their fine china.”
His shoulders shake under my arm. Then they stop.
He takes a breath. I wish I could get a full one but I can’t and I’m still seeing stars and tasting bile and there’s kind of a whistling in my ears.
“Fine china?” he murmurs. He glances at me, his eyes bloodshot. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
“Fine china. Expensive electronics. You know, anything delicate.”
“Screw you, Freak.”
I manage to smile but that hurts, too, so I stop.
“I’ll go get help,” he says.
I shake my head then quit before something else in my body grinds or breaks. “No. No way. We got this far.”
“Man, you can’t even stand up. How are you—”
I force myself to my feet and somehow I don’t scream or faint even if I’m not really sure how because it hurts so much. But I do it, and I make myself turn to face Drip, and I make myself look at him, and I make myself say, “We can’t let her down. Let’s go, okay?”
He doesn’t say anything.
After a second, he just starts walking. Sort of. More like hobbling.
And so we move. Slow at first. It takes forever to gain ground because both of us are just limping. Both of us hold our ribs. If I move wrong, all I can do is stop and gasp and blink away the stars and tears, but I figure out pretty quick how to move where I don’t kill myself with each step. We’re doing it. Down the path. We’re getting there. By tomorrow at least. Christ, this is slow.
And the sun’s out full now, no morning clouds, and it’s getting warmer, and we’re getting closer, and there’s the opening and the place we hide the shears we use to cut the brambles and we’re through it and—
And here we are.
Our quiet place. Our special spot. And the river’s still moving fast alongside it, still rushing over the stones all clear with foam on top, and there’s still trees on the other side and the big huge rock hanging out across the river, and—
Sunshine still isn’t here.
I think we both know that.
I think we both knew it before we ever came here, but we had to come. I can’t say why. We just had to do it.
In the glare of daylight, her absence seems so huge and wrong it’s unbearable. My eyes take in every inch of the place, side to side and top to bottom, and there’s nothing here. Nothing of hers.
Nothing of her.
All the pain in my body turns into nothing compared to the pain in my heart.
Drip limps toward the rock, and slowly, like he’s way sore, he crawls to the top of it, and he sits, and he looks down at the rushing water and he hangs his head, and I can see his hurting, taste it and smell it and hear it and touch it, just as hard and sharp as I feel my own.
It hurts so much everywhere, all over, inside and out, that I just bend over. Then I go forward, crouching, then
crawling, until I’m under the rock, until I’m leaning against the big rock wall under the tall rock roof where we always hide when it rains or when Sunshine needs to be totally away from people or when we’re scared of Roland and Linden and alphabets like them and just don’t want to have to be afraid anymore. This is our private place within the private place. Our special spot in the special spot. I close my eyes and rest my head against the rock wall, trying not to cry out from the aches in my body, in my soul, and trying not to think about the fact that Sunshine kissed me here for the first time, and she tasted like peanut butter.
The last time she kissed me, she tasted like Sunshine. A hint of mint, a tingle of cinnamon. I open my eyes.
She kissed me. Last Saturday before she vanished. She kissed me and she told me things I can’t think about because the black clouds and knives will come to kill me. She told me things I barely remember and I’m not sure I didn’t make it all up, even the kissing and everything that happened after that.
Something catches my attention. Something in the ceiling above me, straight ahead of me, toward the river and the spot where light barely trickles underneath the big rock. It’s small, the thing, but it’s not rock colored, not reddish or gray or even green like moss. It’s more yellow, and it’s tucked into a little crevice of stone.
My heart stops beating, and for a second my mind stops
working and the world stops existing and everything, everything, everything in the universe goes still and quiet and nothing because the thing in the crevice, it’s not yellow, is it? It’s not yellow at all.
It’s gold.
When I can think, when I can breathe, when I can feel the stab and sear of the pain in my bruised chest and ribs, I reach forward. My shaking fingers find the golden thing in the rock, and when I touch it, the metal sends cool shocks through my existence.
I gently draw Sunshine’s locket from its hiding place, the locket she never took off, the locket she never would have left behind—
Unless she couldn’t leave a note.
Unless she wanted to leave a message.
A message for
me
.
Hidden here.
Me, and only me.
“Freak?” Drip calls from way up on the rock, seemingly miles above my head. “You ready? We should get out of here. I think somebody’s coming.”
And my brain is spinning and spinning and I have no idea what this means, no idea what to do, what I should do, what I need to do.
What does it mean? How did she leave it here? When? And why? If I open it—but I don’t even know if it opens. What should I do?
I grip the locket and try not to bang my head in frustration.
What should I do?
“Freak?” Drip calls again, and the locket tingles in my palm like it’s done the thousands of times I’ve held and squeezed it, the thousands of times Sunshine’s brought me back from the dark places I go—
She left it for me.
She wanted me to have it.
—I’m sure of that now, and I want to shout because she’s probably alive somewhere and then I want to scream and cry because no, maybe this means she’s definitely dead but I don’t know why I think that, I don’t know what to think, I don’t know what to do, so I fasten the locket around my neck.
It’s tight on me, and short, but my neck’s pretty skinny and my rounded collar’s pretty high so I can push the locket underneath the edge of the fabric so it’s as hidden and secret as our kisses, as what happened between us before she disappeared. Hidden and private, like this place, and like those things are supposed to be.
I don’t know whether to be happy or destroyed and right now I’m feeling both. I wonder about telling Drip about it. I probably should tell him, but it feels wrong. She didn’t leave it here for him. She left it for me.
“Freak, I mean it.” Drip’s coming off the rock now, and I crawl out to meet him—slow—so I don’t move
wrong, and so the locket doesn’t come out from under my shirt. It feels good to have it, to have this piece of her so close to me, to have it touching me.
When I stand, the sunlight hits my face and my eyes close and the heat washes over me, soothing all the hurts inside and out, but not that much, not too much and Drip stands there, too, just stands listening to the water and feeling the heat until we hear people calling her name, people coming this way.
Searchers.
Searchers who won’t find her.
I resist the urge to lift my fingers and press them against the locket. I just want to go home now. I want to get the locket home and sit in my room and hold it and see if it opens, see if there’s anything inside it, maybe something she wanted to say to me or something she wanted me to know. It’s so small, there can’t be much in there, but maybe there’s something.
“Let’s blow,” Drip says, and he starts out of our spot, and I follow him. We’re both moving like cripples again, and sometimes when I move my arms wrong or turn at the waist, daggers stab into my ribs and chest and I can’t breathe right.