A long beat of silence until the paramedics push themselves to standing, and one of them, the tallest and oldest, brushes some dry grass off his knees. “A parent?” he asks. “Is there an adult in charge here?”
Pirates, cowgirls, and bunnies look at their feet.
The paramedics exchange defeated looks, one of them swearing, “Shit.” Another shakes his head. “Of course, no parent. Perfect.”
A small voice from the crowd then. “Brendon’s going to be okay, right?”
The main paramedic suddenly looks tired and older, like he’s grown a gray stubble on his face in only the last few minutes. “I’m afraid … Brendon, that’s his name?… I have some bad…”
“No!” someone shouts.
“Do something else!”
“Try!”
The hysteria starts all over again. Some parents have arrived by now, and they’re shouting, too, and there’s so much turmoil that I might be the only one watching as two paramedics gingerly lift Brendon and a third slides a stretcher under him.
I want to look away, but I can’t. What did we do? What did I do? I think I should be crying like everyone else, but I don’t. Nothing about me is working. Not even my tears can move. I’m paralyzed, stuck in the horrible understanding of what we did to him. I’ve never been this close to a dead person before and I stare at the figure, trying to make sense of it. This is Brendon. This is
not
Brendon. Death does not look how I thought it would look, not like sleep or sickness. Death looks more like a series of
nots—
familiar things about a person that are no longer there: Brendon’s not warm. Brendon’s not breathing, not moving, not thinking or planning or eating or dreaming or wishing.
One of his arms, pulled by gravity, slips and dangles over the side of the stretcher. I recall the feel of that arm around my shoulder and down the center of my back. That was … when? Only minutes ago. I try to shake away the memory but it doesn’t budge. A paramedic lifts and tucks the arm under the torso. I see him take a deep breath as he pulls a sheet over the body, over Brendon, and tucks it tight.
I’m following every detail, which is why I should have been the first one to scream. Only I don’t. I see it, but shock prevents me from reacting.
It’s one of the Double Ds who lets out the first piercing cry that sounds like part firecracker, part speaker feedback. At first only a few people look her way because there’s so much other noise in the garden. But then she starts doing this extreme screaming/pointing/eye-widening/hand-flapping dance and then someone else sees what she sees and joins in.
The paramedics drop their bags and their jaws and rush to the stretcher.
Brendon’s hand with the hair on the knuckles that once filled me with such longing. It’s come out from under his torso. It’s moving. It’s tearing at the sheet.
Quickly they unfurl him. “Don’t move!” a paramedic insists.
But Brendon twists his head to show us his face, which is white and waxy with a line of smeared blood on his mouth, and the sight of it makes most everyone shriek. But this isn’t
Halloween
the movie. Brendon’s not a vampire, either. He’s alive.
I smell Ambrosia’s perfume an instant before I hear her whisper in my ear. “Hound him to hell. Down, down, deep in the earth. He’ll never be free, protected, not even by death.”
I whirl around. “What are you talking about?”
“You hate him.”
“I don’t.”
“After what happened in the bedroom?”
“But I didn’t want him to die. I’m glad he’s not dead.”
“Of course you are!” Ambrosia sandwiches my hands between hers, gives them a supportive squeeze. “You don’t want him dead. That’s why you pulled him back.”
“Me?”
“You couldn’t let him take the easy route. Death would be so unsatisfying. Death would let him off the hook. You don’t want that.”
Abruptly, I take back my hands. I reach behind my neck and undo the clasp of the snake necklace. I make Ambrosia take it. “I don’t want anything to do with this anymore!”
She dangles the necklace in front of my face like a hypnotist. “Don’t play coy with me.”
I slap at the jeweled serpent.
The necklace disappears into her pocket. Her voice turns blunt. “When you thought he was dead, you felt guilty. I’ll give you that. You were also scared that you’d be caught. You even felt sad that your romance had to end on this tragic note.”
“Shut up,” I insist.
“But you felt something else, too. Look deep. Admit it. You were a little disappointed that it was over so soon.”
I start to protest, but she presses a finger to my lips. “Death? The peace of the void? The perpetual rest of the night? Sleeping in the winged arms of Thanatos? A quick death would be like sentencing him to eternity in a hammock. Where’s the justice in that?”
She runs her hand over my face. My eyelashes tickle slightly, and in the split-second that my eyes stay closed I’m whipped back into the night’s humiliation. Every second of it. My proclamation of love. His lie of love. The overhead light snapping on, the laughing, the photos. He planned it all. He must have planned it. Did he defend me? Did he hurl himself on Pox and fight for me? Did he do anything but stand there in his lame, pathetic way and claim to be innocent? He’s as guilty as all those other Plagues.
Ambrosia is right. I’ll never get over this. Why should he? As long as I suffer, Brendon should suffer.
Ambrosia gives me more words: “He threw you away like garbage, just like your parents did. This little two-story tumble isn’t enough payback. You want more. The score isn’t settled yet.”
My cheeks flare hot with the recognition that she’s right. She cups them with her palms, which have turned icy in the night air. “No need to be self-conscious, Megaera. Is a spider self-conscious about its desire to weave? A snake about its need to swallow its prey whole? This is your nature and it’s your right. Don’t overthink it.”
Across the crowd I spot Raymond trying to get my attention, the features of his blue-and-white face twisting into a dozen frantic expressions. He knows exactly what happened and I know what he’ll say, that we went too far and abused our power.
Ambrosia notices where I’m looking. “Whom did Brendon betray? Who gets to decide when the score is settled? Who deserves justice?” She strokes my hair, which is no longer soft and wavy but a coarse mass of strands that keeps crawling over my eyes and into my mouth.
I pretend not to see Raymond. I look away.
Alix and Stephanie make their way to us, and we are standing together as Brendon is strapped back onto the stretcher and a paramedic orders us to clear a path to the ambulance. There’s a parade of ghosts, angels, wenches, and witches following him in a drunken line, joyful about their friend’s amazing good luck. To fall like that and to still be alive.
Luck is deceiving.
When Brendon passes us, Ambrosia flicks four spiky nails in his direction. I see that her hair has been cut very short and spikey. It frames her face like a ring of razors. “Sleep well, Prince,” she whispers. “Enjoy your dreams.”
Overhead, the mockingbird mimics a squeaky gate, a train squealing around the corner, a human whistle of nine familiar notes.
27
Alone in my bedroom,
looking into the mirror, I practice what I’m going to say to Raymond when he confronts me. I know he will. I make sure to keep my expression flat and certain, a shield against his arguments.
He’ll say: “You almost killed him!”
I’ll say: “I bet he doesn’t even have a broken bone.”
Raymond: “You went too far!”
Me: “We haven’t gone far enough.”
Only Raymond doesn’t phone that night, not even a text. I’m puzzled but relieved. Why should I have to convince him of anything? Ambrosia got it right. This is my business. Brendon didn’t humiliate Raymond. Raymond wasn’t half-naked with half the school laughing in his face. I’m the one who gets to decide when justice has been served. I’m the one who deserves to pay him back.
Who cares what Raymond thinks?
It’s 2:00 a.m. by the time I get into bed. Lying in the dark with He-Cat at my head, I burrow into the sheets, imagining Brendon in the hospital and how he must be moaning fitfully in his sleep—if he
can
sleep—and I get a sense of satisfaction. If I can’t sleep, neither should he.
And then it’s 2:30 a.m. and all I can think about now is how Brendon will eventually get over it. The doctors will stitch up his lip and he’ll be released from the hospital. His family will rally around him. His friends will offer sympathy and support. He’ll surf again and sleep well and have girlfriends, and gradually the memory of that fall through the window will fade. He’s a prince. Life is like that for the princes of this world. All the shame and guilt we put into him will disappear. This Halloween night will too quickly become a small, vague memory in his long, happy, entitled life.
He will forget about what he did. He will forget me.
Unless …
I do something to keep the memory and the guilt alive.
I check the clock. It’s 2:45 a.m., and now all I can think about is the refrigerator. I head into the kitchen and begin my raid. There’s a big slab of leftover lasagna that I don’t even bother to pop into the microwave. I down it cold right out of the casserole dish. I fill a bowl with ice cream and top it with a large dollop of Cool Whip. I eat a half jar of garlic pickles. I would eat more, but that’s all that’s left.
He-Cat, excited by all this middle-of-night action, rubs against my legs, but I’m in no mood to give him or anyone any affection. I nudge him out of my way.
I must be fed.
I think of the Leech asleep in the next room. Why does she get to sleep so soundly when I can’t? Why did I settle for just a new bedroom when she owes me so much more? She should be racked with shame and guilt for the way she treated me. I want both of them, Brendon and her, to beg me for forgiveness. I want their sleep to be plagued by nightmares until they pay for what they did to me.
This hunger gnaws, like I’m feeding some creature that’s all appetite. I grab a pen and a piece of paper and draw: a hungry ghost with a huge maw of a mouth, a neck so long and thin that everything eaten burns and hurts as it travels down to a bloated, bottomless pit of a stomach.
That hungry ghost is inside of me. It is me.
A word, coming from that hunger, springs into my thoughts. I text to Alix and Stephanie—
Hunt
—and right when I hit Send, two messages come in simultaneously.
Hunt
, says Alix.
Hunt
, says Stephanie.
We can’t stop. We must be fed.
* * *
Over the next few days the police talk to a lot of kids who were at the party, and my name comes up in every interview. In an empty classroom a policewoman gently guides me through every detail of the night. Was Brendon depressed? Did he ever talk about hurting himself? Did anyone ever threaten him? When did I last see him?
I stick to my rehearsed story. He was drunk. I was drunk. There was the ugly, ugly scene in the bedroom, and I was mad and hurt. Who wouldn’t be? But when I left the bedroom, he was still standing. The window was shut. Yes, he did seem upset and remorseful about what he did to me. Alix and Stephanie back me up on that point.
Brendon doesn’t remember much, so the police come to the conclusion that I lead them to: A distraught, drunken kid lucked out by not killing himself. The real victim is the poor, sensitive girl whose heart he broke.
At the end of my interview, the soft-spoken policewoman asks if she can give me a hug. I let myself be folded into her arms. “Honey, he treated you wrong. None of this is your fault,” she says. “But don’t be surprised if the episode continues to haunt you for a while.”
I know it will.
* * *
The hospital keeps Brendon under observation until mid-week. The doctors can’t get over how all his vital signs disappeared and yet he came out of it with no serious injuries. They draw blood and do an MRI, but they don’t see anything abnormal.
At school, of course, everyone’s talking about Brendon’s miraculous escape from death. I overhear Mr. and Mrs. H in the cafeteria arguing about what happened.
“Pure luck,” Mr. H says. “He must have hit at the exact angle to dissipate the impact. It’s all a matter of vectors.”
“You and your vectors!” Mrs. H says. “Why can’t you admit that there are some things we’ll never understand?”
I smirk, knowing how wrong they both are. I pulled him back. I am not done with him.
That’s why I don’t care about the rude comments and snickering that follow me as I walk through the halls. That’s why it doesn’t matter to me that the photos of naked me have been e-mailed around. The Plagues spread a rumor that I did something terrible to Brendon. They don’t know what and they don’t know how, but they blame me.
Let the rumors fly. Let everyone shun me. Let them laugh.
Let them think that this is over and they have won.
* * *
Later that week, Brendon walks into Western Civ and is welcomed with applause and a gush of admiration that usually greets war heroes or someone who scored a fake ID. I notice how he doesn’t look in my direction, but lets himself be smothered in boobs by all the girls who insist on hugging him.
“Dude!” Pox offers up a fist to bump. “Lookin’ good.”
Rat Boy, always the master of the obvious, says, “You’re alive.”
The Brendon lovefest ends only because Ms. Pallas, not looking her usual cool and calm self, enters the room and flicks the lights a couple of times. A few minutes after the late bell sounds, Raymond, equally frazzled, slides into his seat next to me. We haven’t talked since Halloween night. He hasn’t been in school. I didn’t call to find out why, and he didn’t call to tell me why.
I do know one thing, though. He and Ms. Pallas didn’t both just happen to come in late. They don’t fool me. Nobody will ever fool me again. They were obviously having a private summit meeting, and it wasn’t about his grades. Ms. Pallas was no doubt filling his head with her so-called civilized ideas about justice. And Raymond was taking it all in with complete devotion. I catch him checking me out with a set of disapproving wrinkles etched on his forehead. I give him a mocking, tight-lipped smile that dares:
What are you going to do about it?