Save Yourself (36 page)

Layla’s voice sounded choked, as if she’d been crying. “Yes,” she said, and then, when he still waited, “Please.”

For a moment, his eyes held hers. The room felt as if the very walls were waiting. Then he turned to Verna.

“And then there’s you. I can’t even count the number of people who have a piece of you. Your parents, Calleigh Bitch Brinker, Wolf-boy—all inside you, chewing on you, carving you up. You’ll never be whole while they’re in there. You’ll never be fully
you
and you’ll never be safe.” Passion rose in his voice. “We can make you free, too. And when you’re free and Layla is free, then we’ll all go together as a unified force and break the chains that hold us. When the sun rises tomorrow, we’ll have ultimate power. Nobody will be able to stop us, ever.”

Engulfed in the fog of his words, Verna nodded. He opened his hand, and Verna saw the ritual knife shining in his palm.

“Verna first,” he said.

She held out her arm but he told her to lay down on her back, so she did: first staring up at the ceiling, then looking out the window to the night sky. Stars like silver fireflies, friendly and alive in the blackness. Criss held one of her hands and Layla held the other. Eric crouched above her head, out of sight. Some Christians drank strychnine, Verna thought, trying to reassure herself as panic began
to blossom in her chest, or draped themselves with rattlesnakes. Some sat by while their children died of fevers because they believed in the will of God over all things. This was only pain, not danger. She was tough. She was titanium. Justinian let her watch as he rubbed the knife down with an alcohol swab. Then he lifted her shirt and bared her rib cage. Verna’s stomach had never been exposed in front of other people. She’d never even worn a two-piece bathing suit. The air in the room felt clammy.

He stroked her ribs, pressing her flesh gently to feel their edges. She had never been so aware of her own skeleton. Then he leaned down over her, so close that she could feel the strands of his hair against her, and kissed the skin just above her bottom rib. She could feel his tongue and when he drew back she could feel the kiss, too, turning to ice as the air moved over the saliva he’d left. She shivered.

Then he cut her. She clutched fiercely at Layla’s hand. The scratch on her arm had been nothing compared to this. The blade moved like a brand across her ribs and she heard herself cry out; her whole body was a high-tension wire and the gash he carved was the core of her. Criss was gripping Verna’s arm and Eric’s hands were on her shoulders, holding her down as Justinian pressed again to make the blood well faster. The experience did not make her feel powerful. It made her feel terrified and imprisoned. She could hear herself crying like a puppy; he pressed again and she felt a hot line of blood snake down her side.

“Be strong,” he said. Then he bent over her ribs and Verna felt his tongue again, his lips, and this time they stayed. Moved.

Not a kiss. There was new pain and the pain was a river. It flowed. It endured. Never in her life had Verna felt pain that didn’t flash and instantly began to ease, pain that persisted, pain that pushed into her very being until the rest began to fold around it. He was sucking on her, drawing out her blood. It went on and on. Distantly she became aware of other things: a hand stroking her cheek. The stars. The mortuary smell of the burning candles.

Herself. Her body. Her own heartbeat.

“Isn’t that enough?” she heard Layla say, her voice strained and oddly distant, and Eric said, “Shut up, bitch.”

Finally, she felt Justinian’s tongue travel down her body, catching the first drop of blood that had spilled, and she thought it must be over. But his fingers were still on her ribs. “Eric,” he said. “Your turn.”

There was a pause. Verna felt Eric’s hands grip and flex on her shoulders. She opened her eyes but she could only see Eric’s nostrils and mouth, which hung open as if he was panting. But she could feel his eyes. She could see his tongue flick out, swipe at his upper lip, recede.

“Wait,” Layla said. Her hand was tight on Verna’s. “One at a time, we do one at a time—”

“Not tonight. Now, Eric.” The command in Justinian’s voice brought with it a dim memory of rough hallway carpet on Verna’s face, the taste of beer in the back of her throat.
Be quiet. Stop moving
. He and Eric switched places. Eric’s hands were hard and merciless against Verna’s ribs and his mouth was rougher. The pain rose and swelled again and this time the world faded into a thick haze of gray. As he drank he scraped the cut with his teeth, biting at its edges. New agony broke through the gray and Verna heard herself shriek.

Eric laughed; he sounded manic, almost drunk. “Don’t be afraid,” Justinian said. “It’s just pain.”

The dim forms above Verna moved again. Now it was Criss at her side. Her tongue fluttered gently at the wound and her cool hand hardly pressed at all, but the pain surged anyway. All the words for pain were wrong. Pain was not bright, it was not electric, it was not hot, it was not a wave. It simply
was
. It was everywhere and it was everything. From the other side of it, Verna felt Justinian’s hands on her shoulders, heard Layla whispering in her ear, telling her to hold on, it was almost over. They were almost done.

Justinian didn’t make Layla drink. She and Verna already shared blood, he said. When Criss was done, they helped Verna sit up. From
somewhere a gauze pad was produced and Layla held it in place while Verna whimpered and Justinian used the silver knife to make a cut on the fleshy part of his arm. Verna’s side throbbed and her whole body ached. She was covered with icy sweat and sick with heat.

“Drink,” he said, not unkindly, and put his arm to her mouth. “Drink, and it’ll all be over.”

There was nothing in the world but him, and blood, and pain. Verna drank.

They gave her more wine. A lot of it. She couldn’t get the taste of his blood out of her mouth. Later she lay curled, fernlike, on Eric’s bed. She shivered and a dirty-smelling blanket was tucked around her.

Layla’s voice, soft in her ear. “Keep your eyes closed. Don’t watch.”

But she was aware, anyway, as Justinian took blood from Layla—aware enough to see that her sister bore more than one gash on her ribs, and also that Justinian was not as gentle with the elder Elshere as he had been with the younger. His hands did not stroke and press so much as they dug and pinioned. Layla did not cry but she writhed and moaned. When Justinian was done he spat into the garbage.

“Christ, I can still taste him in you,” he said.

Then he held Layla down for Criss, and for Eric.

In the bathroom, Layla dressed Verna’s cut. The wine was burning its way out of her system, leaving a remote, empty horror. She noticed how Layla kept her torso stiffly upright, how she didn’t twist or bend, and she realized that she’d seen that stiffness before without knowing what it meant.

Layla rummaged through the cabinet, found a tube of Neosporin. “It’s not that he likes hurting us,” she said, squeezing a greasy worm of ointment onto her shaking finger. “But the world will hurt us worse, and we have to know we can take it.” She smeared the ointment
onto the cut in Verna’s side. The split skin burned and Verna gasped.

“Sorry.” Layla taped the piece of gauze over Verna’s wound. Then she took off her own shirt, and Verna gasped. Her sister’s ribs looked flayed. Behind the new gashes Verna could see older ones, some scabbed hard and some fresh enough that the blood crusted and crumbled. Looking at them made Verna feel sick.

Layla rubbed ointment into her own cut without even wincing, but there were tears in her eyes and the smile she gave Verna was twitchy, unreliable. The fluorescent bulbs in Eric’s bathroom flickered and under their light Layla looked sickly and greenish. Verna was glad when she put her shirt back on.

“You let him do that to you,” Verna said.

“It’s like—therapy.” Layla’s voice was too high, too fast. “He used to tell me my blood tastes like chocolate. He says, every time we do it I feel a little closer to the way I used to. You know, that guy I was with? His dad was the one who killed Ryan Czerpak.”

None of the words Layla said were foreign or unfamiliar, but somehow the things she was saying still didn’t make any sense. Verna couldn’t focus enough to figure them out. “Eric bit me,” she said.

She nodded. “He always does. You don’t have to share with him again if you don’t want to. I only do it when Justinian tells me to.”

Realization flashed in Verna. “Is that why you had sex with him? Because Justinian told you to?”

“I told you. It was profound.”

But Layla would not meet her eyes. Verna felt sick; her side burned. “I want to go home.” She didn’t even know the words were true until she heard herself say them.

“You are home,” Layla said.

They went into the living room. Justinian was outside, loading the car with Eric, and Verna was glad. He had been looking at her in a new way and she didn’t think she liked it. It was still loving and wise and gentle—almost Christlike, in fact, as if he’d studied
one of the famous paintings of Jesus and practiced His expression in the mirror—but underneath all of that was something akin to triumph. Like Verna was a prize he’d won. Criss, red-eyed, lay on the couch. She barely even looked at Verna as she said, “Oh, Layla-love, come here, come be with me,” and even though not an hour before Criss had sucked at Layla’s blood while the boys held her down, while Justinian urged her on—
Come on, Crissy, she’s yours, take her
—Layla went, falling into Criss’s arms and burying her face in her neck. Criss stroked her hair, looking tremulous and ecstatic.

Verna took refuge in Eric’s dad’s bedroom, huddling on the pilling, staticky bedspread. Her side hurt. The tape Layla had used to hold the gauze in place pulled and itched and her mouth tasted like blood. Everything felt wrong. She was in the wrong place, she was the wrong person. Verna closed her eyes and tried to be elsewhere.

She heard the door open. “Oh,” Eric’s voice said, sounding mildly surprised. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

“It’s okay,” Verna said, without opening her eyes.

The closet door squeaked open. Objects moved.

“You all right?” His voice was closer now. She opened her eyes to see him standing next to the bed. A skull grinned horribly at her from beneath his unbuttoned flannel shirt, and his handcuffs glinted from his wrist, but the expression on his acne-purpled face wasn’t unsympathetic, and unlike Criss he actually looked at her, he actually seemed sort of concerned.

“It hurts,” Verna said, in a small voice.

“It’s supposed to hurt.” He put down the thing he was holding—a long black case, which looked like the soft-sided guitar cases the counselors at camp had sometimes carried but was the wrong shape—pushed up the sleeve of his flannel shirt, and showed her the row of parallel scars marching up the inside of his arm, past the twin silver hasps of the handcuffs. His voice was, again, not unkind. “You can’t take a little scratch on the ribs, how are you going to handle the rest of what the world dishes out?”

They kept saying that, all of them. As if pain canceled pain. Eric pushed his sleeve back down. “Hey, what was it like when the bombs went off? Was it loud? Did the building shake?”

Verna nodded.

“Was there a lot of smoke? Were people scared shitless? I bet they were scared shitless.” Eric’s expression was eager, his eyebrows lifted expectantly.

“People were scared. There was some smoke. I don’t know. Not a lot.” She wondered where Eric’s father was. She wondered if he ever came home.

Wistfully, Eric said, “Man, I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have blown up the whole fucking school. That’s what I wanted to do. But we got the bitch’s hands. And that guy who told everyone he nailed you, we got him bad. So that’s something.”

Jared? Verna flinched, huddled more tightly into herself. Eric’s lip curled.

“What, you think I’m creepy now? Your sister thinks I’m creepy, too.” He leaned down close. Verna smelled alcohol and cigarettes. She turned her head, pressing her face into the pillow, but she couldn’t get away. “But when I fucked her, she came so hard she cried.”

Verna started to shake. Eric laughed. “Your poor little virgin ears. Wait until—”

“Eric.” Justinian was standing just inside the door, his face stern. “What are you doing?”

Eric stood up, too quickly. “Nothing.”

“Leave her alone. Go put that in the trunk with the other one.” Eric picked up the black case that wasn’t a guitar, gave Verna an unpleasant grin, and left. As soon as he was gone, the sternness on Justinian’s face melted away. As he crouched down next to the bed, his expression was almost rueful. “Did he scare you?”

Verna was still shaking. “Did Jared get hurt today?”

“Did Eric tell you that?” Verna nodded. Justinian shrugged. “Wolf-boy has a lot more people taking care of him right now than
ever took care of you, I promise.” He reached out, stroked her hair. Verna wished he wouldn’t. She never wanted to be touched again, by him or anybody else. “Why would you care, after what he did to you?”

Verna suddenly remembered Jared, sitting at the art studio table, looking angry and unhappy. “Maybe he didn’t do anything to me,” she said. “Maybe whoever wrote that post was lying.”

“Maybe. So what? Even if he didn’t do anything to hurt you, he would have eventually. Whoever wrote that did you a favor.” Again, she heard that self-satisfied note in his voice. Justinian had called her attention to the message. He’d told her what it meant. The website was anonymous. He could have posted it himself. He could have posted any of the messages, or all of them. Had he? Knowing Kyle and Calleigh would read them, knowing it would egg them on?

She didn’t know. She would never know. But the post
felt
like Justinian, and nothing like Jared. Poor Jared, who was—where, now? In the hospital? Intensive care? Because of her? No. She hadn’t made the bombs. She hadn’t planted them. She hadn’t even known. Because of Justinian.

“I want to go home,” she said.

“That’s just aftershocks. You’ve had an intense night.” The smile he gave her was the same wise, kindly Justinian smile, but all at once Verna found it galling. It was almost midnight and her head throbbed with wine and her side throbbed, too, where she’d let herself be cut open and bled like a plague victim in a medieval woodcut; her parents couldn’t be trusted and Toby couldn’t be trusted and, for the first time in Verna’s life, home didn’t feel like the safe place where she belonged more than anywhere else in the world, but it felt safer than here. Her universe was as inside out and backward as an Escher drawing; the stairs led nowhere and the doors opened onto walls and nothing could be relied upon, but this, right now, the look in Justinian’s eyes, the quality of his voice: this was familiar. Once again, she was being told what she thought, how she felt, what she wanted.