Meredith pretended to be ashamed. She finally lied, confiding that she was grounded until the end of school, except for cheering practice.
“I told you about studying. Well, my grades were crap. If I’m going to try out in the fall, I had to raise them to be eligible. And of course, my perfect sister got nearly straight A’s.”
Merry made Kim promise not to tell, and recognized sadly as she did that telling Kim to keep a secret was a guarantee that she wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone else.
Sadly, also, she told Will Brent, who now seemed terribly sweet and safe to her, the same thing. She had to work on her grades. She goofed off too much. High school was coming. They would both meet other people. He was puzzled and hurt. Merry thought,
This is so great. I really like him. We’re so lucky we can see the future and the past
.
She wished the school year would wind up fast. The second semester had been the longest two or three years of her life. Although she looked forward to high-school tryouts, there was a veil over even that. She wasn’t a tough girl. She wasn’t the kind who went looking for trouble. Why, she thought—as Mally had months before—did she have to be this bizarre way? One night, as she was reading—God! She, Meredith Brynn, was reading a novel her
mother
had given her, and because she didn’t feel like doing anything else!—Merry realized that she and Mally had closed themselves into a cocoon.
It was much safer.
It was much lonelier.
She wondered if a point would come when they knew for sure that they could venture out.
The late April day of Mally’s first game—at home—finally arrived.
Eden let the coach know she needed a family-related absence that day, which didn’t go down too well. He told Mallory she would have to be at forward, so she sank deep into practicing shot drills. She thought of those who called her the Quitter. So on the nights when there was no formal practice, she spent hours passing and kicking in the backyard.
The night before, Tim worked with her until he gave in, saying Mally had worn him out. And Mally was bushed, too, and chilled, as though she were coming down with something. She woke every hour that Friday night, annoyed by the slow crawl of the red digital numbers of the clock. If she couldn’t get some decent sleep, her reactions would be slow, her understanding of the scope of the field—Mally’s best gift as a player—would be blurry. Finally, at four a.m., she got up in disgust, brushed her teeth, and sat in silence on the back porch, cross-legged, for hours, visualizing plays.
Just after seven, she made coffee for her dad.
“Jitters?” he asked. Mallory nodded. It was more than that, though. She hadn’t dreamed, but something was nagging at her.
“You’re ready, superstar,” Tim said. “You own that field. It’s your home turf.”
“I know, Dad. Where’s Merry?”
“Took off on her run already. She told you to hit ’em.”
“
Merry
got up at seven o’ clock to run?”
“Don’t have a heart attack,” Tim told her. “She wants to catch most of the game. She’ll come later with Mom. Ready?”
“Ready,” Mallory told him, but her body was disconnected from her head.
Adam climbed into the backseat of Tim’s truck with its stencil of soccer balls on the side, lined up like dominoes.
Meanwhile, Merry was still running. She felt happy and strong, even though she was alone. Although her mother had offered the night before to come with her, Aunt Karin had called first thing in the morning, asking if she could possibly bring baby Timothy over to see if he had an ear infection or a virus. The poor kid had been up all night sobbing. All in all, Merry thought, it was just as well. She needed to finally accept that she was safe—anywhere in Ridgeline, her sleepy little town with its nightmares washed away.
When she got to the foot of the hill path, she had a strong desire to see if she could make it up past where she and Mally had turned back the day before. And so she began to climb up toward Crying Woman Ridge, up to the opening of Canada Road. Her legs wanted to quit on her. Her lungs wanted to quit on her. But it still felt good, pushing herself to the wall, thinking of Mally running nonstop for almost two straight hours at her game. Finally, she hit the top of the path. On impulse, though she’d already run two miles, some of it uphill, she turned and headed toward their family camp. A little fire road she’d never noticed looped away off “their” road, directly under the rocky shoulder of the ridge, and seemed a natural place to make her turn.
So, barely running now, Merry slowly gave herself over to the pleasure of thinking about how great it would feel to head downhill. She nearly passed the odd, rectangular clearing at the back of the loop, where someone had cut and piled brush to make a clear space probably ten by sixteen feet wide. Stones were placed at regular intervals—some smaller mounds were encircled by little stones, larger ones marked by stones taken from the ridge, from the top where the ridge dropped away sharply to the Tipiskaw River that ran through the New York State hills surrounding Deptford and Ridgeline. From the Brynn camp, a long path veered back and forth to take walkers down to fish or swim. But the bigger kids—although they were routinely forbidden—loved to climb up and look over at the places where the sheer drop was sixty feet.
Merry stopped, lunged into a stretch, and stared at the stones.
When she realized what they were, her throat closed as though she were swallowing her own heart.
She turned to beat it back down the hill.
But David stepped out from behind the brush pile and said, “Hi, Merry. I know it’s you, because I passed your sister, the Terminator, at Memorial Field on the way here.” Paralyzed, Merry listened as David said, “So, you see, it’s just you and me, Meredith. I knew that eventually the two of you would make it up here. And someday, it would be only one of you. Like when that bitch Mallory had a game. I can explain how you followed me up here and told me how depressed you were. I tried to stop you. I tried to grab you, but you were too fast for me.” He made a sad clown face.
Meredith began to run, but she was tired and David gained on her in an instant. He grabbed her shirt and then her hair.
“My mother knows where I am,” she said.
“So what?” David asked, letting go of her hair and then twisting her arm up behind her back until she cried out. “It’ll all be over by the time she gets here.”
“David, why?” Meredith pleaded. “Why?” She had to buy time. “You’re not a bad boy. You can get better.”
“Are you saying I’m sick?”
“David, you know you’re sick!”
“You stupid cow. Remember how Mallory felt when she held that nail gun on me? I feel that way all the time.”
“No, you don’t!” Merry said. “You’re sweet to Kim, and to your mom!”
“Only because I have to live with them,” David said.
“So the girl at the tennis courts? She wasn’t the first?”
“You don’t need to know that. But, okay, what does it matter? She wasn’t. Not by a long shot.”
“None of them is . . .”
“Yes, one of them is! And no one knows where she’s buried,” David said cheerfully. “Or even who she is.”
“Please let me go,” Meredith said. “Please think of Kim! Kim loves you! You can’t do this! Let me go. I won’t tell. I didn’t tell before, did I?”
“Not a chance,” David said.
“Then let go of my arm so I can pray.” She fell to her knees on the hard ground. “David, you’re a Catholic, like us. Don’t you know that—”
“Do you think I’m afraid of hell, little troll? I
am
hell,” David said.
Meredith dropped her head on her hands.
Siow
,
Mal
, she whispered in her mind.
Siow
,
I’m afraid
.
I hurt.
Across town, Mallory sneaked the shot into the net after the tall forward, Trevor Solwyn, faked a shot and passed to her. But Mallory didn’t get up from her slide and do the happy dance.
Trevor, for weeks regretting her snarky comment, jogged to her side. “Mally? Mal?” Trevor said, and shook Mally’s shoulder. Mallory’s eyes were half closed, her lips pale. “Coach!” Trevor shouted. “Mally hit her head! I think she’s knocked out!”
Tim was down four tiers of bleachers in four seconds, Adam scrambling behind him. Madison Kirkie’s mother, a doctor, also jumped down onto the grass, all 180 pounds of her, and trotted over to where Mallory lay. In a row, like young deer, the two teams of leggy girls stood with their arms linked, silent with fear. But before Dr. Kirkie could get there, Mallory was awake, then quickly up on her knees, screaming, “Meredith! Meredith!”
When Tim got to her, she grabbed him with all her strength, almost ripping the sleeve from his windbreaker with the team logo from Domino Sporting Goods.
“Daddy!” she shouted, not caring who heard. “Daddy, we have to leave right now! We have to leave right now.”
The coach said, “She needs to see a doctor, Tim. She conked herself a good one!”
“Mallory, settle down, honey. I’m going to take you in to urgent care. It’s our second home now,” Tim said. He had to drag Mallory toward the car as she protested.
“Be okay, Mally!” called Madison and Casey. Trevor bit her lip.
Mallory was already pleading with her father. “Dad, please! This is like the other time! At the cheerleading meet. I didn’t hit my head, Dad! Meredith is in trouble! Please, Daddy, listen. Remember when we were little and she was lost in the woods? This is like that! Daddy, please!”
An electrical prickle ran along Tim’s palms. “I’ll call your mother,” he said, and did. They spoke briefly. When he snapped the cell shut, he said, “Meredith should be back from her run any minute, and your mother thinks you may be having little seizures—”
“Daddy! Merry left
before
us! That was hours ago! Our run takes forty minutes. Call home. Call Merry’s cell.” Tim did, and listened to his own voice answer the home telephone. He was frightened then, unsure what to believe. Merry’s cell rang and he heard her message: “Merry Brynn! Your turn!”
“She’d answer! She always answers! Always! You know Merry would rather cut her finger off than miss a phone call! Please listen,” Mallory begged. “I’ll go to the hospital. I’ll have my brain scanned. I’ll let you check me in. But first drive up to where we run, almost to the camp. Please, Daddy!” Tim hesitated. He would never forget the time that Mallory “talked” tiny Merry out of the woods.
But Campbell told him to meet her at the hospital. “Oh God!” Mallory screamed, throwing herself around in her seat belt like a chained animal. “Give me the phone, Dad! Give me the damn phone! At least that.”
In shock, Tim handed Mallory the cell and backed slowly out of the parking lot.
She dialed Drew’s home phone, getting a wrong number. “Shit!!” she cried, and Tim, about to shush her, stopped at the look on her face.
Mallory dialed again. No answer.
She couldn’t remember Drew’s cell.
Stop
, she thought. Drew’s cell.
Five oh nine . . . five oh eight. Yes!
But Drew’s voice mail picked up. Sobbing, Mallory shouted, “It might already be too late! You have to go to our camp. Drew! Drew! Wake up!”
“Honey, that’s enough,” Tim said, and Mallory threw the telephone at him.
It was not prayer to God that Merry was repeating—although she did ask God to spare her life, or at least, if he could not, to spare her pain—but
Siow siow, Mallory! Mallory! Mallory! I’m hurt, hurt, hurt! Danger, danger, danger!
She could hear her sister’s agitation. Mally heard her. Mally would come, but would it be soon enough?
“Get up!” David told her roughly. “You could’ve said the whole Mass by now.”
“I was praying for you, David,” Merry said. She didn’t know if he heard her. His eyes were like identical pieces of marbled glass, and flecks of spit collected at the corners of his mouth.
“I’ll give you one chance,” he said. “Go ahead and run. Climb up those rocks, little cheerleader, and I’ll count to twenty.”
“Where?” Merry asked, stalling, stalling.
Mally! Mally!
she screamed in silence.
“You choose. It’s your funeral,” David said.
Meredith tried to pick out a path along the top of the ridge that she could run, as she’d run the balance beam when she was little. Slowly, she began to climb, five feet, six feet, David counting behind her. Another few inches. She gained the top and turned to face David.
“Ready or not, here I come!” he whooped. Merry took a deep breath. She did not need to look down at the jagged rocks that lined the riverbed. If she pushed David, she would still go over.
She gathered her determination and made her choice.
Mally
, she called once more, but gently.
Giggy.
Then she drew herself up.
Just as David’s hands gained the boulder an inch from her feet, Merry flung herself forward over David’s head in a full front flip, landing on both knees, stones biting into her flesh. At once, she was up and running, already imagining the strong hand grabbing her collar, jerking her down. But instead, she heard David roar, “What the hell?”
Merry froze in mid-stride. Did she dare to look back? Would this be her last fraction of a second on earth?
Then she heard a scream—a scream so piercing that it barely sounded human—followed by the sound she would never be able to describe, the wet, heavy, impossibly grotesque thud.
She scrambled to the top of the ridge and looked down, horribly far down, then shut her eyes against the sight of David’s leather jacket, his head, mottled with red . . .
“No!” Merry cried. She grabbed her own head and slid down the rocks, creeping past the graves, moaning and wondering how she would ever make it to the bottom.
At the opening of Canada Road, her legs gave out. And though she didn’t know it, so did her consciousness.