Twins (11 page)

It seemed more and more possible that her identical twin had gone on dates not to dance, not to see movies, not to park the car and kiss … but to hurt people.

“I don’t want to go after all,” said Mary Lee. “Take me back to the school. I have to get my car. Katy, I’ll take you home.”

“Oh, I don’t want to go home,” said Katy quickly. “I mean, this is pretty exciting. I don’t get to do stuff very often.”

Jon Pear’s laughter filled the glossy car. He clicked on a CD and turned the volume up high enough to move tectonic plates. Rap. Words of rage and hate blended with screaming instruments.

Seventy-five miles an hour. Impossible to open a door and escape, even if the doors opened. The driver, however, controlled the locks.

The suburbs ended.

The city began.

It was a city whose symphony and museum, fabulous department stores, and famous shops lay in the very center. Ring upon ring of abandoned wrecks of buildings circled the safe part. The safe part — joke; this was not a city with safe parts — was contained in a very small area. People drove into the city only on the raised highway, keeping themselves a story higher than the human debris below.

It was a place where garbage was permanent and graffiti was vicious. The homeless died in pain, and the drug dealers prowled like packs of animals looking for victims.

Mary Lee did not like to look out the window whenever she went into the city, because the alien world down there was so horrid she could not believe they were citizens of the same country. Guilt and fear cancelled each other out, and she just wanted not to see it, and not to let it see her.

Jon Pear got off the highway.

“Not here,” said Mary Lee in alarm.

The road onto which he exited was pockmarked like a disease. Shadows moved of their own accord, and fallen trash crawled with rats.

“Jon Pear, you got off too soon,” said Katy nervously. “People never get off the highway here. Get back on! The only safe exit is another mile up. This is a terrible neighborhood, even I know that. Jon Pear, we can’t drive here!”

Jon Pear smiled and drove here. He drove very slowly, the way only a big, heavy car with automatic transmission can move: creeping like a flood over flat land. So slowly they could see into the broken windows and falling metal fire escapes, down the trash-barricaded alleys and past the sagging doors of empty buildings.

A gang in leather and chains moved out of the shadows to see what was entering their territory.

“Jon Pear,” said Mary Lee, too afraid to look and much too afraid not to look, “what are you doing?”

It was impossible to imagine that human beings lived here. It was another planet … as the mind of Jon Pear was another planet.

The gang could have enveloped the car, but perhaps they were too surprised, for they simply watched, and Jon Pear turned the corner.

Here, not even streetlights worked; they were long destroyed. Not even cats prowled. A stripped car lay rusting on the sidewalk. Distant sirens as distant as foreign lands whined.

Jon Pear stopped the car.

What if the car breaks down here? thought Mary Lee.

She tried to picture her sister doing this and could not. Madrigal, to whom beauty and order and perfection mattered?

“You better sit up front with us, Katy,” said Jon Pear. “Madrigal, move over closer to me. Katy, get out of the car and get in front with Madrigal.”

“I don’t want to get out,” said Katy, terrified.

Jon Pear swiveled in the driver’s seat. He extended his right arm in a leisurely manner, so it lay over the back of the seat. His golden smile filled his entire face, and he swiveled his head and widened the smile even more.

Katy had no smile whatsoever.

“What do you think we’re going to do?” said Jon Pear. “Leave you here?”

There was a soft friendly click, and the locks on the four doors rose, like tiny antennas.

“Come, Katy,” said Jon Pear, “come sit in front with us. Just open your door and walk around.”

I can’t let her do that, thought Mary Lee. He might — he might actually — no. Nobody would do that. But what if he — no. I refuse to believe that —

Katy got out.

Jon Pear, his smile completely intact, as if he had become a wax figure of himself and would gloat for eternity, reached back, shut her door himself, and locked up.

“No,” whispered Mary Lee, and she was not saying
no
to Jon Pear, or
no
to the neighborhood, but
no
to Madrigal, who had done this before.

Jon Pear put the car in drive but did not set his foot on the accelerator, so that the car moved of its own accord, only a few miles an hour, and Katy could keep up with them if she ran fast enough.

Katy pounded on the metal of the car. “Stop the car! Let me in! What are you doing? Do you want me to get killed?” She was screaming. Her own screams would bring the gang.

Mary Lee was immobilized. This, then, was the entertainment of her own twin. Evil without vampires, evil without rituals, evil without curses or violence.

The simple and entertaining evil of just driving away.

Katy’s face was distorted with terror. Her fingers scrabbled helplessly against the safety glass.

“I love panic,” said Jon Pear. “Look what it does to her face.”

I should kick him, thought Mary Lee, disable the car, call the police, hit him with the tire iron. “Jon Pear,” she said. The words hardly formed in her mouth. Or perhaps her mouth hardly formed words. Everything was wrong with everything. “Stop the car. We have to let Katy back in.”

“We never let them back in, Madrigal. Don’t be ridiculous.”

We never
. So her twin had done this more than once and, presumably, once to Scarlett. No wonder Van hated her.

But why hadn’t police been called? Why hadn’t authorities stopped Jon Pear and Madrigal? If the whole school knew, why weren’t people doing anything?

She would have to tell her parents.

But what parents would believe that their sweet beautiful darling daughter had a hobby like this?

No trigger pulled. No match lit. No poisons given.

Just driving away. That was all you had to do. Drive away.

“What did you do to Scarlett?” said Mary Lee.

“Me?” He lowered his eyes. “I beg your pardon.
You
chose Scarlett.”

Katy screamed and scrabbled and crawled on the sides of the car.

“And what happened?” said Mary Lee.

“You well know. You orchestrated it.”

“Tell me again.”

Jon Pear relaxed. “Oh, you just want a bedtime story. You just want to wallow in the details again. Well, she was much more scared than Katy. I like talking about it.”

“Talk” was a nice, friendly, folksy word. This was not “talk.” This was obscenity.

“Scarlett didn’t even run after us. She just folded up on the sidewalk. Then rats came out to investigate. She didn’t get bitten or anything, but they walked on her. She went insane for a while, I guess. It was so neat. We followed her block after block, just watching. She was seeing rats everywhere. She ran deeper into the tenements instead of out. She kept screaming ‘Help!’ As if anybody here would help anybody. They were probably all laughing, too, if they heard over their radios and televisions.”

Katy stumbled and fell, leaping up with the strength of terror, trying to climb right up the car. Jon Pear, amused, accelerated. “Don’t you love it when they panic so much they aren’t human anymore,” he said.

Katy was not human anymore. Panic had scraped off everything but the desire to survive.

“That was beautiful. I love fear,” whispered Jon Pear. “I love panic.”

Jon Pear turned a corner,

A dozen blocks away were the glittering prosperous lights of safe downtown. If Katy kept running, she’d make it. But Mary Lee could not even roll down the window to yell instructions. Jon Pear had sealed the car.

And even if Katy arrived in the safe part, what then? Did she have the money to phone? Would she go to the police? Would she call those parents that didn’t care where she was?

“Why didn’t the Maxsoms do something to — ” she could not say
us
. “I mean, why didn’t Scarlett and Van — ”

“They never tell,” said Jon Pear. “I don’t know why. People are ashamed. Victims always think it’s their fault. That’s one of the neat things about this, don’t you think? They blame themselves. They tell half of it, or none of it, or lie about it, or wait months.”

He paused, not worrying about traffic, because no one sane would drive here, and looked back to see if Katy was emerging from the pools of dark. She wasn’t. Perhaps she was already trapped.

“Old Scarlett was so blown away,” said Jon Pear, “that even though a fire truck happened by and found her, she got her story so wrong it was comic. She got the times wrong and the description of the car wrong and the rats wrong. You and I really couldn’t have done it! Hysterical. Scarlett set us free. Van’s a little irritated, of course. Scarlett spent two weeks in a mental ward, getting rid of rat visions. I found a rat and put it in her locker, and she ended up back in the hospital. The only thing wrong was I wasn’t there to see her face when she opened the locker. There’s no point in doing this stuff if you don’t get to see them panic.”

Mary Lee would have preferred to find that Jon Pear had fangs and supernatural skills. But he was just a teenager without a soul or a heart, without a conscience or a care.

And so was my identical twin
.

Jon Pear explained himself with the open heart of a lover. “Jon Pear has always been alone,” he said, as if Jon Pear were some third party. “Who would have guessed that he’d find a partner?” He held her hand as he drove, and squeezed it affectionately.

Jon Pear swam under the water of evil. It lapped up against Mary Lee, as if she were a pebble on the lake of evil, soon to be covered by a wave of it.

“It’s wrong,” she said to him.

“Of course it’s wrong. That’s the fun part.” This time he held her in his arms as if about to declare wedding vows. “Oh Madrigal!” he breathed. He drank in her beauty, and Mary Lee saw that he truly was in love.

She would have thought evil people were incapable of love, but she was wrong: Evil could love just as deeply.

For Jon Pear loved Madrigal.

“Oh, Madrigal, I’m so glad Mary Lee is gone out of our lives,” said Jon Pear. “Those foolish, friendly, forgiving thoughts she was always cluttering up your mind with are gone forever.”

Mary Lee spun out into space, as if she were a black hole, an eternal sorrow. He kissed her and in spite of the horror it was a wonderful kiss, because it was truly full of love. Who would have thought that love could flourish in an evil soul?

“You’re just like me,” Jon Pear told her. “For you, people are no different from sheep or ants or hamsters. Just breathers, to provide entertainment.”

The gold curtain dropped over his eyes.

“And now,” said Jon Pear lovingly, opening her door, “I want to see you scared, too.”

I
JUST WON’T MOVE
, she said to herself.

I’ll just stand very still, right here in the street.

Nothing can happen to me in the middle of the pavement.

Jon Pear sat within the locked car, the tiny little lights on his dashboard flickering upward under his chin. He was laughing, his mouth open, his white teeth tinted by the lights.

His glittering golden eyes waited for her to panic.

His chest lifted and fell too fast, a panting dog ready to bite.

She could not look at him. He was not human.

Mary Lee looked away, down the street into the total black and up the street where Jon Pear’s headlights made queerly yellow shadows. She needed an ally. Somebody to stand with.

This is no different from boarding school, she thought, no different from the cafeteria. All anybody wants in life is somebody to stand with!

Mary Lee called out to Katy, but terror had robbed her of the air to support her voice. Only a mumble came from her mouth. Nobody came to her aid.

A rat, however, came to her feet.

She had not known a rat would be that large, that sure of itself. She had not known its little eyes would fix on hers, making its little rat plans. She had not known its long, hairless tail would be so plump.

The rat grabbed her dangling shoelace in its teeth, its teeth yellowy green. Now the scream Mary Lee had not been able to produce invented itself.

She felt her face change shape and her jaw stretch, she felt her eyes scream along with her mouth, widening and gaping. She heard the terrible sound of her own horror scraping its way out of her lungs.

She kicked. She didn’t want even her shoe to touch the rat. She had to get it off her! Get away!

Mary Lee, too, tried to mount the car body, tried to tip the windows down, tried to tear the doors off the hinges — anything — just to get inside, be safe, be civilized.

Jon Pear was delighted.

Bright-eyed, he watched her.

The rat followed.

She choked on her own scream.

How silent was the city. How soundless the rat.

There was no urban din. No radio. No engine. No horn. No bark.

Just the heaving of her own chest, the sucking of her own lungs.

She ran. She had to run. She didn’t know if she was running from Jon Pear — sitting all normal and cozy like an ordinary high-school boy waiting for the light to change — or from the rat.

Only the rat followed her.

The street belonged to the rat. She had to leave the street. She had to run faster than the rat. She would go into this building — she would — but no human beings went into this building. She made it up the first step, and up the second, and while her foot was still in midair, reaching for the third, she saw how the doors and windows were solid: blank, with splintered plywood nailed on to make empty boxes of night out of ordinary buildings.

The third step collapsed. Sneaker and sock were slashed as her foot went down. Down into air, down into nothing, down where probably not just rats but also snakes hid! Down with spiders and things that bit and things that chewed.

Mary Lee had not known she possessed as many screams. They came rolling out of her like links on a chain, one after another, huge shining polished screams.