Another Little Piece (21 page)

Everyone in the youth prayer group can see it as clearly as the outline of a condom in the back pocket of his crisp khaki pants.

The door clicks closed behind them, and the speculation begins.

They’re doing it.

They’ve done it, she’s pregnant, and now with nothing to lose, they’re doing it again.

No surprise, everyone knows what her sister’s like. Twins look alike. Act alike.

Everyone is talking, except me. Folding my hands in my lap, I pretend to pray, as if that’s my true reason for coming here. Really I’m waiting. In a few minutes I’ll walk out that door too, and they can whisper about me as well.

Right now they’re wondering why I’m here, when the plaster Virgin Mary on my aunt’s front lawn makes it clear that I belong at the Catholic church at the other end of town. They know how I came to their school this year, transferring all the way from California. A world away and yet, thanks to Facebook, close enough for all the rumors to follow. Math whiz and cheerleader. Smart, pretty, popular, and—as if that wasn’t enough—the nicest girl in school too. That’s who I had been. Except that wasn’t me. That had been Rose. The real Rose.

Her old classmates had been all too ready to spread the tale of how on Memorial Day weekend, right before the end of her sophomore year, she changed completely. She was at a friend’s beach house up in Santa Barbara, and this freak boy from school showed up. A stalker thing, everyone agreed. He’d been her lab partner in chemistry. That’s probably what made him think he had a chance with her. Couldn’t be anything else, he was so out of her league. Half his face was all messed up from when his house, which doubled as a meth lab, exploded. His mom had died and his dad went to jail. Everyone figured he’d quickly follow in one of his parents’ footsteps. The weird thing was, Rose left with him and didn’t return until the next morning. No one knew that they’d fallen in love. Or that he was the one who refused to be with her, that he told her it would never work out. But Rose had never been denied anything she’d wanted, and she wanted him more than anything. So she got him . . . and lost everything else.

After that, she wasn’t the same. They called it trauma. That was why she could no longer remember the cheers she’d done a hundred times. Why the advanced equations she’d easily solved the week before completely befuddled her. But that was nothing compared to the guy she chose to date at the new school her parents sent her to after that disastrous Memorial Day. Not that she chose. I didn’t choose him either. He couldn’t have been more different from the boy Rose had given her soul for. Her new boyfriend, Paul, was a jerk, best known for getting a Land Rover on his sixteenth birthday and for roaming the halls calling out “Hey, fag” to anyone he didn’t like. He was different, too, though. He’d changed just a week after Rose arrived in Ohio. But nobody really noticed. Going from jerk to full-fledged asshole isn’t such a huge jump.

My cell beeped. Speak of the devil. A text from my boyfriend the full-fledged asshole.

Is it done yet?

I don’t respond to him. Instead I send a text to Rose’s mother in California. A few weeks ago we’d made awkward small talk over the Thanksgiving turkey. I could feel her eyes on me constantly, searching for the daughter she’d once known.

I am in love with Paul. We are running away together. Don’t look for me. You’ll never see me again.

It is all a lie. Except for the last part. Her mother never will see Rose again. No one will.

I put the phone back in my purse. Everyone keeps talking, pretending not to notice me. I walk out the door and down the empty hallway. Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I feel the weight of the razor as it thumps against my back.

It will hurt me worse than that before this night is over.

The hallway is gray and has the same musty smell as the rest of the building. I go the way Jaclyn told me. Right out the door and then straight on. I want the last door on the left. Someone attempted to paint the words
Child Care
on the wood in a cheery bright red, but they were too heavy-handed, and wiggling lines drip from several of the letters. Above the words is a small square of glass. I peer inside.

Voyeuristic. As part of Allison Swan’s SAT prep, her parents had her write out a page of the dictionary every day. My vocabulary grew expeditiously that year. I’d previously thought
voyeuristic
meant someone who liked to travel, but really it’s a fancy word for a Peeping Tom. For me. It’s funny to think I hate this part, when everything that comes after it is really much worse. But yeah, I hate this part and am relieved that the room is completely dark. I can’t see a thing.

“Your boyfriend slept with my sister last night.” Jaclyn had stood next to my table in the corner of the library I liked to sometimes hide in, needing a break from the whole high school experience. I knew who she was. Had made a point of finding her face in the crowd after her name had shown up as the first of two choices on a piece of paper. She was a grade lower than me, and this was my first time seeing her up close. Her frumpy clothes and the big wooden cross hanging around her neck instantly marked her as being part of the Fundies crowd.

“Um, okay,” I’d said, uncertain if this was part of her religious beliefs—confessing other people’s sins.

She went bright red, and her face scrunched up as if I’d just cursed her out or something. Then she turned and walked away.

“Wait,” I called, and she did. I hesitated, pretending to think about what to say next, pretending the decision hadn’t been made the moment I saw her crack. I could never resist picking the broken ones, not merely damaged but broken so badly they already had tiny little pieces missing.

Jaclyn waited, saying nothing, betraying no impatience with twitchy fingers or jangling knees. I felt it though. She’d come to me, wanting to shake things up. Wanting to change her life. Of course, she’d intended to piss her sister off, or get my boyfriend in trouble. I had something bigger in mind, and it told me to skip the soft sell. She was ready to buy.

“There’s something you want. Isn’t there? But you think you can’t have it.” I paused, letting her repeat my words in her head and make them her own. “But what if you could? What if it was yours for the asking?”

She stared at me, quiet and still. Her chest rose as she took a deep breath. “Then I’d ask.”

Looking back, it was almost too easy. When she’d pointed Steven out to me, I’d known something wasn’t right. It didn’t add up. I could’ve backed out; there was still time to choose the second girl. But I hadn’t, and now I am here.

“Sorry, Jaclyn,” I whisper, and press the door latch.

“No, stop!”

I freeze, but the words aren’t meant for me.

“I said stop. Steven, I don’t want this.”

“Yes, you do. You said you did. You’re just scared. It’ll be okay.”

“No-oh—”

The single word is cut off. Muffled.

My initial surprise is already gone, or maybe I wasn’t really all that surprised. Whatever her reason for choosing Steven, it wasn’t love. I’d known that. But still, she’d made the deal. No returns or refunds.

On the other side of the door I hear the scuffling sounds of a struggle. Jaclyn is a small girl; five minutes and it will be over. If it bothers me to hear them, I just need to cover my ears. Then he’ll leave, and I’ll finish the deal. Yes, it’s terrible. A new low after decades spent in quicksand.

There is a high-pitched squeak. Either his excitement or her fear. The twenty-pound weight that constantly sits on my chest, making it hard to breathe, shifts. It burns, beautifully. My breaths come faster, and they are filled with fire.

I push the door open. Fluorescent light from the hallway spills into the dark room. They are outside the brightest wedge of direct light, in a far corner, and haven’t even noticed my entrance.

He straddles Jaclyn, who is facedown on a colorful rug. One of his hands keeps her arms pinned together, twisted behind her back. Her ankle-length jean skirt has been pulled up to her thighs, leaving her legs white and exposed. His other hand jerks at his brown braided leather belt, struggling to get it undone. Her eyes are squeezed close, and her mouth is free. She could scream, yell, and people would come running. But those people are just as likely to stone her as help. Instead she softly pleads. “Don’t do this, Steven. Please don’t do this.”

He doesn’t even hear her.

The door snicks closed behind me, and this is what makes Steven stop.

“What was that?”

I am already moving across the room. My eyes adjusting to the darkness, hunting Steven. The athletic body that I live in finally remembers how to high kick. Fluid and graceful. A shift of weight, and my foot flicks out, finding the sweet soft spot directly behind his chin. His jaw snaps closed with a clack, and his head leads the rest of his body in a backward arc, until he connects with the floor.

He groans; I advance. Grabbing two handfuls of his blue button-down shirt, I haul him up and slam him back down.
Thunk.
His head hits the floor. He blinks blearily. I do it again. And again. And again. Until his eyes stay closed and his mewling mouth goes slack. Only then do I release him, even though it’s not enough. I want to find my razor and slice him to bits.

One step back from him and then another and another. Finally my blood stops pounding so loudly that it fills my ears, and I hear the sound of hoarse and ragged breathing. Like someone desperately trying not to cry, and failing. I look toward Jaclyn, but she is wide-eyed and silent. My fingers find my cheeks and feel the wetness there. The last time I cried . . . it was quite a while ago. Funny, I remember it being a cleansing experience. A release. But this is just messy. And ill timed.

Tired of fighting my shaky legs, I sink to the ground beside Jaclyn. “It’s time to pay,” I inform her, but there is none of the usual steel in my voice. It’s more of a warning.
Run now.
She only nods.

“Sure,” she says. And then she snickers. “I’m an idiot. Why did I make him want me? That makes no sense at all. I should’ve asked you to make me want him.”

Her laughter is sharp and cutting. I close my eyes against it. “I need you to say the words. ‘Yes, I will pay.’”

She quiets, and I think that now she will resist. I am wrong again. “Of course. I always pay. Always. So, yes. Yes, I will pay.”

After this, her fate is sealed. And so is mine.

HEARTS FLOAT

Dex held me while I was away. And I had been somewhere else. Every time I found another piece of the past, I wasn’t remembering it so much as reliving it. As I blinked back to the present, he stayed silent, giving me a few minutes to reorient myself.

“Where’s Jess?” I finally asked.

“Right here,” she said, and I looked up to see her stepping out of the trees at the far end of the clearing, a large glass jar in her hand. “I brought Jaclyn’s heart, thought you might want to see it.”

It was exactly what I’d come for. To witness with my own two eyes that some solid piece of Jaclyn still existed. But as Jess placed the jar directly in front of me, I didn’t want to see. Not anymore. And yet I found it impossible to look away.

The heart bobbed in some sort of liquid. Who knew that hearts floated, yet there it was, doing just that. It was almost calming to look at. A muted pink, instead of dark red; throw some fake snow and glitter in there, and you’d have a macabre snow globe. As if showing off, the heart spun in a circle, and I could see the missing section from where Annaliese had repeatedly bitten in.

The nausea came quickly. I had only enough time to slap my hand over my mouth and rush toward the tree line before my bottomless cup of coffee came up and out. Even then I couldn’t shake the taste of that heart. I closed my eyes and willed them to picture something else.

Bunnies. Butterflies. Bites of a bright-red bloody heart. There was no escaping it.

The worst part was, the heart hadn’t made me sick. I’d puked because I’d been fighting against the hunger. Slowly I uncurled my hands. I’d had them clenched so tightly my fingers were stiff. Not giving in to the hunger was like trying to hold my breath until everything went black. It went against the body’s instinct. We need air to live. And the part of me that was the hunger needed that heart. Needed to take another bite. Needed to finish it off.

Footsteps crunched behind me. “It’s all right,” Dex said softly. “She put it away.”

“Okay,” I said, but it wasn’t. Jess had done it on purpose, had wanted to see me suffer. I couldn’t blame her. Over the years I’d taken pounds and pounds of flesh; all she took was my breakfast.

After a few rounds of breath strips I was able—with Dex’s help—to get on my feet again.

“We should go,” he said to Jess, and I knew he said it not because of our time constraints but because he didn’t want her to hurt me again.

“No,” I said, surprising myself. “She has to finish her story. When Jaclyn left . . . for good.”

Jess studied me for a minute. Then, looking toward the treetops, she smiled. “I can walk and talk. Wouldn’t want you to be late getting home.”

She didn’t wait for us to agree but simply strode out of the trees, in the same direction we’d come from. Dex and I fell into step behind her.

“After Jaclyn became you, she started dating Steven—”

“No,” I interrupted. “It wasn’t Steven. Not anymore.” The boy who I’d beaten senseless as Rose was the same boy whose arms I’d flown into as Jaclyn trying to send a message to Gwen. Eric must’ve taken him soon after I became Jaclyn.

Jess faltered for the space of half a step, but then with a nod began moving steadily once more. “Good. Good riddance. He deserved it.”

I couldn’t argue with that. I was glad that Eric had chosen him . . . even if it didn’t make sense. From what I’d remembered, he didn’t usually take the victims of the lust spell. If he had, then right now he would be Logan instead of the round little redheaded boy. Given a choice, I’m sure that would have been his preference.

“At first Mom was thrilled about Steven and Jaclyn,” Jess continued. “They were both devoted to the church, and she believed they were only holding hands and praying together. Then she caught them making out. At the time I thought Jaclyn was so stupid, getting caught like that. Only later, when Jaclyn told me how you’d had it all staged, did I get it.