Nothing Bad Is Going to Happen (13 page)

I hang up and put the phone in my lap. Dom disabled all my booby traps after Dr. Ferguson came, and I'd probably be feeling really shitty about that right now except the Ativan has taken all my bad feelings away. I watch
The Twilight Zone
, idly thinking about devils and friendship and whether Davey's tubes hurt until my phone buzzes in my lap and I snatch it up. The automated recording for the Green Bay Correctional Facility blares in my ear.

“Ralph,” I say once I can hear him breathing. Not even drugs can slow my heart rate.

“Kippy,” he says, drawing out the word for so long that I think
he
must be on drugs or something. “I thought I'd call because a friend of mine just relayed a message. Apparently you received a special email. Congratulations,
Kippy. I'm so happy this is going the way I'd planned.”

“Ralph, who is it?”

“Who's who?”

“Cut the crap. Your guy on the outside. The one who's selling the Chewbacca head. The one who hurt Davey. Is it Daniel Shully? Dollar Dan? Was it your idea for him to try to, like, rape me with those antlers?”

“What did this person do, exactly?” Ralph's voice is dark, empty.

If his guy on the outside is
not
Dollar Dan, I can imagine that Ralph might encourage whoever is helping him to
kill
Dollar Dan.

“It's nothing. It was just a misunderstanding with antlers,” I mumble.

“How do you know it's a guy, Kippy?” He draws out my name even longer this time. “As far as I know, Davey hurt himself.”

“Please,” I whisper. I remind myself that Dom always locks the doors when he leaves. We have kitchen knives and blunt objects, and hypothetically speaking, I know how to kill a man with one swift upward movement to the nose. But even with the Ativan, my heart is racing. “You can tell me. I won't get you in trouble.” I rack my brain. What does one say to woo a narcissist? “You've already won, Ralph. Telling me doesn't undo that. Think
of Davey, think of Ruth.” I feel sick. “Think of all you've accomplished—”

“Shhhhh,” he says, and it's silent for two whole commercials while I wait for him to finish.

“This isn't happening, Crazy Kippy,” he whispers finally. “None of it is real except for in your mind.”

It's quiet again, but this time he doesn't come back, and when I look at the phone there's no active call, just the screenshot of Davey that I keep as my background photo and the little swipe thing that says
Unlock Phone.
I have to check my incoming calls to remind myself that this one really happened.

Blocked Call
at the very top.

I call Jim Steele's voice mail again and remind him to be careful.

Dragons, pirates, angels, elves,
a cow that looks like Satan, a cow that looks like a llama, a ten-foot-tall replica of Sheriff Staake's face. There's even a gigantic smiling mouth full of perfect teeth, carved by the local Friendship dental hygienists.

“Good turnout,” Dom says, surveying the Frostbite Challenge fairgrounds with approval. “I'll go get us drinks.”

I nod, busy rereading the texts on my phone.

I already texted him saying, “Cool,” or whatever. But I decide to text him again. It might be annoying, but I'm starting to get worried.

Then I decide to text Libby. I drafted and deleted a million messages to her last night, but she's probably here somewhere, and I'm going to run into her, so I should at least acknowledge I was wrong before that happens.

It's very corny but it's all true. I write and delete the line “Please be my friend” approximately a zillion times before finally going “Agh!” and pressing Send.

“Pickle!” Dom shouts. He waves at me from the drink tent. “You want cocoa?”

I shake my head and shuffle past the giant ice sculpture of a Green Bay Packer's helmet to roam around until I find Libby's piece in all its glory: Jesus on the cross, every thorn on his crown perfectly defined. Her dad is perched on a stepstool, still chipping away at the gash in Jesus's side. Technically every participant is allowed to continue working until the bell sounds tonight at six, at which point all the judges come out and everyone gets drunk.

“Where's Libby?” I ask her dad.

“Oh, she'll be here,” he says, like he doesn't know who I am. Or maybe he's just focused on the spear wound. Or maybe he
does
know who I am and is playing it cold because he thinks I'm a real jerk.

I reach up to scratch my face through the balaclava. I'm wearing it for warmth, per usual, but also to disguise myself so that whoever's coming to meet me will have to look around a little, giving me time to ID them. “Merry Christmas Eve,” I tell Mr. Quinn. He nods, his attention still on Jesus.

“Hey, Pickle,” Dom says, coming up behind me with hot chocolates.

“Thanks,” I say, taking the cocoa. “How did you recognize me with my balaclava on?”

“Um. Because I came with you and you're my daughter?”

“Right.”

“So you're meeting up with some friends?” He scratches his head, looking around like he's bored. “Because I was thinking of taking Rosa—”

“Go.” Usually I'd be annoyed by how much he prioritizes their time together. But I can't exactly stealthily stake out the fairgrounds with my loud, talkative father yapping about his feelings, and how cold it is, and what sorts of ice sculptures folks made “way back when.” (
Some of these very same folks, don'tcha know! Ed there used to be a princess guy. Now he builds turtles. Who'd a thunk
.)

“Rosa and I will meet you at the picnic tables for the judging, okay? Someone built a maze out of ice and we wanna go smooch in it.”

“Cool, thanks for letting me know.”

He pulls me in for a hug and kisses my face through the balaclava. “I'm sorry for everything, Pickle,” he says before taking off without specifying which of the many things there is to feel sorry for. The thing that sucks about family is you're stuck with them no matter how good they are at saying sorry, so you just have to accept their apologies in whatever shape or form they come in. It makes me wish that Libby were my sister or my cousin or something. At least then I wouldn't be sweating into my snowsuit about
whether she's going to return my text. If we were related, we could fight all the time, and I could be like,
Oh, she's mad at me now
, and I could accept that while knowing that it would pass—that it would have to, because we'd be at the same barbecues for the rest of our lives or whatever.

Ugh, I wish I had taken Ativan this morning. Unfortunately I tossed it down the toilet because I didn't want to become a drug addict; part of me was like,
You know what's better than a heart-racing life? An Ativan life.
And then I started to understand why Davey likes drinking and the whole thing got really scary.

I roll my eyes at myself and walk off to blend in, thinking about the heart that Davey was planning on carving. There are hundreds of sculptures out here, and lots of them are hearts, but none of them are anatomical like the one he wanted to make.

I pass a family with three kids chipping away at a family of crudely made ice mermaids. To my right there's a gigantic duck sculpture, and next to it, the icy personage of a man posing with a gun (it might be a cowboy, or it might be Sheriff Staake). While onlookers edge by me, weaving between sculptures, chomping on their brats and slurping cocoa, the ice sculptures themselves reflect the flashing red lights of the ambulance, parked in reserve near the exit, just in case someone gets too drunk.

Something slaps me on the butt and I jump.

“Hey, hottie,” I hear Colt say.

I spin around and twist his finger until he screams. “You!” I snap. “You are the reason that Libby and I could not pass the Bechdel test and once again ended up enemies.” Okay, so mostly it's my fault that we had a falling-out. But I still want to
scream
at him.

“What??” he yelps. “It was a compliment!”

“So, now that I'm off crutches you think it's time to initiate me into ass grabbings?”

“Kippy? I didn't know it was you—you have a fucking balaclava on.” He wrenches his hand away. “I thought you were Libby—you were just talking to her dad, for fuck's sake. What do you want from me?”

“Why would Libby want you touching her ass, either?” I snap. “You accidentally sent that text to me yesterday, you know. She knows about McKetta.”

“Um. Okay.” He laughs, casually flicking his fingers like I barely hurt him. “You're acting like me and her are together or something—”

“You ruined my night last night, did you know that? You ruined what could have been a beautiful sleepover-y end to a difficult day.”

“What are you, a lesbian?” he whispers. “Maybe mind your own business and stop being such a bitch.”

“You're the bitch.” I jab a finger at his chest. “You're the weak and dumb and mean and slutty one. You think you're so powerful because you're surrounded by all these pretty girls—and you want them so you think it's reciprocal. Did it ever occur to you that you're projecting? We're not responsible for how you feel about us. We're not witches!”

“Shit, quit being so full of yourself, Kippy. I never said you were pretty.”

“Oh my God. That's seriously what you just took away from the most articulate monologue of my life? Listen, Colt, if you don't want a piece of this”—I gesture at my snowsuit—“then why did you just touch my ass five seconds ago? You can't confuse me.”

Colt looks confused. “I'm gonna tell Libby you're crazy and she shouldn't hang out with you,” he says, backing away.

“Too late,” I shout. I cackle maniacally to myself before slinking back into stealth mode. They've plowed the excess snow to the corners of the grounds, creating giant mounds. I climb one to watch from, pulling out Mildred's binoculars and checking my watch: ten to four. Ten minutes until I'm supposed to meet whoever was posing as Davey's mom. If Dr. Ferguson could see me now he'd say
I was being paranoid. But I know the truth. I'm the only one who knows the truth.

I train my binoculars on the crowd of people moving through the fairgrounds, trying to pick out familiar faces. There's Libby, joining her dad by their Jesus. Sheriff Staake. Pastor Bill.

Then I see Dollar Dan wearing a long black coat and combat boots, dragging poor Stewart by the leash. He's glancing up and down the fairgrounds like he's looking for someone.

I adjust the magnification so I can see him better.

He's looking right at me, smiling.

I thought that meeting up in a highly populated spot would be safer. But now I feel like surrounding myself with hundreds of potential murderers might not have been the smartest move.

“Yo, Kippy,” someone calls.

Everyone's pointing and shouting about something. I swing my binoculars.

“Kippy!”

I jump. It's Mildred, barreling toward me. “I was looking for you.”

I try to hike farther up the snowbank but slip and slide down, ending up right at her feet. “How did you
recognize me with my balaclava on?”

“Because your hair sticks out the bottom and you dress funny in a way I remember. Hey.” She flashes me a weird look. “We need to talk.”

My heart feels like a brick in my chest. Could Mildred be the fake emailer? I look around to see if anyone's watching us. Ralph did say that it wasn't a man. At the time I thought he was just messing with my head again, but—

“Like now,” she says. “We need to talk right now.” She grabs my arm. She's just gone through a breakup, and she's a little unstable, and she's definitely obsessed with Davey—but is she weak enough to be Ralph's email puppet? There's a psychopath on the loose and now this woman is yanking on me, trying to get me to follow her to her car.

“No,” I yell. Crowds of anxious families pour around us. A megaphone whines in the distance. “Everyone remain calm,” a robotic voice instructs.

“What's going on?” I ask, tugging my arm away.

Something flashes in my peripheral vision and I glance over my shoulder, thinking I see Albus again on her bike.

I shake my head, willing my brain to cooperate, but the ice sculptures are beginning to loom larger than life around me, smiling at me just like Dollar Dan.

I finally wriggle from Mildred's grip, slipping into the
crowd to escape. “Kippy!” she shouts. There's a ring of police officers huddled near an ice sculpture of a mermaid. They're all standing stock-still—fixated on who knows what. I don't have to tell them everything, but maybe one of them could just give me a ride home so Dollar Dan doesn't smile at me again and Mildred doesn't kidnap me.

“Dammit, Bushman,” Staake's voice booms overhead. “You stop right where you are—”

As he scrambles down the metal bleachers, his feet slip out from under him and he lands with a thunk on his butt, dropping the megaphone.

I shuffle closer. “Excuse me?” One of the cops turns to see me and blinks. Behind him, the ice is drenched in blood.

I push my way into the circle.

There in the snow, buried up to his neck at the base of the mermaid's tail, is Jim Steele.

“Jim?” I say, looking around at the cops. “Well—don't just stand there—somebody wake him—he'll get hypothermia.” My words sound sped up. The mermaid sculpture glints in a way that makes my eyes hurt.

I fall on my knees, digging at the snow with my mittens. One of the cops grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to my feet. The snow I raked has streaks of red in it. Jim's face is a bluish color and a deer antler is protruding from
his neck. Brownish gunk is stuck in his beard.

“But I just talked to him,” I say dumbly. “He sent a text.”

His chin tilts slightly—and at first I think he's waking up—but then his cheek hits the snow.

It's just his head.