Nothing Bad Is Going to Happen (6 page)

Whoa. Dom knows the word
patriarchy
?

“Hey,” Rosa continues, sounding a little defensive, “older man is nice for girl. What is problem if he dies and
she goes free like bird from cage? Is feminism, correct?”

I furtively shake my head. Child brides are not feminism. But no one could say that Miss Rosa isn't trying.

Rosa grunts, pressing the phone even harder into her round face, as if proximity might clue her in to what Dom means.

“What?” I whisper.

She holds up a hand for me to wait, letting him talk awhile. “So what is wrong with being slut?” she says finally.

“Wait.” I look around. “Me?”

“In Poland we say
szmata
,” she says to Dom. “Is also word for rag, for cleaning floor. Rag for cleaning floor is very useful. Agh!” She yanks the phone away from her ear like she's been electrocuted. Dom's tinny voice honks furiously from the earpiece.

“Why are you screaming?” Rosa yells, still holding the phone at arm's length. “Now you are yelling too much so my brain is hurting—there is pain on my ears with your baby screams—”

She hangs up, looking exhausted, and shakes her head at me.

“He pleases me sex,” she says. “Is good for to remember when I want killing him.”

“You sound like Yoda.” Also, ew.

“Yes!” She grins. “
Yoga
is also good for making calm. Down dog and child's pose.” She kisses her fingers with a flourish and collapses onto the floor in a tiny ball. “Your muscles, they like it.”

“Did you get my present, Kippy? Hey, don't be a bitch,” Ralph is saying. “I won't hurt you, so long as you're nice.”

The machete in his hand starts to vibrate, emitting a buzzing sound, like an electric shaver.

“Well, this is odd,” he says, laughing at the shivering blade. I force myself to start laughing with him, hoping he won't hurt me. But then his eyes change.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz.

I jolt awake, screaming to the sound of my phone buzzing on the coffee table. The vibrations send it skittering across the glass until it lands with a soft plunk on the carpet. At first I'm relieved that the nightmare is over, but then I remember where I am and why: It's the first official day of winter break, and instead of being sprawled out on Davey's futon—my important body parts draped elegantly with sheets like in some beautiful rom com—I'm scrunched up on Miss Rosa's too-short sofa, drenched with sweat, stuffed into a pair of her teensy pajamas that I'm pretty sure I just ripped from thrashing awake.

Bzz. Bzz. Bzz

I scan the floor for my phone and see a note taped to one of the coffee table legs.

I taught her the phrase
soup's on
a few weeks ago, and I think she loves it because she uses it even when she isn't cooking—like when we're waiting in the drive-through line at McDonald's, or when she's about to enter a room. Or when the Packers are winning.

I toss the note on the table, pick up my phone, and survey the weapons spread out on the floor. When I told Rosa about the shadowy figure at Davey's house, she not only believed me but said that we should arm ourselves. She locked all the doors and brought out a whole bag of knives and stuff that I didn't know she had. Then she taught me how to build some basic booby traps, including trip wires.

Somehow, instead of feeling more freaked out by all the shiny blades, I actually felt safe—finally—to the point where I didn't even need to sleep in the same bed with
Rosa, which was a huge relief, mostly because she snores like a bear.

Anyway, it turns out I feel most at ease when I'm in an environment where my heightened anxiety feels appropriate. Like in a room full of loaded weapons. I should mention that to Dr. Ferguson tonight, at our impromptu session. I wonder if it's a thing.

My phone starts buzzing again in my hand. I don't recognize the number. “Hello?”

“Hey, girrrrl,” Libby says. “How in the glory heck was last night?”

“Oh.” I stupidly didn't put her in my phone because of my no-new-friends policy. If I had, I definitely would have ignored this call.

“Did you like it or did you love it? Do you need me to bring over an ice pack for your hoo hah? I've only texted you a billion times.”

“Things didn't go as planned,” I mumble. Across the room, Mom's negligee is draped over a chair.

“What happened?” Libby asks, lowering her voice. “Was his you-know-what too big?”

“What? No—”

“Oh Gah!” she shouts. “It wasn't too small, was it?”

I slap my forehead and take a deep breath. “Libby, are you sitting down?”

“I'm on the treadmill,” she says.

“You're not even breathing hard.”

“I'm an athlete,” she huffs. “I have, like, terrific stamina.”

“Davey's in a coma,” I say, just to get it out. “When I showed up at his house last night he was unconscious and there were pills everywhere and Staake says that he drank forty-eight beers, but he didn't, also there was an intruder in the house and I think Ralph was involved because he left me a weird voice mail but no one believes me—”

There's a crashing sound in the background.

“Libby?”

“I fell off the treadmill,” she calls, sounding faraway. “One sec, I gotta find my phone. Oh my Gah!” she exclaims, her voice loud again. “Are you okay?”

“Are
you
okay? You just flew off a treadmill.”

“Whatever, my body's built for speed. Did the police come?”

“Just Staake.”

“Ew. Did he check the house?”

“Yes. He didn't see anyone.” I tell her about the voice mail from Ralph.

“But the PO box was empty yesterday,” she says.

“I know.”

“This is really weird.”

Rosa and Libby. That's two people who believe me now. “Also, thanks for not immediately assuming he tried to kill himself. That's what everyone else is saying, but it isn't true.”

Libby's quiet. “Duh,” she says finally.

“I was thinking maybe I should go to the hospital? I could call them but I feel like I'd be more likely to get the full scoop in person. I just want to know how he's doing.”

“Double duh.”

“I was there last night, obviously, but they wouldn't let me in because Davey was in critical condition, and, like, ICU policy dictates family only.”

“I hate it.”

“I know.” I roll my eyes. “His family's not even here yet—they're on their way back from one of their grief retreats. But the point is I'm not allowed to see him yet, which—”

“Um, I'm pretty sure that we can get around that,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“You'll see. I'll pick you up in fifteen. Get dressed.”

I glance at the clock. It's only nine a.m. Rosa won't be home with lunch for at least another few hours. “I actually don't have any clothes, is the thing—”

“YES. The answer is yes. I've been waiting forever to
dress you. A fashion transformation is what Gah wants for you, Kippy, believe me. What a blessed day.”

“I'm not really in the mood for that.” Ruth used to give me makeovers all the time and they made me feel superawkward. The last thing I want to do right now is enact some kind of movie makeover montage. “Just basic stuff. Please? Like . . . long underwear that actually fits would be great. Miss Rosa's so tiny. And . . . I don't know. Maybe a snowsuit? With bling on it? That might be nice. Maybe I'm asking for too much.”

“I am, like, soooo disappointed right now I can't even express it to you,” she says, and hangs up the phone.

The ICU was basically
vacant last night but now it's surging with activity. Apparently there was a pileup on the interstate by my house. The magazine rack in the waiting room is empty and the chairs are filled with strangely calm relatives, all slurping coffee out of Styrofoam cups and mumbling about black ice and Christmas miracles. “It could have been so much worse,” somebody says, smiling at us, thinking Libby and I are related to someone from the crash. “Luckily it's just broken bones.”

My phone buzzes: a text from Jim Steele awkwardly asking if I need anything because “suicide's the worst.” Unsure how to respond, I text him back an emoji of a bear.

“You ready?” Libby whispers, cocking her head really intensely. “When I say go, we go.”

I look down at the velour zip-up hoodie she convinced me to wear. It says
JESUS RULES
across the front in glitter. (“I told you I'm agnostic, right?” I said when she handed it to me. “One soul at a time,” Libby responded, smiling.) I conceded to put it on
under
the snowsuit she brought me because today it's a record-setting cold of thirty-five below with the wind chill.

“Kathy!” a doctor shouts, sticking his head through the door. “I need you to help me hold this kid down—he's a thrasher!” The nurse gets up from behind her desk, scuttling off.

“Perfect,” Libby says, tugging me through the door to the ICU. “Come on.” She insisted on lugging in her gigantic purse with us. When I reached into it looking for ChapStick, she got really angry and told me not to touch her stuff. She's being really weird.

“What do you even keep in there?” I ask, digging my heels into the floor to stop her from pulling me through the door marked
EMERGENCY.
“Wait, stop, what if an alarm goes off? We don't have permission.” I glance over my shoulder but nobody's watching—they're all too busy commiserating over close calls.

“Kippy.” She sighs, edging around a gurney. “When you look like me, you don't need permission.”

It's true that Libby's good at getting what she wants.
She hardly ever works for anything and a lot of people say the only reason she's passing high school is because teachers can't keep their eyes off her cleavage, and feel bad about it, and worry about getting sued. I've overheard enough conversations to that extent.

“What if she claims sexual harassment?” Mr. Bender, the biology teacher, asked one day when I was accidentally on purpose eavesdropping near the teachers' lounge. (
Libby
sounds a lot like
Kippy
, so I thought I heard my name—though it quickly became clear that they were not talking about me.)

“She looks like a model from one of those sex magazines, don'tcha know. I feel like I've gotta pass her.”

“Give her that C,” Mr. Hannycack responded. “Don't quote me on it, Frank, but I sure think it's best to avoid any hubbub, you betcha.”

“I don't know how to put this,” Mr. Bender continued, “but she could say I'd been looking and she wouldn't be lying.”

“Join the club, Frank. Anyone with eyes would look.”

Come to think of it, Libby grew religious around the time she grew boobs. As soon as they got gigantic at the tender age of ten, she started all these Jesus committees—I guess to ward off the dirty rumors that were already spreading about her, despite her age, and based solely on
her bra size. Then she began aggressively proselytizing to anyone she hadn't seen in church, which mainly included Ruth, who was Jewish, and me, because I had trouble going back there after burying Mom. Libby would yell at me to show up more often, or else risk hellfire. She still encourages me to come with her on Sundays, though she's nicer about it now. And honestly, I have to admit I'm drawn to the idea, if only because I want so badly to believe in something other than myself. And I know it helps other people to gaze heavenward when folks around them start dying. But I feel like if God were something real, I'd know it by now. My mom is dead, and I've had neighbors pass away, and now Ruth is gone, and so far it doesn't feel like there are all these new angels in heaven smiling down on me, keeping me all warm and protected. As far as I can tell, they've disappeared.

“You need info, right?” Libby asks now, unzipping her tight hoodie to reveal about an inch of cleavage. “Fine. I'm gonna walk around until I find the right idiot.”

“You're going to seduce an orderly?” I hiss.

“Not all the way!”

“You don't have to debase yourself on my account! We'll get information somehow—”

“Geeze Louise, honey, enough with all your gender crap. I'm just using what Gah gave me, and I'm only gonna
stand there talking. It doesn't take much else. Now let's split up.” She shakes her head at my outfit. “You go look for Davey. No offense but this isn't gonna work if you're standing next to me. You look like a gigantic toddler.”

I gaze down at the snowsuit she brought me; it's a vibrant shade of purple and covered in black polka dots. Libby said she found it in one of her mom's attic boxes labeled
1987.
All that matters to me is that I'm warm—well, too warm now, actually.

I unzip the snowsuit like Libby did with her hoodie. “Is that better?”

She shakes her head, so I tie the arms around my waist, exposing the full phrase
JESUS RULES.
“How about this?”

“Perfect—now go,” she says, shoving me. “Find your BF. And if anyone sees you, pretend you're crazy and wandered in by accident.”

I duck around the corner, bristling slightly at the word
crazy
, and crouch behind a bubbler. A doctor walks across the hall, clutching a stethoscope around her neck, and disappears into a dark room, shutting the door behind her. There aren't many places on this floor that Davey could be, so searching for him shouldn't be too hard.

I scamper across the hall and start checking the charts hanging outside the doors.

Albus
, the first one reads.

I press my eyelids and look again.

It says,
Erica Sussman
.

I decide not to dwell on the mistake for too long. The point is that it's not Davey.

Eleanor Harbeck
.

Nope.

Christopher Hernandez
.

Nope.

“What are you doing here?” somebody asks.

I spin around and gulp. A man in a white coat is glaring at me. “Libby?” I yell.

She careens around the corner, snow boots squeaking on the floor, boobs bouncing, and arrives at my side breathless.

“Hello,” she tells the doctor, leaning casually against a wall-mounted dispenser of hand sanitizer.

“I like your coat,” I hear her say as I escape to check more charts.

Stephanie Georgopolis
.

Nope.

David Fried
.

Bingo!

There's a note on the front of his chart:
Attempted suicide using aspirin. State: comatose.
I tear off that part and shove it in my pocket before opening the door.

“Davey?” I call quietly. This morning I read online that people in comas can probably hear you.

I pull back the curtain and there he is. Just a few days ago I was lying stretched out on our couch with my leg on a pillow, and the front door slammed and there was Davey, tugging off his coat in the entryway. Dom was in the kitchen cooking sausages. He preferred Davey to come to our place, rather than the other way around.

“Hey,” I said.

His eyes trailed from my red lipstick to my red nail polish. Snowflakes were caught in his hair. “Does it hurt today?” he asked.

He meant my leg and in response I lied, shaking my head. The John Williams
Home Alone
soundtrack was playing in the other room—Dom's and my favorite mash-up of Christmas carols.

“This one's my favorite,” Davey said, lowering himself onto the couch. I lifted my legs and he slid under them, warming his icy hands on my toes.

“Who's your favorite?” I said. “I'm your favorite?”

“Well yeah.” He laughed. “But also this song.”

“‘O Holy Night'? You haven't turned all Christian on me, have you?”

“No, it's just . . . You know that part where they sing, ‘Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices'?”

“Sure,” I said. “They sing it during that part in
Home Alone
where the so-called bad guy becomes, like, a human being. It's objectively the most powerful moment in the song.”

“I love it.” He leaned back. “I dunno, it just always reminds me that sometimes you have to listen to the crazy stuff inside your head.”

“You mean like . . . listen to your gut.”

“Yeah, sure, if that's what you wanna call it.”

Just then Miss Rosa came barreling down the stairs in one of her crazy Christmas sweaters and he slid away from me—not that she'd care, really. Whenever Dom caught Davey and me together, he'd scream, “Stop it with the sugar!” But if Miss Rosa saw us, she'd just gurgle like a pigeon, and get all wide-eyed, shouting, “YES! VERY GOOD! I LIKE!” which I guess made Davey uncomfortable for other reasons.

“Soup is on!” she yelled. I could smell the venison sausages smoking in the kitchen. “O Holy Night” was still blaring in the other room, and I found myself focusing on the lyrics, waiting for the part he'd mentioned.

“A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

“I get excited every time I see you,” I told him.

“Same,” he said.

That was two days ago. Now he's lying here, slack-jawed, with all these tubes sticking out of him, hooked up to so many machines. His face is pale and waxy but his hair looks the same, soft and dark and thick—and there's about a day's worth of stubble on his face, which I guess means everything's still working.

“Psst, Kippy!”

The curtain swings open behind me. “We've gotta go,” Libby says. “Sorry.”

“Just one sec.” I reach for Davey's hand—it feels the same, all callused and huge compared to mine—and my skin reacts the way it usually does: like it's got a million nerve endings connected to every part of my body. His fingers are cold but not, like, dead cold.

“Come on,” Libby says, tugging on the sleeve of my hoodie. “I told that doctor to get me one of his business cards so we could be boyfriend-girlfriend and he'll be looking for me soon.”

“I'm not leaving yet,” I tell her.

“Okay, listen,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “I was going to wait until we were in the car to tell you this but—” She looks around.

“What?”

“Davey's blood-alcohol level was zero,” she whispers.
“Which means you were right all along. Somebody planted those cans there—which means whoever's saying you made up the burglar person can go screw themselves.” She glances at the ceiling. “Sorry, Gah, but it's true.”

I want to scream with joy and relief—Davey wasn't drinking; I'm not crazy.

“Now come on!” she says, glancing at the door.

There's a hubbub in the hallway and I tell myself it's probably better to follow her lead and get out of here. If the hospital calls the cops then I'll have to face Sheriff Staake again. And I don't know if I can handle another run-in with him.

“Okay,” I say, letting her push me toward the door. I glance over my shoulder to take one last look at Davey before the curtain falls back into place. “Libby, how come you're being so nice?”

“Huh?” Libby scrunches up her nose, looking taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“It's just, I don't know. . . . Remember in middle school, you used to call me Kippy Little Tits?”

“Yeah, well, remember what my nickname was? Donkey Tits.”

“But I didn't call you that.”

She pushes open the door to the waiting room and
leads me through the noisy crowd. The parents of the kids who got into the car accident are talking over one another in raucous prayer.

Libby shoves me in what I'm sure she thinks is a friendly way, but her cheerleading muscles make it sort of rough. “None of us were at our best in middle school, right?”

“I guess so.”

I follow her to her truck in a daze, zipping up my snowsuit and pulling down my balaclava to avoid the freeze. Whatever Libby's reasons are—guilt or Gah, and what's the difference really—it's nice to have a wingman. I need the help, but the trick will be to keep my composure and not get attached to her. I have the tendency for overexcitement, and a history of mixing business with pleasure. During my investigation into Ruth's murder, Davey was my wingman, and we all know how that turned out.

My phone buzzes again. Word about Davey has clearly spread, and multiple people have posted suicide hotline numbers on my Facebook wall. I quickly delete the posts.

“Should we call the police?” I ask. “About the blood-alcohol thingy?”

“You tell me,” she says. “You're the one who had to deal with Sheriff Drunk last night. Do you really think he'll help?” It's a rhetorical question.

My phone rings in my pocket and I answer it reflexively.

“Hello?”

“This is a call from the Green Bay Correctional Facility,” an automated voice says, loudly enough for Libby to hear and get wide-eyed.

“That's Ralph, right?” she says. “Ask him what the heck he meant by sending you a present—go ahead, Kippy, talk to him. I'm right here.”

“Kippy?” Ralph says.

“Hi,” I stutter.

“Ask him,” Libby mouths.

“Ralph, what did you mean in your message last night? I never got a package from you.”

He doesn't respond, just giggles a little.

“Ralph?”

“Did you get my letter about sending bars? Whatchamacallit bars, specifically.”

“I did, but, Ralph, tell me what you meant about the present.”