Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls (18 page)

He sounds desperate. He doesn’t want me to go. His wife is away, his stepdaughter is
dead.
And the sick fuck wants me to stay here with him, reminiscing, having a beer.

“No,” I say. “Thank you. I’m going to . . .” I point toward the stairs. I can barely look at him. “I’ll let myself out.”

“It was good of you to come by.” His voice sounds muffled and strange. Almost like he’s going to cry, but I’m not close enough to see.

I walk slowly until I get to the top of the stairs. I turn back, and the album is on his lap now. He’s staring down, and I swear to God, he is stroking one of the pictures.

I put the bottle on the table and then I’m out of that house. Back in the cool clean air, I breathe deeply, so glad to be away from him.

I imagine William still in the basement with all those photographs. Doing who knows what with them now as the drugs spread through his system.

He deserves to be in jail for what he did to Delia. Soon, maybe he will be.

Chapter 39

Delia

I’m pacing by the door,
buzzing white-hot. I bounce on my toes, kick my legs, run in place. I am burning up. “Sit down with me, baby,” Ashling says.

She comes up behind me, puts her hands on my shoulders, and tries to rub them. I don’t mean to
ugh
out loud, but I do when I shrug her hands away. Ashling gets needy when she’s jealous—clingy. It disgusts me.

She stops, goes back to the couch, and pulls her long legs up under her. Her cheeks are pink. She’s hurt but trying to pretend she isn’t.
You don’t scare me,
she said when I met her.
You’re not too fucked up for me. I can handle you.
She said this like she was proud. I let her believe it was true.

“What are you still worrying about? Seb texted. She’s back in the car. It went perfect. It’s all happening. The fuse has been
lit. . . .” Her voice sounds strained and her sweet berry mouth is pursed into a pretty little pout.

It’s all happening.

I go over to her and kiss her like I mean it. “I’m sorry, babe,” I say to her. I’m not sorry. But it’s easier this way. She can go insane when she’s jealous or insecure. I’ve seen her do it. I can’t deal with it now.

She resists for a second, then wraps her thin arms around my neck and nuzzles me. And I force myself to sit still even though it is physically painful to do so.

I remind myself that I owe her, I always will. I remember that night at Tig’s party, fucked out of my mind on who even knows what, her face like ever shifting liquid, quicksilver eyes swimming slowly back and forth. The words rolled out of my mouth. I heard them as I said them, amazed that I could still speak in sentences anyone could understand.
My fucking stepfather,
I said.
This is what happened,
I said. I thought I’d surprise her; I wanted to. But she didn’t gasp and her jaw didn’t drop. She nodded like she understood. And even as fucked as I was, I realized then that those big gorgeous eyes had seen some really ugly shit.

What she said back then was, “I can help you, maybe.” But she didn’t elaborate at the time. I thought she was saying for the night, that she would bring me water and more of whatever pills it was I’d taken, because I wasn’t ready to come down yet.

I couldn’t have begun to conceive of what she really meant
then. Even later when she explained it all, I barely could. She has given me everything, I always must remind myself. I can’t ever forget it.

So now, sitting here on this couch when all I want to do is stand at the door and wait for my Junie, I make myself hold Ashling’s lips against mine.

Ashling is like a goldfish, or a puppy. She remembers only what you did to her last. The kiss is what counts now. But she has a core of electric hot wires. She is not—none of them are—to be fucked with.

I stroke her back, lean against her. Close my eyes and feel the adrenaline buzz until I hear the cars pull up. And I fly up to the ceiling and stick like a balloon filled with black smoke.
POP!

“They’re here!” Evan says. And he runs into the living room. He is excited too, but for different reasons. He’s proud of what he’s done.

A few seconds later they walk inside. Sebastian gives a tiny silent nod. June’s eyes are bright, brighter than usual even. And her face is flushed.

“He’s disgusting,” she says. “I could barely stand to be in the same room with him, thinking about what he . . . I wanted to fucking kill him.”

I wanted to fucking kill him.

Inhale, exhale, time stops. I hold my face still. Inhale exhale inhale exhale. In out. Whoosh. Time starts again.

I feel a rush of relief and joy and a tingle of something else. “Thank you, Junie,” I say. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

She shakes her head. “I . . . my God.” She holds out a stack of photos. “I got these for you, if you want them. I mean, I had to take them, but if you want to keep them here . . .”

I look down at the pictures of me as a kid, my mom and I, our old house, everything from before. I feel nothing. I reach for them anyway, then put them on the table.

But I am already on to the next thing. Now it’s time to tell her what I’m most excited about: the present.

Sebastian gives June a quick look, again, different from any I’ve seen before.

“Can I tell her?” Evan says. He is nodding and grinning. “Let me tell her.”

Evan was the one who came up with the idea. When I first met him, I thought he was so sweet and innocent. I later learned that was only on the outside. Because inside he’d collected up all the evil that was directed at him—he stored it all up. Held it clenched between his jaw, let it condense and harden. Underneath his sweet smile he is a tiny demon. And although I’m not scared of him, there are moments when I wonder if I should be.

He also happens to be a genius at hacking, pixels, computers, stuff about which I know nothing and do not give a fuck but is useful to know about if your goal is mayhem, as his often is. It was his idea. The execution was his too. But I’m the one
who said we should do something for her, and I’m the one who picked the target. So this is her present, wrapped up in a gold shiny bow. A present for her, for me. For us.

“Go ahead,” I tell Evan. Because I guess the thing is, I owe him, too.

“While you were fucking with William, we were fucking with someone also. For you,” he says.

June gets a funny look on her face. “Who?”

“Ryan.”

She opens her mouth in a little O.

“We take care of each other,” is what Evan says, which is the perfect thing to say, even if he doesn’t know it. “And besides, it’s fun.”

I understand my Junie. I understand how desperately she always wants to be part of a we. Even when it was just her and I. And now there’s more of us.
You can be part of us,
is what I think but do not say.

“So what did you do?” she asks.

“Remember how Ryan was always really into farm animal porn, like the super weird stuff, but was really embarrassed about it and didn’t want anyone to know?” I say.

“Wait, what?” June looks so confused, it’s adorable. “What are you talking about? No he wasn’t.”

“Oh really?” Evan says. “He
wasn’t
?” He raises one caterpillar eyebrow. There’s a big angry zit in the corner.

June is shaking her head. She still doesn’t get it. I can feel
Evan’s excitement vibrating through the air. He is about to burst open, let it all spill out. He looks at me, I nod.
Go ahead, you tiny, insane monster.

His voice comes out high-pitched and squealy with no space between words, just talk talk talk talk talk like he’s on speed. Guess he sort of is—fucking with people is its own kind of drug. “Well, then how come he
accidentally
tweeted a link to his own user profile on his favorite clandestine online forum—where he had been posting for two entire years, mind you—specializing in a certain type of, how shall we put this,
very animal friendly
photograph and then deleted it an hour later after all those gossipy popular bitches, who previously wouldn’t have minded sucking his dick, saw it and clicked and barfed up the lunches they didn’t eat? And also how come, lest anyone think that RyRy99 is not really Ryan Fiske, he had only recently posted a very, very dirty picture featuring his face, as well as other parts, hmmm? Riddle me that, Junie?”

Evan’s eyes are glowing with the intensity of the demon inside him. I want to say
Stop it, don’t scare her, you little shit.

Junie opens and closes her sweet mouth like a fish. I want to shove my fingers in there, to stick them all the way down her throat until I reach her heart. I take a deep breath and hold my hands at my sides.

“But I don’t understand, is that true?” she says finally. “Did he do those things?”

“Define ‘true,’ ” Evan says. “Because it sure as hell is true
now.
”

“How did you make it so that he’d been posting for two years? And the picture . . .”

“Oh goodness, that was easy. A
child
could have done that.” But I can tell he’s excited by June’s confusion. Sometimes the impossible is possible. We die, we burn up, we come back to life. We can travel through fucking time, making the hard cold steel of the past melt, then bend.

“Oh my God,” she says. But she doesn’t look happy.

I want her to smile. I expected her to smile! This is
funny
after all. She takes a few seconds, and then, I see her mouth cycle through every formation and finally settle on a tiny little unconvinced smirk. But I know her better than she knows herself, and the truth is, she loves it. She’s sweet
almost
to the core, but
not quite
. “That’s . . . that’s . . . How did you even . . .” She is shaking her head. But inside I know she’s imagining Ryan’s blandly handsome face, twisting in horrified embarrassment, the way he deserves.

“Evan is a genius,” I say.

Evan shrugs and grins.

June’s face twists again. “It’s funny but . . . does he deserve that? I mean, all he did was hit on you a bunch. And . . . who can blame him, right?”

I feel my eye twitch. I force myself to breathe, in, out, in, out. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t understand. I was so excited. I feel sick. I can feel Ashling staring at us.
Stop fucking staring.

“He almost split us apart, Junie,” I say. I try to keep my
voice calm even though my insides are
bzzzt bzzzt bzzzzt
. I am short-circuiting. “He’s lucky this is all he got.”

“Besides,” Evan says, “it’s already too late. The rumor ponies are out of the pen. They’re galloping along. I couldn’t stop them now even if I wanted to.”

June’s face is bright red.

“He deserves it,” I say. And in my head, I fill in the rest, exactly
what
he deserves and
why
. And then I force myself to smile, twisting the corners of my lips up in a grin I don’t feel at all now. “Let’s not think about it anymore. Because there’s another ex-boyfriend to deal with.” I hold up the letter for Jeremiah. This one I actually wrote myself, full of private details that only he would know. And then Ashling wrote a little note explaining that I’d sent it to her, asking her to pass it on.

“We’ll drop it in the mail today; he’ll get it tomorrow. And all will be fixed.”

June looks overwhelmed, like too much is happening too fast. She needs me to help her know what to think. And so I do. I nod slowly—
This is okay, this is okay,
my head says. And finally she nods back. I keep my face calm, hiding my huge grin blooming on the inside now.

Oh, my sweet Junie, just you wait . . .

Chapter 40

June

Sometimes there’s so much to
think about that you just can’t think about anything at all. Sometimes, all there is to do is sit and wait. So we wait.

For what? I don’t ask. Maybe I’m scared to.

Sebastian is at the kitchen table typing on a laptop. Evan and Ashling are playing Go Fish. And Delia and I are sitting on the couch together and she is braiding and unbraiding my hair, the way she always used to. My eyes are closed. It has been so long since someone has played with my hair like this, because Delia was the only one who ever did. It is so relaxing, it is lulling me into some kind of trance, that place right before sleep. She gives a tendril a sharp tug. “A knot,” she whispers in my ear, like always. But there never really was one.

A little
beep-beep-beep
starts sounding. Delia inhales sharply. I open my eyes. Everyone looks up. And just like that I know that what we were waiting for was this.

Evan takes a phone off the table, one of the three he has in front of him. He pokes at the screen, and nods. “All right, Willy is on the move now,” Evan says. He points to the screen where a tiny red dot is moving across a map. He looks at me, because I’m the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on. “RFID chip,” he says. “While you were inside, Seb stuck it to his car.”

I turn toward Sebastian. He shrugs.

“He’s heading southeast on Ridgefield . . .” He turns toward Delia. “Any idea where he might be going?”

“His gym, I think,” she says.

Ashling grins. “Perhaps he suddenly has a lot of extra energy he doesn’t know what to do with . . .” She looks at me, her lips spreading into a slow smile. “Wonder how that happened.”

I smile back.

“He doesn’t ever stay there very long,” Delia says. “Mostly spanks it in the sauna, I think.” Her voice is hard, but under that there is fear.

But suddenly I’m not afraid at all anymore. I feel strong enough for both of us.

“Well,” says Sebastian, “then let’s do this.”

A few minutes later we’re in the van, pulling into the parking lot of Brentwood Fitness. No one is talking; there
is something steely serious about all of them now. All of us.

We make one lap around, driving slow.

“There.” Delia knocks her knuckle on the window in front of a silver Audi, which I recognize. William’s car. Ashling parks a few spaces away.

“We stay here,” Sebastian says to me. “Keep watch, create a distraction if needed. But it won’t be needed. This’ll barely take a minute.”

Ashling reaches under the seat and takes out a thin strip of metal and a crowbar. Then Delia pulls her scarf up high over her mouth, and her hood down low over her brow. Then she, Evan, and Ashling get out. The parking lot is mostly empty, the after-work crowd not yet arrived. My heart is pounding. After this there is no going back. Maybe there never was.

I watch through the dusty windows. The vinyl seating is cold, but my palms are sweating, sticking to it.

Sebastian reaches out and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Relax,” he says. And he reaches into the front seat, turns the key in the ignition, and starts up the heat and the radio. He flips through the stations until quiet classical comes on, tinkling pianos. Then he sits back and closes his eyes. “Just listen.” I turn and stare at him, at his jaw, his lips. He takes my hand in one of his, like it is completely normal, like he’s done this before. He squeezes it. I squeeze back. With the other hand, eyes still closed, he is playing imaginary piano keys on his leg.

“You play?” I say. My heart is pounding so hard.

He opens one eye and looks at me. “You’re supposed to have your eyes closed, but yes.” His face is calm and still as the music rises.

He squeezes my hand again. His is so warm.

I watch as Ashling takes the thin length of metal, wedges it in the crack between the window and the door frame, and slides it down. She jiggles it, and a second later, the Audi’s door pops open. There’s a sudden high-pitched blast—William’s car alarm. But Evan pokes a couple buttons on his phone and the sound stops.

Delia opens the driver’s side door then. She takes the brown paper bag from the pocket of her coat and stuffs it under the front seat. She shuts and locks the door. Evan pokes his phone again, re-enabling the alarm, maybe.

Evan offers the crowbar to Ashling, then Delia, who holds her hand out like,
Be my guest.
And Evan smiles—a sweet, almost giddy smile—winds up his tiny arm like he’s about to hit a softball, and smashes the thick plastic of the taillight, over and over until it shatters and falls to the ground in pieces.

Ashling kisses Delia. Evan puts one end of the crowbar on the asphalt and does a little jig around it. Then the three of them start heading back toward us. Ashling takes out her phone and makes a call.

Sebastian runs his thumb over my knuckles. “You’re still watching,” he says, eyes still closed.

“Maybe,” I say. And then, “What are they doing? Who is Ashling talking to?”

“The police, probably,” Sebastian says. “Letting them know about the car with the broken taillight, and something hidden under the seat. But it’s better not to know everything. You’ll learn that. . . .”

Ashling hangs up the phone and smiles. Then kisses Delia again. I close my eyes, finally. A moment later, the car doors open. Sebastian drops my hand. Ashling and Delia get in up front, Evan slides into the back next to me. For a moment no one says anything at all. Ashling starts up the car. Delia turns slowly and looks at me. She smiles, reaches out, squeezes my knee, and I know what this means—it means thank you. My heart fills up.

Delia leans back against the seat.

“Bye-bye, Willy,” she says. To all of us, to herself, to no one. Then she cranks the radio.