The Bitch Posse (39 page)

When the Princess threw herself down a flight of stairs, her Prince ignored her and went out horseback riding.

Next to her on the bed breathes a Princess, diamond-tiaraed, a spray of pink roses in her arms, that pale sequined dress. She’s a half a ghost, as real as anything else in this fucked-up world, and Cherry laces her fingers through hers.

And Diana says:
If I was perfect, I wouldn’t be dead.

And Diana says: I
was never as beautiful as the media made me.

And Diana says:
It’s too hard to be your Queen. Can I just be your friend?

And the Princess takes the crown from her own head and places it on Cherry’s.

Happily ever after.

Jagged images flash into Cherry’s head of car crashes, drug parties,
buying everything in sight, spreading legs and sucking in the world to fill some emptiness that yawns and aches and is never satisfied.

Thank God I’m here.

God? Is that what went through her mind just now?

Sorry. I don’t believe in You. I forgot.

Tomorrow they will come in and tell her she is ready to go outpatient. Their little rules and regulations and phony women’s therapy sessions are shams, fake, useless. Cherry hates being watched, accounted for, checked in and out with charts and bench passes. She should just go.
I don’t want help, I don’t need help, I won’t take help, from anyone.

And that’s the goddamn truth, God help me.

Outside the world is so big no one could keep track of her.

They don’t know she’s fucked up in love and in hate with Michael. That, probably, she’d let him beat her up if that’s what he wanted to do, might even goad him into it, for some fucked-up reason she can’t figure out.

They don’t know that she sits here with nine Carbitral in her palm.

Marian is long gone now, but words of hers echo in Cherry’s head:
Do you want to be like me?

Cherry pounds her fists on her perfect tapestry, her mountains of triangles, her creation. Tears that aren’t tears bleed out of her eyes.
I’m not like this, I’m not weak, I’m strong!
She wants out, out of this goddamn place. There’s no one to help here. The one person she tried to help said sayonara to Life.

Josie’s tennis bracelet comes unclasped, flies across the room, jangles to the floor. And another moment of clarity hits her.

There are corners of the outside Institution where people are more fucked up than Cherry herself. When Cherry makes her way out of this little Institution into the bigger one, she will find those places, help those people.

Maybe she will look up her old friends, after she has her own shit together.

But not yet. Right now, she has a bottom to hit. A fate to fulfill.

Cherry reaches into the corner, picks up the bracelet, strings it back onto her wrist.

The air shimmers with a princess-girl’s smile.

And the princess-girl whispers:
Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running, wherever they are.

Cherry tucks her weaving under her arm. She walks into the bathroom, gazes in the mirror one last time, and spreads her tapestry on the floor. Kneeling on it, arms outstretched, she prays to Someone.

As long as the stars are fixed in the heavens and the fish sparkle in the sea.

With her right hand, she presses the handful of pills to her mouth.

God . . .

She reaches for the red emergency button.

Help me . . .

The pills slip between her fingers, scatter like beads across the floor.

She pushes the button and closes her eyes.

Rain patters on the window.

May 1988
The Porter Place

My consciousness returns to my body as the headlights flash from the highway. “A cop?” I look down at myself, hands trembling. I’m covered with blood, it’s drying already, cooling off, who knew blood was so hot?

Blood?

What have I done?

My two best friends are covered with blood too. There’s a body on the barn floor, four letters carved in its chest.
My
lips are sticky. I lick them and taste iron.

Oh, my God.

He’s dead?

Sobs choke my throat and rock through me, my stomach my heart my ears, ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod,
oh my God
. . .

A smack burns my face, and Cherry’s palm flies by me like a bird.
“Damn it, Amy, get ahold of yourself. Listen. There isn’t much time.” She picks up the knife, wipes the handle against her shirt, presses her fingers around it, and throws it down again.

“Is it a cop?” I ask again. No other thought will pass through my brain. I feel dumb, like I can’t process anything.

“No, no, it’s kids, it’s an old boat of car, you still have time.”

“My car, quick!” Rennie fumbles for her keys.

“Keys are in the ignition. You two go.”

“Us two?” repeats Rennie.

“Just you and Amy, hurry up!”

“You’re crazy.” Rennie grabs Cherry’s arm. “You come too!”

“Listen. In a couple minutes those kids’ll be up here and they’ll find the body and call the cops and who the hell do you think will be under suspicion?”

“We won’t let you take the blame. We’re staying with you,” says Rennie.

She’s right, we’ve been sisters all along, we face everything together.

“No,” Cherry says. “It isn’t gonna happen this way.” She pushes a sticky strand of hair behind her ears. “Amy, Rennie, you guys are eighteen, you could go to jail. You have your futures to think—”

Rennie cuts in. “Fuck Stanford! It’s just another fucking school.”

Cherry takes a deep breath. “Rennie Taylor, you’re the smartest girl I’ve ever known, and you’re going to be writing some important books, and I’m not going to let you screw that up.”

“Fuck books! You’ll write them too. You’re as smart as I am and don’t you ever forget it!” She seizes Cherry’s arm. “Now come on already!”

Cherry shakes Rennie’s fingers away. “You and Amy deserve the most beautiful things in the world.”

All I can say is “Cherry . . . ”

“You know I’m right. It was my fault anyway. I let it get out of control. I pulled you over the edge.”

“Fuck that, Cherry,” says Rennie. “You’re fucking crazy. Get in the fucking car!”

She shakes her head. “No one in the Bitch Posse’s going to fucking jail. I’ll confess to everything, no one will ever know you were here. The worst I’ll get is juvie for a while. I can take that.”

“
Cherry
. . . ” I squeak out again, like an idiot.

“This is the best way, the only way, this can end! Stop wasting fucking time. Just jump in Rennie’s car. Go!”

Rennie tugs her hand. “No way, let’s all go, come on!”

“It’s gotta hang on someone, Rennie. A bloody body, blood all over your car, all over our clothes? Look, it’s better that it’s just me.”

Finally I find words. “I won’t let you do that!”
Has this really happened, have we really
. . . I won’t think it.

“I said to myself earlier, that if it ended up like this, this was how it’d have to be.” The headlights swing to the left; they’re almost here. “You two have more at stake than I do. Just let me do this!”

“No!” I yell, stomping my foot like a little girl. “Come with us, or else let’s all hang together!”

Tears creep down her nose. “Damn it, Amy, Rennie, why won’t you let me save you?” She wipes her eyes, and blood comes away from her fingers, streaks her face.

“Because you’re acting fucking crazy!” Rennie chokes out, her chest heaving with sobs.

Cherry smacks her across the face, and Rennie’s hand flies to her cheek. “Listen to me, you bitch. You always said you believe in Fate. All those Greek tragedies and shit. Not even the gods could mess with the Fates.”

“Fuck Fate!” screams Rennie, still pressing her hand to her face. “Just fuck Fate!”

Cherry slaps her other cheek, and Rennie shuts up. “Listen, girls. This is my moment, the best fucking moment I can create. I won’t let you take it from me.”

Rennie seizes her arm again. “Just get in the fucking car!”

Cherry unpeels Rennie’s fingers and slaps her a third time. “You bitch, you bitch, don’t betray me like this!” Her tears come in sheets. “This is my chance to be somebody, to make a difference. Don’t you understand I love you two girls more than anything in the world?” She leans forward and with each hand grasps our Czech glass necklaces, the ones I made for us for Christmas.

“Why—” Rennie starts.

Cherry yanks them, hard, and before I know it my blue beads and Rennie’s red ones pop off, float like teardrops through the air, and go rolling across the dirt. Then she seizes her own and tugs, and green beads fly like lightning bugs, scatter into the grass. “It’s over.” She pulls open the car door and pushes me and Rennie inside. “Go.” She slams the door behind us, and I can read her lips, “Go!”

Rennie’s sobs slow to hiccups as she starts the car. Hundreds of beads wink in the headlights. The tires spin, and we drive out the back way, past the shed and the silo. A light sprinkle of rain mists the windshield, and when we hit the highway I start to cry again.

“She shouldn’t have done that.” Someone’s tied a rope around my neck and is squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, and tears pull themselves up from my heart and burst into the air. “Rennie . . . ” Words don’t come, my best friend,
my best friend . . .
She saved our asses and put her own on the line. Oh,
Jesus
. . .

My heart splits down the middle, and I’m not even a person any longer. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “Why, why’d she do that?”

Rennie sighs, a deep, aching sigh that’s edged with pain. “She told you why.”

Fate. Fate. Fate.

Fuck Fate.

But it’s too late for that.

Something big pushes into my head and threatens to consume me, and I know what it is, it’s the enormity of what we’ve done. I’m suddenly dizzy, and I’m glad I’m not driving. “We all took part. We’re all to blame.” And when I say it that way, it really does seem awful.

Rennie’s eyes are hollow. “Blame, shit. He motherfucking deserved everything we gave him, and don’t you forget it, Amy.”

But her words don’t ring true. She’s playing tough, and I make up my mind to do the same, for the rest of my life or as long as it takes me to forget this night.

And in an odd sort of way it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, swimmingly exciting, hypnotic, satisfying . . .

What am I?

A killer.

I’m not I’m not I’m not.
I reach into my purse and grab my Xanax bottle, pull out five and chew them. Wordlessly, I pass the bottle to Rennie. She takes a few and tosses them into her mouth. What’s going through her head? And I realize, no matter how close you are to someone, you don’t really know them at all.

I concentrate on the routines I know are ahead of me. Slipping early morning into my house because my folks’ll be too passed out to notice. Grabbing clothes for me and Rennie. Taking our old ones to the landfill in a giant trash bag. Scrubbing her Beetle at the car wash, with none of the sudsy water fights we’ve had in the past. All without words. I don’t have any.

That’ll all be for later.

The Xanax has pulled away some of my feelings, but there’s a big hole in my heart, a hole where Cherry should be. She’s ripped herself out of our lives, rewoven the pattern so that her freedom buys ours. What happened in the barn was an accident, a terrible and stark mistake, but she’s done her best to patch it over, even if it means destroying herself. Would I have done the same?

Of course I would have, we all would have.

She’s already sunk away, a stone flung into water, nothing left but the circles rippling around the splash. But is she gone forever?

Impossible.

She’ll always be in my head, passing me a joint and laughing about nothing, rubbing my back as I cry in her bedroom, closing her eyes as I lean toward her for the first best kiss of my life. She’ll always be taking care of every living thing that crosses her path, will always be screaming through the car window as she seals her fate.

My heart stops beating for a second.

The excitement and power and unity and love of our circle of three will never never never be unbraided, no matter what happens to any of us. And the three of us will always be woven back into the tangle that was and is and will forever be the Bitch Posse.

Rennie’ll feel the exact same thing, Cherry too, wherever she ends up. Only we’ll never talk about it.

How can we? Our bond is stronger than any words we could use to describe it.

This was the only way our story could have ended,
killing is wrong killing is wrong killing is wrong,
but events fell together this way for a reason, this was the way everything was meant to unfold. And Dawn, I don’t know her; perhaps she will find happiness, but she’ll never thank us for it, that’s for sure.

God?

Give me a break.

You think God’s looking out for me? After all the shit that’s happened?

That’s one of those questions that answer themselves.

Anyway, I’ll never go back to St. Sebastian’s, and I’ll never again pretend my parents have their shit together.