The Fever (23 page)

Passing headlights flashed across the front windows and he looked out to the front porch to see Gabby was gone.

The drive back through Binnorie Woods seemed to take forever, twisting down one veiny road after another, while Tom tried to will himself sober. To reckon with the snarl in his head, which included a sneaking sense of relief.

He'd promised to bring Gabby back, had insisted Lara shouldn't drive. And now, the road doing odd, shimmery things, he was pretty sure he shouldn't be driving either.

“I know what it is,” Lara had said as he was halfway out the door, still buttoning his shirt with one hand, the other hand crushed over his car keys.

“What?”

“Everything happening,” she said, standing in the hard light of the entryway. Saying it quietly, barely a whisper.

He froze, waited.

“It's what we put in the ground,” she said. “And in the walls. The lake, the air. And the vaccines we give them. The food, the water, the things we say, the things we do. All of it, straight into their sturdy little bodies. Because even if it isn't any of these things, it
could
be. Because all we do from the minute they're born is put them at risk.”

He felt his keys cut into his fingers.

“We put them at risk just by having them,” he blurted, not even knowing what he meant. Touched by her words, frightened by them. “And the hazards never stop.”

She paused, looking at him. A chill on his neck, he felt as though she could see everything.

“Well,” she said softly, her hand in her hair. “We're all at risk.”

And she'd slipped back into the house, closing the door.

Now, in his car, he rolled down the windows all the way, tried to breathe. He couldn't really breathe.

He could still smell her on his shirt and hands and mouth, feel her mysterious energy. Warm and unsettling.

In the strangest way, it reminded him of Georgia.

This is why I don't drink
, he thought, because a hundred things he'd shut in shoeboxes and hoisted up to closet tops cast themselves down again.

Like how he'd wanted to grind that guy's face into the icy parking lot.

How he'd called Georgia ugly names, said things in front of Deenie and Eli.

Once he'd even pointed out the guy to Eli at the grocery store. Said,
There he is, that's what your mother did it all for. That loser in the orange tie.

And that other time. Opening all Georgia's dresser drawers, Deenie in the doorway, balling up his wife's lingerie, her panties, throwing them at Georgia. Wanting to stuff them in her mouth. Stopping himself. He stopped himself.

But that was a short period of time, a long time ago.

How do you get over it?
he'd asked Lara Bishop before he left.
Over what happened to you?

But she just smiled like it was a stupid question, or at least the wrong one.

The streak of her white T-shirt, the hunch of her back, head dipped low, the stillness of her.

“Skye,” Deenie said, louder now, the smell of sawdust, ammonia, fur everywhere. “Skye, turn around.”

And Skye's head turned slowly, as if she'd barely heard, earbuds dropping to her collarbones.

Her face cool and expressionless and so pale it was near translucent.

“Deenie,” she said, her skinny arms inside the open door of the hutch, stroking something. A cherry-eyed rabbit with long ears.

“This is Crow Jane,” she said. “Meet Crow Jane.”

Deenie stopped short as Skye lifted the animal, its plush fur looked as soft as the purple foot charm Deenie used to hang on her backpack when she was little.

“His mother tried to eat him,” Skye said, fingering a pellet into the rabbit's mouth. “It happens sometimes. When they get scared or confused. Or by accident. Or if they think something's wrong with the baby.”

“Why are you out here this late?” Deenie asked, even though she was the one out at midnight, in Skye's backyard.

There was a smell that reminded her of the time the lawn mower sparked and burned up one side of the front lawn.

“What...” Deenie began, and it seemed to happen at that same second, the sharp twinge in Deenie's neck, her head bobbing, and Skye saying, “Are you okay, Deenie?”

Something in Skye's calm made her feel crazy, her neck and jaw throbbing.

“Why were you in Lise's hospital room?” Deenie asked, almost a bark. “What would you be doing there?”

Staring at her, Skye lifted the rabbit to her chest, rubbing its body.

“You've been there too, right?” she asked, her fingers nestled in the fur, stroking it with her thin fingers. “I guess the same as you.”

“You were never friends with her,” Deenie said, voice shaking now. “Not like me.”

Something was shifting in Skye's eyes. “No one can be as close to anyone as you, is that it?”

“What does that mean?”

Skye didn't answer, taking Crow Jane by the cowl and setting her, a little roughly, back into the soggy hutch.

A wind gusted up and the smell, sooty and sweet, came strong, seemed to be coming from beyond the hutch.

“Were you burning something?” Deenie asked, the smell thick in her mouth.

Walking past the hutch, Deenie felt the ground soft with ash.

Skye shrugged. “My aunt does it. We have lots of weeds.”

The school's bell tower chimed midnight, an ancient clang, heavy with rust and lime.

Both their heads turned.

That was when Deenie saw.

Through the dark of Skye's zigzagging backyard, the knotted brush, there it was. Its familiar gloomy limestone, veined with soot.

“You can see the school from here,” Deenie said.

Something was coming together in her head, sharp fragments, thin as ice, assembling, sliding into place.

“Not really,” Skye said. “Until they cut back those trees after the ice storm.”

Deenie walked across the yard, straight toward the greening black of trees in the rear.

“Is this the way you get to school? You walk this back way?”

She thought she could hear Skye's breath catch. Heard the hook of the latch on the hutch and then Skye moving behind her, toward her.

“Sometimes.”

Deenie walked to the far corner. From there, a few muddy steps and it was a clean path along the long row of hedges that ran up to the breezeway on the east side of the school.

We went behind those tall bushes
, she could hear Lise saying now, her legs covered with milfoil.
He took my tights off first.

“Did you see Lise back there, Skye?”

“Lise?” Skye's eyes narrowed to slits, and Deenie knew she was close to something.

“You saw, didn't you? What Lise did.”

Skye looked at Deenie.

“Sure,” she said, her voice changed. “I saw. I guess Gabby finally told you. I know Lise wouldn't.”

“Gabby?”

“I saw it all,” Skye continued. “You should've seen the things your brother was doing to her.”

Deenie felt something crack and twist at her temple.

“What? What did you say?”

“Your brother going down on your Lise. Lise's leg twitching like a dog's.”

Deenie felt her neck stiffen to wood, her hand leaping to it. She couldn't stop it, or Skye. Why Skye would say—

“She seemed to love it,” Skye said, jaw out, her lips white. “She didn't care who saw. Your brother didn't either.”

“You shut the fuck up. You don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't my brother,” Deenie said. “Stop saying that. It wasn't him.”

Skye's hand was at her mouth.

“Skye,” Deenie said, voice creaky and high, “did you do something to Lise?”

“She did it to herself.”

FOR ELI

The note was folded and stuck in the space between the storm door and the wooden one.

It was hard to read, the letters smeared and only the muzzy glare of the porch light. But once he started, he couldn't stop to go inside.

“Your daughter couldn't be here, sir,” the nurse told him. “Visiting hours ended at nine.”

“I know,” Tom said, “but I think she might be.”

Where else would she be?
he thought. Not at home, not at Gabby's—there was no other place.

“Sir, we have a lot going on in here right now.”

“I know, I do. I promise, I'm not being a jerk. I think she might have gone to see Lise Daniels. Can you at least let me—”

“Sir, have you been drinking?”

“Listen, can you page Sheila Daniels for me? She'll vouch for me,” he said, though he had no idea if she would. “I promise.”

The nurse looked at him blankly.

Nurses are like cops, he thought. You can't hide anything.

But then he remembered he had nothing, really, to hide.

Together, they sat on pastel chairs in the Critical Care waiting room.

The slump of Sheila's body, so different from the Sheila of the other morning, or most of the times he saw her, always running on nerves and worry. Now there was a zombie sedation about her that made her easier to talk to, but much sadder.

Her hands, chapped, were folded in her lap, the nails lined red.

“Deenie was here,” Sheila said, the smell on her like a live presence. “I saw her. I think I did. The pills they gave me…”

“When?”

“An hour ago, maybe. I don't know. My mom saw her too.”

“Do you know where she—”

“You know, I've only been home once. For an hour. The coffee table was still tipped over. I keep thinking about that coffee table.” She looked at him, eyes yellowed. “That's what did it, in the end.”

Something ghastly turned inside him. “In the end? Sheila, is Lise…”

But she shook her head, over and over. “Nothing's changed. Except everything. I don't understand. Tom, who would hurt my girl?”

“Sheila, I don't…what's happened?”

“I told them Lisey doesn't use drugs,” she said. “Is Deenie a drug user now?”

“Deenie? No.”

“That's what I told them.”

“The police?” he asked, though he knew. “And they were asking about Deenie?”