Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  With one flick of the toggle switch, Dany will be gone.

  A few minutes later, Dany stands looking at her swollen eye in the bathroom mirror. If she wants to drive that scooter, she will have to open her eye up. Faraday’s medicine cabinet has what she needs – talcum powder and an old razor blade. He also has some allergy pills and a few Tylenol 3s. Dany shoves the pills in the front pocket of her backpack and, for half a minute, loses herself, staring at an expired bottle of Namenda.

  She’d almost forgotten she had the bottle in her bag.

  But yeah, she always carries it in her backpack. Always.

  And inside of the bottle, a broken watch and a mood ring.

  These objects are literally all she has left of her mother.

  After Dany was released from the burn ward, she and Mac moved in with Norah. Dany found the mood ring and the watch inside of an old pill bottle in her aunt’s black medicine bag. Until she sold them off at the black market, her aunt had kept a miniature phar­macy in there – half a bottle of Percocet, a few stray tabs of Vicodin, a couple doses of Narcan, a load of Bugs Bunny Band-Aids and, deeper down, inside of a zip-locked hospital baggie, the half-dozen pill bottles that had once belonged to her mom, an ever-shifting series of prescriptions they’d given Phil before she’d been separated from her family. Though it was empty of pills, Dany had taken the bottle that held the mood ring and watch. Because the label was still legible. Because there, in black and white, she could see her mom’s name. Munday, Philomena.

  Of course, nobody calls her Philomena.

  Everybody who knows Mom calls her Phil.

  Phil always drove with the car windows open, even in winter. Because of the holes in the floorboards. Because of the creeping stink of exhaust. Phil had a throaty laugh. So low, people mistook her for a smoker. But that wasn’t it. Her mom’s laugh just came from a deeper place than other people’s. And Phil always wore the ring. Wore it religiously.

  When you needed it most, the mood ring glowed a special colour. That’s what Phil had told her. When it glows, Phil said, it isn’t a ring at all, but a portal to another world. A world in which you are so, so brave. That’s what Phil always told Dany. That’s what Dany was saving for Mac.

  Dany buries the bottle in her bag and picks through Faraday’s razors. One of the blades looks decent. She drops it in a Dixie cup and pours in some alcohol, stowing the bottle of alcohol in her bag. Then she looks at the girl in the mirror, the one whose right eye has swollen shut. She’ll need the use of that eye, but before she touches the razor, she wants it good and sterile.

  But then, what does she have to be afraid of now?

  Plucking out the blade, she wipes it on her sleeve and nicks the swollen eye fold, one slim cut above her eye. But the pain is worse than she remembers. Dany bites her lip so hard that it bleeds. Finally, she dabs a bit of talcum on her cut, to stem the tide of blood.

  While the blood clots – just to let herself breathe, just to feel a bit of fresh air on her face – Dany lowers her mask. Before she goes back down, she’ll slip her mask back on and reform the seal. Dany isn’t a fool. She knows the best way to use these N95 masks is to keep any potential virus on the inside. And Dany is careful. Especially since she talked to Isobel Lau.

  The virus might not be airborne, but Dany isn’t about to dice micrometres. Not when it comes to Eva and her sister. She isn’t going to take chances. Well, she isn’t going to take many chances. Dany is standing there, mask lowered, razor poised to make the second cut – when Eva appears in the bathroom doorway.

  “What the hell,” Eva says.

  Dropping the blade, Dany pulls up her mask. With two fingers, she reforms the seal, then turns on the tap to wash her hands. Only when she’s soaped up does she take in the reflection of her friend.

  “I need to ask you something,” Dany tells her. “I need to know if we trust each other. I mean with our lives? For real? Literally for real.”

  Eva looks at her friend and shrugs. “Sadly, yes, we would. Well, I would anyway. Not the smartest decision I’ve made, to be honest, but yes, overall, I’d say we –”

  “I need you to take care of Mac,” Dany tells her. “You know, like she’s your own.” Her voice is strange, and almost breaks on the last word.

  Then, as Eva’s face drains of blood, Dany tells her the plan. And what’s more, she lets her in on how, exactly, Dany is going to break into prison and rescue her aunt. As she talks Eva through it, Eva doesn’t look mad. Eva looks scared. She looks scared and sad and small and, worse, she won’t look at Dany, not at all.

  “No,” Eva says, shaking her head. “You can’t do this, no way. Not by yourself.”

  “But you’ll take care of Mac?” she asks Eva, her eyes narrowing.

  “Always,” Eva says. She almost looks hurt to have to say it.

  “And you’ll keep Faraday out of the garage,” Dany says, pressing the point.

  Eva looks down. Her mouth starts to move – and then stops. Once, twice, it happens. Finally, she looks at Dany. Eva is breathing a little too deeply, a little too fast. Dany looks at her friend, standing there, on the precipice of a crying jag.

  “Norah is Mac’s only family, after me,” Dany says gently. There is Antoine, sure, but Dany doesn’t mention him, because Antoine doesn’t count.

  Eva shakes her head.

  “Look,” Dany says, “I have this feeling everything will work out. If I do this, somehow, everybody will be okay.”

  The assurance does its work – Eva takes a deep breath, a little more in control of herself. “You,” Eva says slowly, “have a good feeling?” Her friend raises one eyebrow so high it disappears under her enormous bangs.

  Dany gives a noncommittal shrug. She hates lying to Eva.

  “We’re screwed,” Eva says. “We are wholly and completely screwed.”

  “So you’ll do it?” Dany asks.

  Eva doesn’t answer. Shaking her head, her friend turns and leaves the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. But Eva doesn’t say no, and with Eva, that’s practically as good as crossing her heart.

  But when Dany comes downstairs, Eva isn’t doing what she promised. She’s just sitting there, and no, she hasn’t gotten Faraday out of the garage.

  She is sitting at the kitchen table as happy as daylight. What’s more, Mac is sitting next to her, surrounded by a glowing sea of tea lights. The kid’s nose plug has been taken off and Mac is wearing it on her finger like a wedding ring. An old yellow manual lays open in front of the kid and there, in her tiny hands, is the gun. The one Dany saw earlier. The one that lives in the velvet display case upstairs.

  Mac has that abstracted look she sometimes gets, like the time Dany found an old rotary phone in the dumpster and let the kid strip the thing down to its parts. Eva is sitting beside Mac. Her mask is dangling around her neck and she wears a grin on her face. “I’ve got a plan,” Eva says brightly. “We’re going to help with the prison break!”

  Dany looks from the gun to Eva. “Your plan involves arming children with guns?”

  “You said no hair dryers,” Eva reminds her. “But you said nothing, and I remember this specifically, you said nothing about guns.”

  “I need to specify?”

  Eva doesn’t answer. She frowns at the table, and a little sigh of annoyance passes through her lips. “If you want to pull off your rescue,” Eva says, her tone clipped, “you’ll need help.” Eva looks up at Dany, and a blush butterflies over her collarbones. “Look, I happen to have an interest in your continued existence, okay? We’re going to help whether you like it or not.” Eva crosses her arms.

  But Eva doesn’t understand. Because nobody can help Dany. Not now.

  Nobody.

  Dany glances at Mac, but the kid’s hands, deft and sure, are a blur of motion. When those hands stop, the kid has stripped the gun down to its parts and one l
ittle hand is reaching out for a bottle of WD-40, just beyond her grasp. Before her, in the place where, a moment before, a gun had been, there is now a jumble of little metal bits.

  Dany looks at Mac, but she doesn’t see the kid.

  What she sees are dead salmon fry, the grim line of Miss P’s mouth, the beige suits at the Ministry of Child Services, the work farms where not just Dany but, now that she is five years old, Mac, too, can be sent. What she sees is Faraday’s face, after he gets a look at his prized display piece broken down into a jumble of spare parts. Faraday. That’s all they need. Faraday might walk in here any second and see this. Dany shakes her head. “Stop it,” Dany tells the kid, her voice shaking. “Just stop.”

  The kid looks up at her and cocks her head.

  “Don’t you get it?” Dany asks. “You broke it, you broke it. God, sometimes you just don’t think. The gun’s not ours. It was on display. In a case. It’s special.”

  The kid stares up at her, bottom lip trembling.

  “Yeah, don’t give me that,” Dany tells her.

  Dany takes a paper bag from the counter and, turning back, carefully puts each of the parts inside. “You’re going to fix this,” she tells Eva, shoving the bag her way. “And you,” Dany says, turning to her kid sister. “You just, just keep your stupid paws out of it, ’kay?”

  The kid looks up at her, her eyes rimmed with water.

  Squatting down, Dany kneels in front of the kid and sighs. “Look, tonight,” she tells her, “you have a job. A very important job. You need to stick to Eva. Like crazy glue, ’kay. You stick to her. And I’ll go get Aunt Norah.”

  The kid looks at her out of her wet brown eyes.

  “You need to help Eva and Faraday find Antoine’s farm, ’kay?” Dany asks. “You’re the only one who’s been there. If we’re not there by morning, then you need to help them find the island you drew.” She looks at the kid, but Mac is staring past her now, her gaze a thousand miles distant. “You know I love you. No matter what. For always.”

  She lays her hand, for a long beat, on her little sister’s. She takes in those big brown eyes, but they are staring past her, bottomless and near black in the darkness.

  “Well, are you going to do this?” Dany asks, rounding on Eva.

  But Eva just stares at her, her eyes rimmed with tears. Lower lip trembling.

  “I need to get Norah,” Dany says. “Please.”

  Eva hiccups. And nods.

  “One minute, that’s all I need alone in the garage. Just keep him out for a minute.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eva tells Dany. “I really am. I’ll do it. I promise.”

  “I’ll wait in the yard,” Dany says. Then, by sheer force of will, Dany makes herself turn away from the kid and go out the door. Her feet are moving now, and it’ll be easier if she just keeps them moving. Don’t look back. Just don’t look back at the kid. Dany slams the door open and pushes her way out into the dark night.

  Dany stands in the dark yard, alone.

  Wordlessly, without so much as a glance, Eva passes by and heads to the garage.

  Beneath her mask, Dany sucks her lip, tasting blood. She stood here only an hour ago, but now the world is changing, slowly filling with horror. Because now, when Dany looks out over the yard, everything is different.

  The full moon illuminates each leaf on the tree in Faraday’s yard, casting millions of individual shadows, each razor-edged in definition. Dany looks at the tree, but what she sees is Liz ­Greene. She will never forget the look on Liz’s face, not if she lives for a hundred years – which, of course, none of them will.

  Finally, Eva emerges from the garage, and with her is Faraday.

  Dany breathes her relief.

  Faraday, meanwhile, stands there awkwardly, looking from one girl to the other. Dany doesn’t know what Eva has said to him, but his face is filled with confusion.

  “Ah, you used ice,” her teacher says finally. “Did it help your eye?”

  “Nah, I cut it,” Dany tells him.

  As she watches, his expression changes from confusion to shock. Dany cocks her head and takes her teacher in. Out of everything he’s seen today, this, nicking her eye with a razor so that she can see better, shocks him? She’s just released the pressure. Sometimes, the kids back on the work farm used to do it.

  She pushes out a breath and lets it go.

  “I just, I just need to stow my bag,” she says. On her back, she wears her backpack. She starts past Mister Faraday and Eva, but pauses. “Mac doesn’t talk much,” she tells Faraday’s shirt, “but she’s not stupid.”

  “Of course not,” he says.

  “She’s gifted,” Dany tells him. “Lots of gifted kids talk late.”

  “Einstein was a late talker,” Eva adds.

  Dany glances at her friend and nods. “There’s something else you have to know.” Dany is dancing perilously close to the truth, here, and knows it. Still, she turns to Faraday and eyes his oil-stained T-shirt. “Just, so you know, I’ll always come back for her. I did today. I always will. But if something happens to me, if I’m gone, you’ll do your part, you’ll take care of her. You’ll get her out of the city – take her to Antoine’s then the island, right?”

  “I love the little rabbit,” Eva says simply. “I’ll get her there.”

  “I know you do,” Dany says gently. “I was talking to him.”

  Again, she feels his eyes on her. And from the corner of her eye, she can make out his expression. It’s as if, just now, for the very first time, it has occurred to him to ask what the hell he is doing. Or maybe, who the hell Dany is.

  But he’ll help.

  Faraday is a decent person, that’s what he is. That is his character, through and through. Decent. And for a moment, Dany glimpses another line from one of the many books buried in a series of shallow graves in her head.

  Character is destiny.

  She takes one last look at her history teacher and walks into the garage.

  The garage is dark, cavelike. Dany balances on the scooter’s seat, and her fingers find the toggle. She flicks the switch and for a beat, a long drawn-out beat, there is nothing – and she’s sure the thing is old, done, dead. But a moment later, the engine is vibrating under her and the garage fills with bluish exhaust.

  The scooter is fast, faster than she imagined it could be. It roars to life under her and, shooting out of the garage, she passes through the alley in the space of a breath.

  At the mouth of the alley, Dany pauses to glance back.

  Fifty feet behind her, Faraday bursts into the alley. Seeing her, he stops all at once, and on his face, there’s a comic look of utter shock. Half a beat later, Eva is beside him, her face marked with a wordless plea. “Take me,” Eva mouths.

  But Dany can only shake her head, see Eva’s face, crestfallen.

  Dany has no choice. She turns away from her friend and torques the gas, so the asphalt beneath her becomes a blur of grey.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 21

  Dany leaves Faraday’s scooter by the old swimming pool. Once upon a time, the pool was a pretty blue jewel set in all the green, mountains framing it in the distance. The water was as blue as the sky and littered with hundreds of kids. But when Dany parks the scooter by the rusty old fence, all that remains of her sky-blue memory is a cracked concrete depression in the brown earth. She can’t see the prison-hospice from here, but it’s close, close.

  Over the last two months, Dany learned everything she could about the prison-hospice. Internet searches didn’t turn up much – and the internet’s satellite-view of the place was blacked out – but Jasper is doing a field study there. Was doing one. Him and Lauren Ko.

  Jasper told her what she needed to know. Jasper, who is gone now too. The place, he told her, is run by a skeletal crew of guards, the dangerous work mostly handled by female prisoners �
�� who muck out stalls, scrub down floors, empty out buckets, herd the dying by day and, in the morning, carry the night’s dead to the mobile crematorium. Inside the old coliseum, he told her, there are hundreds upon hundreds of cots. The cots, Jasper said, are the same kind used in cholera camps, the kind with a hole to put a bucket under. There, like elsewhere in the prison, it is prisoners who care for the terminals.

  And watching over this forced work?

  The kind of ex-soldiers the government can leverage. The kind who might, Jasper said, prefer “community service” to a court martial.

  Lauren, passing by Jasper’s desk, overheard them talking.

  Dany remembers her face. How she looked at Jasper, narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I swear, some of the soldiers I met were sociopaths. Keep your distance,” she said to Dany. “Creepy sons of bitches. Creepier than the virals.”

  “Jesus, Lauren,” Jasper said, giving her a look. “These are patients. People with lives, with families.”

  For a brief second, Ko flinched and closed her eyes. When she looked at Jasper once more, she held one hand up in apology. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just, I forgot myself.” She flinched again as she said it.

  Dany frowned, trying to read what was passing between them. When Ko had gone, she turned to Jasper. “What was that about?”

  But Jasper shook his head. “Look,” he said. “I haven’t interacted with the soldiers as much as Lauren, but I did meet privately with more than one. They were having … difficulties with the job. I referred them to a colleague, someone who specializes in PTSD. It’s pretty common among soldiers and first responders, and,” he said, with a chagrined shrug, “laboratory ­macaques.”

  Standing by the abandoned pool, Dany considers all of this. When it comes to guards, Dany doesn’t know what to believe. Jasper is probably right, more or less, but if she had to put money down, she’d put it on Lauren Ko.