“Mom?” I called into the night as Laura sat up.
“Lie down,” Laura said sharply.
I felt something surge through my body—adrenaline, rage, and a sense of righteousness.
“Don’t touch me!” I shouted. I got to my feet, feeling like a swamp beast.
Laura was unimpressed. She came closer. She reached down to grab me by the hair—
I shoved her so hard she went flying and landed in the dark water.
I began to back away.
Laura struggled to her feet and started toward me again.
I shoved her a second time—and as I did, I noticed something. In the front pocket of her jacket was a second small syringe.
How many doses did she think it was going to take to get rid of me? I was almost flattered.
She came close enough for me to grab it, and then I pushed her away. As she flailed, I pulled the cap off the syringe, and when she came at me once more, I plunged it into the spot where her neck met her shoulders.
She gasped and grabbed for her neck as if she’d been stung.
“You’ve been giving me this stuff for a long time,” I said. “Maybe I built up a tolerance.”
I saw her eyes make a panicked sweep of our surroundings—the first sign that she was losing her balance.
“You probably don’t have a tolerance, though,” I said, stepping toward her.
“Stay away from me,” she hissed.
My body might as well have been made from wood, but I kept moving. “You’re a coward,” I said. “You can’t make people do what you want, so you just try to shut them up.”
“Stop!” she said. “What are you doing?”
She seemed to think I was going to kill her—which I wasn’t. In fact, if she’d fallen into the water I would have dragged her out.
But I did plan to knock her down hard enough so she wouldn’t get back up.
I moved slowly, steadily, in her direction, and she continued to scrabble away from me, rendered silent by her fear and the sedative coursing through her veins.
Finally we reached the corner that held Lily’s grave.
Laura knew where we were. She glanced over her shoulder and made a strangled screaming noise.
The grave was covered in a thick, lush blanket of lilies, their faces wide open.
I didn’t even have to lay a finger on her. I walked close enough for her to panic and fall backward into the flowers, which seemed to part and then close around her. Her cries were awful because they were the guilty, terrified cries of a person being dragged to hell.
Like in my dream . . .
I stopped short, and suddenly I realized who the lurching figure in my dream had been—it was me.
Oh, that’s funny, I thought. All I’d been afraid of was myself.
And then I turned and walked away, confident that Laura wouldn’t be standing up anytime soon.
I made it as far as the Adam and Eve gate.
Up ahead, I saw a pair of uniformed police officers moving quickly through the garden.
I paused for a moment, then crumpled to the ground like a rag doll. I found myself staring at a flower I’d seen before—the tiny blossoms so cheerful and sweet. They seemed to be watching me like a thousand curious, tiny creatures.
I saw the officers approach and the surprise in their eyes, and then behind them I saw a weak, staggering figure, teetering in her long nightgown.
“Hey, Ags,” I tried to say.
And then I passed out.
* * *
I AWOKE BRIEFLY as they were loading me into the ambulance. The paramedics said some comforting things that I couldn’t remember even moments after they were spoken. Through the open doors I could see Agatha watching me, wrapped in a blanket. She seemed worried.
Beyond her were about eight police cars.
And past them, at the entrance to the garden, I could have sworn I saw my mother.
She looked at me. Her eyes were shining with love and pride and sorrow.
And then she disappeared.
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
“TONIGHT,” AGATHA SAID, “you, me, Barrett, some rando Barrett knows—Pauline’s Pizza?”
I looked up from my biology textbook.
“Say yes,” Agatha said. “Please? Barrett misses you.”
She slipped off her Camden blazer and hung it on the hook on her side of the closet door, then slid onto the bed next to me and grabbed Blue Bunny (who had magnanimously forgiven her for the earlier mistreatment). She held him in front of my book.
“Barrett keeps whining about you and it’s driving Agatha craaaazy,” she said, in a very poor impersonation of what Blue Bunny’s actual voice would sound like. “You should just do her a favor and go.”
I shut the book and flipped onto my back. “I have a bio test to study for.”
“That’s in three days.”
“I’m too tired to go out.”
“No, you’re not. I’ll buy you a coffee.”
I tried again. “It’s freezing and I’m tired of Pauline’s. We just went there last week.”
“I have nineteen coats, and no one is ever tired of pizza. Stop making excuses.”
There was a knock at the door, and Kiley Chambers popped her head in. “Helloooo, cupcakes,” she said. “Margot, can I borrow your Spanish notes? I was at a yearbook meeting, so I missed class.”
“Sure,” I said. “Hand me my backpack.”
Kiley shouldered Agatha off the bed and sat down next to me. She set a magazine on the pillow and picked my backpack up, handing it to me. While I dug through it for my Spanish binder, Agatha continued to wheedle.
“Just not today, all right?” I said.
“Then when?”
“When she’s ready,” Kiley said. “God, leave her alone.”
Kiley had become extra-protective of me. I’ve heard of some cultures where, if someone saves your life, you’re their servant. Kiley had inverted that. I think she took seriously the idea that it had been her number I called that night, her quick thinking and calling the police that had saved my life (and probably Agatha’s, too), and that made her feel like she was my bodyguard.
Agatha sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the magazine. “He’s just in such a weird mood since we saw Mom last week. It’s making me sad.”
“Even if he’s sad, it’s not Margot’s job to make him feel better.” Kiley made a face. “How’s your mom?”
“Same.” Agatha shrugged and her voice became clipped, as it always did when Laura came up. “Won’t talk. Just sits there. Mad at us for selling the house, I guess.”
In her ranting when the police found her, Laura had inadvertently confessed to murdering Lily. Whoops. Now she was locked away, pretty much for life.
At the state institution, of all places.
We could have been roommates, I thought, when the court’s decision came through.
“Well, sorry,” Kiley said, “but that’s what you get when you try to murder children. You get your fancy old house sold.”
“Stop, Ky,” Agatha said quietly. And Kiley, who was actually an excellent friend, stopped. She picked up her magazine, and I glanced at it.
“Hey, can I see that?” I pulled it out of her hands and turned it over. The ad on the back cover was a picture of a model holding up a new phone to take a selfie.
It was Tam.
“I know this girl,” I said. “I met her at the group home.”
“She loves that phone,” Kiley said.
“She’s pretty,” Agatha said.
Yeah, she was. I stared at it for a few more seconds.
“Keep it, if you want,” Kiley said with a shrug. “I don’t care.”
“Thanks,” I said, tucking it onto my shelf.
After Kiley left, I turned to
Agatha. “I’ll see him,” I said. “Soon. But not yet, okay?”
Agatha frowned. “Okay.”
“Soon,” I said.
She sat down next to me and sighed. “No, no, take your time. He can wait.”
“But will he?” It was a little troubling. Because the fact was, I did like Barrett. Very much. And I missed him a lot. Sometimes all I wanted in the world was to sit and talk and . . . I don’t know, kiss a little (okay, a lot).
But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that the time wasn’t right yet. There were still too many things I had to figure out.
It was one thing to be best friends with Agatha—that had fallen into place as if we’d been made for each other. But taking things to the next level with Barrett? No matter how much I wanted to spend time with him, it was . . . complicated.
“He will wait,” she said firmly. “He told me specifically to tell you to take your time.”
I flopped back on my pillow and hugged Blue Bunny. How much time would it take? How long until I walked through the day feeling like a halfway normal person again, and not That Orphan Who Almost Got Murdered by That Homicidal Rich Lady?
“I don’t know,” I said to the ceiling. “There’s a lot to figure out. And it’s so hard.”
“You don’t have to figure it out right now,” she said, lying next to me so that our shoulders touched. Her voice was wistful, sad. “We don’t have to figure anything out.”
She intertwined our fingers so we were holding hands. We did this a lot. Sometimes I felt more like we were sisters than just friends. I felt like something connected us under our skin, inside our brains.
Like maybe Laura’s cruelty had taught us how to see the parts of ourselves—and of each other—that no one else could see. And we might always be hurting, we might always be damaged, but we were more than that, too. We were the parts of us who had saved ourselves. Who’d had enough. Who’d chosen to live.
I knew it was as hard for Agatha as it was for me. I knew she had nightmares, too.
But when I woke up in a panic, she was there to remind me I was safe. And I did the same for her.
Agatha took a deep, searching breath. Her hand squeezed mine, and I could tell we had come to that quiet part of the day when the hurt was closest to the surface. But we had each other. We weren’t alone.
And that made all the difference.
“Aren’t we lucky, Margot?” she asked quietly. “Do you ever think about it—how lucky we are?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Alender (rhymes with "calendar"!) grew up in South Florida, and studied film at the Florida State University Film School. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she worked in TV development and production for several years, including a long stint producing dog shows for Animal Planet. She penned Bad Girls Don't Die and two sequels, as well as Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer, Famous Last Words, and The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall. In her spare time, she enjoys writing, reading, sewing (especially quilts), practicing yoga, photography, visiting friends' blogs, and hanging out with her family.
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The Companion Page 29
