by Sarah Porter
“No!” it jabbers. Right in her ear, but still loud enough that I can hear it too, and it wallops me that I’ve never heard identifiable words from those things before. “No, no, no!”
“Why the hell not?” Kezzer asks. The mini-Kezzer is bent across her eyes and she still hasn’t noticed me. “If you’re part of me, why aren’t you on my side? Unless I’m just the bullshit copy?”
“Try,” the thing babbles.
“What do you mean?” Kezzer barks at it. “How am I not trying?”
“Harder!” it squeals, so sharply that her eardrum must quiver, and then they drop her, all her little ziggity copies drop her. But pretty softly, and they’re careful to chuck her free of the rosebush. She lands on her back in the grass, and it probably didn’t do anything worse than knock the air out of her. Which—I wouldn’t want to say this out loud, naturally—but I’m an eensy smidge disappointed that they didn’t teach her more of a lesson.
Because really, if she wanted to try climbing in there, why didn’t she tell me? There’s been a little too much of Kezzer going behind my back recently.
She lies on the grass and gasps with her arms flung over her face while all the cardboard half-hers go clattering back up and patch the dark scribbly hole they just made in our house. They slap themselves into place and go back to being vinyl siding. Good as new.
“Kezzer?” I say. It sounds pretty cold. “You okay?”
She pushes up onto her elbows, slowly, and looks at me in a way I don’t like much, anxious and super-focused and—intrusive, like she’s trying to read the future in my entrails. Just because she’s a miracle, it doesn’t mean she never gets on my nerves.
“You were talking with Prince,” she says. “I can tell.”
“Which is your problem why?” I snap. “Kezzer, just stop worrying.”
She sits up and her gray eyes keep hanging on to my face. “They’re really getting to you, baby. Every time you’re with them, you come back—less yourself. You think I can’t see that?” Her voices pitches up. Like, it turns into this mosquito sound, when it should be a low, fuzzy rasp.
“What about what I saw?” I say. “Just now? Why do you keep sneaking around and doing stuff I don’t know about?”
From the way her stare gets even sharper, I know she knows the rest of what I mean. She just plain lied to me to help Lexi get away, and it’s not reasonable for her to expect me to forget that.
Kezzer gets to her feet, moving kind of stiffly, so maybe she’s at least bruised. For an instant her face is so hard I almost step back. “I thought I heard something. Upstairs.”
“You—” Okay, I guess that changes things. As long as she’s telling the truth, which I can never count on. “You heard what?”
She hesitates, and brushes herself off in this half-assed way, not actually caring about the dirt and grass all over her. She hasn’t even been washing her hair much.
“Footsteps.” I guess my mouth falls open at that, because Kezzer half smiles. “Actually, I know I heard them. Somebody was walking right overhead. Maybe you can see why I’d want to investigate?”
A stranger, just bumbling around in our house, spitting on the floor and putting their feet up in those rooms we can’t even get to ourselves—it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Total and complete outrage. And if it’s not a stranger?
That’s double-worse. Lexi, it’s Lexi, says the buzz in my head, but if Kezzer hasn’t already figured that out I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to tell her. Lexi’s found some way in that I don’t know about, and she’s here to steal Kezzer from me. I know Lexi didn’t agree with everything I did, but still, we were close for years. I trusted her. And now it’s like I see what was there all along, all the distortion and smudging and sweet-voiced teasing is torn away, and I get it. I was a fool to think Lexi is my friend.
She’s the enemy.
It’s never too late for revenge, Prince said. Right, right, right. Hey, maybe there’s even time for preemptive revenge, before Lexi manages to destroy everything I’ve fought so hard to create?
“Just because we can’t get upstairs,” Kezzer says, and it’s really hard for me to dial back in and hear her over all the ruckus my thoughts are making, “that doesn’t prove they can’t come down. Like, while we’re asleep? It’s creepy as shit.”
Right. “So what did you do? I mean—whoever it is—did they try to talk to you?”
She shakes her head. “I yelled up. Nobody answered.”
If she’s telling the truth for once, then I can deal with this as an explanation—but, God, she’s lied to me before. Because if Lexi saw her chance to get Kezzer alone, why wouldn’t she take it? All at once words are bubbling up into my mouth, jumping up and smacking on my teeth, and I’m not even trying to hold back. My heart is spewing lava.
“That’s what you want me to think!” I yell. Because I’m seeing it; the glitter and the specks are swarming into pictures, and I’m watching Lexi hiding up there, waiting in the dark, and Kezzer sneaking up the stairs to her whenever my back is turned. “You—I bet you’re lying. I bet you know exactly who it is, hiding in our house!”
I guess I can see how, to Kezzer, it might seem like all of this is coming out of nowhere. She looks so bewildered that for the sharpest little blurt of a moment I almost feel like I’m the one being an asshole. But then I get over it.
“Josh? I’m trying to tell you that we have a problem. You are not helping.”
“Well, what am I supposed to think? You already totally betrayed me by saying whatever you said to Lexi, and now—oh, Kezzer, how am I supposed to know you won’t do something even worse next time? I just want to be able to trust you!”
Maybe nothing I’m saying is true, maybe it’s all some crazy noise that slipped into me when I was with Prince, maybe I’m the one who’s being cruel—but I believe all of it, I see it, it’s all over my vision and my heart is beating out Lexi’s voice, and I can taste Lexi kissing Kezzer, like the kiss is jumping around in my spit. I’m trying really hard not to cry.
“Josh!” Kezzer says. And oh, that’s like it should be. If Kezzer sees I’m upset, she comes to me, always and forever, and she does now. She comes and wraps her arms around me and tries to squeeze the shaking out, and it helps, but not enough. “Okay, so I shouldn’t have lied to you. I’ll admit that part. Lexi—she has a real life out there. Don’t you see? She has the kind of family we never had. I couldn’t stand—but I’m sorry I wasn’t honest about it, baby, okay? Are we good now?”
No. “You let her climb the stairs. They’re you, Kezzer. Those stairs are made of who you are, and we both know that! The whole floor upstairs is you. And Lexi just started walking right up, and you have never let me in that way.”
Kezzer strokes my hair, and I nuzzle close. “You—try not to take this the wrong way, baby, please? But you’ve just been talking to Prince, and he messes with your head. It keeps getting worse.”
Is she actually trying to say the most infuriating thing imaginable? “Why do you keep making this be about Prince?” And then I’m shoving her away and screaming, and I didn’t plan to do it. I’m full of words and sounds and impulses that came from I don’t know where, but they still boil out. “It’s got nothing to do with him! You’re the one who fucked up, Kezzer, and you’re the one who has to take responsibility, and stop trying to pretend—that you can blame everything on—that Prince has got some kind of remote control he can use to jerk me around! It’s totally crazy!”
Tittering, musical and harsh. We have an audience. I don’t even look around, I’m so used to it by now, but I think Prince’s people are up in the trees, watching us and laughing. I can tell by the hike of Kezzer’s shoulders that she’s just noticed too.
“It’s got nothing to do with him?” Kezzer asks—flat and hard, but she’s raising her voice, obviously for their benefit. She has to know they’d hear her even if she whispered, but I guess she’s making some kind of point. “Yeah, except that I was trying to
save Lexi from becoming one of his damned toys in this shithole.”
I’m so shocked I can barely speak. “Kezzer, you’re talking about our home.”
She actually hisses through her teeth. “We’re nowhere, Josh. It’s the void with some houses slapped on top of it. We’re so pathetic that we can’t even function in the same world as other people.”
“We don’t live in the same world as other people, Kezzer,” I say, and I’m really making an intense effort to stay calm, “because those are the same people who kept trying to crush us.” People like Lexi. I never used to think of her that way: as one of the bland, empty, evil ones, one of the people who use boring normalcy as a cover for how vicious they are inside, but now I see the reality I missed back then. “I got you out of there so they couldn’t keep hurting you.”
Kezzer stares at me, breathing hard, and then she shrugs. “I don’t think it matters where I am. You talk about wanting to trust me, but the real Ksenia—probably she’s what Lexi saw die. So what’s to trust? But just because I’m disposable, it doesn’t mean Lexi is.”
“Kezzer!” I say, but she’s turning on her heel—she’s turning her back on me—and stalking away over the shiny green lawn. And the giggling trills all around us, like some garbled mixture of a sitcom laugh track and a thousand manic birds.
why did you send me to die?
By the time I get in the house Kezz has vanished—probably in her room, slumped on her bed and scowling into empty space—and the bitch of it is, we still need to go to their party tonight. We should probably eat dinner first, and I should really try to clean her up and get her into some kind of cuter outfit. Even though Kezzer just said the meanest, most destructive things possible, as if she’d spent weeks refining the calculations for how to maximize hurting me. Even though she’s in a vile mood too, and she’ll bring all that attitude along with her. Which, okay, Prince and them won’t mind, because they think that Kezzer’s worst tantrums are adorable, and they probably even prefer her in a rage. But she can still ruin my night.
You know what? I’m not cooking for her. I’ll eat by myself.
I’m just dumping some leftover stew into a pan when I hear it: footsteps, sounding really definitely human, creaking across the ceiling right over my head. Would I recognize the sound of Lexi’s steps? I listen as hard as I can, and I try to call up one of Prince’s brain-movies so I can see what’s happening, but it doesn’t work. It could be her. But I’m not positive. And either way, it is just grossly, horribly not-okay that somebody is violating our space.
I storm to the foot of the stairs. There’s nothing but darkness up there, same as always. “Hey!” I yell. “This is private property!”
The footsteps stop dead, but that’s the only answer I get. I don’t usually believe in violence, but sometimes you have to make an exception, and all at once I’m ready to literally kill whoever it is up there—if I can get my hands on them. It’s a tricky thing to do, though, when the stairs will throw me halfway across the room if I try anything.
“Why don’t you come down and talk?” I call up. “This doesn’t have to get ugly. Are you hungry?”
No answer, but I get the sticky, draggy sensation of somebody listening hard, and wondering hard, there in the dark. Maybe I can make out the sound of breathing, right at the top of the staircase?
God—I didn’t even think about a weapon. Now, that was an oversight. I slip back to the kitchen and get the biggest, sharpest knife we own, hyperalert all the time for any tiny groaning-floorboard sounds, then dart back to the stairs. I keep the knife behind my back, because whoever it is—Lexi, Lexi, Lexi, or, well, probably—can see me, right?
“So, are you coming down, or what? Because this is getting ridiculous.”
Silence, or maybe a faint shuffling. And—does it even make sense to say this? But I’m getting less sure that it’s Lexi’s silence. Like, the tone seems wrong. It’s meek and sad and pitiful, and maybe I don’t know Lexi as well as I thought, but I know some things she isn’t.
Then, really softly: “Joshua?”
Whose voice is that? It’s so quiet it’s hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure the Lexi hypothesis is wrong now. Which actually, maybe, makes this extra horrible after all? “Yeah? If you know me, why don’t you come downstairs where we can see each other? No offense or anything, but the way you’re acting is pretty disturbing.”
A pause. A snag in the breathing, up there? “Joshua. Why did you send me to die?”
I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and say that this is not a question anybody passionately wants to get from a creepy stranger lurking in their house. My heart slams in my chest. “What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t even know who you are.”
“I know I’m not whole-me,” the voice keeps on, in this whimpery, nagging way. “But I’m enough-me! Enough that I thought—maybe you could love me a little? Enough that you wouldn’t—”
“I never did anything to you!” I’m screaming, out of the blue, out of my mind. But I shouldn’t, I should stop, because it’s really better if Kezzer doesn’t hear this. Oh, except she must have by now. So why doesn’t she come stick up for me? “I never hurt you, or anybody, and I am so, so sick of these—these insane accusations, when they’re the last thing I deserve!”
A sob. If this ghastly thing invading our home comes down here, I swear I will kill it repeatedly.
“I didn’t die, though,” it says. She says? “Not for long. But I don’t know what they did with my heart. Am I allowed to miss it? And then I crawled through all the cold and the mud, for so, so long. Joshua, you never, ever should have hurt me that way!”
God. It almost goads me into trying to run up the stairs to take care of this freak, but I put the brakes on. The thing is, those stairs are nasty, vindictive little jerks, and every time I step on them they throw me back harder. I don’t need a broken spine.
But the way I’m feeling, I have to do something. My body is full of this spastic energy and my hands aren’t totally under my control anymore, and I’m still holding the knife. I’m screaming and it’s not even making words anymore, and—is it even on purpose?—I stab one of the stairs, hard.
The knife jerks out of my grip and sticks trembling in the wood. For a second I just stare at it: the steel blade jiggling with light.
Blood starts oozing out around the blade. Because of course that’s not wood, not really. My own voice rings in my skull, repeating something I said—when did I say it? They’re you, Kezzer. Those stairs are made of—who you are, and we both know that!
I get one more second to wish I could take it back before the staircase erupts in my face.
Millions of them, it must be millions, like they’ve been breeding and replicating all this time. Pointy elbows shove into my eyes and guts and I’m covered in pinching teeth, like a school of paper piranhas. I must go staggering back, but I only know it when I hit the floor and feel the mini-Kezzer-things crumpling under me, then snapping back so my whole body jumps around. I shriek and slap at them, but there are just so many, and everywhere I see those pieces of Kezzer’s face like fragments of a smashed LP. An eye in a zag of half nose, a half mouth full of razor fangs.
And they aren’t all her, either. A brown eye with glitter liner glares an inch from me, like I’m looking into a mirror, and I hear this sick, thin version of my own voice growling at me. They jump on my face with jagged heels and the back of my head bangs the floor again and again. I’m shrieking so loud my throat feels torn. Where is she?
“Kezzer! Help me!”
Teeth pierce my ankle. I can feel my skin rip free: a hot jolt of pain, and the sickening sound of it, the moist shredding kah-kah-kah.
“Kezzer!”
Is she really not coming? Doesn’t she care? Another patch of flesh tears off my neck and there’s that rusty blood stink and I’m crying, not even from the pain, or because my own staircase is going to eat me alive, but because Kezzer is abandoning me. She’s in her room, listening to me die.<
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Then I hear something banging back—oh, the front door? And Kezzer’s running toward me. “Get off him! Get off!” She must have grabbed the broom from somewhere, because I see it swinging just above my face, scattering mini-Kezzers in a jagged cloud. She drops the broom and seizes them by the fistful, yanking them off, and they scrunch like tinfoil in her hands. “You will not hurt him! You will—freaking—not! I don’t care what he’s done, I don’t care. You know he’s not right!”
The horrible little paper-cut teeth slide out of me.
They all let go and scatter, some of them cheeping in this bad-dog kind of way.
She crumples over me, smoothing back the hair from my face, and bursts into tears. “Oh, Jesus, baby, you’re bleeding.”
“They were going to kill me, Kezzer.” The pain in my ankle and the side of my neck feels cold now, this weird icy singing, and I must be bruised all over. “You weren’t here, and I swear—they would have just ripped all my skin off! You weren’t here!”
Kezz scatters little kisses on my face. Oh, I guess this counts as making up? She wipes her tears on her sleeve and gives me about as sweet of a smile as she can ever manage. “Baby? Can you walk, if you lean on me? Because I need to get the first-aid kit, and I don’t want to leave you. Not this close to—”
She glances over at the stairs. They’re back, just the same as before, except for the blood still oozing from the fifth step up. The knife is there, stuck in the wood. Does she see it? Maybe she’ll assume the blood is mine, from one of those bites.
How long until she asks me what happened? Kezzer learning—about what that thing upstairs said to me, about how I stabbed—anyway, she can’t find out about that.
But then she looks from the stairs to me, and her expression is suddenly a lot harder. This look of knowing despair, and—that can’t be loneliness, because it’s impossible that Kezzer could feel lonely with me! Without a word she stands up and walks over there, yanks the knife out and drops it on the floor, then takes off her hoodie and uses it to blot up the blood.
