by Chuck Wendig
Now she's getting pretty good.
With the pliers, she carefully removes the bottom of the bulb. Not all of the metal fixture – just the very bottom.
With the screwdriver, she pokes out the rest of the bulb-guts. The center coil and all its little connecty bits.
Annie reaches into the bag again. Grabs a can of air duster, a box of drinking straws, and a roll of black electrical tape.
Phase two.
A blast of air from the air duster cleans out the inside of the bulb.
From underneath her couch cushion she rescues a small wooden box. It used to hold her Tarot cards, but those things were bullshit. They never told the future, and you always had to use the stupid little book to figure out what the fuck was going on in the first place.
In there now is a small plastic baggy of glittery white powder. Up close, it looks like sea salt, or maybe like the glass dust she just blew out of the bulb.
Into the bulb goes the crystal meth.
Then she thrusts the tip of a drinking straw into it, and winds the tape around it so it's all sealed up nice and tight. Like a sippy cup.
She fishes around the floor for her lighter. It's under the couch.
Annie misses her glass pipe, but Jeffy stole it, that fucking dickwipe. Jeffy's always taking her shit. And yet she lets him. She doesn't know why. He's a parasite and somebody should remove him from this earth and yet she does whatever he wants (wherever he wants) because she really loves him and hopes that one day he'll finally be nice to her. Instead of hitting her. Instead of holding her down and pinning her arms and doing her from behind because "he likes her ass, not her face
Whatever.
A hit from this will calm her down.
Flame under the bulb. Drug bubbles. White turns to muddy black. Vapor rises. She sucks it in.
Clarity tolls like a bell inside her mind. Gong. Everything snaps into focus. She's both calm and wired at the same time. She knows why they call it what they call it because she feels, well…
Crystal.
It's like looking into a mirror that reflects other mirrors. Smoking this stuff shows her all the possibilities. All the things she can do.
Her cell phone rings.
Tiny Tempah ringtone. "Miami 2 Ibiza."
She should check who it is before she answers but she doesn't think about it and by the time she hears her mother's voice it's too late to do anything about it.
"Annie," her mother says. "Annie, it's your mother."
It sounds like she has a cold.
"What?" Annie barks. "What do you want?"
"Annie, I know about the eviction notice."
How the hell does she know that?
She's been spying. That's what it is. Mom's been spying again.
"Goddamnit, leave me alone. I don't–" Focus up, breathe deep. "I don't need you to ride my ass anymore. I got this."
"I just want to help. I don't want to see my baby girl out on the street."
"You put me there. It's all your fault." That adds up. That tracks. It is all her mother's fault. And Dad's fault, too, for sitting there night in and night out like a lump, like a fatty tumor, grotesque but not even so powerful as to be malignant.
"I'll give you money."
That phrase, like a bomb. A flash grenade meant to blind and stun.
"Seriously?" Annie asks, teeth clacking together. Then grinding together. Then biting so hard her jaw cramps.
"I don't have much. Enough for rent."
Enough for rent? That'd be a life-saver. Except. Maybe she'll buy crystal instead. Crystal helps her think. It'll help her think her way into more rent money. Twice as much. Three times as much.
Smart girl.
"Okay, but I need the money now," she says.
"I can meet you."
"Where? When?"
"The bus stop by your apartment. The one by the river."
"On Archer."
"That one. Meet me there in an hour."
She finally asks, not because she cares but because she feels she should feign compassion what with her mother giving her cash and all: "Are you sick? You sound like you're stuffed up."
"Just allergies. Autumn's coming. Pollen and mold are high."
"I'll see you in an hour."
"I love you, Annie."
Annie can't go that far. She wants to, but…
She quickly thumbs the button that ends the call.
The hour feels like it stretches and shrinks and collapses upon itself a hundred times. Annie cleans the apartment. Searches high and low for her keys until she realizes she doesn't need them because the bus stop is only a five-minute walk downhill. She tries to eat but isn't hungry. Smokes the rest of her crystal.
Everything bright, clean, clear. All of life in high-def.
Finally, it's time. Past time, actually. Already ten after the hour. Already late.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Mom's going to be irritated. Anything she can do to be pissed, she'll do it. It's like she wants it. Like she's a dog rolling around in roadkill – she loves the stink. A real martyr.
Annie hurries down the hill from her apartment. It's raining. She didn't realize. Not heavy. Just a spritz. Like God spitting in her hair.
A few kids in hoodies hang out by the defunct tennis courts, leaning up against the chain-link fence. She gives one of them, a kid in big shoes sucking a lollipop, a nod. He nods back.
His name's Chase. He goes by Chizzy.
He's only thirteen, but he sells mad ice. She'll see him soon enough.
Soon she hears the river. The hushed rush of turbid water.
By the road, a line of oaks. A few leaves turning yellow. Some are already on the ground. A few of them helicopter down to the pavement.
She tries not to slip. Wet asphalt and shitty sneakers make for such a hazard. That's what crystal does for her – makes her hyper-aware. Careful. Smart.
The bus stop at the corner isn't much to look at. Not a fancy Plexiglas one like those in the city but an always-moist moss-slick wooden box with ads on each side (plumber on one, funeral home on the other). It's splintering and fraying at the edges, the wood looking like the bristles of a broom.
No mother to be seen.
She hurries into the bus stop. Someone's there waiting for the bus. Some reedy stranger in a heavy coat. It's not yet cold enough for a heavy coat, but hey, it's a free country and people can wear whatever they want. He's just standing there, a floppy hat pulled low.
At her feet are torn pages soaked and sodden. Mailer inserts, a Penny Power, the yellow pages of… the Yellow Pages.
She asks the dude, "Did you see a… a woman here?"
"Mm? Hm-mmn. No."
"Short woman. Hair cut short. She would've pulled up in a…" What the hell is her mother driving these days? "Ford, I think. Blue Ford Focus." It's a nice car. Annie wishes she could have a car like that.
"I said no."
Okay. Whatever. Thanks for the help, asshole.
She steps out into the spitting, pissing rain again and looks left and right down the road. Nothing. No parked cars. No mother. She was either here and bailed or she's late.
Mom's never late.
She hears a scuff behind her – the man moving, his shoe on the ruined pages of forgotten publications.
But then she hears something else: her mother's voice, whispering behind her.
"Wicked Annie."
She's about to turn around, but–
Something heavy clubs the back of her head, and the world goes pitching forward into a dark hole. For a moment Annie blinks and finds herself on her hands and knees on the ground, a yellowing leaf crawling in front of her like a crab, swept that way on a brief and sudden wind.
Another blow strikes the back of her head.
It's lights out for Annie Valentine.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Trojan Horse
Rain – more a steady mist than an actual rain – collects on a windshield already streaked with pol
len. The wiper blades do a fine job smearing it all.
Miriam asks Katey about the two girls. Katey knows the black girl with the frizzy electrostatic hair. Tavena White is her name. Her mother's a drunk and on welfare. Daddy is long gone to jail for running a chop shop out of Scranton.
"I think it's funny when black people have the last name White," Miriam says. Katey gives her a look. "What, that's not racist. That's just appreciative of irony. And see, it's doubly ironic because…"
Wait for it. Wait for it.
"Miriam Black," Katey says.
"Bingo, bango, bongos-in-the-Congo."
I'm sure when Tavena gets her head chopped off she'll think this is funny, too.
A chill crawls up Miriam's spine. A parade of baby spiders.
Ahead, the school.
The iron gates are open. Homer stands vigil over them. A car pulls in front of them, and Miriam sees whoever the staff member is flash an ID and go inside.
Katey pulls up next. Goes to flash her ID. Miriam gives Homer a flip little wave and then Katey's already pulling ahead.
Katey pulls the car into the teacher's lot. The first several rows are already full. Miriam figures some people have been here all night – this is a boarding school. A whole wing of girls is just waking up. The school must have persistent staff. Cleaning, overnight guards, that nurse lady.
"I told you," Katey says, easing the car into a spot. "I can take the note to the girls."
"Uh-huh. And if you get caught, you get fired, and you get fired, then that's on me. Nah. It's early. I can sneak around here pretty good, I figure."
Katey turns to her. "It's good you want to help these girls. Once we let them leave, they're on their own. We have college placement and job placement and some of them do really well. Most of them, probably. But not all of them. Some fall back into bad habits. Or go back to their terrible families. Drugs. Prostitution. Petty crime. Nothing we can do about it. Especially once they turn eighteen, because we can't keep them here after that. You'd be amazed at how many just … disappear."
"Disappear."
"Sure. Hightail it to the cities, I guess. Harrisburg. Pittsburgh. Maybe Allentown or Philly. You hear a lot of girls talking about New York."
Girls disappearing at age eighteen, Miriam thinks. Or are they taken?
An oily black feather tickles the back of her brain. Are there more than two? Are Tavena and Wren just the start? Or part of a far longer and fucked-up pattern?
More chills. More baby spiders.
Nothing to be done about that now.
"I need money," she tells Katey.
"What? Oh."
"Cab fare. Or bus fare."
The teacher hands her two twenties. "That good?"
"That'll do me." She pauses. "You know, once upon a time, I would find someone like you and I'd just… wait. Till the cancer takes you. And then I'd rob you. Credit cards, cash on hand. Maybe pawn your laptop."
"How do I know you're not doing that now? How do I know that everything you say isn't an outright lie?"
Miriam knows Katey asks the question but doesn't believe it – she's a fish with a hook in her mouth. It's just this time, the hook happens to be real.
But just the same, no good answer is forthcoming. All she can do is shrug.
INTERLUDE
Ecstasy
Rich boy. Club kid. Dead man.
He coughs. Blood bubbles onto his lip. His right hand finds Miriam's knee. His left idly paws at a slush puddle in which a dirty Chinese food container floats.
His name is Nick. He lies there in the alley, staring up at her.
"Where were you?" he asks. Each word punctuated by the wet smack of bloody lips.
"I decided to be somewhere else," she says. Petting his hair.
"They came out of nowhere."
"I know."
"They robbed me."
"I know."
He's got the eyes of a car-struck rabbit. Wet and scared. "They took my phone. They took my, my, my watch. They took my money, and I didn't even get the E. They didn't even have any pills." He pops the P in pills. Flecks of blood dot Miriam's cheek.
She doesn't wipe it away. Seems rude.
"They didn't take your shoess" she says.
"You gotta call the hospital."
Miriam gnaws on the inside of her cheek while stroking his. "It's not going to help, Nick. You're not going to make it." He reaches for her but she pulls away and hunkers down by his feet, lifting his right leg up at the calf.
"Whaddya mean? I– I– I'm not even in pain. I'm just cold."
"That's because you're lying in a slush puddle. Take it as a blessing. It's numbing the wound." She pops the shoe – an expensive Nike sneaker – off his foot. She's surprised the thugs didn't jack his shoes. Surprised without being surprised She knew this was how it happened when she first met Nick and made out with him to shitty dubstep music two weeks back at that club.
"I'm okay. I'll get up and show up. I'll get up. You'll see."
He tries but can barely lift his head.
"The knife hit your kidney. Which is pretty bad but fixable. The real problem is the artery. You're going to bleed out."
"What? How do you know that?"
"Because I know, Nick. I just know. I've known this whole time." She says it and wishes suddenly that she didn't because now he sees who she really is.
"Why didn't y-y-you do something? I needn't need to score E tonight. You coulda told me. You coulda stopped me."
Inside his shoe she finds the two credit cards. They may have stolen his cash but the real wealth is here. Daddy's credit cards. Nick has no leash, and Daddy has deep pockets.
"I couldn't have stopped you," she says, crawling back over to him. "That's the thing, Nick. I've tried. And it always sucks because I just make it worse. I could have told you what I knew and you wouldn't have believed me. I could have handcuffed you to a radiator and you would have gotten away. I could have bashed you over the head with a toaster and I would have missed and you would have run fast as you could and you would have run right here into this alley and those dealers would have still shanked you in the back."
"You're a monster," he says. Like a petulant little boy, he adds, "I hate you."
"I know you hate me. I would too. But I'm not a monster, Nick. I'm just the monster's cleanup crew. Sorry it went like this. Thanks for the good times. You were sweet."
She kisses his cheek as his body starts to shake like a haunted séance table, blood pooling beneath him into the slushy pothole.
TWENTY-NINE
Dear Dead Girls
The school at morning is quiet. The building settles here and there – a pop, a squeak, a banging pipe behind the walls. And the wood beneath Miriam's feet creaks and groans even when she's walking on the dusty old rugs that line the floors.
Filmy gray light, fractured by rain, comes in through the windows, dim and watery. For some reason it calls to Miriam's mind a feeling of drowning.
Hair dyed with river water. Capillaries burst in yellow eyes.
Motes of dust drift in the pillars of wan light.
The girls' cubbyholes are labeled: not with swatches of tape but rather with little plaques screwed to the wood, a name engraved on each.
The school has only five hundred girls across seven grades (sixth through twelfth), but that's still five hundred cubbyholes – culminating in what looks like a big version of a wine rack, the holes turned on their sides like empty diamonds.
She would have to look through them all. That is, if Katey didn't tell her where to look. Good having an ally on the inside.
First, drop off the note to Wren. Then, Tavena White.
Miriam floats along the cubbyholes like a nervous hummingbird.
"Elizabeth Hope. Gwen Shawcatch. Trisha Barnes." No, no, no. "Molly Deerfield, Carla Rodriguez, Becky, Nellie, Lakeesha, Cristina–"
And then she sees it. Lauren Martin.
She squats down, slides the note into the hole.
&
nbsp; Behind her, someone clears his throat.
Oh, goddamnit.
Miriam turns.
