The Female of the Species

by Mindy McGinnis

  I know that the seconds are ticking by, making minutes, turning into hours, becoming days that will stretch into weeks and years. And with every sunset Alex will be a little farther from me, her face a bit fuzzier, her voice an echo, our time a memory. And I’m not letting go just yet. Right now life is on pause and I want it that way, because she can’t slip away from me entirely until I start moving on.

  Branley comes to me in the night, smelling like hospital soap and tears. I heard her shower running through the wall and her skin is still hot from it. Some of the red fades as she lies next to me, her body cooling. But there are spots where she scrubbed herself raw and they stay bright, peeking from under the sleeves of her hospital robe, the hem that stops right above her knees.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again, her throat raw.

  I wrap my arms around her and she settles into me, her nose fitting in the spot between my collarbones, my chin resting on her head. We’ve been like this so often, as friends and as more, that it’s second nature. Our breathing finds a rhythm together and I feel her soft movements beneath the blanket. I put my hand on hers to still it, where she’s rubbing her upper arm. Her breath hisses out in pain as my fingers pass over three bumps just under the skin, embedded shot.

  “I wouldn’t let them take them out,” she says, her lips moving against my chest.

  I nod my understanding as her hand goes back to them, rubbing up and down in a hypnotic movement that draws us both down into exhaustion. And while she came to me out of habit, I know there’s more comfort for her in those wounds than I can ever give.

  62. PEEKAY

  I’m somewhere I should never have to be.

  Alex’s grave has already settled, the dirt sinking a little lower with each rain. The grass all around her stone is trampled and muddy, pockmarked from the high heels and camera tripods. But the news crews aren’t the only ones coming. I’ve been here every day in the week since her burial clearing away the debris.

  There are the expected flowers, which I’ve been taking home and putting in vases until Mom said our house smelled like a funeral home, then clapped her hand over her mouth like she wished she could force the words back in. The plastic flowers I took to Goodwill until the girl at the donation center told me they didn’t want any more. Now I just throw them in the Dumpster.

  There are other things I don’t know what to do with. Notes with names and dates, pages of diaries ripped out and weighed down with stones. Some of them have been folded tightly, some wide open, edges flapping in the wind. They’re for Alex, not me. I read only a few at first, the open ones that were begging for someone to finally know. I wanted to stop because I couldn’t stand the hot weight of all their knowledge in my stomach. Still, I read them. I read them until I understood Alex and what she did.

  Her tombstone has become a shrine, the pilgrims coming under cover of darkness to unburden their secrets. The notes I clear away, sending their accusations to the sky with flames and smoke while I sit at the fire pit, across from the empty chair where Alex should be. Some things take longer to burn: a broken necklace, a frayed bra clasp, a pair of underwear with I was fourteen written on them in permanent marker.

  My father presided over her funeral, not meeting my eyes when he quoted Romans 12:19 (Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord), but he looked right at me when he hit on Micah 7:19 (And all our sins are cast into the depths of the sea). I don’t know if he meant Alex’s sins or everyone else’s. Or maybe my own.

  I hadn’t talked to Jack about what he told the cops until we crossed paths at her grave one evening, me hauling away an armload of wilted flowers, him carrying a fresh batch. When he tried to talk to me about it, I punched him in the chest and he let me, crushing petals against him and driving thorns into his skin.

  “You really didn’t know?” he asked, eyes pinning mine in a way he must’ve picked up from Alex. I couldn’t find words so I shook my head and walked away, but his question stuck with me.

  No, I didn’t know. Everyone else wants to talk about the Alex who tore Ray Parsons’s nose off when he tried to hurt me, the Alex who tortured the man who killed her sister, the Alex who burned a child molester alive and blew a rapist away with a shotgun blast. Nobody wants to talk about the girl who held kittens in the palm of her hand, humming to them while they fed, or the girl who would pick fleas off a dog for hours. Because nobody else knew her.

  I’m left to mourn someone alone, someone who I can’t square with the one they put in the ground, the one the camera crews want to interview me about. I don’t know how to say good-bye to someone who shared only half of herself with me.

  Going back to school is the hardest part. The principal makes a big announcement about how we still have jobs to do even though there’s only two days of school left, and we can’t let recent events interrupt our education. The halls are filled with Alex’s name even though she’s not here anymore, and the whispers are so loud I almost don’t hear Branley’s gasp from the next locker down.

  Somebody drew a dick on her locker. Anonymous. Erect. Demanding.

  “Seriously?” Sara stops when she sees it.

  Branley just stands there, a flush rising in her cheeks. I dig in my locker for a pencil, finally finding one with a decent eraser. Sara opens her backpack to find her own and between the two of us there’s nothing left but smudge marks in a matter of minutes. But there are still tears in Branley’s eyes when she thanks us and walks away as the bell rings.

  Sara shakes her head. “Motherfuckers,” she says under her breath.

  “Yep,” I agree.

  “Dick,” Sara says.

  “What?” I ask, eyebrows shooting up.

  “Dick.” She points with her pencil at another drawing, this one on the wall down by the science room. The tardy bell goes off and we exchange glances.

  “We’re gonna need a bigger eraser,” I say.

  “I’m happy to let recent events interfere with my education if you are,” she says.

  We spend the rest of the period scavenging the halls, rubbing our erasers down to nubs and going to our lockers for fresh ones. I laugh for the first time in a while when Sara tells some other girls about what she dubs Penis Patrol.

  “I don’t get it,” Marilee Nolan says. “It’s not like I doodle pussy everywhere.”

  “Maybe you should start,” somebody says, and Sara’s eyes meet mine, her fork paused halfway to her mouth.

  The next day the front entrance is covered in flesh-colored window paint, the only way in or out of the school through a massive vagina. I almost choke in the parking lot, I’m laughing so hard. Sara joins me at my car.

  “What do you think?”

  “Don’t they have security cameras?”

  “Yeah, but it’s worth it. I bet half the guys won’t even walk through.”

  And she’s right. The principal has to force a whole herd of sullen males through the doors, yelling at them that they’re all late. Sara is called to the office halfway through the morning and I’m surprised to see her sitting in the cafeteria at lunch.

  “I thought for sure you’d get suspended,” I tell her, setting down my tray.

  “Nah, the art teacher told the principal it was for my final and that it was a peach and if he saw something else that was his fault, not mine. Then she gave me a book on Georgia O’Keeffe.”

  I let the fake smile I’ve been wearing in public slip away when I go to the bathroom. The grief sneaks up on me when I’m alone, cracking its way through the little walls I’ve built up to keep it away. Alex is gone but she’s very much still here, and not only in my mind. I’ve seen her in Sara’s willingness to skip class and erase dicks with me; in a loud complaint from a freshman instead of just rolling her eyes when a senior smacks her ass; in a not cool, man from Park when one of his friends made a rape joke. And she’s here in the bathroom stall with me, her hand behind the writing on the wall even
if it wasn’t her fingers holding the marker.

  stay away from Blake C.—date rape 3/26

  me too—2/4

  chad will roofie you don’t party with him

  There’s other stuff there too: Branley Jacobs is a whore and Alaina’s a man-stealing bitch, but they’re faded like someone tried to wipe them away, the one about Branley half blacked out.

  There are tears pooling in my eyes as I sneak into the janitor’s closet. I’m armed with bottles of Windex, paper towels, and a Sharpie when I slip into the boys’ bathroom in between classes, half expecting to be high as a kite before I get out of there. The motion-sensor lights kick in and even though it’s the boys’ bathroom, all I can see is Alex leaning against the sink as I wash my face, telling me why punching Branley isn’t going to do any good.

  I’m crying by the time I go into the first stall, the door clicking shut behind me as I pump the Windex, ready to wipe away anything that pisses me off. Instead I end up sitting on the toilet, reading things I never expected.

  I love Jessica

  Yr mom blew me, followed by

  My mom’s dead

  Then—Sorry, dude. My bad.

  Peekay won’t put out

  My fingers tighten into a fist, but underneath it I recognize Adam’s handwriting: U don’t deserve it.

  And on the back of the stall door graffitied in letters as high as my arm:

  REST IN PEACE ALEX

  I pop the cap off my Sharpie, the smell filling the stall and stinging my eyes as I add underneath, Amen. The motion lights flicker off, but I can still see the message imprinted on my eyelids.

  And I think maybe, just maybe, she can.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All my books have taken me to dark places, but this one had special corners where the shadows were quite deep. As per my usual I dragged others there with me. Extensive thanks first need to go to my critique partners and fellow authors R. C. Lewis, Kate Karyus Quinn, Demitria Lunetta, and S. L. Duncan for reading without flinching . . . mostly.

  I had many questions as I dove into this manuscript, many of them relating to the decomposition of dead bodies and the specific manner of the damage I would be inflicting on living ones. Special thanks to Scott Blough and Lydia Kang for assisting with the dead and the living, respectively.

  This was my first attempt at writing from a male perspective, and I must thank Geoffrey Girard and Jordan Nelson for answering my man questions, including how to make a proper fist and not being alarmed when I abruptly text, “Tell me where the thumb goes again?” with zero context whatsoever.

  Always, thanks to my amazing team at Katherine Tegen—Katherine, Ben Rosenthal, Stephanie Hoover, and Erin Fitzsimmons—and the lovely Margot Wood of Epic Reads. Publishing is a business, but they make it feel like a friendly one. Extra commendation to my unflappable agent, Adriann Ranta, who reacted well when I told her I had a manuscript in my closet from fifteen years ago that might be worth dusting off.

  Lastly, my long-suffering family, especially my mother, who worries what the people at church will think of my books. And my boyfriend, who patiently cooks dinner and nods while on the receiving end of a manic creative burst coming from the floor, where I’m usually located at those times.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo credit www.amyparrish.com

  MINDY MCGINNIS is the author of Not a Drop to Drink and its companion, In a Handful of Dust, as well as A Madness So Discreet. A magna cum laude graduate of Otterbein University with a BA in English literature and religion, Mindy is an assistant YA librarian who lives in Ohio. You can visit her online at www.mindymcginnis.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  BOOKS BY MINDY McGINNIS

  Not a Drop to Drink

  In a Handful of Dust

  A Madness So Discreet

  The Female of the Species

  Phantom Heart

  CREDITS

  Cover art © 2016 by Tracy Turnbull

  Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons

  COPYRIGHT

  Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES. Copyright © 2016 by Mindy McGinnis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.epicreads.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932089

  ISBN 978-0-06-232089-6

  EPub Edition © August 2016 ISBN 9780062320919

  * * *

  16 17 18 19 20 PC/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

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