Last Rites

by Danielle Vega

  His eyes light up when he catches sight of me. “Bella!”

  I stumble out of the crowd, and Giovanni sweeps me into his arms, practically lifting me off my feet. I feel myself squeal. I never act like this. Like I’m some grinning schoolgirl. I love it.

  Giovanni puts me back down on the ground and turns to Mara and Harper, raising an eyebrow. “Are you going to introduce me to your beautiful friends, bella?”

  “I’m Mara,” Mara says. “I’ve been on your tour a couple of times. I don’t know if you remember . . .”

  “Ciao, Mara. Of course I remember you. You always asked the most fascinating questions.” Giovanni plants a kiss on both cheeks. Mara blushes, deeply.

  He turns to Harper. “And you must be Harper.” He says her name like Arpurr, more purr than words. Harper smiles, wickedly, and offers him her hand.

  “Pleasure,” she says. Giovanni brushes her hand aside and kisses her on both cheeks.

  “Were the costumes your idea?” he asks, raising his eyebrows appreciatively at our leather jackets and lingerie.

  “They were Berkley’s, actually,” Harper admits.

  “But you styled them,” I point out, motioning to the fierce aviators she found in the accessories bin. Harper beams.

  “Sono perfetti,” Giovanni says, squeezing her shoulder. Just as I’m about to get the teensiest bit jealous, he moves back to my side and presses a hand against my lower back, claiming me. Shivers race up my skin.

  “You ladies need drinks,” he says, and as though on cue, a tiny devil-headed man appears, carrying a plastic tray filled with neon-colored shots. Giovanni says something in Italian and unloads three shots from the tray, which he passes out to me and my friends. He winks.

  “Cheers,” he says.

  I notice a group of girls huddled together as I throw back my shot. They kneel on the stone steps leading up to the piazza, dressed all in white, with lacy veils draped over their dark hair. Everywhere else is crowded with bodies, but the girls are at the center of a wide-open space. It’s like no one wants go near them.

  “What’s their deal?” I ask Giovanni. Candlelight sends shadows dancing over the girls’ faces. I can’t see their eyes, but their lips seem to be moving together, reciting something.

  Giovanni follows my gaze, frowning. “Them? They are no one.”

  “Are they praying?”

  He rolls his eyes toward the sky and holds out his hands, like he’s asking someone in the heavens for help. “Yes. They are always praying.”

  “But why? Don’t they like the party?”

  “It is not the party they do not like, bella. It is the people who come to the party.”

  “Us?” I must look hurt, because Giovanni laughs.

  “Do not take it personally.” He leans closer to me so that I can hear him over the pulsing music. “This town has many old families. They remember what it was like before all the tourists came. How it used to be quiet. Now there are college girls dancing in the piazza every night and college boys throwing up on the sidewalks. Some people think this is . . .” Giovanni pauses, searching for the word. “Peccato . . . sin?”

  “Why would Cambria hold a festival like this if you think tourists are sinful?”

  “Not all of us think like the old families. Tourists bring money. Cambria is a very poor place. Most of us, we like the rich Americans drinking at our trattorias.”

  I nudge him with my elbow. “And going on your walking tours?”

  He laughs. “Yes, yes, exactly. You tourists pay for my school. To me you are sent from God.”

  He pulls his devil’s mask down over his face and nods to a group of bedeviled strangers who’ve been gathering near the fountain. “Enjoy the drinks, my friends. The performance is about to start.”

  “Performance?” Mara shouts. Someone’s turned up the music, and I barely hear her voice. “What performance?”

  I shrug. Giovanni climbs onto the fountain, unbuttoning his shirt as he does. He’s painted an inverted pentagram onto his chest in something that looks a hell of a lot like blood. The crowd whoops and cheers. He salutes and tosses his shirt over their heads. It hangs in the velvety night sky for a second, a ghostly white bird.

  “We need a sacrifice!” he shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth so that his voice booms above the music. “Who among you is brave enough to volunteer?”

  I look over at Harper and Mara, and the three of us burst into laughter. Meanwhile, more people have climbed onto the fountain with Giovanni, candlelight flashing over the blacks and reds and purples of their masks. The shadows make them look like they’re moving.

  They start removing their clothes, just like Giovanni did, and tossing T-shirts and tank tops into the crowd. They have strange symbols painted over their skin in the same bloody paint.

  “Sacrificio!” they chant, their voices merging into one. “Sacrificio!”

  A girl steps away from the crowd, and the people around her erupt into cheers. I feel a prickle of jealousy as Giovanni takes her by the hand and pulls her onto the fountain beside him. She makes quite a show out of opening her mouth and slowly sticking out her tongue.

  “What’s he giving her?” Mara shouts.

  Giovanni places a small white pill on the girl’s tongue. She swallows, and he turns her around. The crowd surges forward as she plummets backward, catching her before she can hit the ground. The people in front of us pump their hands in the sky, jumping up and down and cheering. For a moment I can’t see anything, can’t hear anything. I’m entirely surrounded by noise and energy and people. It’s intoxicating.

  “Another!” Giovanni shouts once the crowd has calmed down. His eyes find mine, and I feel my heart start thumping. He crooks a finger at me.

  I don’t know if it’s the music pumping through my blood or if it’s Giovanni’s delicious smile, but suddenly all I want in the world is to be standing on that fountain next to him, closing my eyes as he places that white pill on my tongue. I start pushing my way through the people packed in around me.

  “Are you serious?” Mara grabs me by the arm, jerking me back. “You’re actually going up there?”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” Harper adds, twisting her fingers together. “I mean, this party is a lot like the one . . .” She swallows the rest of her sentence, then turns to Mara for help. “You know?”

  “No,” I deadpan, even though I know they must be talking about my panic episode. “I don’t.”

  I shoulder through the crowd, and they part to let me through.

  “Sacrificio!” they chant. “Sacrificio!”

  I let their energy propel me forward until Mara and Harper’s objections seem like silly, faraway things. Giovanni leans down and wraps his fingers around my arm, pulling me onto the fountain beside him. I stumble forward, catching myself before I get some of the “blood” smeared across his chest onto my dress.

  “It’s corn syrup,” he tells me, pressing a finger into the pentagram. He lifts the blood to my mouth, and I wrap my lips around it, smearing the red over my cheek. It tastes sweet, like sugar.

  Giovanni grins and leans closer to me. “I knew you’d be my sacrifice,” he says in my ear, his voice making the words curl and dance.

  “Always.” I open my mouth, and he places the small white pill on my tongue.

  I swallow.

  CHAPTER 14

  Before

  I’m humming. That’s right, I’m actually humming, like a cartoon princess in a Disney movie. I half expect cockroaches and mice to crawl out of the walls and start braiding my hair.

  I’ve never hummed inside the institute, and I’m unprepared for how my voice echoes off the concrete walls of my room, haunting and toneless, like part of the melody has seeped in between the cracks and gotten lost on its way back. As soon as this thought comes to me, I press my lips together, going quiet.<
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  But even the eternal creepiness of this place can’t make me feel bad—not today, day forty-two of my imprisonment. The last day of my sixth week. The day I’m finally getting out of here.

  The thought makes me smile. I’ve got my suitcase propped on my bed, and I’m gleefully folding and packing what few possessions they let me bring here. T-shirts. Comb. The toiletries that don’t contain any alcohol. An ugly stuffed hippopotamus my mom insisted I bring with me. I won it during a class trip to Coney Island in eighth grade, and it’s lived in the back of my closet ever since, but Mom seemed to think it’ll bring me some comfort. It only makes me think of Tayla, how I won it because she distracted the guy running the game, and he didn’t notice me steal a few more balls . . .

  I shake my head, pushing the memory aside. In just a few short hours, I’ll be back in my bedroom, where the nail polish and good skin care and colorful clothes live. I’ll be able to wear earrings again and listen to music and go online and text my friends. I can’t wait to chill in Harper’s dorm, like we did during my first semester at NYU, drinking the beer she got some older guy to buy for her and gossiping about her crush on her TA. And maybe Mara will let me borrow her notes from her first-year classes—or better yet, tutor me. If I bust my ass over the summer, I might be able to catch up with them before fall semester.

  I’ll even put this hippopotamus in the middle of my bed if it’ll make my mom happy. Who cares? At least I’ll be home.

  I’ve started to hum again when a hand drops onto my shoulder.

  I screech and whirl around, flinging the hippopotamus across the floor.

  Dr. Andrews picks it up. “Who’s this guy?” she asks, gazing lovingly down at the animal’s ugly stuffed head. Like it’s a puppy.

  I feel my face close in on itself. Something’s wrong. She shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t fit here. Her white-on-beige-on-white ensemble belongs in her office, in the “nice” part of the institute, surrounded by white furniture and soft lighting and carefully chosen flowers. Nothing about her makes sense in this small, close room, with the crooked pipe jutting across the ceiling and the fluorescent light buzzing overhead.

  Without realizing what I’m doing, I edge backward, colliding with the wall. “What do you want?”

  Dr. Andrews places the hippopotamus on my bed and then sits down beside it, one hand still resting on its ugly purple head. “I was hoping we might talk for a bit. Sit down?”

  I swallow. I don’t want to talk for a bit, not when we’ve spent the last six weeks talking and now we’re done and I’m cured. But her voice has a quiet power, one that I have a hard time disobeying.

  I sit, mattress springs creaking beneath my legs. “What do you want to talk about?”

  Dr. Andrews removes her hand from the hippo’s head. She glances at my suitcase. “I’ve been thinking about the story you told during our last session. About Tayla?”

  I blink. “It wasn’t a story. It’s what happened.”

  “I’ve looked into some of the details. Tayla was accepted to Connecticut College, not Columbia. And she only made JV in volleyball, not varsity.”

  I shrug, trying for casual. “I guess I mixed some of the details up. Does that really matter?”

  Dr. Andrews fixes me with a calm gaze. “You lied to me, Berkley.”

  I can hear my heart beating in my ears, a steady hum. They catch you in a lie and you’re totally fucked.

  “I didn’t lie,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Tayla was really intense, just like I told you. That thing with the test—that actually happened.”

  I can still remember her crumpling that test up in one hand, throwing it across the hall in frustration. I told her to chill out—it was one test—and she rounded on me, furious, shouting about how some people care about more than parties and gossip.

  I shake the memory from my head. “I just changed some of the details to help you understand—that’s all.”

  Dr. Andrews’s expression doesn’t change. “Is that so?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  She straightens a wrinkle in her pants and then folds her hands in her lap. “I’m afraid I think there’s more to it than that. I know the plan was for you to head home after six weeks here, but I feel strongly, as do my supervisors, that we need to address the underlying issues that caused you to lie before we can recommend releasing you.”

  I replay what she just said, but the words lose their meaning before they manage to sink into my brain. “What? What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m recommending we . . .” Dr. Andrews swallows, and her eyes flit to the door of my dorm room, almost like she’s expecting someone else to waltz in and help her out. “I’m recommending that we keep you here for a few more weeks. So we can dig down into the reason you don’t want to tell me about what happened with Tayla.”

  A few more weeks.

  A jittery feeling starts in my gut, like when you’ve just realized you’re the butt of a joke but you haven’t heard the punch line yet. I force my lips to curve, not quite a smile.

  “I can’t stay here for a few more weeks,” I say. “I’m going home today.”

  Dr. Andrews tilts her head, sympathetic. “Berkley . . .”

  Whatever else she says gets lost beneath the low hum that’s started at the back of my head. “I can’t stay here for a few more weeks,” I say again, urgently. “I’m going home today. I’ve already started packing.”

  I jerk my chin at my suitcase. It seems sad, suddenly. Just a few folded T-shirts and bundled-up socks. It reminds me of being a little kid, pretending I was going to run away from home whenever my parents were mean to me.

  “Berkley, listen to me—“

  “No!” My voice comes out louder than I intended. My vision flickers, then sparks back to life, the colors sharper than they were a moment ago. The room seems to sway. I blink a few times, trying to regain my bearings.

  Dr. Andrews doesn’t look serene anymore. Her eyebrows form harsh angles in the middle of her forehead. Her nostrils flare.

  “Berkley,” she says, voice hard. “Please sit down.”

  “I am sitting.” But that’s not true. I’m standing, and I have the ugly hippo clutched in my hands so tightly that my knuckles ache. I blink again, trying to remember the last few seconds. Everything feels hazy. Even the colors in the room seem weird, like I’m looking out through tinted glass.

  “Sit down, and we’ll talk this through.” Dr. Andrews stands slowly, and she has her hands out in front of her like I’m a wild animal that she needs to approach with caution.

  The haziness fades as fury moves through me. She’s acting like I’m the problem here just because I don’t want to be locked up inside this cold, concrete room for who knows how long.

  I squeeze the hippo tighter. This is all backward. I’m not crazy. She’s the one being crazy.

  “I won’t stay here!” I feel my voice rise, like it’s a physical thing with sharp nails, climbing up the back of my throat. “You can’t keep me. I’m only supposed to be here for six weeks. Six weeks!”

  Dr. Andrews unclips something small and black from her waist and holds it to her mouth—a walkie-talkie. “This is Dr. Andrews. We have a code five in Block C. I repeat, we have a code five—“

  I throw the hippo, and it bounces off Dr. Andrews’s head, mussing her hair and knocking the walkie-talkie from her hand. The hunk of black plastic hits the floor with a smack.

  Dr. Andrews presses her lips into a thin line, fixing her hair with a jerk of her hand. “You’re making this much harder on yourself than it needs to be.”

  “You can’t do this.” My voice trembles. “You can’t keep me here.”

  Dr. Andrews doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to. I can already hear the echo of footsteps pounding down the hallway. They’re coming for me.

  I back up against the wall, pre
ssing my whole body against the cold concrete blocks. They’re going to take me away, take me somewhere even worse than this small, cold cell. I start shaking my head. The word no runs on repeat through my brain.

  Nononononononono.

  Dr. Andrews steps aside as a large male nurse bursts into my room. I look around for something to throw at him, to keep him away, but all my possessions are already inside my suitcase, packed and ready to take home.

  I pick up the entire suitcase and hurl it across the room. It hits the nurse square in the chest, making a satisfying thwunk. He staggers back, stumbling into the door.

  Another nurse appears behind him, a woman this time. She holds a needle.

  “Calm down, darling,” she coos, easing past the doubled-over male nurse. The tip of her needle looks sharp beneath the flickering fluorescent lights. “This is just a little something to help you relax.”

  I shake my head, pressing harder into the wall behind me. I’ve seen the girls who’ve gotten “a little something” like this before. They walk around like broken dolls, eyes glassy, feet heavy. They drool while they watch television.

  The nurse advances on me. I look around for something to throw, but everything I brought with me is heaped on the floor, trapped beneath my suitcase. Dr. Andrews and the male nurse form a barricade in front of my door. I’m backed against a wall with nowhere to run, no way to fight.

  I think of those poor, glassy-eyed girls. I don’t want to be one of those girls.

  I start to scream. I scream until tears spring to my eyes and my throat feels raw. The female nurse grabs me roughly. I swing out with one hand, and the male nurse charges forward and pushes me against the wall as the woman jabs the needle into the fleshy part of my arm. Metal slides through my skin. Tears spring to my eyes, and a warm, heavy feeling moves through me. My eyelids grow heavy . . .

  The nurses shift to the side, parting just long enough for me to catch sight of Dr. Andrews hovering behind them. She’s watching me with an impassive look on her face.