Wicked Me

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  But I couldn’t see anything.

  One steadying breath. Then two. On three, I swung around the wall my back was to and lifted the gun. A metal wall closed in the space ten feet in front of me, almost a dead end if not for the door that led somewhere I hadn’t had the pleasure to explore yet.

  “Please...” The whisper crawled across the metal and concrete from all directions, desperate, pleading.

  I whirled around, aiming the gun across the table toward an area too crowded with shadows to see anything. My stomach clenched when I drew a little closer. This didn’t feel right. At all.

  “You’re not like them,” the voice hidden in the dark in front of me said. A strange, sort of familiar voice. “I can tell.”

  Quick cracks echoed along the ceiling and shook down the walls with a gust of wind. They matched the speed of the piling doubt in my gut. But I crept closer, close enough to see.

  “Alex!” the guy screamed.

  Alex. The ladyman who’d given me her donut at the corner of 131st and Chestnut now sat bound to a chair near a wall that dead-ended behind her. Bruises and gashes crisscrossed everywhere, over and around leaky eye-makeup, underneath the strands of her lopsided blonde wig, and behind the short, reddish beard that had grown from her chin. Not reddish. Red, from blood. It soaked her front. It dripped steadily from a large tear in her jeans, caking the thick, curly hair that grew on her leg from a meaty hole in her flesh.

  My stomach rolled. My hands shook the gun aimed at her. What happened? What was Alex doing here?

  I didn’t know if I asked the questions aloud. I didn’t know if she could hear me over all the confusion in my own head. But I had no trouble hearing her.

  “I wasn’t going to shoot you that day I stole your money.”

  I blinked hard, fast. My senses sharpened with that thing called understanding.

  Heavy panting. Footsteps. A metal door creaking open behind me.

  A gunshot. Not from my gun, even though it was aimed at Alex. Even though she slumped forward in the chair.

  Not me. It wasn’t me. I stumbled backward into a metal chair that screamed. A deranged scream that wouldn’t stop. Movement flashed to my right.

  Slim, the Texan fat guy I’d delivered rat poison to. He was charging, his gun lifted at eye level. He fired.

  27

  Paige

  “A RULER,” NICOLE SAID, kneeling in front of her poster easel next to me. She raked a hand through her glossy red hair so hard, it looked like she pulled out more than a few strands. “I need a ruler, Paige.”

  “You need some meds,” Charlotte muttered.

  The other interns in the House Members room bustled about with final preparations on either side of us. A couple tables up from Nicole’s, Doug pointed and smiled at something on his laptop for Janice to see, but she looked wholly unimpressed. We had half an hour until show time and Display Day officially began.

  “I would bet you a whole dollar that whoever lands the job doesn’t have their poster’s corners all lined up with the edges of the table.” Charlotte sat in front of Nicole’s table on a stool she’d stolen from one of the janitor closets, her bum leg decked out in a combat boot and stretched to the side. I feared for the poor soul who accidentally bumped it.

  “Easy for you to say,” Nicole said. “You’re high.”

  Charlotte’s grin widened. “As a kite.”

  And yet she still limped and now walked with a cane. On Monday, the doctor had said she had pulled a muscle and loaded her up with painkillers. On Friday, today, I called bullshit and threatened to take away her Starbucks card if she didn’t get a second opinion.

  “Here,” I said stooping behind my table next door for my purse. My hands needed something to do besides fidget all over the place, and I didn’t want Nicole to yank out any more of her hair. I handed her my phone. “Surely there’s an app for that.”

  She took it from me with a grateful smile. As soon as she adjusted the corners of her poster into the same exact position it had been before, she clasped her hands in front of her and stared down at her sensible shoes as if in prayer. Or meditation. Was she sleeping?

  While she did whatever she had to do to get ready to practice her presentation for us, I bit down hard on my tongue to keep the tears at bay. Janice knew. She’d seen everything and had accused me of ‘tainting these sacred walls with promiscuity and heretic thoughts.’ She didn’t have to say I wouldn’t get the library job. I already knew it.

  A part of me was devastated. Another part, a part that didn’t control my tear glands but lifted my chin in times of uncertainty, was relieved. There were other libraries, and I was an extremely capable library science major with one more semester and an impressive Library of Congress internship on my stack of accomplishments. I would be fine. I would be a librarian. Just not here.

  Nicole raised her head and leveled her shockingly green eyes at both Charlotte and me. She launched into a summary of her six weeks here while gesturing wildly with her hands. Her contagious grin infected us, and other interns nearby, with her natural energy and humor. The girl was gaining a fan club for life with every word she said, and the self-elected president stood several feet away next to the American flag.

  William, decked out in his black security uniform, watched her, a faint smile touching his mouth. He was always so stoic, but with her in his sights, he seemed to drop some of that seriousness and be a little more...him. Little by little, he’d also helped bring Nicole out of her shell. Rumor had it that he had walked her to Charlotte’s car that night at The Underground Hill. They were kind of perfect. I hoped for both their sakes they could spend more time together.

  “...and that’s why my relationship with bleach is strictly professional. Go home, bleach. You’re drunk on your own chemicals, and you will ruin a tiny section of a very rare political cartoon about the surrender of Saratoga,” Nicole was saying.

  Charlotte and I laughed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if William had cracked a little more, too.

  “My six weeks here has been filled with triumph and glee, but also a great amount of risk and quite possibly a boatload of stupidity,” Nicole continued. “The week before I received the acceptance letter for this internship, my grandmother, my only living relative, died in a rest home. I made just over minimum wage at the public library where I worked, so I had to dip into most of my savings to cover her funeral costs. I broke my lease in Montana, which forfeited my deposit. I couldn’t afford a car to get here, so I sold almost everything I owned for a plane ticket here and barely enough to cover my first month’s rent. The wages I received here went toward the next month’s rent, so I didn’t have enough money for electricity, furniture, or food for Jimmy the turtle and me.” Nicole’s smile was far away as she stared at a spot over our heads and gestured with her hands. “But I had this.”

  I blinked. “What?” But even as I said it, I felt like the biggest idiot alive. Nicole’s attachment to her tie-dyed parachute bag wasn’t just some shy girl quirk; that, and everything inside, was all she owned.

  Charlotte just stared, her eyes glistening. “Why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve helped you.”

  “You did help me,” she said, shrugging, and met Charlotte’s gaze with a watery one of her own. “Eighteen and twenty-four.”

  “Huh?” Charlotte took the word right out of my mouth.

  Nicole held up her fists where she’d scrawled the numbers eighteen and twenty-four. “Spongebob kept track. That’s what I owe you for the food and drinks, and I intend to pay you both back right after we get our final check today.” Her cheeks bloomed red when she glanced in William’s direction. “Lots of people helped.”

  “But...” I shook my head, not caring one bit about what she owed us.

  “You could’ve asked for more,” Charlotte said.

  “Says the lady who wouldn’t pay for a doctor’s visit.” Nicole sighed up at the gorgeous ceiling. “Starving myself for a few weeks was worth following my dream. Besides, how muc
h would you risk to follow your dream of opening the Midnight Library bookstore?”

  I shook my head, too stunned to do much else. Both of them had risked so much for this internship. And what about me? What risks had I taken? The answer was a painful none. In truth, I had run away—from Wichita, from Her, from my parents, from myself—toward a dream I had too easily sabotaged. Because I no longer wanted it? Or because I wanted something else?

  “I’ve derailed my own presentation. Most of that isn’t in there, but let me finish.” Nicole took a breath and closed her eyes as if searching for where she’d left off. Finally, she opened them, a stunning green alive with excitement. “I had this—this experience, these memories, and only by chasing one’s dreams does one truly live.”

  Maybe she was right. Maybe by telling myself I was chasing my dream, I was really living, exploring a thrilling relationship, facing my past head-on, thinking about a future life I might possibly have with Her. Maybe. I would sure like to tell myself that with absolute certainty, but I had no idea who I even was anymore. But I thought I might like to know who I would like to be one day—a lover, a mother, a librarian, not the wicked person Dad said I was. None of those things seemed out of the realm of possibility.

  Swallowing hard, I stepped toward Nicole and wrapped her in a tight hug. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Her shoulders heaved, and she sniffed into my hair.

  A cane prodded us both in the sides.

  “The cane is me hugging you,” Charlotte said, her voice breaking.

  I barked out a wobbly laugh, eyeing William’s approach through the fiery strands of Nicole’s hair. He’d likely heard every word, though his stony expression didn’t give him away.

  “Most of that wasn’t in my presentation, but...” Nicole said. “I’m no expert on friendships, but I thought you both should know.”

  “Of course we should know,” I said, releasing her.

  “Nicole.”

  She turned at the sound of William’s rough voice, swiping at her wet cheeks. When she saw him rounding the corner of her table, her eyes widened and her cheeks flamed. “Yes?”

  He forced a business card into her hand. “This is the name and number of a guy I know. He sells furniture, and he’ll give you a good deal, if you...decide to stay.”

  An exchange occurred between them, a lingering electrical one that had nothing to do with the card between their touching palms.

  She quickly turned her gaze toward her short black heels and smiled. “Thank you.”

  A sharp clap erupted near the front of the room.

  “Places, everyone, places,” Janice called. “We start in five minutes.”

  A flurry of movement waved through the roomful of interns, all of their faces pinched with sudden nerves. People were already milling outside the double doors, but I didn’t spot a particular blond head among them. Sam said he would be here, though. He was probably just held up in Friday afternoon traffic.

  I stood behind my table filled with digitized and original Spanish photos and their descriptive translations, ready as I would ever be, taking in the gothic architecture and rich, musty book smell one last time. After this was done, I could really go for an evening with my good friends known as Cabernet Sauvignon and Ben & Jerry to help numb my disappointment.

  Finally, the crowd drifted inside, and Janice delivered a short welcome speech into a squawking microphone. Then, senators and their wives, state representatives and their children, library staff, and the general public all listened to our presentations, or pretended to, anyway.

  Between congratulatory handshakes and starting my presentation once again for a new group, I lifted onto my tiptoes to search for Sam. Where was he? The hour crawled onward, and I still didn’t see him.

  But I did see Rick. He trolled through the people with a smirk fixed to his mouth and a pretty, blonde helmet-haired woman attached to his elbow. Oh my god, was that his wife?

  Unease tapped down my spine. I didn’t want to meet her. Not now with fifteen minutes of presentation time to go. I would look at her all shame-faced as I stuttered through my presentation. But at the same time, I wanted to know what kind of woman could be married to a man like Rick.

  His gaze caught mine, and a sudden burst of anger rushed through my body. But I refused to give him any more power over me, to let him think he’d won. I schooled my expression into one I hoped was mild boredom. He whispered something to the blonde, who flitted her gaze over me as if I was a speck on the wall before continuing her conversation with another woman. Rick then stalked toward me while he absently unbuttoned his suit jacket.

  “Having fun?” he asked, his voice like a purr.

  “Always.” I clasped my hands in front of me, the picture of poise and unruffled feathers. “Shall I begin?”

  He grinned. “Does it really matter?”

  “It matters to me.” But maybe not as much as he thought. I launched into my presentation, reciting the names and approximate dates of the people captured in the old photos from the Spanish Civil War, every detail perfect, my voice even, steady eye contact engaged. A flawless victory.

  At the end, instead of clapping like a normal person, Rick arched an eyebrow and said, “You know your stuff. The Library of Congress could really use you.” He shrugged, leveling me with a knowing smile. “Too bad.”

  “It is too bad,” I agreed, nodding. “But there are over one hundred thousand libraries in the U.S. alone. If you’re going to ruin my chances at all of them, I suggest you get started.” I pointed toward my purse on the floor. “I still have the pictures you sent me on my phone in case you deleted yours. I also have surveillance video of you inside Janice’s office with an envelope of pictures.”

  That last part was a lie, one plucked and modified from Lisa Montgomery’s Dirty Pretty Lies.

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

  “I’m sure your wife would be very interested to know more about you,” I said, glancing over his shoulder.

  His jaw pulsed. “Watch yourself, Paige. We wouldn’t want anyone to overhear us.”

  Janice’s clear voice rang out over the buzzing crowd into a microphone, but my thoughts were so focused on truth, I didn’t immediately tune in.

  “Does she know about you and Mademoiselle Goldfinch?” I whispered.

  It had been all over the news, Riley and a slew of others who worked in politics, all on the pages of Mademoiselle Goldfinch’s little black book. If I had to guess, Rick’s name could be found inside, too, written carefully by Rose Cleary, queen of yellow bird tag, herself. Why else would he be so interested in finding out where she’d been? I hadn’t known I was right about any of it, though, until Rick’s eyes flashed murderous. Bingo.

  “...six weeks,” Janice was saying, and it was followed by a crash of applause.

  Had I missed the announcement? I looked to Nicole next to me, as well as the familiar faces of the other interns dotted among D.C.’s finest, but they all stared toward the front of the room, many of them standing on the balls of their feet in expectation. Charlotte met my gaze across the narrow aisle from her perch on the stool, a question in her dark eyes.

  But it was like a dam had lifted, and I couldn’t have stopped even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t.

  I stepped in closer to Rick’s ear so he’d be sure to hear me. “Does your wife know you have a child?”

  His eyes widened. A mess of emotions played across his face—confusion, shock, disgust—before it settled on one that shook through his entire face and throbbed a vein in his forehead.

  “You’ll need to keep that quiet,” he growled.

  “Or what?” I asked. “You’ll blackmail me again?”

  “No.” A mad grin crossed his face that blasted a chill up the back of my neck. From inside his suit jacket, he pulled a black book with a yellow bird embossed on the cover. “Worse.”

  “So it is with great honor that I announce the intern who showed the most promise, the most passion, and the
most dedication, and who will be offered the coveted position as the new librarian at the Library of Congress,” Janice continued, “should he or she choose to accept that position.”

  Rick flipped the book open, thrusting it into my face, and my whole world tilted.

  Sam Cleary. The handwriting was flowery, so obviously feminine. My gaze tracked down the page from his name, my mouth souring with every word I read. Names of favorite girls, favorite sexual positions, and dates...dates that were less than two weeks ago after we... I swallowed. After I had given myself to him, mind, body, and heart. Oh my god.

  “The new addition to the Library of Congress is...” Janice continued.

  Tucked into the page were date-stamped pictures that showed too much naked skin, and I backed away from all of it.

  Through the double doors at the back of the room burst three police officers, their heads swiveling right and left. They separated throughout the room, their eagle eyes sweeping over every face they passed, their movements tense and swift. The crowd at the back of the room parted for them, but those in the front hung on Janice’s next words.

  Rick cut his gaze to the police and back at me, his nostrils flaring. “Did you tell anyone? About us?”

  I looked at him, calm and cool even though my heart, though cracked and wounded, thrashed between my ears. All my life it had been me squirming under the guilt of having a child with a married man, of ruining my relationship with my parents, of almost believing their wicked label they’d given me, but I was done after this one final lie.

  “I told the police everything.”

  28

  Sam

  LOUD. SHARP. THEN THE whole world exploded with pain. My right shoulder was sagging, bringing the rest of me down with it. It was turning colors. Bright, bright red. This couldn’t be good.

  I crashed against the table behind me, into the drug money piled high. For all the things money can do, it didn’t do shit to catch me or to stop the deafening hum in my ears. My body folded into the concrete, right shoulder first, of fucking course. Pain, so raw and real, darkened the room in a wet red.