Bloody Bloody Apple

by Howard Odentz

“I wouldn’t care,” I tell her, because that’s what guys are supposed to say to their girls. I try to picture Annie fat, but the image doesn’t come. “Besides, this is my fantasy. You don’t ever get fat in my fantasy. You stay perfect, just like you are.”

  A deep, throaty chuckle comes from behind the barred door.

  “I’m gonna fucking puke,” Not-Becky spits and sputters. “If you don’t shut your fucking pie hole right now, I’m gonna puke all over everything, and you’re going to have to clean it up . . . Jackson.”

  I hate it when it says my name. It doesn’t sound right coming out of its mouth. It sounds dirty, and wrong, and evil.

  “Annie, I have to go.”

  “Text me later,” she says. “I love you.”

  “Me, too,” I whisper then the phone goes dead. I don’t get to ask her about the job at the BD Mart. I don’t get to talk to her about a lot of stuff.

  Not-Becky makes a retching sound, but I don’t hear any wet splatters, so I know it’s only messing with my head. It likes to do that—just like with the welts on Becky’s skin. It’s all a game. It’s all just a sick way of screwing with me, but I won’t let it.

  The welts aren’t new. They’ve happened before. There have been unspeakable things written on my sister’s skin, but that only fuels my father’s insistence that the worst has happened to his daughter, and she’s possessed. Of course, that only serves to throw logs on the pyre of my mother’s depression.

  I know they’re wrong. I’ve even looked it up on the Internet. Writing on skin is something called dermatographic urticaria or dermographism. Some people also call it Paper Skin. It’s not all that uncommon. If you have it, all you need to do is trace images or words on your skin, and they’ll pop up in angry, red welts that last for about fifteen minutes.

  Believe me, it’s scary as hell, but that’s all part of Becky’s illness. My parents can believe whatever screwed-up crap they want. My father can hang crucifixes all over the walls and go to church on Sunday mornings and pray like someone who desperately needs salvation—but it won’t make a lick of difference.

  My sister’s sick, and she needs real help—not prayer or tranquilizers or the kind of help that my parents think comes from their God. If she doesn’t get it soon, something’s going to give. I can feel it in my gut. I can taste it in the musty air of our creepy-ass basement.

  Still, the one thing I can’t figure out is how she knows things—like Claudia Fish. How does she know that her murder is pressing on my mind like a vice?

  There has to be an explanation, because if there isn’t, the only other answer is too frightening to think about, so I don’t.

  I go to the dryer and pull out the whites, along with my parents’ sheets, fold them up in a wad, and head toward the stairs. I’ll gently coax my mom from her fetal position and dress their bed with hospital corners and everything, like she used to do for me before Becky got sick.

  Of course, before I can do that, one more little piece of horror has to be piled on top of my Jenga of a day. One more piece that threatens to topple me over. As I start up the stairs, Not-Becky says a few last words that chill me to the bone.

  “What scares you, Jackson?” it sputters in a pea-soup voice, like that fat, piggy girl in the movie where she puked all over a priest. “What . . . scares . . . you?”

  14

  I DON’T REMEMBER dozing off last night. Sometime between grabbing a handful of cookies, playing with Betty Palm and her five sisters, and rereading old comic books full of blood and violence, sleep overtakes me. I’m carried away down a deep, dark hole filled with disturbing images.

  First, there’s Claudia Fish reading a book, all alone, in the library at school. She doesn’t have any eyes, but slimy, congealed jelly oozes out of her empty sockets and plops down on the pages.

  Then there’s my mother, holding her hands against her ears to seal them from the insane ranting of the thing that she birthed, that’s now locked away in the basement.

  As she fades away, my grandfather comes into view. He’s sitting in his wheelchair, grousing about nonsense to my grandmother, who’s been dead for two years. She’s doing cartwheels behind him, with her head flopping back and forth, left and right. My grandparents disappear, only to be replaced by my father, feverishly rubbing oak-stained wax all over a freshly carved crucifix. His hands are raw and bloody, and he keeps saying, “Jesus was a carpenter . . . Jesus was a carpenter . . .” over and over again.

  As he dissipates into smoke, I see Becky. She’s alternately pulling bloody handfuls of red hair from her ruined scalp, while absent-mindedly tracing vulgarities on her bare arms and legs. The words become three-dimensional, like those pop-up pink hippos and dancing alligators in that old Disney cartoon. Ass-wipe—cocksucker—motherfucker. They sail off her skin, leaving gaping wounds clear to the bone, before flying away into the maelstrom of my nightmare.

  I fall further still, plummeting past Chief Anderson, who makes a haphazard attempt to grab me as I fly by him. Then I see Newie, who’s biting his nails as the brown head of Margo Freeman bobs up and down between his legs. Finally, I plunge by Annie’s open front door. She frantically reaches out for me, but dozens and dozens of drunken dirty hands are grabbing and clawing at her, pulling her inside and away from me, forever.

  I wake with a start. My neck is a knot of pain, and I know my cheek has a flat, red palm print pressed into it. My hand is numb from sleeping on it all night, and the skin beneath my damp T-shirt is slick with sweat. The clock says 6:10. Normally, I’d sleep another twenty minutes before getting up for school, but I don’t want to fall back into my nightmares, so I pull myself out of bed, scratch lazily at the hard-on that every guy has in the morning, and wait for it to deflate, so I can get up and take a leak.

  Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about my grandfather or Becky in the mornings. My father begrudgingly took over that responsibility after what happened to my grandmother. He doesn’t get along with my grandfather. I’ve never fully understood why, but I think it has something to do with faith. Simply put, my grandfather thinks my father has too much of it. My father thinks my grandfather has too little. I think it’s funny how faith can build a wall instead of tear one down.

  My father spends the first thirty minutes of each day in prayer, on his knees in the living room, his hands clasped together so hard that if there was a piece of coal between them it would turn into a diamond. When he’s through, he brings a tray to my grandfather and another to Becky. He also brings a Bible with him when he sees her. It’s the same Bible he’s had since he was a child.

  He stands outside her door and reads passages to her while she eats.

  I can’t think of anything more painful. Frankly, I think it screws with her mind. It would definitely screw with mine.

  I quickly take a shower and pull on a fresh T-shirt with a Mr. Jones logo on it. Mr. Jones is a local band. They’re pretty good for Apple standards, and sometimes you can see them for free if you can catch a ride out to Finnegan’s at the edge of town.

  By the time I spread some peanut butter on toast for a quickie breakfast, it’s almost 7:00. I pull out my phone and text Newie.

  You walking? I ask him.

  He immediately texts me back. Asshole’s driving. He says come with.

  Annie, too? I text back.

  Si, senor.

  I text Annie and tell her that we’ll be by to pick her up. She sends me back a heart which speaks volumes. Roughly translated, it means, Oh, my God. Thank you so, so, so, a thousand times, so much. I didn’t want to walk through High Garden and up the Giant Steps by myself, and I certainly didn’t want to go through the path between the middle school and the high school. That’s where we found the body, you know. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to be able to walk down that path again. How am I going to get to school? Am I going to have to walk all the way aroun
d? I don’t want to do that. It’s like three miles that way . . . it goes on and on and on.

  My father’s in the shower, and my mother’s still in bed when I leave. I grab my jacket off his coat rack in the living room and quietly slip out the front door, noticing as I walk down the steps that our little front lawn needs another cut, even though it’s getting late in the season and the grass isn’t growing as fast as usual.

  I mentally scribble down cutting the lawn on a list of chores I have for the weekend, then swing open our gate and trot across the street to the Andersons’ house.

  The chief’s cruiser is parked along the curb. There’s another car in the driveway. It’s Mary Jane’s. She must have stayed over last night.

  I’m right, because she opens the door and almost bowls me over as I’m about to walk in.

  “Watch yourself, Jackson,” she purrs, then squeezes by me closer than she needs to be. She lingers a moment, her tits crushed up against my chest, before sliding past me and out to her car. Only then does it register that she’s only wearing an oversized man’s shirt and nothing else. I watch as she opens the side door and bends over, the shirt riding up and showing a major portion of her slutty ass. Mary Jane grabs a gym bag from the back seat and slams the door shut. Then she giggles as she pulls the shirt down and straightens it, before leisurely walking back across the lawn and up the stairs. “Forgot my clothes,” she pouts like it’s the opening line in a porno movie on the Internet.

  “I see that,” I say. She only smiles and saunters past me into the house.

  Poor Newie. Poor, poor Newie.

  I notice Mrs. Owens from next door, staring out at me through her kitchen window. Her hair’s neatly done up in curlers, and she has a disapproving look on her face. She slowly shakes her head back and forth. Is she judging me or Mary Jane? Who knows? I suppose lust is a sin, but as I turn away from her wrinkled, leathery skin, that will never be young again—that will never be caressed by another living soul unless you count a coroner—I remember that envy is a sin, too.

  “Jackson,” Chief Anderson growls and nods at me as I walk inside and drop my book bag in the hallway.

  “Thanks for driving,” I say to him. “You don’t mind picking up Annie?”

  He gives me a look like I’m the village idiot, then stuffs his shirt into his pants and checks his huge mop of hair in the hallway mirror. While he stares at his image, he yells up the stairs. “Get your ass moving, Newie.” His booming voice cuts through me like the speakers at Finnegan’s.

  “I am, I am,” I hear Newie call down from the second floor. Seconds later, there are footsteps, and Newie is flying down the old curved staircase wearing his letter jacket and carrying his football bag. “Can I at least grab a bagel or something?”

  The chief doesn’t answer. He stands in front of the mirror and begins tying his uniform tie. I watch him as he admires his reflection. A smug, self-satisfied look slowly creeps across his face. I suppose I’d be pretty pleased with myself, too, if I regularly got my knob polished by someone as hot as Mary Jane.

  Newie must go to bed at night with cramps.

  “I talked to your dad last night,” the chief says, as he loops his tie over and around and back through itself.

  “He told me.” I look self-consciously anywhere but at his eyes.

  “Did he say anything to you?” I hear dishes clattering in the kitchen, and Chief Anderson is momentarily distracted. “What the fuck are you doing in there?” he yells after Newie.

  “Sorry, nothing,” Newie yells back like a ten-year-old instead of the linebacker that he is.

  “Fucking idiot,” mutters Chief Anderson and shakes his head. Once again, he shifts focus back to me, staring through the mirror like he did yesterday with his reflective glasses on. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, then he closes it and slightly shakes his head.

  It’s like I know what he’s going to say, so I silently pray that he doesn’t. If he does, it will probably be something about how sorry he is that it had to be Annie, Newie, and me that found Claudia Fish’s body—not because Newie is his son, or because Annie has a drunk for a father.

  He wants to say he’s sorry because of me.

  He wants to tell me that it’s not my fault that my grandfather’s brain has turned to mush, or that my mom has crippling depression, or that my father’s born again. He wants to tell me that Becky isn’t my fault either. Sometimes things just happen, and we have to suck it up and move on.

  Maybe he doesn’t want to tell me any of those things. He just wants to ask how soccer’s going this year. If he does, I’ll have to tell him that I had to drop the team. He’ll know why, and the vicious circle will start all over again.

  The chief finishes tying his tie, turns, and puts his heavy paw on the bannister.

  “Mary Jane?” he yells up the stairs.

  “Yeah.” I hear her silky voice wafting down from the second floor like fluffy dandelion fuzz dancing on the wind—pretty—to hide the fact she’s an invasive weed.

  “We’re out. Lock up when you’re done.”

  Newie comes out of the kitchen with half a bagel stuffed in his mouth. He didn’t shave today, so he looks more like the chief’s younger brother than his son. As a matter of fact, he looks like the one who’s banging Mary Jane instead of his dad.

  “Okay, sweetie,” she calls down from the second floor, and Newie winces like it’s the last thing he wants to hear. As the chief turns around to put on his jacket, I look at Newie and mouth Sweetie? at him. He rolls his eyes, then we’re all out the door and in the cruiser to go pick up Annie.

  Although he doesn’t say it, I know Newie’s relieved that I’m with him.

  I’m relieved he’s with me, too.

  15

  ANNIE’S DYED HER hair back to blond. It’s almost the original color, and I like it better than the red. At least it’s not pink or black, because if it were, I’d think we’d have to talk.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she murmurs to Chief Anderson as she opens the back door. Newie and I slide over to make room for her. The chief only nods his head and gives her a long look through his rearview mirror. I’m beginning to think that mirrors are what he uses to intimidate people. Staring at him head-on is scary enough. Catching his eye in a mirror can make you pee your pants.

  Newie gapes open-mouthed at Annie’s new hair. Finally she says, “What? I needed a change.”

  Neither of us truly believes her lame excuse. She might as well tell us the truth—that she needs to be someone else right now instead of Annie Berg—the girl with the alcoholic father and the sad, overworked mother—the girl who found Claudia Fish’s cold dead body in the woods less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “Okay,” Newie shrugs and stares out the window. As for me, it’s not her hair I’m thinking about. She’s wearing her gray sweater, the one that she shouldn’t be pulling out of her closet until November, when the air gets really nippy. The sleeves are extra-long, so only the pink tips of her fingers are sticking out.

  Shit.

  Before she can stop me, I shoot out my arm and peel back one of the gray knit sleeves.

  “Quit it,” she yelps, as she yanks her arm away from me and pushes her sleeve back down, but she’s too late. I see the bandage wrapped around her wrist and snaking up her forearm.

  “Everything okay back there?” the chief barks as he pulls along the bottom of High Garden and begins the long climb up the hill.

  “Fine,” Annie says, folding her arms and sinking back into the seat.

  That familiar burn starts in my chest and crawls up the back of my neck. I can feel a rush of blood pouring into my face.

  “Damn you, Annie,” I whisper through clenched teeth. The words are tiny—almost inaudible. “You promised.”

  Annie doesn’t say anything. She looks out t
he window the same way Newie is looking out his. How can the three of us be so together and so alone at the same time? How can we be so lost?

  I close my eyes and force myself to take a deep breath. The air feels good, so I let it out and breathe deeply again. A few more times, and the burning inside is reduced to embers. Any anger I have is replaced by a deep and profound sadness—for me, for Annie, for all of us.

  Tentatively, I reach out and rest my hand on her leg. She doesn’t pull away, which is a good thing. After all, we’ve been through this sort of thing before.

  Why does it have to be bandages on her arm? I thought we were finished with that part of our unbearable adolescence, but who I am kidding? In Apple, terrible things have a way of creeping back into our lives, like vermin that sneak through the cracks in our foundations when it starts to get cold.

  “You said you stopped,” I whisper to her so quietly that I’m not sure that she even hears me.

  “I did,” she whispers back.

  “So what happened?” Our exchange is all but inaudible. Newie has no idea that we’re having a Lifetime moment two feet away from him. Besides, he’s tapping his leg to some nameless beat that’s going on in his head.

  Annie doesn’t answer me. She shoves one of her fingers in her mouth and sucks on it, probably to keep from screaming.

  The idea of her sealing herself in that dingy little bathroom on the second floor of her house makes me sick. I can almost smell the vague stench of alcohol and vomit as it leaches through the walls, while Annie pulls out a fresh box of razor blades from the medicine cabinet.

  Why does she have to do that to herself? She’s so pretty, even with the thin white lines on her arms that have almost faded to nothing. What’s going on in her head that makes her believe that doing that will somehow help? I have no earthly idea, except that an image of Becky yanking hunks of red hair from her ravaged skull flashes across my mind.

  At the top of the hill, the chief makes a left. Soon, we pass the entrance to the middle school and continue on Glendale Road, past the woods where we found Claudia Fish’s body. There are already a few cop cars parked out in front of the middle school. Inside, I can imagine Officer Randy standing behind a big glass window in the office, telling Principal DesRoberts what happened.