by Lex Thomas
David slowed down because he was getting out of breath. It was just after midnight. He’d been in school for four hours and wasn’t any closer to finding Will. The elevator had been a bust, no trace of Will. David had decided to head to the Stairs next, but he knew the chances of Will being there weren’t great. There was a better chance that he and his brother would end up circling each other through the school until Will blew his lungs out onto his face shield. If he hadn’t already. David shuddered at the thought of Will dying so brutally.
He heard a noise. He stopped.
He felt the floor rumble under his feet. Something was coming his way. Fast. David panicked. He ran to the nearest classroom. Locked. It was too late. In his periphery he saw someone come tearing around the corner. He looked. It wasn’t a someone. It was a wild hog.
The snarling beast with protruding tusks charged him and he froze. Its heavy hooves cracked against the floor. White spit flung from its mouth. The beast bolted right past, and before David could even think to feel glad, seven shirtless Skaters, carrying sharpened broom handles, charged around the corner after the pig. David kept his head down and turned away. He hugged the lockers. They made pig squealing noises as they rushed past, and one of them laughed. When he dared to look up, he saw them disappear around another corner after the animal.
What had happened to this place?
McKinley was not how he remembered it. The building was in worse shape. Holes had been knocked through drywall, and entire sections of wall had been removed. Remaining walls were nearly blacked out with pen and marker graffiti. The floor was so dirty it was beginning to look like asphalt.
People were acting differently as well. They seemed more violent. He had already seen brutal altercations as he had snuck through the halls, hiding in one locker after another, darting from empty classrooms to maintenance closets. Through locker slats and from behind doors, he’d seen McKinley kids robbing each other at knifepoint. He’d watched as one Skater had been surrounded by three Geek girls. They’d told him to strip and give them his clothes or they’d beat him with hammers. He’d seen two Nerds trying to get a rolling book cart, stocked with water bottles, back to the library. A group of Saints had tackled them, repeatedly kicked them in the ribs, and dumped some of the bottles on their heads. The Saints left them on the ground, wet and writhing, and made off with the rest of the bottles. David had seen a frail Geek girl get felt up by Varsity boys as they were emptying her backpack onto the floor. Through all of it, David had stayed hidden and done nothing.
In the past, he would have done something about these situations, not watch them. He’d have intervened. But each time he watched one of these assaults go down, he’d only felt afraid for himself, that they would hear his breathing, that they’d tear his mask off, that he would die, and Will would too. He knew he had reason to be afraid, but David couldn’t shake the feeling that he had changed, that he had lost some part of himself that was right, and true, and brave.
David picked up the pace, and reached the Stairs without any more animal attacks. He stood staring at the doorway of the old Loner base. The door had been removed. He knew there were no Loners inside. He knew that. But he didn’t realize how hard it would be to see his old home abandoned. It hurt nearly as much as seeing his parents’ house overrun with raccoons and squatters, and he’d lived in that place all his life. As he walked into the desolate armory, his mind leapt back to when this bottom landing had been heaped with weapons. He ascended the Stairs where his fellow Loners had once greeted him with smiles, grateful for the safe home and sense of family he’d provided. He was startled by the little moments, the forgettable exchanges, that crackled in his brain—a hidden smile from Dorothy, the twins feeding each other, Will actually reading, Sasha teasing Gonzalo about how she was going to cut his hair in his sleep, and the first time Lucy had laughed at one of David’s jokes.
It almost made David smile.
Then, he saw the lounge wall. Light from the hall spotlighted a slew of profanity about the Loners, written in field paint. The sentiment was signed by Varsity. They’d enjoyed doing this, that much was clear. It made David bristle. He hurried across the empty landing and up the next flight. The Stairs were running out of dark corners where he might find Will, and it was making David anxious. But there was still his room, at the very top.
When David got there, he found his curtain entrance still hanging. He pushed one heavy flap aside, and saw a kid crouched in the corner with his back to David.
“Will?”
The kid turned and jumped to a fighting stance. He had blue hair. A Freak. He had a short two-by-four in his hand, ready to swing. His other hand was deformed, bent and twisted into a claw.
“Mort …,” David said.
Mort dropped the two-by-four and it clattered on the ground. He rushed to David and got his face right up against David’s mask. Mort’s eyes danced around David’s face.
“You’re alive!” Mort laughed high and loud. He did a little jig, hugged David, and wouldn’t let go. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Okay, okay, Mort, take it easy,” David said, but in truth, all the joy Mort was displaying warmed David. He’d remembered that his gang had loved him, but he’d forgotten how it felt.
Mort broke away.
“I wish you didn’t have to see me with blue hair.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Things just sort of fell apart,” he went on. “I still come back here to think about old times.”
David wanted to interrupt and change the subject to Will, but he was touched.
“Sometimes I’ll run into Leonard or Ritchie here and they’re doing the same thing.”
“Really?” David said.
Mort nodded with a smile. “I wish things were like they used to be. I wish the Loners hadn’t—”
“Me too.”
Mort sighed.
“Mort, I really need your help.”
Mort straightened. His eyes bloomed.
“Anything for you, David.”
He said it like he was ready to receive orders, and David was still his leader, as if no time at all had passed.
“I need to find Will.”
“Oh, I heard Will graduated.”
David shook his head. “He came back into the school, and I have to find him or he’s going to die. Can you think of any place he might be? Anywhere. He’s looking for Lucy.”
Mort snorted a laugh. “What, is she knocked up or something?”
“Yes. She is.”
Mort’s grin went flat. He broke eye contact with David.
“Why did you say that?” David said.
“Huh?” Mort said without looking up. “I don’t know … good guess?”
“But why did you smile?”
“If I was Lucy, I’d hide somewhere no one goes. Maybe the dump?”
“Mort.”
“Um.” Mort drew circles on the floor with his toe. “I heard from a Slut that Lucy and Will dated. She liked him so much she got the Sluts in a huge brawl with the Saints to save him from Gates. This guy, Gates, was—”
“I know who Gates is,” David mumbled, turning inward. Will and Lucy had dated. It stung him to hear, but he guessed it made sense. Will had always been in love with Lucy. David had died. They were a comfort to each other.
“I just—” David rasped. “He would have told me.”
“You said he came back right after he heard Lucy was pregnant?”
The math clicked in David’s brain. “That little motherfucker.”
12
THE PORCELAIN TOILET LUCY SAT ON HAD once been white, but was now gray and gouged with black scratches. Its bowl was cracked and it leaked a thin dribble of toilet water continuously, leaving the floor of the stall wet and the air thick with the stink of mold. No one went to this bathroom, it was too deep into the ruins, too far from anything most McKinley students cared about. Lucy’d had to crawl underneath a collapsed doorway to even get into it.
Something was wrong.
Blood poured from her. Too much. More than any period she’d ever had, and full of clumps and clots. It felt like a river of warm caramel flowing out of her. She was shaking. It had begun with the feeling that there was a Rubik’s Cube trying to solve itself inside her uterus, twisting and cranking and scraping her with its sharp corners. The clenching cramps hurt so bad she’d thought she’d been going into labor. She’d told herself that was impossible. It was just her injuries from the fall, and that she only had to find somewhere to rest.
Something large fell out of her and plopped down into the water.
Lucy sat bolt upright at the noise. She didn’t want to look. She looked at her pale, bruised knees. Her pulse thunked in her neck. She felt empty. She sat staring at the coat hook on the back of the stall door, the curve of chrome with a bulbous end, wishing she was somewhere else, somebody new, far away from here.
When Lucy rose to her feet, it was on baby deer legs. With her pants still around her ankles she turned to face the bowl of blood. She could feel more blood trailing down her thighs, but she didn’t bother to wipe herself clean. It didn’t matter that she was messy. What mattered was in the toilet.
Lucy began to sob as she reached her hands toward the red water. There were dark clots floating in the watery blood and little bits of pink tissue, and gray pieces too. One clot was larger than all the others. She reached in and picked it up. The water slipped through her fingers, leaving just a clump of red.
She couldn’t breathe as she staggered out of the stall and over to the sink. She turned on the water and held the clump under the stream. As the blood washed away, she saw it was a clear sac, with something that looked like a piece of liver attached to it. What was inside the sac didn’t look human, it looked like an alien shrimp with a big head and a curly tail. But it wasn’t an alien. It was her baby.
Lucy screamed. She felt the floor strike her kneecaps. She felt herself pulling on her own hair. The world became a blur. The next thing she was aware of was running from the bathroom. Pounding her feet, pumping her arms. Nothing she could do, nothing she could think of, could make what she’d seen go away. There was nowhere to run. No place in the school would reverse what had just happened.
She wanted it to not be true.
She begged God to make it not be true.
The sadness crushed in on her from all sides.
She had to stop this feeling, she couldn’t bear it.
She couldn’t.
She saw the world through a dense cloud of smog. Her brain and her body felt a mile apart. Lucy didn’t even remember deciding to go there, but before she knew it, she was shuffling back into the Burnout drug den. Dirty kids inhaling dirty air together to forget where or who they were. And for the first time, Lucy understood the faraway look in those dirty kids’ eyes. They were gone completely. That was where Lucy wanted to be.
“Bile …,” she said.
When Bile saw her face he must have known, or maybe it was when he saw the blood seeping through the crotch of her pants, because he wrapped her in a bony, dry-skinned hug.
“My … my baby.”
Those were the only words she could get out.
He squeezed her harder. He walked her across the room, stepping over kids who sat against the wall with their chins resting on their chests. They came to the water bottles of human waste with the inflated gloves coming off the top. Stinkers, he’d called them.
Bile reached down and picked up one. He twisted the base of the glove and held the twist of rubber to keep the gas in while he pulled the glove off the bottle. The scent of pungent sewage burned in Lucy’s nostrils and she almost lost her nerve. He tied off the end of the glove like a balloon. Then he pinched the tip of the thumb and snipped the end with a pair of scissors.
He told her to put her mouth on it. She was afraid. She looked at him. He nodded with understanding eyes.
“You’ll feel better,” he said. “You won’t feel nothing at all.”
She realized that this was why she’d come here. And that was why she was so afraid. She wanted this. She looked at Bile in his soiled slip. He was staring at her with concern, like a worried school nurse.
“One big breath. Just do like this,” he said and then mimicked sucking on his thumb.
She put her lips on the bitter rubber. He nodded and smiled at her, revealing the brown rot of his teeth. She bit the glove. She thought of Will. And it cut her in two. Tears fell down her cheek. She was sorry. She was so sorry.
Your baby is dead.
Lucy let her teeth part, and inhaled. Bile squeezed the plump glove to make sure she got it all. The taste didn’t hit her until she’d finished taking the breath in. The smell of shit was on her tongue. It was in her throat, in her lungs, and she wanted it out of her at once. Bile put his rough hand over her mouth and pinched her nose shut between his thumb and knuckle.
“You gotta hold it!”
She pried at his fingers, trying to get them off her as her lungs marinated in methane, and the taste sunk into her tongue. It was becoming part of her. She struggled but he was too strong. Her vision began to darken. Her lungs kicked. Her legs went soft.
He let go and she fell to the ground. The back of her head smacked against the wall but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt anymore. She couldn’t even feel her head. It had become a dandelion puffball, and a breeze scattered all her seeds into the air. She was everywhere at once, moving, traveling away, and soon the room, as she knew it, was a memory, even though she understood she was still in it. The filth, the garbage, the stinkers, the scabby kid in the back of the room who was defecating into a bucket that his friend had just pissed in—none of it meant a thing.
“Lucy.”
She looked up. David was there. His white hair shined. He picked her up like he was carrying her over the threshold after their wedding. And then it was true, he was in a tux and she was in her mother’s wedding dress. Her veil was over her face, and she wanted so badly to lift it and kiss him, but when she tried, she found that it was just too long. No matter how much fabric she tugged up over her head, there was always more, the veil was infinite.
She hugged his body and buried her face into the dry-cleaned fabric of his suit. She let her tears soak in. She could hear the heavy thump of his heart and with every beat she felt a wave of heat come through his tuxedo.
He sat her down on a bed in a room with clay-colored shag carpeting. The bedspread was paisley and pillow-soft.
“I miss you,” David said.
“I miss you too. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I’m always with you.”
“So am I,” Will said.
Will was on her other side on the bed now. He took one of her hands, and David took the other. They both wore gold wedding bands on their ring fingers.
“Will,” Lucy said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“I already know. It’s okay.”
“You do?”
“Kelly’s fine.”
“Kelly?”
“We made a beautiful daughter,” Will said. He smiled and turned away. She followed his gaze to the doorway where a five-year-old blonde girl stood, on the edges of her feet. The fabric had just started to pill on the fuzzy flannel pajamas she wore. The light from the hallway was radiant and the little girl seemed to glow.
“Mommy, are you scared?” the little girl said.
Lucy’s eyes flooded.
“No baby, come here,” Lucy said, and it felt so natural to say it.
Her daughter ran to her. Little feet taking quick little steps. Pudgy arms reaching out. She hugged her daughter’s tiny body close. When Lucy had been a little girl, she had always wanted a teddy bear that would hug her back, and this was sort of like that, but so much more. The love she felt for her daughter drowned out every other feeling. It filled the room. It filled everything that there was in Lucy’s world. She promised herself she would never let go, and for what must have been an hour
, she didn’t. It wasn’t until the glow of her love seeped away, and the warmth of her daughter’s body grew chill, that Lucy opened her eyes to find herself lying on the floor of the Burnout drug den, clutching the hydrangea flower to her chest.
Just like that, it was over. The aches began to return to Lucy’s body. Bile sat near her, swaying forward and back with eyelids hanging low and a gasoline-soaked sock in his hand. There was soil on her belly. She realized that she’d pulled the flower out of its pot during her hallucination, and the pot lay in shards on the floor by her feet.
The foulness of the stinker still lingered in her mouth. Her trash bag was stowed safely behind Bile. Lucy crawled over to it and dug through until she found her toothbrush, and small sliver of soap, her only soap left for bathing. She popped the soap sliver in her mouth and chewed. Once she got a lather going she got the brush in there. She scrubbed relentlessly and when the suds would get too big she’d spit it all on the floor, and keep going. Eventually there was no suds left, just the bitter taste of soap inside her raw mouth.
Bile’s eyelids eventually flickered wide.
“I watched over you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to worry.”
Lucy shivered. For a brief beautiful time she had known escape, and love, and safety, but now those things were gone, and everything that she had run from was still here, still true, still too much for her heart to handle.
Bile brought the sock to his face and cupped it over his nose and mouth. He dragged in a full lungful, and she watched his ribs puff out. He stared at the ceiling as he held it in. Bile finally let his air out, and his swaying grew more pronounced. His eyelids drifted closed, then pulled themselves halfway open again, then drifted shut again.
“What does that feel like?” Lucy said, pointing to the sock in his hand.
Bile moved like he was underwater. He uncapped the jug of gasoline and dribbled a bit of gas into the sock. Bile held the sock out for Lucy.
