Kaley had thought Nan a bit silly, even crazy, but then she had to admit that there were times when she felt bogged down, as well. Being around her mother was like that. Kaley didn’t have the heart to tell her mother, for she truly was empathetic and could sense those dashed hopes of hers, but she also didn’t want it to rub off on her, or on Shan. Shan didn’t know it yet but she had the charm, and as long as she was around their mother the more likely she was to drown in the Ocean of Sorrow.
And it’ll bring me down now, if I let it.
The attachment Kaley had now to her sister had her feeling the fear of a child. It mixed with her own. It had her feel every little nook and cranny of her sister’s terror. Like a tumor, it swelled and threatened to overtake them both.
“I’m sorry I ran,” Shannon whimpered. “I didn’t wanna get you hurt, I thought if I got away—”
“Hey, shush!”
“—that I could get help for us both—”
“I said shush, girl! Don’t you ever apologize to me for tryin’ to save yourself. You…” She wanted to say You should’ve kept running, but it was senseless to make Little Sister even more upset than she already was. “You’re my sister,” she said, hugging her.
“Why’re they doing this, Kaley?” she cried. “It’s not fair! We didn’t do anything!”
Shannon’s fear seized hold of Kaley’s heart, and squeezed. “Shh. I know, sweetie. I know. Shh.” The fear was like a needle of ice through her heart. Then, the coldness spread, and her whole heart seemed to stop.
Shannon shivered in her arms. It was agony being this close to her. But she loved her little sister too much to leave her now. She couldn’t do it. Not even for a second. Shan was frightened worse than the Harper girl, and she needed comfort or she would never get through this.
You have to ward yo heart, chil’, she could almost hear Nan saying. Protect it. That empathy you have, that charm, it’s like mine. And, oh, chil’! What heartbreak it can bring. Ward yo heart, chil’. Ya hear?
And that’s when Kaley realized what she had to do. She had to sever the Connection. She had to cut ties to the Anchor. It was the only way to find strength. If she wasn’t strong enough alone, she could never be strong enough for the both of them.
“Shannon,” she said. “Shan? I need you to let go of me.”
“Where are you going?!” Shannon demanded at once, clinging hard to Kaley even as Big Sister moved to stand. She looked up at Kaley with big, round, rheumy eyes.
“Does it look like I can go anywhere else but here?” she said, perhaps a little sternly. “Now…let go.” She wouldn’t. Kaley pushed her away, and Shan fought it, shaking her head and crying. Shan had the charm, too, and didn’t yet know that she was in its thrall, that she was addicted to Big Sister. Like Mom’s addiction, Kaley.
“Don’t leave me—”
“Shannon Alexis Dupré,” Kaley said, in a voice remarkably like Ricky’s. Ricky had been the closest thing either one of them had ever had to a father, and the deep command he had held over them had been something that Kaley had actually been thankful for at the time. He was also the one who pointed out that Shan’s initials were SAD, and the thought of that broke Kaley’s heart all over again. “You listen to me,” she went on, now that she had Little Sister’s attention. “I am not going to leave you. I can’t leave you, not even if you were on the other side o’ the world. You know that, don’t you?”
Shannon nodded. “Y-yes.”
“We have an Anchor. Do you understand what I’m sayin’, girl?”
Shannon nodded. “Uh-huh.” She sniffled, and Kaley fought back the urge to reach down and wipe away the snot around her nose and the tears streaming around her eyes. Touching her again might poison them both.
“Now, let me go.”
The little hands were as unbreakable as iron clasps. But Kaley had discovered a key, and the locks came off. When they let go, it was the most reluctant feeling Kaley had ever sensed out of any person before. Deep need washed over her, and for a moment she fought to resist grabbing for her sister again.
Kaley pushed herself up off the bed before her resolve broke and walked over to inspect the door. It stood about seven feet tall and was made of wood. She tried to will herself to think about something other than Shan huddled up and alone behind her. The other side, if she recalled correctly, had been smooth, whereas this side was flecked with peeling paint. A spot about head height in front of her was dented inwards, and was suspiciously fist-shaped.
Without knowing why, Kaley reached up to touch it.
Her knees buckled.
It held her.
There was a wash of fear and rage. Boundless rage. A young person’s rage. A boy’s rage. There was temerity there, a great deal of it. And there was pain. He’d had nerve and was awash in shame and bitterness. Whoever he was, he hadn’t given up.
It held her.
There was a sinking feeling in her stomach, and then it did flip-flops. For a moment she felt nauseas again. She felt a hand touch her shoulder. Someone was trying to reassure the boy, giving him soft promises that it would be okay, that the pain was over with. Then, there was the white-hot rage again. A silken fury that felt disturbingly satisfying. It was directed inwards. The boy felt angry at himself for having believed them, even as they had handcuffed him to the headboard on the bed. He was angry at himself for falling for it a second time.
It held her.
It held her.
It held her.
Suddenly Nan’s voice filled her, Ward your heart! it screamed. Kaley jerked her hand away from the door, and realized she was drooling on herself. When she turned around, she looked at Shannon and the Harper girl, both staring at her from where they sat. Kaley wiped her mouth and swallowed.
Wordlessly, she walked over to inspect the sink. It dripped brown water every ten or fifteen seconds. A stain on the floor showed that this remained a constant. She tested the faucet. The water that poured out wasn’t so brown, but there was definitely a darker hue to it than should be.
Kaley moved over to the wall where the toilet was. Directly above it was an air vent, no bigger than Shannon was wide.
Two steps from her, the Harper girl sniffled.
“Your name’s Bonetta?” Kaley asked. The Harper girl treated her like a ghost, like she wasn’t there. “Hand me one of those chairs, would ya?” Bonetta Harper didn’t move. She held her locket in her hands, shivering.
“I’ll get one,” Shannon said.
“No, Shan. You stay right there. Bonetta?” Still, the girl didn’t move. Kaley snapped her fingers twice. “Yo, girl! Dry it up! I ain’t your babysitter. Now hop up and grab me a chair.”
“I ain’t yours to boss around!” Bonetta suddenly screamed.
All at once, Kaley nearly buckled from the girl’s fear and rage. It wasn’t quite as powerful as the boy’s rage that still haunted this room, but it was close. “All right, then. Will you please grab me one o’ those chairs?”
“Get it yourself,” she said, trembling. “Get it your own damn self. Just leave me alone.”
“Givin’ up just like that, huh?” The Harper girl looked at her. It had been the right thing to say, as well as the wrong thing to say. “You know they gonna fuck you, right? You heard them?” Bonetta looked up at her with eyes wide with indignity. Sometimes, you gotta give some tough love, chil’, she remembered Nan saying once when she’d been honest with her feedback of a drawing of MLK that Kaley had done. “You know that, right?” Kaley egged.
“Shut your filthy fuckin’—”
“Or what? What’choo gonna do, girl? Beat my ass? I bet I beat yours.”
Shan stopped crying, and looked between the two older girls.
Bonetta Harper rose. In that moment, Kaley remembered where she’d seen this girl. She hadn’t looked like much while curled up and cowering in the back of the SUV, but now that she had found some reason to rise to her fullest, she took the persona of the bully Kaley knew her best as. “Don’t you t
alk to me like that,” she warned.
Kaley nodded. “You go to English Avenue Middle.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I know you.” It was a haughty, threatening statement.
“You’re that girl that punched Andrea Kessler in her mouth, took out two o’ her teeth.”
“That’s right, yeah.” Again, haughty.
Kaley nodded. “And now you’re stuck in here like the rest of us,” she said. “And you’re scared.” She took a step towards her, and Bonetta took a step closer in response. The men outside had, for a time, robbed her of her playground powers, all the authority she held at EAMS, but now that they were gone and it was just them girls Bonetta was back. She might’ve been slightly younger and slightly smaller than Kaley, but she was a firm, wiry girl and everyone knew she would throw down at the drop of a hat. “I know you’re very scared. So are we.”
“I ain’t scared.”
Kaley nodded. “You are. I can…I can feel it.”
“What’choo mean, feel it?”
“It’s something I can do. I feel these things. Fear is real. It’s…it’s an energy. It spreads fast, like love or hate. It’s viral. Ya know what viral means?”
“The fuck is this shit?” Bonetta said derisively.
“It means it’s catching. The less control you have over your fear, the less control my sister and I have over ours,” Kaley explained, reciting something Nan had told her a year before she died. “And the less my sister and I control our fear, the less you can control yours. It’s a vicious cycle. We…we have to work together, understand? And that means—”
“My daddy’s comin’ for me—”
Kaley sighed. “You’re daddy’s not here—”
“But he’s comin’!”
Suddenly, Kaley felt herself feeding off of Bonetta’s anger. Her haughtiness, her audacity, it was all just too much. Like the fear, it was infectious. “You keep believing that,” Kaley said. “Put that hope in your right hand, then shit in your left. We’ll see which one fills up first.” Now that was definitely one of Ricky’s lines.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Bonetta took a step again, but this time backward, as though she wanted to keep from catching whatever madness had hold of Kaley.
“It means ain’t nobody comin’ for us. You heard that bitch Olga. They keep tabs on kids like us. They scout around, see who is an’ who ain’t watched out for. My mama’s a meth head, how’s yours?”
“My mama’s dead—”
“And your dad? He ever around? He ever miss you?” Kaley knew the answer. No, she felt the answer. Nothin’ cloys like the heart of a battered woman an’ a neglected child, Nan used to say. Kaley had had to look that word up.
cloy v. , cloyed , cloying , cloys . v.tr. To cause distaste or disgust by supplying with too much of something originally pleasant.
And that’s what she was feeling right now from Bonetta Harper, a cloying of love. Too much love for her father. It was the kind of unhealthy yearning that a woman gets after years and years of worshipping an unavailable man (something else she would learn in years yet to come). Defenses were built around that kind of love, walls that protected people from seeing the truth. That she’s wasted her life loving an idea of a father who’s never emotionally available. And defending that idea for no good reason.
This would not be an easy wall to penetrate. “You don’t talk about my daddy, bitch,” Bonetta Harper snapped.
“Will ya’ll stop fightin’?” Shan offered sweetly. So sweetly, in fact, that it threatened to cripple Kaley’s heart.
Ward yo heart, chil’!
“I don’t need to talk about him,” Kaley said, trying to remain stalwart here. “I only need you to lose hope.”
“What?” Bonetta said, her upper lip rankling.
“I need you to give up. Quit. Stop hoping. And then, I need you to get mad. Really mad. And then I need you to want to live,” she said. “You found something awful about Andrea Kessler, something that made you wanna hit her, made you laugh when she lost those teeth. I need you to think the same way now.”
“Are you stupid or somethin’?” Bonetta said, and quickly wiped away the tear that leaked from her eye. “Did you see those guns they got? You can’t punch a bullet—”
“But we might be able to get outta here.”
“How?”
“See that vent?” Kaley pointed to the vent cover above the toilet.
Bonetta looked, and shook her head. “Can’t fuckin’ reach it. Too high.”
“Maybe if I had a chair?” she suggested. “A couple of chairs? And someone to give me a boost?”
For a moment, the two girls stared at one another, each one weakened by the other’s fears, and none of their fears was worse than the fear of hoping and then having all hope dashed. They had to simultaneously give up on all the hope they had and yet work towards survival. Decide that they were likely going to die, and then try and do something about it anyway. They would have to do so mindlessly, and forget that fear ever existed.
Kaley felt the change in the other girl’s heart. She felt the heart flipping its switch, the mind doing the same. There was resolution. The same audacity that had once made Bonetta so formidable on a playground and had given her the strength to knock out Andrea Kessler’s teeth now returned. She was just about to agree. That’s when Kaley sensed something else.
“All right,” Bonetta said. “Maybe we can—”
The doorknob across the room rattled. A second later it was flung open, and in stepped their nemesis. Oni, Dmitry, stood there with Olga. The wave of intrigue and lust had been what Kaley had smelled from the other side of the door an instant before it opened. Oni in particular had a pretty cocky air about him, and his lust…it was there. Don’t worry, little girls. We fuck you soon. That’s what he had said.
“No,” Kaley breathed. If a needle of ice had punctured her heart before, a spear of ice now split it utterly in half. She knew what this was. She knew. The nausea returned, and a vision of Shannon’s future hit her like a fist to the abdomen.
Olga looked at her brother. “Which one?”
Oni didn’t hesitate. “That one.” He pointed at Shannon.
“No,” Kaley said. She stepped forward, and Bonetta stepped back, all her courage gone, shattered, depleted, nonexistent. Oni had the gun in his hand, and Olga held something that looked like a Taser. Out there somewhere, no doubt, was Mikhael. And then the men upstairs, they were probably armed, too. Bonetta was not going to stick her neck out for somebody else. “No,” she said again as they stepped into the room. She dashed across and snatched Little Sister up by her sleeve and pulled her to the other side of the table, where the board games were still stacked high. “No. No. No, you can’t have her. You can’t.”
“Move out of the way, little girl,” said Oni.
“Kaley,” Shan whimpered.
“No,” she said. But Kaley had made a mistake. Touching Shan had reestablished the Anchor, and the fear swamped the boat of confidence she’d been floating in moments earlier. “No…no, take me! Take me!” she cried.
“We don’t want you tonight, little Kaley,” Oni said. “We want the little one. Don’t worry, she will not feel—”
“Bonetta? Bonetta, please help us!”
But Bonetta was no help, not even to herself. She was backing up to the other side of the room. Her own confidence was utterly sapped. Sapped by the same virus that had spread from Shannon, who gripped her sister at the waist and screamed as Oni lunged for her.
The boiling rage of every person that had ever occupied their room surged through Kaleyat room, and it came through in a piercing, a white-hot flash that sent her screaming at the man. She rushed forward, slamming the table into Oni’s midsection. She pressed her weight into the table to pin him against the wall. “Run, Bonetta! Get help!” Bonetta didn’t budge. Enraged by the girl’s impotence, Kaley screamed uselessly. “Somebody help us!”
Olga came into the room and flashed t
he Taser at her. Kaley backed up, and, once again, made the mistake of caring too much. Instead of protecting herself, she protected Little Sister. She pushed Shannon away from the two monsters instead of keeping her weight against the table to keep Oni pinned. Dmitry knocked the table to one side, and Monopoly money spilled out onto the floor. Mikhael stepped into the room. The three of them—Olga, Dmitry and Mikhael—now formed a wall at the doorway. They stepped inside and corralled them into a corner, with Bonetta , cried into her hands and held her locket.
“Bonetta?” Kaley said, backing up while urine trickled down her leg. “Bonetta, help us. We can get them together. Bonetta!”
Kaley looked around the room for something, anything to use as a weapon. There was nothing loose in here, it was all bolted sinks and sterile walls. Designed to be that way, no doubt. Her hands still groped along the wall as she pushed Shan behind her. “Don’t you—” she started, and then Olga lunged forward with the Taser. Kaley leapt to one side. Olga missed and hit the wall. Momentarily inspired, Kaley lashed out with a balled fist and cracked Olga on the jaw. The bitch staggered a bit, her black hair a shawl about her face.
Psycho Save Us Page 26
