by Schow, Ryan
“I’m not saying that.”
I tell her not to worry, that I’m fine. Inside, however, I’m thinking she’s too late. Maggie’s suicide, it changed me. To what degree, I can’t tell. I only know the more vindictive parts of me are dying to settle the score.
2
I’m in the shower when I hear the bathroom door open up and I’m about to tell Brayden to get out, but it’s not Brayden.
I wipe the condensation off the shower’s glass door and see that it’s Rebecca. She sheds her pajamas, her underwear and her bra and she walks in the shower with me. She turns on the second head on the opposite side of the shower and says, “Is this okay?”
Okay, so I guess she’s not shy around me anymore.
“It’s fine,” I say.
That’s when she looks at me with the biggest smile.
“What?” I say, smiling because I can’t help it.
“I remember where I live. The town I mean. Plus…I remember what my mother looks like. Sort of.”
“Really?” Another breakthrough! “So where are you from?”
“Reno, Nevada.”
“And your mother, you remember her, too?” Rebecca nods, her smile brightening even more, if that’s possible.
“Not everything, but I see her face in my mind. She has curly blonde hair, and I’m pretty sure she works at the library there.”
3
After getting out of the shower, and I’m only in a towel at this point—we’re talking wet hair, and not a stitch of makeup—I sneak out back and hurry past the pool to Brayden’s room where he’s standing in boxers only in front of the window talking on his cell phone. His body looks fantastic. He actually has muscles! Seeing all those scars, however, sends a shot of pain through me, leaving me a little weak in the knees.
When he first showed me his scars and told me how he had got them, it made me so sad. The way he was tormented at school, beaten with belt buckles, it hurt to think of anyone doing such a thing to another human being. Brayden called this his defining tragedy. Torture is a better name for it. He doesn’t seem that concerned about me seeing them, though, which I’m happy to say. Then again, with everything we’ve been through, he’s like the boy version of Netty.
He turns and sees me and puts up his hand for me to hold on a second. Then he does a double take of me in my towel. He keeps his eyes planted firmly on me.
With his pointer finger and his thumb, he makes the symbol of a gun and raises his eyebrows as if to say, “See? I told you I’d come through.”
This sends all kinds of sensations fluttering through my head, my heart and my stomach. I feel sick, yet resolute. The only reason we haven’t killed the monster who raped Maggie is because we don’t have a gun. Now we have a gun, which means…
….it’s time.
Brayden switches his phone from one ear to the other—his eyes still on me—then he makes a motion like I should open my towel. I flip him off, pull it tighter.
He frowns.
Now that I’m thinking for a minute, I’m a little weirded out about showering with Rebecca. I’m telling myself girls shower together in the gym after PE, so what’s the biggie? It’s not like I haven’t yet seen her naked. She has a beautiful body. It’s just, I guess maybe I’m still shy about mine. Of course, this makes no sense at all since both Brayden and Jake have seen me naked now.
I look at his boxer shorts and I make the sign of him pulling them down and he grins, turns really red, then looks away.
“Pussy,” I say too loudly.
He looks back at me, then flips me the bird. I suppose it’s enough that he’s not hiding his scars from me. Then, without looking at me, he flashes me his ass and I smile. It’s a good ass. And now I’m the one grinning like an idiot.
A moment later, he looks over his shoulder at me, to make sure I’m still here, or to see what my reaction is. I give him the thumbs up, and mouth the words, nice butt!
When he hangs up, I can’t stop smiling. It feels good to smile.
“Two things,” he says, his eyes sparkling, his mood radiant. “One, you look amazing, and two, I got the gun.”
“You got it,” I say. My goodish mood hits the skids. Nothing like the prospect of murder to kill your morning wood.
“Actually three things. I have everything we need to track down and end Demetrius Giardino. That freaking turd.”
The rapist.
The gosh damn pedophile.
My heart slams into overdrive, making a thump-thumping ruckus in my chest. I almost second guess the prospect of killing off the polluted Giardino bloodline. But I know I’d feel worse not killing him.
“A life for a life,” Brayden says.
“Now it’s my turn for good news,” I say, desperate to switch subjects. “I know where Rebecca’s from.”
He pulls back, raises his eyebrows. He never expected me to find information like this faster than him. He’s the computer expert. The infamous hacker. I’m just the ex-fat girl, ex-throw up artist, ex-chickenshit rich girl.
“How?” he says. One word to mask his jealousy.
I let him hang on my next words longer than necessary, maybe just to taunt him a little. “She remembered,” I finally say. I watch him visibly relax. Who knew his competitive streak ran this deep? “She’s from Reno, Nevada. She remembers her mother. At least that she has curly blonde hair and is, or was, a librarian. The point is, if we find her, Rebecca should be able to identify her.”
“That’s great,” he says, and he means it.
“You like her, don’t you?” I say.
“She’s beautiful. But all of Gerhard’s girls are beautiful.”
“I don’t mean like that,” I say. “You like her as a person.”
“I know what you mean. The truth is, I like that there’s something sweet and innocent about her, you know? Basically she hasn’t grown up and become an asshole yet.”
“Not all pretty girls are assholes,” I say.
He looks away, then uses his toes to push through a pile of his clothes on the floor. He reaches down, pulls out a wrinkled shirt, puts it on. “It’s a defense mechanism. Hate them first, that kind of thing. It’s how they can never really get inside and wreck you.”
“But they do,” I say thinking the same thing about boys. “They have.”
“Especially you,” he says, and I wonder how true this is. He’s wearing a sly grin, but I can’t ignore the feeling that there’s truth to the statement. How much truth, though, I don’t really know.
“What do you want with this fat girl in a skinny girl suit anyway?” I tease.
“Nothing. I’m just stoked your nipples match,” he says.
“And I dig a guy with scars.”
“Well now aren’t we a pair?” he jokes.
I want to say, “We were almost a pair, but your dad ruined that, so now we’re not.” Talking about having your parents crush your dreams! I all but gave up on him, but now things are changing. Not the way I imagined, but they’re most definitely changing. For starters, he’s looking kinda hot now. With his buzzed head, his new muscles, his emerging identity…I’m feeling like he’s got some serious potential. Plus he’s competent and he likes me. At least, he likes to look at me.
“What are you doing just staring at me like that?” he says.
“Thinking different thoughts,” I admit.
“Like what?”
I want to tell him I like the way he looks, that I like how he looks at me, but suddenly Rebecca’s pulling the slider open behind me and she’s saying hello to Brayden and I can see how he looks at her. He looks at her the way he looks at Cicely and Tempest. The way he looks at me. The way he looked at Georgia before she went away.
My stupid, defeatist brain is telling me he looks at her like that because who she is, it’s the only version of her he’s ever seen and she’s a dream to look at. Me, I’ll always be the fat girl to him, the one he watched change through the miracles of science.
“I need to get ready,�
�� I say. If there was a moment ready to unfold between us, it’s freaking gone now.
“Wear jeans and a t-shirt,” he tells me as I’m leaving.
“Now you’re telling me what to wear?” I ask with the hint of an argument in my tone. I love Rebecca, but for a second, I wish she wasn’t here.
“We’re getting…that thing today. And we don’t want you looking too feminine. Wear a boring outfit. Something forgettable.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Okay, boring. Jeans and a t-shirt?” I ask, hands on my hips. “Anything else?”
“I guess, I just—”
“Spit it out,” I say.
“It’s just that you are so beautiful and I don’t want these guys thinking things, you know? They aren’t exactly civilized.”
“Fine. I’ll find something.”
“Be ready in an hour. We’re meeting them at noon just outside Mountain View.”
“What about the timing of…that other thing?” The killing of Demetrius.
“What thing?” Rebecca says. Her hair is still damp and she’s not wearing makeup and still I think she might be better looking than me. And more conflicted. This whole conversation has to be putting a strain on her underdeveloped brain. “Why are you two keeping secrets?”
“It’s private, Rebecca,” I say. “Besides, knowing some things can be dangerous.”
“I’m okay with danger.”
“Well we’re not okay with you being in danger,” Brayden says. “It’s our job to protect you. And sometimes protecting you from knowing things is as important as protecting you from people who can do bad things to you. Like the people who took you.”
I’m looking at Brayden thinking he sounds really smart, and surprisingly mature. Is he showing off for her? Playing the protector role?
When he was taking those courses in Vegas on how to get more women using the art of pickup, or seduction, he said, “Girls need to know the man values himself, that he’s valued in the eyes of other men, that he demonstrates leadership skills and can protect his woman.”
From what I know of Brayden, he doesn’t value himself much, other men don’t value him, and he is not a leader of other men. But protecting Rebecca? That he can do.
I look at her and she’s looking at him looking at her and I’m thinking, holy cow, maybe this shit really works.
“Rebecca, go get something to eat and let me finish talking to Brayden, please.”
Having been dismissed, she gives a noncommittal shrug, then turns, walks past the pool and into the main house, leaving me and Brayden alone once more.
“So?” I say.
“So I say we do it this week. When we go, let’s stay the night, hit a local club for drinks and dancing, then give in to our inhibitions and—”
“That’s not going to happen,” I say. But already he’s got my mind thinking about these things, if only because he said them aloud. It’s another trick he learned at his seminar for attracting women.
Almost as soon as Rebecca disappears inside the main house, she reappears. She pulls open the glass slider and says, “Jacob is here to see you.”
“Tell him maybe I’ll stop by later,” I say. “Make sure you tell him maybe.” She nods and then she heads off to do as I asked.
“That guy’s a douche,” Brayden says.
“Whatever he is, at least he’s trying. Besides, he surprised me a couple of times, and with him I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Anyway,” he continues, clearly uncomfortable with me talking up my first crush, “back to my original thought. After possibly exploring our more provocative sides, we scout the area, get to know where this Italian butthole works and lives, and then we use the gun to do unspeakable things to him.”
“Unspeakable things?” I say.
“Unspeakable things.” Switching subjects, he says, “Did you study the list of the most common mistakes murderers make that get them caught?”
“Yeah, some. Most of what I’ve read is DNA related, stuff the cops and feds have on file. Like hair, blood and saliva, fingerprints, dental records—”
“Are you going to bite him?” Brayden jokes.
“Perhaps. Not that it would matter much. Since this new body and new DNA of mine isn’t even a year old, there aren’t any state or federal records on me. Which means I’ll basically be invisible to the system.”
“Regardless, keep studying because in a couple days, if everything goes according to plan, there will be one less asshole on the planet.”
Already, second thoughts are fogging my restless brain. I keep telling myself once I cross this line, there’s no going back. But there is. I’ve already crossed that line. I killed Gerhard’s pet monster. I try telling myself a kinder story of self-defense and the monster not really being a true human being, but the truth is, I used a gun to end a life. And I can do it again. The music executive, he’s a monster, too. He’s just a monster of a different sort.
“So what did you find when you hacked his hard drive?” I ask. “Anything on Maggie?”
Brayden can pretty much get anything off anyone’s computer no matter the security measures taken to protect it. That’s why the FBI arrested him and is forcing him to work for them once he graduates high school. It was that or hefty jail time and a felony record.
“I was saving that for you when you get cold feet.”
“I’m going to need it, because my feet aren’t as warm as they once were.”
“He’s done this before,” Brayden says. “He’s done this many times before.”
That awful feeling inside returns, like cramps and nausea and food poisoning all wrapped in one. “How many?”
“In the last ten years?”
“Sure.” My face feels bloodless.
“There are twenty-three different girls in similar videos. These are girls we know. Celebrities, I mean. Several of them have songs currently playing in the top 20.”
“Jesus.” Vertigo sets in and I put my hand against the door jam for support.
“He’s a real predator, Abby.”
My wavering heart becomes resolute: I’m going to do this.
“You need to bring your laptop and Maggie’s phone,” I tell Brayden. “Before we go, I’ll need to watch those videos. Every single one of them.”
4
The gun pickup goes well. The guys selling the weapon brought two boxes of bullets and a clean silencer. These “super-scary” guys Brayden warned me about, they aren’t thugs, and they don’t look like criminals, and they certainly didn’t bring any muscle with them to insure their safety during this illegal transaction. No. These guys look like gamers. Nerds who developed a niche in the criminal underworld by not going for the biggest piece of the pie.
“This is how they pay for their Xbox hours,” Brayden says. “This is how they afford the next Call of Duty game while not having to have a real job.”
“They aren’t what I expected,” I hear myself say.
“Yes, well they’re dangerous.”
I snort out a laugh and say, “Whatever.”
“I’m not joking, Abby. If they like the way you look, they can do any number of things. There’s this gamer broad the tall guy was telling me about last year. Since the Xbox is plugged into an Ethernet connection, he was able to hack the kinect portion of the system—the camera built into the unit—and he basically spied on her. He would remotely turn on the camera and watch her while she had sex with her boyfriend, while she masturbated on her bed, while she picked her nose and farted. Talk about the ultimate betrayal. Talk about material for blackmail. Imagine if any of them found out who you are.”
“I don’t have Xbox,” I say.
“You have a laptop, a cell phone. With those two things, nowadays, you’re so unbelievably vulnerable you can’t imagine.”
“The Virginia Corporation bugged my room, my car, my laptop. They basically melted me from a hundred miles away, so yeah, I can imagine it. B
ut thanks anyway.”
Again, playing the protector card.
On the way back home I attach the silencer, feed a bullet into the chamber and shoot at a tree. The recoil is light, but my aim is way off.
“Did you mean to hit the tree?” he asks.
“I meant to hit a tree, just not that tree.”
“Your aim sucks then,” Brayden says. “Which means you had better be close when you pull the trigger.”
I roll the window down to shoot at another tree. The way the wind is blowing through my hair and cooling the skin on my face, it’s sort of taking the edge off me becoming a professional criminal.
“You’re going to chicken out,” Brayden finally says.
“Am not.”
He gives me that lopsided smile and fixes me with a look. “Are, too.”
“Blow me.”
Turning his eyes back on the road, he says, “Anytime, anywhere.”
“Still a fat chick.”
“I was always uglier than you,” he says, “so either way, it’s me improving.”
We both laugh, and it’s energizing. It’s been a long time since there’s been anything worth laughing at.
5
The lies are becoming easier and easier. Me and Brayden tell my father we’ve got a lead on Rebecca’s mother and we’re heading to LA to check it out. We never told him of Rebecca’s revelation, about her mother being from Reno. This was our brilliant idea for a cover story. Still, lying like this, it’s hard to feel good about myself.
Rebecca doesn’t contest our story, as promised. I feel like a schmuck asking her to do this, but maybe she would have done it anyway. This all has me wondering what she was like before being put into the pink gel. Was she a good kid? Did she have a sound moral center, or was she a brat? Maybe she was a head case like me, or perhaps her parents simply didn’t want her. Or is there another story I haven’t thought of? Hopefully one day we’ll find out for sure.
“Where are you staying?” my father asks.
“We’re not sleeping together if that’s what you mean,” I say.
His face turns red, but he says nothing. It’s like he can’t find the words.
