When we get closer, I stop to peer between two metal drums, goose bumps rising on my forearms. At a small reception area, an older man counts out money, a lamp casting a concentrated light onto his shabby desk, illuminating two stacks of bills, his hand methodically setting down a third stack.
“Three twenty, three forty, three sixty, three eighty,” he drones. And next to him, her back to me, standing between two red drums marked with an outline of a cartoon rat with X’s for eyes, I can see the familiar blond hair with the roots growing in. I’m close enough to smell her bubblegum.
It’s her, I turn and mouth to Ford. I motion for him to stay hidden. Then I take a gulp of stale air and make my presence known, stepping into the dim circle of light cast by the desk lamp. “Hello, Rosie. Or whatever your name really is.”
“Well. Look who it is,” she says, turning around and stepping out of the shadows. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, her leather trench buttoned all the way to her throat, its oversize collar stiff and flared, framing her hard red mouth in its black folds.
“Stavros, take a long walk, wouldya?”
The guard, a stooped man beaten by life, his nose a mass of broken capillaries, looks at me with pity. I motion that it’s okay, and he nods, grabbing a bottle of brown alcohol from his desk drawer. “See you next week, then,” he says to her.
“Yeah, sure. Go take a nap somewhere. I’ll need an hour or so to speak with my . . . friend.”
Stavros nods and shuffles out. All the cash he’d been counting remains on the desk, and Rosie goes to scoop it up, stacking it all in a big pile and stuffing it into a black leather handbag. She clicks it closed and smiles at me.
“Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?” she says. “Pretty sure I heard two sets of tiptoes scurrying in here.”
Ford steps into the circle of light, his face a hard mask of indifference, a boxer’s face before the bell. “So this is her?” he says to me, his eyes never leaving Rosie’s face.
“It’s big, bad me, in the flesh.” Miss Roach twirls, her hands fluttering at her sides. She’s wearing spectator heels. How very prim.
“It’s her,” I breathe, suddenly so full of rage that she’s alive and Gavin is dead that I feel dizzy, my head exploding with the memory of Gavin looking into my eyes before she shot him, shaking his head, pretending he wasn’t scared but his beautiful eyes giving him away as he pleaded with me to go . . . and then her tight smile as she aimed right for his heart. . . .
“Gavin’s killer.”
She snorts, her hands clasped out in front of her, index fingers out, making the shape of a gun. “You’ve got a real flair for drama, don’t you, sweet pea?” She looks at Ford appreciatively, her heavily lined eyes lingering on him before refocusing on me.
“You murdered him in cold blood, for no reason,” I say, my voice shaking. I wonder if I’ll be able to restrain myself, to keep myself from hurting her. “And now you need to pay.”
“So naïve,” she sighs. “I feel sorry for you, almost. Go home, okay, princess? Focus on this new boy of yours. He looks neglected. Like a lost little puppy.”
I launch myself at her, unable to hold back anymore, wanting to rip hunks of her blond hair from her head, to break her bones, to smash in her teeth. In a heartbeat I’m on top of her, knocking her to the floor. I bring my hand up, ready to smash it into her face. When she grins I feel something in my back, a burning sharpness that morphs into a tingling freeze. I’ve been stunned by a zapper.
I’m immobilized for a second, enough time for her to roll out from under me. Ford is at my side then, checking on me, yelling something that I can’t quite hear, his mouth moving as Rosie runs down one of the aisles of chemicals. A few seconds later, I can move and hear again, Ford’s hands in my hair. I push him away and jump to my feet again. “I’m going after her.”
Ford nods, pulling out his bulletless gun. I motion to him to take the left side of the room, and I take the right.
I run through the warehouse, blinking in the low light, not daring to breathe so that my sensitive ears can better pick up Rosie’s footsteps. Halfway down the aisle, shots ring out from the other side of the warehouse.
I sprint through a center aisle that runs horizontally through the maze of poison, careful to keep my footsteps silent in the dark room. Then there’s a hissing sound, and I start to panic, my heart thumping with fear. One of the canisters has been punctured and is spraying industrial poison into the air. We need to get out of here. Now.
Then there’s another gunshot. This time it’s closer.
I look up toward the ceiling and notice a hanging metal pallet, dozens of additional barrels of chemicals stacked on top of it. Then I hear breathing. I race toward it, my hands raised like all-too-penetrable shields in front of me.
It’s Ford, crouched behind a pile of tubing. He’s all right, uninjured. He points silently straight up to the ceiling at the hanging metal pallet filled with heavy drums of poison. He pantomimes it falling.
More gunshots ring out, echoing in the giant warehouse. My ears are ringing, and for a second I can’t tell where her voice is coming from.
“Come out, princess,” Rosie shouts. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To die for him? So let’s get on with it.”
We crouch down and hold our breath as the poison fills the air and Rosie’s spectator heels clack clack clack on the cement floor, getting closer.
My eyes move to the wall, where there’s a red lever connected to a chain wound again and again around a spool. The chain is holding up the pallet dangling above us. I race toward the red lever, taking care to be as silent as I can.
She’s only two rows away from us now. I spot the metal of her gun glinting between the skull-stamped drums.
I look back at Ford, who’s still crouched on the floor. Run, I mouth. Go now. I point to the lever and motion to the ceiling where the pallet sways.
He nods curtly, wavers for a moment, then darts toward the front doors.
I see a sliver of Rosie’s body through the shelves of poison. She’s less than twenty feet away now. I focus on her and realize I can hear her breathing, labored and gasping in the poisoned air. “Come on already,” she groans. “Let’s end this.”
Yes, let’s, I think, my heart revving in my chest. You don’t deserve to breathe, ever again.
“Here I am,” I say calmly, pressing my body as close to the wall as I can. As she turns, gun raised, and begins to walk through the aisle toward my voice, I pull the red lever, using all my weight to lean on it until the metal chain starts to unspool. “Good-bye, Rosie.”
Above Rosie, the pallet starts to sway. I hold my breath, my mouth filled with the taste of aerosol poison. Just as she steps in front of me, the pallet slams down on the towering shelves. She looks up and realizes what’s about to happen, her face frozen in shock. Then in a half-second, the shelves of poison cave inward, sending hundreds of metal canisters raining down on Rosie, burying her underneath.
The avalanche is massive. She doesn’t stand a chance.
As the drums and canisters continue to pile on top of her, I push off the wall and sprint around the edge of the room, holding my breath amid the slish and hiss of pinkish rat poison spraying out in all directions.
When I’m nearly out, I hear a pop.
I get outside and just as I’m about to slam the door shut there’s the pop of another drum exploding. I turn to see industrial poison blooming into a huge red aerosol cloud. Through the cloud I spot Rosie’s high-heeled shoe, her ankle twisted oddly, her body crushed under the weight of the drums of Bug-Off. Bile rises up from my stomach as the bright red cloud engulfs her. I hesitate for a moment before I slam the door.
I run thirty feet away, then lean over and retch, bile coming up, sour on my tongue, and I’m vomiting on asphalt, just a few feet away from the yellow LandPusher, my vision streaked with tears, my whole body shaking.
When my body has expelled everything it can, I let Ford guide me to the car,
my throat raw, my eyes burning. He gently puts my arm over his shoulder, not saying a word. He opens the passenger door, and I collapse into the seat.
When he’s in the driver’s seat, we just sit for a minute, not looking at each other. Outside, eddies of crushed cigarette packs, plastic bags, and the Daily Dilemma swirl past. In the distance, neon red and yellow chemicals spray the two front windows of the RID-EX warehouse. My body is violently shaking, watching it. Rosie doused in poison, crushed to death. A gruesome, inhuman death that even she didn’t deserve.
“This wasn’t what I’d planned,” I whisper, tears falling into my mouth. “Not at all.”
“I know.” Ford grabs my shaking hands in his. “Just breathe. She’s gone now. That’s all that matters. She’s gone, and it’s over.”
Then I hear the distant wail of a police siren. “Let’s go,” I say, swallowing hard and shaking my hands free of his. “We can’t be here when the police come.”
CHAPTER 37
The day before opening night of Giselle, I go to Zahra’s house on Lakeview Drive, duck my head under the weeping willow in her front yard. I think about all the summers I’ve spent here, in this yard, the blue stone dappled with sun, building fairy houses out of sticks, Zahra sprinkling them with daisy petals. I wish I could go back to that time, when we were all the other needed or wanted, when we were as alike as twins, when whatever Zahra liked, I liked. Whatever Zahra wore, I wore. Whatever Zahra laughed at, I laughed at. Z’s dad used to joke that we shared a brain.
But that’s all over now. I bite a ragged cuticle on my thumb and wince at the treatment I’ve subjected Zahra to lately. The girl who knows me better than anyone, and all I’ve given her are lies.
I approach her front door slowly, pushing my stocking cap back on my forehead a little. It’s late March now, but spring shows no signs of coming. Winter is getting longer every year. I take a second to check behind me, to scan the block from one side to the other, making sure nobody has followed me. I keep waiting for retaliation, for the Boss or some other Syndicate thug to come after me, or to figure out that Ford was involved and come after him. But nothing happens. Nothing has happened for a week. Just ordinary calm, the regularity of my routine.
I put my hand up to knock but instead, on a hunch, I try the door. It swings open. “Zahra?” I call out, the ticking of the grandfather clock in her tasteful living room the only sound I hear. I breathe in the familiar smell of Z’s home: pistachios and furniture polish and bread and flowers from the garden.
A door creaks open upstairs, and Zahra appears on the landing, one hand resting on the banister.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” I smile as she hesitates on the landing, seemingly deciding if I’m worth coming downstairs for. “I’ve been looking for you for days.”
“Huh.” Z shrugs, turning to fuss with her growing-out pixie cut, almost a bob now, the orange ends now pink, studying herself in her grandmother’s antique mirror. It’s the same one we used to play Bloody Mary in as little girls. “Guess I’ve been busy.”
I take a tentative step toward the stairs, putting one boot tip on the carpeted bottom step. The second step has always squeaked. We both knew to skip it when we snuck upstairs at night after popcorn-fueled movie marathons, or later, when we were older, after coming home late from a school dance or a party. “I miss you,” I say simply, my voice breaking. “It’s over with Will. I wanted you to know. Not that you should care in the slightest.”
“Of course I care,” Zahra snaps. “I care about everything. It’s you who doesn’t have time to care about me.”
The accusation stings, but she’s right. I shake my head. “I’ve been a terrible friend. I hate what’s happened with us. I want to know everything, Z. Everything about what’s going on with you. I always did, and I always do.”
“Whatever,” she says. “You tell me one thing and do another.” But I detect the trace of a smile pulling at her lips. “I have to admit, I was impressed when I heard you got Will shipped off to Weepee Valley,” she adds slyly.
“Yeah,” I say, climbing a few more stairs, careful to skip the squeaky one though nobody’s here but us. “I thought you might like that.”
“What a psycho.” Z shakes her head. “He was always bad news, Anthem. Even before the pills. I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t see it. It was like he cast a spell on you. . . .”
“I was an idiot.”
I breathe a huge involuntary sigh. Things are finally starting to feel okay again. The people who can hurt me are gone. Will is locked away in Weepee Valley for at least another six weeks. I have his flash drive under my bed. Rosie is gone, and though her death makes me a killer, I’m starting to convince myself the world might be better off without her. Only one of us was going to walk out of that warehouse alive. I’m glad it was me.
“You seem good now,” Zahra says, studying my face, her head tilted to one side. “Are you good?”
“I think so,” I muse. “For the first time in a long time, I’m pretty good. Especially now that I’m here and you haven’t thrown a shoe at me.”
“I would never throw a shoe at you,” Zahra insists. “A magazine, maybe.”
“I deserve it.”
“Yeah. You kind of do. But I’m tired of hating you. It’s giving me zits.”
It feels so great to hear her say this that I’m actually dizzy with relief. I grab on to the banister to steady myself, my heart thwacking with joy against my ribs. All this time, I’ve had a million rationalizations for not telling Z the truth about what I’m doing and what I’ve become, but being my old self with her feels like such a relief right now that I finally understand my real motivation for hiding what’s happened from her:
I need this too badly.
Being the old me—the Anthem who Zahra has always known—means not having to think about the person I’ve become at night. It’s a reprieve from the violence, the pain, the horror of everything that’s happened in the South Side. If the girl I am during the day fuses together with the girl I am at night, I won’t know who I am anymore.
And for right now, all I want to be is Zahra’s friend again.
“You should have seen the look on his face when they carted him away.” I fake-sigh, hamming it up as if it’s a painful memory. “He was so shocked.”
“Details,” Z demands, her violet eyes widening, her hands reaching for mine, braceleting my wrists with her fingers. She pulls me into her room, where she’ll smoke a rollie out the window and I’ll regale her with the debate trophy, Lydia with her tiara, the Weepee orderlies, Will’s hissy fit before they took him away. Finally, something I can be totally honest with Zahra about.
It’s a start.
CHAPTER 38
My hair is shellacked in a tight bun, metal combs with glittery white feathers firmly affixed to either side of my head. My stage makeup is freshly sealed with a giant puff of powder. I’m wearing an ivory leotard and a stiff tutu the color of cinnamon toast, my toe shoes newly cracked and sewn on to my feet like a second skin.
I am number six in the line of dancers waiting for our first entrance. I roll my shoulders back, raise my arms above my head, take a deep breath, and fold over one final time, my head almost touching my beribboned ankles, as the violins swell with the first notes of the Giselle score. I straighten up and lift onto my toes, peeking out at the audience when the heavy red curtains begin to rise. Through the scrim of the wings, I can see a sliver of endless seats that seem to go on forever, all filled. All eyes are trained on the stage, and under violins I can almost hear the collective anticipatory hush of the packed house.
It’s opening night at last, and I am pure ballet—my mind focused, my muscles taut and ready to perform, every step committed to memory, not in my head but in my body. After eight counts, the first dancer flits onto the stage. I am last in the long line of level sixers, just behind Mara Wood. As the line moves forward and I approach the stage, I spot Mayor Marks in the front row next to his pin
ch-faced wife, her hair styled like a cinnamon bun atop her head. Just behind them are Zahra and her parents, Asher and Melinda Turk. My heart does a cartwheel, and I lift a hand up to wave, forgetting for a second that they can’t see me in the wings.
Next to the Turks are my parents. My father is leaning over to whisper something in my mother’s ear, and I see her fuchsia lips curl into a hard smile. They’ve been waiting for this moment a long time. Their daughter, premiering as Giselle. I think of all my years of practice, my dogged, desperate clinging to the routines of a dancer. And I press down on my chest, my scar so faint that all it takes to cover it now is a bit of foundation and some powder.
I turn to the stage, watch the level sixers fan out into a blooming rose of balletic precision. In a few more beats, it’s my turn. I rise onto my toes, and the nervous butterflies that filled my stomach backstage are gone now, replaced by muscle memory, by the absence of thought. Through the hot glare of the stage lights, I make out the vague outlines of the full house, the seats packed to the very rear of the rafters at the Bedlam Opera House. The audience is a silent mass, a breathing wall of energy just outside my vision.
And then all I see are my fellow level sixers, whose steps I have made every effort to match—not too high, not too fast has been my mantra in rehearsals.
My heart whirring and whirring like an eager dog pulling at a leash, begging me to speed up, I become the dance. Onstage, I become Giselle, an innocent and sickly maiden who falls passionately in love. I leap and chasse, I pirouette and fouetté en pointe, the music moving through me and with me. The energy from the audience radiates into my limbs, which bend like rubber bands at my command.
Everything else falls away—Gavin’s murder, Ford, the guns, the fighting, Rosie’s gruesome end, the chemical smell of RID-EX that hangs on me even now, a week after her demise—and I feel more present in this moment than I’ve felt in a long time.
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