Anathema

by Bowman, Lillian

  “What are you doing?” I scream at him.

  He frowns. “You’re not even using it.”

  “I will in a minute if you get out!” Anger augments my fear. My voice is strong, and Russell laughs and then retreats from under the stall.

  “Why are you freaking out? I’m messing with you, Kat.”

  “It’s not funny! Just get out!”

  “I’ll wait by the door.” His slow footsteps move away. The door squeaks open, but not close. He hasn’t gone all the way into the hallway.

  My body shakes. I want to go upstairs. I should never have come down here. I could have risked being caught in the halls. They might not have booted me outside. I wasn’t even that drunk.

  Right now, I feel completely, stone cold sober.

  Russell is listening and I couldn’t use the bathroom now even if I needed to. If I delay any longer I’m afraid he’ll come back again or try to get in here with me. The last thing I need right now is to be trapped in this bathroom in the basement with Russell. I need to get out of here. The need to escape is suddenly suffocating me.

  Just like with the janitor, instinct is blaring at me to act casual. Betray no signs of panic. Show no fear or he’ll spring. I wash my hands. I towel them dry. (Thank God it is not a blow dryer. That would take too long.) I step past Russell, shuddering at the proximity. The bathroom door swings closed behind me. I start down the empty service corridor, heading towards the stairwell.

  “So how do you think Amanda’s test is going? How do you think she’s doing? What teacher does she have?” My voice babbles mindlessly as I fixate on the door I’m crossing towards. I grab the handle—my haven in reach. “She was so wasted. I can’t imagine she...”

  The door handle doesn’t give.

  It’s locked.

  Locked!

  “Aw.” Russell’s voice is coated with barely repressed glee. “Guess it only opens from the other side.”

  He knew. My heart trips over itself, thumping wildly in my chest. He already knew this. I’m sure of it. “There’s another exit.” There has to be. There are safety regulations, that sort of thing. I shoot off down the corridor, walking swiftly, aware of him close behind me.

  “Where’s the fire?” his voice floats to me.

  But I am walking faster and faster, and I force a laugh. “I bet Amanda fails and freaks out at us for getting her drunk. She’s not going to be happy. She’ll be so mad at us even though this drinking thing was her idea…” I am still babbling, but now I am walking so fast it is no longer walking. I’m running suddenly, outright running.

  And Russell is still laughing, too, running behind me.

  A turn in the corridor, and a wall swerves up before me.

  No. No, no!

  “Dead end,” Russell almost sings.

  His chest hits my back before I can turn. I try to jerk forward but his arms trap me like he’s steadying me. But he doesn’t let go, I try to shove them away but they aren’t moving. He’s holding tight.

  “This is a storage area, huh?” I say, my voice shaking. My eyes groping desperately over the old music stands piled up around us, in the corner. Why is nobody else here?

  His breath touches my ear. “Who cares?”

  “It has to be. I guess everything has to go somewhere.” I feel this urgent need to keep talking. If I keep talking it will change what is happening here. It will change all of this. Right now, we can pretend Russell isn’t letting me go because he’s keeping me upright. It’s better than admitting he isn’t letting me because he’s restraining me.

  Then he whispers, right in my ear, “Did you know I killed an anathema once?”

  That’s when I know I can’t pretend everything’s fine anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The silence presses in around us. The fluorescent lights overhead hum. Russell’s voice presses into my ear. “He was a grown man. Big guy. I was only thirteen. But I always wondered what it would be like.”

  “I don’t…” I don’t want to hear this. I want him to let me go. But when I try to wheel us around, try to pull away, he pulls me tighter, my back to his chest.

  “He didn’t see it coming.” Russell’s voice is husky. Breathless. Excited. “I followed him for three days. Just waiting. He had three kids. Guess he had to provide, so he was still living like a normal person. He should’ve known better.”

  “God, Russell.”

  “I waited until he had two bags of groceries. Then I just jammed a knife in his side.”

  Russell’s grip tightens so hard I cry out. I hate myself for showing weakness.

  “He was so surprised, Kat. Like, he never saw it coming from me. He thought I was just another punk kid.” He laughed delightedly. “But he figured it out quickly. He was scared of me by the end. He tried to get away. I followed him for two blocks before he collapsed. He was gushing blood all over the sidewalk.”

  “Let me go right now!”

  And then I feel his lips on the back of my neck. Tasting my skin. His hand slides up my stomach, under my shirt, then trails downward.

  “No!” I rear forward, but his grip is like iron. I can’t break it. His large body folds me forward. I have to hold onto the wall to keep my balance.

  “It was so easy, Kat,” he whispers hoarsely, grinding against me. His lips trail down my neck. “You wouldn’t believe how easy it was. I got the bounty a week later. I bought a new Xbox with it.”

  “You’re sick. You’re seriously mentally ill, Russell.”

  “Mom wanted to throw away my shirt. I got blood all over it. But I kept it.”

  “Let me go or I’ll scream.”

  He laughs like I’ve said something foolish and kisses my neck. “Do you think anyone’s going to come help an anathema? And even if they would, who will hear you down here?”

  “HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP!”

  I didn’t realize I could scream so loud; it feels like it’s tearing up my throat, throbbing my ears. He obviously didn’t expect it. His meaty hand clamps over my mouth.

  I lose it. My teeth dig into his skin as hard as I can, and his shriek of pain meets my ears. His grip loosens. I launch forward, my hands flying out to grope the nearest thing I can find—a cold metal violin stand.

  Just as he starts forward, I crash it into his head. Russell’s ferocious swearing splits the air as he tumbles to the ground, tearing down other violin stands with him.

  I back away, shaking all over, and he thrashes upright. His thick arm swats the violin stands aside, sending more of them crashing to the ground

  “That hurt.”

  “Good.” Suddenly I remember something. “You’d better back off right now, Russell! We’re on school grounds. You can’t hunt me here! It’s illegal.”

  He grins malevolently. “I’m not planning to hunt you.” He draws towards me as I stumble back. His eyes are dancing. “You’re just an anathema. Nothing I do to you is illegal. Only restriction is I can’t kill you here if I want your bounty—but I’m not planning to kill you.”

  “Get back!” I scream as he lances toward me.

  But this time, he catches the stand as I swing it at him. I jam my knee between his legs, and just miss hitting him where it hurts. And then suddenly he wrenches the stand from my grip, his other fist flying at my face. The impact makes my entire head vibrate, stars exploding before my vision. I sprawl on the ground, disoriented, and then a hand is clawing at my thigh, yanking me onto my stomach. His heavy weight crashes over me.

  “No! No, Russell! Don’t!”

  Sharp pain erupts on my scalp as he seizes my hair and wrenches my neck back. “Shut up. Shut up and—”

  Then Russell’s hand releases my hair abruptly, tearing a few strands in its haste. I fall forward onto my stomach. His weight is no longer crushing me. I crawl away, hearing Russell give a pained shriek. I find my feet and whip around.

  It’s Alexander.

  He has Russell by the back of his shirt, and when Russell twists around to swing at h
im, Alexander dodges—and Russell screams as his fist hits the concrete wall. Alexander sinks his knee into Russell’s stomach, seizes him by his hair, and then slams his face into the wall so hard, something crunches.

  When Russell drops back, he’s clutching his nose, blood trickling between his fingers. He’s left a smear of red on the wall. Alexander locks an arm around his neck.

  “I’ve never brutalized someone twice in one week,” Alexander tells Russell conversationally, holding him in a headlock. “You’ll be the first.”

  “I’ll kill you!” Russell screams, and tries to rear them both back.

  Alexander lifts the broken end of a violin stand and smashes it into Russell’s head. This time Russell drops like a stone. Alexander lets him fall. He throws me a quick look over his shoulder.

  I find my feet, my legs shaking beneath me.

  He swings back around and plants his knee on the small of Russell’s back before he can rise, flattening him on the floor. Russell tries to buck him off, but Alexander keeps his balance. He wrenches up Russell’s arm, twists it up behind him. Even when Russell tries to rise, tries to pull away, he can’t. Alexander just twists the arm until Russell is shouting for him to stop.

  “Not a great feeling, is it?” Alexander intones, leaning over him. “It really sucks being at someone else’s mercy. Now imagine how much worse it feels being raped.”

  “That’s not what that was!” roars Russell. “She wanted it. She was begging for it.”

  Rage explodes over me. “No, I wasn’t!” I shout at him.

  “I’m an eye for an eye type of person,” Alexander tells him, digging his knee into Russell’s back when he tries to move. There’s a hard, reckless look to his face. “But I think you’d enjoy that too much. So what to do with you…? I can’t kill you on school grounds any more than you can kill me here.”

  “No, you can’t!” Russell taunts.

  “That’s why I think I’ll break your fingers one-by-one instead.”

  I am breathless. Some part of me, some ethical, moral part of me tells me I should stop this.

  Some vengeful part of me can’t seem to care.

  Alexander’s blue eyes move up to me piercingly, as though he’s gauging whether I need to see this. He must see my fury on my face, because he turns back to Russell with grim determination. Then he wrenches his pinky.

  Russell screams out as it cracks.

  I clap a hand over my mouth. But I don’t look away.

  “Stop!” Russell screams.

  Then Alexander takes his ring finger.

  “Stop! Don’t!”

  A sickening crack.

  Russell begins pleading. Begging. “That’s my good arm. Come on, man, that’s my good arm. I need it. Stop. Please, okay? Please, I won’t do anything else. I’ll leave this alone. I’ll forget this.”

  “Your good arm?” Alexander says. Despite his taunting words, there’s no enjoyment on his face. He’s cold and methodical, his eyes like a winter’s frost. “I guess you’re hoping to be scouted. You’re a great wide receiver. If you went to the right university, you might have had a shot at the NFL one day. Pity.”

  He wrenches his middle finger. Crack. Russell screams, then dissolves into hysterical threats. “I’ll raise your bounty! I have the money. You wait and see. I’ll raise your bounty so high, you won’t be able to believe it. You won’t sleep through a single night for the rest of your life.”

  Alexander laughs darkly. “I never sleep through the night.”

  “Please, please, man—I get it. I get it now. It was wrong. I was wrong.”

  “A lesson learned a few minutes too late. Isn’t life full of painful ironies.” And then Alexander breaks his index finger.

  Russell screams again, and his threats are mixed with pleas. “Please,” he gabbles, over and over, a chant. “Please, please, please not my thumb. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything you want, just don’t…”

  “The thumb takes the longest to heal,” Alexander says. “You’d be out the whole season. There goes your career.” He looks at me, a silent question in his eyes.

  I realize suddenly he’s leaving it up to me. If the thumb takes the longest to heal, this one counts. Breaking it this early in football season of senior year doesn’t just knock Russell out of the season—it knocks him out of contention for any college scouts. It ends his football career. He can function after a few weeks of healing with the others. Not if Alexander breaks his thumb.

  Alexander must know how rich Russell’s family is. Yet he’s still willing to do it even though the Corgins can add to his bounty.

  Not only that, I realize suddenly, but he didn’t ask me out loud. Just with a questioning look. All I need to do is nod.

  My throat tightens. He’s willing to take all the fallout for me.

  That’s why I can’t let him do that.

  Take the fallout, I mean.

  I look down at Russell, still struggling on the ground. No laughter comes from him now that he’s the helpless one. Bile rises in my throat as I think of his whispered story. His heavy breaths on my skin.

  “A father with three kids, Russ?” My voice shakes with disgust and loathing. “Really?”

  “Kat, please…” he whines, panic creeping into his voice.

  His terror touches nothing within me. I don’t recognize the pitiless void in my chest. I didn’t know I had this creature of ice inside me, because there is no mercy in my heart.

  I tell Alexander, “Break it.”

  Alexander looks at me sharply. He hadn’t expected me to say it aloud. To let Russell know I’m the one making the decision to do this to him. His eyes hold mine, respect glinting in their depths. Russell shrieks in rising panic.

  And then Alexander breaks his thumb.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Alexander manhandles the whimpering Russell across the hall, hauling him to the fire escape I’d been searching for. He kicks open the door and hurls him through. Then he slams it behind him.

  I watch in a haze, my eyes fixed on the door. I half-expect Russell to spring back through. I stay rooted in place for so long that my legs grow numb beneath me. It takes me a while to become aware of Alexander’s gaze resting on me.

  “Are you all right?” he asks me.

  I swallow. Swallow again. “I need a minute.”

  He folds his arms, leaning back against the wall, just watching me. Waiting. I don’t know what he’s waiting for. I hope it’s not for me to act, to move. I can’t. My muscles are locked.

  My body is hot and cold all over, my palms tingling. My brain begins to fill with a big, static blur of noise. The thunder of my heartbeat is mounting in my ears. I can’t focus. I can’t move.

  “Kathryn?”

  “Just a minute,” I say hazily.

  I sit down in the middle of the hallway. There’s something comforting about the cool, solid plaster beneath me. Beneath my thighs, my palms. My face is starting to throb, my skin hot where Russell punched me. My fingers probe my skin.

  Alexander’s boots stride up in front of me. He offers a hand. I draw my eyes up the long expanse of him and stare at his palm, but don’t touch it. I still remember him that day in class. Trapping me in my chair, cold menace in his blue eyes. Warning me off. I would have been afraid an hour ago to find myself alone with him in an empty service corridor.

  Right now I can’t even think.

  He sighs. “Come on.” Then he reaches down and pulls me to my feet. His long, cool fingers grip mine, his other hand at the small of my back. “You’re in shock. It’s normal.”

  I gape at him. Normal? Is there a normal anymore? Two months ago Russell was Amanda’s jerk boyfriend. Just another face in my group of friends. Today he tried to… to…

  That really happened. It really just happened.

  “Where’s your phone?” Alexander says, leading me down the hall.

  “My phone?”

  “I’ll call someone. Your parents.”

  “No, don’t!”
I cry, my first coherent thought breaking through the fog. If Mom and Dad find out I was attacked in school, they’ll never let me leave the house again. Then they’ll become anathemas—for killing Russell.

  “What about your friends? That girl you’re always with. Amanda.”

  For a moment, I look at Alexander, a strange feeling settling over me as I realize he classifies Amanda Sykes, Empress of the School, as the girl always with me—not the other way around. Then I digest his words, and shake my head vehemently. “No. Don’t call her.” I can’t face Amanda right now. If it was anyone but Russell… But it’s not. “Don’t. Just… just leave it alone.”

  “Kathryn,” Alexander says quietly, “is there anyone who can come take you home?”

  It occurs to me dully that he always calls me by my full name. Never Kat. I wonder why. Then again, he always goes by his full name, too. “You don’t have a nickname. Why is that?”

  He blinks at me in the fluorescent light. He’s eyeing me in a way like he’s questioning my state of mind.

  “Alexander’s a long name. Most Alexanders have nicknames,” I point out blearily.

  “I just don’t have one. Come on.” He shoves open a door.

  My head is spinning. “What if I called you Al?”

  “I wouldn’t answer to it.”

  “Here’s a million dollars for you, Al. You’d answer that. Everyone would.”

  “You don’t have a million dollars.”

  “Oh. Good point, I guess.” I wouldn’t be in this situation if I did. I’d be in Europe with my shiny new exit visa. With French boys. Or Scotsmen. In kilts.

  “My father used to call me ‘Alex’,” he says after a moment.

  His father. The reminder sobers me. The father whose surname he cast away.

  “You need to sit down,” he says, watching my face.

  I sit on a plastic chair by the door. He sweeps across the room and begins rifling through a bag. My eyes find a large, plastic jug of water. It’s just resting against the wall beside a sagging pallet. A makeshift bed. There’s food, too. Prepackaged food that looks to have been pilfered from the cafeteria. A laptop sits in the corner on an overturned box.