Beautiful Broken Girls

by Kim Savage

  “Piggy’s playing you with that mob talk. Besides, the only person who’s ever home at that house is Nana P., and she’ll be cooking in the basement,” said Kyle.

  “I got it. We say he got jumped by kids from Germantown,” Louis said. “I got a cousin who has a score to settle. I can get some names.”

  Kyle cuffed his shoulder. “Don’t be a moron. We can’t get away with pinning this on someone else. Besides, he’s the one who’ll have to worry when his dad finds out who clocked him.” Kyle smiled over at Ben, who closed his eyes and held his groin.

  Louis gave Kyle a cold stare. “Always sticking up for Lattanzi, no matter how much of a nutter he acts like.” Rubbing his shoulder, he scraped up the notes and dumped them at Ben’s nose. “Whatever these are, I hope they’re worth the way you’re gonna feel when you wake up tomorrow.”

  “What the hell happened here?” Eddie stood in the clearing, staring at Piggy on the ground.

  Kyle sprang up. “Nothing, man. Lattanzi decided to use some of those new big muscles on Piggy ’cause he was getting out of line about his mother. The usual Piggy trash talk. Ben got in a lucky punch and Piggy’s milking it. Right, Piggy?” Kyle kicked Piggy in the side and he groaned.

  “Mother-ucker,” Piggy moaned.

  Eddie grunted and moved past Piggy like he no longer saw him. From the ground, Ben watched Eddie with his big bandaged hand, eyes clouded, dragging his feet. The idea of stopping by the Villela manse to shoot hoops suddenly seemed whack.

  Still, Ben tried. He spit blood and brushed his knuckles across his lips. “Ed. You wanna get out of here and shoot some hoops at your place?”

  Eddie looked at Ben like he didn’t recognize him. He dropped his towel and rifled through his gym bag until he found a plastic bag, which he tented over his hand and secured with duct tape. Ben doubted it would keep the bandages dry, but no one else said anything, nor did Kyle offer any professional medical advice. Eddie moved past the boys like they were ghosts, stood at the top of the ledge of the altar rock and raised his hands above his head as if in salute. Then, he was gone.

  SEPTEMBER 2015

  Francesca let out a pained sigh.

  Mira looked toward her sister’s bed. There was no hint of pale, no lighter darkness, nothing that suggested a form. She raised her hand in front of her face, expecting to see a shimmer of movement, but blackness saturated the room, and Mira had lost the most familiar parts of her body to it. She scrambled upright and swatted at the lamp, which fell to the floor with a soft filament pop.

  Mira waited for Francesca to startle. Nothing but darkness.

  “Francesca?” Mira’s voice was small. “What’s wrong?”

  Nothing.

  Mira threw off her covers and righted herself. “You’ve been groaning. Are you sick?”

  She was used to Francesca’s unresponsiveness. Though eighteen months younger, Mira often felt like the older sister. She slipped off her mattress and felt for the cord, pulling the blinds up in a shriek. It was later than she’d thought: the sky was already the color of a raincloud. A flutter as Francesca’s birds rose and dipped low, landing on the branch outside the window again, one higher than the other. Not just any birds, but the same two that had lived outside their window since Mira was a little girl, that followed Francesca everywhere. They were a complicated mix of green and purple, with white breasts and garlands of deeper purple around their necks, so ubiquitous and with Francesca since such a young age that no one spoke of them anymore. Except for Connie, who still nearly squealed every time she saw them, and probably wished there were three, because then they could say they were their birds, one for each girl, instead of simply “Francesca’s birds” (kinder, to ignore the “two”: Mira’s idea).

  One bird shrugged and cocked its head, puffing snowy under-feathers at Mira.

  “Shoo!” Mira whispered. The birds stomped their insect legs, uncomfortable.

  Mira navigated to Francesca’s bedside, leaning in close. Her sister’s face was slick with tears and waxy, as though her blood had drained away. Mira touched her hair. It was soaked, by sweat or tears. Mira thought she might have a fever. Francesca spiked fevers constantly, ran hotter than her body’s limits. Mira skidded in socked feet to the door, easing it open and listening for her father, considering if she should wake him. Snores crescendoed into a choke.

  Francesca moaned again, arching her back, pointing her chest to the ceiling.

  Mira returned and stood over her sister. Her thoughts went to their mother, in her bed on a different morning ten years ago, after an après-dinner Ambien/vodka cocktail cured her insomnia forever.

  Mira grabbed Francesca’s shoulders and shook them roughly. Francesca’s chest rose and fell. Mira hovered her ear over Francesca’s mouth, and heard her slow, wet breath. Satisfied, she hissed, “Francesca, stop this, now!”

  A room away, their father mumbled in his sleep.

  Francesca’s eyes flew open. Her black pupils were vast. Mira jumped.

  “You scared me!” Mira nearly shouted.

  “I’m in so much pain,” Francesca squeaked, her lids lowering.

  “Oh no. Your hands again?” Mira asked, more softly.

  Francesca yanked the sheet tight under her chin. “It’s not my hands.”

  “I’m getting Daddy,” Mira said, moving away.

  Francesca released the wad of sheet and clamped onto Mira’s arm. “Don’t!”

  Mira jerked her arm. Francesca’s power crouched inside her and popped out at unexpected moments. She held on with that strength that always blindsided Mira.

  “Let go,” Mira said, twisting. “You need help.”

  “The pain is in my heart,” Francesca said.

  Mira pried Francesca’s nails from her arm. “You could have a virus. Food poisoning. We don’t know.” Mira’s random diagnoses hid what she really feared: that this was one more out-of-control thing happening to Francesca’s body.

  “It’s not like that. My heart aches. It feels like it’s been stabbed, through my side; it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. It’s hopeless.” Francesca’s voice was ragged.

  Mira perched on the edge of the mattress and pushed hair from her sister’s face in wet clumps. Her pillow sagged under the weight of tears. “What’s hopeless?”

  “Loving him.”

  An extra-loud snore, followed by silence. Mira shot a wary look toward the door before whispering the question whose answer she already knew. “Who?”

  Francesca closed her eyes and rolled over onto her side, hair stuck like kelp to her cheek. “Mr. Falso.”

  “I know, love,” Mira said, pulling her hands to her lap, relief mingled with a new fear. Things with Mr. Falso had been building. Mira imagined a growing tower of white china plates, wobbling with each plate added. “I know.”

  Francesca rose slowly. “I can’t go on like this. I need to tell him how I feel. Once I show him the holes”—she held up her bandaged hands—“he’ll see what makes me special. It will change everything.”

  Mira twisted her ring. “It will. But in the way you want it to?”

  Francesca threw a sharp look over her shoulder. She peeled off her nightshirt and snatched a dress from over the back of a chair. Weeks earlier, Francesca had excavated an old white lace dress from their mother’s closet. Mira assumed the dress was an attempt to look older; mostly, Francesca looked out of time. Filmy, dingy, and overlaid with appliqué daisies, its front draped to reveal twin hollows nested inside a sharp collarbone. It hung away from her narrow middle and ended at mid-calf, where the hem bunched in spots. The effect was of an ill-fitting shroud.

  “You can’t go to him. It’s too early in the morning. He won’t even be awake.”

  “So I’ll wake him.” Francesca stomped into the bathroom and returned with her paddle brush. She flicked the lamp switch over and over again, frowning. “I’ll be the first thing he sees.”

  Mira shivered at the raking sound as Francesca brushed her hair. “You’ll have to rid
e your bike. It’ll be awkward in that dress.”

  “Suffering puts me closer to God.” She drew hair behind both ears. “Let him see me naked and vulnerable.”

  Naked? Connie would have yelled, Mira knew. But Mira was accustomed to Francesca’s extreme word choices. Instead, she asked simply, “What about Daddy?”

  “Tell him I’m sleeping late. I’ll slip back in through the kitchen slider.”

  Francesca checked her bandages and slid a pair of old black leather gloves over them before facing Mira. The dusky glow of morning fell on and around her.

  Mira touched her throat. “Oh.”

  It wasn’t beauty, though there was that. Barefaced and shoeless, with her damp hair drawn severely behind her ears and her body hidden in milky folds, Francesca had transformed herself into someone timeless. There was nothing to pin her to the year, or her actual age, to the Cillo family, or to any of the things that defined her. She had erased herself and become a canvas on which Mr. Falso could project anything.

  “How do I look?” Francesca asked.

  Mira swallowed. “Not like yourself.”

  Francesca clasped her hands to her chest. “That’s exactly right! You see? It’s absolutely perfect! Because I’m not myself anymore! I’m a vehicle chosen by God to do his work on Earth!” Francesca sprang toward Mira and squeezed her.

  “Your pain,” Mira said softly.

  “You know I can absorb my suffering. And soon, it will end.”

  Mira buried her nose in her damp hair, breathing deep. “Francesca.”

  Francesca held her away, studying her face. Mira didn’t like the feel of her dead mother’s old hard gloves tightening on her bare arms.

  “What is it?” Francesca asked.

  Mira honeyed her voice. “I’m sure it won’t be the case, but what if telling Mr. Falso about your gift has the opposite effect?”

  Francesca’s eyes went hot. “I should have known.” She dropped Mira’s arms and strode to the mirror, smoothing her hair one last time, her sharp movements carving the air. She slid into worn ballet flats, working her jaw, her most awful angry habit, that suck-click noise that signaled a shutdown was imminent. I could wake up Daddy, Mira thought, make a loud noise right now that so that he will stop her as she leaves. There was still hope.

  Francesca tugged at the dead woman’s gloves. “If you can find it in your heart of hearts, wish me luck. You’re not the only one who can make a boy love her.”

  Mr. Falso’s not a boy, Mira thought, staring at the floor. Francesca could be so cruel. So often Francesca reminded her that blood was thick and binding, that they were part of each other, that this shared blood transcended anything. But Francesca’s blood was shifting, turbulent. It wasn’t like Mira’s. It left Francesca in a constant state of discontent. Perhaps this idea was a good thing: if Mr. Falso believed she had a higher purpose, it would calm her. Mira believed her, though it no longer seemed to make a difference. And Connie believed. If only they two were enough.

  Francesca disappeared down the stairs. Mira felt her heart in her mouth, as hard and full as if there had been a death. They never left without saying “I love you.” Snores trailed in through the door. Mira ran to the window and scraped her fingers forcing the grimy screen locks. It squealed open. She leaned out as Ben Lattanzi walked out his own front door in pajama bottoms, dragging his ancient shaggy terrier on a leash. Ben sensed Mira and turned his face. From ten feet above, she watched Ben’s spine straighten as his eyes met hers. Mira felt the familiar rush of warmth and sadness and desire to touch away the auric pain that burned bright around him.

  The dog grew rigid and barked. A whiz of bike tires on asphalt: Francesca, tearing from their garage out into the street, her bare calves circling below the bunched silk hem. The dog lunged at her.

  “Francesca!” Mira yelled, as her sister sped past Ben and the dog. Mira winced, knowing their father may have heard her call and hell could break loose. She stared at her sister’s misshapen figure for as long as she was in sight. It wasn’t unusual for the Cillo girls to ride bikes like they were twelve, not when they weren’t allowed in hardly anybody’s car, and neither had applied for their junior license. Anyone who saw Francesca would think she’d lost it: a bag lady tearing along the highway down Powder Neck before seven a.m. Mira wondered, had she lost it?

  Ben gave a half wave up to Mira, straining against the dog pulling toward Francesca’s leftover dust.

  “Hey!” he called, unsure.

  More importantly, would Mr. Falso think she’d lost it? And if he did, would he tell their father? Mira was fairly sure Daddy never noticed when Francesca went dim; she hid her withdrawals, citing girl problems, or lack of sleep. Mira helped, backing up the same excuses, even claiming the same ones sometimes, to make them seem more likely. What would happen if there was some adult consensus that Francesca needed help?

  Above, the crayon-colored birds held Mira with their eyes, wobbling on their branches. They crouched one by one, then rose together on silent wingbeats, toward the ocean and Francesca, up and out of sight.

  The dog yanked Ben’s arm. He planted his legs.

  “Girls?” her father called crustily from inside.

  Mira dragged the window shut.

  * * *

  Francesca rounded the tip of Powder Neck, riding close to the ocean. She tried to ignore the cooler air gripping her chest and her runny nose. She rode slowly past identical bungalows until she spotted the cherry Miata parked in front of a white house with a porch layered in jalousie windows like a glass cake. The garage door mawed open. Anxious thoughts skidded through Francesca’s mind: Had someone broken in? It was so early. She slid from her bicycle and walked it, taking baby steps alongside. Mr. Falso’s fancy European racing bike lay on its side with its parts strewn around on the garage floor. Her heart pounded: he was already awake. More toys lay about, in the garage and the driveway, and on the lawn. They included a second bike, for off-roading, which he did in the nearby conservation area; a moped, for cruising Powder Neck Beach at night; a small speedboat for fishing off the boat club dock; rappelling hooks and harnesses, for climbing in the quarry; and an eerie man-sized scuba suit hanging from a hook, for dives into the harbor. Francesca knew precisely how Mr. Falso used each of these things from scraps of overheard conversations.

  She slipped her hand through the armpit of her mother’s dress and felt her breast. The muscle was pleasingly thin over her sternum. Saints starved themselves so that others could see their heart beating for love of Jesus underneath their skin: this she knew.

  “Francesca?”

  Mr. Falso’s voice came from the dark back half of the garage. He emerged in a thin T-shirt and jeans stained with grease. Francesca stared at his arms—how hadn’t she known about the tattoos?—and shivered.

  “You rode out here on your bike? It’s barely seven in the morning!” His words were stern, but his face exploded with happy surprise, the signature Mr. Falso look: eyebrows spiked upward, white teeth bared.

  Francesca snapped to attention. “I don’t drive.”

  “You could have asked your dad to drive you out here. Or I could have met you somewhere! You didn’t have to come out all this way…” He wiped his hands on a cloth and stepped toward her, his smile tightening. “What did you come out all this way about, anyway?”

  Francesca held her elbows. Rehearsing them at night, the words seemed easy and right. Now in the harsh light of morning, they seemed impossible.

  So she lied. “I want to talk to you about a friend.”

  Mr. Falso pocketed his thumbs. “Then this isn’t a spiritual matter?”

  Francesca cleared her throat. “It is, in a way. My friend’s spirit. I care about her deeply, you see. And I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”

  “I see. Remember, talking to me isn’t like confessing to Father Ernesto. If someone in your family is in trouble, I’m obliged to tell an adult.”

  “Whatever,” Francesca said quickly, then scolded herself:
stupid Cesca! Her flip “whatever” made her sound like a dumb teenager. She felt a tide rolling back, sand moving back under her feet, everything in reverse. His face assumed its professional mask. She stumbled for lost ground.

  “What I mean is, I don’t care, because you’re the right person to tell. Father Ernesto is—God forgive me for saying this—a little out of touch when it comes to stuff of young people”—Young people, NOT teenagers. I am a young person, Francesca thought hard, willing him, telepathically, to understand. She cleared her throat—“stuff young people have to deal with. I would never be comfortable telling Father Ernesto that a friend is acting … inappropriate. With boys.”

  Mr. Falso’s mask dissolved, she thought. It had softened around the eyes and mouth, she was sure.

  “I’m touched that you came to me,” he said.

  Francesca’s blood pounded hot in her ears. It was going to be okay. And her story about Connie wasn’t untrue; her behavior around boys lately was appalling. The kind of person Francesca wanted Mr. Falso to think she was—the kind of person she was-was—would care about Connie’s self-respect. She couldn’t ignore the problem. Her concern was based in love.

  “She’s been letting boys touch her for the attention. And they’ve been using her, terribly,” she whispered.

  She saw a tiny flicker, a blaze in his eyes. It was a protective fire, anger born of gallantry. She might have been talking about someone else, but he seemed to be thinking of her. And he wanted to protect her.

  “Go on.” He matched her whisper.

  “Not just any boys: awful boys. Of course, all boys our age are awful. It’s always been this way for us.”

  He leaned forward. “Us?”

  “We attract boys we want nothing to do with. It’s like we give off some vibe. But the ones we want don’t seem to see us.” Francesca bit her lip as she watched the muscles in his arms shift under his shirt. She trained her eyes on his faith charm. “Of course, we’re talking about my friend. Not my sister and me.”

  “Of course. But, Francesca…”