Matchbox Girls

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

“He was...” Marley searched for the right word.

  “He was bad,” said Lissa, without looking up from the paper she was coloring on. Marley blinked. When they were quiet, it was so easy to forget the children were there and probably listening. Lissa went on, “So many bad guys.”

  “Well, my Jeremy is good. He runs a charity!” Penny said firmly, and then seemed to realize she was talking to a small child. “Lots of people have the same names, after all. There are probably dozens of Jeremy Whites in L.A.” Lissa didn’t respond, and Penny looked up to meet Marley’s eyes. “So how are you doing? How’s work?”

  Marley blew out her breath. “Intermittent. Been a bit distracted the last couple of days, but I have to get something out soon. How about you? Did you get any more writing inspiration in Rome?”

  Penny blushed. “A little, then I got stuck again. But I was talking to Jeremy last night and he suggested…” She fell silent abruptly. Then she said, “I had some interesting design ideas, too. Of course, it’s Italy—that’s why I went there.”

  Gently, Marley asked, “You told him about your writing?” It wasn’t a subject Penny talked about to most people. Throughout high school, Penny had written, Branwyn had illustrated, and Marley had been their sole audience.

  Penny shrugged. “I like him, Marley. I want this to work. I... feel like I’m part of something when I’m with him. Part of something, but... special, too.” Penny’s expression turned derisive, one corner of her mouth twisting. “A special snowflake. It’s dumb, I know. But things fall apart enough on their own. So, don’t...” She shook her head and fell silent.

  For a long moment, the ghosts of old conversations thronged the air. Marley listened to them.

  She looked at her own anxieties and demanded of them: What do you want me to do? I can’t make her do anything. All I can do is be here afterwards. And then, taking into account current events, added, Possibly metaphorically speaking, writing letters from Cellblock 2-A.

  Her misgivings had no words of their own in reply, so she said to Penny, “All right. I won’t.” And from somewhere inside, she found a smile to share with Penny. Penny returned a little smile of her own.

  Kari appeared at Marley’s elbow, holding her fairy doll and a container of dental floss. “Put this on her,” she ordered, and thrust the dental floss at Marley. “She’s naughty. She keeps trying to run away. She needs a leash.”

  Marley blinked at Kari, and then down at the dental floss. But Penny spoke before she could. “That’s not a good leash. But I know what to get.” She disappeared into Branwyn’s room and reappeared holding a spool of white ribbon and a pair of scissors.

  “Put it ’round her neck.” Kari gave the doll a kiss. “You can’t trust fairies. They’re fun but trouble.” She sounded like she was quoting something she’d heard somewhere.

  “Please, I object to strangled fairies,” Marley said. “Put it around her waist instead.”

  “Leashes go ’round the neck. Like the doggies.”

  Penny shifted her gaze between Marley and Kari. “It’s called a harness if it goes around the body. They even make harnesses for little kids.” She tied the ribbon in a cross over the doll’s torso, then snipped off a long tail.

  Kari looked dubious, but she took the doll back. After inspecting it, she wandered off to bother her sister, dragging the doll behind her.

  Penny’s faint smile had real pleasure behind it now. “What else can I do to help?”

  Marley looked around. The mess in the apartment seemed to reflect the disorganization in her head. There were plenty of things that needed doing, but—

  “I know!” Penny announced. “How about I take the girls out to lunch and give you an hour or two to work? You said you had to get something done.”

  That was a good idea.

  No. No, it wasn’t. No sooner had Marley considered the idea than a wave of nausea and panic swept over her. It was the same as the day before, when the lawyer had tried to take them away.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” said Penny sharply. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  With an effort, Marley dropped her gaze to the carpet and breathed carefully, waiting for the internal visions of misery and doom to fade away. It was the screams heard by her mind’s ear that faded last. Her own screams.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “Panic attack.” She looked up in time to see Penny’s face change, the warmth shuttered away.

  “You don’t trust me.”

  The sick feeling didn’t fade, though. “That’s not it. I don’t want—it seems like—” Marley fumbled for an explanation. She had to find an explanation because she couldn't let Penny take the kids away from her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Penny. She stood up and grabbed her purse. “I should go, anyhow. I just remembered I have something to do myself. It was good chatting with you.”

  She stalked to the door while Marley sat curled in on herself on the couch, wretched with confusion. Penny yanked the door open, then turned to Marley, doubt playing across her face. She almost spoke. Then she stepped outside, and there was nothing but the door.

  Kari reappeared next to Marley. “Uncle says at least angels are honest. If you can get them to talk to you. Will you put a leash on Lissa’s fairy too?”

  -nine-

  The apartment was stifling. Marley tried to think about Zachariah. She examined the ciphered book fragment again, watching the way the patterns seemed to waver and move when she stared at them for too long. She threw herself from couch to computer chair to dining room table, but all she could do was rehash the conversation with Penny in her head.

  At last, after peanut butter sandwiches and medication, she decided to go out again. She considered the possibility of the Interns of Evil reappearing, and realized part of her hoped they would. She wanted somebody associated with all this this-ness to yell at.

  Marley scolded herself and found Branwyn’s extra can of pepper spray. The anti-anxiety medication made her reckless sometimes, especially when she upped her dosage like she had just now. She forced herself to consider the idea of taking her car to a different park. After a careful, thirty-second examination of her choices, she concluded that if she wanted to be stealthy, leaving the car where it was, taking the back exit from her building, and walking to the local park was the best option.

  The back door of her apartment complex led to the laundry room and the dumpsters. It was always smelly, but today the whiff of smoke in the air overwhelmed the other odors. A firefighting helicopter flew by, tilted like a swollen mosquito, and she tracked its progress toward the mountainside until it faded into the haze.

  As they walked, Marley said to the twins, “This afternoon’s game is: run away from anybody over the age of ten who gets close enough to touch you. Except me. Don't run away from me.”

  Lissa said, “Something bad is happening, right? All these bad guys.” She sounded more thoughtful than scared.

  Marley hesitated and then said, “Yes. But it’s too hot to hide under the bed.”

  “Hah!” said Kari to Lissa. “I told you the fire was part of it.”

  “What?” said Marley. “No, no. That’s just nature. Everything gets so dry.” She tried to remember what it had been like to be so young that the forces of nature had been anthropomorphized to her. She had vague memories of believing that earthquakes came from the sea’s jealousy of the coast, but that was it.

  “But you’re not supposed to hide under the bed if there’s a fire in your house,” said Kari seriously.

  “That’s... that’s true. I was just referring to the summer, though.”

  “It was sticky back at your house.”

  “Mmm,” Marley said, because what else could you say to that? Looking down at Lissa, she asked, “Are you scared, Liss?”

  Lissa was quiet for a moment, and then shrugged. “I will throw rocks at them.”

  Kari giggled. “Yeah! And bugs! And dog poop!” She looked shocked and pleased by her own daring.
<
br />   Marley, who had been present for a park lecture from Zachariah on why dog poop was yucky and shouldn’t even be poked with a stick, sighed. “I’d rather you just ran away.”

  Kari seemed to ignore her entirely, while Lissa just shrugged. They walked along in silence for a few moments, until they came to the edge of the park. As far as Marley could tell, the place was utterly empty. It wasn’t entirely a surprise given the wildfires and heat, but it was a relief.

  “There we go,” she said. “Nobody to throw things at. Please, please come to me first if you think that would be a good idea. Now go play.”

  She followed them into the playground. While Kari wouldn’t let go of her harnessed fairy doll for any reason, she otherwise played as she always had. Lissa, in contrast, was quiet and uninterested. But after ten minutes of Marley’s enticement and encouragement, she relaxed and began to show signs of enjoying herself.

  It was nice, until Marley looked up from Lissa’s smile and realized a familiar figure had appeared in the park.

  It was neither Lawyer Jeremy nor Tall, Dark and Nevermind, but the teenage girl with the dogs. She was throwing a Frisbee that two of the dogs chased, while the third lazed around in the grass, ears pricked toward the playground activity. The girl seemed to be paying no attention to anything else around her, but Marley was not convinced.

  She looked around the park to see who else had shown up. There was still nobody near the playground, although a ball game seemed to be assembling on the distant diamond. On the other side of the park, a pair of women strolled along the jogging path.

  The girl’s back was to Marley, making it impossible for Marley to catch her eye. She snapped her fingers at the dog watching her, a chocolate-colored retriever. Its tail waved slowly, but it didn’t move.

  Finally, she cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “Hey, you! Girl with the dogs!”

  The girl looked around and then waved. Marley beckoned her over. Much to her surprise, the girl immediately dashed across the grass to her, all three dogs following in her wake.

  “Hi!” she said. Marley looked at her with narrowed eyes. The kid looked to be maybe fourteen, with a mop of curly dark hair and big hazel eyes in a brown face. She was pretty in a way that almost seemed airbrushed, which wasn’t uncommon in L.A., but did usually require makeup.

  “Who are you?” Marley finally asked.

  “Is this about the dogs? Because they are totally under control.” She made a hand gesture and all three dogs sat down. Her words were followed by a hopeful grin; her teeth were very white.

  “That's nice. That's good. But I already saw that today. However, now I am asking for your name,” Marley said.

  “Oh! I’m Annalise Audot. Call me AT.” She grinned again, but there was a hint of nervousness beneath the cheer.

  “Why are you following me around, AT?”

  AT looked like she’d just been asked the one test question she absolutely knew the answer to. “Corbin asked me to help keep an eye on you.”

  “Is that the tall man from the library?”

  “What, he didn’t even tell you his name? What a dork.” AT rolled her eyes and raised a hand in despair at such neglect. “Yeah, him.”

  “Where is he now?” Once again, relief flashed across AT’s face, and Marley wondered what questions would worry the girl.

  “He went to look up something. I think he wants to figure out what the bad guys are planning.”

  “See? Bad guys,” said Lissa, from somewhere behind Marley’s leg. “I said.”

  Marley looked around. Kari was playing in the woodchips near the edge of the playground, while Lissa was crouched in the grass a few feet behind Marley. She clutched a sizable stone in each hand, but didn’t seem ready to throw them. Marley hesitated and then let it pass.

  Instead, she fished for a question that would make the dog girl nervous. “Where’s Zachariah?”

  A serious shrug. “I wish I knew. I can’t f—” she cut herself off. “He knows stuff he didn’t tell Corbin.”

  “Uh-huh. And what makes those other folks the bad guys?” AT stared at her like she’d asked something ridiculous, so she clarified. “Maybe I’m the bad guy. Maybe you’re the bad guy.”

  AT shifted uncomfortably. “Um. They’re the bad guys. If you knew what I knew, you’d agree. But I can’t explain,” she added hastily. “It’s complicated.”

  Marley was pleased; that was more information than she'd actually expected to get. Secrets. Complicated secrets!

  Lissa, who had crept forward, tugged on Marley’s pants leg. “Kari’s throwing stuff.”

  Marley turned in time to see Kari on the far side of the playground, chucking a piece of wood bark at the pair of approaching women. It fell far short of them, but the little girl had a supply of ammo in her shirt.

  “Kari, no, stop it!” Marley called, moving toward her. The strolling women paused. They were middle-aged, and reminded Marley of her own adopted mother, with short, neatly managed hair and quietly stylish clothing. There were almost certainly women who had experienced the idiosyncrasies of small children before.

  Except one of them looked honestly frightened of Kari, while the other one was absolutely expressionless. The frightened one fumbled in her handbag, a large, pale leather affair. They both had identical handbags, which was... strange.

  Marley’s stomach churned. Something was wrong. She shouted, “Hey!” and her jog became a sprint.

  It seemed like a tidal wave of dog poured around her as AT’s animals sped past, but she barely noticed. Kari was looking back at Marley, confused. Beyond her, the woman was shaking something out of her purse. No. They couldn’t. Who would...?

  Kari started to run. There was a cracking sound, and another, and another.

  Everything seemed to happen at once, but Marley could order a few things: the sting of pain in her arm before she saw the gun in the blank-faced woman’s hand, pointed directly at her. The yawning feeling in her mind, like her ears popping after a long flight, before Kari tripped and rolled and came to her feet again, still fleeing. More cracking, but the guns were obscured by the dogs. Blackness sprayed through the air.

  Then the women were down and the dogs, previously silent, were snarling on top of them. AT dashed past her to kick at a woman’s hand.

  Kari cannoned into Marley, and she realized she was on her knees. Hesitantly, still aware of the yawning, open sensation in her mind, she felt her head. Was she dead? What had just happened? Where had the guns come from?

  Her skull seemed whole, but the rest of the world seemed... different. It was as if she'd discovered distance, as if a television image had suddenly become the view from a window. Marley shook her head, and the feeling faded as she focused on Kari. The little girl seemed uninjured, although there was a smudge of dirt on her face.

  Marley raised her hand to wipe at the smudge, and realized there was blood running over her fingers. She stared at it.

  “Marley, you’re hurt,” said Kari, wonderingly. “You’re bleeding.” She pointed at Marley’s upper arm. Marley felt at it with her other hand. The stinging she’d barely noticed became a searing ache as she touched the edges of a long cut.

  “Bang, bang,” said Kari. Her eyes widened. “They shot you.”

  Lissa, standing only a few yards away, said, “Bad guys.” Her voice was clear and cold. It rang in the empty vastness in Marley's head and her vision rippled and distorted. The world broke into a riot of kaleidoscopic images. After a moment of utter disorientation, Marley realized every person she saw was refracted and layered upon themselves, filling up the new distance.

  But there were only two images of Lissa. One image wavered and glistened, with small shadows crawling over it; just looking at it made Marley's stomach churn. The other one seemed normal: Lissa the little girl. Beyond the child, the two women lying passively on the ground had their own pair of refractions, one muddled with the long grey-blue shadows of grief, and one swirled with silver-limned night. Faint lines o
f light linked the images of grief to Lissa's nauseating refraction.

  Lissa walked toward the women. The dogs holding them down tumbled off them as if blown by a gale-force wind. Their claws scrabbled at the ground, but they couldn’t regain their positions. AT, crouched down near the women, stared at the child. Her eyes widened with shock as she struggled to keep her own balance.

  The women on the ground lay still. The one who had been frightened of Kari was terrified now, and her handbag had a hole blown through its bottom. There were lines around her eyes and a dog bite on her hand. Her mouth was moving but no sound emerged.

  “You bad guys should just go away,” said Lissa. She tossed her stones.

  The golden light that burst around them was like the sun had come out from behind the clouds. It cast no shadows; it suffused everything until there was nothing to see. It was blindness without end.

  But the kaleidoscope vision remained.

  Marley saw the two images of Lissa waver. The nauseating one strengthened, and the line that connected her to the fallen women thickened. Static began to devour the images of the women. They cracked and fragmented, until they were pitted and worn like a rock face under a sand wind.

  Then great golden wings folded around each woman, a shield against the devouring. The static faded away.

  The light spoke.

  Foolish. But you were loyal and true.

  My loyal servants shall not be lost while I yet endure.

  What was will be again.

  The light faded slowly. There was only one strong image of Lissa left, and the glass of the kaleidoscope was clear and undistorted.

  The grass and playground reappeared out of the light. The women were gone.

  In the silence that followed, Lissa stomped over to where the women had been, and kicked at the pile of clothes remaining. A dog whined and huddled, licking its flank. It was the black dog, Marley realized, and it had been shot, just like her.

  She touched her arm again absently, but her questing fingers only found a dull pain and a scab.

  “I fixed it,” said Kari, smiling up at her. Both her hands were smeared with blood. “I fixed it.” For just a heartbeat, Marley thought she saw static around Kari's hands, too. But she blinked, and it was gone. The blood was shocking enough, in any case.