She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

  I opened the back door to the Subaru.

  “Veronica?” the driver asked in a hoarse old-man voice.

  “Yep.” I hopped in and pulled the door shut behind me. The driver pulled away from the curb and the doors locked all at once, an automatic feature that made me nervous every time. He smelled strongly of cologne and had a thick black beard, a fedora, and a beer belly that protruded against the steering wheel. “Please put on your seat belt, miss.”

  I hurried to obey, but the seat belt felt stiff as I pulled it out of the seat. I was hesitant, not interested in getting trapped by some messed-up seat belt.

  I pressed the release button on the seat belt, just making sure it felt normal, but it didn’t push in at all. Weird. I tried pressing the release button on the seat next to me, but same thing.

  He said, “Seat belt on, miss?” The tone of his voice carried a certain patriarchal bossiness that made me feel oppositional.

  I pulled it around myself but didn’t buckle it. “Yeah. All buckled up.” I opened up iMessages and sent a text to Mick: Just got picked up. On my way. Where are you? I want to map it.

  I waited for her to answer while I watched the streets go by. I hated it when Uber drivers wore this much cologne. He turned right onto the freeway heading east and accelerated to the speed limit. If he was heading for National City, we were going the wrong way. I opened Google Maps on my phone. Sure enough, we were on the 8 heading east.

  I checked my phone. No answer from Mick.

  “Excuse me, where are we headed?” I asked the driver. “My friend ordered the Uber. Where are we picking her up?” His face was turned slightly away from me. He hit the gas harder. We were up to eighty now.

  “Excuse me,” I repeated, starting to get scared. “Where are we going?”

  Quick as a snake, he reached back and grabbed my phone out of my hands. I cried out. He laughed. He took off his fedora and beard and looked back at me, a grin stretched across his face.

  Nico.

  In his normal voice, he said, “How did you not recognize me? Honestly, Veronica.”

  I was frozen, my entire body stone-still.

  He pulled a pillow out from under his shirt and tossed it aside. “Frankly, I’m offended.”

  “Nico, what are you doing?” My voice was low and scared.

  “I’m taking you on another road trip.”

  Desperate, I jiggled the door handle. Child locked. I jammed at the window controls. Also child locked. Tinted windows. No one would see me if I waved, and no one would hear me if I screamed.

  The seat belt. It was a trap. If I had buckled it, I’d be completely stuck.

  I said a prayer of thanks for my suspicious and difficult personality, and I made sure the seat belt buckle was hidden under my butt, so that he couldn’t see that I wasn’t buckled.

  So that was my one advantage, then, that I could attack him from the back seat without him thinking I could.

  I checked the speedometer. We were going eighty-five miles per hour. There was no way I was going to attack Nico and cause an accident at this speed.

  “Think about it,” he mused. “Don’t you know me well enough by now to see through a simple disguise? You need to check your narcissism, girl.”

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  “You’re such an asshole. You use people. You used me. You use everyone. You are an entitled, spoiled little bitch.”

  I was stunned, hurt, drowning in confusion. “Where’s Mick?”

  “Back at the warehouse. We have plans after this.”

  This sounded ominous. “Is she okay?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Where are we going? This isn’t the way to your warehouse.”

  His eyes flickered up to the mirror again. “East.”

  “No shit.”

  He cackled. “The best things in life are surprises, wife.”

  I inventoried my options: Try to choke him from behind. I discarded that immediately. Gouge his eyes out with my nails. That wouldn’t work at eighty-five miles an hour, but maybe if we slowed down.

  “So are you going to murder me?” I asked.

  “Of course not, darling.”

  “Like you didn’t kill Lily? Or David?”

  He shrugged. How had I not recognized the familiar squareness of his shoulders?

  “So you have an envelope in your purse,” he said. “What’s in it, wife?”

  I clutched the purse.

  In the mirror, his eyes were smiling. “Just kidding. I know what’s in it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  MICK

  I’m splayed out on the cold floor of the VAN, my head pillowed on the pile of cardboard. My chest aches where Nico stepped on it, and my shoulder hurts every time I breathe. I’m lying directly beneath the fan, which is mounted into the ceiling. I watch its blades spinning inside the casing, the cold wind freezing my face and bare arms. I wish I had some way to jam it, to stop those blades from spinning. I can’t think with this awful whirring-freezing wind.

  I hear myself whimper with despair. I don’t want to die in here. Veronica is out there. Nico is doing who knows what to her.

  I pull one of the pieces of cardboard over my head, trying to create shelter. It’s a tiny bit warmer and quieter, but it’s no solution.

  But the cardboard—the fan. It gives me an idea.

  I stand. My shoulder protests and my head swims.

  I rip a long, narrow strip from the cardboard and poke it up into the fan. It catches, snatched violently from my fingers. It rattles and whirs inside the fan, which chokes momentarily like a garbage disposal with a spoon in it.

  Encouraged, I rip another piece off the box and shove it up into the fan. The fan sucks it in. I get another strip and then another. The fan shrieks, grinds, and chunk-chunk-chunks to a stop.

  “Ahhh!” I cry out, triumphant.

  A couple things occur to me at once.

  First: Without the fan blowing in air, I’m going to suffocate eventually.

  Second: I’m still stuck inside this stupid fucking van.

  It hits me: The vent must suck air in from the outside. When they installed it, they must have cut a hole in the ceiling of the van. I wonder if I can pull the refrigeration unit out. I wonder how big the hole is and if I’d fit through it.

  I imagine it has to be attached to the ceiling with screws, but the metal of the unit itself looks pretty flimsy.

  I jump up, grabbing for the vents. I slip and fall the first time. I get up, ignoring the pain in my shoulders and chest, and jump again. This time I catch on to the vent and hold tight. This isn’t so different from working out, right? I swing back and forth, trying to loosen the unit from the ceiling. I imagine I’m on the rings in elementary school, or the monkey bars. I swing and swing. I feel the unit creak.

  I lose my grip and fall, crashing to the cold white floor. I’m winded, and I take a minute to catch my breath.

  I push myself to my knees. I try to talk myself up the way Coach would. I try to hear her voice telling me, You can do this. How long have you been swimming? Is today the day it becomes too much? I think about all the hours spent running bleachers, climbing out of the pool again and again and again.

  I jump, grab the vents. They’re sharp. I feel wetness—the metal is cutting into my fingers. It doesn’t matter. I adjust my grip and swing, swing, pull, disrupting it as much as I can. It creaks, and I’m moving it! I feel it loosening in the brackets.

  I crash to the floor, the unit with me. My fingers are stuck in the vent slats, and I pry them from the crevices. They’re covered in cuts, the blood sticky and scary to look at.

  The hole in the ceiling is at least a foot in diameter, but something is on the other side, blocking it. Maybe the refrigeration unit has two sides to it?

  I grab one of the pieces of cardboard and roll it into a cylinder, smearing it with my blood. I poke it up through the hole in the ceiling. It encounters something metallic and wobbly. I jab harder. The c
ardboard cylinder breaks through. Something goes clattering. I track its progress down the roof and off the side of the van, and I hear a faint crash as it hits the concrete ground. Through the hole, I see a visible patch of dim light.

  I wait for Nico to yell, for the van’s door to open. I hold my breath.

  Without the fan blowing tornados of air around, it is dead silent.

  I remember him texting with Veronica on my phone. He must have left. He must be doing something bad to her.

  I have to hurry. I have to get help.

  I jump up and grab the edges of the hole in the ceiling. I slip right down; my hands are slick with blood. Quick, I yank off my shoes, shed my socks, and use them as gloves. With my shoes back on my bare feet, I jump up and catch the edges of the hole.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  VERONICA

  We’re far outside the city now, in the brush and hills that form a buffer between the suburbs and the desert. I watch it fly past, an endless, undulating series of rocks and bushes and cacti. The sky is huge, an eye-watering powder blue, even through the tinted windows. I’m waiting for him to slow, waiting for my chance to strike.

  “I used to be jealous of you,” Nico says out of nowhere. His face is calm, eyes flicking back and forth between the road and his mirror, keeping a close eye on me.

  “What were you jealous of?”

  He shrugs. “Your house. Your mom. You have everything, you know that? I used to think you were this interesting Great Gatsby sort of person. Someone who was really free and different.”

  “Okay…”

  “But you’re not.” He makes eye contact in the mirror for a moment. “You’re not even really an artist. Everything you want is safe and boring. You want to fall in love, you want a successful career. You have a picket-fence life, and that’s all you want.”

  “What’s wrong with falling in love and being successful?”

  “Mick is interesting. She’s unpredictable, she’s different. You’re show. She’s substance.”

  I’m winded, shocked, hurt. “Fuck you,” I say at last.

  He snorts. “Original.”

  I hate him so, so much. “How did I never see this in you? How did I never know you? How could you pretend to be one thing and be something completely different?”

  His eyes flick onto mine in the mirror. “I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t. You’re just really self-involved, V.”

  “I’m self-involved? You garroted your friend because, why? Because she wasn’t interesting anymore? Because you felt like it?”

  “The series I’m doing next is different; I can’t leave anybody behind who knows me. I need a fresh start.”

  “That’s so … ruthless.”

  He glances at me in the mirror. “Come on. You steamroll over everyone. People are just furniture to you. You think Mick wants to be in your pictures?”

  “She said she did.”

  “Bullshit. She told you what you obviously wanted to hear, because she does feel empathy and she isn’t a selfish asshole.”

  It hurts because he’s right. What kind of person is best friends with a murderous psychopath and has no idea? I’m like those wives of serial killers who wear the dead girls’ jewelry and know their husbands are monsters on some level but don’t care, don’t believe.

  We’re fully in the desert now, far outside the city. The road has gotten narrower, one lane in each direction. We’re slowing down. My heart palpitates madly in my chest. There’s a turn coming up, a smaller road leading off to the right. He puts the brakes on and takes the turn. The desert goes on forever in all directions, an endless landscape where anyone could disappear.

  I check the speedometer over Nico’s shoulder. We’re going forty miles per hour. This is it.

  I lunge forward. I grab his head from behind and dig my index fingers into the squishiness of his eyes.

  He grunt-screams and twists the wheel. I dig harder, nails gouging his eye sockets. The car spins out, whips around, hits the embankment. He’s trying to get ahold of the steering wheel while we spin. I scratch at his face, hoping I’m drawing blood, hoping I’m blinding him. The car catches on a hill, half rolls, gets stuck on a rock with a scraping squeal, and shudders to a stop.

  No time to waste.

  I grab my purse and jump forward, over the front seat, trying to escape out the front door since the rear doors are child locked. Nico grabs at me, catches my ankle. I kick him in the face. I unlock the door and fling it open. The air outside is hot like an oven. I plunge out of the car, which is tangled with a guardrail. I can run either way on the road, or I can run out into the desert.

  I choose desert.

  I run.

  Behind me, I can hear him laughing.

  I run harder. I’m wearing slip-on Vans, and I’m making bad time on the rocky terrain that bites at my ankles and legs. I head for what looks like a line of hills. Maybe I can hide on the other side. I run uphill, my chest burning, cursing my lack of cardiovascular fitness. Mick would never have this hard of a—

  I vault to the top of the hill and push my legs harder, intending to sprint down the other side.

  I’m on the edge of a cliff.

  It’s too late. My feet hit air where ground should be.

  I fall down the cliff head over heels. I can’t scream, can’t think. I feel impacts—rocks hitting my head, my back, my butt, my ankles. A whir of motion.

  And then stillness.

  Darkness.

  I drift.

  Eventually I drift into wakefulness. Into pain.

  Hot sky. Blue.

  Birds.

  Whizzing above me. Wings leaving trails like fireworks.

  Above, on the edge of the cliff, a slender silhouette. He’s watching me die.

  More birds. So loud. So many.

  Pain.

  First Lily. Then David. Now me. We all fall down.

  I never thought much about birds, but now I think—I’d love to be one. Imagine the freedom of movement. They’re living in three dimensions while the rest of us are pinned flat to the earth.

  Maybe I’m safe in this moment. Maybe there’s something to be said for just holding still and appreciating the simple beauty of birds in a blue sky.

  The thought makes me feel close to Mick. She sees all the simple, important things.

  I close my eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  MICK

  I pull myself up onto the roof of the van and squirm-wriggle out until I’m heaving, panting, and crying on the smooth metal surface. My sides burn from scraping the rough-cut hole.

  I did it.

  I check my hands. They’re swollen and bloody. I climb down the windshield to the hood, then jump to the floor.

  The small, crowded warehouse is lit by a single lightbulb in the ceiling. It occurs to me now that the rolling door is probably locked. I was so focused on getting out of the van, I didn’t even consider how to escape the warehouse itself.

  I’m filled with dread as I bend down to grab the rolling door’s handle. I say a silent prayer and pull.

  It doesn’t move. It’s locked.

  Of course.

  I back away from it, checking the perimeter for doors and windows, pushing through boxes, past the kiln thing, past the pig, around in a large rectangle. Nothing. I pass the kiln a second time and pause next to the coffin box.

  I remember the things he said, and I wonder if he was planning to bury me in this box. Was this how he was going to get rid of my body after he’d frozen me to death?

  I look at the pig. Something about it sets off little internal alarm bells. Look at me, it seems to cry. I’m important.

  And then I know.

  The coffin, just my size. It’s surrounded by discarded wood; he built this himself, in exactly my size.

  The refrigerated van.

  He wants to freeze me and then make a sculpture out of me. The pig was a rehearsal. He wanted to practice on something large, human-sized.

  I�
��m the fifth piece. I am the finale.

  I have to get out of here. Now.

  Clang.

  A series of clatters at the front of the warehouse, and then the sliding door starts rolling up. Daylight floods in, stinging my eyes.

  He’s back.

  I look around for something to defend myself with. I’m sure the warehouse is full of stuff, but it’s all in boxes, and I don’t have time to start digging around hoping for an ax. As blinding daylight floods the warehouse, I grab one of the boards from the stack next to the coffin box. My hands scream in pain when I grip the rough surface.

  He pulls the door down, locks it, and steps through the warehouse toward the van. He starts unlocking the back door. What’s he planning to do? Will he strangle me first with his bare hands? Or maybe he’s hoping I’m already frozen to death.

  An image strikes me, as real as the board clutched in my aching, stinging hands: me, dead, cast in bright silver steel. Would he strip me down? Where would he put me—in some public place for me to be gawked at and photographed, naked and dead?

  Rage.

  He killed that kid for no reason. Out of boredom.

  I run at him from behind, heft the two-by-four, and swing it like a bat. It whacks him brutally on the back of the head. He topples away from the van, smashing into the concrete and rolling over onto his back. A trickle of blood streams from his hair. His eyes are closed, face slack, arms splayed out beside him.

  I poke at him with the board. My hands are shaking so bad, the entire board vibrates.

  His eyes flutter open. My heart stops. I raise the board, ready to hit him again.

  His gaze flickers over me weakly, eyes scanning me from head to toe.

  He smiles faintly. “Awesome,” he whispers, and closes his eyes. His head falls to the side.

  I lower the board.

  My whole body feels like it’s being blown by wind, like I’m back on the bridge, like I just jumped and am rappelling through empty space. I kneel down beside him and feel his chest.

  He’s breathing.

  What do I do?

  Where is Veronica?

  My phone. He has it.

  I dig through his pockets, keeping the ring of keys I find. There are two phones in the left one and another in the right. I recognize the turquoise case as mine and the black-and-gold case as Veronica’s. The third one must be his.