by Hannah Capin
They stare. Banks leering and Mack strung tight in fear.
“Weak,” I say. “You’ll never be men. You’ll be scared little boys forever—”
And I turn and run hard for the edge and leap.
Sinking
The water swallows me whole. Its teeth cut gashes into my skin and it’s so cold that my mouth flies open and I gasp and then I’m choking. It’s darker than any dark there’s ever been. The water grabs my arms and my legs and pulls me down, pulls me apart, pulls me deeper—
I fight.
I will always fucking fight.
The ocean should know better.
I kick its grasping strangling fingers away. Pull hard with both arms. Mads said you can’t swim for shit, but I can and she knows it and tonight I’m not weak like I was that day under the too-bright sun. Tonight I swing hard at the hands that hold me and the teeth that want me and the haze that drags me toward sleep—
I burst through the surface. Gasp so hard I see another sky of stars between me and the real sky. The boat blazes bright but ten times farther away than it should be. The waves lift me and drop me back down.
Mack yells from far away. I see them leaning over the railing. Two little shadows screaming, Jade.
But they don’t jump in.
I fight. Breathe in deep and dig into the water and crawl for the light. It takes hours. It takes days. But I kick and I fight and then all at once, the lights are blinding and Mack and Banks are five feet away and yelling themselves hoarse. My hand hits the ladder. The shock—
the thrill—
—shoots up my arm and fills me up. I shout at Mack and Banks, shout at the sky and the shrinking stars, shout at my guardian flock and feel them scatter away into the night.
I’m safe. They know I can do what I came here to do.
My other hand finds the ladder and I climb up and stumble onto the deck. Dripping wet and with water caught deep in my lungs, but laughing. A wild shrieking laugh that peals brighter than the waves and the wind.
“Fuck,” says Banks. And then, “Fuck, Mack, you know how to pick them.”
It echoes from the white-sheets room, Fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
—but the echo is dull and drowning and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
“Jade—” Mack gasps. He runs for the cabin and comes back with a towel and wraps me in it. I shiver against him. I kiss his neck, kiss his jaw, kiss his lips.
Taste salt water and liquor and freedom.
Then I turn to Banks. I say, “Your turn.”
“Don’t do it,” says Mack, and he means it.
It works better than anything I’ve said.
“Why not?” says Banks. He pulls off his shirt. “Think your girl will change her mind about which one of us she wants?”
“Don’t do it,” Mack says again. The worry rises in his voice. “The water’s too rough.”
“You didn’t stop her. You’re sure as shit not going to stop me,” Banks says. He shouts loud into the dark. Climbs up onto the first rung of the railing and swings one leg over and balances there, one foot on each side, grinning back at us.
“Banks—” Mack calls out, pained and sharp—
The boat rocks and Banks almost falls but his grin stays nailed in place. The same as it did when he slammed the door to the white-sheets room. The same as when he cut through the crowd with a drink in his hand. The same as when he stood with me under the lights, I think, and I can almost see him there—
Banks yells. The water swallows up his words.
Mack shouts, “Brody!” and he’s a little boy again shouting for his best friend before he can dart into the street—
—but Banks is all wolf now. He howls at the sky and swings his other foot up to the top rail and flips backward into the dark.
Mack slams into the rail and shouts at the water. Keening. Torn apart.
“Jade, no, we can’t—” he says. “We’ll bring him back in—”
Far back, at the very edge of the circle of light, Banks comes up. Coughing hard.
I unhook the ladder. Pull it up. Feel each rung clank sinful and knowing. Clip it back into place. Lock the gate closed. The boat pitches. Banks tries to shout to us, but he goes under again and struggles back up.
“He’s my best friend,” says Mack. Pleading.
I turn on him. “You promised.”
“I can’t!”
“He’s guilty. You know he’s guilty.”
“But—”
“He’s not your friend anymore!” I shout it louder than I want to. “He’s one of them.”
“He’s—he’s—” Mack grabs for the gate.
I push his hand away. Another wave rocks us hard and we fall this time, both of us, onto the deck. I grab his hands and say it right into his face: “He knows what we did.”
“He doesn’t! He can’t!”
“He knows! You heard him in the hall—when he said you played dirty, and you have your own guilt—”
His breath catches.
I say, soft and cruel, “He’ll ruin us.”
And I’ve won.
Mack’s shoulders stoop but his jaw hardens. I hold my breath. Banks shouts, distant and drowned.
Mack says, “For you.”
I say, “For us.”
He stands up.
I say, “Take us home.”
He turns away from the dark water behind us. Walks heavy to the stairs.
The wind whips up and slurs across every inch of my skin. The towel is splayed across the deck and weighted down with seawater. I pull it across my shoulders and tie the corners around my neck. It’s as white as the sheets from Duncan’s house, but I’ve turned it mine. Turned it imperial and ominous.
Banks is almost back now.
I stand up. The deck is slick under my feet. The boat rolls with the waves but I don’t stumble. A lantern hangs next to the cabin door. I unhook it and wrap one hand tight around the ring at the top.
Then I find the light switch and plunge the deck into darkness. Another light still shines from the stern, and another high up from the roof. I hit every switch until only the stars shine down.
Banks shouts. Close. Afraid.
I walk back across the deck in the dark.
Banks shouts again—
“Light!” He breathes the water in and chokes and flounders. “I need light!”
I hit the switch on the lantern. It flares blue-white. I hold it out over the water with one hand. My cape hangs heavy against the wind.
“Jade!” Banks shouts. Right below me now. I have to lean out over the rail to see him. His arms flail against the slick stern. “Give me the ladder!”
I don’t move.
“Fuck!” he shouts. He throws his arms up and tries to grab the rail, but it’s too high to reach. His hand slaps against the deck. He won’t hold on for long.
I lean over the rail. Lean close with the lantern circling us together.
“Jade! Help me! It’s not a fucking joke anymore!” His hand slips and he goes under and struggles back up. “Jade!”
I kneel down and reach out. He grabs onto me so desperate that I can feel his whole soul caught between our hands.
“Help me get the rail,” he says. “The ladder—where’s the ladder?”
I say, “It’s gone.”
He coughs hard. “You—what are you—”
And I’m sick of him. Sick of his rough drunk charm and his rough drunk hands. Tonight he doesn’t dazzle and he doesn’t smile, and I don’t know if he gave me the drink that night, and I’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter because tonight, this night, I’ll kill him. “Shut up,” I say. “You should’ve seen this coming.”
“What the fuck,” he gasps. I can still see the three long scratches I left on his arm. “What the hell—”
“You know what we did to Duncan.”
He chokes. His hand slips closer to the edge. “You—” he rasps out. “You mean—”
“We killed him.
”
“Fuck!” he shouts, and then, dying desperate, “Mack!”
“He’s gone,” I say, and the engine thrums hot and thrilling.
Shock shines through his panic and his fear. “You didn’t—you—”
I shout over the waves and the wind and the engine pulling me away from him—
“You know what you did.” The waves crash around him and he swallows too much water. Our hands are clasped but I’m alive and he’s dead and he knows it.
I say, “You met a girl like me once before.”
I hit the switch on the lantern and the whole world goes as dark as the water.
I reach out too far to be safe. Bring my hand down to where the scratches start on his arm. Rip the scabs open again.
And he laughs a death-rattle laugh and he knows, he knows, he knows. His hand slips again. With one more wave he’ll be gone. He chokes out one last word, lashed bloody and bare and finally understanding—
Revenge—
I let go.
His hand disappears into the dark.
The engine thrums louder. I stand up and look out to where the horizon should be. I don’t even know where I’m looking anymore—toward home, or toward the cliffs of El Matador, or out toward the endless open ocean.
There is only darkness. Rolling and hateful and complete.
United
We don’t speak the whole way home.
Mack sits rigid behind the wheel. I sit one seat over in a sweatshirt that hangs loose around me. It’s bright proud blue, with ST ANDREW’S LACROSSE bold across the front. On the back is a white X with one word, MACK, blazoned over it.
We don’t speak, but his hand holds mine so tight I think my bones might break.
Back on shore, my coven will do all the things I planned. Mads pulled up as soon as we left the slip. Jenny and Summer climbed into my car and drove back to Mads’s house, right behind her, and parked so the whole world could see that beaming shameless red car in the driveway. They grabbed up my phone from the back seat and texted my mother and father, Staying at Mads’s.
Tomorrow, when they realize Banks is missing, every bit of proof will say I never went out at all. And his car will wait at El Matador with his phone blinking its little beacon, and when they find it the last message will say, You know what you did to her. You and your dead friends.
Guilt doesn’t work on boys like them, but whoever finds his phone won’t know that. And someday, when his bloated rotting body washes up in Malibu, they’ll know it broke him.
He broke.
He drank too much and he swam too far out.
He stopped fighting.
Poor Banks.
It’s almost midnight when we’re back in the slip. Mack shuts off the lights in the captain’s room and we walk out onto the deck together. Banks’s shirt hangs off the back of the boat, wrapped around the railing. I crush it together in my hands.
Mack stares at the gate I locked. Everything is as spotless as it was when we left. I say, “You never went out tonight.”
He nods.
I say, “I was never here.”
He nods. But then he says, “Jade—” and it’s brimming full of all the loyalty in the world. To justice over mercy. To her over his pack.
He says, “Stay with me. I know I won’t sleep. I’ll see things. But if you’re here—”
He says, “Stay with me.”
I do.
Waking
Mack reaches into my sleep and wrenches me awake.
“Jade—” he gasps, and light floods in and I can’t remember where I am.
“Banks—” says Mack—
I remember.
I feel a smile shimmer across my face and last night comes flooding back, as dark and unrelenting as the waves that swallowed Banks down. I close my eyes again and sink back against Mack’s chest.
“I saw him,” says Mack. “He was right in front of me and he was soaking wet and dead and saying he knew—”
I murmur up at him, “What’s done is done.” Pull him back down with me.
He says, “I think I’m going crazy.”
I feel him almost as close as we were last night here in the dark. I open my eyes. “You’re not.”
He says, “We’ll never be forgiven.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
His face changes. He smiles at me, but it’s strange and sad and it doesn’t match what he should be. He says, “I’ll always feel guilty. I’ll never be like you.”
“We’re the same,” I say. Lying for him.
He shakes his head. “No.” His eyes drift closed, but then he jolts up and grabs my arm so tight I can feel a bruise bloom under my skin. He says, all terror, “There’s blood on your face.”
I won’t let him splinter apart. “No, there isn’t.”
“It’s his,” he says, but then he hears himself. He takes his head in his hands.
“Mack,” I say, and I sit up and run my hand along his back. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“Last night,” he says.
I wait.
“Last night, sort of,” he says instead. “I don’t know. The night Duncan died. I can only sleep when you’re here. I just see it all, over and over—”
“Stop.”
“No.” He buries his head deeper into his hands. “We’re the villains. We are.”
I get up and go to the window. Look out at the marina warming slow in the morning light. Last night blurs across it, bleeding together—
the bloody sunset off the bluff at El Matador—
Banks choking out, Revenge—
the engine thrumming to life and carrying us back to shore without him.
Mack is right: he’ll never be like me. But he’ll be close.
When we’re done, he’ll know it like I do. He’ll feel the pride and the thrill and he’ll understand.
He will.
Behind the Gates
Mads says, You’re getting reckless.
The gate swings closed behind me and I walk barefoot up the driveway. She waits inside until Mack’s car pulls away. Then she crosses the grass and gets into the passenger side of my father’s red car at the same time that I get into the driver’s seat. I wear Mack’s sweatshirt and my uniform skirt, still damp from the deck.
She says, You’re getting reckless.
“No, I’m not,” I say. I open my mirror and trace two fingers under my eyes to chase away yesterday’s slipping mascara.
“You just brought him here. He could’ve seen us.”
“He didn’t.”
“He could’ve.”
I snap the mirror shut. “Fuck, Mads, it’s too early for this.”
She reaches over and takes my hand. She says, barely out loud, “Are you okay?”
I look away. Out past the sharp fierce spikes on the gate to the street with the trees bending across it. At the morning light pooling where the shadows don’t reach. I say, “Every time one of them dies I’m better than I ever was.”
She doesn’t say, Don’t lie.
I say it again: “I’m not reckless. You know how good that plan was yesterday. You know they’d never be able to prove anything even if they looked at me.”
She says, “When.”
I look back at her. “What?”
“When they look at you. They will. Four boys are dead—”
“Six,” I say. “It will be six. And one girl.”
Even this early her eyes are circled in kohl. She is always, always Mads. “Seven dead,” she says. “All of them since you came to St Andrew’s. All of them since the party at Duncan’s house. And everyone knows what happened to you.”
“To her,” I say, sharp.
Her hand holds mine tighter.
I say, “I don’t care if they catch me. They can do whatever they want once I’m done.”
“What about Mack?”
“What do you mean?”
Mads watches close. She says, “You’ve left it so it all points to him. Du
ncan died at Mack’s house. Mack’s boat went out yesterday. Mack held the knife for you. That’s your plan, isn’t it? For after?”
The sun comes through the palms and stripes light across the windshield and our eyes. When I think of after—
of when I’ve ripped all their red-circled faces out and thrown the page away—
of when all the scorching white is drowned in an ocean of red—
of when their whole hungry pack is cut down to nothing and none of them will ever mix another drink, grab another girl’s arm, crush a hand across her mouth so she can’t scream—
—I can’t see anything at all.
There is only now. The boys I’ve killed and the boys I’ll kill.
Finally Mads gives me my phone and says, “Don’t forget us. We’ll be yours until it’s over and we’ll be yours after it’s done.”
I say, “I know.”
I don’t tell her there will never be an after.
The Haunting
There are no birds on the roof today. The whole school—
the whole kingdom—
—is stifled under the ash from Duncan’s crumbled reign, but the silence is loud and startling. The current under it rushes stronger than the riptides that pull swimmers out to drown past the rocks at El Matador.
Everyone is watching. The boys and the girls and the cops at the door.
Piper and I are the first to our table at lunch. The whole week behind us wears at her eyes. She’s brushed her makeup on heavier to cover it, but I can still see the creeping dread underneath.
She says, worn through, “Fuck this.”
“God, Piper, go to confession,” I say, safe and mocking and the same words she said to Duffy a day ago. “Maybe it will help you sleep at night.”
“Fuck this and fuck you,” she says, “whoever you are—”
But then her fire burns out and she gives up. “Whatever. I don’t know if you’re a narc, or best friends with those bitches in the masks, or if you and Mack are all ganged up with Malcolm now—”
