by Hannah Capin
I don’t fucking cry.
Finally I stop shaking. Finally I stop making the sounds that ruin me. Finally every muscle in me aches and hollows and I’m so tired I can see sleep hanging from the ceiling and crawling out of the two bright gashes that set Piper free. I say, slurred and catching—
“What do I do? What do I do?”
I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anything. I want to curl close to dead Piper and slip under into the darkness she already knows. Burrow down into the red and the nothing—
Mads says, “We’ll call Jenny’s father. Self-defense—I don’t know—”
I unfold. I am outside myself. The way I would have been that night if there was any justice in all the world—
I stand up. The sword is impossibly heavy. “No,” I say, and it echoes high.
She stands up after me. She’s a shadow in black and I’m a ghost in white and red. She says something and I say, “No.” And I say, “What’s done is done.”
I let the sword fall against the floor. It thuds hard—
the door swings shut—
—and little red drops scatter onto the white.
I stare at Piper lying dead and done. Piper who said, I didn’t do anything. Piper who said, You’re her. Piper who said, fine, go fuck some roofied slut.
Piper, the girl I killed.
I crouch down next to her limp, lifeless body. The room spins and hums and I hear feathers and wings and my own pounding heartbeat.
My vision floats up high into the rafters and I look down on us. Down on the bright-lit white room. At Mads in her perfect dark black. At me balanced on my toes and bowing reverence to a dead girl who was never worth saving. At Piper in her sea of red.
That little whore with the jade-green eyes takes Piper’s hand and slips it away from her sabre. Holds her gloved fingers tight and drags them through the red. Brings them to the space where the floor is still white. Writes one word, shaking and huge:
DUFFY
—and lets Piper’s hand fall defeated next to the last trailing letter.
That little whore with the jade-green eyes steps back. Picks up her mask and her phone and her sabre: everything that proves she was here. There are no footprints and no fingerprints. Just angry wide-flung drops of red and a heavy sword on the floor.
That little whore with the jade-green eyes backs all the way to the end of the piste. The room fades in and out.
Mads follows me silent to the door. I open it and she slips out into the night.
I stare across the endless miles between Piper and me. She stares and doesn’t see.
She walked out that night.
She left me there with them.
I step out into the dark with Mads and let the door swing shut behind us.
Escape
Mads drives my father’s red car fast, so fast, weaving through the crawling traffic and flying hungry along the shoulder, never stopping, never slowing down. Her hands grip the wheel tight. Her jaw is set so hard it could break stone.
I sit in the passenger seat on the bright silver sunshield Mads found in the trunk. It shines all the freeway-light back up around me and webs me in white and red and gold. Piper’s blood drips down and paints the shield the color of Mack’s lies and her truth.
The sky glows with city lights. The stars hide their fires the way he wanted when he knew they knew too much. The cars blare loud and angry at Mads speeding furious between them.
Nothing is real.
It’s a night that won’t end.
It’s darkness and light and blood—
—so much blood—
It’s wings that follow us all the way home, swooping low, whispering my name, whispering you’re her—
I don’t remember how to scream.
Home
Hancock Park is dark and blurred. The branches hang so low the car snaps them apart. The jacarandas are all in bloom for a bright shouting moment and then when I blink the dripping petals are gone again and the branches point and writhe like snakes—
My house is as empty as I left it. Windows staring blank. Birds in the eaves. Mads has the lights off the way we did when we left Banks to drown. She pulls my car into the garage and the door clanks down heavy behind us. The chains grind. The air is still and cold.
Mads is on the phone with our coven, saying words in broken bloody pieces—
get my car from St Andrew’s and get here now, to Jade’s—
get rid of the phone—
stay in the shadows—
don’t stop for anyone—
—and her hands shake black bags free from the box by the door.
Come on, Jade, give me your shoes, give me your mask—
And I do.
Stand up.
And I do.
We have to get rid of this—
She folds up the bloodied sunshield.
I take off my gloves. Unzip my jacket and slide my arms free. Step out of the white pants heavy with red. Stand in my hanging sequins and my bare feet and feel my lungs flutter—
Mads says, You have to go wash off the blood. I’ll be right there—
Jenny and Summer are coming—
We’ll be right there—
We’ll get rid of all this—
And I slide ghostly up the steps and into the house. It’s dark. Everything is dark. My breath is too loud. Rasping like Duncan, cracking like Connor, choking like Banks—
and I hear glass shattering and the croaking bird that sat on the oleander branch above the gates of Inverness—
and all their ghosts cling close to me; all their hands grab at my dress, grab at my ankles, grab at my skin—
It’s too dark. I need light. I need to see them, chase them away, chase them out of my house—
I need light—
Fire
They keep the candles in the tall cabinet in the dining room. I find the drawer in the dark. I find a candle, pale and narrow and new. I find the matches. I strike one and it flares and fades before my fingers find the wick.
Strike a second and it sparks and dies and falls to the floor.
Strike a third and hold it close until the wick catches fire and the match burns all the way to the end and I smell scorched blood.
I walk up the stairs with the candle held tight in both hands. It smokes the air clean so no ghosts can show their rotting faces and bare their loosening teeth.
My room is dark. My bed is empty. Outside the window a thousand birds cluster so close all the starlight is snuffed out.
In the mirror on my vanity I am a glowing dead girl. My face is striped in red. My dress catches the candlelight and dances bright and broken.
Blood drips down the candle instead of wax.
There are voices all around me, whispering—
god damn, she’s feisty—
fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
give her a minute, she’ll be gone—
I’ve never loved anyone more—
And my hand is on my knife, the good long knife from my sister’s wedding silver, and my knife-hand digs into my pillowcase and the candle drips blood onto the sheets. I find the folded paper with my four dead boys gouged out. It’s time to cut Piper free but she doesn’t have a picture because she didn’t do anything—
The blood drips down my hands, down my arms, down my dress. I grip the candle and the knife and the paper, all my weapons against the whispering dark and the blood that marks me guilty and dead and her—
The birds watch from the windows.
The bathroom lights up bright with the tiny flame. I balance my candle against the curving neck of the faucet and stare into the mirror at the girl from the St Andrew’s Prep party on my sweet sixteen.
Revenge-black hair.
Blood on my face.
Blood on my hands.
A long silver knife—
Blood
I wash my hands.
The water rushes fast and clear. I leave it ice cold, as cold as my
heart, as cold as murdered Piper with her sabre on the floor.
The girl in the mirror watches dead-eyed and soulless. I hate her. She is weak. She is guilty. She trusts. She shouldn’t.
Downstairs voices echo. And I see her—
—the girl who fought and couldn’t fight.
I look at my hands. They’re shivering and clean and wet. But the blood blooms back out of them like the summer-flowers breaking blue and sticky outside, and I see her—
—the girl who said I’m going to kill them.
The birds shriek and the tall clock from Inverness groans. Outside an engine fires hot and Porter speeds hard onto the freeway and crushes to dust between metal and pavement.
I drown my hands under the water and feel it close deep and unforgiving over my head. The blood flows thick and I see her—
—the girl who held a dripping knife and all the power in the world.
I pull my hands free again. They’re redder than before. My dress is stained and torn and the bruises are back. I taste Duncan’s blood on my teeth. I feel it drip down my legs. The circle of red spreads thick around me and I see her—
—the girl who let go, who lost control, who lost the power I ripped out of their chests.
I lean over the sink and splash the cold water onto my dress, onto the stains, and the damn spot won’t wash out—
and it marks me guilty, marks me her, marks me lost.
I’m not done. I can’t be done. But I am, I am—
And I bring my hands out of the water and rub them fast together and still the red bleeds out. Duncan’s blood and Piper’s, soaking into the page on the floor. Soaking into the red X over the dazzle-smiled boy, there all along and I never ever saw it—
And I laugh and laugh and try to scream and can’t because their hands press against my mouth and the lights are bright and spinning.
I want the dark back but the candle blazes and the blood blooms and the light sparks off the knife resting hard on the porcelain—
I betrayed her. The girl who needed the girl I am.
The door hangs barely open and I’m alone in the room and I can’t move, and my face bleeds and my throat bleeds and my dress is ripped and ruined.
My hands are still red. They’ll never be clean. The smell of blood rises so strong I feel it digging into my lungs and I grip the knife and say to the girl in the mirror—
Wash your hands—
Go to bed—
What’s done is done—
And the knife clatters and the room shakes sideways. The floor hits me hard in the face. Cold and smooth and wet.
My hands run red, but hot now instead of cold. Blood pours quick from two long gashes—
one for the girl alone and trapped—
one for the girl who betrayed her and left her unavenged—
—and my hands are red with guilt and ruin.
The candlelight is bright and brighter but my eyes are slipping closed. My lips are numb and it’s over, it’s over, it’s over. I don’t have to fight anymore. The little laughing girl with the too-big eyes and the tiny gold earrings sits next to me with my blood all around her and she giggles and smiles and stares in wonder—
And she says,
Sleep well.
And I fade.
Mourning
Everything is white. The ceiling and the walls and the lights.
It all seeps back to me. Through the fog that laces my thoughts. Through the blackbird-feathers across my eyes where they won’t open all the way.
I remember the floor rushing up and my wrists pouring red.
I struggle and my eyes open wider. The fog settles heavy into my head and a dull throbbing pain presses itself just over my right eye.
My father says, She’s awake, she’s awake—
—and my mother’s hands clasp onto mine.
I feel it like the blade against my wrists: shame and fear and fury.
I’ve broken them. All their Stanford dreams and their little girl who always lied but always loved. Fought and won but never got caught.
Never lost.
Always chose.
My eyes burn hot and I struggle against the fog—
against the creeping darkness that tries to keep me silent and still—
—and I sit up.
My mother’s makeup is tracked through with tears. My father hasn’t shaved. They wear last night’s going-out clothes.
The light pours through the window on the far wall but I think it’s wrong. It’s still night. Endless and unbroken. I wear a scratching white hospital gown. Needles poke into my arms and ooze venom under my skin. My wrists are bound tight in white bandages.
I close my eyes against all of it. The dark flutters with a thousand wings.
They speak. I answer. I’ve hurt them worse than I ever hurt the wolves.
But they say, You’re safe.
They say, No one will ever hurt you again.
They say, It’s over.
They stay with me. They let me not-speak and I stop trying to tell them I’ll fix it. My throat feels strange and raw. My thoughts tangle in themselves. They’ve given me pills—the people in white and blue who drift timid behind my parents. They’ve spilled poison into my arms through the needles.
They’re keeping me dull and dead exactly the way Duncan’s boys did that night. The way Mack did when he gave me the drink.
I sleep and wake. The light changes from white to gold.
I sleep and wake. The light changes from gold to red.
I speak again. Finally. I tell them, “You can go home. You can rest.”
They say, “We won’t leave you.”
I say, “I need to sleep. I want you to rest. I don’t want you to have to look at me like this.”
My mother says, “It isn’t your fault. It was never your fault.”
My father says, quiet, “You did nothing wrong.”
For the first time since I woke up still alive something stirs in me and says, fight.
I will still be their daughter after this.
They kiss me on the top of my head and make me promise I’ll call them if there’s even one thing I need. They promise they’ll be back in two hours even though I tell them to rest longer.
They leave me in the white-sheets room with the sunset glowing red.
I stare at the sky and fight the fog. It’s fading, but I’m still not whole.
When a new nurse comes in with dinner on a pale blue tray and pills in a paper cup I smile dry-lipped at her. She half-smiles back and checks the screens next to my bed. She’s different than the rest of them: no shiny plastic courtesy and no pity in her eyes. Her scrubs are bright wild pink and a spiny tattoo peeks through her hair: Vive sin miedo. She tells me there will be a woman in to talk to me when I’m ready. I say, because I can, “Do I have to?”
She nods. “Rules. But take your time.”
She leaves me alone.
When her squeaking-rubber footsteps have died away I drink the tea and leave the food. I drop the pills into the watery applesauce and swirl it together until they disappear.
Out in the hall, drifting lazy through the white, a low voice says, Elizabeth Jade Khanjara. Another voice answers, fading too much to hear.
I sit up and swing my feet off the bed and onto the floor. My vision shivers up. My legs are unsteady. I stand anyway. Walk, one step at a time, to the door. Holding tight to the rack of tubes and screens.
The hall stretches long outside my room. At the very end, two men in guns and badges stand chests-out, talking low to the nurse in her pink.
The men look up. One of them says, hands sliding to the silver cuffs on his belt, “Just a couple of questions.”
“Absolutely not,” says the nurse.
The other cop scoffs and shakes his head. “Then we’ll stay right here until we can.”
“Outside,” says the nurse. She glances over her shoulder at me. “Other side of these doors.”
She follows them out the door and l
ooks back through the narrow window set into it. On purpose, waiting, until I slip back into my room.
They’ve come for me, but I’m not done.
I sit back down on the bed and unhook the ugly plastic phone and call the only number I know by heart. I tell Mads what to bring. I say, Cedars-Sinai. Emergency room door. Drive fast. I hang up before she can say anything. But she hangs up, too. I know it.
I wait. I count down from sixty twenty times. Five minutes to get the things from my room and run back across the fourteenth green, and fifteen to drive to me. The fog burns away. The pain in my head throbs bright and the gashes on my wrists sing themselves awake.
Tonight I’ll fly.
After twenty minutes I leave the white-sheets bed behind me. I float silent to the door with my blinking screens. To the left, the hall stretches out to the sealed-shut doors with the two men guarding them, shoulders blocking out the windows, backs to me. To the right there’s a siren-red EXIT sign over a stairway door. Past it, another nurse walks away.
She disappears around a corner.
I yank the needles out of my arms and I run. I fly. I soar on the wings no one will clip. The screens beep shrill but I’m at the stairway door already and through it and running down and down and down. The echoing zigzag gray makes my head go light and my hands clutch at the railing but it doesn’t matter, because I will always fight.
I always fight.
The stairs dead-end at a heavy door and I crash through it and stumble out onto cigarette butts and sidewalk. My eyes skim across the parking lot and the buildings jutting high until I see the glowing beacon, EMERGENCY, calling me to my coven.
I dash breathless-fast down the sidewalk and across the pavement. A car honks and a man in a white coat shouts. I’m faster than they are. I am on fire.
I’ll never be theirs.
When the sign shines just above me an engine roars. Mads’s black car peels away from the curb and pulls up shouting and defiant. I swing myself into the passenger seat and slam the door and behind me Jenny and Summer yell, “Drive, drive, drive!”
