Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

  Kit crushed Fancy in a back-breaking hug and tried to dance her around in a circle. Instead they crashed into the bike rack and knocked all the bikes off true.

  “I been dying for the four of us to do something together!” Kit exclaimed. “It’ll be so much fun. I can’t wait!”

  “Me either.” Gabriel was staring at her from the car window, and when she smiled at him, he flinched. “I have a feeling it’ll be interesting.”

  FROM FANCY’S DREAM DIARY:

  DADDY PULLED ME TO THE SIDE AND SHOWED ME HIS MONSTER. IT WAS RED AND HAD WEIRD ELBOWS, AND HE KEPT IT IN HIS POCKET. HE SAID I HAD TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SHRINK MY OWN MONSTER DOWN ENOUGH SO THAT I COULD HIDE IT BETTER. WHEN I TOLD HIM I DIDN’T HAVE A MONSTER, HE POINTED BEHIND ME SO I TURNED AND SAW THIS THING THAT WAS AS BIG AS ST. TERESA CATHEDRAL BUT WAY LESS HOLY. AND SLIMY. AND ALL MINE.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The sisters had never been way downsquare before, in the low, swampy area of Portero. Luckily, Dog Run was relatively swamp-free, encompassing flat, treeless acreage covered in gramma needles and buffalo grass. And the dog-run cabin, of course, from which the land got its name, a sagging bit of wood that looked as though a tornado had dropped it from the sky.

  But today the house was barely visible because of the hundreds of people crowded around a makeshift stage. Groups from all over Navarro County—from Castelaine and Charter, as well as Portero—had come to compete for a cash prize and bragging rights. The sisters stood in the midst of the crowd, gaping as Ilan and Gabriel performed their brand-new song, “My Girlfriend Put My Head in a Jar (and I Liked It).”

  “You would too!” Ilan screamed, grinning maniacally as he thrummed his guitar. “You better! Cuz now she’s coming after YOU!”

  The sisters exchanged baffled looks as the crowd went wild all around them.

  “Is that supposed to be about us?” Fancy screamed into Kit’s ear.

  “Gabe claims we inspired them!”

  “They’re inspiring me!” said Fancy as Gabriel beat the drums as if they owed him money. “They’re making me want to kill somebody!”

  “I know, right?” yelled a boy Fancy didn’t know, who slammed into her and knocked her to the ground.

  Kit helped Fancy to her feet, but before she could rip the body slammer a new one, a crowd of unamused Porterenes wedged themselves between the sisters and the boy and did all the ripping themselves. The Porterenes were easy to spot because they were the only ones not wearing bright notice me please and then eat me clothes, unlike the transies.

  Fancy felt warm and protected as Kit led her out of the fray; for the first time she understood what Sheriff Baker had meant, what Madda was always saying. Whether it was against bullies or transies or monsters, Porterenes stuck up for one another.

  When the concert was over, and each band lined up on the stage so they could determine the winner based on audience applause, Fancy clapped the hardest and screamed the loudest for all the Portero bands.

  Unfortunately, the girl doo-wop group from Castelaine kicked everyone’s ass. However, Ilan and Gabriel’s band, Pig Liquor, got an honorable mention.

  “That and two bucks’ll get me a guitar pick,” Ilan said later as they hung out in the cabin. But he was smiling. Ilan, Fancy, Kit, and Gabriel sat on the floor of the dog run—the long outdoor passageway linking the two sides of the cabin—with their other bandmates and assorted groupies, the breeze playing over them as they shared a bottle of Southern Comfort. The sweet peach taste reminded Fancy of Big Mama. The bodies pressed to hers made her feel plugged in, like Kit had once explained, as though electricity were zipping their bodies to hers. It was nourishing, in a way, being able to feed off other people’s energy, like social cannibalism.

  Ilan tried kissing Fancy, but she was too fired up to relax into it. “Why all this tension?” he said into her ear, hand on her backside. “Music is supposed to soothe you.”

  “Not your music,” said Fancy.

  “You didn’t like ‘My Girlfriend Put My Head in a Jar’?” He looked genuinely upset. “I wrote it for you.”

  Fancy considered what she could say that wouldn’t hurt his feelings. “Your band name is interesting. I like the way you scream—you have a good yelling voice. And, um, I liked when you took your shirt off—that was fun to watch.”

  “The girl’s got no appreciation for the arts, man,” slurred one of Ilan’s bandmates.

  “What would be really fun,” Ilan told her, “is if you took your shirt off and screamed for me. No?” he said when Fancy just laughed and slapped his hands away from her shirt. “Well, then kiss me, and we’ll call it even.”

  As Fancy kissed him a flash went off in the darkness. Kit had taken Fancy’s picture with Gabriel’s phone.

  “I’m gone have it framed,” she said, giggling so much that Fancy wondered how much Southern Comfort she’d had. “Maybe give it to Madda for her birthday. Then she’ll stop being so grumpy and suspicious.”

  “Grumpy and suspicious about what?” Ilan asked.

  “Us. She doesn’t know what we do. Everybody else in town knows, but not her. She doesn’t want to know.” Kit looked like she was about to break into a million pieces, but she kept smiling. “Listen to me going on and on. Or better yet don’t listen. Let’s not talk about sad stuff.”

  “But it is sad,” Fancy said, “when people are that afraid of the truth. Right, Gabriel?”

  “I guess.” He took his phone from Kit and started playing with it so that he wouldn’t have to look at Fancy.

  “Will you take a picture of me and Kit?” Fancy asked him.

  “Sure!” Gabriel said, relieved and grateful, as though she had changed the subject for his sake.

  “Not here,” she said, when Kit tried to squeeze next to her and Ilan. “Outside, while there’s still some light.”

  The four of them climbed over all the bodies and left the dog run. It was still incredibly crowded at the back of the house, not only with people, but with parked cars, so they circled around to the front of the house, where it was relatively calmer.

  “What looks like a good spot?” Kit asked. “Ain’t nothing but grass for miles.”

  Fancy scouted about, and far from the cabin, about a football field’s length away, she found what she was looking for. “How about over there? In that patch of gory Annas?”

  “No,” said the Turner brothers in unison, wearing identical expressions of horror.

  “Why not?” Fancy asked with her most innocent expression.

  “Yeah,” said Kit. “We might as well take at least one picture over there. I’m going anyway.” Kit wore her skinny pink heels and was managing to walk in the grassy field admirably well. “Everybody knows gory Annas grow near corpses. Maybe whatever’s buried there wants to talk.”

  Gabriel caught up with her. “Can’t you just skip it for once?”

  “That’s not very Christian, Gabriel,” said Fancy, serenely following her sister.

  Ilan grabbed her arm and held her back. She’d never seen him look so panicked, not even when she’d sicced the dogs on him. “Fancy. Stop her. Please?”

  She watched Kit moving ahead with Gabriel at her side talking very fast and trying ineffectually to steer her away from the gory Annas. “She has the right to know. She’s the only one who doesn’t.”

  “When Gabe told me you helped save him from that imp, I thought you were past this . . . pettiness.”

  “The Blue Sisters saved him from that imp, not me. See? He can’t be truthful about anything. Don’t look at me like that, Ilan. It’s nothing personal. Just family stuff. You know how that is.” She broke free of his hold and caught up to Kit just as she stepped into the gory Annas. Almost immediately an arm shot up through the white flowers, and bony fingers encircled her sister’s shin.

  “Quick, Gabe,” Kit said, striking a faux-frightened pose, as the corpse’s skull broke free of the earth. “Take the picture! Otherwise my children will never believe how awesome I was when I was
young.” She dropped the pose when Gabriel just stood there, staring at the corpse that was using his girlfriend as an anchor to drag itself out of the ground. “Gabe?”

  Gabriel looked sick, like he had come down with the flu. Ilan placed a hand on the back of his neck, holding him steady. Or keeping him from fleeing. Ilan didn’t look any better than his brother, of course. Fancy hated involving him in this, but Kit deserved an introduction to the real Gabriel.

  Once the corpse was fully free, it released Kit and put its hand over the hole where its ear should have been. It only had the one hand because its right arm was missing. “God,” said the corpse, using the air around it to make speech. “What horrible fucking music.”

  “You want me to make it stop?” asked Kit, breezy as ever. “Is that your wish?”

  “No, that won’t give me peace.”

  “Then what will? Tell me. I’ll give you anything you want.”

  The corpse turned to Gabriel and Ilan, who stood beside Fancy on the edge of the flower patch. It had no eyes, but its gaze was intense nonetheless. Intense enough to drive Gabriel back several steps. “My sons. I need them to be with me, the way I’d always intended. I don’t see why death should keep us apart.”

  “What do you mean?” Kit frowned. “I can’t bring you back from the dead. Nobody escapes death.”

  “But you can bring them to me,” said the corpse. “Especially the one who killed me. It’s only fair.”

  “Who killed you?”

  “My son.” But the corpse didn’t point his lone, bony arm at Gabriel, as Fancy expected.

  He pointed at Ilan.

  FROM FANCY’S DREAM DIARY:

  KIT AND MADDA AND ME THREW A PARTY FOR DADDY’S VICTIMS DOWN IN THE CELLAR BUT ONLY ONE OF THE GUESTS SHOWED UP AND HE WAS KIND OF A JERK. HE SAID IT WAS TOO COLD IN THE CELLAR AND THE MUSIC WAS TOO SLOW TO DANCE TO AND WHY HAD WE USED CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS WHEN IT WASN’T EVEN CHRISTMAS AND HE WAS REAL MAD CUZ THERE WASN’T ANY FOOD. EVEN AFTER I POINTED OUT THAT HE WAS DEAD AND DIDN’T NEED TO EAT, HE STILL WOULDN’T LET IT GO SO WE KICKED HIM OUT AND LOCKED THE DOORS AGAINST HIM.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “No.” Fancy darted forward and slapped the corpse’s pointing finger so hard one of the knuckles snapped off. “Don’t point at him. Gabriel killed you. Not Ilan.”

  “Mr. Turner?” said Kit, her face almost blank with confusion. “Wait a minute. Daddy killed Mr. Turner,” she told Fancy. “Everybody knows that.”

  “Guthrie didn’t want to kill me. He wanted to kill my son. My Gabe.” Mr. Turner stretched his hand to Gabriel, imploringly.

  Gabriel looked at the broken, skeletal hand as though it were a spitting cobra and shoved his hands into his pockets.

  Mr. Turner lowered his hand and said, heavily, “I had hoped he’d go back for you so we could finally be together, but—”

  “Don’t talk to him!” Ilan stepped between his father and Gabriel.

  “Ilan.” Fancy caught his eye, but only briefly; he couldn’t hold her gaze. “You killed Mr. Turner?”

  “Ilan was always jealous of his brother,” said Mr. Turner, “the attention I gave him. He used to poison my Gabe. Did you know that? Even pushed the poor boy down the stairs once. But I forgive him.”

  “You forgive me?” Ilan yelled.

  “Jealousy is just a sign of devotion. I understood that, even then.”

  Ilan launched himself at Mr. Turner, who grabbed him and held him so tight Fancy heard the creaking of bones—whether Mr. Turner’s or Ilan’s, though, she couldn’t say.

  “I know you didn’t mean it,” Mr. Turner hissed into Ilan’s ear. “I know you’ll make it up to me.”

  “Let him go!” Fancy tried to pull Ilan free, but Mr. Turner’s bony grip would not loosen.

  Kit pulled Fancy out of the way and spoke to Mr. Turner. “If Ilan’s the one who killed you, why do you want Gabe, too? He didn’t do anything.”

  “You said I could have anything.” The darkness in his voice stood Fancy’s hair on end. “You promised.”

  “Well, I take it back!” Kit shouted, unaffected by Mr. Turner’s voice. “There’s no way I’m—”

  Mr. Turner let go of Ilan and shoved Kit to the ground by her face. He knelt on her, his knees in her belly, and put his hand over her heart, over that empty space that was not as empty as she’d thought. She was full of life, and Mr. Turner was sucking it out of her.

  “No!” Fancy screamed, watching her sister decay, shriveling and cracking like a mummy, like something that had crawled out of the ground with Mr. Turner. Fancy fell on him and dislocated several of his ribs, but she couldn’t pull him off her sister. Gabriel and Ilan tried to help, shoving and pulling at their father, but he wouldn’t budge. He didn’t have to budge. Kit had broken her promise.

  “Kit,” Fancy said. “Quick! Take back what you said.”

  “No.” It was just a small croak from her dried lips. Small, but decisive. She’d obviously lost her mind and didn’t know what she was saying.

  For the first time in her life Fancy would have to speak for her.

  “Leave her alone!” Gabriel cried, dropping to his knees beside his father. “Please. Kit’s the only one here who’s really innocent—she didn’t know the truth!”

  Despite the dire situation Fancy couldn’t help but roll her eyes at Gabriel’s use of “Kit” and “innocent” in the same sentence. Fancy shoved Gabriel out of Mr. Turner’s reach.

  “He’s not gone kill Kit,” Fancy said, calm and in control. Maybe Mr. Turner was sucking the life from Kit, but she wasn’t what he was hungry for. “If he does, he won’t get what he wants.” She stared into Mr. Turner’s empty eye sockets. “I take back what Kit said.”

  That got everyone’s attention.

  “Me and her are practically the same person,” Fancy continued. “So this time I’ll speak for her. If you fix what you’ve done to her, you can have your sons.”

  “What?”

  Fancy held up a hand to silence Ilan, but continued speaking to Mr. Turner. “You can take them far from here, far from this horrible music. You can—” She gave Ilan a quick look. “You can take them to paradise, and Ilan can introduce you to the cute little dogs that live there.”

  The look of outrage on Ilan’s face was replaced with understanding.

  Mr. Turner heaved himself off Kit and stood. Ilan put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder, and Fancy heard him whisper, “I’ll take care of you. I always have.”

  Before Gabriel could say anything, Mr. Turner slung his arm around both their necks and pressed their faces to his splintered ribs.

  “I’ve wanted so long to hold you both,” he said, and then turned his skull in Fancy’s direction. “Now, keep your word.”

  Fancy shot an embarrassed look at Ilan, relieved that his face was smashed against his father’s ribs and he couldn’t see her removing bubble solution from her purse. She blew a bubble so big that all three Turners fit inside it. There were no gory Annas in the bubble with them. Only the stone platform ringed with the headless statues.

  Mr. Turner was no longer a corpse, but was as fully alive and real as Franken’s girlfriend had become after Kit had sent her to the happy place. Though he was still missing his right arm, he was tall and handsome and strong and dressed in the suit he’d been buried in.

  When she stopped blowing, the bubble popped, and the Turners disappeared.

  “Fancy?”

  Kit groaned behind her, no longer shriveled and horrible, but groggy as she sat up. “Where’s everybody? Where’s Gabe?”

  “I let Mr. Turner take him. Both of them.”

  Her grogginess cleared up instantly. “How could you let that happen?”

  “Don’t worry. They’re just in the happy place.”

  Kit noticed the bubble solution. “Show me Gabe. Quick!”

  Fancy tried, but the bubbles she blew were all black. Before Fancy could apologize, Kit punched her in the mouth, bloodying her knuckles on Fancy’s teeth and spil
ling the bubble solution all over the ground.

  “I thought you didn’t want to hurt me,” Fancy said, trying to dodge Kit’s fists, her mouth stinging.

  “You took everything else.” Kit pushed her. “What’s left but this?” She slapped Fancy. “And this!” She slapped her other cheek. “Don’t just stand there, you heartless bitch!”

  Fancy wasn’t just standing there, but Kit was stronger and quicker than her. She couldn’t win in a real fight, so she fought with words. “Not heartless, sensible. Sensible enough to fall for a guy who can take care of himself. Unlike your whiny, horrible—”

  “Whiny, horrible, and innocent!” Kit shoved her again and then backed away from her, as if she couldn’t stand to touch her anymore, not even to fight. “You set this up, didn’t you? Just to break up me and Gabe. Why do you have to be like that? All jealous and scheming?”

  Fancy swallowed the blood in her mouth and rubbed her slap-swollen cheek. “It’s ridiculous for you to care so much what Gabriel thinks of you, when he’s no better than we are.”

  “Well apparently he is. Ilan killed Mr. Turner.”

  “Well, if Ilan did it, he must’ve had a really good reason.”

  “Gabe couldn’t’ve had a reason?”

  “Like I can believe anything he says! He told me he killed Mr. Turner and buried the body at Dog Run. See how devious he is, mixing in the truth with his lies?”

  “Oh, shut up, Fancy. Maybe he does feel responsible for Mr. Turner’s death. I felt responsible when Daddy got arrested, and I didn’t have anything to do with that. Kids always blame themselves for shit their grown-ups get involved in.” Kit glared at Fancy. “Or maybe Gabe told you what Ilan made him believe. Mr. Turner said Ilan used to poison Gabe. Maybe Ilan poisoned his mind, too.”

  Fancy went cold at the idea that Ilan would treat his brother that way. It was one thing for him to hate Gabriel—Fancy fell in and out of hate with Kit all the time—but it was another thing entirely to mess with his brother’s mind, to make him believe horrible things about himself.