by Ellery Fenn
“I think I can wrap one of the curtains around your head like a turban and leave a little bit loose over your face. It’s not enough to hide it, but it could satisfy a glance.” She wrapped it around my head and fussed with the flap that hung over my face like a veil. She took a step back and laughed.
I groaned.
“Oh, don’t be that way. You look… good.” Her face was tight as she held in her smile. I ignored her and started walking. She flew to my side. “I mapped our best path. If you go in between the dirt pile and the old camper, that’ll get you most of the way to the hedge. And from there you just go slow and try to hide in the bushes.”
I hesitated at the edge of the woods. The sunlight was brighter, unobscured by the thick covering of trees. There was so little green. The only place I’d been outside the forest was the side of the road. These empty lots, and the subdivision beyond them, reminded me far too much of the place I lost my life. Or began it.
We hurried through the empty lots, ducking and dodging to keep out of sight. A hedge wound through the neighborhood, sometimes in one yard and sometimes in another. I kept to its greenery. Lisa stopped me after five minutes of careful moving.
“This is it.” She pointed to a backyard. “Doug’s window’s right next to that tree.”
The yard was bare, with even less cover than the hedge. Lisa read my mind.
“All you can do is be fast.”
I darted from the bushes and reached the tree in only a few steps. I climbed it in seconds, perching myself safe among the leaves. Again I was struck by my strength. I hadn’t had a chance to test my abilities, and I yearned for it earnestly.
Lisa opened the window. “That was fast.”
She moved aside and I launched myself through the opening, loudly crashing to the floor. I would have to practice my landings. Lisa fixed my crooked turban as I stood.
This was Doug’s room. It was devoid of the horrors I’d pictured before. There was no manic writing on the walls or displays of stolen underwear, just a bookshelf of baseball trophies. It was average, like any teenage boy’s room.
Lisa shivered. “This place gives me the creeps.” Her face was guarded, but I couldn’t tell what she was hiding. “I’ve got an idea. His mom probably has something you could wear. And makeup. And maybe a scarf instead of that turban.” I nodded. She creaked the door open. “This way.”
The closeness of the walls was unsettling. I couldn’t see the sky, could barely hear the birds. Where was the green?
We entered Doug’s parents’ room. It was messy and the large bed was unmade.
Lisa flicked on a light in the walk-in closet. “Fancy. Wish I had this.”
I touched the rows of dresses and blouses, all light and delicate fabrics with obnoxious prints. It was foreign, artificial.
She pulled an orange dress from the rack. “How’s this?”
I frowned. “Camouflage.”
“Yeah, but it’s so pretty. You’d look lovely in it. Not that you don’t look lovely now, but, um, never mind.” She returned it to its place. “What about pants?”
I shrugged. I didn’t care about fashion. Only practicality mattered.
She dug through a pile of discarded clothes in a corner. “I love dressing up.” She lingered over a torn velvet blouse. “I used to spend hours trying on Mom’s clothes. Of course, she didn’t have anything as nice as all this. I thought I looked like a princess.” She laughed. “I haven’t done that in years. That’s why I was so excited when Doug asked me to Homecoming. One of the reasons at least. Mom and I went to every dress store in town. I would’ve been happy with any of them, but I wanted to try on everything. I found the perfect dress, creamy white with those ruffles and that bow in the back. And the beading on the bodice.” She traced the embroidery of a skirt. “It was heavenly.”
I grabbed the nearest dress and held it out to her. “Try on.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Why?”
“Fun.”
“But I can change my shape and clothes by thinking. And it might just fall through me.” I rolled my eyes and threw the dress over her. “Hey!” She shoved it off. “You’ll mess up my hair.”
I couldn’t decide whether her slowness was endearing or annoying. I took a deep breath and planned my words.
“When you’re not thinking.” My voice cracked. She stared, surprised at my speech. “About it, you can touch like live person.”
She furrowed her eyebrows and gazed at the fabric in her hands. “You mean I’m overthinking it?”
I laughed.
“Well that’s nothing new. I’ll try.” She slipped the dress off the hanger. “Turn around.”
“Why?”
“Just turn. It’s the principle of the thing.”
I obeyed and listened to the sound of fabric sliding against fabric, sliding against skin. Yet it didn’t sound quite like fabric on skin. It was softer and vaguely crackly, like static electricity. Then there was silence. I peeked over my shoulder.
At first glance in the dim yellow lighting, she looked almost solid, almost alive. I could nearly see pink in her cheeks, but then the illusion was lost, and she looked like herself again, but smiling. She was beautiful.
My chest fluttered. What was this feeling? It surged through my body, cool and hot, something I’d never felt before. I saw Lisa with new eyes.
“This is a really ugly dress.”
I grinned. She was right.
The dress fell straight through her to the ground. “I think I’m getting the hang of this.” She slipped it onto the hanger and returned it to the rack. She hesitated, her hand resting on the cloth. “Thank you.”
The closet was suddenly very small, and decidedly not green.
She grabbed a pair of brown slacks from the floor. “These look like they’ll fit you. Take off that stupid curtain.”
I struggled out of the makeshift clothing and stepped toward where she held the pants unzipped for me. One leg at a time, I carefully stepped into them. She pulled them up around my waist, the slip falling over her hands, obscuring my hips, and buttoned the fly.
“There,” she said. “How’s that?”
I tested the stretch of the fabric. “Fine.”
“Good.” She turned her attention to the rack again. “Now for a shirt. This?” It was a loose flowing white blouse.
“Dirty.”
“Yeah,” she said dejectedly, hanging it back up. “Here.” It was dark green, baggy with short sleeves and buttons down the front. The color was duller than the forest but would still work.
“Good.”
“Good.” I tried to grab it but she pulled away. “Oh. You have to take your slip off first.”
I touched the black silk. If she recognized it, she’d know it was hers. She’d know my secret. I couldn’t indicate that it meant anything.
I grabbed the bottom of it to pull over my head and got tangled up halfway through. “Help.” I squirmed.
“Lift your arms.” Lisa grabbed the straps and gently lifted the shift. The silk slid over my skin, conforming to every contour of my body. Her eyes closed with a gasp as it uncovered my bare chest and slipped off my arms. She fumbled with the shirt, her eyes still closed, handing it to me with one hand.
I put my arms through the sleeves and attempted the buttons. My motor control wasn’t exact enough, but I wasn’t going to ask for help again.
“Done.”
She smiled. “You look good. Still dead, but good.”
I returned her smile awkwardly.
She shoved the pile back together. “There. Like we were never here. Now for the makeup.” She pulled the chair from the vanity and gestured toward it. “M’lady.”
I took a seat as she rummaged through the drawers. She pulled out several vials of goo and powder.
“The biggest problems are your nose, your cheek, and your forehead.”
“Whole face?”
She snorted. “Yeah, basically your whole face. I don’t know if I can do
much honestly.” She smeared various creams and powders on my skin, frowning in concentration. Finally, she leaned back with a sigh.
I took that as my cue and looked in the mirror. A dead clown stared back.
“I’m not very good at this.”
“Yeah.”
She shoved the makeup back into the drawers and grabbed a black scarf. “Turban time.” She replaced the curtain. “Done.”
I didn’t bother to look in the mirror. I gathered my old toga. The slip was still clenched in Lisa’s hand.
We returned to the hall, shutting everything as we went. I threw the curtains out Doug’s window and into the arms of the tree.
I doubted there would be anything to find. If he was smart, he wouldn’t have anything that pointed to his crimes.
Lisa stared at the bed. I crossed the room to her and waited for her to speak. Her voice was low.
“If things would’ve gone differently. If I would’ve said yes, gone along with it. Let him do what he wanted, I wouldn’t be dead. I’d be his girlfriend.” She touched the blanket. “I would’ve ended up here.”
The image of the two of them naked, wrapped around each other, invaded my mind. His hands claiming every inch, stealing like a wildfire across her body. My stomach churned. I was glad she died instead.
That’s when I saw it, a scrape on the wood floor where the bed had been slid back and forth. I felt the mark. It was deep, frequently used.
“What is it?”
I examined the floorboards and found what I was looking for. I slid the bed over the scratch and lifted the wood underneath it.
Lisa rocked back on her heels. “You’re better than I thought.”
My hands closed around something in the dark hole. I lifted out a book.
She gasped and took it from me. “Oh my god.” She flipped through the pages. “How are we this lucky? He keeps a diary?”
The sound of the front door closing shook the house.
“Crap,” Lisa hissed. “Put the floor back.”
I fit the board in place and slid the bed over it once more. Voices filtered up from downstairs. Lisa floated out the window, my slip and Doug’s diary clenched in her hands.
“Hurry.”
I threw myself from the window into the tree. I slid behind the clusters of leaves and positioned the branches to cover me and the curtains. Lisa closed the window.
Chapter Thirteen
Lisa
We left the curtains by the old camp trailer and made our way back to our newfound home. It was funny; already felt like home, more than my house, or even Clarisse’s ever felt. I tried to keep my brain out of Doug’s bedroom, but it kept popping into my head like a bad commercial. Me and him, in his bed. Me and him, on his floor. Me and him, in the kitchen, in the living room, doing all the normal things that couples do. Dinner with his parents. Dinner with my parents.
Corrie kept looking at me, almost like she knew what I was thinking. Or wondering why I wouldn’t put her slip down. I didn’t know why, but it was comforting, nice. Like a little reminder that what was real wasn’t me and Doug; what was real was me and Corrie.
But most of all, it was mine. She must’ve taken it off my body, but why? And why wouldn’t she tell me? Why was it a secret?
She put the journal in the hollow tree and had dinner at the creek. The sun was setting now. The day passed so fast, all caught up in spying and sneaking. I thought it would be fun, but it was disturbing. It exhausted me.
I watched Corrie eat. She smelled each fish first, turning it over in her hands and admiring the glittering scales before tearing into it with her teeth. She finished every part, from the head to the tail, eating slowly with her eyes closed and her expression serene.
“What are you doing?”
Confusion was written on her face. “Eating,” she mumbled through a full mouth.
“No. Why are you eating so slow? And closing your eyes like that? Does it taste that good?”
She shrugged. “No.”
“Then why?”
She popped a fish head into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully before swallowing. “To feel it,” she answered.
A smile crept over my face. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Her forehead furrowed. She gazed at the creek for a while. “Don’t you feel?”
“What do you mean? Of course, I feel.”
She shook her head. “Everything feels strong for me. Drowning.”
I did my best to look past the awful makeup. Her face was still.
“I didn’t know that.”
She shrugged. “S’okay. Not bad now. Dealt with it.”
“How?” Why was I asking so many stupid questions? “I’m sorry. I know talking is hard for you.”
She ignored my apology. “Felt it lots. Swam through. Now feel it good.” She ran her hand along her arm, slowly tracing from the edge of her sleeve to her fingertips. If she felt things more than I did, more than most people did, how would that feel? I mirrored her, touching my arm softly. There was nothing special about it.
“That’s really cool.”
She met my gaze with a smile. “Weird.”
“Not weird. Just different. Is it like that for everything? Like, what do you see when you look at the creek? Or hear birds?”
Her eyes watched the rushing water. “See dance. Hear music. Ballet.”
The creek didn’t look like anything other than a creek to me. “I wish I could feel things like you do.”
Shadows moved across the clearing. The sun had set.
“Me too.”
“Why?”
She drew lines in the dirt beside her. “Only one.”
She was probably right. I’d never heard of such a thing, of someone feeling things more than other people.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Not everybody has to be the same. Sure, we’re all similar, but we’re all different too. It’s okay to be Corrie.”
She stared at me. “Okay to be Lisa too.”
Something in my chest caught. How could she see me as anything other than the dumb girl that got herself killed? “You don’t know that.”
She tilted her head. “I do.”
“You can’t know that. No one can know that.”
“You’re good person.”
I hid my face behind my hair. “I’m not.”
Chapter Fourteen
Corrie
She thought she was a bad person. I couldn’t find her logic, couldn’t comprehend her conclusion. How could someone as lovely as her think so poorly of herself?
I couldn’t understand her thoughts, but I could feel her feelings. Tension and pain rippled off her. The newborn night was too pleasant, too mild. If I could feel her emotions that strongly, why couldn’t the trees? Why couldn’t the sky?
“Why?” I asked.
Her voice was muffled as she buried her face between her knees. “’Cause I’m stupid.”
My face creased with concern. “Not stupid.”
“I am though.” She poked at the dirt. “If I was smart, I wouldn’t have gone out with him, would’ve seen the warning signs, wouldn’t drink. There’s a million things I could’ve done to stop it.”
The memory of that night charged through me, skin stinging, head pulsing, muscles aching. “No.”
“It’s true.”
My chest burned. I couldn’t stand to see her like this. It was more distressing than sensory overload, worse than hunger. “No. Would’ve done anyway. If not do to you, he do to other.”
She pulled the silk of my slip over her eyes. How could she stand the smell? “I don’t want to think about how many people he’s ruined.”
“Ruined?”
“Deflowered, defiled, soiled. Take your pick.”
Not one of those words applied to her. She was the closest thing to an angel I could imagine, the very image of purity, of perfection. “Don’t understand.”
She laid her head on her knee. “He took the one thing that made me worth anything.
Not my virginity I guess, but he touched me and, and. And good girls don’t let that happen.”
The air rushed from my lungs. The only thing that made her worth anything? How could some silly human concept be so important to her? How could she treat herself so unfairly? “How?”
“What do you mean, how?”
“How make not happen.”
She shrugged. “Be careful. Don’t drink, have a chaperone, cover up.”
If only she could see through my eyes rather than the twisted kaleidoscope of her own. If only she could see the truth.
The truth. Doug was the truth, the reason we were here now, and though I would never sacrifice the time I spent with Lisa, I couldn’t be grateful to him. He didn’t do it for me. He did it for himself, because he had power we didn’t. Power that needed to be taken away.
“You blame you for date.”
“Well, yeah. If I wouldn’t have gone out with him, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“How would you know it happen?”
“I’d pay attention!” Her hands twisted in the fabric of my shift. “Notice the warning signs.”
“What signs?”
She scraped her feet against the ground, gathering fallen leaves and dirt into piles. “I don’t know. But I shouldn’t have been drinking! That’s one thing I could’ve done.”
“If sober, he not rape?”
She flinched at the word, and my skin flared in response. I’d hurt her. I couldn’t think of another way to say it, not with my limited speech.
“Well, no,” she said.
“Clarisse drunk and not raped.”
“Pat wouldn’t do that! He’s a good guy.”
“Doug?”
She sighed. “Bad guy.” She rolled her head back and forth with a groan. “I shouldn’t have left the dance with him. Why didn’t I go with Clarisse and Pat?”
“Party.” I winced when I realized that she hadn’t told me any of this. She’d wonder how I knew.
“They didn’t go to the party. Why did I think I needed to go?”
I breathed a sigh of relief at her oversight. “They planned to go.”