She waits until the middle of the night, until the cave fills with the sound of his slumber. On her knees with heels resting against the backs of her thighs, she lifts her arms high, palms protected by knotted silken scarves.
The stone pierces pelt and sinew, and blood gushes crimson and warm from his neck. He roars as his eyes open, lashing out with claws extended. Pain flares bright and hot in her upper arm, but she doesn’t stop. She can’t. There’s so much blood. Rivers—oceans—of it. Fingers slick, mouth filled with the taste of wet metal, she stabs again and again and again until her breath is ragged, until his is no more.
Sobbing, she drops the stone and draws her knees to her chest. Will they flay the flesh from her bones? Pummel her with rocks? Merely give her to another monster?
No. She won’t allow the latter. She’ll never allow it. She strips off her sodden nightgown and uses another to scrub the tears from her cheeks and the blood from her skin.
His body is heavy, but she manages to drag it to the floor and she works through the rest of the night, cutting away the furred skin, carefully scraping the fat and meat free. Using strands of her hair braided with strips of the beast’s viscera, she sews the rents from the stone. She rips the heart from the carcass and smears the clotted blood on her skin, then she curls her body into the hide, pulls it close, and slips her hands into the paws.
Her flesh warms, melts into the pelt until there’s no way to know where one ends and the other begins. Her muscles flex and expand, growing to fit a new shape, a new purpose. Her bones break and knit back together in a stronger construction. There’s no pain, but she isn’t surprised. She’s already paid a thousand times over.
She opens her reshaped mouth and what emerges is neither the mewl of a tongueless girl nor the roar of a monster, but the triumph of a great and terribly beauty. All around her, the colors are more intense, the edges sharper. She gets to her feet and heads toward the entrance of the cave, trailing her claws along the walls, cutting gouges in the stone. Her new form isn’t ponderous, but graceful. Powerful.
And she remembers.
She remembers the council handing her over without a second thought. She remembers everyone standing outside, watching her led with tether and chain. She remembers their gazes upon her and their silence. Peace, they called it. She has a different word for what they’ve done.
Emerging into the sunlight, she throws back her head, cries out to the sky. The ground trembles fury beneath her feet, and she bares her new teeth.
The people want a monster. She’ll give them one.
* * *
Once upon a time there was a girl …
Deep Within the Marrow, Hidden in My Smile
I wear you in my bones.
No one else can see you, but I know you’re there. I feel the weight of you within the shape of me like a tumor, a disease. If I look too long in the mirror I’m afraid I’ll see you staring back.
Sometimes late at night, when the house is quiet, I whisper your name, but you never answer.
* * *
My mom talked the whole way to your house, which was weird because she never liked talking while she was driving, and when I tried to turn on the radio, she swatted my hand away. I watched the houses and trees blur past and tuned her out. I’d already heard everything she was saying: Alyssa can’t wait to meet you. And her birthday is only three weeks after yours. Almost like twins. Isn’t that neat? Thom is so excited for you to see the house.
Our parents had been dating for over a year, and they already had a wedding date set. I don’t know why they waited so long for us to meet, unless they had a feeling it wouldn’t go so well. Or maybe they just wanted to make really sure it was serious.
I didn’t want a sister or a stepfather. Didn’t want to move from the only house I’d ever lived in, didn’t want to leave behind the gouge in the kitchen doorframe which I’d made with a field hockey stick or the marks on the wall in the kitchen measuring my changing height or the spare bedroom that was my dad’s old office, that still smelled of his aftershave, even after three years. Your mom was dead, too, something mine told me a thousand times, and she met your dad in a support group for grieving spouses. I guess they weren’t grieving that much. I knew better than to say that to my mom, though.
“We’re here, honey,” my mom said as she pulled into a driveway.
The house, more than twice the size of our townhouse, was brick with dark green shutters and a big front yard, and, gauging by the trees towering over the dark-shingled roof, an ever bigger back yard. My mom’s face was all smiles, but I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.
At least it was big enough so we wouldn’t have to share a bedroom—that would’ve been awful—and I wouldn’t have to change schools either. My mom asked if I wanted to switch to the private school you went to, but I said no. I didn’t care that I’d have to wake up way early to catch the bus. She was making me leave everything; I wasn’t going to leave my friends, too. She asked me a couple times, but once she realized I wasn’t going to change my mind she stopped.
You dad met us at the door and that wasn’t a big deal. We’d met before. You were in the living room, slouched on one end of an uncomfortable-looking sofa. We said hello, but your gaze said Invader.
You were a lot smaller than me and your cheeks were still chubby, like a little kid’s. You looked ten, not thirteen. But your eyes were dark and serious, and you stared at me so long and hard that I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet and eventually looked away.
Your dad said, “Why don’t you show Courtney the rest of the house while Grace and I work on some wedding stuff?”
“That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it?” my mom said to me.
It wasn’t like I could say what I really wanted to, so I followed you around the first floor while you pointed out the rooms in a low, flat voice. The staircase off the front foyer was a wide curve leading to the second floor. I thought it would be fun to slide down the banister, but when I asked you if you’d ever done it, you said, “Of course not.”
All the furniture in the living room looked formal and unused; the dining room was dark wood and heavy curtains; the study held leather chairs, a desk with clawed feet, and lots of bookcases. You didn’t say the rooms were off-limits, but they were all museum silence and sharp edges.
Kind of like you, honestly.
Everything smelled weird. Not bad, just the way other people’s houses always do, and I wondered if me and my mom would start to smell like this, or if everything would start to smell like us. And worse, would we even notice?
The kitchen was big, but there were no pictures or school notes tacked on the refrigerator, no crumbs on the counter, no dishes in the sink. The breakfast nook was the first room that looked lived in—there was an open book face-down on a placemat and a cup with traces of orange juice. Two steps led down into a family room with a huge television and a wrap-around sofa with throw blankets and pillows. There were two more books on the coffee table, and one of the pillows had a dent in it from someone’s arm or elbow.
At our house, we always had magazines or my homework or unopened mail on the coffee table and half the time, I shoved the pillows on the floor because they mostly got in the way. It drove my mom nuts. Our sofa was a lot smaller than the one here, but I didn’t see anyplace where it could fit. I bet my mom was going to donate it like she did with the old clothes that didn’t fit or I didn’t want anymore, and my chest got tight. Someone else would sit in my spot. My spot that used to be my dad’s spot. I really wanted to run over and cut open the cushions of your sofa so we’d have to bring ours. Same with the pillows and the blankets. But I was too old for temper tantrums. And a sofa wouldn’t change anything.
“We use this one most of the time,” you said, pointing to a narrow staircase off the kitchen.
Carpet the color of instant oatmeal before water’s added swallowed the sounds of our feet. Your dad’s bathroom was almost the size of my room at home and the bedr
oom had room for a sofa, coffee table, and another television nearly as big as the one downstairs along with all the regular bedroom furniture.
You pushed open the door to an empty room across the hallway. “This is yours,” you said, sneering as you spoke the words.
The room was big with pale blue walls almost the same color as my bedroom at home. The paint wasn’t wet, but it smelled new. Two wide windows looked out into the back yard, which was even bigger than I thought it would be, and there was a hot tub off the deck and a pool with an enclosure so it could be used all year long.
“Your bathroom’s there,” you said, nodding toward another door.
I was secretly relieved when one quick look inside revealed that I wouldn’t have to share.
“Where’s your room?”
You pointed at the end of the hallway. I caught a glimpse of bookcases and pale grey walls through the half-open door, and I thought you’d show me the whole room, but you didn’t, just stared at me again the way you did downstairs, like you could see through—inside—me. My arms broke out in goosebumps.
“I have a soccer ball in the car,” I said, rubbing my arms. “Want to kick it around?”
You shook your head. “I don’t play sports.”
“Do you swim?”
Another shake of your head. “The pool was my mom’s.”
I traced a circle in the carpet with the tip of my shoe. “Can anyone else use it?”
“I didn’t say they couldn’t,” you said, each word bitten off and spat at my feet.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so we stood there in the hallway—I kept my face turned away so I wouldn’t have to see your eyes—until I wanted to scream to break the quiet.
“We can go back downstairs,” you finally said.
In the car on the way home, my mom asked, “What did you think?”
“It’s big and it’s way too quiet,” I said. “But I like the pool and the back yard, and it’ll be neat having my own bathroom.”
“Not the house, kiddo, but Alyssa?”
“She’s quiet too,” I said. And weird, I didn’t say.
* * *
A few weeks after the wedding, after my mom and I moved in—I was wrong about my sofa being donated; it fit in my bedroom—I took a soccer ball into the back yard. You were in your room, reading, which was pretty much all you did. My mom kept telling me to ask you to do stuff, but you weren’t interested in anything I was, so most of the time I lied and told her I’d already asked and you said no.
Your dad came out of the kitchen with a bag of recycling and waved as he went around the side of the house. On his way back, the ball traveled into his path and I called out, “Sorry!” He kicked it my way and I returned it without a thought, the way I used to do with my dad.
I held my breath, thinking he’d get mad, but he didn’t. He grinned and said, “Now you’re on.” He grabbed two lawn chairs, setting them on their sides for makeshift nets, and the two of us ran back and forth across the lawn, kicking the ball and laughing. Not sure how long we played, but it was a lot longer than I expected. I won, but it was close; he was pretty good and played hard.
After he went back inside, I saw you through your bedroom window, half-hidden by the curtain. I started to wave, but you stepped out of sight. I waited to see if you’d peek again, but you didn’t.
I guess it made you jealous, but it wasn’t my fault that your dad liked soccer. You could’ve come out to play too. No one was stopping you.
* * *
Even when it was just the two of us, my mom was big on family dinner. She said it was too easy to get into a routine of not eating together. So every night we’d sit at the table, and I’d tell her about school and she’d tell me about work. Then we’d talk about things happening in the world, silly stuff from social media like viral videos or ridiculous memes, everything and anything.
We did the same thing at your house, too, and your dad joined in the conversation. My mom tried to get you to talk, but you answered with “Fine” every time she asked how school was and shrugged and forked another bite into your mouth when she asked what you did in class.
That lasted for about a month and then one night, my mom called everyone to the table and from the top of the stairs you called down, “I’m not hungry.”
Your dad said it wasn’t really a big deal, but my mom’s eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. “I want us to eat as a family,” she said.
“You can’t force her to eat if she isn’t hungry,” your dad said.
“She doesn’t have to eat if she doesn’t want to, but I’d like her to sit with us at least. She shouldn’t hide away in her room all the time.”
“She’s not hiding, she’s probably reading. We never really made a big deal about dinner before.”
“I understand that, but things are different now.”
“Grace, honey, she’s still getting used to all the changes. Every kid deals with things at their own pace,” your dad said. “Don’t worry about it tonight, okay?”
I knew my mom didn’t want to let it go, but she did. I was surprised. The next night, you did the same thing, and although my mom narrowed her eyes, she held her tongue.
Later, I saw you in the kitchen, making a sandwich.
I said, “I thought you weren’t hungry.”
“I wasn’t,” you tossed over your shoulder.
“My mom’s trying,” I said. “You don’t have to be mean to her.”
Your eyes were laser beams, boring into mine. “I didn’t ask her to try. I didn’t ask her to come here at all.”
* * *
I flopped on the sectional in the family room, grabbed the remote, and started flipping through channels before I saw you curled up in the corner of the sofa with a book in your hand. You glared at me from atop the cover. I wanted to leave the room, but I didn’t want you to know how I felt so I stayed put.
“I was sitting here reading,” you said.
“Okay, sorry.” I turned off the television. Crossed my arms over my chest and swallowed hard. “Want to play checkers or Uno or something?”
You let out a long sigh and, from behind your book, said, in a sing-song voice, “Why don’t you go play soccer with my dad?”
I didn’t, but I did go swim in the pool. I didn’t understand what your problem was. We were supposed to be a family, right? I didn’t like it a whole lot either but I was trying. After a while, my mom and your dad came outside and got in the pool with me. When we finished, you weren’t in the family room anymore and your bedroom door was shut. I made a face as I walked by, but paused because I heard your voice, your words low and growly. It definitely sounded like you were talking to someone—you kept pausing like you were waiting for an answer—except I knew you were the only one in your room. Your footsteps moved close to the door and I took off, heart pounding. You talking to yourself was nothing to be scared of, but I was.
* * *
My mom opened my bedroom door and stuck her head in. “Courtney, are you going to get up sometime this morning?”
I groaned and smacked the snooze button on my blaring alarm clock, fighting to keep my eyelids from fluttering shut again. Wondering why my sheets felt gritty, I pushed back the covers, scrubbed the sleep from my eyes, and struggled to a sitting position. Both my sheets and the soles of my feet were flecked with dirt, and smudged footprints tracked across the floor, leading in from the door.
I sat motionless. I’d showered the night before—my towel discarded in a pile on the floor was proof, not that I needed any. And I didn’t sleepwalk. I never had.
My hands started to shake. It had to be you, but why would you even do something like that? I left you alone, and I never went in your room.
I heard footsteps in the hall and caught a blur of motion, too short to be my mom. She called out again for me to get a move on and I did, wiping my feet on the towel and cleaning away the footprints on the floor as fast as I could.
While I was rinsing out my juice g
lass in the kitchen, I stared out the window over the sink and saw my favorite soccer ball in the middle of the yard. I never left it outside. Ever. It was the last thing my dad ever gave to me. When you came in the room a few minutes later, you had a tight-lipped, secretive smile. I wanted to shove your cereal bowl off the counter. I also wanted to run out of the room. Behind my mom’s back, I mouthed the word why. You kept on smiling. I wanted to tell my mom what you did, but I didn’t.
I should have. I guess I was afraid she wouldn’t believe me, and, although I didn’t want to admit it, I was afraid of you.
* * *
In the formal living room, gilt-framed photographs sat on the side tables and the fireplace mantel. There were a couple of pictures of you as a baby and one with you, your dad, and your mom at the beach. The three of you were squinting into the sun, but I could tell you looked a lot like her; you had the same hair color and the same round face. She looked normal, though, not creepy.
A picture from our parents’ wedding hung over the fireplace. In it, they were smiling so big it made my cheeks hurt. I was standing beside my mom; you beside your dad. All four of us had our arms linked—the photographer’s idea. You were smiling, too, but it was more like the weird smile from the kitchen than a real one. I’d never noticed before but once I did, I couldn’t not notice. I heard a snort behind me and you were there, book tucked under your arm, mouth crooked into a sneer. “O happy family,” you said.
“At least some of us are trying,” I shot back.
“She’ll never be my mom,” you said.
“She isn’t trying to be.”
“You’ll never be my family. You’ll never be my sister.”
You made the word the ugliest thing in the world, and I wished my mom had never met your dad.
“Why do you hate me so much?” I asked.
“Who said I hated you?”
“You put dirt. In. My. Bed.”
Cry Your Way Home Page 2