by Megan Abbott
“It was you,” she repeated, louder now.
“No,” he said, looking at her. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m sure it has nothing to do with all this. I’m sure—”
And something seemed to snap hard in her face, like a rubber band stretched too far.
“Oh, Eli, no. Look what happened, and now,” she said, her voice going loose, like someone slipping under anesthesia, like when he watched his teammate get his arm rebroken after a game. “Lise. Lise is going to die.”
“Hey,” he said, gently. “No, she’s not.”
Her hands gripped the table beneath her.
“She is. She is.”
He put his hand on her arm, hot to the touch.
She breathed in fast, shuddering.
“I better go,” she said, pressing her body against him for the most fleeting moment, so close he could feel the swell of her breasts, the heat of her breath on his neck.
Before he could say anything, she slid off the table, her jacket dragging behind her as she raced up the stairs.
“Hey,” he called out. “How…”
But she was gone.
Stuck with the landline, it took him several minutes and a few tries to figure out his dad’s cell number.
He could hear Gabby on the front porch, talking into her phone.
After six long rings, his dad answered, “Deenie?” His voice breathless and sharp.
“Dad,” Eli said. “Deenie’s not here. I don’t know where she is.”
“She and Gabby must have gone out.” It sounded like his dad was even panting a little.
“No, Gabby’s here, Dad. She’s been waiting for her. She doesn’t know where Deenie is either.”
There was a pause. Eli thought he heard music in the background.
“Dad,” he asked, “where are you?”
“Okay, I’m going to find her. I’m going to look for her. I’ll call you.”
* * *
Trying to buckle his half-undone belt with one hand, Tom called Deenie. There was no answer.
On the edge of the bed, Lara was talking to Gabby on her own phone. A lock of hair drooping forward, she spoke in low mothering tones.
“I’m not mad at you, Gabby, but…okay, it’s okay…”
Walking into the hallway, he decided to call Eli back.
Just as his call went through, almost in the same instant, he heard the electronic bleat of a ringtone from another room.
Then came the recognition. That ringtone—the shriek of a goal horn. It was Eli’s phone. In the Bishop house.
Following the sound, he stopped at the doorway to what had to be Gabby’s room.
He could feel Lara behind him now. “What the…?”
“That’s Eli’s phone. Why would…”
Lara’s eyes darted around the room. In seconds, she was kneeling over Gabby’s laundry hamper, hands rustling through the clothes.
When she rose with Eli’s familiar Calgary-red phone in her hand, Tom hung up.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.
For several minutes, they stood over the hamper, pushing buttons on the phone, popping the dying battery in and out. It didn’t matter. The screen was blank. No call history other than Tom’s own call moments before, no contacts, no texts. The phone was immaculate.
* * *
There wasn’t any time to think, just a few minutes, Deenie walking swiftly, a block over to Revello Way.
For a panicked moment, Deenie wasn’t sure she’d recognize it. She’d only been to Skye’s house a few times, and never inside.
But then she spotted the glint of the gold-rimmed sundial on the front lawn.
It was a ranch house, a rambling one that hooked over a sharp incline on one side. There was the whispery sound of chimes in every window—capiz, bamboo, glinting crystal—and the creaking of its eaves, heavy with old leaves.
It felt too late to knock on the door, but it didn’t matter because she saw a light on in the garage.
Making her way up the drive, she caught a flash of white.
T-shirt, bare legs, and the distinct white flare of Skye’s hair.
Her back to Deenie, she was completely still, shoulders bent.
Like a picture Deenie once saw of a white cobra, its hood spread.
Girls like Skye, she would never understand. Girls who got away with ditching school and never doing any homework, who could have twenty-six-year-old boyfriends and be able to explain what fisting was and why anyone would enjoy it and had aunts who gave them copies of the Kama Sutra and who made everything seem easy and adult and anyone who found it all confusing and maybe scary was just a kid, just a little kid.
Girls who, despite never having been your real friend at all, felt it was okay to visit your oldest friend’s bedside and lurk there in that Skye way, like a living ghost, a cobra-hooded witch.
“Skye,” Deenie called out softly, wet sneakers grinding up the gravel drive. “Skye.”
But Skye didn’t move or even flinch, shoulders bony under her thin shirt. Her head down.
Approaching, Deenie finally saw what Skye was standing in front of, a wet-wood hutch on stilts, its front traps open.
“Skye,” she hissed, “it’s Deenie.”
But still her head wouldn’t turn, her shoulders hunched, her white figure ghostlike, and a tiny noise of something chewing, gnawing.
“Skye?”
* * *
Through the window, Eli could see Gabby on the front porch.
At first, he thought she was still on the phone, but then he saw she was writing something in one of her notebooks, writing faster than he’d ever seen anyone write.
He walked through the house, his head starting to feel things again, and badly. Everything seemed to be coming undone, like the ceiling corners, swollen with rain. The house, his mom used to say, is weeping.
Passing headlights flashed across the front windows and he looked out to the front porch to see Gabby was gone.
* * *
The drive back through Binnorie Woods seemed to take forever, twisting down one veiny road after another, while Tom tried to will himself sober. To reckon with the snarl in his head, which included a sneaking sense of relief.
He’d promised to bring Gabby back, had insisted Lara shouldn’t drive. And now, the road doing odd, shimmery things, he was pretty sure he shouldn’t be driving either.
“I know what it is,” Lara had said as he was halfway out the door, still buttoning his shirt with one hand, the other hand crushed over his car keys.
“What?”
“Everything happening,” she said, standing in the hard light of the entryway. Saying it quietly, barely a whisper.
He froze, waited.
“It’s what we put in the ground,” she said. “And in the walls. The lake, the air. And the vaccines we give them. The food, the water, the things we say, the things we do. All of it, straight into their sturdy little bodies. Because even if it isn’t any of these things, it could be. Because all we do from the minute they’re born is put them at risk.”
He felt his keys cut into his fingers.
“We put them at risk just by having them,” he blurted, not even knowing what he meant. Touched by her words, frightened by them. “And the hazards never stop.”
She paused, looking at him. A chill on his neck, he felt as though she could see everything.
“Well,” she said softly, her hand in her hair. “We’re all at risk.”
And she’d slipped back into the house, closing the door.
Now, in his car, he rolled down the windows all the way, tried to breathe. He couldn’t really breathe.
He could still smell her on his shirt and hands and mouth, feel her mysterious energy. Warm and unsettling.
In the strangest way, it reminded him of Georgia.
This is why I don’t drink, he thought, because a hundred things he’d shut in shoeboxes and hidden in closet tops cast themselves down again.
Like how he’d w
anted to grind that guy’s face into the icy parking lot.
How he’d called Georgia ugly names, said things in front of Deenie and Eli.
Once he’d even pointed out the guy to Eli at the grocery store. Said, There he is, that’s what your mother did it all for. That loser in the orange tie.
And that other time. Opening all Georgia’s dresser drawers, Deenie in the doorway, balling up his wife’s lingerie, her panties, throwing them at Georgia. Wanting to stuff them in her mouth. Stopping himself. He stopped himself.
But that was a short period of time, a long time ago.
How do you get over it? he’d asked Lara Bishop before he left. Over what happened to you?
But she just smiled like it was a stupid question, or at least the wrong one.
* * *
The streak of her white T-shirt, the hunch of her back, head dipped low, the stillness of her.
“Skye,” Deenie said, louder now, the smell of sawdust, ammonia, fur everywhere. “Skye, turn around.”
And Skye’s head turned slowly, as if she’d barely heard, earbuds dropping to her collarbones.
Her face cool and expressionless and so pale it was near translucent.
“Deenie,” she said, her skinny arms inside the open door of the hutch, stroking something. A cherry-eyed rabbit with long ears.
“This is Crow Jane,” she said. “Meet Crow Jane.”
Deenie stopped short as Skye lifted the animal, its plush fur like the purple foot charm Deenie used to hang on her backpack when she was little.
“His mother tried to eat him,” Skye said, fingering a pellet into the rabbit’s mouth. “It happens sometimes. When they get scared or confused. Or by accident. Or if they think something’s wrong with the baby.”
“Why are you out here this late?” Deenie asked, even though she was the one out at midnight, in Skye’s backyard.
Skye shrugged.
There was a smell that reminded her of the time the lawn mower sparked and burned up one side of the front lawn.
“What…” Deenie began, and it seemed to happen at that same second, the sharp twinge in Deenie’s neck, her head bobbing, and Skye saying, “Are you okay, Deenie?”
Something in Skye’s calm made her feel crazy, her neck and jaw throbbing.
“Why were you in Lise’s hospital room?” Deenie asked, almost a bark. “What would you be doing there?”
Staring at her, Skye lifted the rabbit to her chest, rubbing its body.
“You’ve been there too, right?” she asked, her fingers nestled in the fur, stroking it with her thin fingers. “I guess the same as you.”
“You were never friends with her,” Deenie said, voice shaking now. “Not like me.”
Something was shifting in Skye’s eyes. “No one can be as close to anyone as you, is that it?”
“What does that mean?”
Skye didn’t answer, taking Crow Jane by the cowl and setting her, a little roughly, back into the soggy hutch.
A wind gusted up and the smell, sooty and sweet, came strong from beyond the hutch.
“Were you burning something?” Deenie asked, the smell thick in her mouth.
Walking past the hutch, Deenie felt the ground soft with ash.
Skye shrugged. “My aunt does it. We have lots of weeds.”
The school’s bell tower chimed midnight, an ancient clang, heavy with rust and lime.
Both their heads turned.
That was when Deenie saw.
Through the dark of Skye’s zigzagging backyard, the knotted brush, there it was. Its familiar gloomy limestone, veined with soot.
“You can see the school from here,” Deenie said.
Something was coming together in her head, sharp fragments, thin as ice, assembling, sliding into place.
“Not really,” Skye said. “Until they cut back those trees after the ice storm.”
Deenie walked across the yard, straight toward the greening black of trees in the rear.
“Is this the way you get to school? You walk this back way?”
She thought she could hear Skye’s breath catch. Heard the hook of the latch on the hutch and then Skye moving behind her, toward her.
“Sometimes.”
Deenie walked to the far corner. From there, a few muddy steps and it was a clean path along the long row of hedges that ran up to the breezeway on the east side of the school.
We went behind those tall bushes, she could hear Lise saying now, her legs covered with milfoil. He took my tights off first.
“Did you see Lise back there, Skye?”
“Lise?” Skye’s eyes narrowed to slits, and Deenie knew she was close to something.
“You saw, didn’t you? What Lise did.”
Skye looked at Deenie.
“Sure,” she said, her voice changed. “I saw. I guess Gabby finally told you. I know Lise wouldn’t.”
“Gabby?”
“I saw it all,” Skye continued. “You should’ve seen the things your brother was doing to her.”
Deenie felt something crack and twist at her temple.
“What? What did you say?”
“Your brother going down on your Lise. Lise’s leg twitching like a dog’s.”
Deenie felt her neck stiffen to wood, her hand leaping to it. She couldn’t stop it, or Skye. Why Skye would say—
“She seemed to love it,” Skye said, jaw out, her lips white. “She didn’t care who saw. Your brother didn’t either.”
“You shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It wasn’t my brother,” Deenie said. “Stop saying that. It wasn’t him.”
Skye’s hand was at her mouth.
“Skye,” Deenie said, voice creaky and high, “did you do something to Lise?”
“She did it to herself.”
* * *
FOR ELI
The note was folded and stuck in the space between the storm door and the wooden one.
It was hard to read, the letters smeared and only the muzzy glare of the porch light. But once he started, he couldn’t stop to go inside.
Eli:
The first time I met you, back when Deenie and me were just freshmen, you wore a shirt with a dinosaur on it and you were practicing wrist shots against the garage. You smiled at me and waved and said if I ever had a bad day I should try it, and you showed me the dents your stick made in the door. You put your fingers in them. Deenie kept saying, let’s go inside. I couldn’t move, I felt it already.
Every time I go by the garage, tonight even, I put my hand over those dents. My fingers fit in all the grooves.
The first time Deenie asked me to sleep over, I ran into you in the hall upstairs. You said you liked my Tupac T-shirt (for the longest time after I wore it every time I might see you). I could smell the beers on you. I couldn’t breathe. I stood in the bathroom and held the sink edge. I knew I’d love you forever.
I could tell you a 100 stories like that and you wouldn’t remember any of them. If you didn’t remember the Ping-Pong, I might die.
That time we went to WaterWonders, I followed you all day. I told Lise and Deenie I got lost. I decided it was going to be the day I told you. But then I saw you talking to that disgusting girl in the white jeans, and I lost my nerve. What if I had done it. What if I had. Wouldn’t it be something if you loved me too. If all along you were waiting too.
(Even just now, in the basement, it seemed like you were going to kiss me except my hair smelled so bad. I could feel it. Were you?)
I only went out with Tyler because he was on the team so I could go to the games and watch you. I only ever watched you. I thought I could make him feel like you in my head. I couldn’t. And I couldn’t make it go away. And sometimes I was sure you felt something. (Did you?) It’s what I lived for.
So I have your phone, but I can’t tell you how I got it. I had to get rid of the picture I sent you. I was sure you knew it was me, but I guess you didn’t. (Except that awful, awful feeling I keep pushing away: you d
id know it was me and never said anything at all.)
I should have thrown the phone out. I couldn’t even turn it off. Having it the past two days, it was like being connected to you. It kept me strong. I even charged it once, held it in my hand like it was part of you. I can’t believe I just told you that. I hate myself so much.
I keep thinking about when Deenie finds out. She thinks I need her but she’s the one who needs me. I make her feel more interesting. Your sister’s a really good person. But she doesn’t know me at all. I hide myself from her. I would never want her to know. Now I guess she’ll know everything.
I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?
I believed her when she said it was you with Lise by the bushes. It was the worst moment in my life, worse even than the other. It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did. It was just supposed to embarrass her. I thought it would just make her look bad, make her head crazy a while. Maybe I wanted her to have to feel crazy for a little while.
Lise is beautiful and there is nothing dark and messy in her. Nothing bad ever happened to her that I ever heard of except her dad dying when she was a baby. She’s unmarked. No one asks to be marked up. And nothing was hard for her ever. And then she got to have you too. Or that’s what I thought. Now I have to fix things.
I wanted to play Ping-Pong with you forever. Would you have let me.
I’m just so in love with you. I just can’t stop being in love with you.
This is the first letter I ever wrote.
xx Gabby
* * *
“Your daughter couldn’t be here, sir,” the nurse told him. “Visiting hours ended at nine.”
“I know,” Tom said, “but I think she might be.”
Where else would she be? he thought. Not at home, not at Gabby’s—there was no other place.
“Sir, we have a lot going on in here right now.”
“I know, I do. I promise, I’m not being a jerk. I think she might have gone to see Lise Daniels. Can you at least let me—”
“Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Listen, can you page Sheila Daniels for me? She’ll vouch for me,” he said, though he had no idea if she would. “I promise.”