Felice took a slow breath. “I think it’s—it’s a mistake. See, there was this really dumb letter? I don’t know. We all signed it. But I’m sure Hannah probably got really upset about it—that’s just how she is. The rest of this is—somebody got the story wrong. I’m sure she’s fine—I promise you.”
“Felice,” she said in an awful, melting voice, “I’m so sorry. It doesn’t make sense, I know. And I know how hard it is—to try to take in something like this. Someone so young. It will take you some time to process it. You have to give yourself time.”
“It’s not hard. It’s just a mistake.”
“No, dear. The police were here and I spoke with her parents. I know it’s a shock. It is for all of us.”
“Then how did she do it?” Felice asked, now challenging.
Ms. Muñoz seemed to pull up into herself. “That really doesn’t—I don’t think you need to hear about that right now.”
“But wait, just tell me, so I can explain this. ’Cause I’m pretty sure I can tell there’s a big mistake here. You just have to tell me how.” Felice couldn’t stop chattering—she felt as if she were caught in a spell of talking—as if she could talk through this situation and make things right. “Please, please,” she begged.
“No, Felice . . .”
“Then I’ll just find out from one of the other kids.”
Ms. Muñoz shook her head. Then, for a long, elastic moment, she stared at the wall, her eyes turning glassy. Finally she murmured, “She used a belt, actually.”
“A belt?” Felice felt the urge to giggle.
“Her mother—that poor woman—she found her.”
Things were starting to come into focus again. The gray light bled into the corners and clear, straight lines began to emerge, underlining everything with white rays. Felice put the V of her thumb and forefinger to her brow bone. She could feel sharp twinges there. “But that’s not how her brother did it.” She was confused, her voice weak.
“Oh. Oh no.” Ms. Munoz pressed her chest. “Oh God, I didn’t know about that. They’re supposed to tell us. Oh my God. That poor family, my God.”
Ms. Muñoz wanted to call Avis, to have her come pick up her daughter. But Felice managed to convince the counselor that her mother would be out all day, making deliveries. Recalling something she might have heard on TV, Felice said, “I’d rather be here, with my friends—it will help take my mind off of things.”
Her counselor nodded and gave her a note she could hand to her teachers at any point, that would allow her to go to the nurse’s office. For the rest of the day, Felice kept feeling as if the ground had turned spongy or that her legs were too long or the walls too far away. She sat silently through classes, registering nothing, the teachers’ masked, benevolent presences at the front of the room. Her friends surrounded her, just as sympathetic as Ms. Muñoz has been. They kissed her and stroked her hair and behaved as if Felice and Hannah had stayed fast friends till the end. No one mentioned the letter.
After final bell, Felice told Coco, Bella, and Yeni that she wanted to be by herself for a while. They gazed at her, their eyes round, and made her promise to call and check in. But Felice knew they’d start to forget about Hannah after they’d gone to the mall, had dinner, and watched TV. Walking through the echoing corridor, Felice was drawn back to the music room. She pulled open the heavy double doors, peering in as if she expected to catch some phantom of Hannah and Mr. Rendell together on the couch. She entered, staring at the vacant room and the couch in disbelief; shaking waves passed through her. She thought of the letter: its ragged edge torn from a spiral-bound notebook, handwritten in green ballpoint, decorated with daisy petals, the words: disgusting, pig, stay away 4-ever, the list of signatures, the last one—growing larger in her imagination—set off with flourishes: Felice Muir.
Ms. Muñoz hadn’t mentioned if there was a suicide note. Perhaps Hannah had responded to the letter. Maybe someone—her poor mother—would find the letter with Felice’s prominent name at the bottom. And maybe the police would come to arrest her for murder. Was that murder? Or maybe Hannah had folded the letter and put it in her pocket. And no one had ever found it and they would bury her with it forever.
That was the most horrifying possibility of all.
OVER THE NEXT couple of weeks, Felice began to feel stronger again. She started to eat, foraging from the family refrigerator whenever Avis went out. She watched great, drugging amounts of TV. One morning she went into Stanley’s room while he was at school. It was so still and solemn, the walls painted a clean ivory, the floor bare wood, a cotton sheet on the bed, a curved wooden desk that must have come from their grandmother. A bookcase filled with importance: Chekhov, Merton, Marx, The Writings of Augustine. And cookbooks—the Moosewood, the Greens, the Chez Panisse Cookbook. Stacked on a nightstand beside the bed were notebooks, clipboards, and pages of drawings and diagrams: his business plans for a variety of shops—bakeries, a deli, a fruit and juice stand. Mainly, there were ideas for an organic food market. Attached to one of the clipboards, under a big silver fastener, were curling pages inscribed in ink: Stanley’s Manifesto. Felice slipped it out from the pile and sat on the side of the bed studying the document. Stanley had worked on this statement—essentially, a list of goals—for years, adding to it when things occurred to him. Bella, Yeni, and Coco used to roll their eyes when Stanley talked about his manifesto, but Felice was privately proud of him—the idea of a boy making such a document, attempting to think about principles to live by. She’d never wanted to actually read it before, but now she held the clipboard tightly between her fingers, her breath rushing through her head.
To offer clean, healthy food.
To make the food available. Affordable.
To offer the food in a clean, appealing environment.
To get the food only from local, small, independent growers.
Grass-pastured meats. Cageless.
Produce in season only.
Sustainably-grown.
No genetically modified foods.
Heirloom seeds and produce.
No Monsanto, no Dupont, no corporate food.
Hand-crafted.
No factory-processed.
No transfats or high-fructose corn syrup.
The lists went on for pages, on scraps taped to larger sheets, papers clipped or stapled together. Toward the end, she found what she was looking for—his mission statement.
Because all people, rich and poor, young and old, deserve access to and education about clean whole food, we will be teachers, leaders, and activists first, sellers and purveyors second. These are the principles I commit myself to, to live by, always in that order. To make people healthier, happier, and smarter by bringing them better food: to contribute to the restoration of the earth, to making it a better, safer place for all people, but especially for all children on Planet Earth, to live and play in.
Felice stared at the loops of blue ink: they blurred and twinned. She thought she was holding the one thing that could save her. Instructions for getting better. She pulled out a new sheet of paper and began writing, very carefully: This is Felice’s Manifesto.
I have to find a way to make up, if I can, for the terrible thing I did to Hannah Joseph (Hanan Yusef). I confess that I killed her. I was horrible to her and I signed the horrible letter that made her do it. I have to try to make up for it. That means
I have to be judged.
I have to make sacrifices whenever I can. Big and small.
I have to be punished. It has to be the worst punishment there is. I have to go away and to leave everything and everybody.
I have to try to become a completely different person from who I was when I signed The Letter.
If there is a way to help someone in bad trouble, I have to do it.
If something awful is going to happen to me, I will let it happen, until the Judging is over. Whenever that turns out to be. Murderers get the death penalty, so maybe that will happen to me.
Signed: Felice Avis Muir
When Felice left—each time she ran away—she took almost nothing with her. The first attempt, a week later, was mostly an experiment. The police brought her home: she apologized to her parents, she went back to school; she pretended to be her old self, as best she could. But she kept her manifesto folded into a rectangle in her backpack. It took six attempts over the next year, but one day she left home for good: she made it stick.
HER HANDS SWEEP over her body, checking that she’s still alive and unhurt. The feeling of relief comes in a burst, revives her, cascading through her system—her lungs ache with a ripping influx of air. She turns toward the surf, but there’s another explosion—air shredding open, just inches past her shoulder; her hair lifted and singed.
Her magical grace broken, Felice stumbles and stumbles, clumsy and shaking. She can’t get purchase on the sand. A hand seizes her ankle, the fingers digging in, and she flashes on the way Bethany went down on the sidewalk, how Felice knew she wouldn’t get back up again. “Fuck, you stupid, fucking . . .” the man trails off, sounding almost rueful, as if sorry that this is the way things have to be. As he drags her upright, her hand touches the dimple in the sand, the nub of bullet.
She can’t see his face, just a glimmer of teeth. His hand is heavy, pulling her to her knees. The pants unzip silently. Her eyes water shut but this seems to make the roar in her ears louder, so she opens them again. His fists are full of her hair, yanking her head. She clutches his legs as if she might drown. Her senses drown, her eyes and nose full of salt, taste of limp flesh: a moan shifts through his body. She feels a frigid metal pressed into her spine, pointing down into the path of vertebrae. Tears leak from her eyes in an inert, horrible way; his hands crushing the skin at the back of her neck. She can’t breathe and she wonders if she were to do something like reach for his gun it might persuade him just to kill her more quickly. Instead she reaches carefully and cups the humid sack of the man’s scrotum as if for a caress, then squeezes with all her might, crushing his testicles. He screeches and goes straight down, banging his chin against the top of her head. He rolls in the sand, retching. Felice staggers a couple of steps, stunned. She can hear the man trying to recover himself, moaning and gasping. “You—you’re gonna die. You’re just gonna—fucking—”
Felice manages a few more steps, but she’s shaking so badly she keeps going down to her hands and knees. She can make out the man’s form, rolling over and up onto his knees, sides heaving, he lunges at her. She feels hands on her shoulders, a fierce grip, and she gasps. Her scream sails through her as she feels herself falling backwards. Then nothing is holding her down. Forms like pieces of night come loose, a thudding, sand spraying: two bodies thrashing. For one protracted, surreal moment, she thinks that the other man has caught up to them, that he and Marren are wrestling. But then she hears a choked-off straining, then wheezing, a very soft, low, stifled gurgle. After a pause, from the deep seam of the night comes a rattling, warbling sound unlike anything she’s ever heard before. She reclaims herself, trembling, curls her hands into her arms, chest hunched over her knees. There’s the sound once again, dismal and chilling.
EMERSON, CROUCHING ON HANDS and knees. She senses his hands near her, hovering, careful not to try and touch her again. Maybe he knows how it goes, has seen it happen with other street kids—attacks and rapes. “Felice,” he whispers. She wants to ask where he’d come from, how he’d found her. But shock has stripped the voice out of her, so at first she can’t make a sound. It seems possible that he might dissolve like a puff of dust—a hallucination. Finally he risks his fingertips, then his hand on her back. “We can’t stay here,” he whispers.
“You—” The whisper scrapes in her throat. “What—happened?”
“He’s done. I made sure.”
Her mind is narrow and isolated, her senses heightened to startling clarity: she can smell the topaz wisps of algae beneath the rocks and hear the crackling scurf of mole crabs plugging into the sand. “There was another one. With him.” She scans the area, but the streetlights barely reach them. Clouds twist over their heads; the beach is a dark miasma, a gaseous planet. Something rumbles low inside her, slick pain in her gut, and she runs over the sand, toward the water’s edge, barely skimming off her jeans in time. Her bowels liquefy. The surf boils around her knees as she finds and yanks free the silver necklace, throwing it into the moonlight. She finishes washing herself off, the water warm and mineral as a desert sea. But then her stomach lurches, bringing up bile and a hot streak of old alcohol. When she crosses the strip of sand to rejoin Emerson, he peels off his T-shirt so she can dry her legs. She accepts, too numb to be ashamed. He takes the damp shirt and whispers, “Someone is out here—something moving—over there.”
Her gut rumbles again, but she clenches herself. They wait in silence, looking: Felice can perceive the third presence which also seems to be soundless and motionless. Barely twenty feet away. The dead man’s body seems to be deliquescing into a black pool on the dark sand. Nothing is clear. She strains her eyes but can’t make out the other man. Finally Emerson murmurs, “Let’s move.” He helps her start walking, to orient herself along the ridge of unlit beach, to stay far from the streetlights, slipping away.
THEY STICK AS CLOSE to the water as they can—the only place on Miami Beach that doesn’t glow all night. It roars and surges, higher than ever, and makes it impossible to talk or think. When they notice the first hints of gray in the sky, they cut up into the neighborhoods. Emerson tells her that he’d gone to the Cove that evening, looking for her. He didn’t see Berry or Reynaldo, but some of the outdoor kids had seen her in the club, talking to Marren, and another had just spotted her walking out onto the sand with him. “She should not be with that guy.” The kid had pointed in the direction that she’d gone. “You better fucking hurry.” Now Emerson doesn’t let go of her hand, nor does he ask questions about Marren, for which she is grateful. They make it to Derek’s house and throw pebbles up at the window they think is his bedroom. It turns out Derek’s father is out again and Derek is hanging around downstairs on the couch, the light from the TV shuddering through the rooms.
Felice uses the toilet, sweating and trembling and hunched, while Emerson and Derek confer in the kitchen. She waits until the serrated pain in her gut eases a bit and everything inside of her seems to have streamed away in a thin liquid. After that, she washes her face and hands and she rubs toothpaste all over her teeth and tongue and the inside of her mouth with her fingers. She rinses, clutching the rim of the basin. She churns Listerine in her mouth and spits, then swallows a tiny, fiery capful. Before she goes out, she cracks the door. She hears Derek say “lose her.” He’s arguing for Emerson to let Derek and their friends take care of him. “She’ll be okay. Girls are okay—people feel sorry for them and take them in.”
“No, man.”
“I bet she’s still got parents somewhere. I hear she comes from some fucking house in the Gables. Fuck, your stupid temper anyway, man. What does she need with a maniac like you?”
“Fuck you, Derek. We’re together now.”
“You’ve gotta get serious. You don’t know who the fuck that guy was—he could have been some kind of Latin gangbanger. Or the mob—you know some of the Gambinos got a nice winter house a few blocks from here. This isn’t like the time with that scuzzball punk at the mall. Nobody would’ve even cared if he’d actually died. You need some serious lying low, for a good long-ass time. Some witness protection shit, for sure. I deal with shitheads like that, and man, they have got some scary friends.”
“Don’t talk to me about that asshole.” Emerson sounds caved in, shrunken.
“Whoa, man—he needed to die. No doubt. That isn’t under discussion. But you need to live, very much so. And you know how it goes, it’s always the same with these chicks—she was cozying up to him at some bar—everyone saw them. Some rich asshole is gonna have associates. People who care about what does and doesn’t become of him.”
/> “Fuck that loser.” Emerson says with little conviction.
“Your funeral, Sonny. I’m just saying. If you’re sticking with her, then you’re on your own. Count me way the fuck out.”
Felice moves into the penumbra of the kitchen light, puts her hand on Emerson’s shoulder. Derek gazes at something beyond the walls of the room. For a moment, silence fills the space, ticking from the cupboards, pans on the drain board. Now his flat eyes take in the two of them. “Anyone could show up here, anytime. Like my asshole brother, or Steve-o, or anyone. You gotta get as far away the better. I’m gonna call you a cab.”
There’s a fight over whether Emerson will accept a wad of bills from Derek. Finally Derek stuffs the cash down the front of his T-shirt. Emerson removes it, glowering, and pushes it into his pocket. Derek flops back on the couch. “Up to you now. Good fucking luck—I hope it’s all worth it.” But then he walks them out to the cab, hands the driver a black credit card and a small brown paper bag. Derek and Emerson clap each other in a brief embrace. Emerson turns away from him then, automatically reaching for Felice’s hand. As they pull out, Felice turns to see Derek standing in the arc of the circular driveway watching them go, his face hard and motionless.
The cab reeks of a fir-tree car freshener, Felice asks the driver to take them to Homestead. The young black man squints at them in the mirror. “Where you want?” His accent is so thick the words are nearly unintelligible. Felice repeats her request slowly, gesturing south. His eyebrows lift. He turns off the meter saying, “Good he give me the card number then.” She slides down in her seat until the back of her neck touches the low, molded upholstery. The car bounces over ruts in the streets, beads and medallions swinging wildly from the rearview mirror, and a drizzle starts, stippling the windows. Not until they’re approaching downtown does Felice feel some inkling of the night before. She has spent so many years awakening in unpredictable circumstances that she is almost accustomed to the dreamy, stifling sense of things, the acceptance of any terrible possibility. Traffic streams by, shadowy in the half-light, and Felice cranes around, studying the swirl of cars. Twice, she becomes convinced that she sees the green Maserati, but all the convertibles have their tops up in the rain, hooded and anonymous. Each car that quietly passes them seems like another miracle.
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