by Elliot Wake
She shut the door and locked it. Knob, dead bolt, burglar lock.
“Ingrid?”
She gave me a stark blank look, unreadable. Then she took my hand.
“Let’s sit,” she said.
I let her lead me to the sofa. No lights. In the shadows her paleness was ethereal, almost glow-in-the-dark. All I saw was the shine of her eyes.
“You are creeping me the fuck out, Inge.”
“Where’s your gun?”
My spine hardened. “Why?”
“Just tell me where it is.”
“Not in the apartment.”
“Good.” Her thumb moved over my knuckles. “You said if this ever happened, I should make sure you didn’t have access to a gun.”
Now I knew, for certain, what this was about.
I began to stand.
Ingrid tugged me back. Surprisingly strong, but I was stronger.
We rose together, entangled. She was taller than me, thinner, that lanky, boyish build I’d so envied. In high school, in the weird hours after midnight when she lay on the floor of my bedroom in her underwear and a faded tee, the graphic fragmented, indecipherable, my hand floated toward her as if someone else controlled it, traced the straight lines of her hips. I’d kill to be you, I had said. She’d rolled onto her back and stared up at me. Why can’t you see how pretty you are? she said, and a wildness in me reared. I pinned her wrists to the floor, knees astride her waist. I don’t want to be a fucking pretty girl. I want to be myself.
Ingrid lifted her chin, gave me that expressionless stare she was so good at. Empty beauty, untouchable.
“Let me go,” I grated.
“No. I know what you’re going to do.”
“So let me do it.”
“If you kill him, you’ll go to jail, you idiot.”
“I don’t care.”
“You do fucking care.” She wrenched my arms, hard. “They’ll put you in a men’s prison. Do you realize that? You’ll be everybody’s bitch. Don’t be stupid.”
My muscles tensed, firm as stone, but I refused to use my strength to overpower her. “Let go of me, Ingrid.”
“Not till you promise you won’t go after him.”
How could she ask that? For five years I’d been waiting for this. Convinced myself all too well I’d been seeing a ghost. But he was real, he was bone and skin and blood and here, and I was going to take those things from him, one by one.
“I can’t make that promise.”
“At least for tonight. God.” Her face was an alabaster mask but I heard the crack in her voice. “How many fucking times am I going to lose you?”
Fury drained. I released, and her fingers trailed down my arms.
“Promise me,” she whispered.
“Fine. I promise. For tonight.”
She pushed me back onto the couch. Sat on the coffee table, took my hands in hers. There was something so familiar in this. Like that night, years ago: me, broken, and her picking up the pieces. Building a weapon out of them.
“So. Adam’s back in town.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “Now how are we going to kill him?”
—4—
Laney was alone when I arrived. We sat cross-legged on bare hardwood, her cat curled in her lap. Sun painted stripes of gilt over his orange coat, and the smell of smoke and soap blended into bittersweet perfume. Their energy mingled here—Blythe’s fire, Laney’s ice—resulting in something volatile but contained, a hurricane trapped under a glass. Blythe said their crazinesses balanced each other out. Armin called it codependence. It was just love, I thought, between two broken girls. Two forces of nature meeting, wrecking each other, spinning out the bright shards of their mutual destruction.
Maybe I had issues with love, too.
Orion, the cat, watched me through slitted eyes as I spoke.
“I get why you didn’t tell me about Crito. I understand it very, very well. Because someone else from my past is back, and I need help before I do something crazy.”
Laney nodded as she stroked Orion’s head. “This is what I like about you.”
“Emotional instability? A hair trigger for violence?”
“Total lack of bullshit.” She set Orion on the floor. “Come on.”
We stepped onto the balcony. Windy today, a whirl of invisible blades slashing at our hair, our skin. Laney huddled in her flannel, so small and frail-looking I felt an impulse to sling my arm around her—no matter that she was one of the most powerful people in town, the black hole center of our universe. That she could crook her finger and destroy a man’s life. And had. Still, in all her willfulness there was something vulnerable. The wounded warrior, doomed, hell-bent on taking everyone else down with her. Or maybe I was projecting, like Armin. Seeing the person I used to be.
Below us the streets rushed with endless streams of light, electric veins twisting through the city’s neon heart. Laney lit a cigarette and exhaled.
“What do you want to do to him?”
“Kill him. In the most painful way possible.”
A ring of fire ate its way down her cig. “That’s pretty crazy.”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I need this, Lane.” I leaned on the railing, scraping my nails through thin frost. “I wouldn’t ask if there was any reasonable alternative.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes.”
Months ago, when I first thought I saw him, I’d told her, Either I’m losing my mind or he’s back. She didn’t judge. She didn’t try to convince me otherwise. She believed me.
Being believed feels almost as good as vengeance.
Laney ashed and the wind shredded it into a little blizzard. Her face was blank but I saw the war in her eyes. Finally she said, “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”
“You owe me.”
Her forehead creased, a fine fracture on a porcelain doll. “Black Iris is a house of cards. Threats leaning on threats, lies built on lies. He’s connected to Crito, Ren. They’re old friends. You know that. Messing with him right now could destroy everything I’ve been building up. Those cards could collapse on us instead of them.”
“You owe me,” I said again.
Her eyes closed. She sighed. “I know.”
Inside the apartment she moved pensively, aimlessly. Out of character. Delaney Keating always had a goal and always poured every ounce of energy into that goal. Now she drifted, scattered. At last she grabbed her coat and keys.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“I want to show you something.”
We took a bus east, got off in hipster wastelandia, thrift stores standing cheek to cheek with pricey bistros. Laney led me to a café that looked like a page from a Restoration Hardware catalog. This was Ingrid’s milieu. A place where people who were marginalized—but not too marginalized—could meet and talk. Queer white kids with trust funds, like her. We used to argue about it endlessly. My money doesn’t matter, she’d said. You have male privilege and straight privilege. But I will always be a woman, and a lesbian.
It’s not the Oppression Olympics, I’d said. Being a trans guy isn’t easier than being a queer girl.
She’d shaken her head. Margaret Atwood said the difference between men and women is that men fear that women will laugh at them, while women fear that men will kill them. Do you get that? I’m on the side that laughs. You’re switching to the side that kills.
I swallowed, pushing down the memory.
“How are you not breaking out in hipster hives?” I muttered as we picked up our drinks.
“Blythe inoculates me.”
“Ouch.”
Laney gave me a small, mysterious smile. “It’s what I like about her.”
“That she’s no bullshit and total bullshit at the same time?”
“Exactly.”
We took a table and people-watched for a while. I kept my face low, shaded. Laney sipped serenely at her chai latte.
“Why are we here?”
“Followi
ng up on a case.”
Black Iris maintained two sets of case files: actionable and closed.
Actionable cases were ones Laney deemed legit. They came from friends, friends of friends, an expanding network of people—mostly girls—who’d been wronged. Blythe tracked certain hashtags on social media. If he hurt you, girls said, use this tag and they’ll be in touch. My abusive ex lost his job. My cheating boyfriend got his Tinder account hacked. Use this tag; they’ll take care of the rest.
We vetted them thoroughly. Background checks, anonymous observation. Tests of resolve. We mocked up all the contingencies. Your Honor, I’ve never heard of Black Iris. I have no knowledge of those events. If a client seemed off we’d drop them flat. Sometimes Laney dropped them on gut feelings. Not her, she’d say, and close the file.
Didn’t make much difference. There was always another girl who’d been hurt.
Closed cases included our successes, too.
My job was all on the front end. My fists in a man’s face, my voice snarling in his ear. I’d never seen the aftermath—what happened to the girls we’d avenged.
Till today.
I knew her the moment I saw her. We hadn’t met IRL, but I remembered that face—it had been in a hundred pics taped to candles in the shrine her stalker ex-boyfriend built. He burned one every night as he chanted words like “slut,” “liar,” “cunt.” When he started following her to work and chanting those same words, she flashed our bat signal:
#HeWontLeaveMeAlone.
So I taught him a lesson, in twenty-nine bruises.
She took a table in the corner so no one could get behind her. Rail-thin torso swallowed in a chunky sweater, nervous bird hands fluttering, bony. Girl, deconstructed. When someone called out her name and waved, she jerked like she’d been stabbed. Then it was all smiles, hugs. The two friends sat and fell into conversation.
“How long has it been?” I murmured to Laney.
“Three months.”
“Is she getting better?”
“Does it look like it?”
From this far I couldn’t discern tone, but the girl’s eyes held a dull, feverish luster. They kept slipping away from her friend, scanning the shop. They met mine and I stared back for a second.
I knew that look.
Five years ago I walked out of a police station without pressing charges. Got on a bus and rode it from one end of the line to the other. Too scared to go home till Ingrid was there. That night we sat on the couch with our biggest kitchen knife, a chair wedged against the front door. She listened to me cry and scream and held me when I curled up in her arms, exhausted. I woke to her stroking my hair in the darkness. Her eyes had that fever glaze. That dull luster, like being drunk, but on hate. When dawn came we huddled over my laptop, and Ingrid typed: how to buy a gun in Illinois.
I looked away from the girl. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Laney dipped a fingertip into her scalding tea. No flinch. “She’s pregnant.”
So she was trapped in her body, too.
“He’ll find out.” Laney swirled the foam idly. “He’ll fight for custody to stay near her. He’ll warp that kid and drive her insane.”
“Why doesn’t she just . . . terminate?”
“It’s part of her. She loves it.”
Nausea fumed in my throat.
“This is what we do.” Laney looked up at me intently. “We help those society fails. Girls who slip through the cracks.”
“She can go to the police. She can fight him.”
“She tried. It went about as well for her as it did for you.”
I didn’t flinch, either. “Then you know how important it is to me, making him disappear. There’s no way to make it right—I just want him gone.”
“That’s how I used to think. An eye for an eye. I’d blind the whole world if I had to.” She peered at her fingertip. “It doesn’t work. The world makes monsters faster than I can dispose of them.”
“But if there were more of us—”
“If we kill every monster we find, it won’t be enough. Some will still get through. We can’t win that way.”
“So what’s the point of vengeance?”
“It feels good.” She wrapped both hands around the hot mug, her eyes gleaming. “But it doesn’t help those girls. It doesn’t make their fear stop. There’s only one thing that can cure fear.”
“What?”
“Power.”
The girl’s friend left the table to use the restroom. Across the coffee shop, a man folded his newspaper and stood. We watched him approach the girl. Watched her cringe at his greeting, muster a brittle smile. Watched him bend close, closer, begrudging her with body language. Taking up space so she had nowhere to go, nothing to do but share it with him.
Laney and I came up from behind. I clapped a hand on his back.
“Hitting on my sister, pal?”
“Excuse me?”
My fingers dug into his jacket. “You. Are hitting. On a woman. Who’s not interested. And her big brother is very protective.”
He went rigid. His eyes locked on empty air beside my face. “My mistake. Pardon me.”
Laney and I watched him leave. The girl watched us.
“Who are—” she began.
The Little Wolf slid something across the tabletop: a postcard print of an O’Keeffe painting, luscious petals parting silkily against each other, ivory, violet, onyx. Black Iris. It was unabashedly feminine, unrepentantly sexual. A symbol of female power.
“We’re looking out for you,” Laney said softly. “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.”
We were on the street before the girl’s jaw finished dropping.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said as we walked. My fists furled in my hoodie. “I know why you brought me here, Lane.”
“Then don’t ask me to do something that would endanger us all.”
“I don’t need you to do it. I’ll pull the trigger. I just need information.”
“I know what you need. And I can’t give it to you.”
I snapped to a halt, hands trembling. “That’s so goddamn selfish.”
“What you’re asking is selfish. You want me to make an exception for you when it would jeopardize everything.”
“I want you to tell me where Adam is. Give me a place and time so I can do what I need to do. Is that asking so much?”
“You’ll kill him. And that’ll put all of us at risk. You want vengeance, but it won’t satisfy you.”
“It’ll help me take my life back.”
“You have a life, Ren. It’s helping girls like her.”
“What about girls like me?”
The words shot out heavy and dense as lead. Bizarre, in a man’s voice. Laughable. Instantly I recoiled, distancing myself from them physically. Laney’s mouth had fallen open. I’d never caught her off guard before.
And I’d never said something that fucked-up.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant the past. The old me. Not—look, I spent eighteen years being called that. It’s hard to unlearn.”
“I get it.” Laney touched my arm. “No need to defend yourself.”
“But there is.” I shook her off. “Because you’re telling me we can help everybody else, except ourselves. Except me. The person who’s been hurt the most. The person who deserves revenge the most. This will help others, Lane. I’m not the only one he’s hurt, or will. He’s a monster.”
Again, something strange brewed in her eyes. Hesitation. Ambivalence. She was hiding something from me. And unlike the Laney I knew, she wasn’t hiding it well.
“What is it?” I said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I gave you my answer. Drop it.”
“Or what?”
No reply. Laney didn’t give ultimatums. She cut problems loose, regardless of whether those problems were people.
“I can’t believe you,” I said. “Ingrid is ready to do this with me. She’s got nothing—no tr
aining, no connections, but she’ll stick her neck out for me because she cares. You won’t even lift a fucking finger.”
Those bright blue eyes darkened. “I’ve done more for you than you know. Be a little less judgmental of your friends, and a little more careful who you trust.”
“Ingrid is my friend. And she’s a better friend to me right now than you are.”
“I asked you to trust me once, remember? And I gave you collateral. A sword to hold over my head.”
“I’d rather trust the girl who’s willing to kill for me than the girl who made me kill for her.”
It was insane, saying this on the street in broad daylight, but for all anyone knew we were filming some prank video to go viral. It was easier than ever to get away with this shit. So much of what we saw online was fake that people were skeptical of live reality.
“I have never asked you for anything before this. This is the only thing I need, Laney. You owe me.”
“I can’t.”
“Right,” I said, backing into the flow of foot traffic. “I get it. You won’t help me because of who I am.”
“Ren—”
“Don’t worry. Priorities understood. I should’ve known better. You only care about girls.”
“Ren, wait.”
But I was gone.
———
Run.
There was nothing else I could do. This fury needed a physical outlet. I needed to hurt someone, and the only person I could hurt was me.
I ran east, toward the water, into the long fingers of mist curling off the lake. Leaf shadows fluttered in the twilight, a collage of dark wings rippling over pavement. I was pure heat. A meteor hurtling through space, burning a trail through the cooling city.
Running reduces the world to its simplest forms. Muscle stretching, contracting. Oxygen saturating blood. An inescapable oneness with your body, no matter how ill-fitting it feels when it’s still. Ellis hooked me on running when she said it helped with dysphoria—she stopped fixating so much on being stuck in a girl’s body and instead became a nameless, wild animal, a skeleton in motion, a living machine fueled by air and water and light. Even if your body wasn’t quite right, it could do amazing things. It could convert base elements into emotional release. Take you, for a moment, out of your own skin. If you ran fast enough, you could escape the very machinery of yourself.