He pulls back. Appraises me. His gaze lingers around my mouth.
“I feel it, you know,” he says.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“The heat between us.”
“But I won’t come between you and Maxine,” I say. “She loves you. She told me so.”
“She’s not ready for me, though. She still needs to work through the sickness she brought with her.”
I busy my hands so I don’t blurt something that’ll get me killed. Like: Lay a finger on her I’ll bash your brains in.
“It’s been right in front of me the whole time,” he mutters. “I can’t believe it took me this long to see it.”
“What has?”
“Moses had three wives. King David had seven.”
Before I can think, move, talk, his mouth lands on mine.
He thrusts his tongue into my mouth. Searches with it. I command myself to keep my tongue there, keep it flat, instead of giving in to the instinct to jerk it back, swallow it down, way down into my gut, choke on it, even, if that’s the only way to keep it from him.
“Mmm, you taste good,” he whispers, his mouth still on mine.
You like the taste of death, motherfucker?
He brings his hands up to the tangle of my hair. He pulls his lips away from mine and presses his face against my scalp, inhaling deeply. “And you smell good too.”
Using dish soap I’d found in the kitchen, I washed my hair last night at the pump. I was weirdly proud of that accomplishment, of at least the outside of my head feeling more normal. I don’t have a comb, so my hair’s a knotty mess. I wish I had kept it dirty.
He kisses my neck. Bites my earlobe. I manage to keep my shoulders from stiffening and not knee him in the nuts.
I know that no matter how still I remain, it won’t end here.
But I know I will do it.
For my sister.
35
HARPER
“Lunch can wait,” he says, taking my hand like it’s a marvel, newly discovered. He turns it over and back, then his eyes bore up my body.
“Later,” I say. I try to make my voice sound promising, demure, coy. Instead of trapped. “Tonight.” After you’ve eaten.
He drops my hand. Practically throws it back to my side. “I need to see you in the daylight.”
“But lunch will spoil.”
“Nothing here’s gonna spoil.” He shoves the dry faucet with the heel of his hand so that it spins around and slams into the backsplash behind it. “Yes or no?”
The girl who wore the Skechers. The girl with the little beaded purse. The girl who owned the peasant blouse. They lost. I won’t lose.
My breathing labored, my steps wooden, I follow him to his cabin. It’s the one closest to the road, no doubt so he can keep watch. There’s a cedar hugging the building, a nest in its low branches. A mother bird feeds her noisy young. I want to know what kind of bird this is, as if my survival depends on it. My view of her isn’t clear, though. Another bird swoops over and perches beside the nest. A flutter of tomato red against the tree’s browns and greens. That one’s easy to ID: the good dad, the male cardinal.
The monster’s already in his lair. Waiting for me. Expectant.
I don’t think I can step inside the cabin. It’s dim in there. Birdless and treeless. Play the game. Hide your fear. My feet resist until I command them. Max. This is for Max.
I’m inside. There’s not much here. A wicker chair. A sleeping bag on the dirt floor. A lantern. A milk crate holding a canteen, a couple of towels, a few blocks of partially carved wood. On one wall, a poster-size cross, crudely cut out of what looks like pine. Twenty times bigger than the necklaces in our cabin. On the opposite wall, a set of antlers, wide as wings and sharp as pain. There are two small windows, but one is boarded up. From in here, it’s easy to think of the sun as small and struggling to reach the earth. The air is hot, and still, and close.
He whips the knife off his hip. I flinch. I hope he doesn’t notice. That wouldn’t be playing the game.
He sets his weapon on a high shelf, one I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to reach. Not in the body I’m in. Not that he needs it—the way he reaches up and brings his hand back down is knifelike.
He takes off his shirt in one swift movement, tosses it on top of the crate. He’s got a Mxine tattoo on his arm. He touches it.
“That means forever,” he says. “But Max won’t care this time.”
Skechers. Lip balm. Purse.
Fierce, unyielding Max. Why is she still alive? He must have something special planned for her.
I move to the window. Inside, I’m flailing. “Max is a good person.”
“Her soul is immaculate. I see the way she mothers those boys.”
Then why take her away from them? I want to scream. But that would be violating the rules of the game.
“What were things like for you when you were a boy?” I ask with as much gentleness as I can spare. Who hurt the child so he’d hurt us? And can knowing that help me now?
He steps forward, pressing me against the window. “Relax,” he says, and reaches under my arms and lifts the pane, setting a wooden block under the sash. He places my palms on his pecs. His skin is hot and smooth. The smell of him—musk and metal—is all up in my head. Before, when I was only Harper, we saw each other three times, and we made out, fully clothed. He hadn’t even tried to sneak his hands under my shirt. I thought he was such a Southern gentleman. And then, when I told him I had a boyfriend, he knocked me out and left me to drown.
He presses my hands down more firmly on him, twitches his muscles under my touch. I force my hands—mine but not mine—to behave.
“What do you see in me?” he asks.
“Ah, so many things.”
“Like what?”
I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. The dust motes over his shoulder churn in the slant of light. I don’t need to look into his face to know he’s glaring.
I say, “It’s just that I don’t want to come between you and Max.”
He rears back. “Don’t bring Max into this.”
“You’re strong. Confident. Devout.”
“What else?” A muscle jumps at his jaw. His eyes dart all around my face until they pounce on my mouth. Like he’s scanning for a lie.
“Handsome, of course.” I thought so when I met him at Tracey Bigelow’s party, when he handed me a beer and introduced himself as Tyler.
He smiles. A smile I would’ve said was winning before. “‘Man and woman shall cleave together and become one flesh.’”
I turn and face the window head-on. Where’s the bird family? I need the babies’ unbroken chorus of cheeps, pure and clean and innocent in this filthy room. I catch my reflection in the glass. I can almost convince myself I’m not borrowing a body.
“You’re thoughtful,” I say.
“How so?” He parks his hands on my hips.
“You let me and Max sleep on cots, but you only have a sleeping bag.”
“I want the best for Max.”
I’m still in list mode. “You’re hardworking. Smart. Resourceful.” Paranoid. Damaged. Deranged.
He spins me around and shushes me with a finger against my lips. The smell of metal is stronger in my nostrils. “You did good.” He does that staring thing again, and I have to work hard to hold his gaze. “You have pretty eyes,” he says. “They’re the color of cornflowers.”
And yours are the color of wrath. “Your eyes. That’s another thing I like. They show who you are.”
“The eyes don’t lie.” He tugs the blouse’s elastic sleeves off both my shoulders at once like a magician unveiling the finale. “And now we’re done with words,” he says, a guttural drag in his voice. He rests his calloused palms on my shoulders for a moment, then hooks fingers under my bra straps and slides them down my arms.
Breath escapes me. I close my eyes.
“Open them,” he commands. “You need to see me seeing you.”
I obey.
He roughly yanks everything off, bra and blouse, and takes a step back to take me in through a wide lens. Despite the heat in this musty hut, my skin goes cold.
“What did man do to God’s beautiful handiwork?” he asks. As if it’s a zipper, he travels a finger up and down the scar, whistling low. “What happened to you?”
“Bad heart.”
“Fuck’s sake, that looks serious.” He brightens. “But God chose you to survive.”
I clear my throat. “I’m grateful.”
“I’ll bet you don’t like people knowing about it.”
I don’t know which answer he wants to hear, so I stay quiet and cast my gaze downward. I’ve been standing up so long. Years, it seems. I’ve been told Linnea’s body is small, but I am carrying so much weight. My head is too light and my body too heavy. My vision flickers.
“A flower so few get to see,” he says to himself, turning to the chair. He removes his boots, jeans and boxers and faces me again.
The old Harper knew how to conceal. How to pretend. Ezra asking where I was when I didn’t want him to know. Mom asking where I was when I was supposed to be at school. Harper knew how to spin stories, how to sound convincing. Why now … why is this the moment I’m feeling less like myself than ever? It’s as if Linnea’s body gives me away. Judging by her goofy friends and how they talked about her, she’s never cut class, or snuck out, or smoked a joint in a boy’s Mustang. Or …
Will her body betray me?
He’s kissing me now. I try not to squeeze my eyes shut in disgust but let them flutter closed like when I kissed Ezra.
I’m kissing Ezra. Kissing Ezra. Kissing Ezra. Kissing E—
“I like your enthusiasm, girl.”
He doesn’t remember my name. Linnea. Harper. Girl with the beaded purse. Just not Max.
He tugs the drawstring at my waist.
If I’m the one bargaining for my life, where does that leave Linnea? Whose body is being sacrificed? She can’t give consent. Whose life am I saving? Whose life am I ruining?
My pants fall to the floor when I suck in my breath. I wish I could undo the breath.
He moves his lips to my chin, to the curve of my throat. His hands are on my shoulders like he’s preparing to rip me in half down the middle. He moans. I imagine having the knife in my hand, burying it into the back of his neck.
He misinterprets my shuddering. The shuddering I tried to keep inside.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”
I can’t stop shaking. My knees buckle.
“Whoa!” He catches me before I hit the floor. “Whoa, girl!”
He scoops me up like I’m weightless, gingerly carries this body to the sleeping bag. This body I’ve borrowed. He lays me down on top of the bag, the zippered flap bunched under my hip.
“Christ, are you sick?” he asks. He’s on all fours above me, his fists on either side of my head.
“I need … I need my heart medicine.” For the first time, I consider maybe it’s not only that, but the sliver of mushroom already working on me.
Something flits across his eyes. Regret? Remorse? Genuine concern? And then the something is gone. He scoffs. “You need faith.”
I press my palm over my eyes. To stop the spinning. To hide the tears.
“And maybe some protein,” he snaps. “I’ll get the trap working, get you and Max a stupid squirrel or something.”
“Thank you,” I barely edge out.
He sighs. “You rest up, darlin’.” He pats my leg and straightens up.
Oh, sweet Jesus, is he leaving me alone? Oh, please, leave me alone.
He’s putting his boots on.
Wait … only his boots.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“To Max. God wouldn’t put this desire in my heart if he didn’t want me to use it.”
Your heart? It’s in your fucking prick. Now I feel all Harper again. No muddledness. No tug of contradiction. Mind over body. Sorry, Linnea. I’m giving something of yours away. Letting it be stolen. Forgive me. But for Max, I must.
“No!” I say. “I’m ready. Max needs more sleep. I’m here for you.”
I prop myself up on an elbow. Every muscle hurts.
He glances through the window in the direction of the cabin where Max lies. I pat the sleeping bag. He kicks off his boots and stands over me, blocking the sun.
“Max is the one,” he says, flipping back the sleeping bag flap with his bare foot. “But you’ll be her surrogate.”
“Yes.” And after, I will kill you.
“For whenever I need you.”
“I understand.” That you’re soulless and sick.
“No matter what, you’ll never be Max to me.” He rips the sleeping bag flap out from under me so that the surface I’m on is wholly flat. And then he descends.
I wonder how many different ways the same person can die.
36
MAXINE
I’m alone. Dusk bleeds into the window, turning the light in the cabin to flame. There’s faint scratching on the roof. And then the scrabbling sound speeds up. From the prison of this cot, I can see a flash of squirrel as it bolts down a tree, another at its heels.
I hear Chris’s heavy footfalls on the warped steps outside. I may not know who Chris is. Who he really is. But I know him better than Linnea does, even if Linnea thinks she has a ribbon of Harper curled within her.
Pretending isn’t going to get us anywhere but dead. And she looks half there already. The fact that pretending is the extent of her plan makes me crazy.
I close my eyes before the doorknob creaks. Not because I am pretending, but because I don’t want to see his face.
He steps inside. He’s probably ready to feed me more drugs, which he hasn’t been able to do with Linnea around. I’ll bite his fucking finger off if he tries it now.
He strokes my cheek, sweeps the hair off my forehead. He smells like rotting leaves. And campfire ashes.
“I love you,” he whispers.
I work hard to keep my facial muscles slack.
“It didn’t mean anything,” he says softly. “It just … happened.” What is “it”? My God, he killed Linnea.
He sighs, gently plays his fingers over my shackled hand. “No matter what she says, you’ll always be the one who has my heart. I promise.”
Oh. So he didn’t kill Linnea. Thank God.
I hear the jangle of his keys. Gently and slowly, like I’m made out of the thinnest glass, he adjusts my arm so he can get at the lock. I hear it snick open. Still feigning sleep, I feel him bring my hand up until it stops at his mouth. He kisses my knuckles.
And then, just as gently, he lays my arm back at my side.
I hear him walking toward the door, his heels dragging in the dirt. He stops.
“Maxine,” he says, “I know you can hear me. And I want you to hear this: no matter what the girl thinks, it has to be you and me. No matter what. Alive or dead. Us.”
He walks out.
37
HARPER
I’m back in the kitchen. My body feels like an empty husk, like he scraped everything out of it but the stubbornly beating heart. And because I’m still alive, I feel something. Past the horror of what I let him do to me. Past the horror of what I let him steal from Linnea. Something else. Something physical: a numbness at the base of my skull, tiny tremors in my fingers, a feverish flush. Nothing like the weakness and shortness of breath from being without those meds Alma and Julie warned me I needed.
She didn’t lie.
“Thank you,” I breathe.
Fall semester of tenth grade, I was on the debate team. I soon realized that being in antagonistic roles with people I wanted to hang out with wasn’t for me. One of our debates was about capital punishment.
Of course I argued against it. I used to believe—really believe—that every life was worth saving, no matter what. I know better now.
Before he climbed off
me, he whispered that just the two of us should eat “dinner” (as if anything we do here can be given sane-world labels) in the cafeteria. “Make it special,” he said, planting one last kiss on my neck.
“Let me borrow your knife,” I said, “so I can make a proper meal. So I can mince and dice and chop.”
“Never mind,” he said with an infuriating chuckle. “It doesn’t have to be that special.” And then, his tone stripped of everything but warning: “You’d best not mistake me for stupid, girl.”
And with that, he left me to clean up the blood between my legs.
I don’t care where we eat, as long as he eats. And eats enough.
For once I’m glad Max is confined. That will keep her safe. She doesn’t have the heart for a game. I’ll be able to unlock her soon enough. Once the poison’s humming through him, I’ll snag his keys, free her, and we’ll use his truck to reenter the world of the living.
Judging by the sad kind of light leaking into the windows of the caf, it’s late afternoon. Even on the best of days, this is my least favorite time of day. Always has been. Of course as a kid I didn’t have the word for nostalgia, but I had the feeling. Daylight’s low simmer, before it burned out completely, made me feel like I was missing something I couldn’t quite remember, and wasting something I’d carelessly forgotten. I never grew out of that.
On this particular afternoon, as far away from the best of days as I can imagine, the wistful tone of dying sunlight triggers a whole new kind of sadness.
The world has shrunk down to something too small and at the same time too big to manage. As if Max and I are puppets in a theater, Tyler has become our world. And the world is monstrous.
Watching my hands that aren’t my hands, I use a wooden spoon with gnaw marks on the handle to coax the mushrooms around the hot pan until they hiss and shrink, curling into themselves like comfort. This is my portion. In the smaller cast iron pan.
I back the pan off the flame, shroud it with a dishcloth, and set it aside.
I took my power
I add different mushrooms to the larger pan. This is his portion.
in my hand
I sauté them with sprigs of fresh dill I tore from the overgrown herb garden out back.
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