by Emma Kress
“Because,” Kiara says, “it’s not right, Dyl.” We’re all quiet. I’ve never seen Kiara go against Dylan.
Dylan just blinks at her. “Wait, what?” she finally says.
Kiara’s lips are tight. “This is going too far. It’s wrong, Dyl.”
“He’s wrong!” Dylan shouts.
“I understand wanting revenge, Dyl. I do. But I can’t do this with you.” Kiara’s voice is soft, steady. “You know I can’t.”
“I don’t know.” Dylan’s chest is heaving. “You’ve seen what Kups is like.”
“I have,” Kiara says. “But Dyl, I’m Black. You’re white.”
“And?” Dylan’s face is red. “I’m poor. You’re rich.”
Kiara’s face is so still, too still, and I feel like none of us should be witnessing this because they both look scraped raw. “Yeah, and you shouldn’t be doing this. No matter what. But I can’t do it. You can’t be Black and fuck up that hard. You get do-overs. I don’t.”
“I get do-overs? Me?” Dylan stands, her fists clenched at her side. “You know exactly what I’ve been through. How many—” She shakes her head and I can see her eyes squeeze tight against the tears. She walks away, Kiara close behind.
Even though they’re walking side by side, I feel the space between them stretch. It’s not a rubber band that will snap easily back into place. It’s a crack spreading into a canyon.
I look at Liv.
That can’t happen to us. She has to get it. She has to see that Dylan and I—and the rest of us—are right.
Bella’s doing the same thing with Sasha. Saying something about how their dad takes them to the gun range every year. How they know how to be safe. I pull Liv aside. “Think about how good it would feel to finally put Kups in his place,” I say.
“I am thinking of how it would feel. I just think we have different ideas about what would feel good.”
“I can’t believe you won’t do this for me. You’re my best friend.”
“Exactly. Which is why you should listen to me. Zo, this is a bad idea.” She sighs. “Besides, I thought this wasn’t about you.”
“It’s not!”
She tilts her head at me. “This isn’t about what happened with Reilly?”
“Of course it’s about that. But it’s not just about that. It’s about—” I almost say it’s about what happened with Nikki and Jamison. But I don’t. That’s Nikki’s story to tell. I look at Nikki, plotting already with Bella and Quinn. “It’s about taking the school back from them. I’m not even sure we ever had it to begin with. But this is the way we can get it back. It’s about all of us feeling safe.”
“It doesn’t feel messed up to you that to feel safe you have to make someone else feel unsafe?”
“Um, no. Not if that someone is Kups. He’s making Dylan’s life hell. The dean said his parents thought about pressing charges against her. Against Dylan. Everything is slanted in their favor. We’re just—”
“Leveling the playing field?”
“Exactly!”
Liv exhales. “I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, Zo. I think that’s what we were doing when we were saving people. But that’s not what this is. Zo—” She looks at me and I feel like there’s pity in her eyes, which is messed up because there’s nothing to pity here. “Zo, this is serious stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to threaten someone with a gun.”
“Yeah? I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to sexually assault people and run them off the road.”
“And you’re willing to risk everything—your scholarship—for Kups?”
“It’s not for Kups. It’s for Dylan, for us. Besides. What am I risking? It’s all of us against him and we’ll wear masks and have a gun.” She widens her eyes at me. “Oh please, Liv. It’s not like it’ll be loaded. You’re making such a big deal of this.”
She sucks in her lips and nods. “Okay.”
I squeal and put my hands on her shoulders and jump. “You’re in?”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m just done trying to convince you. I’m not in.”
We stand there for a minute looking at each other. There’s so much distance between us she might as well already be in London.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“I’ll catch a ride from someone else.” My voice feels quiet.
She walks away, and she doesn’t turn around. Not once.
I look back at those of us who remain and realize that we’re all white. It’s an uncomfortable feeling.
I think of what Kiara said to Dylan about being Black. I remember how Kiara was the first one daring enough to tell her story. It’s not that this isn’t important to Kiara. It’s that she can’t be the one to respond. It’s just more evidence of how screwed up our society is.
So we’ll respond. We’ll fight back for every girl who’s been leered at in the halls, cornered at a party, run off the road.
I text Dylan.
I was right to push that kid off the bridge, just like I was right to have this whole idea in the first place. If I could, I’d stick that gun barrel in all their faces. Kups. Jamison. Reilly. And anyone else who dares to mess with us.
All this time, we’ve just reacted. Their game, their rules, their refs.
It’s time to change the game.
THIRTY
AVA: You’re really going through with this?
ME:…
There’s no point in answering. I’m not going to convince her, and honestly, I don’t even want to. We planned for hours last night, worked everything out to the tiniest detail—thought of every contingency. Nikki, Dylan, and I are the lucky three. After, we’ll all go back to the triplets’ house for a sleepover that will be the perfect alibi. We don’t need the others.
AVA: U remember we have a game tomorrow right?
AVA: Not just any game
AVA: Regionals
AVA: U know, the game we need to win to get to the state semifinals in the dome?
AVA: The thing we’ve been talking about all focking year?
ME: Of course I remember. Don’t do this.
AVA: ME? ME don’t do this? How about u?? You’re risking everything for what?
Nice. It looks like Ava and Liv have been talking behind my back. But they can talk all they want. I get that this doesn’t make sense for them. But it’s not just about them. This is for all the girls. And it’s what’s right.
ME: Can we just agree to disagree?
AVA:…
ME: U can still come u know.
Silence.
It’s okay. I don’t need her approval. I’m ready for this. I’ve been ready.
Wearing our black masks and clothes, we meet in the woods outside the school right after the Friday-night game begins. The November wind breaks at the tree line, but the cool air still finds us. I stomp my feet on the fallen leaves to keep warm while I wait for my turn. Nikki brought her cousin’s gun, Dylan brought one from home, and the triplets brought their dad’s. So we each get one.
Bella hands me the gun and I expect it to be cold. It isn’t. But it makes me shiver anyway. Or it makes the air shiver. It’s heavy in my hands, like it knows what it can do. I brace myself to rack the slide the way the triplets taught us. The slide is the thing that’s cold. To force the bullet into the chamber, I have to pull the slide, hard.
Kuhcheck.
The sound is loud in the night. I wrap my right hand around the grip and cup its base in my left. I lift it and look through the sight at a knot in a distant tree. Slowly, I squeeze the trigger until I hear the click in my ears. The sound rockets through me.
The chamber is empty. Nothing happens. But in that sound, everything happens.
We run to his truck. Dylan found out that he never locks his truck on game days, and sure enough, when we try the door, there’s no lock, no alarm. Dylan crawls into the footwell under the passenger seat, while Nikki and I crouch in the back seat.
“Uck,” Dylan says. “It reeks in here.”
“Well,” Nikki says, “to be fair, leaving the door unlocked did get a bunch of girls in his truck. Just maybe not with the idea he had in mind.” She laughs in nervous, short hiccups. Nikki’s usually graceful, but now, clutching the gun in her hands, her shoulders twitch.
I think of the triplets, safe, outside. They’re walking around the parking lot. Ready to signal us or create a distraction.
“Only Kups would base life decisions on some movie he saw,” Dylan says from the front seat. I wish I could see her.
“What?” I can’t remember what we’re talking about, and the game is loud outside.
“The whole leaving-the-door-open thing. He saw it in a movie. After a guy made a touchdown, a naked girl waited in his car. Ready to fuck him.” A pause. I’m sure she’s rolling her eyes. “There is no touchdown that would ever make me want to screw Kups.”
Nikki’s restlessness is contagious, and I try to look anywhere other than at her. A gun rack eclipses the rear glass. I’m not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing that it’s empty. “Check the glove compartment,” I say to Dylan.
“It’s locked,” she says. “But I’m in front of it anyway. He can’t get to it. Besides”—I hear a click—“I have a gun. No matter what, he’s outnumbered.”
Inside me the snake is uncoiling. It’s shed its skin. Its new skin is shiny, smooth. It’s circling, scales against scales, spiraling up up up.
The buzzer signals the end of the game. I glance at Nikki gripping the gun with both hands, the way we did in the woods. Mine is heavy. Thick. It doesn’t feel hollow at all. It feels like I’m holding everything in my hand.
I’m hot and cold all at once. I exhale and close my eyes for a beat. He deserves this. They all deserve this.
I hear the footsteps of the crowd, car doors opening, engines turning. Lights flash across the night sky, and I wonder what the other girls are thinking. The three of us don’t dare to speak.
The snake is filling me up, round and round and round it goes.
They all deserve this.
The lot feels empty around us, the other cars far away. There are no voices anymore. I know the players will come out last, but time feels frozen in here, while everyone outside this truck is moving and living and breathing.
Also, it’s really hot.
Then I hear his voice. I look at Nikki, and her eyes are set, determined. I feel bad for Dylan up front. At least I have Nikki.
They deserve this.
We duck deep behind the front seats. Our backs will blend into the car’s upholstery. I’m more worried about Dylan being spotted.
Time stretches.
Then the door creaks open and it’s so loud I almost scream. It’s just another bottled one to add to my collection. The gun is shaking and then I realize it’s not the gun but my hands, my hands are shaking, and the gun feels too heavy so I press it between my knees. I hear him toss his bag onto the seat. This would be the moment he’d discover Dylan.
But he says nothing. He turns the key and the engine shakes the floor beneath me. Every sound an explosion.
I look at Nikki. Her eyes are focused.
He turns on music, loud and screamy. The truck rumbles slowly through the parking lot. I hear the beat of his fingers on the wheel, off tempo. I count the stops, feel the turns, picture where we are. We need to do it off the main road. But we don’t want to stray too far from school, too far from our escape.
I am not worried. We planned it all out. It’s not worry that shed the skin of the snake, that made it uncoil, that made it rattle the bottled screams on their shelves. It’s something else entirely.
I look at Nikki. She nods. I risk lifting my head to look out the window. He’s turned off the main road, just as we knew he would. The woods bordering the school are on our right. Exactly like we planned.
I nod at Nikki. I lift up and place the barrel of the gun to his neck.
“Shit!” He screams and swerves wild into the other lane. The headlights of an oncoming car blaze across the truck’s insides before he jerks back. The car’s horn is long and loud as it passes. But it is not worry that’s rising in me.
Nikki presses play. Our prerecorded male voice says: “I have a gun. Pull to the side of the road. Slowly.” You can find anything online.
He starts crying. Blubbering. Like immediately. I want to laugh. Look at you now, Kups. He’s a cracked dam, a busted water main, a flash flood.
Dylan pops up holding her gun too.
“Oh shit!” He swerves again. “Oh shit!”
Nikki presses play again: “Keep your hands on the wheel. Pull over to the side carefully. And keep your eyes forward. You look at us, you die.”
He slows down. Another car passes, but the rest of the road is empty. All the traffic from the game is long gone. He pulls over.
He parks. There are no cars or streetlights. Dylan holds the gun on him, while Nikki and I get out. I open his door, gesturing with my gun for him to get out. Nikki steps out, her gun at his neck. I put mine at the small of his back. He doesn’t notice that we’re smaller than his three hundred pounds of stupid. He’s too busy crying.
I walk him into the woods, Dylan and Nikki flank us, guns out.
He’s really crying now, hands up in the air. His whole body shakes with the sobs. My snake is free now, slithering along on the ground beside us, weaving between our feet, ready to bite if I give the word.
Our feet crunch on dried, dead leaves. There’s no beauty in the way they fade and shrivel. This is where he deserves to be. With the dead things.
Nikki presses play again. “On your knees. Hands behind your head.”
I rock back my slide. Kuhcheck. Then Nikki. Kuhcheck. Then Dylan. Kuhcheck.
The sounds send him over the edge. With each one, he breaks more. He’s bawling, begging. “Please, please,” he cries again and again.
I think I see a patch of wet spread across his pants. I think I smell it.
He’s disgusting. They’re all disgusting. I remember the way he called after us, took her stick, our stick, turned it into something ugly, something his. Eyes like knives cutting our bodies into pieces like they’re his to slice. Jamison and Nikki and running onto the beach buttons all wrong, my buttons all wrong. He no buttons no zippers basketball shorts his hands on me on my body not his body his elbow my neck no breath ripping at my jeans him laughing on the stairs my stairs my school. Mine.
He got away with it. They all get away with it.
I move my gun from his back to his cheek. I press the hard hate into his skin. I want them to feel me in their skin like I feel them in mine. I press harder. He whimpers. I rotate it. I wish it had blades on the end so I’d cut a circle. Leave a mark.
Tattoo my anger on their skin.
Dylan kicks him from behind and his face eats dirt. He’s crying so hard he’s making mud with his tears. It’s so perfect. So perfect that he’ll leave here bloody and muddy just like he made her last week.
Nikki presses play again. “You have been found unworthy.”
He sobs.
“You are unfit to live.”
He wails. “Please, please.” He curls into himself. “I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
“Women do not exist for your pleasure. If you don’t change, we’ll end you.”
His face is a mess of tears, snot, and mud. His fat lips are trembly and weak.
My finger feels heavy on the trigger. The snake is coiling around my ankles and it would be so easy to just pull the trigger. It would scare him that much more.
The triplets said you must never pull the trigger when aiming at someone. Even if you think the chamber is empty. Because you never know. But my finger feels heavy and the chamber is empty. I checked. The snake rustles the dead leaves.
Gunshot.
THIRTY-ONE
TIME STOPS. I AM THE hands on D
ad’s watch. The snake is gone. The bottled screams are gone. The broken glass is gone.
I look at the gun in my hand.
I didn’t. I know I didn’t.
I drop it.
I poke Kups.
He howls. Screaming for God and Jesus and who knows who else. So he’s not dead. “Please, please don’t hurt me.” So he’s not hurt.
Nikki waves me on and takes off. Dylan tugs my arm. Right. Someone could have heard that. I jump up. I crash across the leaves and remember the gun.
I run back. He’s still sobbing, still curled, still a mess. I can’t see it. I get down on all fours and search around. With every rustle of the leaves he cries louder. Finally, I find it and grab it off the ground.
I run. I run faster than I ever ran on the field.
I think I hear him following us, but when I turn, I can’t see anything. I lift my mask up so I can breathe. But when I do, I trip over a root and fall down. My knee slams against something hard.
I’m sure I hear the leaves rustle behind us.
“Come on!” whispers Nikki as she pulls me up.
We jump over a broken-down stone wall at the edge of the woods and sprint to the parking lot of the dead strip mall next to the school. The triplets wait for us. Part of me wants to collapse into their arms and the other part just wants to keep running and never stop.
“We heard a gunshot.”
“Was that a gunshot? It could’ve been a car backfiring.”
“It wasn’t a car,” Nikki says, glaring at Dylan.
“You shot him?” Sasha nearly shouts.
“Shhh. No, he’s fine,” I say. “Totally fine. We need to go.”
“But—”
“She’s right. We’ll talk at your house.”
We split up. Nikki’s driving me and Dylan. As soon as we close the doors on the others, on what happened, on the world outside, Nikki spins to Dylan in the passenger seat.
“What the actual fuck, Dylan?”
“Oh chill. He’s fine. And honestly? Would it be the end of the world if he wasn’t?”
Nikki’s eyes go wide and her arms straighten on the steering wheel. Her hands are exactly at ten and two. Just how they taught us in driver’s ed.