by Katrina Leno
“What?” he asked.
“Why a girl would believe her boyfriend over her best friend.” Magpie paused. Her heart, when she thought of Allison, felt squeezed two sizes too small. Stuck into a space it wouldn’t fit. “I guess that means she probably wasn’t my best friend anymore. I thought it happened after that, but it must have been before, right? Otherwise… why wouldn’t she believe me when I told her you made me?”
“I didn’t MAKE you do ANYTHING!” Brandon shouted, and his voice echoed even though there wasn’t anything for it to echo against. It just kept repeating and repeating until it got too far away for them to hear.
“That’s what I used to tell myself,” Magpie admitted. “It was easier to get to sleep at night if I believed it. But now it’s easier if I just tell the truth and we all get on with our lives. Isn’t that right, Ally?”
Brandon’s eyes grew wide. He turned around so quickly that he almost fell over, and there was Allison right behind him, just as pretty and mean and hard as Magpie remembered her.
“This is kinda sick,” the Near-Allison said.
“Babe? Babe, where are we?” Brandon asked, and he lunged for Allison, but she deftly avoided him, stepping to the side so he missed her and fell to his knees.
“I mean, you could have conjured up anyone,” Allison continued. “But me? That’s totally sick, Magpie. I like it.”
“I thought you would,” Magpie said.
Allison turned back to Brandon, who had scrambled to his feet again and was looking back and forth between the girls, worry spreading over his face as he realized something wasn’t right. “Well, let’s get this over with, shall we? You’re lucky I didn’t eat a big lunch.”
And the growing.
And the unhinging.
And the screaming.
And the blood.
Magpie took a seat on the grass, stretching her legs out in front of her and crossing them at the ankles, leaning back on her arms, feeling the warmth of the Near-sun on her face. She couldn’t have written it more perfectly. While Mr. James had slid neatly down his monster’s throat, Brandon struggled and flailed. It was almost as if Allison was playing with him, crunching down on the bones of his legs and then letting him almost get away, crawling across the grass on his arms, pulling himself forward before she knelt down and scooped him up again.
A neat spray of blood shot across Magpie’s tennis sneakers.
There was considerably more blood this time.
Magpie found that she preferred that.
When it was over, and Near-Allison had retreated down the hill, dabbing at a spot of red at the corner of her mouth, Magpie turned around to take the doorway back to her own backyard—oh, how soon it was until she would never have to take that doorway again!—and found Hither, almost a human now, blocking her way.
Have you noticed the water?
Magpie hadn’t, but she looked around her now and saw that the water—the vast dark ocean of Near—was closer now than it had ever been. If it got much closer, it would reach the town.
Magpie frowned. “Why is it doing that? I didn’t tell it to do that.”
Are you under the impression that you can tell your subconscious what to do and it will always listen?
“Jesus, are you just around to spout cryptic nonsense while I try to get actual, useful things accomplished?”
Hither considered.
Are you suggesting it was useful for you to swallow up your English teacher and a boy who once shoved his penis down your throat?
“Maybe useful isn’t the right word. But it sure feels appropriate.”
Are you finished now?
“Finished with what?”
Exacting this revenge.
“You make it sound so serious.”
You make it sound so negligible.
“Well, the answer is no. I have a few more people in mind.”
And you aren’t worried about the consequences?
“What consequences?”
How is your head, Magpie?
Magpie touched the back of her neck, only now noticing the dull throb that had returned to it in the moments following Brandon Phipp’s final exit.
“It’s fine. I’m getting stronger.”
You’re getting weaker. You can’t keep this up.
“Watch me.”
She tried to step around Hither to reach the garden shed, but the creature grew in size to that of an elephant, complete with several sets of enormous ivory tusks.
I have substance here, Magpie. I have solidity. I wouldn’t try your luck.
“I don’t need luck,” Magpie retorted. “Not when I have so much more.”
And in a motion she was beginning to get pretty good at, she uncapped the pen and drew a doorway.
She hadn’t tried it before, drawing a doorway in Near.
She had always used the shed to get back to Farther.
But everything was going so well.
And everything she wanted to happen was happening.
So she thought she would try.
And, sure enough, she did it.
The doorway led her right back to Brandon’s bedroom. Right back to the party. Right back to—
Allison.
Magpie had no sooner stepped through the doorway and left Near behind her than the door to Brandon’s own bedroom burst open, and there she was, the real Allison, all silky blond hair and flawless skin and cheekbones and arms and legs and mouth set in an angry little line Magpie had once been so familiar with that, against all odds, it felt a little like coming home.
“Ally,” Magpie said.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Magpie?” Allison said. Her voice was just like Magpie had remembered: an angry, sharp thing that could twist in an instant to something sweet and sugary. Magpie had never met anyone more in control of their voice than Allison. It could be a thousand different things. A close friend or a dreaded enemy. A whispered tickle or a shout to rival storms. Something like a butterfly or something like a dragon.
When Magpie didn’t answer right away, Allison moved like a force into the room, crossing to Brandon’s closet, the light still on within, and violently wrenched open the door. “Where is he?”
Magpie had to catch a laugh, ball it up, and toss it away. “You think Brandon’s hiding in the closet?”
Allison didn’t answer, but she dropped to her hands and knees and looked under the bed.
This time Magpie couldn’t help it; she burst into laughter so loud that it cut the room in two. “You think Brandon’s under the bed? C’mon, Ally, this isn’t a Lifetime movie.”
“Elisabeth and Brittany saw you walking around the back of the house together. I know he’s here somewhere.”
“Behind the curtains, maybe? You could turn on the light; that might make things a bit easier.”
Allison did turn on the light, and she did look behind the curtains, and then she hesitated, because although Brandon’s room was bigger than your average high schooler’s, there weren’t that many more places where he could be hiding. Still standing next to one of the windows, she cupped her hands to the glass and peeked out into the night.
“You think Brandon jumped out of a second-story window? Jesus, Allison, if he didn’t care that much to avoid being caught the first time, why do you think this time would be any different?”
“This time? So you admit that he was here?” Allison said, twirling around so fast that her hair flew out around her head like a fan.
“He was here. He had to go. He sends his regards.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you even here?”
“Here like Brandon’s bedroom? Or here like this party?”
“Both.”
“Well. It’s a party. You know how much I love parties.”
“I swear to God, Magpie…” Allison had begun to pace small circles in Brandon’s carpet. “Will you just tell me where he is?”
“It would be hard for me to explain. But I can show you.”
>
“Show me? Is this some kind of fucking game to you? I ruined your life once before, Magpie, and I barely even had to try. Imagine what I could do if I really put my mind to it.”
“I’m shaking in my boots—really,” Magpie said dryly. “Do you want me to take you to him or not?”
“Yes. I want to see Brandon.”
“All right, then. Follow me.”
YOU MUST NOT MISS
Allison did not fall to her knees when she stepped through the doorway into the bright day of Near because Allison did not let herself show weakness. She did not vomit or hold her stomach or do much more than clasp her hands together in front of her belly button. Magpie detected a slight increase in her breathing, but other than that, her ex–best friend acted as if it were a perfectly normal thing to walk through a doorway in a bedroom and end up in an entirely new world.
“What is this place?” Allison asked.
“Do you like it? I made it myself. It’s called Near.”
Magpie watched as Allison took it all in. Her eyes swept over the tiny town at the bottom of the hill and the waters that had grown even closer in such a short time, that were even now lapping at the base of the white picket fence that surrounded the picture-perfect copy of Farther.
Allison’s eyes landed, finally, at a little patch of grass not five or six feet in front of them.
A little patch of grass that was covered in something that looked a lot like—
“Is that…” But Allison could not complete her sentence.
In the golden sunlight of Near, the patch of Brandon Phipp’s blood shone like something made of a thousand little lights. It was so bright that it hurt Magpie’s eyes to look at it, but at the same time, she made herself do it because there was something so comforting in the physical proof that Brandon Phipp had been here, had been alive, and was now—look! blood!—undeniably dead.
“What did you do to him?” Allison asked, her voice quiet but even.
“I didn’t touch him,” Magpie responded, and she was delighted to find that this was actually true.
“Where are we?”
“Near. I told you that.”
“There’s no place called Near.”
“No place you’ve ever been.”
“You said you made it. What did you mean by that?”
“I meant exactly what I said. It wasn’t a trick.”
“You made a… town?”
“A world,” Magpie corrected.
Allison nodded her head. “Near,” she repeated, and when she said the word, she made it sound like something much more than it was. Like a curse. Like a memory. “Where is Brandon?”
“Indisposed.”
“Okay, can you cut the shit, Magpie? For once in your life, can you try to be normal? Can you just answer me? I know you’ve hurt him or…” She wavered at that, unable to bring herself to say the other possibility, that Magpie hadn’t hurt Brandon but killed him.
“Fine,” Magpie said, huffing a little, irritated now that Allison was in the world Magpie had made but unmoved by it, neither reverent nor awed nor, as if it were too much to ask, scared. “He’s dead. I killed him. Are you happy now?”
Allison didn’t cry. To be honest, the expression on her face hardly changed at all. She just nodded her head, as if to symbolize that she understood, and then she didn’t say anything for a long time, and with every second that passed by that she didn’t speak, Magpie grew angrier and angrier.
“You don’t have anything to say?”
“What do you want me to say, Magpie? I can’t beg you to bring him back. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Maybe it works like that here,” Magpie countered.
Allison’s eyes lit up with a tiny little light—a tiny glow of hope. “Does it?” she asked.
“Nope, sorry,” Magpie replied, and she savored the way Allison’s shoulders fell, the way Allison moved her hands to cover her face, the way, when she pulled them away, her cheeks had gone all red and blotchy.
“I hate you,” she said, and the words were a scream even though they were no louder than a whisper. “I’ve always hated you. From the minute I met you. You know the problem with you, Magpie? How obsessed you were with me. At first it was fun, having you as a friend—you would do basically anything I asked; it was like having my own private cheering squad. But pretty soon it just became pathetic.”
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings?”
“If I thought you had feelings to hurt,” Allison retorted.
For a minute they just looked at each other.
And then—very suddenly—Magpie realized that Allison had started to cry.
“Fuck,” she said, wiping at her cheeks with shaking hands. “You killed him?”
“He deserved what he got,” Magpie said.
“Why, because he was mine, not yours? Because I would have picked him over you a thousand times over? Because he made you suck his dick at a party once?”
Magpie bit her bottom lip so hard that white dots swam in front of her vision.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Do you think I was happy my boyfriend shoved his dick in your mouth, Magpie? Obviously not. But did he really have to die because of it?”
“You said—”
“Yeah, I know what I said. I said I didn’t believe you, right? I said you were a shitty friend who was trying to steal my boyfriend from me, right? Don’t make me laugh, Magpie. I wish you were interesting enough to do something like that.”
Magpie could hear the sound of the ocean in her ears, and for a minute, she thought the waters had grown so close that the waves were even now echoing through her—but no. It was the sound of her own blood, thick and hot and bubbling inside her.
“You knew he did that to me and—”
“Give me a break, Magpie. If I had a dollar for every guy who slipped his dick in my mouth without asking, I’d be fucking rich and I wouldn’t have needed Brandon Phipp’s horse money. So yeah. I really fucking wish you hadn’t murdered my boyfriend, but it’s not so much because of how much I loved him as it is because of how you’ve sort of butchered my entire life plan.”
Allison had stopped crying, and her face wasn’t as red anymore, but her hands still shook. Only now Magpie realized that they shook not with sadness but with anger—the kind that had filled Allison’s body from the very moment of her conception.
Wow.
And to think Magpie had ever liked this girl.
This poor, mean girl in front of her, in a too-short skirt and a bra that pushed her boobs almost completely out of her shirt. This angry, lost girl who had taught Magpie how to put on lip gloss and how not to lick it off and how to put a condom on a banana and how to braid her hair and how to act as if you didn’t care about anything in the world. Magpie had thought that this last part had been a trick, just another ploy for Allison Lefferts to pick up guys, but it hadn’t been like that at all. Allison really didn’t care about anything in the world.
It was kind of refreshing, finally, to know that.
Not refreshing enough to change what Magpie had to do, but still. There was something nice about the fact that Allison was going to go out exactly as she had lived: like a raging, unforgiving bitch.
Magpie watched as a faraway figure opened the gates that kept the tiny town of Near safe from the encroaching sea. It had to wade through several feet of shin-deep water before the ground started slanting upward, then it was on the hill again, trudging dutifully toward Magpie and Allison.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home now,” Allison said. But it was more like a demand. She crossed her arms over her chest, and out of the corner of her eye, Magpie saw the figure at the bottom of the hill pause, unsure of what it was supposed to do.
“Home?” Magpie repeated. “I’m sorry to inform you that’s not an option.”
“Are you trying to threaten me?” Allison snorted. “That’s hysterical.” She looked around impatiently. “A door brought us he
re, so I’m assuming that same door can get us out.”
“I said it wasn’t an option.”
“Seriously, Magpie, are you going to kill me?”
A staring contest.
Magpie blinked first.
Allison looked around again, then paused, looking past Magpie at something. Magpie followed her gaze and saw it, too: the thin outline of the door Magpie had drawn in Brandon’s bedroom. She must have forgotten to pull it closed behind her because through it, in a shimmery sort of quality, as if she were looking at something through air gone wavy with heat, Magpie could see the outline of Brandon Phipp’s bedroom—his unmade bed, the clothes that lay in a heap in front of his nightstand, the bureau where somebody had framed a picture of him and Allison laughing and sharing an ice cream cone. (Had it been a gift from Allison?)
Magpie took a step in front of it, blocking Allison temporarily, but she was too far away to reach back and pull the door closed. Plus, Allison had also seen the Near-shed, and the doorway that would lead her to Magpie’s own backyard. The quiet, cricket-filled night of Farther. The glow of the moon on the still waters of an aboveground pool. A swan pool float made useless now by a thousand slashes from a razor blade.
The figure at the bottom of the hill was still standing motionless, and Magpie could feel something inside her that was stuck, too, like a gear that had stopped spinning, gunked up with years of misuse, of not being properly cleaned, of macaroni and cheese dinners standing over the kitchen sink while her mother vomited in the bathroom.
“You were my best friend,” Magpie whispered.
Allison rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Name three things we have in common, Magpie. You’re like a leech. Or one of those things that will follow its friends off cliffs—”
“A lemming,” Magpie whispered.
“First it was Eryn—I mean, Jesus, she’s six years older than you, and it’s like you expected her to be your best friend and hang out with you and take you everywhere she went. And then it was me, and now it’s—who? Clare Brown? Ben?” Allison rolled her eyes again, and this time she laughed for good measure. “I’ve seen you sitting with them during lunch. Way to downgrade, Magpie. At least now you’ve got a fair shot of someone actually liking you back. Too bad they’re losers.”