Dark Song

by Gail Giles

  “The Em you used to know is so yesterday.”

  I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe what I was hearing. Em was practically entering a nunnery.

  Em cleared her throat and did the singsong thing. “So-ooooo, why are you meeting him at midnight?”

  “Guess.”

  “Oopsie. You aren’t allowed to date him. Do they know how old he is?”

  “Dad thinks he’s seventeen and he thinks that’s too old. I think he can think whatever he wants.”

  “Tick, tock — we’ve traded personalities. So, sneaky slut, have you done the deed?”

  I was quiet for a minute. Em’s tone was teetering on the edge of, what exactly, disapproval?

  “Not yet.”

  “Good, hold off for a while. You want to make sure you’re the user in the relationship — not him.”

  “Why should either of us be a user?” Anger tinged my tone.

  “Don’t get pissy.”

  “He protects me.”

  A groan from Em. “From what? You can’t be this… well, this stupid.”

  That was it. “You have no idea what this is like, Em. You have no freaking clue.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Tweety. I don’t know everything about your parents’ shit, sure, but I know the type of guy who likes younger girls. Does he give you orders? Get mad when he doesn’t have control?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hello?”

  I hung up.

  * * *

  I looked at the clock. It was only eleven thirty but I was ready to get out of this ugly, claustrophobic excuse of a house. I walked right out the front door.

  Not a block away the lights flashed from a parked car. I stopped and they flashed again. Marc? This early? He stepped out of the truck and I ran the rest of the way.

  He grabbed me around the waist, swinging me in a circle as he kissed me.

  “You’re early,” I breathed.

  “I left as soon as Dad did. I didn’t want you out in this neighborhood alone.”

  My hero hustled me into the truck.

  “When do your parents wake up?”

  “They aren’t the problem. Chrissy wakes up around six.”

  “Okay, you’ll be back by five. Does that work?” He took his eyes from the ignition switch and searched my face.

  I returned his gaze and smiled. “That’s perfect.”

  GENTLING THE HORSE

  It wasn’t perfect.

  It started out all dreamy and moody and sweet, but then… it was invasive. I pulled back, but Marc held me down and whispered that it would be fine. It wasn’t. It hurt. Pushing, jabbing, shoving. I grit my teeth and turned my head away, but Marc didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were closed tight. I don’t think it mattered who was there. As long as someone was there.

  But when it was over, he was all Marc again, kind and smiling. “I know, I know, sweetheart. It hurt and you hated it. It’s always like that the first time. It’s just something you have to get over with. It’s so unfair that it’s like that for girls.” He curled me into him and smoothed my hair. Covered my face with soft kisses. “Next time will be so much easier. So sweet. You’ll see.”

  I got back home at five and crawled into bed. I still hurt a little. The sex itself was kind of awful, but the after was wonderful. When another person looks at you like there’s nothing before you and nothing beyond… that’s what made it worth it to me.

  One thing was certain. Being bad was easier than I’d ever realized. I had always thought Em was lucky or her parents were stupid or uncaring. The reality was that anyone could do it.

  Over the next two weeks I kept the cell on vibrate and Marc texted. Love you, Marc.

  Or Text me.

  Tell me everything you are doing.

  I hate having you out of my sight.

  Make me a word picture.

  Whenever I went to do the laundry we talked.

  “Your dad is watching us like a hawk. I couldn’t talk to you at all today,” Marc said when he called at two in the morning.

  “I know. I have blisters from scraping the paint off the house. I told Dad tonight that I either need to register for school or he needs to let me set up home-schooling and study during the day.”

  “Yeah. This work is too much for you. It was fine to keep putting it off as long as we could talk and touch each other, but now… I’d rather know you’re not breaking your back, even if it means I can only watch you through the windows.”

  “I wish this was a camera phone so I could have a picture of you,” I said.

  A snapshot of Marc appeared under my pillow the next night.

  I snuck out nights to see him. Sometimes just for a few minutes. Sometimes to go to his house. For sex and then for cuddling and talk, and sometimes just for cuddling and talk. Once he showed me a documentary about a prison work program that had inmates training horses.

  “They did that at juvie, too,” Marc said. “For us older inmates.” He snorted. “I was gonna do it until they said that after we got the horse trained, it was given away.”

  I knew better than to say anything.

  “I told them to forget it. Once I make something mine, nobody takes it from me. Nobody.”

  “I wouldn’t want to break a horse anyway,” I said. “It seems cruel.”

  “You don’t break them,” Marc said. “That’s the old way. Now, you gentle them. Works lots better.”

  What did it matter? In the end the horse still didn’t have a choice. I sighed and leaned against his chest. Marc tightened his arm around me.

  On another night, his dad was home, so we were curled up together in his truck. “Tell me about it,” I said. “Why you’re here. How they hurt you so much.”

  “You know most of it,” Marc said.

  I shrugged in his arms. “I know isolated facts.”

  “Dad bailed. I don’t know, I took that… personally. I felt like he left me. Didn’t want me. It was like someone took away my anchor.”

  I took his hand and laced my fingers through.

  “I did stupid stuff, getting attention. Skipping school, shoplifting. Name some random kid kind of destructiveness and I probably did it. Nobody noticed. Or cared. Mom was worried about paying the bills and the younger kids. Dad had checked out and wasn’t checking back in.”

  He sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. “So I went big and boosted a car. Got caught. I thought Dad would come rescue me and Mom would cry and…” He stopped. “They didn’t even get me a real lawyer. Public defender. They turned their backs on me. Abandoned me.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “I hate them both,” Marc said.

  His voice wasn’t angry. It was cold, unflinching. I had the thought that he was more dangerous than his gun. I pushed that away. We had a pact. He was just a hurt boy.

  OWNERSHIP

  The party was the beginning of the end.

  “This is a party for, ummm, ‘marginals,’ ” Marc warned me as we drove out to the house where the party was taking place. “There’s goths, punks, tweakers, tokers, bikers, the way-out art crowd, and a few seriously mentals. What there aren’t are frats, teen queens, Bible thumpers, or anybody that thinks they are somebody. These people live on the edge of the map — where there be dragons.”

  “We’re here because?”

  “I have a deal to make.”

  “What kind of deal?” I asked.

  “That’s my business. Here comes my guy. You stay quiet. Got it?”

  A wave of irritation swamped me, but I was out of my element and I knew better than to make Marc mad.

  A guy that looked like a cartoon bad guy slouched up. Long, thin greasy hair. Leather vest, dirty jeans, bad teeth, gleaming shark teeth on leather thongs around his neck, miles of tats. Couldn’t he just cut the crap and pin “I am a serious badass” on his shirt?

  “You got it?” Marc asked.

  “In the back. Got my stuff?”

  Marc tilted his head.<
br />
  “Sorry, I know, man of your word and all that. C’mon.”

  Marc took my hand and towed me through the crowd.

  “The chick doesn’t come,” the badass cartoon man growled.

  The chick? Couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “Somethin’ funny?”

  Marc glared at me. I tried for composure.

  “She’s with me. She comes,” Marc said.

  “Then it’s on you,” Cartoon Man said.

  He turned his back and led the way. When his vest hiked up, I saw the gun tucked into his waistband. He wasn’t funny anymore.

  In the bathroom of the dilapidated house, the man shoved back the moldy shower curtain. Then he pulled up a black tarp. Displayed on a plywood board were handguns. He picked that up and balanced it across the toilet. Another black tarp. When that came up there were two guns. Shotguns. Sawed off. Completely illegal.

  My skin shivered. This wasn’t a handgun snapped into an ankle holster. Marc had said he had a gun collection. I pictured a rifle, a shotgun. I blew out a calming breath. Get real here, Ames. You knew there had to be something illegal. There wasn’t a gun cabinet in his house. No display. You knew. What’s different about a sawed-off shotgun? A shotgun is a shotgun, right?

  Marc picked one up. He held it down along his side and jacked it with one hand. Then again.

  He looked at the man.

  “It’ll blow a hole in an elephant. Get up close and it’s over, Grover.”

  Marc’s smile was eerie. “I love her.”

  Love her? Something flashed through me. Jealousy?

  He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a large baggie and a wad of cash.

  The man counted the cash, then opened the bag and sniffed. “Smells righteous. I got your word this is good shit?”

  Marc’s face hardened and the cobra eyes flashed. He handed the sawed-off shotgun to the man. “If you’ve ever had so much as a stem, one stem, and the weed hasn’t been mind-busting, you shoot me in the head, right here, right now.”

  There wasn’t much room to back up in the filthy bathroom, so I was pressed against the wall. Marc was… lethal.

  Shark handed the shotgun back and put his hands up. “Go home, dude. Chill.”

  “I’ll go home when I’m ready. My woman wants to dance.”

  I didn’t want to dance. I wanted to go home and crawl under the bed, but that was the old Ames. This was the Ames who howled and prowled and lunged at the throats of anyone who annoyed her. The Ames who wanted to be Marc’s “woman.”

  In the main room of the house I saw a girl with a black leather biker’s vest swinging open and unbuttoned with nothing underneath but skin. She was dancing by herself to the music. Marc swept past me. “Back in a few.”

  He left me alone. With these “marginal” people. Because of that gun. The one he loved.

  The black vest girl stopped with a stagger. “You look lost.” She pointed, her wrist and fingers limp, a vague wave. “The party bowl’s on the coffee table. Take a handful and get right.”

  I looked around. There were men here, not boys. They watched me, vulturelike. I smiled to myself. Power. It rushed through me and tingled at my fingertips and lips. If my parents had that feeling of power over me, no wonder they didn’t want to give it up.

  I walked over to the party bowl. Pills of every kind. Mix and match. Marc showed up beside me. “The idea is to grab a handful and wash it down. Nobody gets the same combination.”

  “I’m not four. I know how it works. But somebody ends up in the emergency room and I’m not looking for that to be me,” I said.

  Marc smiled, then kissed me. “I had to learn that the hard way. How old are you again?”

  “Young enough for bad to be fun and old enough to know that you have to practice to be really bad enough.”

  I pulled out of his embrace and started a swaying dance, my hands over my head. Let the men with the vultures’ eyes look. Let Marc be a little jealous when he saw other men want his woman. Then he’d see who he loved — me or a shotgun.

  Marc’s smile straightened out, his lips thin and tight, like… almost like my mother’s when she disapproved. I shimmied up to him and then away. I didn’t care about the watchers now. I was caught up in the music, relaxing to the beat, to the pulse of the other writhing bodies in the room. I lifted my hair off my neck and —

  “Stop that! People are looking at you. Stop making a slut of yourself.” He grabbed one of my uplifted arms and yanked it down, then he pulled me along behind him, out to his car.

  He drove me home in silence and stopped at the corner. When, shocked and confused, I didn’t get out, waiting for him to say something or at least come around and open my door as he usually had, he reached across my body and pushed open my door. Then he shoved my shoulder, hard. He had the element of surprise and I slid out onto the street, landing hard, the pebbles on the side of the road gouging my cheek. Marc floored the truck and the door swung shut, missing my cocked-up knee by what seemed an inch and flinging more road gravel onto me.

  I pushed up into a sitting position and inspected the cuts and scrapes, too dazed to feel any emotion, too dazed to see the cruelty. All I could think was: What had I done? Why was he so angry?

  Marc was all I had. I wasn’t ready for him to push me away.

  I slowly got up, testing my knees and ankles and brushing dirt away from my clothes when I heard the truck. Then I was bathed in the glare of his headlights. I felt my heart slow down. Like my life was banging to the adagio beat of a loud drum. Would he run me over?

  Marc jumped out of the truck with the motor still running. I flinched when he threw his arms around me.

  “What is wrong with me? I’m so sorry. Ames. Please, please. I love you, baby. I just got so jealous when I saw those guys looking at you. You were so beautiful and sexy when you were dancing and it’s like my head exploded.”

  He pulled back and looked at me, stroking my face with his thumbs. His thick-lashed eyes were deep with tears. “I’m a jerk. I know it. I’m not going to be one again. I swear.”

  He kissed me, little kisses, all over my face, then my neck, then long deep kisses on the mouth. He led me back to the idling truck and shoved me down into the seats, fumbling with my clothes and his. The sex was rough, fast and painful, but it was what I had to hold him close to me.

  FALLING

  The next night I called Marc. I knew he was still in apology mode and I could get pretty much what I wanted. I didn’t want to be shoved around anymore. I wanted more control. I needed to be more important than those guns.

  “Pick me up at midnight. It’s time I see your gun collection,” I told him.

  “Cool. You’ll love it.” He sounded relieved that I had called. Excited that I wanted to see his treasure.

  When we got to his house he tugged me straight to his closet. He opened the door, leaned forward, and pulled a chain that hung from the ceiling. A light flicked on and he pushed the clothes apart, revealing a plywood panel. He swung it open.

  I involuntarily sucked in my breath. “Jesus!”

  Guns, knives. More guns. Handguns. Rifles. Shotguns. All different kinds.

  I didn’t know much more than a cap gun from a cannon, but I think there was everything except a cannon in there. One looked like those machine-gun things you see drug runners use on TV.

  One handgun had been a turn-on. This was overwhelming.

  “Planning a war?” I asked, trying not to let on how much my head was reeling. Considering the firepower here, a massacre wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

  His eyes almost glazed over. He was dreaming standing up. His smile was small but satisfied. It both chilled and excited me.

  “Kind of like that. I think of creeping people’s houses while they sleep. Going into their bedroom and standing over them with my gun. I have the power. All the power and they don’t even know. I could take everything from them. Everything. Life. And they sleep.”

  He clicked
off the light and closed the door. “I think about it all the time. I’m going to do it soon. I am. The ultimate thrill.”

  Ultimate thrill. Yes. I shivered as that dark thing inside me crawled up my neck, trying to take hold. But the sheer number of guns shoved it down again. I backed away from him.

  Then I ran.

  I pounded out of Marc’s house and down the broken sidewalks. I ran for two blocks before I was winded and lost. All the houses looked alike. I wasn’t sure if I had turned in the right direction when I had bolted from the house.

  Marc’s truck pulled up alongside me. “Ames, wait. Please.”

  I didn’t look at him and willed my feet forward as fast as I could.

  “Ames, get in the truck. I’ll drive you home. I just want to explain.”

  “Are you going to shoot me, or just let me know that you can any time you want?”

  He slammed the truck into park and jumped out of it, leaving it running. He sprinted toward me and I poured on more speed. I couldn’t outrun him. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me to face him.

  “I’m not carrying. I swear. I saw you were freaked. That’s what took me a couple of minutes to follow. Check me.” He raised both hands palms out.

  I kicked his ankles. Nothing there. “Turn around.” I slapped the waistband of his jeans. Again, nothing.

  I took a giant step away from him and folded my arms across my chest.

  “Can I talk?”

  No answer. No reaction. I stared off to the left. Away from the charm.

  He sighed. “Okay. I moved way too fast. But you did ask to see the guns. I guess I didn’t understand how much you’ve been betrayed. They must have spun your world so hard, you lost all footing.”

  I sneaked a quick glance at him.

  “It’s not so much that you can’t trust me. It’s that you have trust issues with just about anybody. Here I go talking about creeping around.… But don’t you see, showing you all this, the guns, telling you my secret, was my way of giving you power.”

  My jaw loosened.

  “You control me now, and I know it. All this gives me the way to take care of you. How can anyone hurt you again if I’m there with the ability to let them live and make them die?”