Girls on Fire

by Robin Wasserman

Sometimes, as I was trying to fall asleep or trying not to, listening to the other girls dream, I remembered home and the people who’d driven me away from it. I counted the trespasses of mine enemies.

  I made lists.

  It’s important to remember who your enemies are. What you would do to them if you could.

  What would you do if you could do anything? What would you do in the dark if you knew you would never be seen?

  What would I do if I got to go home?

  Awake, I made lists; in my dreams, I crossed off names. I laid waste to my enemies.

  His eyes were always watching.

  They approved.

  THE GIRLS WORE PILLOWCASES OVER their heads when they came for me. Moonlit ghosts closing me into a silent ring, pale arms reaching for me, cold fingers tugging back sheets, grasping for purchase on slick skin, pressing me down, holding me still, nails digging into flesh, hands clamping my jaw shut, teeth slicing tongue, the tang of blood dripping down my throat, and I blinked and writhed and thought foggily that I’d dreamed them into reality, that this was my coven, come to claim me for the dark. I was lofted in their arms and floating into the night before I grasped that the ghosts were watching me through eyeholes cut from cotton. Heather will seriously fuck them up for shredding those sheets, I thought, and that was how I understood: They no longer cared. Fear could no longer stop them.

  Then my hands were tied together and my ankles lashed tight, and I was lying on my back in the mud, homemade Klan masks blotting out the stars. No one could exorcise what was inside me; that I was there, down on the ground beneath them, that they so desperately needed me frightened and weak was proof enough of that.

  I made this happen, I thought.

  I willed it to life with my words and my deeds, I transformed myself into a dangerous creature, and there was almost power in that, and almost comfort.

  “O Lord, we beseech you, help us banish this evil,” one of them intoned. I knew her by voice: Peppy, a beefy cheerleader from Harrisburg who’d been caught blowing her gym teacher and had about as much respect for the Lord as I did. “Devil, be gone!”

  “We anoint thee with holy water,” said someone who sounded suspiciously like the Skank.

  With a ritualistic solemnity, she raised a plastic cup over my head and dumped warm piss all over my face.

  “Amen,” the others chorused. That part had clearly been rehearsed.

  The rest they made up as they went along.

  ALONE AND NAKED IN THE woods. Curled up against mud and bark, twitching at every whisper and crack of branches. Vision tunneled to the next second, and the one after that. Imagining red eyes in the dark. Waiting for someone to come back. Waiting for dawn.

  Flies are drawn to the smell of pee and shit and blood. Mosquitos, too, and squirrels, and rats, and when your hands are tied together, you can’t exactly wave them off. All you can do is scream.

  A search party of counselors found me, eventually—it took all night and most of the next day, but then, who knows how hard they bothered to look.

  They found me with shit smeared across my forehead and lips, with EVIL written across my breasts in my own dried blood, with stigmata cut into my palms and feet, sliced by the same scissors used to hack off my hair. The next morning, I signed something saying it never happened, and in return Horizons called and told the Bastard I’d turned over a new leaf, that I was shining with the light of the Lord. They sent me home.

  I decided: It never happened. I would not allow it to have happened.

  It was erased.

  Still, everything leaves a stain.

  And if there is such a thing as possession, if I really do have the devil in me, now you know who put it there.

  DEX

  Negative Creep

  YOU GETTING IN, OR WHAT?”

  The car was the same; Lacey was different. Her hair had been cropped close to her scalp; from the uneven look of it, she’d done it herself. Her eyes were unlined, her nails flesh-colored. Lacey without makeup looked naked. She’d always been thin, but now she was skinny, almost gaunt, deep hollows carving her face into a skull. Her favorite dress, a blue-and-green-plaid baby doll, hung sack-like, and the leather jacket that had hugged her curves now gave her the look of a kid swimming in her father’s coat. Even her voice sounded alien, maybe because it was nothing like the one I’d been ignoring in my head. That Lacey was reptilian cool. Lacey in the flesh was warm-blooded, sweat beading at her collarbone, fingers twitching against the dash. “Now or never, Dex.”

  I got in the car.

  “You’re back,” I said.

  “I’m back.”

  I hugged her, because it seemed the thing to do. She leaned in at the wrong time; our skulls clunked together. “Sorry,” I said.

  “Never apologize, remember?”

  It had never been awkward between us.

  “It’s late,” I said. “I should probably get inside. Maybe we can hang out tomorrow after school or something?”

  Her voice flew to a simpering register. “Maybe we can hang out after school? Or something?” A weary sigh. “I thought I’d trained you better than that.”

  “I’m not your dog.” It came out harsher than I meant it—I was the only one who flinched. I saw her see it in my face, the wish that I could take it back. Only then did she smile.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  I didn’t argue. How come you never get to decide anything? Nikki would have asked. But deciding was what Lacey was for.

  “I don’t know where,” she said, as if I’d asked. “Anywhere. Everywhere. Like we used to.”

  She rolled down the windows, turned up the volume, launched us into the night. Just like old times.

  WE WENT TO THE LAKE. Not our lake, but the swampy pond on the east side covered in a layer of algae and golf balls. Lacey had always treated its water as a personal affront.

  “Here,” she said, picking her way through the weeds to a rotting dock. There were no streetlights there, no moon behind the thinning summer clouds. Without the radio, there was nothing left to fill the space between us.

  “You missed me,” Lacey said.

  “Of course I did.”

  “You’ve been counting the days until I came home, marking them on the wall in lipstick like a lovesick convict.”

  “Not lipstick. Blood.”

  “Naturally.”

  It was a game we played, narrating the story of me better than I could do it myself.

  “I know you too well to ask,” she’d said once. “It would be like asking my elbow, How do you feel?”

  When something’s a part of you, she told me, you just know. But I didn’t; I had to squint through the dark, searching the shadows of her face, and ask. “Where were you?” Whatever the game, I’d lost. “Why come back?”

  There was a plunking splash, then another. She’d kicked off her shoes, blue polka-dotted flip-flops we’d lifted from Woolworth’s in the spring. Bare feet settled in my lap. “Don’t you know, Dex?” It was strange to hear her say my name. “I’ll always come back.”

  “But where did you go? Why?”

  I stopped myself before I could say it: Why did you leave without me? Small victories.

  The sound of a car streaking past, then another. That was how long it took her to answer.

  “God, Dex, why do you think? The Bastard and his joke of a wife sent me away.”

  This was the one possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. That she hadn’t betrayed me. That I had betrayed her all the more by not, somehow, knowing it.

  “They told me they didn’t know where you went.”

  “Gosh, they lied to you? Shocking.”

  “Sent you away where?”

  She snorted. “To the kind of place you send wayward daughters. Think of it as a Club Med. With extra Jesus.”

  Not Seattle, not New York, not starring in music videos or living on the streets but this. I waited to feel something.

  “You’re thinking, Oh, n
o, Lacey, that’s horrible! If only I had known, I would have come to rescue you.”

  “Was it . . . was it bad?”

  “Oh, Dex, your face.” She circled my cheeks with her finger and squeezed. “It’s adorable when you do that worried thing with your mouth.”

  I’d forgotten the sound of her laugh.

  “You think the Bastard has the power to make me suffer? Please. It was a shitty summer camp with brainwashed sheep. Ten minutes and I was running the place.”

  “Good. I guess?”

  “And you, Dex? What did you do on your summer vacation? Other than miss me desperately?”

  I shrugged.

  I wanted to tell her everything: the foreclosure party and its fallout, the strangeness of Nikki, the chill at home, my father and me and the space between. At least, I wanted to want to tell her.

  “Normal summer,” I said. “You know.”

  Lacey scooped up a clump of dirt and tossed it at the lake.

  “Forget the past. Let’s talk future. You ready to hear the plan?”

  “What plan?”

  “You’ve gotten so slow, Dex. We’ll have to work on that. What were we doing back in June when we got so rudely interrupted? What was number one on our agenda?”

  I shook my head.

  “Revenge, Dex. Knock the bitch off her throne, pay her back for fucking with us. Who do you think tipped the Bastard off to my stash? Why do you think they sent me away in the first place?”

  “I don’t think Nikki did that. Would do that.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right? It’s exactly what she did to you. Now she pays.”

  “Can we just let it go, Lacey? Start fresh. Forget the past, like you said.”

  “You, queen of the grudge, want to forget the past?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “No, you don’t. Yes, I do. No you don’t yes I do no you don’t yes I do—” She stuck out her tongue. “We’re not six, we don’t need to play that game. And besides, you know I always win.”

  I remembered a particularly vicious episode of late-night Twister with vodka for stakes and lubrication. The more I drank, the more I lost, the more I lost, the more I drank. I remembered Lacey shoving the drinks into my hand, cheering me on.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I said.

  “You can’t let her scare you.”

  “She doesn’t scare me. She . . .” To explain Nikki would be to explain what had come before. The long days after the party. The party itself, after Lacey left me alone. She would want details. She would want to peel back the surface, because Lacey only believed in what lay beneath. “She apologized. I accepted. It’s over.”

  Lacey burst into laughter. “Fuck that. She apologized? I bet she promised never to screw with you again, cross her heart and hope to die?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You know who else made a lot of promises like that? Hitler.”

  “Come on, Lacey. Really?”

  “I’m serious, Dex. It’s historical fact, look it up. Appeasement. They were too chicken to do anything but kiss his ass. You know what happened then?”

  “I’m on the edge of my seat.”

  “He invaded fucking Poland.”

  “Invoking Hitler isn’t exactly the sign of a strong argument, Lacey. And I don’t think Nikki Drummond is angling for Poland.”

  “You can’t negotiate with evil.”

  It had been nice, that summer, not having so many enemies.

  Lacey threaded her fingers through mine.

  “You know why guys like to hold hands like that,” she’d told me once. “Because it’s sexual.” She drew out the word, like she always did, because she liked to watch me squirm. “Your fingers are basically having intercourse.”

  “Say it, Dex,” she said now, squeezing. “You and me against the world. Everything like before.”

  “Sure.”

  We drove home without music. Lacey propped her bare foot on the seat and hung an arm out the window, steering with the fingertips of one hand.

  “Pick you up tomorrow morning?” she said when the car stopped in front of my house. “We could drive to the ocean again, see some real water.”

  “I’ve got school tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “And I can’t cut.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I can’t. I’ve got a math test. And this . . . other thing.”

  “What other thing?”

  “I’m going to the mall after school, okay?”

  “Whatever, let the mother-daughter fro-yo wait a day.”

  “It’s not my mother—” I was almost tempted to say the name, see what she would do. “I said I’d go with some people, and I want to, okay? So I’m going.”

  There was a noise in the darkness, the sound of someone choking on her own spit. “Funny ha-ha.”

  “No. Seriously.”

  “Oh.”

  I wanted to touch her face, then lay my fingers against her lips and feel what shape they took in surprise.

  “Are you coming back to school?” I asked, opening the door.

  “Nothing better to do. They gave me a week or two to catch up.” The words came slow. “Whatever. I can go to the beach myself. Maybe I’ll send you a postcard.”

  “Fingers crossed.”

  She pulled the car away from the curb, then stopped and stuck her head out the window. It was still strange, that pale moon of a face without its curtain of black hair. “Hey, Dex, I almost forgot—”

  “Yeah?” I was prepared. She would ask me for something, something I couldn’t deliver and couldn’t refuse. Or she would find the magic words that would bind us together again, some spell to fix what was broken. I would have waited there in the dark forever, except for the part of me that wanted to run.

  “Tell your dad I say hello.” Then she drove away.

  THAT NIGHT, I EXPECTED TO dream of Lacey. When it didn’t happen, I woke up convinced she was gone. Run away for real this time, or banished back into my imagination, like some fairy-tale creature who, once refused, spirits herself away.

  I went to school, did my homework, answered my parents politely, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey, didn’t think about Lacey.

  Sunday, Nikki invited me to church. I sat stiffly at her side, examining the fine grain of the pew while the minister explained about hell, counting the bulbs in the track lighting and trying to remember when it was time to stand up for Jesus. The Lord was a lot less interesting without magic mushrooms. Ladies fanning their Sunday finery, husbands jockeying for usher spots so they could sneak a smoke, ribboned and bow-tied kids who took a sickening pleasure in good behavior dodging spitballs from brats who didn’t. The minister spoke on forgiveness, opening your heart to those who had wronged you, but he didn’t say how.

  There was a time, I thought, when I descended on a place like this as a god.

  “There’ll be wine at lunch after,” Nikki whispered. “We can snag some if we’re careful.”

  I was always careful.

  Days passed without sign of Lacey, until I started to think I really had imagined her return. Then, one Monday after school, the Buick pulled into the bus lane and honked, one unrelenting blare of the horn that didn’t let up until everyone on the lot had turned to stare.

  Lacey poked her head out the window. “In.”

  HER ROOM WAS DIFFERENT. THE giant poster of Kurt was gone. Everything was gone.

  “Spring cleaning.” She shrugged. “I’m going for the monk thing.”

  She’d painted the walls black.

  “The Bastard had a fit,” she said.

  Lacey sat on her bed. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, next to where she’d kept her tapes. They were gone, too. Everything she had left, she kept in her car. A handful of tapes in the glove compartment, everything else in the trunk. “You never know when you’ll need a quick getaway.”


  I’d thought we would go on a drive; we always went on a drive. But Lacey wanted to show me something, she’d said. To tell me many things.

  She smiled a fake Lacey smile. “So, how was the mall?”

  “Fine. You know. The mall.”

  “I know you went with Nikki Drummond,” she said.

  “Are you following me?”

  “I notice you’re not denying it.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “So, what? You two are friends or something now?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, not officially friends, I’m guessing. Not in public, not at school, where people could see.”

  I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. She put on a real smile once we both concluded she’d won. And then, very quickly, it went away again. “Sorry,” she said, and she never said that. “I heard some other crap, too. About that party last spring . . .”

  “It’s bullshit,” I said quickly.

  “You know I don’t care what you did, Dex.”

  “I didn’t do anything. People are fucking liars.”

  “Okay . . . but if someone did something to you, we can handle it. We’ll—”

  I needed it to stop. “If someone did something to me, I don’t see how that’s your problem.”

  “What is it? What did she say to you?” Lacey asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know who. The bitch. Nikki. She told you something about me. That’s what this is.”

  “No, Lacey. There’s no conspiracy.”

  “Whatever she told you, I can explain.”

  It was the wrong thing to say; it was an admission.

  “Go ahead. Explain.”

  “First tell me what she said.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think she said? Or, even better, the fucking truth.”

  “Language, Dex.” She tried another smile. I didn’t. “It’s complicated.”

  Fix this, I willed her. Before you can’t.

  “She’s using you to get at me,” Lacey said. “Tell me you see that, at least.”

  “Because someone like her would never actually want to be friends with someone like me.”

  “It’s not you, it’s her! She uses everybody. It’s how people like Nikki operate.”

  “Right. People like Nikki.”

  “Believe whatever you want about me, Dex, but promise me you won’t believe her. She’ll do whatever she can to hurt me.”