Trudi’s laugh seemed to burst from her throat, startling her all the way back to herself. She used the phone to snap a quick pic of Eddie hunched over and murmuring to the cave water as though summoning more orcas. Reversing the camera, she framed her own anxious face, angling the phone to catch at least the shadow of the new girl—Jew? Joo? Named, perhaps, for or by some green-eyed, Swedish owl?—lurking just a little too far up the cave wall, weirdly still, like a spider or a stalactite with really remarkable hair. She snapped that. Then she fired both pics back to Raj with the words:
Tru Through the Looking Glass. Episode 16,338.
When she lowered the phone, she found Ju studying her again. Not just looking, but full-on examining, as if Trudi were a particularly colorful shell, an octopus that had scuttled up out of the Strait. As if Trudi were the first black girl she’d ever seen.
Or first girl, period.
God, she’s really beautiful, Trudi thought, positively heard herself think, and realized she was probably looking at Ju the same way Ju looked at her. Beautiful, in a twilight-in-twinflowers-on-the-hills-above-those-weirdo-barracks sort of way.
Definitely not in a come-down-off-that-wall-and-bring-your-fairy-mouth-to-my-mouth sort of way.
Not really.
“Fuck!” Trudi burst out, shaking her head hard, stumbling before she’d even started moving. She dragged her gaze from the girl and back around to Eddie, or halfway around, anyway. She couldn’t seem to get herself fully turned, but at least her feet were in motion. She half staggered, half splashed into the water, which was freezing and woke her further, still. With a pop she could almost hear and definitely felt, her eyes wrenched free of whatever had held them, and she turned her full attention to the kid.
Only then did she realize how far out on the rock shelf Eddie was. He stood almost knee-deep in water, so close to the edge of the ledge that his toes had to be dangling over the abyss where the cliff fell away into bottomless blue deep enough for orcas. Blue enough that Trudi could see his face reflected on its surface, even in cavelight, as though he were already draining into it, becoming part of it.
“Eddie, Jesus,” she snapped, too loud. Echoes ricocheted like gunshot, and Eddie jerked and slipped, flinging a glance over his shoulder as his feet scrabbled for purchase.
Ignoring the shock of cold in her ankles, Trudi plunged forward. By the time she got close enough to seize the kid’s wrist, he’d already regained his balance. He laughed as she yanked him to her.
“Ow!” he complained.
“Quiet.”
“I wasn’t finished.”
Whatever that means, Trudi thought. But in truth, she understood, at least in essence. He hadn’t finished reprimanding a crab, maybe. Telling some krill it couldn’t talk to him like that, not if it wanted its screen time later.
Eliana and Raj were right, she decided as she turned and tugged Eddie back toward dry rock. It was time to get the hell out of Wonderland. Maybe she could take Eddie and Rebecca and any of the rest of her Stockade-mates who were whole enough to come along with her. Instinctively, she kept her eyes averted. That was why she didn’t realize where Ju was until her reflection surfaced upside down in the water right in front of her.
For a wild, panicked second, Trudi thought the girl was over their heads, hovering on the cave ceiling. A gasp escaped her mouth before she could stifle it.
But Ju had simply come down off the wall, and now she was maybe three steps away, separated from Trudi and Eddie by a barely there lapping of inches-deep inlet.
Which is what’s saving us, Trudi thought nonsensically, the thought bumping repeatedly against her brainpan like one of those wind-up toy trains she’d once aimed into walls in the common room at her first orphanage, the one with beetles infesting the carpets. She can’t cross running water. She clutched Eddie’s hand, and for once, for some reason, he clutched hers back.
Ju didn’t even seem to be looking at them. Not at first. She stood so still. Only her hair seemed to wave, slightly, like kelp in shallows, stirred as much by the light filtering through the cave as by current or breeze. When she did look at them, first Eddie, then Trudi, her eyes were green and full of shadows. Deep enough for orcas. Trudi could no longer keep herself from looking at that face.
Then, with a sort of mourning-dove coo, Ju stepped down into the water. Her whole body rippled, and her hair swept in front of her eyes. When it slid aside again, she was smiling.
“Cold,” she said. “Sooooo cold.”
“No shit,” said Trudi. Suddenly, all of them were laughing, Eddie too, their voices caroming around the cavern. Dazed, or maybe dazzled, Trudi watched Ju shake, watched her gaze trail lazily all over the cave before gliding back down on her. Trudi could feel those eyes on her forehead, cool as a cave kiss.
She also felt a pang of something very like jealousy when Ju’s gaze slid to Eddie.
“Little boy,” Ju said. “Come here.”
And Eddie—the fickle little shit—just up and went. Like he already knew her. Stupid, trusting baby, who’d been unlucky enough to have people who loved him around him for every second of his life, and was therefore utterly unprepared to live in the world.
Shivering in the ankle-deep wet, but unable to move or imagine where she’d go if she did, Trudi watched Ju stroke Eddie’s head. Her hair floated around him like jellyfish tentacles as she leaned down to whisper. There was her beautiful mouth by his ear, hovering near his throat. For no good reason, Trudi wanted to launch herself, barrel into the girl and drive her back. Hurl her down on the rocks. Get her off and away from Eddie.
So I can get on her??
What. The seriously actual. Fuck.
“I think we should go back,” she said, the words spraying from her mouth like a BB-gun blast.
For answer, Ju ran a pale, long-fingered hand through Eddie’s hair. The boy shuddered but didn’t pull away. If anything, he wriggled closer. When Ju finally looked up, she was sporting that strange, shy smile. “I think we should go to the barracks. You know that place? Those … old bunk buildings, or whatever?”
“Hornby Camp!” Eddie yipped, like a little puppy.
“They remind me of home,” Ju murmured.
“Me, too,” Trudi heard herself say even as she wondered.
Home. As in, a room full of bunks for other girls without homes. Which meant Ju was an orphan, too? Was that what Trudi had been sensing?
“I think maybe we should stay here,” she said, though she couldn’t think why. Without meaning to, she smiled. She also seemed to be swaying on her feet. Jealousy and nervousness and unexpected recognition and something else she didn’t even want to think about flickered through her, yet she felt a little removed from all of it. As though none of these sensations were actually hers, or real. As though this were all just another conversation with her sock puppets. As though she’d magicked her sock puppets into walking at last.
“I think we should go to the camp,” Ju said again. “But let’s wait until dark. How about that?”
“Until dark,” Trudi murmured. Heard herself murmur. This time, when Ju smiled, Trudi sighed, or maybe whimpered. Way down in her brain—deep, deep down where she’d buried it under even her fragmented memories of her parents, the smell of tea and towels at Amanda’s worktable at the Halfmoon Lake house, the sound of bitch-queen Danni’s spine snapping on the night the Sombrero Man came—something rolled over and sat up.
That smile. Ju’s smile. That shiny, sweet, sparkling thing with needles in it.
She’d seen it before!
Hadn’t she?
On Ju? Not on Ju. Not on the Sombrero Man, either, God knew, so why was she thinking of him?
For a split second, she had it, almost had it, almost knew.
Then Ju said, “Good,” and gave the sweetest, sexiest little shrug, her hair sweeping over her face past those wet, winking eyes. “Then I can introduce you to my…” Her smile got even sweeter, a little confused, a little helpless, and then she gave up and
flat-out giggled. “Mom.”
21
At first, while everyone else hurled themselves atop the blonde they’d driven to the floor, Kaylene froze. She literally could not think what to do. Benny and Joel and Jess and Rebecca each had a limb, plus fistfuls of hair or other body parts, and even if Kaylene wanted to help, there wasn’t room. Plus, the screams felt like daggers in her ears, which was ironic given what she and Rebecca had done with their free time these last few years.
Eventually, one by one, her housemates went silent even as they went on wrestling. But the silence exposed the blonde’s cat-yowl raving, which went on and on and on like feedback from a guitar plugged in and left onstage at the end of a show. If Kaylene had had her own guitar, she would have let loose just to drown out the cat-yowl, or at least give it some harmony. Make it music.
Rebecca glanced up and caught Kaylene’s eye, the way she had so many times from behind her drum kit in the eye of whatever whirlwind of sound they’d unleashed and were riding. Usually, Rebecca was smiling, those times, but she wasn’t now. Her mouth had slackened into a sort of open oval, and her eyes—those quiet, see-everything eyes—were full of tears.
Because the monsters are back. Because this is one of them.
The smell of Mrs. Starkey’s ice rink flooded Kaylene’s nose and mouth, set her gagging. Her heart thundered so hard that she had to grab the countertop to stay upright. Rebecca saw and started to stand, but she couldn’t let go of whatever she was crushing to the ground.
Memories came the way they always did.
Jack on his flying saucer on the ice, sailing through that cone of light which he’d almost seemed to carry with him into the dark. The Thing in the Hat at the other end of the rink with his arms wide open. Marlene sprint-skidding after Jack as though there were anything on earth she could do other than die alongside him.
Jack and Marlene.
Jack and the …
“Kaylene!” someone shouted, and Kaylene pushed off the counter, moving toward the scrum on the floor.
“Rebecca, wait,” Joel snarled, too late, and Kaylene saw.
Rebecca was staring down into the blonde’s one open eye. She didn’t look hypnotized or mesmerized or whatever it was these monsters did to people. She was just being Rebecca. Just seeing. Abruptly, she rocked back on her haunches and freed the blonde’s arm.
Up the arm snaked like a powerline, like a cobra. But it didn’t shoot toward any of her attackers. It flew to the blonde’s own face, the oil-flooded eye that seemed to be swelling and sinking at the same time, boiling to nothing, pooling in its own pith like a stewed tomato.
When Kaylene finally knelt, she did so behind the blonde’s head. Her hand went toward the woman’s cheek, which was sizzling and spatting. So many times back at the battered-women’s shelter in East Dunham, Kaylene had caressed cheeks like this. Or not quite like this, those cheeks were mostly bruised, not burned. But still …
With a single touch, Rebecca stopped her, nudged her hand back to her side. They shared one more look. Sock Puppet, rampant. Wreaking havoc. Holding tight. Staying alive.
Then Joel bumped them both out of the way. He made sure Benny had the blonde’s shoulders pinned, and Jess the legs. Standing up fast, he hurried off into the garage.
The room went startlingly quiet. The only visible movement was the blonde’s relentless blinking, as though she were trying to fan her eye, cool it in time to keep it from exploding. A single drop of liquid, streaked with red, slipped from the corner of the charred socket. Even that seemed to steam, as though the woman’s tears were boiling.
“Kaylene, get me a knife,” Jess hissed from where she knelt on the blonde’s shoulder.
Sophie, Kaylene thought, not even sure from where she’d dredged up the name. But that was this thing’s name all right. It had been her name before she was a thing. When she was Jess’s … daughter? No. But something …
“Kaylene!”
In a daze, she started to stand. Rebecca’s murmur checked her.
“Hold on,” she said, though not to Kaylene, and in something like her old Rebecca tone: cool, smart, and loving. Not at all the voice of a woman who threw boiling oil at other people.
Or bashed in their faces with shovels.
Wait. Hadn’t that been this thing’s face?
Jess and Rebecca were glaring at each other now. Joel returned, dropping three black felt bags with a clank at his feet. The blonde bucked, freeing her other fist just long enough to punch Benny in the face. Rabid dog snarls burst from her mouth as spittle bubbled from her lips. Eventually, somehow, the chains in the black felt bags got wound and locked tight around Sophie’s arms and torso and legs. She stopped spitting, howling, even blinking. She glared up at all of them through her one unharmed eye, which was beautiful and brown, Kaylene noted. Oil droplets still shimmered on her wide cheeks.
“Now, Kaylene,” Jess said. “Get me that knife.” Her voice was so weighted with grief, she seemed to have to shove the words through her teeth.
“I … can’t,” Kaylene whispered.
She really couldn’t. She was still gazing at Sophie’s face. It almost felt as though Sophie wouldn’t let her move, though she was apparently paying Kaylene no mind whatsoever.
“Jess,” said Rebecca.
“Fine. Give me a hammer.”
Benny got up to do just that.
There was more arguing, then. Someone said they had bigger worries right now, and someone else mentioned not knowing how many others were out there or what the hell they wanted or whether they’d even come together. Dimly, Kaylene was aware of her own hands closing around the grip of the aluminum bat she’d been wielding earlier, and then turning to dig around in one of the kitchen drawers. She wasn’t consciously aware of looking for anything, and she wasn’t really listening, either—her memories wouldn’t let her—when she caught sight of Rebecca again. Her friend—bandmate, fellow survivor, sister—was drawn up on her knees, now, head cocked, absolutely still, like a seabird riding a current of air. Locking in on a fish.
“Oh, ’Bec,” Kaylene said, right as Rebecca plunged.
Everyone went silent, tensing for the crunch of skull on skull. But Rebecca held up inches from Sophie’s face, staring straight down into that single, glaring eye. That beautiful eye.
“How are you even alive?” she hissed, and Kaylene heard the guilt there, understood the weight Rebecca had carried ever since the night she really had helped save them all.
Except for the ones she hadn’t. Danni, and Jack, and Marlene, and Amanda. The only thing Kaylene could think to do was place her palm between her friend’s thin, powerful, birdlike shoulder blades and leave it there, for whatever good a palm could do.
Then Joel said, “Kaylene. What did you do?”
He was looking, she realized, at the baseball bat in her other hand. The hand that wasn’t on Rebecca. So she looked at that, too.
“Huh,” she said.
Apparently, while the rest of them had wrestled over the fate of the creature who might or might not have come to kill them, she’d been festooning the bat’s barrel with little stick-on googly eyes from Jess’s ribbons-and-crafty-things drawer. The buttons winked in the wan, windowless light like the eyes of a thousand cave-creatures living inside the aluminum.
“I’m…” Kaylene murmured. “Kaylening the weaponry?”
No one laughed. Mostly, they stared. But Rebecca straightened, settling back on her haunches, and Benny and Joel let themselves sag momentarily. Even Jess released a long, slow breath. Only Sophie stayed tensed, blinking relentlessly, glaring mostly at Jess. And that was fair enough; she was the one chained to the floor, after all.
Clap her in irons, Kaylene thought, the phrase echoing in her head. In her mother’s voice, just for added absurdity. Although that wasn’t so absurd, come to think of it. Mother of Warm Bao had loved reading her daughter Treasure Island the way most of her Korean friends employed the Bible.
“Okay,” said Jess. “Let�
��s get her upstairs.”
A whole host of expressions ghosted across Sophie’s face like cloud-shadows in time lapse: there was fury more ferocious than any Kaylene had ever felt, a deeper and deadlier loneliness, wilder laughter.
“Right you are,” Sophie finally snapped. “Don’t want to continue this in front of the children.” Then, horribly, she grinned. “Mom.”
Even as Jess lunged to her feet—for a knife? To get away?—Benny and Joel swept in, hoisting Sophie by the shoulders and ankles as she laughed. And let them, Kaylene knew, even before the blonde shot her a single, withering glance and, with her good eye, winked.
As though hustling away a ticking bomb, the men swept her up the steps into Rebecca’s room. Jess snatched a knife off the counter and Rebecca started to object, then simply preceded Jess upstairs.
Kaylene could have followed. Brought along her freshly decorated, festive bat. Probably, she decided, she should do that. So she moved to the foot of the stairs and stood still, listening. There should have been more arguing, or else stabbing sounds. Which Agatha Christie was she remembering now? Maybe Orient Express? The one where they all did it?
Kaylene took a single step up. Still, she heard nothing. If everyone in Rebecca’s room was arguing, they were doing it with sign language. And if they were murdering Sophie—again—they were doing it in absolute silence.
Eventually, Benny, then Joel, then Jess emerged from the room. One by one, with the barest possible acknowledgment of Kaylene, they passed her on the stairs and without a word resumed the tasks they’d been performing at the instant Sophie reappeared: mopping grease spatter off the floor and walls; setting new pans boiling; spilling more flatware out of drawers; stockpiling rusty gardening implements from the garage; affixing boards to windows. Everyone’s movements seemed so terrifyingly natural that quite a while passed before Kaylene realized that Rebecca hadn’t come out.
Which meant she was still in there. Up there. Alone. Her last best friend.
The croak that escaped Kaylene’s lips sounded pre-verbal to her, barely human. A whimper and a warning and a calling out all at once, like a cat’s meow. Shoving off the wall, Kaylene started upward. She got maybe two steps before Jess snapped, “Kaylene!” and stopped her yet again.
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