(spinning in circles)
JOON WAS SPINNING IN circles—slow, dizzying and painful. She was twisting in the wind like a creaky weather vane, pirouetting clumsily on her ice skates in the middle of the Rockefeller Center ice rink. This was what it had come to: dangling herself out there for him like a shiny red ornament hanging off the eighty-foot Christmas tree.
It was her last resort, really: the scratch spin—the only skating move she’d ever done halfway decently despite six years of lessons forced on her by her father in the hopes that she’d become Korea’s answer to Kristi Yamaguchi. Her form was an absolute wreck, but she didn’t care. She didn’t even care if all the spinning made her puke, just as long as it got Trick’s attention away from Mary.
Her old, neglected skates were cutting off the circulation in her ankles. Sleet was pricking her nose and eyelids and soaking her red Prada coat, which she’d only worn to look Christmas-perfect for him. Her shivers were coming in thick, crashing waves now, but her skating coach had taught her to put on a stiff, sparkling smile no matter how cold, no matter how much it hurt. She could ignore it all—the ice on her eyelashes and the sharp pains in her feet. None of it mattered if Trick was watching her twirl like he’d promised.
But as she fell awkwardly out of the spin, she couldn’t find his face anywhere in the crowd. He had disappeared from the railing.
“Patrick?” she called out, sliding involuntarily forward. The next thing she knew, she’d fallen flat on her ass like a slapstick tramp in a choppy silent movie.
Hundreds of tourists watched her splatter on the ice in a pool of Prada, and they laughed with Christmas glee. It wasn’t even derisive laughter; watching people’s pratfalls was one of the joys of Rockefeller Center. Joon knew they were all laughing with her, but she couldn’t find the humor in anything right now. There was nothing funny about the massive group of guffawing middle-schoolers pointing at her as they waited for their turn to skate, or the pairs of giggling lovers in flowing white scarves and wool hats, gliding past her in the silver shimmer of the rink’s bright spotlights. Even the gilded statue of Prometheus that watched over the rink seemed to be laughing at her with his fiery Grecian eyes. You’re humiliating yourself, Joon, he seemed to be saying. Just let the guy go. You’ve already lost him.
But a deeper instinct took over: some strange little piece of Joon’s heart that apparently had no shame. She climbed back onto her skates, dusted the ice shavings off her black tights, sped off the ice and clomped her way onto the hard rubber of the waiting area, making a beeline for the locker room, every wobbly step on her three-inch stilts stinging her ankles. She knocked a tall hot chocolate onto a beefy frat boy’s yellow ski jacket as she elbowed her way through.
“Patrick? Trick? Are you in here?”
She stumbled past rows of benches and lockers, and scads of barefoot Chadwickites who’d just arrived for the traditional Christmas skate. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet, so there was no way Trick had already abandoned her for another party (something he’d been doing more and more in the past few weeks). She peered over as many heads as she could manage, searching for his golden curls, and she finally spotted him, sitting on one of the benches, putting on his pristine Timberland work boots.
“Hey,” she called.
Trick flinched ever so slightly when he heard her voice. No one else would have noticed it, but Joon knew every one of his gestures almost as well as she knew her own. She knew what his tiny half-smile meant (he wants to fool around), and what his devastating grin meant (he hates your guts), and what that slight flinch in his shoulders meant. She’d seen it when she found him using in the bathroom of Chez Bernard after he’d promised to stay straight for their six-month anniversary dinner. He only flinched when he’d been caught.
“Hey,” he said, standing up and brushing the specks of snow off his tailored coat and hoodie.
“Where are you going?” Joon asked, trying not to sound like a lost, orphaned child.
“I feel like crap,” he said. “All that going around in circles—it’s just not something you do with a hangover.” He quickly pulled his BlackBerry and TAG Heuer out of the locker and snapped the watch on—the BlackBerry gave a notification beep, and he glanced at it before dropping it in his coat pocket. “I think I’m going to head home and sleep it off.”
Joon’s eyes followed the BlackBerry into his pocket, and then she watched him avoid her eyes as he slammed the locker shut.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“What?” He laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re lying,” she repeated. “Where are you really going?”
“Oh, Joonie, not again. Please.” He gave her that pitiful Girl, Interrupted look, like she belonged in a mental ward with Angelina and Winona. “I thought we were past this shit.”
“What shit?”
“The paranoia shit. You promised you’d stop.”
“I’m not being paranoid,” she snapped. She knew it only made her sound crazier, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t.
Patrick threw up his hands like he was being mugged by a raving psychopath. “O-kay. Jesus. You’re not being paranoid. Cool. I just need to get home and get some sleep, okay? I’ve got a car outside, so I’m going to run, all right?”
“Let me see your phone.”
Trick raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Your phone. You just got a text. Who texted you?”
“My driver. I just told you, he’s waiting for me outside. Jesus, Joonie, just call your shrink, all right? Seriously, I’m begging you.” He squeezed her shoulders and gave her a peck on the forehead. “Bye.”
“Where’s Mary, Trick?”
His shoulders flinched again. She was absolutely sure of it. “Mary who?” he said. “Mary Shayne?”
Joon shook her head, disgusted by his ridiculous answer. “Yes.” She laughed bitterly. “Mary Shayne. My good friend Mary Shayne. The one you’ve been tending to every fifteen minutes tonight to make sure she doesn’t die of the adorable sniffles! That Mary Shayne!”
“Stop.” Trick brought his voice down to a whisper as tourists began to stare. “What the hell is the matter with you? I was trying to be nice to your friend. She’s got a cold, and I was trying to be nice.”
“Nice is one time, Trick! ‘Hey, you look a little under the weather, Mary. You feeling okay?’ That’s nice. You were waiting on her hand and foot! Every time you were supposed to be skating with me, you were buying her another freaking hot chocolate!”
“I gave her the rest of my hot chocolate. Half of one already-purchased hot chocolate. She looked like she was dying from the freaking cold.”
“Well, what if I was dying from the cold, Trick? What if I was dying out there too? Which one of us would you save? Who would you rescue with your precious half a hot chocolate?”
“God, will you stop with that ridiculous game already? I’d save you, Joon, okay? You get the hot chocolate, one hundred percent.”
“You’re such a goddamned liar! You’re a liar and you know it!”
The locker room went silent. Trick looked altogether mortified, and Joon didn’t care in the least.
“Joonie,” he said quietly. “You just need to take your meds, all right? Just take your meds.”
He gave her one last kiss on the cheek and then rushed toward the exit. She called out to him again.
“Patrick—!”
“What?” He stopped briefly at the doorway.
“Did you even see my scratch spin?”
“Your what?”
“My spin … on the ice … you said you’d watch. Did you even see it?”
“Of course I did,” he said. “It was perfect, Joonie. Really. Nine point five from the German judges.”
He raised his hand for a pathetic wave goodbye, and then he disappeared into the crowd like he was running from a ticking time bomb. Joon fell back against the lockers, staring down helplessly at the gray sludge on the floor. She sud
denly felt exhausted. Her head was throbbing and so were her ankles.
Only a few seconds passed before Amy came clomping into the locker room, towering awkwardly on her rented white skates and panting desperately.
“Have you seen Mary?” she asked, trying in vain to catch her breath. Her eyes darted around the room.
“No,” Joon said. “Isn’t she out there skating?”
“I thought she was,” Amy heaved. She slapped her hands on her sides. “Damn it. She promised she’d skate with me. She promised. Jen Morris said she just saw her leave.”
“What?” Joon felt the acid in her stomach rising up to her throat.
“Mary told Jen she was feeling sick,” Amy said, “so she left. Just now. Can you believe that? She just walked out. Why did she tell Jen, why didn’t she tell me? She didn’t even tell you, did she? God, do you think she bothered to tell anyone else she was leaving?”
Joon’s mouth went dry. Her heart began to race uncomfortably like a scampering bug in her chest. She was sure Mary had told someone else she was leaving. And she knew exactly who that person was.
“Ugh, that bitch …” All of Joon’s muscles contracted at once as she violently clutched her Dolce winter hat in her fists. “That bitch.”
“What?” Amy looked a little shocked by Joon’s reaction. “Who? What’s wrong?”
But Joon was already elbowing her way back through the crowd, laboring skate by skate, making her way to the stone and marble steps that led out of Rockefeller Center and down to Fifth Avenue. Now she understood. Now she knew why he’d left in such a rush. Because she knew Mary. She knew how she operated. All Mary had to do was drop the hint to him that she was leaving. That was all Mary had to do, and she knew it. She knew he would follow.
Joon only got as far as the top of the icy steps—just in time to see Mary standing alone in a swirl of snow and sleet on the corner of Fiftieth and Fifth. She had one arm crossed over her immaculate white parka for warmth, and the other barely raised in the air, half heartedly trying to hail a cab when she knew there wasn’t an available taxi for miles. She was still holding Patrick’s hot chocolate in her hand.
A gleaming black limo drove up through the heavy traffic, sloshing through the gray water, past a Salvation Army Santa cheerfully ringing his brass bell. It pulled up next to Mary, and Patrick emerged from the sunroof like the world’s most beautiful jack-in-the-box—like Mary’s knight in snowy armor. He said something to Mary, and she threw her head back and laughed in that particular singsong way that made all the boys her slaves. It was the laugh that made them feel like she’d already had sex with them at least twice, even if she’d never touched them.
At that moment Joon shut her eyes tightly, and she actually made a wish. A cold, hard wish, like a desperate little girl wishing on a star.
Mary, please don’t get into the limo. Please, just this once, don’t take a boy away from me. I’ll forgive you for all the others, if you’ll just leave me Trick. Just once, show me our friendship means something to you. Show me that you haven’t conveniently forgotten I exist again. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t get in….
But of course Mary got in. Of course she did. Giggling and innocent, and completely heartless.
Joon raised her skate off the ground and stomped the blade down into the icy stone with all her might. It sent a bolt of exquisite pain through her shin, a pain she almost welcomed, because it was physical, unlike the pain in her heart, which she knew wouldn’t fade, which would grow and spread and hang over every day to come.
(pain)
MARY’S TEETH WERE CHATTERING as she clenched her jaw against the pain in her arms. Joon’s right, she thought miserably, still reeling from the overwhelming force of her memory—Joon’s memory—the entire sordid night that had come into her head all at once. The pain in her arms was nothing compared to that feeling: that dull, anticipatory ache of losing something, losing someone you care about, of seeing it all beforehand and not knowing how bad it will get but knowing it won’t stop at unbearable, it will go right past unbearable and just stay there, forever, morning to night, every day from now on.
Mary was crying, Joon’s exquisitely applied mascara running down her cheeks. Patrick had dumped her that morning—the memory (the real memory) was still vivid.
At least Patrick had done it fast and hard—it only took five minutes, from the trepidation she’d felt when she’d first seen him standing on the sidewalk waiting for her, to the final shock as he did the deed and walked away.
Fast and merciful, she thought, just like one of those movies where somebody prays for a quick death.
Not at all like what Joon had gone through.
Gone through because of me, Mary added miserably.
And he hadn’t even meant it! The breakup pain had lasted—what? Maybe twelve hours? Twelve hours of indulging her pain like a little girl. Twelve hours without Patrick and I couldn’t even function. How could she have possibly endured what Joon had gone through that December night, and all the time since? Watching her and Patrick parade their relationship like models in a sexy jeans ad, taking every opportunity to rub Joon’s nose in it? Endlessly talking to Joon about Trick, and, at the end of every day, going back to the Peninsula and settling onto one of the plush hotel couches while Joon went home alone?
The savagery of Joon’s memory—the depth of the pain Mary had caused her best friend—was amazingly strong, like being kicked in the stomach and having to smile and ask for more.
And then she’d gotten him back—and forgotten all about it.
But it was even worse than that, Mary realized bitterly, swaying in the darkness on the fraying rope that burned her wrists like hot metal shackles. She’d actually made jokes about Joon and Patrick’s breakup, right to Joon’s face, as if Joon had nothing better to do than laugh at the merry whimsy of her life. And it wasn’t the first time, Mary realized miserably. Going back through the years, how many boys did I—
She stopped thinking about it, because something was moving.
She could barely see it, straight ahead—but she was sure of it. The memory hadn’t taken any time, she realized; exactly like when she’d been Scott, the whole thing was there, just as with any vivid memory.
In the center of the black shape of the house, a pale rectangle of light appeared, widening slowly, revealing a silhouetted figure.
That’s me.
Of course it was. As soon as Mary had realized where she was, and had identified the glow of the Mercedes’s headlights, she understood what was about to happen. Once again, she was looking at herself, earlier in the day, watching herself do exactly what she remembered doing.
Behind Mary, framed in the dim doorway, another shadowed figure appeared.
It’s Amy. The silhouettes of the two girls were immediately, completely recognizable. Mary would have known Amy anywhere. It was clearly her.
Straining to listen, Mary could just make out their distant voices through the whipping wind and the rain.
“I can’t,” Amy was yelling—her voice drifted through the wind, barely reaching Mary where she hung from the fraying rope. “Oh, Jesus, don’t make me go out there—”
Go with her! Mary pleaded mentally. She remembered what had happened to Amy … what had happened to both of them.
In the distance, barely visible in the farmhouse’s doorway, Real Mary said something inaudible, and Amy’s voice got more anguished. “Don’t … me here,” Amy’s thin, high voice carried over the wind. “Don’t leave me here alone.”
If I can hear them, they can hear me, Mary realized, breathing painfully through her nose and trying to scream again. The bandage over her mouth made it impossible, but she squealed and moaned desperately, kicking her legs and wriggling to get their attention.
Real Mary was already moving, wading forward into the dark rain, moving closer to the hole she couldn’t see. “I’m coming!” she called out—Mary could hear her voice clearly, now. “I’m coming, Joon!”
No
, no, no, Mary thought desperately, watching herself start wading into the tall weeds. Stay there, idiot! You’re going to fall into the hole—you’re going to get trapped!
The rain kept falling, freezing her to the bone like an endless cold shower. Tipping her head back again, Mary stared upward, following the ropes as they climbed above her, impossibly high, converging like high-tension cables flanking a desert highway, vanishing into the blackness of the trees, far above. Can’t climb, she thought desperately. No way up—no way down. As she stared upward, trying again to scream—and hearing her own muffled moaning, recognizing Joon’s voice—the ropes twanged like guitar strings, vibrating like a rush-hour subway platform.
“I’m coming, Joon!” Real Mary was bellowing, straight ahead, back at the farmhouse’s back door. “I’m coming! I’ll be right there!”
Lightning flashed brilliantly then—a long, extended multiple flash like a fireworks display—and suddenly, Mary got a clear view of something she hadn’t seen before. Another big surprise.
Below the edge of the embankment—the steep, ragged cliff where the tall weeds ended and the ground dropped away. There was a flat shelf of rock, like a recessed butte set into the earth well below the cliff’s edge. The shelf was wide and relatively dry; it was sheltered from the rain, she realized, by the overhanging curved wall of earth, clogged with tree roots and rocks. The stone shelf wasn’t that far down—just about five feet below the tips of her dangling feet.
Someone was down there, Mary saw.
The lightning was like a Times Square movie-premiere klieg light. It was so bright that, for a half second, she had an unobstructed view of the figure that stood back against the edge of the embankment, completely out of sight of the farmhouse.
A boy in an oversized bright yellow Patagonia raincoat.
Scott Sanders.
Mary’s eyes—Joon’s eyes—widened as she stared incredulously. Scott was standing right there, just a few feet away, gazing critically up at her, frowning in concentration. A coil of rope lay on the wet rock ledge next to him, along with a giant flashlight and his ever-present red book bag.
7 Souls Page 18