by J. A. Rock
“You can’t go having conversations,” Bitsy said. “We don’t want people remembering us.”
“’Sides,” Kenna said, “we’ve got to get back soon, and Bitsy wants to stop at the convenience mart.”
“Can’t we skip that tonight?” I tried to sound offhand.
Kenna glanced at Alle, then grinned slyly at me. “Awf, you haven’t told the nice Miss B. that you’re a thieving tough, have you?”
“There’s no one out!” I insisted. “They’ll notice you more, because there’s no one else around.”
“What’s going on?” Alle glanced at each of us.
“Come on, babe, don’t worry about it.” Bitsy led the way down the street toward the store.
“Bitsy’s just gonna run in and get something here,” I told Alle as we arrived at the store. “I’ll wait here with you.”
“Naw, naw. Come in.” Kenna motioned to us. “You might see something you want.”
“Leave them be.” Bitsy shot us a quick look and stuck her hands in her coat pockets. “I’ll go alone. We don’t want to attract attention.”
She went in. I stared at the ground and waited, holding my breath. I could sense Kenna staring at me, and I could feel how rigid Alle was. Why I’d ever thought bringing her was a good idea, I didn’t know.
Bitsy emerged at last, hands still in her pockets. “I got us chocolate,” she said. “A whole bunch of it. And lipstick.” I turned gratefully, ready to start for Rock Point, when suddenly the shop doors opened again. Two men walked out, one taller and one rounder. Both in uniform. Cops.
I motioned Bitsy toward us, just as the taller cop said, “Hold it there, honey.”
Bitsy stopped and faced them.
“Bitsy!” I called. “Let’s go.”
“What were you doing in there?” the rounder cop asked.
“What business is it of yours?” Bitsy asked.
No. No, no, no.
“It’s my business what’s in your pockets, sweetheart.”
Taller stepped closer to Bitsy. “Hey, blondie. What’d you need from that store, hmm? New eyelash curler?”
“She probably uses it on her front doormat.” Rounder grinned. “Keeps it nice and springy for the boys. Or are you bald down there, baby?”
“Wanna show us?”
Bitsy’s hands clenched at her sides, then released. She walked toward them.
Kenna tensed as though intending to go after her. “Bitsy, you lug, no!”
“What did you say to me?” Bitsy demanded.
The cops were still smirking.
“No, really. What did you just say to me?”
I stood frozen. Some sick part of me wanted to see what would unfold. But I knew this was dangerous, knew we had to get Bitsy back to us and return to Rock Point.
Bitsy stopped a few feet from the cops. “My cunt hair is none of your business, you clogged chutes.” I had never seen her so angry. At Rock Point her temper was amusing, or annoying, but it never really frightened me until now. Kenna and I moved closer. “And everything in my pockets was mine to begin with.”
Rounder glanced at Taller, then looked back at Bitsy. “That’s, ehhh . . . disrespecting a police officer.”
“And just where are you from, honey?” Taller asked. “What’re you doing out so late at night?”
“I’m sorry,” Bitsy said snidely. “Do I have a curfew, daddy?”
“Bitsy, let’s just get on home,” I said again, hating my own cowardice. But I was afraid, and I wanted to be back in my room, sleeping next to Alle. There were so many ways this could go wrong—if the officers knew she’d robbed the convenience mart, if they found out we were from Rock Point . . . I’d have taken the girls’ home over prison; any of us would have.
Taller smiled. “Ought to listen to your friends, blondie. Unless you want a ride to the station.”
“Maybe she’s armed, Toby,” Rounder said. “You ought to search her.”
“Not a bad idea.” Taller reached forward. At the same time, Bitsy lunged, bashing his jaw with her fist. The man staggered back in surprise, and Rounder grabbed Bitsy, laughing. Taller blinked and moved his jaw in circles, pressing his fingers to the spot she’d hit.
“Bitsy!” Kenna shouted.
Bitsy elbowed Rounder in the throat, and he let her go, but Taller caught her. I raced toward them, hearing Kenna and Alle behind me. The officers were genuinely struggling to contain Bitsy, who wasn’t screaming, but was fighting as hard as she could.
“Let her go!” I yelled.
Bitsy sank her teeth into Taller’s hand. He shouted, then raised his other fist and punched Bitsy in the side of the head. Bitsy’s knees buckled, and she dropped to the ground.
Kenna, Alle, and I stopped running. The cops stared down in shock. There was a moment of complete silence while we all looked at Bitsy’s motionless form.
Then I started to scream.
“Holy shit,” Taller said. “Holy shit.”
Rounder had bent down and shook Bitsy, feeling for a pulse. He glanced up at Taller, and though he didn’t speak, I knew what he was saying.
I tried to run to them, but Kenna held me back. “Murderer!” I shouted at them. “You murderer.”
“Bitch bit me.” Taller suddenly glanced at his partner with mingled panic and despair. “She came at me.”
“You’re the bitch. You’re the bitch, you pansy cowshit! You toad, you trash!” I pounded at Kenna’s arm, trying to get her to release me.
The officers fled. I broke free of Kenna and ran to Bitsy. Knelt beside her, searching for a pulse. I knew she was dead. Her eyes were frozen, wide and blank. I clutched her hand. I don’t know how long I stayed there, snarling and weeping, before Kenna dragged me away.
Back at the fence of Rock Point, Kenna shook me. “Pull it together.” She hissed the words fiercely and yet somehow managed to sound like a little girl. I was vaguely aware of Alle standing silently to one side, her arms crossed. She’d done nothing. She’d stood there, silent, while the police officer had killed Bitsy. I wanted to shout at her for it. Kenna kept shaking me and said, “Shut the fuck up. You understand? We’re in major goddamn trouble.”
I bared my teeth at her. “She’s dead. She’s dead.” I chanted it like I was casting a spell, and I shook my head so my hair swept my neck, and I shoved Kenna away.
“You fucking idiot!” Kenna grabbed my shoulder. Her touch was rough. I wanted nothing so much as to have Bitsy with us, snickering and going on about how stupid the men were in the pub. Slapping the dirt from her arms and dragging the tangle of vine back over the hole. “We need to walk in there and get in our beds. And tomorrow, we need to act like nothing. Fucking. Happened.”
“She’s dead,” I repeated. “They’ll know she’s dead.”
“They won’t know anything. They won’t know a damn-fuck thing until her body turns up. And even then—”
“They’ll know.”
“They’ll think she ran away.”
“Something did happen. Something did happen.”
Kenna slapped me. Harder than Auntie Bletch had ever managed. I didn’t even put a hand up to my cheek; I just stood there and let it sting. “Shut up.” She glanced at Alle and then looked back at me. “Go inside and get in bed. If you can act normal until they find her body, then we’ll be fine. Once they tell us she’s dead, bring on the hysterics.”
She turned without another word and slid open the basement window we’d been using. I followed her through the darkness of the laundry room. When we got up to the kitchen, Kenna pushed me ahead of her. Everything we did seemed loud—the shuffle of our feet, our breathing, Kenna’s whispered commands.
Kenna walked Alle and me to our room. She gave me a pat on the shoulder that was half shove. “Not a word.” When I looked at her, the damp sheen in her eyes caught the moonlight. She was trying not to cry.
Dead. The word tunneled through my brain, writhing like a worm in the meal of an apple, and chewed its way through feeling and mem
ory. When it got in deep, that word—when it touched on the memory of Bitsy falling—my heart whirred like a wound clock and then ticked on.
It was hard to talk to Alle. She nodded when I said things that could be nodded at. But she didn’t really reply. She kept her head down. Sometimes at night, if there was enough moonlight coming through the window, I could see her huddled form on the cot, shaking. But I never heard her cry.
Don’t you care? I wanted to scream at her.
Kenna kept reminding us to “keep quiet” and “hold it together.” She even promised we’d go back and find those officers and kill them ourselves. But she didn’t mean it. She was, in her way, as lost as I was. Most people I have met seem skewed toward the idea that death, real death, will shake the dreamers lose from their trees. You can’t shut the book on real death. You can’t break at a chapter’s end then pick up three months or a year later to when things are easier for the characters. You can’t unleash an act of good to tame the tragedy.
Losing my parents felt more like a dream—blurrier, less permanent—than storybook deaths. I used to tremble with empathy for lost heroes in stories, for friendships cracked apart, for those who were fictionally lonely. The girls who felt unworthy and scabrous and consulted with false stars to negotiate better fortune. I cringed at descriptions of death, while the real thing only left me woozy and confused, like I’d wandered unknowingly onto a playing field and been whacked by a ball.
But Bitsy’s death ached me where it ought to. I was as much a wreck as I had been the day I’d arrived at Rock Point, and yet Kenna was right—nobody seemed to notice. Miss Tophitt lectured me on my posture and Bessie Holmes hustled us all through our morning routines and Miss Ridges asked in a still-croaky voice if I was ready to resume the Dark Tales. The whispers among the staff were the only sign that anything was wrong. They were looking for Bitsy in the house and on the grounds. They’d sent a search party to the cliffs.
This drove me nearly mad. Someone in town ought to have figured out by now that a girl of Bitsy’s age with no identification on her could have come from Rock Point. Had something happened to her body? Had some glop-faced drunk from the pub dragged her off to give himself a few good tugs over her lifeless form? Had someone thrown her in the river, in a ditch, burned her, buried her?
One day I was in a history lesson, trying not to look at Alle or Kenna, trying to focus on a religious crusade, when a cry came from the hall.
Immediately several girls stood, despite Miss Tophitt’s orders to stay put. Kenna moved for the door, and I followed her out of the room.
Liz, Bitsy’s roommate, was on her knees in the corridor, her white tights torn, her black shoes scuffed. She was sobbing—blubbering—and pounding the tile with her fists. Bessie Holmes was bent over her, large breasts swinging. I could see right down the front of her sweater to her grayish-white bra.
“I know, dear, I know.” Bessie’s tone was different from her usual faux-mama nonsense. She sounded genuinely sympathetic. “You must miss her so much. But the police’ll be finding her. They will.”
No. Not the police. Not the fucking police.
“She’s not coming back.” Liz’s voice arced from a whisper to a wail. A chill went up my whole body. “She’s—she’s—she’s—”
“Sweetheart.” Bessie tried to draw Liz to her feet. When that failed, Bessie knelt slowly beside her. “If you been known anything about what might have happened . . .”
“She used to sneak out!” Liz said between gulps. I froze. Behind me, I could feel Kenna ready to lunge. “At night, she’d sneak off sometimes.”
Bessie gave a dramatic gasp. “Lord, Liz. Where did she go?”
I actually heard Kenna growl. At that exact moment, Liz looked up at the small crowd that had gathered. She spotted Kenna and me, and her face went slack. “I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t know if she went with anyone. She might have . . . I think—I think she said she sometimes met a boy in town.”
You liar! I wanted to shout. But it was a lie that we needed, Kenna and Alle and I. A lie that made Bitsy into a silly, love-struck girl rather than a criminal. Which seemed still another level of injustice.
Liz looked away from Kenna and sobbed, a hand over her face.
Bessie moved her mouth in a sort of fish-gape. “Sweetheart,” she said finally. “I’m taking you to your room. I’ll been needing you to tell me everything.” She led Liz away, and I couldn’t protest, could only watch them leave.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Kenna and I had attempted to find Lizzie after dinner and figure out what she’d told Bessie, but Liz hadn’t come to the dining room and the door to her bedroom was shut. She didn’t answer my knock.
The only one who noticed the change in me was Denson, and she cornered me one day in the parlor and said, among other things, “I know you must be worried about her.”
I gazed at Denson with perfect calm. “If she’s run off, she’s run off. I’ve thought about doing it plenty.”
Denson’s expression barely changed, but she tilted her head slightly. “Did she say anything about running away?”
I studied her glasses. God, but they looked thick enough to make bullets bounce like raisins. “No.” I looked away.
“She took nothing with her.”
I felt a slight vibration just under the surface of my left temple, as though a small fly were trapped between layers of skin. “Then maybe she hasn’t run off.” I turned to Denson again. “We’re not happy here, you know. We all want homes, families.” I was pleased to see Denson flinch a little. “You send us out of here with nothing but slave skills,” I went on. “Can you blame Bitsy if she took off? If she went looking for something outside this place, even if it was just for one night, and—”
“Do you know where she is?” Denson’s voice was as close to severe as I’d ever heard it, and it bashed everything out of place for a moment. The walls were crooked and Denson’s body looked like it was stacked wrong.
I began to cry. It started like glass cracking—the smallest, barely audible cricht. A web of faults reached out from that center point, long tendrils of weakness lengthening and branching. I had to find a way to go back to that night. To keep Bitsy safe and Alle happy. To keep Denson on my side. Or I had to find a way to push a lie forward, to doctor this broken tale. “I don’t know. I don’t know. But I th-think Lizzie’s right. She used to sneak out to meet a boy.”
Denson coughed. And coughed and coughed, leaving blood in the crook of her elbow. I’d encountered enough tragic coughers in stories to know it was not dust in the air that did this to Denson, and the thought that she was ill made me feel even more hopeless.
Denson looked up, wiping her mouth. “Please don’t lie to me.”
“I don’t know!” I stepped backward. “Why won’t you find her? Why won’t anyone find her? Look near the pub! She always came back smelling like booze.”
Denson stared at me, and it looked too much like Rachel’s stare when I’d yelled that Marc had touched me where he oughtn’t. Like Auntie Bletch’s dismayed contempt when she’d realized why her pills were disappearing. “Go away!” I shouted. “Go away!”
Denson did, and I hated her for it. But I would have hated her more if she’d stayed, if she’d pushed, if she’d discovered what I really was. If she’d loved me anyway and told me I could still be saved.
I knew the day they found Bitsy. I saw Denson and Miss Ridges go into the reading room together. I was supposed to be on my way to grammar, but I’d forgotten my book and had doubled back. Now, instead of going upstairs, I went to the half-open door of the reading room, and I listened.
“—all three of them,” Denson was saying.
“In town?”
“Yes. And he claims to have seen them that night.”
“But no one saw who killed her?”
I clenched my hands so hard my bitten nails put a blunt, unsatisfying pressure on my palms. They knew. They knew Bitsy was dead, and they knew Kenna and A
lle and I had been in town with her. Or . . . No. Three of them, Denson had said. But there had been four of us that night.
I heard a series of small gasps. I didn’t understand at first, and then I peered through the door and saw Miss Ridges’s heaving shoulders. She wiped her face sloppily with her arm. “I read them those stories. Do you think they . . . that’s where they got the idea to—”
“No.” Denson sounded firm. “I don’t.”
“If I’d known what it would cause them to do, I’d never have shared those tales.”
“Your stories didn’t cause it,” Denson assured her. “If anything, you gave them further inclination to make their own decisions. If they have made the wrong choices, that is on them, and not on your tales.”
Silence for a moment. “Do you think Allendara might know anything about it?”
“Perhaps. It’s worth asking. I know Thera is hiding something. But I don’t know if . . .”
I had to step back then or risk being sick. I fled to my room and shut the door. It would all fall apart now. They knew about Kenna and me, and they’d want to know why we were in town and who killed Bitsy. And if we told on the police officers, the officers would have us arrested for stealing.
I went to the bathroom and was sick for the better part of an hour.
Then I washed my face and went to find Kenna.
Death Notification
Report By: Dr. Brenda LiPordo
B Lacombe’s body was found in Rock Hill Cemetery yesterday. Coroner believes cause of death to be trauma to the head. This loss is a shock to Rock Point, and Dr. DuMorg and I are discussing how to break the news to the girls. Police are looking for the killer. Though the head wound could be accidental, there is evidence her body was dragged into the cemetery postmortem.
Security Staff Report: Officer Molly Grenwat
I for one would like to know HOW she got out. Van Narr and me keep a good eye on things.
DuMorg’s Note: Really? Because Darla Ling always said you two played cards most of the night.