Kay carried the mugs to the sink. There’s nothing I can do to keep her here if she doesn’t want to stay. Jackie’s irresponsible, but she’s Shawna’s legal guardian.
“Nic. I need you more everyday.”
She went to her room, showered, and pulled her nightgown over her head. She desperately needed to sleep. Tomorrow she’d talk things out with Shawna; then see Vic about the out-of-towners who would become her new neighbors. She’d try and talk to them about the property, see about the horses. Tomorrow, she thought laying her head on the pillow.
The regular, metallic sound of the clock on her nightstand filled the quiet air, its endless chain of clicks pulling her toward the morning. She closed her eyes and turned onto her side, rolled back, punched the pillow, and buried her face.
I’m getting more exercise than sleep, she thought. She sat up and put her feet on the floor. She snapped on the bedside lamp, and rummaged through the stack of magazines piled under the nightstand. Choose something dull, Kay.
She pulled out an old Time magazine and flipped the pages without reading them, letting the pictures show her the stories of crime, misery, and occasionally new heroes, basking in the light of fame.
But then she felt it more than she heard it. Or maybe was it both? She dropped the magazine and leaned forward, waiting to feel or hear more. But there was nothing except the sound time makes as it passes.
Had it come from outside? She pulled on her jacket, walked to the back door, and stepped into her boots. Probably a raccoon. The back porch light cast eerie shadows out toward the barn, but nothing scuttled away when she walked down the steps and quickly circled from the porch to the barn and back. Maybe the front then? Buster looked up from his cushion at the sudden brightness when the yellow light flooded the front porch.
“Sorry, old boy. False alarm.” She turned off the light and locked up again. “Let’s make another stab at sleeping.”
At her door she paused. Still, there’d been something, she knew it. Kay walked down the hall to Shawna’s door and listened. She tapped softly, and then stepped into the dark room.
The rumpled bed was empty.
Shawna lay sprawled on the floor.
Chapter 44
Shawna
“What’s wrong with you?” Kay screams. She’s standing next to me, but I hear her from very far away. Her face becomes many faces, falling over me like flower petals.
She pries open my hand. What do I have that she wants? Whatever it is, she’s got it now. I search for my favorite memory—that motel somewhere, the woman with the long red braid, the spoon, the ice cream. How come Kay doesn’t have a braid? Or ice cream?
She grabs me by the back of the neck, takes my hand and pulls me onto my feet, hauling me across the floor until I feel the cool bathroom tiles
I think I’m laughing. Maybe it’s because she grabs the chickens in the same way, takes them to “the block,” and chops off their heads. Is Kay going to chop off my head?
“Stick your finger down your throat!” she yells. “Either you do it, or I will!”
“I... can--’t find . . .” I know what I want to say, but when I try, the words come out slushy.
My head is sinking toward the toilet bowl. I’m going to drown in it. But I feel Kay’s hand tighten on my neck. It’s strong and rough, and she’s shaking me so much, my eyes seem to roll around in my head.
My mouth gapes and I feel her finger at the back of my throat. I gag, and up comes a wave of vomit. Chunks of pills spill into the water. Then there’s more. I become the Niagara Falls of pill vomit for what seems like forever and ever.
Kay flushes the toilet. And when I throw up again, it’s smelly and slimy, but there are no more white lumps.
Kay lets go and I slide down the wall to squat on the floor.
“Here.” Kay shoves a damp towel into my hands. “Wipe your face.”
She drags me to my feet and props me onto the toilet seat cover.
I hear the back door open and close, and then it’s quiet. I’m alone. I’m still alive, my face buried in a towel that smells like vomit.
Kay dashed from the house to Kenny’s trailer. But the distance seemed greater than ever before. Would she reach him in time? Why couldn’t she move faster? Maybe Shawna was hurting herself again at this very moment. Kay’s nightmare was coming to life.
A high-speed train whipped around a bend in the tracks. The oncoming engine with its beam stretched out into the darkness, silhouetted Nic, standing, waiting, waving to her without seeing the train behind him.
Run, her brain screamed, but her feet were caught between metal rails, and she couldn’t lift them. The train came nearer and nearer until it washed Nic away in its white light.
“Kenny!” she shouted and pounded on his door. The door flew open. “Grab your bag. It’s Shawna. She’s taken something. I made her throw up, but . . .”
Kenny was already running toward the house, his bag flapping at his side. “Where is she?” he shouted over his shoulder.
“The bathroom,” she managed to say; then she leaned against the side of his trailer for a moment and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. I couldn’t save Nic, she thought. Please let me save Shawna.
I hear Kenny’s voice before I hear his footsteps on the back steps. The door swings open, and his boots clomp through the house until he’s standing over me. He pulls my eyelids up, then puts his fingers around my wrist. He wraps something around my arm until I can feel my pulse thud against the tight band.
“What do you think?” Kay’s voice is tense.
“Vitals are good. I think you got most of it out of her. Let’s get something into her stomach to soak up whatever’s left. “Come on, Missy. No more tossing your cookies tonight.” He has me around the waist and I stumble down the hall with him until he drops me onto the living room couch.
A kitchen cabinet opens and closes, then the refrigerator door. The familiar sound of Kay’s sturdy boots strides back to me. That’s a first. She didn’t take off her boots. Neither did Kenny. They broke the boot rule! I made Kay Stone and Kenny Fargo break a house rule. I didn’t expect that.
“Eat these,” she says.
I pull the towel down and look up.
“I don’t think I . . .”
“Eat,” Kenny says.
I take the crackers and chew on one very slowly, sure that it will come right back up all over me. It doesn’t. Kay pushes a glass of milk into my hand, and I take a small sip. But the milk tastes like liquid chalk. I burp and hold the towel over my mouth. My throat burns like it’s filled with hot acid, but still nothing comes up. I hold the glass out for Kay to take, but she pushes it back toward my mouth.
Stubborn old woman.
I take another sip, and work on keeping my head from turning itself inside out so everything around me will stop stretching like elastic. I concentrate on the coffee table in front of me. It should be a tidy square, but at the moment it snakes this way and that, like it’s on the way out the door.
Chapter 45
Shawna
I must have fallen asleep after Kenny and Kay forced more crackers and milk into me. I wake up on the couch under one of Kay’s afghans, with crumbs in the corners of my mouth and my brain kicking the back of my eyeballs.
Kay sits in her chair, drinking coffee and watching me. “Dr. Lubell said you’d feel very thirsty and probably shaky. Was she right?”
I try sitting up but give it up as a bad plan. Instead I stretch out with my eyes closed against the morning light.
“I guess she was.”
A few minutes later, I feel a cool cloth on my forehead and Kay’s fingers on my wrist. “See if you can sit up now. I’ll get you some water.”
I take my time and ease back against the pillows that Kay props behind me.
My head wobbles like one of those plates on a stick that jugglers twirl around, but with her hand to steady me, I manage to gulp down a glass of water before I fall asleep again.
The ne
xt time I open my eyes, the sun is shining on the back of the house. The porch, which I can see from the couch, is shaded. That means it’s late afternoon.
My head isn’t pounding and I don’t feel like I’m about to hurl anymore, so I decide to test my legs. They don’t buckle under me, and I can walk. Good thing, too, because I have to pee. I shuffle across the room and down the hall.
The bathroom mirror’s afternoon feature is a horror show: matted hair, puffy eyes, skin that wintered under a rock. If I had died last night, I wouldn’t be pretty on the slab today. And I always thought I’d make a very pretty dead person.
I splash water on my face and run my wet hands through my hair.
“Tell me again about the picture I had in my mind last night,” I say to the face that looks more like Monster’s than Shawna’s. I was a sleeping beauty surrounded by pink satin. Marta, huge tears draining to her chin, leaned over to say goodbye. Deirdre, her bumpy nose red from crying, stared down at me, and Deanna of the two N’s stood next to her, apologizing, too late, for being such a bitch. Casey stayed the longest and kissed me so softly that his lips were like moth wings on my forehead. The last to lean over me was Kay, with Kenny beside her. “I’m so sorry, Shawna,” they said together, like one person speaking. Wasn’t there more? I just can’t remember.
I squeeze a glob of toothpaste onto my brush and attack the fur on my teeth, but I need to sit on the toilet while I brush. My legs are not ready to hold me upright for long.
What else don’t I remember about last night? It was important. But not important enough, I guess.
When I come out of the bathroom, Kay is leaning against the wall, like she’s waiting for her turn in a ladies’ room line in a theater.
“You going to guard me twenty-four seven?” I ask.
“For a while. Until we can arrange to see Dr. Lubell again. But we have some decisions to make. Both of us.” She takes my arm. “Come on. I’ve got soup on the table.”
The soup’s hot and good, and I’m hungry, even if my stomach is still sour. “I’m not going to school on Monday, right?”
“We’ll talk to the therapist first. The appointment’s at ten.” She clears the table and sits down again across from me.
“So, what in the h—” Kay shakes her head like she has to erase that line and start again. “What were you thinking, taking those pills?”
I want to explain, but how do I explain Monster? I don’t understand him. Monster used to hang out with me. He left after the lady with the single red braid came to stay and feed me ice cream, and laugh with me when Mom was gone and I was scared. About a year ago, when I was fifteen, Monster came back. Only he wasn’t little and fun like before.
I was almost asleep when he swam up through the sheets, wrapped long wormy fingers around both my ankles and pulled until I was sure I’d disappear under the bed. At the moment my head was about to go under, he let go of me, and I curled myself into a tight fist, holding onto my knees.
The next time Monster came, he promised to help me if only I’d do one thing for him.
“What?”
“You know. It’ll be our secret.” And he whispered in my ear.
“No. It’ll hurt.”
“Only a little,” he said. “And then you’ll feel good.”
He promised to help and I believed him. So I found one of Dylan’s razor blades in the bathroom. At first I didn’t like the feeling of the blade slicing across my ankle, but I grew to appreciate its cold thinness. It took me away from Mom and her Dylans, Randys and Jakes, from Tuan’s snaky looks, and the greasy takeout boxes piled in the sink. For that moment of cutting, I didn’t feel anything except the icy red line.
From then on, whenever I got the shakes and felt the touch of Monster’s fingers, I’d slip Mr. Sharp from under my mattress and draw him across my skin—in places only I would see. And never too deep, just enough to stop being scared for a while. At least for that moment, I could control something.
“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m nuts,” I say to Kay, who never backs down from anything.
“Try me.”
“Can I wait until my stomach isn’t up here?” I point to my chest. I’m thinking I shouldn’t have eaten.
“No.”
See? She’s stubborn. So I tell her about Monster, about the cutting, and how, as weird as it sounds to say so, it helps. “The shakes leave when I draw the line across my ankle. For just that minute, I’m in charge of my life. Jackie’s gone. Tuan’s apartment fades. Even Las Vegas goes dark and quiet.”
“But here?” Her voice is just above a whisper.
I have to think, so I close my eyes and focus on her question. I see the house and barn, Kenny, Casey with the gray, Magic waiting at the fence, Kay with her mug of coffee Sunday mornings. Then there’s Marta and school and—I open my eyes and look up at her.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s what I brought with me. Monsters travel, I guess.” When I finish she doesn’t say anything for a while, so my stomach has some time to go back to its normal business.
“So why the pills this time? Are you ratcheting up to really destroy yourself? You really want to leave me with your suicide as your good-bye?”
I know better than to shrug, so I answer her straight. “Yes. You never wanted me here in the first place.”
Her knuckles, laced into a single tight fist, turn white. Her eyes stay fixed on me as she speaks in that slow way she has when she’s had it with me.
“And you came to that conclusion all by yourself, did you?”
“No. Not all by myself. Jackie said so.” I shouldn’t have mentioned Jackie. Kay’s face goes into a spasm, but the rest of her doesn’t move and she’s silent.
“You were the one who wanted to flush me. You wanted me gone a long time before I landed on your porch two months ago. You didn’t want me, and my dad didn’t either.”
From the look on Kay’s face, I expect she’s going to explode and I’ll be wearing bits of her. I’ve hit dead center on a sore spot. I consider backing away, leaving while I can before she blows. Instead, I stay put and keep my eyes locked on hers, waiting for her next move.
When Kay suddenly scrapes her chair back and stands up, I hold onto the table to keep from jumping out of reach. But she doesn’t come at me like Jackie would. Instead, she goes to her office and returns holding a large leather book.
“You need to know about your father.” She opens the book and drops it on the table in front of me.
“His name was Nicholas Stone, and he was a good son. He would have been a good father, but the service took him, so he was a good soldier instead. He died trying to save other people.”
She’s at my side and I can feel the heat of her, can almost feel her breath with each rise and fall of her chest. I clear my throat and take a chance on saying something else.
“Why do I need to know about him now?” I’m still half expecting my stomach to pop out of my mouth, with the way it’s hopping around inside me.
“Because he was a lot braver than your mother or you, or... even I ever thought of being. He valued life. He didn’t try to throw it away.” Kay’s voice has settled into a low and dangerous current. “And he never walked out on anybody... unless they forced him to go.”
I know better than to open my mouth to tell her my mom’s version of that story. Besides, I’m too tired to say much. So I look down at the album only to see a face so much like my own that I jerk back, letting the book fall flat onto the table.
“No question you’re his daughter. I knew that at the bus station, or you’d never be living here now.”
Chapter 46
Shawna
Kay gets up from the table. “When you’re done going through the album, we’ll talk. I’ll tell you all about what happened, and you’ll have to decide which version of the story to believe, Jackie’s or mine.”
She grabs her straw hat from the rack by the back door. “Can I trust you not to do anything else stupid for a while?”
“That’s a dumb answer, Shawna. I want one that sounds intelligent, all right?”
“I’m too sick to kill myself today. Is that good enough?”
Kay turns and stomps down the steps.
I’m alone now, with my father looking up at me with dark, scolding eyes. Nicholas, age seventeen. The flat cap is pushed back on his head, its tassel dangles near his ear. He clutches a diploma in his hand.
I flip the pages backward. Nicholas, age twelve. He sits on a white horse, his smile spreading across his face; he squints at the lens. Nicholas, age ten. Tall, dark from the summer sun, he poses with a fishing pole and a string of fish he holds up for the camera—same smile, same squint.
Another page and another, going backward in time. Nicholas, Day One, 1970. Then Kay and Peter before Nicholas, 1968. Kay, her black hair pulled back gleaming under the sun, leaning over the porch of this same rough red house. A lean blond man sits beside her, his arm around her waist.
The yellow newspaper clipping is wedged between two empty pages. I open it and read:
April 10, 1991. Sweet River Native Lost in Desert Storm. Sergeant Nicholas Stone, Tank Commander of the Third Armored Division was killed this week while on patrol in the vicinity of the Safwan, Iraq refugee camp when he stepped on a land mine.He is survived by a wife and baby daughter—
“Baby daughter!” I inhale the words and hold them inside, not wanting them to vanish. I reread that line and run my finger underneath it, like I might lose my place.
—as well as his mother and father, long time Sweet River residents. Sergeant Stone attended Sweet River High School, where a memorial service is planned to honor his memory.
Mom told me my dad left because of me. She said he ran off the week I was born and didn’t tell her where he was going. She said he didn’t want to see me. The clipping quivers in my hand and I have to put it down. I have to stop the shakes. I slam my hands onto the tabletop until my palms burn.
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