by Kim Savage
Mira thought she saw Francesca rolled in a ball, making herself even smaller behind her scraggly pine. As Mira ran toward the tree, Francesca stepped in her path. Mira bounced off her chest and fell backward. Connie laughed, and her laughter seem to come at Mira from every direction.
“You took me out!” Mira sputtered.
“Now I’m it!” Francesca slit her eyes and scanned the field. Mira turned cross: Francesca had slammed her hard, and the ground was cold. She rose slowly, rubbing her behind. Connie called, “Me next! Me next!” from her scrubby hiding place. Francesca’s shoulders pitched forward, and she ran toward her, elbows pumping fiercely. Connie screeched in delight. She took off, heading east in a wide arc around the quarry mouth. Francesca followed, but Connie had at least a yard lead, and she was strong, stronger than she ever seemed, Mira thought as she joined the chase. Again and again, Francesca lunged, but Connie dodged her grasp. The girls shrieked in pleasure with each near miss; even Mira began to shout, rooting for Connie to get away. Connie squealed, reveling in moving. As her lead grew she became brave, stopping and switching direction, taunting Francesca from behind spindly oaks, her pursuer struggling, shreds of leaves like torn butcher paper in her hair. She tracked Connie closer to the crest, to the drop-off into the quarry proper, with its ledges and water. Ahead, the Boston skyline blinked, festive. Mira knew Powder Neck glowed, too, behind and below them, a steady blue-white.
Mira stopped. Francesca was forcing Connie to the edge.
Mira cupped her hands around her mouth to scream “Stop!” and Connie did, turning to face them, her head loose on its stem, bobbing slightly. Francesca stopped short a few feet from Connie. Mira approached, slowly, squinting. As she came closer, she saw Connie’s eyes were unfocused, her hand waving around her throat.
“Connie?” Mira said.
Connie fumbled with her jacket zipper. Mira stepped forward and yanked it. When it caught, Mira yanked harder, rocking Connie like a rag doll. Finally the zipper split and Mira threw the coat open. Pink welts traveled down Connie’s throat and joined, forming larger ones that disappeared into her low-cut shirt.
“What are those?” Mira cried.
Connie splayed her hand against the lacy pattern, as if someone had said something surprising. Francesca pushed Mira aside for a better view. She peered at Connie’s chest.
“Hives.”
Connie’s breath got loud and ragged. Her fingers closed around her throat. Miles away, on Powder Neck, an ambulance siren wailed, jolting Mira.
“We need help,” she said. “This is bad. We need to call someone right now.”
Connie staggered and swayed, dropped to her knees and retched. The sound carried. Mira crouched beside her and wiped Connie’s mouth with her sleeve. She rubbed Connie’s back, murmuring, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
Francesca’s eyes flitted over Connie.
Mira looked up at Francesca. “I’m using the pen.”
Connie looked up weakly. “Don’t,” she whispered.
Francesca’s eyes flashed at Mira. “You heard her.”
Mira felt Connie stiffen under her arm. Mira stood and looked around wildly. She reached around to her back pocket and felt for the bulge of the pen. As she did, Francesca walked swiftly toward Mira and knocked her to the ground. Mira stumbled a few feet away. She blinked hard at the dusk and scrambled to her feet. Francesca had rolled Connie onto her back and now kneeled beside her, her hands on top of one another upon Connie’s chest, about to perform CPR.
Mira felt relief sweep over her. Francesca was going to do the right thing, like she always did, big sister sweeping in and taking control. How could she have doubted?
Francesca closed her eyes and tipped her chin to the sky, murmuring, “Jesus, you commanded your apostles to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils: freely I have received, freely I give.”
Mira gasped.
Connie’s body twitched from its core.
“Quickly!” said Mira.
“Give me your grace, oh God, to perform a miracle, to give breath to this girl where there is none…”
Mira cried. “Is it happening? It needs to happen, there’s no time!”
Francesca threw her head back. “Oh Lord, you put saints on Earth after the apostles to follow Jesus’s command to heal the sick and raise the dead. Let me be your vehicle, dear God…”
Mira drew the pen from her back pocket and held it in front of her nose. “I can’t see. What do I do with it?” The pen slipped from Mira’s spastic hands, flying into the air and landing soundlessly in the dark. “I lost it!”
Francesca’s head snapped up. “Pray! Pray now with me!”
Mira crawled on her hands and knees, fumbling blindly on the ground. Loose rock and mica shards sliced the soft undersides of her hands. “I can’t find it!” Tears streamed into her mouth and nose. “I can’t find it!”
Francesca dropped her head. The ledge was filled with chanting, verses of the Lord’s Prayer, broken with sobs.
“Mira!” Francesca’s voice was shrill. “Pray with me!”
Mira crawled onto the altar rock. It seemed impossible that the EpiPen could have bounced that far, and as she thought this, another thought, her father’s words, intruded: No good comes from running around alone and unchaperoned. She pushed it from her mind and ran her hand in front of her in a semicircle. Her fingertips grazed plastic. She snatched up the cigar-shaped shadow and held it up to the lights of Boston. She spotted a soft indent below the cap and twisted the top. The cap fell to the ground with a soft tick. Clambering to her feet, she turned, and froze.
In the half-light, Mira thought she might be gazing at a medieval religious painting. Francesca, serene and lovely, now kneeled at Connie’s head, her hands long underneath, pale slices cupping Connie’s darkened cheeks.
Alone on the ledge, Mira shivered deeply. On the ground, Connie’s twitches had stilled, and she appeared to be sleeping. Francesca’s voice floated past Mira, past the tip of the altar rock, out and over the chasm. Mira knew the quarry did queer things with sound, warped and threw it. But never this. Her voice magnified and multiplied, and soon it sounded like a hundred girls praying from every ledge. Mira felt the voices bounce back and fill her, and the reverberation entered her body and warmed it. If the prayers were a color, they’d be white, Mira thought, a pearly white light. Mira imagined the light pouring into Connie, and that seemed good.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
And then she heard her mother’s stern voice. Pray, Mira.
Mira walked as if through water and kneeled next to Connie. Francesca swayed now, her eyes upturned. Mira’s eyes widened as she marveled at her own voice soaring back to her tenfold.
Mira’s fingers flexed around the pen.
Francesca prayed louder. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. On Earth as it is in heaven.”
Mira straightened her back and prayed louder too. Francesca reached across Connie’s waist to grab Mira’s wrist, chanting, her eyes smiling at the corners. She shook her wrist, still chanting, and suddenly Mira realized her sister needed her, needed her voice to join the chorus or Connie would die.
Mira closed her eyes and prayed.
“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.”
Mira listened to her own voice multiply and divide. A thousand Miras surrounded her, and their voices were beautiful.
She swayed.
“As we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation.”
She chanted louder.
“But deliver us from evil.”
As if obeying an unspoken command, the girls fell silent, but their voices carried for another minute across the chasm. Mira opened her eyes. Francesca looked down. She dipped her head over Connie, and her hair spilled, draping her in darkness. Her ear pressed against Connie’s mouth. Mira froze, staring at the black crown of Francesca’s head for a full minute.
Mira blinked hard, shaking herself awake. Her hand that clasped the pen had gone numb. She switched the pen to her left hand and raised it to the sky. With a primal scream, she jammed it down hard. The needle pierced Connie’s jeans and punctured her thigh. The pen stood upright as her hand moved away, her fingers aloft and quivering in the air, her scream echoing across the chasm.
She didn’t respond, and Mira knew that was not good.
PART 8
Ash
DECEMBER 2016
On the same day Ben walked out of Piggy’s basement for the last time he ever would, he waited for his parents to fall asleep before slipping into his moonlit backyard clutching Mira’s notes against his chest.
Stealth was required. His parents had been watching him closely since the incident. His mother had collapsed at his feet; his father had wept. Drenched, cocooned in a Mylar emergency blanket, the cops pushed Ben over his own doorstep. Now, his father’s wing tip toe nudged the side of his sneaker under the kitchen table, his mother’s fingers brushed the tops of his shoulders. Constantly, they touched him. Ben couldn’t blame them, since it seemed like the teenagers of Bismuth were disappearing into the ether. Ben had even agreed to weekly dinners with Mr. Falso, which had to be easier than seeing a real therapist. Like his parents, Mr. Falso had accepted his excuse: that he’d gone to the ledge that night to get peace. His swim was deemed a sad reenactment of what his lost girlfriend had done months before, but resulting in hypothermia instead of rigor mortis. What they didn’t know was that he’d brought something back with him from that night. Something he couldn’t shake.
In the yard, a wet click click in his ear.
Softly, he placed the notes inside the patio chiminea and lit the match, each time snuffed by the wind, until the third time when it caught. The smoke blew away from his house, the smell of ink and char rising out of the neighborhood and over the Neck, out across the water and toward the city, where it would mingle with the smells of salt and city and new beginnings.
He no longer needed the notes. He could tell their story now using his own words. Mira’s and Francesca’s and Connie’s.
Do something to one of us, you do it to all.
But first, there was business.
He stepped lightly across the frozen grass to his front yard, flush against the house so as not to set off the sensor lights his father had installed to discourage further escapes. From the bush in his front yard, Ben could see Mr. Cillo in his office, hunched over his desk, head resting on forearms. He had watched Mr. Cillo every night since he’d hidden in the man’s dead daughters’ closet. Graying gelled hair on a massive head. Meaty hands with scarred knuckles cupping elbows. Epaulettes of an ancient Members Only jacket worn indoors. Always the same.
Ben checked his watch: 11:19—arguably too late. But he was still a kid. Harmless if he showed up on a doorstep. He knew vaguely that the old Ben would have realized it was inappropriate to ring his neighbor’s doorbell after eleven o’clock at night. But somewhere on the altar ledge, the new Ben had lost the compass that told him what normal kids did not do. For sure, his new lack of a filter had contributed to his near-friendless state. Since that night, Ben had felt Francesca’s disapproving presence.
The sense of Francesca hit a crescendo in Piggy’s basement, when Piggy began comparing the Miller girls to the Cillo sisters and everyone started weighing in, sizing them up. Ben’s indignance had risen with every jaw-click in his ear. He’d yelled at Piggy, then each of them, and when they laughed at him, he threw his Xbox controller at Louis’s lap, nailing his balls and starting a fight. Kyle tried to call them off, even said it was Ben’s meds making him a nutbag, though to his knowledge, Ben was still faking his daily dose.
The sense of being watched was growing stronger.
And then, without remembering he had walked across his own driveway and the small patch of lawn that separated them, he was ringing Mr. Cillo’s doorbell.
The door creaked open slowly. Framed by the indoor gloom, Mr. Cillo’s form was rumpled and aged. A belly had developed that winter. Streetlight glare caught in a pair of never-before-seen glasses. Behind Ben, the wind whipped up. Something about the house seemed cozy, and for the first time in ages, he wanted to be inside.
“I know it’s late, sir. But I have something to say to you.”
“I’d say it’s late, boy. It’s almost midnight. Do your parents know you’re out here?”
Ben looked down at the stoop, his cheeks hot. Mr. Cillo was referring to Ben’s runaway escapade, one that he had been drawn into, a favor that he knew was unwise, hadn’t wanted to give. The sureness of purpose Ben had had moments before evaporated.
“No, sir. But I couldn’t sleep. I know you can’t either. I see you awake every night.”
Mr. Cillo wrinkled his brow, and Ben noticed his eyebrow hairs were long and tangled. He crossed his arms over his gut. “You peeping in my windows, son?”
“I can’t help but see. We’re so close, our houses…” Ben was fumbling. In his ear, the impatient click click of bone in socket.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Ben blurted. A leak had given way, and something hot and heavy poured out of him.
“Yeah, well. We’ve had our differences, your dad and me. But you got a good family. Show me how sorry you are by sticking close to your mom and dad and not scaring them anymore.”
“Yes, sir.” Ben told himself that it didn’t matter what Mr. Cillo thought he meant, only that he said it. He had been mistaken in his belief about Mira’s father, and now he had atoned.
“And stay away from the quarry. Nothing good comes out of that place.” He raised his arm to close the door, ready to sulk back into the dim.
Ben wondered if he understood the irony of what he’d said—the quarry had given him a living, and it had taken away his daughters. The filter was gone. Before he could stop himself, he said, “It’s like the Bible says. First it gives, then it takes away.”
Mr. Cillo let his arm fall. He opened and closed his fists. Ben cringed, ready for him to come after him, deliver him a smack for his insolence. But the wrinkles around his eyes grew soft, and his fists loosened at his waist.
“I feel sorry for you, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “That coach really messed you up, didn’t he?”
Ben felt the emotion rising in his throat. There was a time when he would have done physical violence to Mr. Cillo for his words. But Ben was beginning to master his own white-hot rage. Turn it into something else.
He straightened his shoulders and turned away from the Cillos’ home. There was nothing here that he wanted.
APRIL 2016
Pale thimbles floated in a congealed Crock-Pot of pasta e fagioli. Spatulas under squares of lasagnas in colored Pyrex invited takers, but every slice remained. Children had filched all of the Jordan almonds from the pizzelle trays, and the cookies lay unadorned.
Everything had gone switchback, sideways, wrong. Francesca couldn’t take it any longer. Mr. Falso had spent the entire night counseling her aunt, though she was barely responsive from the Xanax, and could easily be attended to by any one of the priests who had come to the house directly from the cemetery. Even her father—no fan of Mr. Falso, not really—had squeezed his shoulder at one point and offered him a cigar and an escape, but Mr. Falso had refused. Francesca was beginning to see Mr. Falso’s behavior as one big attempt to avoid her, and she would not have that. Not now, when she needed him most, for comfort, of course—Connie had been her cousin, her blood—but her spiritual resolve was in jeopardy, never more so than now, since her dream had confirmed what she had begun to suspect.
She would catch him when he couldn’t say no.
Francesca broke away from Mira. It was stifling, anyway, the way she clung to her, gave her no room to breathe, depending on her to get through her own terrible guilt. How could Mira feel guilty when the guilt was Francesca’s to bear? It seemed almost self
ish to Francesca, the way Mira sucked up responsibility for what had surely been Francesca’s fault. But that was their way: one body, shared blood. Mio sangue.
Mira tugged at her sleeve. “Will you ask Daddy if we can go home?”
Francesca caught her reflection in a mirror. She was a ghost of herself, in her favorite black dress, the same one she’d worn to the wake, shapeless skin and bones under a cheap spandex blend, with hollows under her eyes. She looked like crap, really. But that was to be expected when your little cousin dies.
But not Mira.
Somehow Mira looked okay, in her flowy dress, her eyes sad but beautiful. Surely she had been tortured as much as Francesca by what happened to Connie. It had been a dumb trick, a stunt too soon to try, since she’d had so little time to explore her latest power. Mr. Falso’s waning interest had set her on an accelerated time line. Francesca’s eyes narrowed on Mira. Her cheeks had color; Mira hadn’t lost weight like she had. Her small belly was soft and slightly rounded under her dress, her arms still full. Perhaps Mira felt less guilty, because she’d tried to use the pen to save Connie? What ever happened to that pen?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mira said.
“It’s nothing.” Francesca smiled gently. “I’ll ask Daddy if we can go in a minute. I promise. Stay here and don’t talk to anyone.” She waited half-hidden behind the corner of the Villelas’ hutch until Mr. Falso broke away to get her aunt a paper cup of punch. The other women seemed relieved as they swarmed Mrs. Villela’s chair; they couldn’t leave without sharing regrets and a proper goodbye, and Mr. Falso’s monopolizing had stalled them for a good hour.
Francesca waited until he set the crystal ladle back in its bowl with a soft clink.
“I need to speak with you privately,” she said curtly.
Mr. Falso spun and punch splashed onto his curled hand. With his eyebrows raised, the creases in his forehead and around his eyes and mouth seemed deeper than before, making him look old and clownish. Francesca set the thought aside.
“Now.”