Circle Nine

  I can’t go, I tell him. I’m sorry. I am miserable. The words are knives hurtling from my tongue.

  Please, he whispers. Tears roll down his cheeks.

  Sam, I say, I just can’t do it; I’m sorry. I am hurting for him, so sorry to deny him anything.

  Sam is silent. He turns away, begins sobbing quietly.

  Then I am filled with relief; my hot-and-cold panic subsides. I realize: I can go to Sid’s, after all. I can find another way, make a different trade.

  I’ll try, Sam, I tell him suddenly. I’ll go to Sid’s and I’ll try. At this, he turns back to me, his eyes alight with watery red hope.

  I knew you would, baby. I knew you wouldn’t make me suffer.

  So I have decided to do the one thing I can to ensure Sam’s safety once I am gone. I put my plan into action, gathering supplies, brainstorming a trade that Sid will not refuse. If I don’t come back with Sam’s medicine, if I don’t know for sure that he will be OK, I will not be able to leave. And that is not an option. To stay here will destroy me, too.

  When I see Sam’s ugliness — his tortured body and venomous words, the things I used to associate only with Circle Nine — I know I am more a part of that world than this one. I know that my time here is over, and it makes me less afraid. The ugliness I see sometimes makes our canopy bed look like a dirty, stained mattress. It makes our feasts of lamb and roasted pears look like McDonald’s we pulled from a garbage bin. It does evil, horrible things with what we have and to Sam. Sometimes he turns from me and talks to Amanda’s shrine, where it sits in the corner of the room. He talks to the shrine as if it is Amanda herself. Amanda is a good listener, he says. She listens patiently, he says. He says he likes how she does not interrupt like I do. She’s easy. She doesn’t drive him out of his mind. She sits quietly among her possessions.

  I know that Amanda is gone. But even still, I have that old worry that Sam loves Amanda more than he loves me. It is all madness.

  Sam, I think, I will go get your medicine, and you’ll be OK, and then I can leave you, only for a while, only to do what I need to do.

  I think these things, but really I am worried that he will not be able to survive this. I am panicked. I will be able to survive, because now I know that Circle Nine is the world in which I belong. It is where I came from — I know that deep down, from everything I’ve discovered. But Sam may not be equipped to get on without me here. I hope that his medicine will make him feel better, like before, when I first came here with him. But I also know that his magic-potion medicine isn’t safe. I’m suspicious of its cylindrical vial, but I see no other choice.

  I leave Sam, thrashing and muttering, behind me, and I plunge into the outdoors. I am less and less vulnerable out here, since now I’ve left many times on my own. It makes me feel strong, empowered. Besides, when everything is still beautiful and the darkness hasn’t crept in, I am invincible.

  I trudge over the train tracks, three blocks west to where Sid lives. I have brought Sid a modest gift. I hope it will be enough; it was the best I could do. What happened last time left me feeling dirty, cast me into a bad place. So this has to be enough. It’s my only plan. I’m not sure it’s a good one, though; something feels off, fills me with a desperate panic.

  Sid! I call.

  I knock four times. His little house looks so warm and inviting. There are flowers blooming around his white picket fence. There is light streaming from his windows. Marmalade, Sid’s cat, slinks sultry around the corner and rubs against my ankles. She is hairless and adorable. Sid is a true animal lover, Sam told me once. I stroke her chin and she meows and vibrates under my palm. Sid sees me through the window.

  What do you want, Abby? He asks it past the door, while it is still shut. Back for more?

  But he seems afraid of me.

  Please, I say. I stand for a few minutes patiently.

  Sid finally opens the door a crack. He looks at me and makes a face like he doesn’t like what he sees.

  Go away, Abby.

  He shuts it again. But I push the door open and offer him my fists. My offering is hidden inside my right fist. It is very important that he picks the right fist.

  Pick one, I say.

  You’re crazy.

  Pick one, Sid.

  I motion my fists at him again. Marmalade yowls at my feet. She wants me to keep petting her. I nudge her with my toe, hoping it will suffice.

  Sid rolls his eyes and points to my right fist. I laugh! I am doubled over with mirth. I knew he would choose that one. I am so excited to give Sid what he picked. It means maybe I will get Sam’s medicine today, after all. I unroll my fingers from where they clutch at my palm. Inside my fist is my offering. I hold it up. Something’s wrong with it.

  Sid yells and jumps back. Then he slams the door again.

  Freaking crazy, he mutters through the door. Get the hell out of here and don’t come back, he says. Freak!

  I don’t know at first why he reacted like that. His rudeness settles into my gut and makes me sick. It is a crushing disappointment. Maybe Marmalade will like my offering. I kneel down, and she is already nudging her nose against my fist, which I have closed again. I open it slowly and, as she pounces on the tiny dead mouse, I begin to understand. It wasn’t dead this morning; I have clutched it too hard in my sweaty fists. It was sweet and companionable when I caught it — an offering fit for Sid. But now it looks slightly nasty and only fit for a cat. I wipe my palm on my thigh and take a breath. I am angry, but only with myself; my instincts have betrayed me. I need to go back to Sam.

  When I return to the cave and Sam sees I am empty-handed, he cries.

  I’m sorry, Sammy, I whisper for the millionth time as the tears roll down his cheeks. Without Sam’s medicine I am trapped. I curl up behind him on our bed, which has turned into the ugly torn cot again. I wrap my body behind his so all of our parts match up. I kiss the back of his neck as he sobs, and eventually we begin to fall asleep. I have let myself down, too.

  I am so frightened. I’ve never seen Sam like this, worse than ever before. He is raging, throwing things, tearing at his hair, and I am sitting quietly in the corner, hoping he won’t focus his rage on me. The source of his fury is his medicine, of course — the stuff I used to think of as medicine, but now I know it for what it always was: poison, drugs. The barrier between Circle Nine and my and Sam’s world has been broken. Circle Nine is seeping in and swishing around us until nothing’s separate any longer. But every now and then there are glimmers of the old brightness. And when there are, I hang on to them, because the alternative threatens to destroy me.

  I look at Sam as if he’s on a screen and I’m at the cinema, like on our Date not so long ago. With him on the screen, I don’t worry for myself. I am free to stare long at the purple marks on his arms, his bony rib cage, and the thinness of his hair. I am free to feel horrified without fear. I look at my own body and see that it’s as bony as his, but my arms are free from any marking. There is that. I am so hungry. There is nothing to cook here. There is not even any way of cooking. It’s cold, and damp, and filthy, and my Sam is raging, so loud and violent now that I can’t keep him on that cinema screen.

  He’s shaking my shoulders. My teeth rattle against each other, and my neck snaps back.

  Why didn’t you help me! He is so angry. He slaps me hard, and I am crying. He’s never before touched me in this angry way.

  I tried, Sammy. I tried so hard.

  Why don’t you care that I’m suffering, Abby? Why don’t you care?

  I do care! I plead with him. He is squeezing me too tight and slapping me again and again. I feel trails of tears and maybe blood on my cheeks.

  Then do something, Abby, help me! I need it. Don’t you see I need it?

  I see, Sammy. I see that, I tell him. I don’t know what to do.

  Now he’s crying, too, and saying he’s sorry, but he’s so different from the Sammy I love that it’s hard for me to look at him and know he is the same. I wonder if he has
always been like this, but I don’t think that could be. As angry as I am with him for what he’s done, the things he’s hidden, I still can’t believe it was all a game for him.

  Then he’s running outside and I’m running after him, but we’re both slow and clumsy. It rained earlier, whole sheets of it slicing the sky in half, and now the ground is soggy. Its damp softness feels like quicksand under my feet. It’s late at night, and I’m afraid Sam will get lost or hurt himself, because he’s so weak. And I’m afraid I’ll lose sight of him. I’m weak, too, but I’m still stronger than he is — strong enough to want to take care of him.

  The only thing that fuels him is desperation. I can hear the crunch of his shoes against the ground, and I know he’s heading toward town. But I don’t know what he plans to do there. He’s still crying, and his breath is coming out in thick, animal-like grunts. It is later than late. It is the darkest, deepest part of night now.

  We reach town and it’s dead. Sam stops for breath, and I try to wrap my arms around him, to calm him, but he shoves me away in one motion far more violent than he should be able to manage. All I can do is follow. My heart pounds because some part of me feels like this is it: every bad and good thing we’ve ever done in our lifetimes has come down to this moment.

  Sam has reached a small liquor store, Canyon Jack’s. I am ten paces behind him, lagging, but I can’t move faster. My limbs are deadweight, and my head is light and hazy. He stares at the store for a moment, then he walks to the garbage bin that sits outside and rummages around inside. I am afraid to ask questions. My cheek still throbs from earlier, and my left hand is painfully swollen from where I caught myself when he shoved me down. I watch the scene from a distance, watch it unfurl out of my control.

  Finally he finds what he is looking for. A large stone meant to weigh down the flimsy plastic bin. Sam launches the stone through the store window. The sound of shattering glass may as well be a bomb going off in this quiet neighborhood, and I wonder if he triggered an alarm. I run up to the window and look in. Sam’s already at the cash register. I know what comes next.

  Sammy, please, I plead with him. Please come home with me.

  Just a little, he cries. Just a little bit, Abby. I’ll pay it back — I promise. Just enough for Sid. Please, Abby. I can’t do it anymore. He is sobbing, pathetic, and stuffing wads of cash in his pockets, and again I feel like this isn’t real, and I don’t know what’s real anymore, whether this is Circle Nine or my life or one of my gruesome nightmares. I am so terribly sad.

  Just hurry, Sammy! I say, because now I can hear sirens not far away, and they remind me of how scared I was when he saved me from the burned-down house that awful day long ago.

  I’m hurrying, baby. Don’t leave me.

  Hurry!

  Now he’s leaping over the counter and racing toward me where I stand on the other side of the broken window. But it’s going to be too late — I know it is! Because I can see the flickering lights of the police cars reflecting off the buildings down the street. I want to run, but I don’t; I am motionless, waiting for Sam. He is coming toward me fast. He is looking into my eyes as he runs, and they are full of everything that’s ever happened to us, and I see how much he loves me and how sad he is. Now he’s jumping back through the window because I know he’s thinking, No time to unlock the door. I am screaming for him, and I’ve already begun to back up because he’ll be right behind me. When I turn around again, he’s not there. I see him rolling on the ground holding his leg and screaming, and there’s a puddle of blood trailing from him and blood on the glass above him where he leaped.

  Don’t leave me, baby! He is crying and gasping it over and over. He is so like a child, lying helpless and hurt, and for a moment I am frozen, caught again in his eyes, in their beautiful brown-gold agony. My eyes dart toward the cars, which are turning the corner with their red and blue lights. Then again at him, at his mouth which even now forms my name. I look at him long, one more time, maybe for the last time, before I turn and run.

  I save myself.

  Maybe he’s been caught by now. Maybe he’s sitting in some hospital, or a jail cell, afraid. I wonder, I worry, but I don’t turn back. It would be impossible. The cave is not far — I remember that much. I move quickly, fighting the irrational fear that he is following behind me. I go fast, faster still until I am stumbling, until I have run for a very long time. Far too long. The dense forest stretches as far as I can see, so far it implies no end. There’s silence apart from my breathing, heavy and fast, the rustling of the wind against the trees, the calls of owls or maybe bats. White noise.

  Then I know: there is no cave for me anymore, no safe place. It is nowhere; it’s been swallowed up by the forest. I’ll never find it.

  I keep running. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the pain crushing my head and the weary feeling that’s oozing up my ankles and toward my shins and over my lungs and chest, making it impossible for me to breathe. I stop, collapse, rest. Right now, I don’t know what else to do.

  For the first time, I see it as it happened.

  Mama’s curled up next to Daddy on the bed. She keeps to his schedule, usually; so nothing could really wake them between nine p.m. and five a.m., when he gets up for work. When everyone else is up watching movies late at night, they’re snoring a duet. When other people get up for breakfast, Daddy’s practically taking a lunch break. That’s the way it is with him — odd jobs take odd hours. As for Katie, she’s gone out again after cheer camp.

  It’s the perfect time.

  I met a boy this morning, Sam. My heart thuds even as I think of him. I have such a hard time meeting people, boys and girls alike; Katie’s the more social one, and I’ve never needed any friends but her. Lately, though, she’s been getting impatient with me. “You’re sixteen, Addie. Time to start living your own life.” So she goes out without me, and I’m left alone a lot of the time with only Mama to talk to. Mama tells me things will change, that I’m just a late bloomer like she was, that Katie got Daddy’s natural charm. Mama says it’s hard for me to connect, that kids are hard, that I’ll find my kindred spirits eventually, that people just need to grow up. Thinking I might bloom later doesn’t stop me from being angry with Katie now when she leaves and it’s just me.

  It’s true that Katie and Dad are a lot alike. No matter how tired he is, he always smiles when he sees her, makes a few jokes just to get her grinning, perks up when she walks in the room. When they laugh together, it’s like twin wind chimes knocking against each other, musical and airy. Their eyes crinkle up the same way, and they don’t stop until they’re clutching their stomachs because it hurts. It’s different with me. When Daddy looks at me, he looks tired, like maybe it’s too much effort to try to make me laugh, too. Like I’m somebody unfathomable, like I don’t really belong to him at all.

  Today, I met my own friend, someone who doesn’t even know who Katie is. To Sam, I am not Katie’s little sister. I’m just me, a girl he met. I skipped summer school this morning. I don’t do much there, anyway — just sit in the back of the room and daydream and sketch until the final bell rings. I’ve always kept to myself; no one bothers about me much anymore. I know people think I’m weird, or at best standoffish, but really it just fits to be alone. I used to try; I used to force a smile onto my face and laughter into my voice, even when I didn’t get the jokes or the secret teenage language everyone else around me seemed to share. Finally, I realized that all my trying wasn’t fooling anyone. So I stopped altogether and drifted back a little. And I liked it fine that way, really.

  Today I told Mama I was sick, then slipped out when she was gone running errands. After she got back, she probably jumped right into bustling around the house, getting dinner ready for Daddy, like always. He gets home around four, and after that they usually don’t notice a thing but one another, as long as we’re back for dinner. It’s funny about Mama; she’s one-hundred percent devoted to Katie and me, but then when Daddy’s around, love takes over and she f
orgets to focus as hard on us. I think they must be really in love. When they’re around each other, they act all young and giddy again. It’s OK, though. They’re good to us, my parents.

  I was on the swing set in the park when I met him. It’s where I like to go to think. I was twirling on the swing, doing my thinking, even talking to myself a little when he spoke.

  “I talk to myself, too,” he said. “I always thought I was crazy till now.” I jumped, because I hadn’t heard him come up at all, let alone settle onto the swing exactly next to me. I was so embarrassed. The boy was dark and strikingly handsome, Latino-looking. I was pierced, gone from the start.

  “I wasn’t talking to myself,” I muttered, looking at the ground.

  “OK,” he said. “Then I guess you were talking to me.” I looked up then, meeting his eyes and nodding slowly. He looked long and hard at my notepad, open on my lap. It was just a little piece of nothing, a drawing of me, how I see myself. But his eyes went wider when he saw it, and he nodded as if he saw exactly what it was I was doing. As if he saw the thoughts behind the girl in the picture.

  “Do one of me?” he asked. So I did, forgetting the way I usually try to normalize things, forgetting to try to flirt the way Katie does, forgetting to focus on anything but the way I saw him in that moment. When I was done, he looked at it for a long time.

  “I think I understand,” he finally told me after I’d sat there biting my lip for a couple of minutes. His voice was quiet and serious, and I worried at first that I’d offended him. Maybe he hated what I saw. Because what I’d seen was a mishmash of contradictions — some lovely, some harsh — and what I’d drawn was a caricature of that. My interpretation. He wore a shirt with rolled cuffs, once white and probably crisp but now irreversibly soiled, as if he’d been living in it for weeks. It had some embroidery, Rockville Prep, on its breast pocket. I knew Rockville Prep. It was a boarding school an hour away, the kind of place even the rich can barely afford. He wore chinos that were ragged and thin, leather dress shoes with holes in them. His face was hard-edged and handsome, but his eyes were sunken deep. He oozed of ruined wealth. He looked like he’d fallen from grace, so that’s what I’d drawn: a fallen angel.