Last Girls

by Demetra Brodsky

  Rémy’s face is pure amazement, but there’s no time for us to stare in awe. We need to get Bucky inside fast.

  Ansel and I take him under his shoulders and help him toward the house. We catch snippets of an argument between Alice and Dieter inside. Random words stick out in the heated conversation. Fate. Rogue behavior. Annalise. Magda. Missing. Feds. Prison. I pause and Ansel pulls me forward. There’s no time to hesitate from fear of Dieter’s wrath.

  When Alice sees us bursting into the kitchen she sucks in a breath. “You’re alive. My god, I thought—”

  The shock in her voice so clear there’s no denying the truth. We were never meant to return to The Nest, for Mother or anyone else. Not that she’s spared any blame. Annalise and Magda meant to kill us, either on Dieter’s orders or their own volition.

  “You thought what?” I snarl. “That we’d be dead? You trained us to be soldiers, to protect what’s ours, and that’s exactly what we did. Blue, clear the table.”

  Dieter turns hard eyes on Ansel. “What is this? Where’s your sister?”

  “Tied to a tree in the woods like the animal you turned her into. Mother and Connor are there, too.”

  “You left them defenseless?”

  “Defenseless? They tried to kill us. They’re lucky we didn’t return the favor.”

  Blue sweeps jars and mugs to the floor, letting them crash and shatter.

  Ansel and I hoist Bucky onto the table. He leans back on his elbows, trying to gauge the full situation, but his arms are trembling like they might give out. “You have to help him. The spike he pulled out of his leg was coated with rattlesnake venom.”

  Alice is in a state of near shock. “Who is this?” she asks, staring at Bucky’s face, even though every syllable is tainted with knowing.

  I want to torture her, let her puzzle it out, but there’s no time.

  “He’s our brother. Bucky.”

  She shakes her head in denial.

  “Yes. Toby Ellis. Remember him?”

  “Toby,” she whispers. “How?”

  “Forget him. He’s an Outsider,” Dieter barks and stomps forward, wrenching his son’s arm. “Where exactly did you leave them?”

  “I don’t remember,” Ansel says. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

  Dieter delivers a sharp backhand to Ansel’s nearly healed face that makes me cringe. Ansel shakes it off and squares his shoulders, looking past his father. Past me. Tipping his chin at something in the next room.

  I don’t understand until I hear a gun click and Birdie steps beside me. “She said help him.”

  I didn’t clock my middle sister’s whereabouts while we were helping Bucky onto the table. And now, she’s aiming the gun Alice keeps behind the painting in her bedroom right at her.

  Dieter reaches for his Glock, and my sister turns the gun on him without blinking. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “You’ve never shot anything bigger than a wild turkey in your life.”

  “You underestimated me. That’s good.” Birdie’s words match her ice-cold eyes.

  Dieter reaches for the Citizens Band Radio against better judgement and Birdie shoots the wall next to him, missing by a couple of inches. The deafening explosion makes everyone duck. My ears are ringing when I stand back up, my pride giving way to fear when I realize Birdie might be angry enough over Daniel’s death to kill him.

  “Next time I won’t miss,” she says.

  “Birdie,” Ansel says her name like a plea.

  “Don’t Birdie me,” she says. “That’s not even my name.”

  My eyes flick reflexively to Alice, and she dips her head.

  “Easy does it,” Dieter says, with his hands up. He reaches slowly for his pocket and pulls out a vial of white powder. “If I drop this, we’re all dead, so put the gun down.”

  Birdie narrows her eyes. “That could be anything. I’ll take my chances. For Daniel.”

  I yell, “Don’t!” right as Blue pushes Birdie’s arm down from the opposite side. Stopping our sister from pulling the trigger on something she’ll regret forever. The bullet meant for Dieter’s head hits him in the ribs. Alice leaps forward as he loses his grip on the vial, catching it in a closed fist before it hits the ground.

  “You’re bigger than a turkey,” Birdie says. “Shall we go for round two and see who bags the biggest prize this time?”

  Dieter is moaning, teeth clenched tight as he reaches for his gun again. Blood pooling between the fingers of his left hand.

  “Birdie,” I plead. “Give me the gun. I won’t lose you over this asshole.”

  Her sight is locked on Dieter. I’m so terrified she’ll take a kill shot, I try a different tactic.

  “Ansel, take your father’s gun and get him a towel from under the sink to hold against the wound until the authorities get here.”

  He moves in for Dieter’s Glock, and his father clamps a hand around his arm. “I’m your father.”

  “You’re my father and everything you’re doing is wrong.” Ansel pries himself free of Dieter’s grasp in more ways than one.

  “I never meant to hurt you girls,” Alice says nervously. “I saved you. There was a blackout. You were walking down the street in the rain alone. You could have been killed, hit by a car like my own husband and daughter. Your mother was so selfish. Always asking me to help out. Give you girls rides. Make sure you had a neighbor to go to if you needed. I even put the stitches in your brother’s lip. He left you alone. You were so precious, and Evie was always working on her ridiculous paintings. She didn’t deserve you.”

  “So you stole us?” The biting accusation leaks out of me like acid. “You had no right. Our lives were not yours to take and control.” My voice and hands are shaking now. “You knew we had a brother we called Bucky, and denied it when we made him into our imaginary friend.”

  Alice looks at Blue first, then Birdie, but not me. She won’t dare look at me.

  “Her real name is Allison Murphy not Alice. A lice. A lie. Malice,” Bucky whispers before sinking limply into the table.

  “The poison,” Blue yells. “Help him. Please.”

  Alice sifts through cabinets for supplies and brings out a small vial and syringe. “We can’t know if this antidote was made from the same species that poisoned him, but we’ll try.”

  Alice cuts off the bandages tied around Bucky’s leg with scissors then slices his jeans open around the wound. Blood pools from the puncture, dark and ominous, filling the hole left by the spear. Alice douses it with wound wash and Bucky hisses, arching his back with the sting. I grit my teeth and watch.

  “It didn’t hit an artery. He’ll be okay. Do you feel nauseous? Is your face or leg numb?” She grabs his wrist and takes his pulse.

  “Maybe a little. I can’t tell. Everything is sort of numb right now.”

  “He might just be in traumatic shock,” Alice says to me.

  “We all are,” I snap back. “But we can’t take any chances.”

  She takes a deep breath, letting go of what her training is telling her to do. Trusting me without the benefit of being able to pull labs and wait for results, like they would in a hospital emergency room. She picks up the syringe and administers the antivenom via push injection into his thigh. “That’s all I have in the house. He’ll need several more if it was in fact coated with venom.”

  She injects his leg with lidocaine and keeps working, cleaning and bandaging the wound. “This could have been much worse,” she tells him.

  “I’m not sure it could,” he says, voice cracking. “The last eleven years were pretty rough. I’d say this is the easiest part.”

  Alice hangs her head and says, “I’m sorry,” so quietly I almost miss it.

  “The feds are here,” Blue announces, interrupting whatever clemency Alice was hoping to get from Bucky.

  I whip my head toward the window where Blue is letting the curtain fall.

  The authorities waste no time barging into the house, armed and
covering for each other. Ansel moves fast and takes the gun from Birdie, slipping it into a kitchen drawer, before somebody sees it in her hand. A look of understanding passes between us, but I’m worried that his father’s actions won’t bode well for him.

  An officer asks us to step outside while they talk to Alice and Dieter. Bucky is up now, limping but able to walk on his own. I look back at the woman we’ve been calling Mother for eleven years, knowing she probably saved his life. Emotions rush through me in an unexpected flood of contradictions. Gratitude and resentment. Satisfaction and regret. Love and hate.

  “Farewell, bastard!” Blue says to Dieter as we walk through the door.

  There’s a hitch in Bucky’s unsteady step. “That’s from Troilus and Cressida. You’re named for Cassandra in that play.”

  “The things we don’t know will become the things we knew all along.”

  Now that’s the most accurate thing the littlest weird has ever said.

  “Spoken like your namesake,” Bucky tells her.

  * * *

  They must have found Mr. Whitlock in a bunker because they’re putting him into an ambulance when we get outside. Even from this distance I can see the bloody lip and black eye he got from one or more of Dieter’s conscripted ruffians. I yell his undercover name before the EMTs can whisk him away, and he turns toward my voice. I place one hand on my chest, trying to say thank you with all my heart. He nods back with his familiar knowing grin, and my eyes prick at the corners against my will. I don’t know if I’ll ever speak to him again, but I’ll try. He deserves my thanks and apologies.

  A tall, dark-haired agent with graying temples rushes up to us.

  “Jonesy.” Our brother breathes with palpable relief.

  He hugs Bucky tight, and I step back to give them space. “You should have waited for us,” Jonesy reprimands.

  “Is that your way of saying I was right?”

  “I guess it is.”

  “Well, tell it to my sisters. I don’t think their day-to-day protocol lines up with wait for help.” Bucky pulls each of us forward. “This is Honey.” He takes a few steps to the left. “And Birdie.”

  “And I’m Blue.” She smiles at Jonesy. “I have a pet falcon. If he can’t come, I’m not going, either.”

  “I think we can make arrangements to ensure he’s delivered to San Diego. Can you get him into a carrier?”

  “Yes, only I don’t have it anymore. It’s in the woods somewhere. But I can call him down to his mew. That’s secure.”

  “Perfect. I can’t wait to meet him. But right now, there’s someone I’d like to reacquaint you with,” Jonesy says.

  I hold my breath as he opens a car door. A woman who looks like a version of my future self steps out and steals the air from my lungs. Evie Ellis, the artist whose work I was inexplicably drawn to during a slide show at school.

  “That’s our mom,” Bucky says, as if we wouldn’t recognize ourselves in her eyes.

  When Evie Ellis lays those same familial eyes on us, her knees buckle like she might faint, and Jonesy takes her hand. Her steps are cautious, shoulders hunching as she pulls her cardigan tighter. She starts shaking more with each step.

  Blue runs forward and throws herself into the arms of a woman I barely remember, making her break into sobs. “Your hair,” she says, laughing through her tears. “It’s cobalt blue.”

  “Is there any color better than blue?” our youngest sister asks.

  “No. Not really.”

  “I’m Honey,” I tell her and shrug. “I guess … Katherina.”

  “I know,” she says. “I’d recognize you anywhere. You’ve always had the same protective look in your eyes.”

  I grin but swallow hard, knowing her recognition of me is the good mirror version. There’s so much we need to catch up on about each other.

  Birdie is holding back, chewing her nails and fighting tears. Her heart has broken so many times in the last twenty-four hours, it’s a miracle she’s still standing.

  Blue takes our mom, our real mom, by the hand and leads her forward. “This is Birdie. Bucky said you named her Imogen, after someone in Cymbeline. She’s had a really rough day.”

  “Hi Birdie,” our mom says. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  Birdie does something I never thought I’d see in a million years. She flings herself into our real mom’s arms and sobs and sobs and sobs.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she tells her. The term of affection makes her shift her eyes to mine again. A gentle smile plays on her lips, knowing I’m Honey, or I was. And suddenly we’re all blubbering messes trying to understand how we came to be in this place.

  Finally, she hugs Bucky so tight I think she might break his spine.

  “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” he tells her.

  If I remember correctly from my English class, that’s a line from Macbeth. His wife was power hungry and together they tried to take down anyone who threatened their power. Wife, daughter, either way it sounds about right.

  “Do you girls want to get your things while I talk to your friend Ansel?” Jonesy asks.

  I wipe my eyes with the back of a bloody, dirt-covered hand and look for my EOTWBFL. Ansel is leaning up against an unmarked car, talking to a federal agent.

  “He helped save us,” I tell Jonesy. “Ansel is a good person. He deserves leniency and help. He’s not like his family.”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” he says. “I promise.”

  Bucky said Jonesy never gave up looking for us, so his promise warrants my trust.

  My sisters and I head inside to our bedroom and retrieve the physical things we want to take away from this life. Birdie’s comics, Blue’s needlepoint. Mentally, everything about The Nest will always be with us.

  I hand them their bug-out bags. “I don’t know what else to take.”

  “Anything and nothing,” Birdie says. “Most of it’s a lie.”

  “Most, but not all,” I say, gathering the notebooks that hold all the letters I’ve written to Bucky over the years.

  Birdie smiles. I haven’t seen her do that in a long time. “Are you gonna let him read those?”

  “Maybe. Are you gonna let him see your comics?”

  “Of course. I made him a cape-wearing hero.” She turns and lays her hand on Blue’s shoulder, stopping our little from collecting her needlepoint supplies momentarily. “You were right. Bucky didn’t save us, but he was there.”

  “I know,” Blue says. “I told Honey he wanted us to come home.”

  She did. In the woods before we fell asleep. The wonders of Blue never cease.

  We look around the room one last time. Birdie sighs and goes to the window, searching the trees for the freckled boy who will never visit her in the middle of the night again, except in dreams.

  “It’s time,” I tell them. “We never belonged here.”

  “That is factually correct,” Blue says.

  We walk down the creaky steps, past the living room, where Birdie threw cushions around looking for the EDC that kickstarted this whole ordeal. We march through the wooden screen door, letting it slap behind us like a gavel issuing freedom.

  “What are those?” our real mom asks.

  “Some of our art.” Blue shows her the needlepoint she’s been working on and Birdie’s comics.

  Starring Bucky Beaverman: Lead Anti-Hero.

  “What about your art, Honey?” she asks.

  “I don’t have anything here. My last painting is at the school.”

  “The one that was on the news?” Bucky asks.

  I nod and kick at the dirt with the toe of my boot, wishing I’d taken the painting with me.

  “Rémy brought it. It’s wrapped up in the back of the catering van.”

  Bucky limps to the van and opens the double doors. At the same time, Rémy steps out of the passenger seat, lifts his camera, and takes my picture.

  “Have I ever mentioned you’re relentless with that thing?”
r />   “Damn straight, I’m relentless.” He shows me the photo in the viewfinder.

  I’m filthy, a cut on my forehead is crusting over, but I look strong. Resolute.

  “I’m surprised you’re still here. Most people would have cut and run.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  No, he isn’t. He never was. “Thank you,” I tell him, and mean it so much my chest aches.

  “You don’t have to thank me, Honey. It sounds too much like goodbye.”

  “You deserve my thanks, Rémy, so be quiet for once and let me get this out. Thank you for following your own suspicions and looking into what was happening. And for taking all those photos of my sisters and me and seeing what I couldn’t. And most of all, thank you for wanting to be my friend and sticking around even when I tried to push you away.”

  “Still in the friend zone, huh? After all that?”

  “Boyfriend, I guess. If the world as we knew it didn’t just end.”

  “Does that mean I can finally kiss you?”

  “Do your worst, Petruchio.”

  Rémy slips a hand behind my head. I didn’t know how much I wanted this to happen until his lips press down on mine. I’m clinging to him, returning his kiss like I may never see him again. I don’t want to let him go.

  We pull apart, and he touches my cheek so softly I can’t help but lean into his hand. “This doesn’t have to be goodbye.”

  “It’s not,” I tell him. “I’ll write to you.”

  “Okay. But we can also text and video message. You have friends here. Brian. Shawna. I bet they’d love to hear from you. And let’s not forget email. That old faithful form of communication.”

  “I know, but I’m still gonna write you letters, on paper, because that’s what I do.”

  “A Dear John letter?”

  “No. Never. That would mean a true goodbye, and I’ll never forget everything you’ve done for us.”

  He looks away, which is un-Rémy-like, and I follow his eyes.

  Dieter and Allison Murphy are being taken into custody. She stares back at us, face sagging with hurt. All I feel is numb. This place she made us call home was all a lie, like every other town or city. Lies piled on top of lies. Now we know why we were always moving. Not to find the safest place, but because we were running. Hiding until Alice’s paranoia grew and she made us part of The Nest, thinking they would protect us.