by Dia Reeves
Rue raised her hand. “Me.”
Stanton pushed Rue behind him, but the queen beetle followed.
“You’ll stay?”
“No!” said the twins.
“Sure I will. I’ll sit right here and I won’t get in anybody’s way.”
“Excuse us, ma’am.” The twins backed away respectfully from the queen, dragging Rue with them before turning on her.
“What the hell is your problem? You can’t stay here with a bunch of insects.”
“Isn’t this why you asked me to come?”
“You for a bug is not a fair trade,” said the twins.
“Then what did you bring me for?”
“Your soul.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, you unbelievable idiot. Even less than you gave us.”
After a moment to fully understand what they were saying, Rue breathed out her soul.
“Just a little,” said Stanton. “Too much can hurt the beetles.”
“And time itself,” Sterling added. “Let’s not forget that part.”
Rue held up the marble-sized bit of her soul for the queen to examine. The beetle queen gripped the colorful ball of light between multiple legs, while the other beetles crowded around. “This is a fine replacement. A fair trade. You may go.”
Outside, Rue’s phone beeped at her again, revealed another message just as absurd as the previous one but, away from the beetles’ influence, she had to take it seriously.
While the twins studied the trapped beetle, their backs to her, Rue slipped away.
It took a while to run to the dark park, to Mr. Beardsley, but Rue finally made it, only panting a little.
“Nettle?”
She read the two absurd messages again.
I change my mind. Dodder is boring. Just like you say. I want to have fun. Can we go someplace? Austin or someplace?
Meet me by Mr. Beardsley. I don’t care where we go. I do love you enough. I love you too much.
Rue waited near the stump, claws extended, waiting for a flood of heartless to ambush her. Nettle wouldn’t have simply forgiven her for Thyme. Eventually yes, but the wound was too fresh. But someone had written the texts from her phone.
Except Nettle wouldn’t have told anyone about Mr. Beardsley. She had neglected to leave food for Rue, but Nettle didn't want her dead. Maybe she hadn’t neglected to leave food. Maybe someone had tricked her. Hurt her.
She dialed the number.
“You get my message?”
“Yes. Yeah, but...Nettle?”
“What? Why you sound confused?”
“You want to run away? With me?”
“Yes. When I go to take you food, to leave it in our secret place, Dodder stop me. He tell me I have to wait and he will go with me. And his parents and grandparents and cousins. And when they learn the food is for you, they take it all to eat for themselves. I tell Heath, but he don’t want to hear. Just go away in his red car. I don’t want this.”
“I can take you with me to the plantation.”
“No! Not to them that killed Grandpa. We have to go some other where. It will be better for you to get away from them. They make you do bad things.”
“They just want to...maybe.”
“I am almost ready with my bags. Pick a place for us, okay? Here I come.”
Rue put the phone away, unable to settle on what she was feeling. Happy that Nettle had finally come to her way of thinking. Sad to leave the Westwood children. She had been on the verge of some great revelation that would now have to wait to be unveiled. Nettle would always be first with her.
So she waited.
And waited.
Hours later, when the sun began to go down, she was still waiting. And then, a text:
I change my mind. Sorry.
“Are you hungry again?”
The twins stepped forward, flashlights in their hands, trained on her.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Your phone. Dad likes to keep track of everyone. Are you hungry?”
“No.”
The wind had picked up, a chilly north wind that smelled of rain. Sterling watched Rue shiver like she was doing it to irritate him. Except he put his arm around her.
“Then why are you here?”
“I don’t know. Because I’m stupid.”
“You really thought we were just gonna leave you?”
It took Rue a moment to understand the reference. “Oh. Yes.”
“And you would have stayed?”
“I’d rather leave than be left.”
“No one is leaving. Especially not us. Let’s go home.”
“I don’t have a home. What does that even mean? Home?”
“We’re still trying to figure out what love means—one thing at a time, huh?”
The curtains billowed in the wind like a sail, like Rue’s room was drifting away. Pleasantly chill in the darkness, but only because the twins were in bed with her.
“I love you,” she said, trying the words on for size. “I love you!” she said louder, in case volume made a difference. Or perhaps quantity? “I love you I love you I love you I love you I love—”
“Shut up.” Sterling put his hand over her mouth. “And don’t say stuff you don’t mean.”
“Don’t shut her up,” said Stanton from her opposite side. “She’s having a breakthrough. I never believed she’d say it without me goading her. This is great.”
Rue bit Sterling’s hand and he drew it away hissing. She licked his blood from her lips. “I don’t know that I don’t mean it. I don’t know what love is any more than you do.”
“I do know what it is.” Sterling sucked the sore spot where she’d bitten him. “A gnawing pain like hunger. But the only thing I’m hungry for is you. That’s what love is. That’s what it feels like.”
“What you’re feeling is actual hunger,” said Stanton. “A sandwich or two will take care of that.”
“I’m not talking about food!”
“I know what you mean, Sterling. Sort of. It doesn’t feel like hunger though. It feels like knots. It can’t be both, can it?”
“I don’t think it has to feel one specific way.”
Stanton watched them kiss, sleepily. And his stomach growled. “Sure could go for that sandwich.”
Karissa burst into the room, throwing the door wide. “I can’t sleep.”
“Is it your dad?” Rue switched on the light and scrambled out of bed. “Did he try to hurt you?”
“Daddy doesn’t want to hurt me anymore. But I think there’s a monster in my room.” She climbed onto Rue’s bed and said, “I thought you were gonna stop walking around naked.”
“I wasn’t walking around. The twins and I were—”
“Never mind, Rue!” He and Sterling were bright red and holding the covers up to their chins. “Uh, Kissy...do me a favor and go make Sterling and me a sandwich.”
“Okay.” As soon as she was gone, the twins leaped out of bed and into their boxers. Stanton tossed Rue a nightgown and she tugged it on as she hurried to Karissa’s room to investigate. After a thorough search she went back to her own room and found Karissa on the bed with the twins eating tomato and cream cheese sandwiches.
“Did you find the monster?” Karissa asked.
Rue climbed in with them. “No. I searched the rest of the floor, too. Nothing.”
“Can I still sleep in here?” Karissa asked. “It’s lonely without Peppermint.”
The four of them curled up, Karissa a heavy weight against Rue’s chest, the twins bookending them.
Just as she was relaxing into sleep, Rue’s toes curled against something cold and sticky. She asked Stanton to turn on the light, and when he did, Rue lifted the covers.
A dead bird lay below, soaking her feet and the sheets with its blood.
Chapter 35
Karissa’s birthday party was Friday, the first day of spring. Paper fairies smacked into the dining room windows, Shonen Knife sang
about strawberry cream puffs, Rue and the twins sat at the table in conical hats watching the birthday girl in her white bunny costume. Her pink ears twitched every time she thwacked the bear-shaped piñata with a stick. Because the twins had made the piñata, it writhed in agony, growling and batting its paws at Karissa who quickly put it out of its misery and then squealed when a shower of hard candy and chocolates rained on her.
After eating her fill of sweets, Karissa joined the others at the table and unwrapped the stack of presents piled there, starting with Adele’s presents—a plaid sleeping bag and a red lantern shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“I’m going to take these on my camping trip!”
“I like that you’re so excited about that camping trip,” said Stanton, dislike coloring very word. “But don’t have too much fun with Adele. Don’t let her talk you into fleeing the country with her or something crazy like that.”
“I won’t,” said Karissa, and exchanged a do-you-see-what-I-have-to-deal-with look with Rue.
Sterling rolled a large, draped object that had been in the corner nearer to Karissa. “Well since you’re not abandoning us, I guess you can have this. Happy birthday.”
He pulled off the sheet, unveiling a terrarium and the inhabitant inside resting on a log.
“A Jesus lizard!” Karissa reached into the terrarium and scooped it into her hands, covering it in kisses. “I’m gonna name him Bojangles. I bet Peppermint…”
Much of the excitement left her and she sat once again in her chair, quietly stroking her new pet.
Stanton said, “Dad’ll come through. You know how he is when he sets his mind on something; he doesn’t give up.”
Rue passed Karissa her phone. “This is my present for you, but it’s not the sort that can be wrapped.”
Karissa moved Bojangles to her shoulder and pressed the play icon on the screen of Rue’s phone.
The Lazarus snake swayed awkwardly and then exclaimed in his booming voice, “Hello, Karissa. Happy birthday. I’m sure your age is important to you, but for me, time has no meaning.” He cleared his throat, and then shot a desperate look off-camera where Rue’s voice floated back:
“The invitation?”
“Oh yes!” Lazarus faced the camera again. “I understand we missed an opportunity to meet formally, and so I extend an invitation to you now. Any time you’d like to visit with your charming friend Rue, you may.”
When the video ended, Karissa gave back the phone and turned to the twins, hopeful. “Can I meet him this time? He said it was okay. Please?”
“Only with Rue,” said Stanton, like it was costing him.
“And only if you swear not to ask him for anything,” Sterling added.
“I swear. Hooray! Rue, can we go when I get back from my camping—”
“I see you started the party without me.”
As the fun screeched to a halt, Westwood strolled to the Mars end of the table, presiding over his brood. A fine mist of stubble had finally grown back over his head, white, as though the lightning had aged him twenty years. A paper fairy landed on his head, but he didn’t shoo it away.
“Don’t look so wary,” he announced. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m here to make peace. I thought about how much you, all of you, have sacrificed for my sake, for my dream.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Your souls, your beloved pet, your family. But what have I sacrificed?” Westwood bowed his head, like he was ashamed.
Once he was able to look up again it was Karissa he focused on. Karissa, who had been wavering between there and not there since he’d arrived.
“And so I shall sacrifice my rage. I hated you for being born, for what you represented: that Elnora no longer loved me. But I’m letting it go. I…” He tried again. “I’m sorry.”
“You won’t try to hurt me anymore?” said Karissa, fully opaque.
“I promise I won’t.” He put his hand over his heart, and then held out his arms to her.
Karissa remained in her seat, disbelieving but hopeful.
Grissel and Drabbin entered from the kitchen, carrying drinks and dinner platters covered with silver domes that Rue had only ever seen in the movies.
“Thanks for that bit of healing the other day,” said Grissel, setting dishes before Rue and Karissa. “I feel much better.”
She was still pale but no longer see-through, and she was wearing the black wig again, the one that was supposed to make her look more like Elnora, but instead made her look as if something foul had been dumped over her head.
“Did your soul come back to you?” Sterling asked. “Like ours did?”
“No, but it’s just as well, isn’t it? Pretty sure Elnora wouldn’t like to share.”
When everyone had been served, Westwood said, “Lift the dome, birthday girl.”
Karissa did, and Rue instantly recognized her mom’s head, even though she’d been cooked and her skin had rippled and darkened.
Karissa sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I don’t have to eat people. The twins said so.”
Westwood laughed. “It’s not for eating. There’s a prize inside. Pull off the top of her head.”
Karissa did. She had to use both hands, and what she saw made her scream.
With joy.
“Peppermint!” Karissa lifted his stitched together body out of the empty head.
“A sneak peek of what we’re going to do for Elnora.”
Karissa kissed Peppermint’s nose and let the twins pet him. “He remembers me! I can tell.”
Peppermint lunged at Karissa’s shoulder and in moments Bojangles was sliding down his throat.
“Peppermint! That wasn’t nice.” But Karissa’s face couldn’t hold on to anything like displeasure. “I guess I deserved it. I’m sorry, Peppermint. I’ll never hurt you again, no matter what. I promise.”
After the snake sucked down Bojangles’ tail, he bumped noses with Karissa.
“I love Peppermint so much,” she burbled, as he curled in her lap to digest his meal. “The only thing is, if sacrifice means giving something up, are you allowed to get it back?”
“Of course. Sacrifice carries with it the idea that if you let go of something, you’ll get it, or something even better.”
“I wish I knew all that before. I wouldn’t have worried so much.” Karissa pulled the dome off Rue’s dish. “I wanna see what everybody else got!”
Westwood said something, but Nettle’s head was on the platter, and Rue couldn’t hear him.
That’s why she hadn’t heard from Nettle since that day she’d waited so fruitlessly beside Mr. Beardsley. Because she was dead. A crazy flood of relief washed through Rue. A deluge. She began to drown.
“Who are these people?” Karissa said, staring at everyone’s plate.
“Rue’s family,” said Westwood. “This is Rue’s sacrifice. The price she was willing to pay. What do we say, children?”
“Thank you.”
“Peppermint says thank you, too,” Karissa added, grinning. The twins…their faces were blank, but Rue had gotten so much better at reading their eyes.
They were horrified.
Her brothers’ heads on the twins’ plates. Her father’s head on Westwood’s plate.
“Open them!”
“You’re the birthday girl,” Westwood told Karissa. “Only you get treats.”
The nightmare Rue had the other day came back. The dead bird soaking the bed in blood. All the nightmares came back, every wretched thing she’d ever dreamed or witnessed. All harbingers that one day she would find her sister’s head on a plate. If only Rue had read the signs. She could have prevented this.
“You don’t mind?” Westwood asked her. “It’s such a nice sacrifice on your part, don’t you think? And now that the twins won’t have to worry that you’ll leave or do something foolish—like run away with your sister—they can focus on what really matters.”
He said more things, but Rue’s brain ceased to function the way it usually did. She
kept blacking out.
Staring at Nettle’s head.
Blackout.
Playing pin the tail on the lizard.
Blackout.
Sitting with Stanton who wiped her face. Rue didn’t understand why until she looked down and saw that she was covered in vomit. Because she’d tried to eat her sister, even though Rue couldn’t eat cooked things.
Blackout.
The twins, with a red wheelbarrow they had gotten from somewhere, carting the desecrated heads of her family through the kitchen door.
Blackout.
Sitting in the twins’ room while they talked and talked. Couldn’t hear them. Could only hear the rush of nothingness filling her, spilling out of her, flooding the room, drowning her.
Blackout
Drabbin sat cross-legged on the floor of his room, a pungent den in greens and browns with sloping attic ceilings. He’d gathered his superfluous skin at the crown of his head and banded it into a fleshy topknot that had put his face somewhat into alignment though his nose had a tendency to shift out of position.
She’d interrupted him in the act of pouring something dark and sweet-smelling into a tiny vial.
“Rue! Come to pay me a visit, then?”
“I didn’t want to. I’m not ready to be out yet.” Rue closed the door behind her. Locked it. “Not where there are people.”
The calendar on the wall, of a pack of wolves licking their chops, claimed it was April 1972.
“Your calendar lies.”
“Yeah, but it also tells the truth. My father died April ‘72. Most important date of my life. The day when I started to go wrong. And here I am: how much wronger could I be?”
“You cooked my family.”
“Precisely.”
“I shouldn’t be here. I wish she’d let me go back.”
“Back where? What are you on about?”
“What are all these items?”
“Surplus from the lab. I take a few things now and then, what won’t be missed. Figure I can luck on to a recipe to reverse what Westwood done to my face.”