Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

  “I brought him here to get rid of him.”

  “And you did, Fancy. So why can’t we all have some fun now?”

  “You wanna have fun with Franken? Fine. Let’s all have some fun.”

  Fancy stormed back through the hedges to the Headless Garden, ignoring Kit’s cries for her to wait and to calm down. Fancy did neither. Instead she jumped onto the platform where Franken was sitting looking glad to see them, to see Kit. And then she threaded her fingers through Franken’s hair and twisted off the top of his head.

  “Fancy!” Kit came to a stop before Franken, whose eyes had gone wide.

  “What just happened?” he asked her.

  “Hold this.” Fancy dropped the top of his head to his lap, and he grabbed it, reflexively, then froze when he realized what he was holding.

  Franken’s brain was shiny and throbbing and bluish-gray.

  “It’s wrinkled like the old man’s intestines!” Fancy exclaimed. It was almost beautiful to see a brain at work in its natural habitat, instead of floating in a liquid-filled jar, totally out of context. “Do you remember which part we have to cut out?” she asked her sister, who just gaped at her like a fish.

  “Me neither,” said Fancy. “I’ll just cut it all out.” She snapped her fingers at Kit. “Gimme your knife.”

  “Are you crazy?” Kit screeched, finally finding her voice. “You can’t give him a lobotomy now. There’s no point. Put his head back on.”

  “But you said—”

  “Put it back!”

  Fancy wrestled the top of Franken’s head away from him— he didn’t seem to want to let go of it—and twisted it back on over his brain, feeling inordinately put out. “All you been talking about since you took him hostage is killing him.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Change it back! We can do anything here.”

  “I don’t want to hurt Franken.”

  “No one would know.”

  “I’d know!” Giant pink wings sprouted from Kit’s back.

  It was Fancy’s turn to gape as Kit spread her wings to their farthest point and squealed joyously.

  “Holy shit, Fancy, are you seeing this?” Kit flapped her wings and knocked Fancy onto her butt as she shot six feet in the air, laughing until she thumped into something, feeling the air above her like a mime.

  Fancy said nothing, but Kit wasn’t bothered by her flight limitation, holding herself aloft on feathers as fluffy as goose down. With her black leggings and camisole she looked like a punk angel.

  “You were right, Fancy. It is in me. I can change things too. We are the same. Isn’t that great?”

  The fluffy pink wings burst into flames.

  Kit yelped and crashed to the ground, rolling and choking on the burned feathers fluttering about her face as the cellar reappeared around the sisters, shutting them out of the happy place.

  “That’s not who I am,” said Fancy, almost conversationally, as she watched her sister burn.

  FROM FANCY’S DREAM DIARY:

  THE SUN BEAT SO STRONGLY ON EVERYTHING AND WAS SO OPPRESSIVE THAT I DECIDED TO PLUCK IT FROM THE SKY. I SWAL LOWED IT AND FLOATED UP, RISING OVER THE WORLD, SCORCH ING EVERYTHING IN MY PATH.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kit picked herself off the cellar floor, her arms wrapped around her body as curls of smoke arose from what was left of her camisole. Fancy stood before the kinetoscope, watching the screen so she wouldn’t have to look at Kit, avoiding her sister’s gaze as if they were strangers in a cold, claustrophobic elevator. As she watched Franken sift through the pile of ash and feathers on the ground below the platform, Kit moved in close and Fancy couldn’t resist peeking at her sister, if only to reassure herself that Kit wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t, at least not physically.

  The light from the screen made Kit’s face look ghastly. “You set me on fire,” she said, her words as pallid as her face.

  “I didn’t mean to,” said Fancy, but Kit was already talking over her.

  “You go on and on about how it’s our place, and then as soon as I make one little change—”

  “Who asked you to change anything?” The words tore out of Fancy, so big and loud they scared her. But not Kit.

  “Don’t yell at me, you little shit! You set me on fire!”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.” Fancy stared into the kinetoscope, wishing fiercely that she were back in the happy place.

  Kit grabbed her and spun her around so they were face to face. “Look around, Fancy. You’re not in your imaginary kingdom anymore.” She shoved Fancy to the floor and stood over her. “So now what?”

  When Fancy tried to stand, Kit pushed her down again, harder than before, so Fancy decided to stay low—the position matched her mood. “I’m sorry.” She spoke the words into her knees, not wanting to see the anger in Kit’s eyes. When Kit didn’t respond, Fancy looked up. Kit was no longer standing over her, but sitting on the cot.

  She removed her switchblade and fooled with it like she always did when she was upset.

  “Why’d you do it?” Kit said, her voice soft.

  “I wanted the wings to go away. Not you. You weren’t even hurt.”

  “Don’t tell me I wasn’t hurt!” She jabbed the knife at Fancy, who winced as though it had entered her flesh. “Those were my wings on my back. You don’t even wanna know what that felt like.”

  Fancy squeezed her knees tighter. “Next time we go back, I’ll let you set me on fire.”

  “Set yourself on fire. I ain’t going back there.”

  “Don’t talk crazy, Kit. We have to go back. Where else can we hide the evidence?”

  “Evidence?”

  “I told you what Cherry said. About how we need to help people. I figure she means we should protect them from pervs like the old man. Criminal types.”

  Kit put the knife away, a sure sign she was starting to come around. Kit never could stay mad for very long.

  “How’re we supposed to be able to tell? ‘Excuse me, sir, we’re thinking about cutting your throat, so could you tell us, are you a good witch or a bad witch?’ People don’t advertise themselves that way.”

  “Advertise!” Fancy sprang to her feet. “That’s it!”

  “What’s it?”

  Fancy ran up to the sleeping porch, Kit on her heels demanding to know what the big deal was.

  Fancy knelt beside her bed and, from beneath it, pulled out the stash of fan letters stuffed in a Fanta carton.

  “Them?” Kit sat on the floor near Fancy, her long legs cramped in the narrow space between their beds. “They hate us. And they’re insane.”

  “Not all of them.” Fancy settled against the nightstand and shuffled through the letters she’d dumped into her lap and started reading. “‘I know people who need to be killed.’” Shuffle. “‘I don’t get why Guthrie killed nice people when there’s so many jerks out there who deserve it way more.’” Shuffle. “‘I wish I had it in me to do what he did.’” Fancy looked at Kit, a breeze rippling through the letters in her hand. “Know who does have it in ’em?”

  Kit was all smiles. “Us?”

  “Exactly!” They went through the letters, and when they had a list of people they felt good about, they wrote a letter to each one of them, choosing their words carefully.

  “‘So if you have a problem,’” said Fancy, scribbling furiously on their pink stationery, “‘we’d love to hear about it. Sincerely, the Cordelle sisters.’” Fancy finished the last letter with a flourish, and after shoving it into an envelope, she gave Kit a big hug.

  Kit’s halfhearted embrace worried Fancy, but when she looked into her sister’s face, it wasn’t lingering anger over the wing incident she saw, but thoughtfulness. “You think . . .” Kit paused, unusually hesitant. “When people find out what we’re doing . . . when they realize we want to help . . . you think they’ll like us?”

  Fancy pushed out of her sister’s embrace, laughing. “Who cares if people like us? We like us. Besides, nobody knows ab
out the happy place but you and me. How could they find out? Even if someone tried to use the letters against us, where’s the proof? No body, no crime.”

  Kit shoved the carton of letters under the bed, her hesitancy gone as if it had never been. “Franken knows.”

  Fancy scooped up the stack of envelopes and went in search of stamps. “Well, he’s gone now.”

  She put the letters in the mailbox, and when she came back into the room, Kit was still leaning against the screen door. “I miss him.”

  Fancy stood next to her. “You’ll get over it.”

  “Easy for you to say. You hate everybody.” Kit reached back and rubbed her shoulders over the spot where her wings had been. The back of her camisole was almost completely burned away, though the skin beneath was smooth and untouched. “I felt like him and me were really starting to understand each other.”

  “The only thing a wolf understands about a rabbit is that it tastes good.”

  “Franken does taste good.” Kit’s face took on a gleam of sublime hunger. “His blood splashed on my face one time, so I licked it off. It was like V8. You sure we had to let him go?”

  Fancy opened the porch door and hustled Kit out. “Positive. Come help me clean out the cellar.”

  They stripped the linens from the cot and scrubbed the cellar with bleach, eradicating all traces of Franken’s temporary stay.

  “There,” Fancy said, satisfied with their thorough cleansing. “That’s done.”

  “Good.” Kit stretched the kinks out of her shoulders. “I gotta practice my scales. I wanna be tip-top for class tomorrow.”

  She threw the rag at Fancy, trusting her to catch it as she always did. Instead it smacked her in the face.

  “I thought we weren’t going.”

  Kit stared at the cot, thoughtful again. “I changed my mind.”

  “Why?” Fancy had a sudden urge to bleach the inside of Kit’s skull, scour away the annoying bouts of thoughtfulness that kept gunking it up.

  “You said it yourself,” said Kit as she stomped up the cellar steps. “Everybody’s gotta fly the coop sometime.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” Fancy said, but Kit was already gone.

  Since Kit had decided to go to her music class, Fancy saw no reason to stay home getting dumber and dumber while Kit became advanced and sophisticated. So she rode her bike down to the square, to the Standard, an old movie palace with curtains and a balcony.

  The art class, however, was not held in the pretty part of the theater, but in the attic, which could only be accessed by a narrow metal staircase that spiraled like a slide at a water park. Numerous fans blew in the cavernous room, yet it was still just short of sweltering. Sweat beads formed on Fancy’s face almost immediately. The smell of paint and sour pickles crinkled her nose as she made her way past student work on the walls to the pairs of chairs and easels arranged in a circle. The room was large, but the class was small, consisting of a handful of kids roughly Fancy’s age: a few she vaguely recognized from Portero High, but only one whose name she actually knew.

  “Hey, Fancy.”

  Fancy took the chair next to Ilan’s. She had to, since it was the only empty one in the room.

  He looked like a work of art himself, like he had been purposely sculpted to look good from every angle. No matter how he turned his body, the light hit him in startling ways. His fingernails were stained with phthalo green. She tried to imagine his nails stained with blood like hers sometimes were, but she decided that green suited him better.

  He leaned in and said, “I had a dream about you.”

  He smelled like a mountain. Fancy had no idea what mountains smelled like, but a mix of sun-baked rock and piney woods seemed about right. He leaned back and took his smell with him, leaving her with sour pickles.

  Since they were in pairs, the teacher, Mr. Hofstram, had them draw a picture for each other that would serve as an introduction. An artistic business card, he had said.

  Ilan drew quickly, finishing before the time was up. Fancy gazed at the paper he’d given her, a skillful drawing of them kissing.

  “That’s what I dreamed about.” He rested his arm against the back of her chair. Fancy thought about stabbing it with one of the X-Acto knives strewn irresponsibly around the room. But, unlike Kit, she was used to ignoring such urges.

  “My dreams always come true. Did you know that?”

  She decided not to look him in the eyes ever again. It was too much like being shoved over the edge of a ravine.

  Instead of answering, Fancy drew on her own paper. She used the same colored pencils and took even less time with her drawing than Ilan had. She handed the paper to him.

  “‘Drop. Dead.’” Ilan turned the the paper this way and that, studying the letters. “It’s not really a drawing.” But he smiled as he spoke, a smile that hit her in the chest like a rock.

  It was really unfair, this ability he had to attack her without even touching her. Fancy knew she’d have to be on guard around Ilan; he was tricky.

  The “drop dead” drawing was the best work Fancy did for the next two weeks. She was painfully inartistic, as Mr. Hofstram was happy to constantly point out to her.

  She went home to find Kit at the piano, practicing. Fancy flopped next to her on the bench and threw her arms around her, making Kit laugh.

  “How was class?” she asked, as if she couldn’t guess the answer.

  “I still suck. The room is still too hot. Everybody still ignores me.” Not everybody, but in addition to not looking at him, she refused say anything about Ilan, refused to even speak his name. His interest in her was so inexplicable Fancy had no words for it.

  “Want me to go to your class and beat everybody up?”

  Fancy thought about it. “Not right yet.” She straightened and picked out a few notes on the piano that vaguely resembled “Three Blind Mice.” “How was your class?”

  “Awesome.” Kit’s face lit up. “We’re learning ‘Beyond the Sea.’ It reminded me of you, how you always wanna sail away. Listen.”

  Kit played it for her, singing the words jauntily. She had a nice voice when she wasn’t screeching at the top of her lungs.

  “You think he kept his word and went home to his girl?” said Fancy as the last notes died away. “Or you think she’s still waiting for him?”

  “If he did leave her, she probably moved on.” Kit replayed the song in a different key. “That’s what happens when people split. They get over it.”

  “If you left, I wouldn’t get over it.”

  “Sure you would. I’d write to you. Eventually. Ow!”

  Fancy pinched her sister again for good measure. “That reminds me: Did you get the mail?”

  The music came to a halt.

  “Oops.” “Oops?” Fancy shot off the bench. “You can’t be forgetting like that, Kit,” she said, hurrying out to the front porch. When she came back inside holding a stack of letters, she was still grumbling. “Madda would freak if she knew about all this.”

  “She wouldn’t,” said Kit. “It’s not like she doesn’t know people hate us.”

  “But if she saw the other mail,” Fancy insisted. “If she knew people wanted us to kill for them—”

  “Do they?” Kit looked at the mail in Fancy’s hands. “Has anyone written back asking for our services?”

  Fancy sat on the bench, and together the sisters went through the mail, but it was the same old hateful tirades.

  “I knew advertising would be a waste of time,” Kit said, dumping her share of the letters into Fancy’s lap.

  “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

  “Only? It’s been forever since we killed that old man. And now that Franken’s gone, I don’t have anybody to cut on. Not that that was particularly satisfying, but at least it was something. You know how when you stab people, it’s like plugging into them? You feel their hearts beating; you feel their blood flowing. You see their struggle for life, and in that moment they start to seem real and not
like windup toys. I miss that. That realness. You know what we should do?”

  “What?”

  “Hunt.”

  “Hunt what?”

  “Whales, you stupid girl—what do you think? Bad guys! If people won’t ask for our help, let’s just volunteer it.”

  “So now you think you can just spot ’em on the street, easy-peasy?”

  “We’re predators, Fancy. Predators can always sniff out prey.” Kit shot up from the piano bench and grabbed Fancy, nearly making her spill the letters all over the floor. “Let’s go catch some bad guys!”

  Fancy pulled away from Kit, wondering why her sister had to be so antsy about everything. “We can’t just go. We have to think this through.”

  “What’s to think about? The great thing about having a killer instinct is that it negates the need to think.”

  “We can’t just go club people on the street and drag ’em back to the cellar.”

  “The cellar.” Some of Kit’s enthusiasm cooled a bit.

  “Right.” “Right. We need to test whether the kinetoscope works outside the cellar. Otherwise, we can’t cover our tracks. Go wait for me in the backyard.”

  A few moments later Fancy joined Kit in the kitchen garden with the kinetoscope. Without the stand, it was just big enough to be a pain to carry any great distance, but small enough to cart on Fancy’s bike or rest in her lap. Kit sat, absently picking snails off the tomato plants as Fancy cranked the kinetoscope . . . but nothing happened.

  “See?” said Fancy. “Maybe it does only work in the cellar. There’s no way we can convince all the bad guys to come home with us.”

  “Don’t give up just yet. You know how you can only see things inside small spaces: a puddle, or a cup—”

  “Of course!” Fancy shot up, surveying the expanse of forested land. “There’s just too much space!”

  The sisters hurried into the house and cranked the kinetoscope in the shuttered living room. The walls flickered slightly, but that was all.

  “Well, this is the biggest room in the house,” Fancy said, looking at the high ceilings and the tall shuttered windows they supported.