She paused again, watching me while she formulated an answer. Eventually she just said, “That sucks.” I wasn’t sure if she meant the situation itself, or what I’d done to get out of it.
“You never really knew who I was,” I said. “I wore a facade back in Clayton, and sometimes I still do, trying to look normal and act normal and pretend to be the person everyone thinks I should have been. That’s who you liked, not me.” I shrugged and looked away again. “Not the real me, at least.”
“The John I liked was never normal,” said Marci. “That’s what I liked about him.”
“He was still a lie.”
“Maybe you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.”
“So you fell in love with a psychopath?” I turned toward her again, feeling angry for reasons I couldn’t pin down. “Out of all the boys in school I was the only one with those dreamy, soulless eyes, and you said to yourself ‘I want to date a boy who might kill me.’”
She pursed her lips before answering. “Maybe you’re not as dangerous as you think you are, either.”
“You want my resume?”
“I was an attractive teenage girl,” said Marci. “No offense to Brooke, I think she’s beautiful, but I’m not being arrogant when I say that a lot of boys lusted after me. A lot of men, too. Maybe because my boobs came in so young, maybe because my mom had a nice butt and the genes were on my side. Maybe because I liked the attention sometimes, so I learned how to do my hair just right and wear my clothes just right and talk to boys saying just the right words in just the right ways. One time in seventh grade—I was twelve years old—I turned in some homework late to Mr. K., and he told me he’d give me full credit because he liked my eyes.”
“You gave me this speech before,” I said. “You liked me because I didn’t stare at you all the time like some kind of creep. Well, not staring doesn’t change the fact that I’m a creep, that I’m worse than a creep. I didn’t stare at you because I had rules designed to mimic the behavior of a normal, well-adjusted person. I actually counted the times I looked at you, per day: five times at your face, two times at your chest, one time at your hips. Is this really what you want to hear? I had dreams about killing you and Brooke and half a dozen other girls in school. Recurring, nightly dreams about cutting you open and listening to you scream. I set those rules because if I didn’t, I’d start to obsess over you and then maybe I’d start following you, and then maybe I’d start thinking it was okay to act on some of those dreams. I’m not a good person, and you were a fool to ever think I was. And I was evil to ever make you think I was anything else.”
“You didn’t let me finish,” she said softly. “Do you remember the first time I called you?”
“It was … during the trial,” I said. “After Forman kidnapped me and the others, and Curt tried to convince everyone I was an ally instead of a victim.”
“My father heard you testify in court,” said Marci. “He told me what you did, that you saved those women’s lives and hurt the man who hurt them. Brooke turned away from you, but I called you the very next day.”
“Because you liked the danger?” I spat. “The thrill of thinking I might snap and attack someone who hurt you?”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “After all the crap I’ve had to deal with I admit that has some appeal. But the real truth is that I knew you were the safest boy in that whole town.”
“Have you not been listening—”
“Every girl gets leered at,” said Marci, her voice fierce, Brooke’s eyes practically glinting with inner steel. “Every girl gets harassed. In American high schools sixty percent of all girls get directly propositioned for some kind of sexual behavior—I did a report on it—and the only thing surprising about that number is that it isn’t higher. One in eight teenage girls will be groped, and one in fifteen will be raped, usually by someone they know and often by the boys they trusted enough to date. One in fifteen: that’s one girl in every class you ever had in school. I’ve listened to boys brag about what they’ve done to my friends, so loud and careless they didn’t even look to see who was close enough to hear them.” She shook her head. “I didn’t date you because you were dangerous, I dated you because you were the only boy in school who knew he was dangerous, and was actively trying to stop it.”
I looked back out at the highway and didn’t say anything.
11
Our ride dropped us off in the outskirts of Dallas, then turned and headed to a suburb. Marci and I hung out by the freeway on-ramp for a while, hoping to hitch a ride deeper into the city, but nobody stopped. Hitching was always harder in big cities, especially at night, and though it wasn’t dark yet, the sun was setting, and the streetlights were coming on, and the shapes rushing past us were changing from cars and trucks to black blobs and bright points of light. The highway wove through the city like two wide rivers, one of white lights and one of red, and we stood on the bank and wondered what to do. We asked at a gas station for directions to the nearest bus stop then hiked almost a mile to reach it. We bought two fares and sat silently in the fluorescent light as we rode downtown.
Ninety-four dollars and sixty-one cents. We hadn’t eaten since Ms. Glassman’s house, the day before.
The notes for Potash’s Dallas stash had an address and four numbers, one with three digits, and three with two digits. I assumed it was a locker number and combination, probably for a bus station, but when we finally arrived two transfers later, we found a storage facility: all internal, four stories high, and closed after 10 PM. It was nearly 11:00.
“Well,” said Marci. “What are the odds they have a drive-in theater we could crash at for the night?”
“We want to stay off the street if we can,” I said, watching scattered pedestrians still milling around in the darkness. Most of them looked ragged and filthy; homeless, or junkies, or close enough to make no difference. “Everything’s more dangerous in a city like this.”
“The small-town Withered would be offended.”
“The Withered don’t have a monopoly on evil,” I said and I thought about Derek and his friends. “They’re just the ones we’ve decided it’s okay to kill.”
“Where, then?” asked Marci. “If this was a bus station we could have slept on a bench inside and been fine.”
“We could look for one,” I said. “Or maybe a homeless shelter. We’d have to find one that doesn’t split up men and women, though.”
“Because you don’t know if I’ll still be me in the morning.”
I nodded. It had happened before.
“I’m going to need some tampons, too,” said Marci. “Does Brooke keep some in her bag?”
I nodded. “Just pads,” I said. It was about time for this to happen again. “Tampons freak out most of the older girls—anyone who died more than fifty years ago, really.”
“Ha!” said Marci. “I can only imagine.”
“This is the life we lead.”
Marci nodded, looking around. “Okay. We’ll need to find somewhere I can change in private, the sooner the better.”
“We’ve got another half hour on these bus passes,” I said. “Or we could look for a fast-food place with restrooms—most of those don’t close ’til late.”
“I’d rather have a bed than a booth in a taco place.” She pointed across the street. “I don’t suppose it’s a good idea to ask one of those guys about the nearest shelter?”
“I prefer not to,” I said. “Most of them are okay, but the bad ones are pretty bad, and you never know what you’re going to get.”
We ended up walking four blocks to a burger joint, just closing up for the night, and they let Marci in to use the restroom once she explained the situation to the girl at the drive thru. Boy Dog and I waited outside, and I asked the other worker about homeless shelters. He gave me some vague directions, but didn’t know much. Marci came back out after a few minutes.
“We’re going to need some more pads,” she said. “She only has a couple, pro
bably just an emergency stash to tide her over until she gets to a drug store.”
“Can you make it through the night?”
“Probably.”
We wandered over what felt like half the downtown area before finally finding a shelter called Second Chance. They stopped taking new residents at 7 PM, which seemed ridiculous to me, but pointed us toward a sobriety shelter that was open all night. We walked another mile to reach that only to find they required ID and an extensive registration form. I wanted to stay off the grid, and we didn’t carry ID anyway, so we left and kept wandering. Eventually we broke down and went to a restaurant, one of these twenty-four-hour breakfast places, so Brooke’s body could get some good food, if nothing else.
“I can’t let y’all in,” said the woman at the front desk. Her name tag said Delilah. “The manager says we can’t take no beggars.”
“We have money,” I said, but she shook her head.
“It’s the rules, I’m sorry, I wish I could.”
The old familiar thought popped up, like a voice in the back of my mind: just kill her, and you can stay here all night. Kill her and the cook, then lock the door, eat your fill, sleep in the back, and get out before the next shift showed up for work. It was stupid, in addition to being evil, and I pushed the thought away without dwelling on it. And then, as I stood there, it struck me that I should be dwelling on it—that it should bother me, or disgust me, or at least worry me to have thought something like that. And yet it hadn’t. The urge to kill whoever stood in our way was so common now, so second nature, I almost didn’t even notice anymore.
I needed to be better. If that meant I needed to feel more pain, or more guilt, then that’s what I needed to do. I had feelings now, right? What good were they if I didn’t use them?
I found a solution to our problem and a penance for my coldness in one simple gesture. I pulled a stack of neatly folded ten dollar bills from my sock—we’d been mugged before, so I’d taken to hiding our money in small quantities all over my body—and held it up. “I have thirty dollars,” I said, fanning the bills. “Let me give it to you now, in advance, and then you just take what we owe you and give the rest back.” It was expensive, but Marci needed to sit, and we both needed to eat.
Delilah stared at us a moment, then sighed and took the money. “I guess if y’all have money you ain’t no beggars. Your dog has to wait outside, though.”
“That’s fine,” I said. Most restaurants had the same policy, so I kept a leash in my backpack for times just like this. I took Boy Dog outside and tied him to a square metal pole that marked the handicapped parking spaces. I gave him the rest of the beef jerky, and then Delilah led us to a booth in the back of the restaurant, where we wouldn’t be visible from the street or the front door. It’s the table I would have chosen anyway.
Marci sank into the benches with an exhausted sigh. “I can’t remember the last time I sat on a cushion.”
“Get something healthy,” I said, picking up a menu. “Cheap, obviously, but something that’s going to put some meat on your bones. Or her bones.” I bought the cheapest meal on the menu, four bucks for some eggs and hash browns and a couple of sausages, which I took outside to Boy Dog; I was a vegetarian, but eggs didn’t count. Marci ordered an omelet with plenty of vegetables, and an orange juice that we ended up splitting. Sixteen dollars and forty-five cents, plus a dollar thirty-six in tax and four dollars for the tip—a little more than twenty percent, but I wanted to keep Delilah happy so we could stay as long as possible. We ate quietly, though there was no one else in the restaurant. Delilah left our plates, playing into the pretense that we weren’t quite finished yet, and after a while she came and leaned against the corner of the booth.
“Where are y’all from?”
“It’s a town called Stillson,” said Marci. “Don’t worry, nobody else has heard of it, either.”
“What brings you to Dallas?”
“Just traveling,” I said. There was no sense trying to pass us off as itinerant college students at this point; we were obviously homeless drifters, and she knew it.
“Where’d you get that money?” asked Delilah. “You work?”
That was a red flag—did she think we’d stolen it? “It’s the last of my savings,” I said, looking down at my plate.
“We sold our phones,” said Marci. “Didn’t want to, but we gotta eat, right?”
“It’s none of my business,” said Delilah, holding up her hands as if to ward off the implication that she was prying. She showed no sign of stopping her prying, though, and phrased the next question as a subtle accusation: “Not a lot of homeless people with phones, though.” In other words, did you steal them?
I started to answer, hoping to spin some story that would get her off our back, but Marci got there first. “We’re not exactly homeless,” she said. “Just on our way to a new one. Our uncle lives south of here.”
I wished she hadn’t said south—that’s where Rain supposedly lived, and if whoever was following us managed to find this waitress and question her, she’d give the right direction.
“What happened to your old home?” asked Delilah, and I could see by the look on Brooke’s face that Marci had an answer ready to go. She was getting into this.
“Our mother died when we were little,” she said. “And dad … well I guess he drank before that, but I don’t remember. He drinks a lot now, though, and it’s only getting worse. And the beatings are getting worse.”
“That’s terrible!” said Delilah.
“Uncle Zach is Mom’s brother, not his, so we’ll be safe there.”
I hated using the runaway story because it usually prompted adults to call in the authorities, but as I watched Delilah’s face I suspected that Marci had read her right—she wasn’t the kind to turn us in if she thought we’d get sent back to an abusive home.
Marci put the finishing touch on the sob story by grabbing her backpack and scooting out of the booth. “Time to, uh, visit the ladies room.” She shot Delilah a quick glance. “You don’t happen to have any ibuprofen, do you? I grabbed some pads when we left, but I forgot the painkillers.”
“Oh for heaven’s sakes,” said Delilah, straightening up. “All that with your father, and it’s shark week, too? You go along, I’ll see what I have in my purse.” She bustled away, and Marci winked at me.
“She’ll let us stay here all night, now.”
“Shark week?”
“You have no idea of the nicknames this has.”
Marci went to the restroom, and after a moment Delilah came back with a couple of pills and a piece of chocolate cake.
“Always helps me,” she said. “No charge.” When Marci came back she swallowed the pills and ate the cake gratefully, offering me a few bites. I turned them down and let her have it all.
“Sleep now while you can,” I said. “We’re going to get thrown out sooner or later.” She curled up in the corner and nodded off quickly; I tried to stay awake but eventually fell asleep as well at around four in the morning. I was awakened by an angry shout when the manager came in at 6 AM and threw us out. We gathered our things while he grumbled and snapped at how slow we were, and when we left the building he yelled at Delilah so loudly we could hear it from the parking lot.
“We should help her,” said Marci.
“The best thing we can do for her is disappear.”
Seventy-two dollars and eight cents left. Let’s hope Potash’s supply drop has more cash.
We stopped at a pharmacy on our way to the storage unit, leaving Boy Dog outside again. Eight dollars and eleven cents for pads, plus six eighteen for ibuprofen. Marci changed her pad again in their restroom while I pretended to browse the aisles out front. I saw a black SUV in the parking lot that I didn’t remember seeing when we’d arrived a few minutes earlier, which seemed odd because no one else had come in the store. Why would the driver just sit in the parking lot? I watched it out of the corner of my eye, thumbing through some discount DVDs by the windo
w. Eventually a woman came in, trying to return a bottle of shampoo, but I couldn’t be certain she had come from the SUV.
Were we being followed? How had they found us?
“Ready,” said Marci, walking up behind me.
“Look at that SUV,” I said, still pretending to browse the DVD bargain bin. “Don’t be obvious about it.”
“Ah.” She bent over as if to look at a movie and cast a perfectly subtle glance at the parking lot. “Think we’re being followed?”
“I think you might be right about Potash’s depots being watched,” I said. “They may have seen us last night and tailed us here. We should go somewhere random and see if that SUV shows up again.”
She nodded and we walked out, collecting Boy Dog and passing the SUV as if we hadn’t even noticed it. There was a man in the driver’s seat, but maybe he was just waiting for the woman in the store? I took a quick glance at the license plate—it was out of state, from Iowa of all places, but it didn’t have government tags; 187 RCR, Mills County.
We walked for several blocks, staying on major roads, not acting conspicuous, but simply easy to follow. Dallas seemed to have a lot of parks, and we stopped in one and let Boy Dog drink from a fountain. It looked like it was going to be another scorching day, and the glass and concrete in the city would only make it worse. Brooke and I were already deeply tanned from our months of hitchhiking, and as I watched Marci play with Boy Dog I noticed how weathered Brooke’s face had become, chapped cheeks and sun-bleached streaks in her already bright blond hair. I liked it short, the more I looked at it. Or maybe I just liked it when she smiled. Did Brooke smile this much, or was that all from Marci?
No black SUVs appeared, so we moved on, crossing the street and looking for something narrow we could duck into—a shopping district would be ideal, but even an alley would do. It was time to make ourselves harder to spot, and hopefully draw out anyone who might have to make a desperate move to keep up with us. We found a hotel and angled toward it.