Down With the Shine (19 page)

He reaches for my hand, the burnt and bandaged one—still tender and aching from his orders. Or that’s what Rabbit told me, but maybe he’s the liar here because Cash takes my hand so gently, as if he could never stand to see me get hurt. “Do you think I would have let even a day go by without seeing you if the choice was mine to make? They hid you from me. The same way they’ve hidden themselves all these years. There was no way for me to have a moment like this until you sought me out of your own accord.”

“They hid me with a wish,” I say. “A wish to keep me safe from you.”

“Safety,” Cash scoffs. “If they cared about that, they’d have kept you far from the moonshine. But they needed a successor, I suppose. So they selfishly decided to use you for their own means.”

I stare at Cash, shocked by his twisted interpretation of the uncs. I am ready to defend them when Cash releases my hand and stands, brushing himself off while adding, “I can’t say for certain as to the exact wording of their wish, but I assume it was something along the lines of keeping your true identity and abilities hidden. That’s how your friend was so easily mistaken for you.”

I’d been nodding along, happy to finally get some answers and wondering beneath that if my father was not the villain he’d been made out to be all these years. But that last bit stops me cold.

“My friend?” I ask.

“Yes, the one who got herself chopped up.” Cash walks over to one of the filing cabinets, opens a drawer, pulls out a sandwich bag, and tosses it to me. I catch it reflexively. After a short glance, I immediately throw it away with a frightened yelp.

“Those are fingers.”

“That’s right,” Cash casually confirms. “A man by the name of Rollo Grange sent them to me along with a note saying if I wanted to see my daughter alive again, he
wanted a meeting and money and . . . Well, I don’t really know what else. I stopped reading it.”

I gape at him. “You stopped reading?”

“I don’t deal with people like that,” he says with a shrug. “Giving in to blackmail is a sign of weakness.”

I stand, pick up the stupid folding chair, and fling it at the line of filing cabinets to my left. It hits them with a satisfying
clang
and then bangs to the floor just as loudly. Only after it settles am I able to turn and face my father once more. “How did you know those weren’t
my
fingers? Or did you even know? Did you even care?”

He sighs, looking harassed. “I had a hunch it wasn’t you. But either way, my hands were tied.”

“They weren’t tied!” The words explode out of me. “That was my best friend.
Her
hands were probably tied. Until he cut them off! He chopped her into pieces! You could have stopped that, but instead you let it happen without . . .”

“Lifting a finger?” Cash asks with a slight smirk.

“You think that’s funny? How he . . .” My voice fails and tears blur my vision. I impatiently brush them away. “How could you?”

“Hey,” he snaps back at me, the friendly dad act finally fraying at the edges. “I caught him, okay? Not in time to save your friend, but I got the guy and made him pay a
hundred times over. If you coulda heard his screams and the way he begged for mercy, maybe you’d give your old man a break.”

“Never.” I reach down and pick up the bag with Dyl’s chopped-off fingers. “You are out of your mind if you think I’ll have anything to do with you after hearing that. I thought maybe they’d made you out to be worse than you are, but they didn’t. If anything they made you sound too nice.”

At last the curtain rises and Leonard Cash, the real Leonard Cash, takes the stage. Oh, he is every bit as magnetic as the man I’ve been chatting with. The same burning energy fills him to overflowing. His eyes glitter and glow in that same mesmerizing way. But there’s no charm.

This is the man who would order Rabbit to hold a lighter to his daughter’s knuckles. The man who’d receive a girl’s fingers in the mail and simply file them away for later. The man who left me in that Chuck E. Cheese’s all those years ago.

I remember now with sudden clarity that I’d gotten in that ball pit to hide from him. And I’d stayed buried for so long because I’d been convinced that he would find me. How had I ever forgotten that?

“You need me, little Lennie girl,” he says, and this time there is pure poison in that nickname. “You need me
because you’ve gotten yourself into a mess only I can get you out of.”

“Not you,” I spit back at him, feeling reckless. “You’re nothing. Powerless. Only good at catching people with abilities way beyond your own.”

I immediately regret my words when Cash’s hand finds my throat. “The moment you started granting wishes—not safe little wishes, but big, messy, life-changing ones—you might as well have hung up a billboard announcing yourself and your services. That wish of your uncles’ can’t hide you anymore. Now think, how many people out there might see a wish-granting girl and ask themselves how such a person might be of use to them.”

I should be smart and stay quiet if I want to continue breathing, but I open my big mouth anyway. “I know at least one.”

Cash only grins in response, but there is none of his earlier warmth in it. “Yes, well, I know at least twenty, and the only reason they aren’t already ripping you apart and fighting over the pieces is because I put the word out that you belong to me. But what would happen if I changed my mind and said it was open season on my little Lennie girl? What if I decided that you weren’t gonna be of any use to me after all?” His hand tightens slowly, and I draw in a final strangled breath before my windpipe is completely
restricted. I claw at him, desperate for air, while he eyes me coldly. “Lennie, trust me on this, you’d rather be dead than let them other people catch up with you.”

Spots appear. I try to blink them away, but they multiply. And then darkness and then . . . he releases me. I gasp and choke while he strolls back to his desk chair as if nothing’s happened.

He smiles and again the coldness in it is enough to make me shiver. “I’ll give you time to think about coming with me.”

“I don’t need time.” I take a step toward him, but stumble. The room whirls around me. It must be from the oxygen loss. Squinting to focus on Cash, I finish my thought. “You’re right, I’d rather be dead than have anything to do with you.”

“Don’t be hasty,” Cash counters. “Sleep on it and maybe you’ll feel differently when you wake up.”

“When I wake up? But I’m not even—” A gigantic yawn interrupts me. And just like that, my eyelids start to droop. For a moment I think Cash’s power of suggestion is so great that he can even make me feel sleepy, but then I trip over my water bottle and realize . . .

“You drugged . . .” I trail off, my lips too heavy to finish forming the words.

“It was good seeing you again, Lennie,” Cash says as I
collapse to the floor. “We’ll have to do this again soon.”

No
, I think.
No. No. No.
I fight to keep my eyes open, but it is a losing battle. They fall hard and heavy, like a dungeon door clanging closed, and an instant later, I am asleep.

I
wake up stiff and cold and still half dreaming.

In that dream world, I am six years old and my father is yelling at me.

“Say it,” he demands. “‘May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one.’”

I tremble, scared and confused. The awful man looks like my father, but this mean face is not the one I’m used to seeing. Still, I try to say the words the way he wants. They come out wrong, mixed up and half forgotten while snot runs into my mouth.

He brings his hand up and I wince. Instead of hitting me, he slowly brings the hand back down. Smiles. Says he lost his temper. He’s sorry. I deserve a treat.

We go to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Sitting outside in the parking lot, he reminds me of all the delights to be found inside. I nod eagerly, my hand on the doorknob. “Wait,”
he says. “Not yet.” Then he brings out the jar of moonshine and tells me we need to do the toast first. I start to tremble once more, not wanting to mess up again. Daddy tells me to focus, his voice hard and unbending. Somehow I do.

“To being invisible—” That big word trips me up a bit, but I somehow get it out and then continue on, “except for when you want to be seen. May all your wishes come true, or at least just this one.”

Daddy takes a swig from the jar and passes it to me. But I don’t want to drink the moonshine. I push it away and the jar falls and gushes out all over the floor mats. Daddy grabs the jar and smashes it into my face. “Drink it, damn you!” He grips my shoulder with one hand while the other pinches my nose. The lid of the jar grinds against my wiggling front tooth and, afraid that I’ll swallow it and won’t get a visit from the tooth fairy, I finally open my mouth and let him pour the moonshine down my throat.

I am still gagging and coughing when he drags me inside the Chuck E. Cheese’s, his mood changed once more, telling me how much fun we’ll have. I hide in the ball pit and he is looking for me when they come. Calling my name. Demanding I come out. I am the reason he does not run away until it is almost too late. “I’m not leaving without you,” he says again and again. But in the end he
does. Still I keep hiding. I stay in that pit for so long I fall asleep and begin to believe it was all just a bad dream.

I’m awake. Not in a ball pit. But in my father’s office. I have not managed to escape him after all. Perhaps I never will.

I push up onto my elbow and then pause to rub out the kink in my neck. My eyes are sticky and it is a relief to open them and find darkness. I swallow a few times, trying to unglue my tongue from inside my cottony mouth.

“Lennie.” Dyl’s hand finds mine and gives it a squeeze. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“Hurry,” urges a second voice that I recognize as Rabbit’s. “I don’t know how long he’ll stay away. Even now he may know we’re here.”

“Can you stand?” Dyl asks, as her arm slides around my back. Even with that help I barely get my legs beneath me, and before I can straighten them the room begins to spin.

“Can’t,” I explain as I collapse. “Gimme a minute,” I quickly add, not wanting them to give up on me.

Rabbit squeals his alarm.

“A minute won’t make a difference.” I can hear the annoyance in Dyl’s voice. “If you’re so worried, go upstairs to keep watch.”

“But if she can’t make it up—” Rabbit protests.

Dyl cuts him off. “We’ll manage.”

Silence. Then Rabbit sighs. “Call if you need me.” His dragging footsteps make a soft
shush
ing sound as they fade away.

“How long was I out?” I ask.

“Not long. Maybe two hours? We gave you a shot of adrenaline or something like that. I dunno. Rabbit said it would help.”

I groan. “What’d I miss? Anything good?”

Beside me I can feel Dyl shrug. “Just Rabbit freaking out about how we need to hurry and get you out of here.”

“Sooo . . . this is the rescue?”

Dyl laughs her crazy laugh that always sounds on the edge of hysteria, although for once there’s actually a reason for it. “I guess. I mean, if you wanna be rescued. Personally, I don’t think cutting out of high school a year early for a Rio vacay sounds all that bad.”

“It’s not a vacation if you aren’t allowed to leave.”

Dyl makes this impatient noise and I can imagine her expression of disgust. I’ve seen it many times. She could never believe that I saw being my father’s child as anything but a wonderful bonus. “You’re being a little hard on him, Len. He wants the best for you.”

“Did he tell you that?” I struggle my way back into a sitting position, not wanting to have this argument lying
down. When she was alive, Dyl always made me wonder if I was being too harsh. She would bring up my deepest kiddie fantasies that my dad was the only one who’d ever truly loved me. Now with those illusions truly shattered, I am no longer content to end this argument by agreeing to disagree. Cash is a bad guy. There’s no other side to the story. But Dyl is off and running before I can say any of this.

“Actually, he did tell me that. We chatted for a bit upstairs. He was nice, Lennie. He told me he wanted to make up for lost time with you and he wanted you to be happy. And . . .” Dyl hesitates before leaning closer to me so she can speak quietly. “He said I can come too. He thought it would make it easier for you and he said—”

The rotting smell I’d noticed earlier is even stronger, and I almost gag. I shift, so her breath isn’t directly in my face, and then cut off this stream of bullshit. “He’s using you to get to me, Dyl. It’s so obvious. You’re being played.” I almost add “again,” as I think of the internet guy who lured her away and chopped her to pieces.

Maybe Dyl is remembering this too, because her voice is raw when she answers me. “It’s not always about you, Lennie. He said I’m special because of what happened to me. Coming back from the dead, he said, can sometimes give you certain powers.”

“That’s even worse, Dyl! He collects freaks. Uses them. You wanna be like Rabbit?” A mixture of anger and disgust fueling me, I push myself to my feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dyl grabs hold of my arm, her grip surprisingly tight as her fingers bite into my skin. “I need this Lennie. I can’t go back to the way things were. I don’t feel right. I feel groggy and achy and confused and worst of all . . .” She stops and I can actually hear her swallow. “I hurt and I want to make other people hurt too.”

This stops me. As she knew it would. I cover Dyl’s hand with my own. “Don’t tell me you wish I hadn’t brought you back. ’Cause I would do it again. I’m sorry it sucks, but I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Lennie . . .” Dyl sighs and I can feel her soften. “I’m glad you made that wish. I mean, thank you, or whatever. Guess I shoulda said that earlier. The thing is, I wish I’d never been dead at all.”

Something in me lifts. “That’s it, Dyl! That can be your wish! I can grant it right now.”

I wait for Dyl to start jumping up and down beside me, but she turns to stone instead.

“What?” I demand, starting to feel impatient with her and annoyed with being unable to see her face. “You don’t want that? You just said you feel weird and achy and stuff.
Is that how you want to feel?”

“That might go away,” Dyl answers, her voice low and sullen. “I just woke up today; maybe it’ll get better.”

I’m still confused. “Are you afraid the wish won’t work? Or that it’ll undo the other wish? I know I’ve messed a lot of this wishing stuff up, so if you don’t trust me—”

“Shut up, Lennie,” Dyl interrupts. “It’s not that. I . . .” She pauses. Sighs. And when she speaks again her voice is barely a whisper. “If I wasn’t dead, then I’m not special anymore. Leonard might not even want me to come then and—”

Now it’s my turn to interrupt. “Leonard?! You’re calling him Leonard now? That’s super. And it’s because of him that you would rather be in pain and stuff. Well, that’s stupid.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” Dyl’s sarcastic voice is the worst. It’s her with all the warmth removed. “I’m stupid, then. Now can we get this rescue over with?” She tugs at my arm, but I resist, pulling away. I don’t want to end things with her this way. Ever since she woke up, I’ve felt like we haven’t been able to find our old groove, like our friendship had been buried along with Dyl and I needed a special wish to resurrect that as well.

“When you died, Dyl, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It hurt so bad and I just thought: it
should have been me. You have no idea how many times I wished that it had been me instead of you.”

I don’t know what I expect in response to this, but after baring my soul, I am at least hoping to avoid hearing that hard, sarcastic voice again.

“You’re such an idiot,” Dyl replies at last, her tone softer than her words. “If it had been you, the cavalry would’ve charged in to save you. Your dad. Your uncles. Even your nutso mom. They wouldn’t have let you go down like that.”

I reach toward Dyl to give her a shake. “This is the problem. You think my life is so great. So cool. But you can’t see that my father is crazy and only wants to use me. My mom wouldn’t notice if I went missing. And my uncles, c’mon, they aren’t people you can count on in a crisis. I mean yeah, they’re at Michaela’s now, but their first instinct was to get totally wasted. Maybe you can’t see it clearly, but I can. I’m nothing special and not one of them would think I was worth the effort of saving.”

“You see it clearly? Really?” Dyl laughs. “You grant wishes, Lennie. That’s pretty fucking special. And your uncles were beside themselves at Michaela’s house. They want to fix this. They want to fix this
for you
. Your mom too. You like to make excuses and feel sorry for yourself. Oh, nobody’s nice to poor Lennie ’cause her dad’s a killer. But that was never it, Lennie. You keep yourself sealed
off from everyone else and you are so frickin’ afraid to live that you go running every time something the slightest bit exciting might happen to you.”

“Shut up!” I yell, not wanting to hear anything else she has to say. “I went to Michaela’s stupid party because of you. To live ’cause you couldn’t anymore. Look how that worked out. And I could be running away right now, but I’m not. I’m trying to figure out how to fix things before more people end up dead.”

“And let’s say you do that. What happens next?”

It’s a question I haven’t taken time to consider. But now, I realize the answer is easy. “I’ll do what my uncles have always done. Have somebody make a wish to keep me hidden and after that only grant small wishes that nobody’ll ever notice.”

Dyl makes this low noise in her throat. Like disapproval. Or worse. Pity. All she says, though, is, “That’s really what you want?”

I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I don’t know what I want, except to be far far far away from my father.” I turn and start up the steps. “Speaking of which, we’re wasting time. Cash could come back at any minute.”

“He said he wanted to help you, Lennie,” Dyl protests as I start taking shaky steps forward.

“Himself,” I correct. “He wants to help himself.”

“What if you’re wrong? What if he’s the only way to clean up your mess?”

“I’ll take my chances,” I shoot back without hesitation, and I keep moving forward. Dylan fell for Cash’s act, and she fell hard. I could tell her about him having her missing fingers on file, but I’m honestly not sure that would be enough to pull her out of his spell. She’s convinced herself that he’s the answer to every problem that ever was.

A light shines under the door at the top of stairs, lending a tiny bit of illumination so that when Dyl comes up beside me, I can just make out how distorted her whole face looks. The skin is stretched tight across her cheekbones and her eyes seem strangely oversized as she stares at me.

“I know you think I’m stupid for going with Cash, the same way you thought I was an idiot to run off with someone I’d met online. It wasn’t like I didn’t know it could go badly. I knew that was possible and I didn’t care. I took my chances. And you know what? For a few days . . . For a few days, it was amazing. He looked like his picture and he talked the same way we had online and it was totally worth it . . . until it wasn’t.” Dyl laughs that crazy laugh, except now it is more manic sounding than ever, reminding me that for her this didn’t end several months ago. For her it probably feels like yesterday.

“Dyl . . .” I reach toward her, full of sympathy.

She slaps my hand away, not angry but impatient, as if I’m not getting the point of her whole story. “I took my chances. I took my chances once and I’ll do it again. And you should too.”

I shake my head. “I’m not like you.”

She smiles, tentatively. “You could try to be.”

Again, I shake my head, since it seems kinder than saying that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be like her. Maybe once I did. I’d definitely admired her boldness . . . except now it looks more like recklessness and not giving a shit what happens to anyone except herself.

Maybe Dyl senses my hidden thoughts, ’cause she mimics my head shake and says, “You know Teena always said we had one of those friendships that wouldn’t last after high school. The two of us would go in opposite directions and never meet again.”

“Yeah, and you always said Teena was full of shit.”

Dyl shrugs. “Mostly full of shit. She said one or two things I took note of.”

I look at Dyl. Past the crazy eyes and the burning determination to do whatever the hell it is she’s gonna do. I know she’s telling me our friendship is at that breaking point Teena talked about, but that’s not only up to her and I don’t want it to end this way.

So I force a grin. “I thought the only time you took note of Teena was when she said, ‘Girls, size matters. And I’m talking about a man’s manhood, if you know what I mean. Unless he’s very good at going downtown, in which case you make allowances.’”

And Dyl laughs, her too-wide eyes relaxing with it. “Like I said. One or two things worth listening to.”

I laugh with her. Then I swing the door open, wanting to end on that note without any more harsh words being exchanged. Rabbit greets us with a relieved smile. “Hurry, hurry,” he whispers, ushering us through the dark bar.

I glance over my shoulder at Dyl. She gives me a reassuring smile, like everything’s okay between us now. I’m not reassured. Still, I smile and nod back, willing to pretend too.