Living Dead Girl (11 page)

"Please," I say, because I know he is lying, there is no deal, there is only what he wants, has always ever been only what he wants with no bargaining, no questions, and he smiles at me, his real smile, all pain and teeth and knowing. We drive to a shopping mall that was built but died, empty stores everywhere with only one sad supermarket at the far end.

"Start making it up to me now," he says, and pushes my face into his lap. Digs his fingers into my shoulder hard.

I hate him. Thought comes like pain and throbs there, screaming. I hate him, hate him, hate him.

I'd forgotten how much feelings hurt.

"WHO ARE YOU?" WAS THE FIRST thing Ray said to me after the aquarium, was the first time I heard his real voice.

"Who are you?" he said, and hit me when I answered, slap across my face, my parents had never hit me before, made me sit in a corner when I was bad and yelled, my mother's face sometimes turning bright red and scaring me.

But not like this.

"Who are you?" he said again. "What's your name? Where do you live?" and he didn't know who I was, how could he not know who I was when I was in his car and he--I had words for what he'd done then, words from the
news and from talks at school, but how could he not know me? They never said I would be nothing to him, just some stupid girl who said yes, show me where to go.

"Stop crying," he said as I told him, and I did. I sniffed all the tears back up into my head, hiccupped held them in my throat and told him who I was and where I lived.

He nodded. "Good," he said. "Very good."

"Will you take me home?" I said, and he looked at me like I'd asked the silliest question in the world.

"Of course," he said. "Where else would we go?"

"But--" I didn't want him in my house, did not want him near my things, didn't want him with my parents.

"Oh, you mean the other place," he said. "623 Daisy Lane. I could take you there, but then you'd say I hurt you--"

"No, no, I wouldn't, I--"

"I'm talking," he said, and hit me again. It hurt more the second time. "Good girls are quiet when grown-ups talk. Can you be quiet?"

I nodded.

"Better," he said. "Now, I can't take you to 623 Daisy Lane unless you want everyone there to die. Because that's what will happen if you go there. Do you want that? What--" He leaned over and pinched my jaw shut, back then his hand could cover it like it was nothing. "What kind of girl are you?"

Disgust was thick in his voice and when I didn't say anything he said, "I see," and shook his head, and then said, "I guess we'll go, then," and I said, "No, no, I'll go with you."

"You'll come home?"

"I'll come home," I said. And that's when I knew I never would, that home was now just a word, that it meant nothing.

I felt what loss was then, and it was like dying.

It was dying, and when Alice was born, that little once upon a time girl, that far away long ago me, disappeared.

She became a story, one I have mostly forgotten. One I can't end because she died a long time ago.

RAY IS ALMOST NEVER HAPPY. YOU would think he would be, he says I make him happy, but I don't. I'm always doing something wrong.

But now he is happy and buys chicken from a fast-food place, leaving me in the truck, whistling under his breath as he comes back jingling his keys and carrying two bags smelling of meat and salt and bread, all warm, soft, good smells.

"After five already," he says, looking at his watch and frowning, wipes spots off it, dried brown-red spots, my blood. Uses the hand cleaner he always carries--germs are bad, his mother taught him, and he is full of them, the
world is full of them, and he used to never want me to get sick--and then eats his chicken.

"Here," he says, and puts a biscuit on my knee. I can't pick it up with my right hand and he is holding my left and when I look at him he giggles, high-pitched.

I am scared. I thought I knew fear, lived inside it, breathed it in every day, but this is terror, his laugh and knowing he is going to have me help him take his Annabel and then kill me. Then kill everyone who lived with the girl I used to be.

And he knows I know that. I did not see it before but I see it now. He sees I see my own death and he is keeping me with him because he likes it. He wants to see me waiting for it.

I lean over and eat the biscuit, one bite before it falls off my knee and onto the floor. Ray says, "You're like that cop, that fat cow cop, who ate candy when we were walking back to her car. Women shouldn't eat candy, it makes them fat and all those bulges are horrible. My mother used to wave hers around, I bet that cop does that and I said I'd call her and got her number and when she asked about you I said you needed someone to take care of you and I hoped whoever loved you would do that."

He laughs again and takes a bite of chicken, ripping flesh between his teeth, all the way down to the bone.

5:40.

We are close to the park. Ray has finished his chicken and cleaned his hands and pressed my face down into his lap again, then changed his mind and moved me around, folding me into what he wanted, my head pushing into the door as he pushes into me, grunt (him) thunk (me).

"You. Remember. Who. You. Belong. To," he says. "You. Remember. Whose. Girl. You. Are."

I nod and he pushes my hair out from where it has gotten trapped under me, caught by him and how he's moved me.

"There," he says. "That must feel better."

It does, of course it does, not feeling bits of my hair strain, snap. My head goes thunk again, once, twice, and then he sighs. Flexes his fingers on my shoulder, red pain silent scream inside me.

Tears on my face, I cannot help it, and he licks them off one by one, sucking every last thing he can from me.

RAY AND I LIVE IN THE TOWN OF CEDAR Hills. There's a sign and everything. I see it on the TV channel that runs town meetings and school lunch menus. I sometimes watch to see what little girls get to eat.

If you saw Cedar Hills, you would like it. It is a nice town, with good schools and low crime and tourists who come to look at the vacation home of a man who helped write some sort of treaty and a company that makes expensive tiny phones that you see people talking on in television shows. So many new houses are going up that it's like there are ghost towns all around, pockets where the skeletons of homes sit, waiting to be finished,
waiting for their families to come and move in.

"Now we're ready," he says, and hauls me up, buckles my seat belt around me. Ray insists on seat belts in the truck. He says you can't be too careful with all the other drivers out there. He says it's better to be safe than sorry.

It is strange how slow time has gotten, each minute creeping by. I thought that everything ending would be quick--and I have thought about it every day for five years, thought about it ever since he pulled me close, like a parent putting an arm around a child, and then whispered what would happen if I said anything, if I tried to run, if I said a word.

He said I would be sorry, that I would die, that everyone would die, and Ray always keeps his word.

"Can you--?" I say, my head swimming as my shoulder throbs softer, duller red now, everything getting heavy, my shirt pressing down on me. Empty ghost houses all around us.

"Can I what?"

"Just do it now," I say. "Just kill me. Put me in a house, get the knife, the matches, and--"

He leans over and kisses my cheek. "You do what you're told," he says, and then backhands me so hard I feel something snap crack, feel some of my teeth wiggle up and around, loose.

"You keep your promises to me," he says. "You do
what I tell you to. You remember whose girl you are."

"Yours," I say, "yours," and swallow the blood in my mouth. It is warm, salty.

"Mine," he says, and whistles as we drive away.

5:50.

Ray tells me what I will do. I will go into the park. I will find Jake. I will give him whatever he wants and a special purple pill that Ray hands me, tells me to make sure Jake takes. I will wait until he has drifted far away, eyes wide shut.

Then I will walk by Annabel. I will stop if there are other children with her. ("And there will be," Ray says. "On a night like this, who wouldn't want to be out playing?") I will pretend to tie my shoe so Ray will know he has to come a few minutes later and tell everyone the park is closing early, sorry, town rules, things have to be painted like that statue at the far end so go on, go find your parents. Go on, go home.

Annabel will head for Jake and find me.

And then Ray will come for us. "Right there, at the boy's car," he says, and grins, laughs, "I know what you were thinking," in a singsong voice, teasing like the kids I saw pushing smaller ones around, grinding them down into the ground.

"You leave when I say," he says. "You leave with me. You don't get to be alone with the boy like that. With his car."

Laughs again. "It'll be good for Annabel, I think. See what happens to her brother. Start her off right to see what happens when you don't listen. I wish I'd done it with you. But between that and our trip to Daisy Lane--no, I didn't forget--she'll learn what she has to do. She'll learn to be good."

"I'll run," I say, slow, sluggish, the words like weights in my mouth and Ray looks at me like he has never seen me before, like I am someone--something--new.

Then he laughs and pats my face, not a slap, but a pat, fond soft rubbing, his hot hand on my face.

"No," he says. "You won't."

And he is right. I won't. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. Because my shirt is so heavy now, hard weight on my skin, and I feel strange, hot and floaty and weirdly sleepy, darkness pressing in against me like Ray at night turning to loom over me.

Unstoppable.

That's what night is. What Ray is. And I am nothing against any of that. Against him. I never have been.

Little Alice, all hollowed out, so easy to smash into a million pieces.

I HAVE BEEN SMASHED AND PUT BACK together so many times nothing works right.

Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.

Feel it? Pushpushthrob, one beat. Pushpushthrob, two beats.

Now, Ray says. Now.

"NOW," HE SAYS AGAIN AND LEANS across me, unbuckling my seat belt, opening the door. 6:02.

Pushing me out.

I do not fall. I fell so hard so long ago there is nothing left for me to land on. I just keep falling and falling and falling.

My shoulder-heart throbs and I walk, still falling.

Into the park, over to where the cars are, not by the lights or the shiny slides and swings.

To Jake's car, empty. I look in the window, try the door. It opens, smell of boy and sadness and handfuls of pills. I lean inside, head spinning, beyond dizzy, world tilting
swirling melting running into dark, and then pull back. My shirt drips onto his seat, plop plop plop, blood like tears because both do nothing except make Ray happy or sad you never know with him what kind of mood he's in and I used to think I could figure them out, be what he wanted, but it was never right I was never right.

And in the end blood and tears are alike because they stop too. You can't have either go on forever. You will go on--I did, I am, get up, day goes by, Ray comes home, nighttime, bed, sleep to wake up and do it all over again over and over and over like we pray in church, world without end.

Amen.

I HEAD BACK TO THE PARK. JAKE IS probably there, waiting in the bushes or behind a tree, thinking he will do something, but instead will just be there, daisy-eyed watcher that Ray will smash if he finds.

It is hard to see in the dark, the lights faint far away tunnel shadows, and I round a corner, the left-turning one that marks the curve where the park starts, grass green in the day but now inky dark, reflecting the night.

Annabel is there. She puts her hands on her hips, like a grown-up, head tilted to one side, and I was never this young, not ever.

I wait for her to playact, ask where's my brother at and
sigh like the children at the apartment do, where's my sister at, where's my brother at, where's glenda/maria/shanda/ levonda/najari/tedanna at? Ray sometimes watches them, sneaking peeks out the window, me kneeling between his legs as he whispers what he would like to do to them, what he could teach them, how good he could make them be.

Instead she says, "You're bleeding."

STANDING THERE, BLACK PANTS, WHITE shirt, orange sneakers (left shoelace untied), she wrinkles her mouth like a grown-up, like the woman she will never get to be, Ray won't let her grow up, not into this world, never grow up he would whisper to me at night, never grow up. Stay just as you are, Alice.

Swear you'll never change. Swear it. Good.

She stands there, staring, and I can see her five years from now, hollowed out, hollow-eyed, shrunken little thing, not a girl but nothing more, not quite right at all but you won't look, will you? No, you will turn away, you will always turn away. Everyone says they want to
help but no one really does. He was always so nice, they say on TV about the killer next door. He was so quiet. We never thought there was anything strange about him at all.

The girl? We thought she was his daughter. He said she was sick, that he was trying to get her help. He seemed to be so--well, normal. And she never said a word. Why didn't she say a word? That's all she would have needed to do.

"RUN," I SAY, AND SHE BLINKS AT ME. Doesn't move.

Just one word, they say. But no one would listen. I could have screamed a million times in a million voices and no one would have ever heard me. I did, every time I left the apartment, with every step I took out in the world.