Save Yourself (35 page)

She clapped her hands. “Come on, people.” Now her voice was shrill and frightened. “Move. Let’s go.”

Verna let herself be herded with all of the others, through the parking lot and across the street to stand in the front yards of the neighboring houses. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing ever closer. The motions of the teachers urging students forward were stiff with fear. Verna passed Mr. Chionchio and he grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild.

“Verna,” he said, “where’s Layla? Is she in school today?”

“No,” Verna said.

The art teacher closed his eyes and some of the rigidity left his frame. “Thank God. I hadn’t seen her. I was afraid she—”

Then he stopped. The sirens were earsplitting now, coming from
all directions, and over Mr. Chionchio’s shoulder the first of the screaming vehicles roared into view: four fire trucks, a huge black van, more police cars than she could count, and still they kept coming. Mr. Chionchio turned, too, and the two of them stood and watched as masses of firefighters and policemen flowed out of the cars and trucks into the parking lot. The black van was full of men in bulky black suits wearing helmets with clear plastic face shields. It looked like one of Eric’s video games. It looked like a war.

“Mr. Chionchio,” Verna said, “what’s going on?”

He tried to look very teacherly and reassuring, but failed. The tie he was wearing today bore a repeating pattern of cartoon cats with mouse tails sticking out of their mouths and the words
carpe diem
. “There were a few bombs in lockers. But they were very small,” he added, quickly. “The police are just here to make sure there aren’t any more.”

Another vehicle with flashing lights appeared at the top of the hill. An ambulance. Two ambulances. One of them stopped a few houses down, where a tighter cluster of adults had gathered, including Mr. Serhienko and most of the guidance counselors. The ambulance door opened and two blue-shirted medics pushed their way into the cluster. “Who got hurt?” she said.

Instead of answering, Mr. Chionchio said, “Verna, what class are you in right now?”

“Algebra. Mrs. Bergman.” The other ambulance parked in the lower lot. There, the medics were stopped by the men in the padded suits, who didn’t seem to want to let them inside.

“You should go stand with her. She’ll want to make sure you’re safe.”

Verna doubted very much that Mrs. Bergman could have picked her photo out of the yearbook, even, but she nodded and went to stand with her classmates anyway. They were scattered in hushed groups, whispering and staring across the street at the school building.
Mrs. Bergman stood with the other math teachers. They whispered and stared, too. Everybody seemed afraid, Verna thought, even though they were theoretically safe. But nowhere was safe. Maybe that was why Verna wasn’t scared. Maybe that was why, when a hand fell on her shoulder and somebody said her name, she wasn’t even startled.

It was Criss, looking anxious and grim. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Down the street, the cluster had broken, and she saw a medic helping someone into the back of the ambulance. It was Calleigh. Her face was red and tear-streaked and her hands were wrapped in thick bandages.

“Just turn around and walk,” Criss said. “Quick, before anybody notices.”

And so Verna did, because nobody
would
notice. The two girls slipped around the back of the nearest house, through a backyard and a stand of trees into another backyard, emerging into a nice residential neighborhood where all of the houses were well-kept and all of the window shades were pulled. Police radios crackled faintly over the hill but in a few moments, even that faded.

Criss had Justinian’s car. She was breathing hard, her face purple and her blue hair indigo with sweat. Her driving was erratic, too fast one moment, too slow and careful the next. She zoomed around corners and then swore, as if it were the car’s fault. At Eric’s, the other three—Eric, Justinian, and Layla—were gathered around the television, which showed a helicopter shot of the school and the surrounding chaos. By now there was a second black van and even more cops in riot gear. “Verna,” Layla said, sounding glad, and hugged Verna. She smelled like somebody else’s soap.

“What’s going on?” Verna said.

“The assholes had to pay,” Justinian said.

“Although they’re saying three injured, which means that one got away.” Eric was frowning. “I don’t see how. I built those things solid.”

Verna felt a twitch of fear, and yet part of her almost wanted to
laugh, because the situation seemed so impossibly absurd. It couldn’t be true, but she had no doubt that it was. “I saw Calleigh,” she said, hesitantly. “Her hands were bandaged.”

Justinian shrugged. “I guess that’s something.”

“I wish there was more fire,” Eric said.

Now a stiff-haired female reporter with perfect lipstick was talking about how much of the building remained to be searched, about how they had finally managed to get the third, most seriously injured student into an ambulance. None of the injuries were expected to be life-threatening. Verna found herself hoping, despite herself, that the third injured student was Kyle Dobrowski. The twitch of fear intensified.

She edged closer to her sister on the couch. “Layla?”

“Relax, Vee,” Layla said. Her eyes were glued to the television screen but her voice sounded normal. “It’s all going to be okay, I promise.”

It wasn’t. Verna knew that. But nothing had been okay before, either. “They made bombs?”

“Eric and Justinian,” Layla said, “yeah. For you.”

There was no accusation in her voice. None. For me, Verna thought numbly.

It was almost two o’clock. Justinian said it would take hours to finish combing the school, and more hours after that to connect them to Eric, because he’d been out of school so long. They were safe for now, and would be until after dark. He never said the word
police
but Verna felt it there anyway.

“What happens after dark?” Criss said.

“Phase two,” he said. “The Elshere sisters. I think Verna needs a formal welcoming, don’t you?”

Verna didn’t know what he meant. She didn’t know what else there could be after letting him cut her and drink her blood, but she didn’t believe she could be hurt anymore, anyway.

“You said sisters, though.” Criss sounded uncertain.

There was a moment of icy silence. Layla, next to him on the couch, seemed suddenly shrunken, folded into herself.

“Right. I guess we should talk about Layla.” Justinian said her name slowly, as if he was tasting it. “Layla strayed from us. She lost faith. After all this time, you’d think she’d know how the world treats people like us, but I guess sometimes you have to learn a lesson over and over before you truly know it.”

“Wait,” Criss said, and Eric said, “What did she do?”

“She let one of them contaminate her,” Justinian said.

There was another pause. Then, “Fuck her, you mean,” Eric said, and looked at Layla. “Whore.”

Layla sat up straighter and glared at Eric, some of her old nerve asserting itself. “Right. You hate when I fuck other guys, unless of course it’s you.”

“You were a whore when I fucked you, too.”

Verna said nothing about Toby. She hated the words Eric used. She hated them.

“Layla, be quiet,” Justinian said, calmly. Layla’s mouth snapped shut and her body contracted back into itself. He turned to Eric. “You’ve got a right to be pissed. But for what it’s worth, she came to me on her own, confessed everything. She’s had to be very strong, this week. If she didn’t want to be here right now, she wouldn’t be. Don’t get me wrong; she betrayed you. And me, and all of us. But now she’s asking to be taken back.”

“I don’t hear her asking,” Eric said. “I hear you.”

Justinian’s voice was cold. “It’s the same thing.”

“Who was it?” Criss said.

Layla shifted uncomfortably. “This loser who works at this gas station.”

Gas station. The one they went to for coffee in the mornings? Verna had never seen Layla talk to anybody there.

“Such a loser that you couldn’t stop yourself from having sex with him,” Criss said. She sounded bitter and wounded.

“It wasn’t like that.” Now Layla seemed genuinely pained. “Crissy, I swear. He was— When I was with him—” She stopped. Her hands were twisting together almost convulsively. “When I was with him, I could pretend I was like him. Like I was normal.” Her eyes scanned the room, landing briefly on each of them, even Eric. Searching for sympathy, or maybe refuge. “I’m not normal. I’m not like them. I’m like you. This is where I belong.”

“You know that now,” Justinian said.

She nodded. Quickly, as if she were afraid she would miss her chance.

“And you’ll be faithful, from now on.”

The same quick, desperate nod. Verna had never seen Layla like this, cowed and cringing. It frightened her.

Justinian smiled. “It’s like I always say. You find pleasure through pain and power through submission and wisdom through doing stupid things. So now Layla is a little wiser. I think this was her last mistake. I think if we give her a chance, she’ll be more than willing to prove how loyal she can be.”

“Maybe I’m just a cynic,” Eric said, “but I can’t help wondering if you’d be forgiving her quite so easily if you weren’t so into fucking her.”

Justinian’s eyes narrowed and his face went hard. But his voice, as always, was controlled. “Every time I look at her, I see his face. Every time I touch her, I feel his greasy skin. She tastes, and smells, exactly like sewage. Exactly how
easy
do you think that is for me?”

Eric didn’t answer. Layla’s cheeks were black-streaked with tears. “Every human being on earth who truly loves me is in this room,” she said. “I know I screwed up. I know it’s bad. I know none of you are ever going to come near me again without wondering if I caught something from him. But I don’t have anywhere else to go. If you
don’t forgive me, I might as well be dead.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were obvious, and then she fell silent.

Justinian nodded.

Verna didn’t understand what was happening. “Layla,” she said, but her sister only looked at her, and didn’t answer.

Criss sighed, long and pained. “Of course we forgive you. We love you,” she said. “We want you with us.”

Eric rolled his eyes. “You just want her, period.”

“Good, then,” Justinian said. “It’s settled,” and whatever had been in the air was gone, just like that, and all that was left of it was the nervous feeling in Verna’s stomach and the mascara on Layla’s cheeks. Layla quickly wiped away the mascara, and after that there was nothing.

Justinian produced a bottle of wine and they drank it as they waited for dark. Verna drank as enthusiastically as any of them. It didn’t seem to matter anymore if she got drunk. Justinian told them again about Montreal, the old Victorian they’d buy; they’d fix up the house together, and it would become a place of love and freedom. People would flock to them, they would be happy. Verna let the wine and the words wash over her and didn’t believe that any of it was going to happen. What she believed was that night would roll around, and somebody—probably Criss—would decide to go home, instead. Or the police would find them; she wasn’t sure it would take as long as Justinian thought for them to look at the absentee list and figure out who the bomber was most likely to be. If that happened, Verna thought, they would probably all find themselves in a great deal of trouble.

“It’s going to be okay” was all Layla would say. “Everything is going to be okay.”

If they made it to Montreal, Verna would never have to worry about her father seeing the video. She would never have to stuff another folder with Layla’s face on it, never have to sit through another cookie-and-punch Worship Group reception, never see Amberleigh Costa again. Never set foot in school. Never hear Calleigh’s voice.

Calleigh. She wondered if Calleigh was in a great deal of pain. It was awful, but she hoped so.

The numbers on the clock moved smoothly, almost magically. The time when her mother would have been waiting outside of the high school had long since passed. No cars pulled up outside, no bomb squads, no lights and sirens; maybe Justinian was right. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten. Then he said it was time. He and Criss and Eric shut themselves away in Eric’s room while Layla sat on the couch and smoked silently, one cigarette after another. When the others finally opened the door and let the Elshere sisters in, Layla stood and walked in, still silent, and Verna followed.

Eric’s room—was clean. Cleaner. The floor had been cleared and a blanket spread out. The lights were off, and the room was filled with candles that looked and smelled like the ones from Justinian’s house. The warm dancing flames were friendly, the smell of the wax otherworldly.

Justinian sat in the middle of the blanket with his eyes closed. The rest of them arranged themselves around him. Verna looked out the window—it was fully dark now, she could see stars—but found her eyes drawn to the white terrain of Justinian’s throat, the ribbons of tendon under the skin.

Finally, he said, “The other day, I saw a dead deer by the side of the road. Stiff, with its legs sticking up in the air. Everybody else was just driving by, but I stopped. I looked. I saw the blood on its hide, the flies crawling in its mouth. I could smell it decaying, returning to the earth. It was like a poem that somehow contained the whole world, birth and death and rot and color and everything that ever was, the sum total of every possible experience. It was like being on the best drugs in the world. It made me want to live, to do everything that my body could possibly do: fight and fuck and eat and laugh and cry and sing. Everything.”

He paused. There was no noise.

“All those cowards driving by, too scared to look because the truth
might be ugly. We’re not scared. We take the blood and the shit and the beauty and the agony and we use it to make ourselves stronger. We wanted power, and we took it. We wanted our freedom, and we took it. We want revenge on everybody who’s wronged us, and we’re taking that, too.”

He turned to Layla. The set of his mouth was stern. “Layla, you lied to us, and that was wrong. But in a way, I’m proud of you. You saw something you wanted and you went for it. If you hadn’t tried to do it alone, you could have had him. Instead, he has you. I can see him looking out of your eyes. We can take you back from him. We can make you free, if that’s what you want.”