The Bullet List (The Saving Bailey Trilogy, #1) (21 page)

I don’t have any friends
.
I’m like the kid on the playground who eats his own boogers.

“What friends?” I ask, my throat tensing.

“Mm, one of them was named Nessa. They said they go to school with you. I didn’t know you had girlfriends besides Alana,” she says thoughtfully.

“I don’t,” I say, and burst out the door.

“Angeeelll!” I holler as I tumble down the stairs and onto the street.

Gone. Abducted by Miemah and her crew
.

I scream his name as I run to the bridge that daring kids sometimes jump from. A bridge where Clad and I used to crawl under, and draw graffiti pictures with sharpies. My organs are in my throat. My boots slap against the concrete, and my breath comes out in staggered gasps.

“Angel!” I cry out.

If they hurt him, I will shoot them until they look like pieces of bloody Swiss cheese.

There is a green Subaru parked beside the bridge. Miemah is leaning against it, a black plastic trash bag in her hand. She is laughing when I come up to her.

“Where’s my dog?” I pant. “What did you do with him? I swear I’ll kill you if you’ve touched him!”

The bag in her hand wriggles and whimpers.
Angel.

I lurch at her, my hands prepared to wrap around her throat and choke the life out of her. Someone pulls me backwards just as my nails touch her skin, and I fall hard on my tailbone.

“Crazy bitch!” Miemah snickers, and punches the bag.

“I will kill you!” I scream. “I will murder you!”

I scramble to my feet, the gravel slick beneath my boots, and deck her in the throat. Then, while she is still coughing and sputtering from that hit, I knee her in the stomach, and grab for the bag. My fingers rip at the plastic as Nessa comes up behind me and lifts me off my feet. She tosses me over the bridge railing, dangling me like a rag doll.

“No!” I say.

The water looks unforgiving beneath my feet. Kids have died from jumping off and smacking the water in the wrong way, breaking a neck, or back.

“I’ll get you my pretty,” Miemah says in a witchy voice. “And your little dog too!”

I swing my legs, trying to pull myself back over the railing; Nessa is straining not to drop me, my weight too much to hold.

“Please!” I say to her.

She lifts me over the railing and throws me back on the sidewalk.

I gain my balance, and look for Miemah. She is leaning over the bridge, Angel in her wicked hands.

Nessa doesn’t try to stop me when I run to him my arm outstretched. I have the bag in my hands, and am bewildered as to why Miemah would surrender Angel, until I look into her crow-like eyes and see they are sparkling demonically. I am shoved, my stomach hitting the ledge, my body tipping over and flailing to the water below. One thing goes through my mind as I am falling, moments away from meeting the water:
If Miemah told you to jump off a bridge would you?

Chapter 28

Running head-on into a sliding glass door because someone has used too much Windex on it.
That’s what it feels like when I smack the water, the air in my lungs pressed out of me like squeezing the juice from an orange. My two front teeth bite straight through my bottom lip, and blood colors the water like food dye. Once I recover, I realize that I am no longer clutching Angel he must have fallen from my hands when my face hit the water.

“Angeeelll!” I scream out in anguish.
He is probably sinking to the bottom of the ocean, dead in his plastic bag grave.

Puppies can’t swim. Puppies can’t breathe underwater. Puppies’ tiny claws can’t rip through plastic.
I kick my legs, thrashing, and screaming until my voice is hoarse, then I hit something slippery like seaweed. It catches on the tip of my boot, and I raise my leg steadily to the surface to retrieve it.
The bag
. I tear it open, and raise Angel above my head. He coughs and whines.

“You maniac!” Nessa screams from above the bridge. “You love that stupid dog enough to die for him.” Her and Miemah get in the Subaru, and drive away.

I kick myself to a ladder hanging over the side of the bridge, and with my soggy casted arm I hold Angel, and use my other arm to climb up it.

My chest aches and my boots keep slipping on the metal rungs, but I have to make it up. I swing my leg over the edge, and place Angel on the sidewalk. He is shaking from fear and the cold water that is dripping off his fur.

I slump against the bridge, my heart pounding so fast it may jump out of my chest and run down the street. I am drenched in the icy water, my clothes heavy and clinging to my skin.

“I’m sorry, boy,” I say and scratch behind his ears. He shivers under my icy fingers and withdraws from them. “Even you aren’t safe from Miemah’s evil.”

I catch my breath, and tucking Angel under my shirt, start the long walk home. Blood fills my mouth and I swallow it, but it keeps coming. I poke my tongue around, and find a sizeable wound just below my lip.

The wet leather of my boots rubs blisters against my heels, so I take them off and tie the shoe laces together, letting them hang over my shoulder. My cast is like wet paper-
mâché
, falling off my arm in strips. Reminds me of my eighth birthday when Alana and I made a piñata shaped like a princess, then painted it orange because that was the only color paint we had in the apartment, and Mom was too drunk to drive to the store.

Only Clad came to my party. I had invited the entire second grade class, but they were avoiding it like a trip to the dentist. “They are just jealous of you,” Mom had said to comfort me.
Jealous of what? The beatings? Clad and Alana, my only friends? Or jealous of my inability to find happiness no matter how hard I sought it?

That day, I took off my party dress, brushed out my curls, and put on sweatpants and a sweater. Clad came into my room, took one look at me and smiled. “I like your outfit,” he said, and handed me a crudely wrapped present. I tossed it back in his face, saying, “You are just saying that because you like me!” He looked hurt, as a single tear crawled down his cheek.

“I
do
like you,” he said, and left my room. He must have gone home, because when I finally came out of the shelter of my room, Mom was passed out on her couch, with a beer dangling in her hand, and he was nowhere to be seen.

That’s our relationship: me being acid, and him being base. He takes the full brunt of all my cutting words, and returns them to me, after spinning them into something sweet.

Mom is standing at the door, her lips puckered around a menthol Marlboro.

“Are you okay?” she asks and taps the cigarette against her thigh.

I shove past her, and head to the bathroom in search of towels for Angel. I take off my wet clothes and squat on the rug, swaddling Angel in the towels. I press him against my chest and rock him.

“My cast is ruined,” I say when Mom comes to the door, holding my nightgown. “And my lip needs stiches.” I pull my lip, and show her the gaping hole.

She sighs heavily.

“Eat dinner, and then I’ll take you to the emergency room,” she says.

I grab onto the counter to raise myself, my legs feeling unstable. I put my silk night-gown on, and shiver. Angel shivers with me then barks. Mom is setting the table in the kitchen,
as if I hadn’t just fallen off a bridge in an effort to save my dog that she let my enemy take from our own home.

“Different girls this time,” I lie, and chew on a piece of beef.

“Mhm,” she says, stuffing a potato in her mouth so she won’t have to say anything more.

“I fell off a bridge, they were going to kill Angel.”

She drops her spoon in the bowl. “Sorry,” she says, her voice reaching just above a whisper.

I grimace as the heat of the soup stings my cut.

“I’ll put some broth in a cup for you,” Mom says, catching sight of my pain-warped face. I sulk to the couch to relax, and let Angel rest between my legs.

Later on, Mom wrestles Angel from me, and locks him in my bedroom; we go to the emergency room and wait three hours to get stitches and a new cast.

Neon green
. A small improvement from my last one, it is the color of a shirt I would choose to wear clubbing. Four black hair-like threads stick out from the cut inside my mouth, tickling my gums. My tongue runs across them, fascinated by the new addition to my mouth.

“We are broke,” Mom says, hitting her head on the steering wheel.

“We’ve been broke,” I say.

“We are more broke,” she corrects herself. “Why did they do it?”

“Beats me,” I say.

She rolls her eyes and cuts the ignition. We are sitting in her car below our apartment, and she refuses to go in. “We need to talk through some things,” she says.

“
I’m tired
,” I say.

“Maybe you should consider homeschooling. These kids aren’t going to stop, that much is obvious. You and Angel would be safer.”

I draw in a breath. “Ha! And then they would come to the apartment and harass you too.”

“It was only a suggestion,” Mom says, overwhelmed.

“A terrible one,” I say.

“What about the police?” Mom asks.

“No. We can’t get them involved. They can’t take Miemah down. No one can,” I say. “And I’ve done things I shouldn’t have, and so have you.”

We are all criminals in this game called life. The least I can do is keep the playing field even.
An eye for an eye
. No one would miss Miemah.

“Can we go in now? I don’t want to leave Angel alone any longer than I have to.”

“Fine,” Mom says, and unlocks my car door, her voice revealing how worn out she is.

I leave her moping in the car, her eyes glowing in the darkness like a bats eyes.

When I open my bedroom door Angel comes barreling out, thrilled to see me.

“Let’s go to sleep boy,” I say, and pick him up by the underside of his warm belly. His fur is still damp, so I let him come under the covers with me.

“Now if only your fur was glow-in-the-dark,” I yawn. “Then it wouldn’t be so dark in here.”

The front door opens and shuts, Mom has finally come in.

She enters my room and kisses my forehead and Angel’s too. Her face is wet with tears.

“You’ve been crying,” I say, my voice quiet.

“What do you do, when you can no longer protect your child? I feel so helpless in defending you Bailey.”

“You don’t have to,” I say, and kiss her hand.

“When you were little, you would fall and scrape you knee, and I could tickle and kiss away the pain. You would be all better. Now, I can only take you to hospitals, my broken doll, and ask them to fix you back up. When did my hands, stop being able to heal you?” she says, another barrage of tears coming on.

“When the world decided I didn’t deserve to live,” I say.

“You have just as much right to be here as anyone else!” Mom says, at wits end. “Don’t you let anyone make you think otherwise.”

“Will we get through this?” I ask her, knowing she will answer as she always does: ‘It will end.’

“I don’t know,” she says, surprising me. “Good night, sweetheart.” She leaves my door open a crack so that a bit of light shines in from the kitchen.

Tonight I dream of mirrors
. I am in a room of them, each one reflecting a different image of me at different points in my life. The reflection of my malnourished body in the hospital, Spencer’s bathroom mirror reflecting my bruised body from the fall on the stairs, and before Miemah had done so much damage, my own mirror showing my skin glowing and beautiful, not a single scratch on it.

There is one fogged-up mirror, and I wipe it with my hands franticly. Once it is clear I stare at it, the back wall of the room reflected in it. My body doesn’t show up. I am not there. I don’t exist.

I am screaming when I wake. I am vaguely aware of Angel’s fury little body, being squeezed by my hands. I release him, and let out a guttural noise, sounding something like an accordion being pounced upon.

Mom stumbles into my room at the sound of my choked scream. “What? What?” she says, searching the room for the cause of my distress.

“Bad dream, really bad dream,” I say.

“You’re sweating,” she says, slapping a hand to her forehead, relieved I am unharmed.
Well, for the most part anyway.

I have sweated through my nightgown, and sheets. “What time is it?” I ask, not able to tell by the moon outside my window, which shines just as bright at both midnight and early morning.

She looks at the clock in the kitchen. “About five. You should get ready for school now.”

I dress myself, sip on a glass of tea to soothe my lip, and get on the bus for school. My routine is becoming stale:
wake up, dress, eat, and leave
. I am chewing on it, like bread crust, rough, and tasteless. The same sun rises over the same trees, and the same school opens its doors to me. But beyond all the routine events of the morning, my bones can feel a change in the air: today I am going to play out a new script.
I dread what the day will bring.

There is a thick-bodied little man with a cart of cleaning supplies blocking the janitor’s closet.

“Who are you?” I ask brashly.

“Chewy,” he says and holds his brown hand out to me.

I rub my sweaty palm against my jeans, and shake his hand.

“Is this your closet now?” I ask, my words boomeranging back into my head:
is this your closet now?
As in
‘no longer my refuge, no longer my rock to hide under, no more a pile of sand to bury my head in.’

“It is, the principal assigned me to it. Why you ask girly?” he says, his words Spanish accented.

“Can I stay here when you aren’t using it?” I ask, my words fast and pressing.

“You mean can you skip class?” he says, his eyebrows rising.

I nod. “The kids hate me, they beat me up,” I say, trying to sound pathetic and sweet.

He considers it while playing with the blue rag in his hands.

“I guess so,” he says. “But don’t tell anyone I let you, K? I could get fired.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, should I dare tell a single soul!” I say.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, clearly not understanding.

He pushes his cart from the door and strolls down the hall. As he walks away, his cart in front of him like a baby carriage, I hear him mutter,
“Loco.”

I shut the door, lock it, and sit on the cot. A couple weeks ago I was sitting on this same cot, writing out my Bullet List. Then it was just a question, an idea stashed in the back of my mind; now it is front and center, a tangible goal.
The only question is: when will I go through with it? Tomorrow, ten days from now, twenty years?

I’m a serene body of water, just waiting for someone to walk by and toss a rock in me, causing me to ripple out in a chain of events. I am about to pull out my binder and a piece of paper for sketching when my phone chimes. I am surprised at first, not having heard it ring in days. There is a text message from Trenton.

Talk about unexpected
. I read the text message. ‘
Hey Sexy, I’m sorry about lunch a week back, and I heard about Miemah and the locker room. Hope all is well. Would you like to come to my house today after school?
’

Trenton inviting me to his house?
What could he possibly be planning
? Then I remember Ashten in the hospital, and her confiding in me about Trenton’s scheme to take over the Allie.

‘Sounds good,’
I text him back.

I’m going to be shooting up the school soon, and then I will be in prison for the rest of my life like Dad, what do I have to lose? Trenton thinks his plan is failsafe:
Kill the leader’s little sister, and take the throne.
Real original,
I think sarcastically. Except he didn’t count on Ashten telling anyone, or even on her discovering his plot to take over.

I can’t sleep. The cot is about as comfortable as a pebbled street in Rome, and my body is stiff. I wonder about Clad, Spencer, and Lydia. Think about Angel, and wish he was here to snuggle up with. I wonder if I will break Spencer’s heart when I go through with my Bullet List and end up in prison.
Hasn’t he suffered enough?

Be selfish, Bailey,
I say to myself. If I’m not then Miemah will never stop, not until I’m buried in the ground, or sunk in the bottom of a nearby canal with fish swimming in and out of my skull.

Then comes my concluding thought:
what will happen to my soul if I die, under the circumstance that Miemah kills me before I can kill her?
Will it float out of my body, like an angel, and soar up to heaven? Or will it stay trapped inside me, watching as my body turns to dust, my hair losing its sheen, and my lips shriveling up and turning white?

“What is heaven?” I asked my Sunday school teacher once. Even when I was a toddler, I had a strong fascination for life and death, and the journey your body takes when you have taken your last breath.