17
MR. ERNST CHATTERED AWAY UNTIL HE pulled into a parking spot at the rest stop, if you could even call it that. The squat building was tucked off to the side of the road, almost completely obscured by a tangle of weeds that clung to the faded, rust-stained walls. There was a small unpaved clearing around it. And no other cars or trucks.
Mr. Ernst turned off the truck and pocketed the keys. “I’m gonna go take a leak myself,” he said. “You coming?” he asked Jamie.
Jamie raised an eyebrow at Stella. “Yeah . . . ” He didn’t want to go alone, and he didn’t want Stella to have to either.
Mr. Ernst winked at me. “Don’t get into any trouble now,” he said, then walked off toward the building.
Stella and Jamie hopped out of the cab, Stella nearly running. She must’ve really had to go. I felt bad for Jamie, trailing behind, so I jumped out of the truck too. As I approached the building, the unmistakable smell of raw sewage assaulted my nostrils. Stella had already gone inside, but I caught up with Jamie quickly, and we stood there just staring at it. A thick layer of grime covered the once blue stenciled sign for the ladies’ room, and flies choked the entrance. Jamie swatted the air in front of his face. The men’s room was on the other side of the building.
“Tough break,” Jamie said to me.
“What?”
“Not having a penis.”
“God, I know.”
“We’re stalling.”
“We are.”
“I don’t know, Mara. I’m not sure I can do it. I don’t want to walk in there and see our not so illustrious truck driver at the urinal. It could get weird. I think I’m just going to go in the bushes.”
“I feel like I’m going to catch hepatitis just standing here.”
“If you want to go in the bushes or something, I can watch to make sure no one’s coming?”
I rubbed my nose. “I’m going to go in, I think. For Stella. Solidarity, you know?”
“You’re a better man than I.” Jamie held his fist out. I bumped it. His footsteps crunched on the gravel and then faded as he walked off into the bushes.
I took a few seconds to psych myself up, then held my nose and kicked the door open.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d been expecting. It was worse. There were a few stalls. One of them was open, and the toilet was so backed up that it was all I could do not to gag. The mirror behind the sink was cracked and dingy. The tile floor that had probably once been white was stained in shades of brown and yellow.
No. There was no way.
I turned to leave, but as I did, I heard a noise behind me.
Stella was pressed against the wall, her body almost completely obscured by Mr. Ernst, who was covering her mouth with one hand. He saw me see him, and pointed his gun at me.
“Go on back now,” he said. “Or you’re next.”
My veins filled with lead. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was already imagining Mr. Ernst dead on the floor, his throat ripped open, his mouth a bloody hole.
“He’s done this before,” Stella whimpered when he uncovered her mouth. “He’s going to kill us.” The words barely escaped from her mouth. She could hear what he was thinking.
He shook his head. “Not the colored boy. Not my type.”
Part of me was still standing there, rooted to the spot. The other part was tearing out his throat. But only in my mind. In reality nothing was happening. In the seconds that followed I imagined a hundred different ways for him to die. None of them worked.
What was wrong with me? It had been a long time since the drugs had worn off. Why couldn’t I do it?
And what would happen to me and Stella if I couldn’t?
“Let her go,” I said with frightening calm. I don’t know where it came from.
“If you don’t go, I’ll shoot the both of you right this minute.”
I took a step closer. “You’re making me jealous,” I said in that same chilly voice that was and was not my own.
“Back up.”
I didn’t. I stepped closer. “This whole time I thought you were coming on to me. That’s why I chose to sit in front.”
He looked me up and down. “You’ll get your turn.”
“Me first,” I said. “She can’t do the things I can.”
Those were the first words I said to him that seemed to sink in. He looked back and forth between me and Stella, then finally stepped away from her. He trained his gun on me.
“You,” he said to Stella. “You stand there and watch.”
Stella scooted down the wall till she was backed up against the sink. My feet carried me toward Mr. Ernst without me even having to tell them to.
“Don’t scream,” Mr. Ernst said. He pressed his gun into my side, spun me around, and pushed me against the wall, pinning my hands behind me in one well-practiced move. His cowboy hat fell to the ground.
I expected my heart to race, my skin to sweat. I expected to cry and scream.
I didn’t.
“Don’t touch me,” I said instead.
He laughed. It was a little boy’s laugh, a giggle really. “Don’t touch you? If you didn’t want to be touched, you wouldn’t be wearing those shorts! Why, they’re an invitation! You’re advertising. Open for business.”
He did something lewd with his tongue. I imagined cutting it off.
“Take them off,” he said, nodding at my stupid boxers.
“I can’t,” I said plainly. “Not without my hands.” I wriggled my arm behind me. I reached my hand into the waistband of the boxers and felt the scalpel, warm from my skin. My shoulder ached, wrenched behind my back and forced into the wall by the pressure of Mr. Ernst’s body. His breath roared in my ears, rotten tobacco mingling with the stench of human waste.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ernst appeared to be having trouble with his pants. I wriggled my arm behind my back, which unfortunately arched my body toward his. He took it as encouragement.
“I knew you wanted it,” he whispered into my ear. Then he licked my cheek.
“The tongue definitely has to go,” someone said in my voice.
I looked up into the cracked mirror behind him and Stella. My reflection stared back. She shook her head in disgust. Neither Stella nor Mr. Ernst seemed to notice.
A small shift in movement, and the scalpel was in my hand. I tucked it against my forearm, holding it tightly against my skin. It was sharp enough to cut me.
I swallowed, then said, “I need my hands. I can’t do anything without my hands.”
He adjusted his gun, poking it under my ribs, then nodded once quickly.
I brought my hands in front of me, tugging the waistband of the WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE boxers down with my thumbs. Mr. Ernst was watching, but not closely enough. Stella had fled. And before he could even register the movement, I stabbed him in the eye. He screamed until I cut his throat.
I took his keys and his gun when I was finished. Before I left, I glanced up at my reflection in the dark, cracked mirror. The asinine WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE T-shirt was streaked and soaked with Mr. Ernst’s blood, and so was my skin. It was under my fingernails, in my hair. It freckled my face.
I stared at my reflection, waiting for a rush of disgust or terror or regret—something. But it never came.
18
I KNEW WHAT I LOOKED like as I walked calmly back to the truck. Jamie and Stella were already on their way back to find me.
“Fuck,” Jamie said when he saw me. That about covered it.
“I’m okay. Get into the truck.”
“Is he . . .”
Yes. Yes, he is.
“I have the keys,” I said. “We need to go.”
Stella reached out her hand. It was shaking. “Keys?” she asked as Jamie pulled me up into the cab. I reached into my pocket and tossed them at her.
“What—what happened?” Jamie asked.
I looked out the window, catching my reflection in the side-view mirror. She shrugged. “He made a mistake,” I said quietly. I
began to notice the blood drying on my skin. I felt sticky. Dirty. I pulled my hair back into a knot. It was clotted with blood.
“Mr. Ernst?” Jamie asked. “Did he touch you?”
“He tried,” I said under my breath.
“Mara.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m okay.” It was true enough. I wasn’t hurt. “He thought I was someone else.”
Jamie’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “Who?”
“Someone who wouldn’t fight back. Listen, we need to go.” I withdrew Mr. Ernst’s gun from the back of my boxers and shoved it into the glove compartment. Jamie’s mouth hung open, disbelieving.
“Did you shoot him?” Stella was looking at the floor of the cab. Her voice sounded hollow, like she wasn’t really there.
I shook my head. “He had the gun. He was pointing it at me. I cut him while he was trying to . . . undress.”
“I should have stayed with you guys,” Jamie said. “Fuck. Fuck.”
Stella’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Her face was pale and bloodless. “Mara helped me,” she said, as if to herself. “And then she had to help herself. It was self-defense.” She began to nod. “I saw it, most of it, before I ran to get you, Jamie. So we can call the police and tell them—”
“We can’t call the police,” Jamie said. His voice was muffled. He had put his head between his knees. “You know we can’t.”
Stella closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. “Right. Right. Okay, so, Mara wouldn’t have done anything unless she had to—and she had to.”
I had to.
“But now we have a problem.” She looked at my hands. “His DNA is under your fingernails. Yours is probably all over his body. This isn’t like Horizons. We have his truck. If we leave it here, we’re stranded. If we take it, we’ll be easy to track.”
“It can be tracked anyway, even if we leave it. But Mara’s right, we can’t stay here,” Jamie said. “I vote for ditching the truck somewhere unobvious and then we’ll figure the rest of this shit out.”
“We’ll burn the clothes or something,” Stella said, looking at my T-shirt. “Clean you up. It’ll be all right.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince me.
“Then the only way out is through,” Jamie said, and Stella started the truck.
19
THIS IS LIKE THE PERFECT storm of bad decisions,” Jamie said as the three of us approached a bed-and-breakfast in Key Largo. It was dark out. We’d ditched the truck about seven miles before; minutes later, it had begun to rain. Not enough to wash the blood out of my T-shirt or off my skin, but more than enough to make the miserable seven-mile walk even more miserable. Stella scratched at a thousand mosquito bites, and Jamie muttered about Lembas the whole way.
“Fine. Let’s get this shit show on the road,” he said as we stood in front of a well-lit, charming old green Victorian with yellow plantation shutters and scalloped trim. The shingles were weather-beaten and worn, and creepers snaked up the siding from the ground to the windows. “Mara, you should probably stay outside while I—”
“What?” I looked up. I’d been picking at a flake of dried blood between my thumb and forefinger, not paying attention.
“You’re not exactly inconspicuous,” he said. “And I’ve never tried to Jedi mind-fuck anyone like this before.” His voice wavered a little.
I arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean ‘mind-trick’?”
“Not when I do it,” he said.
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just ask for three rooms.”
But I’d never seen him so nervous. He ended up taking my hand and walking in with me, filthy and bloody though I was. Our clothes dripped water on the maroon runner that led up to the front desk. The wood had been painted a dark hunter green, and the desk itself looked like it was covered in a giant doily. A fan lazily spun above our heads, and the breeze made me shiver.
No one was actually at the desk, of course. There was a little silver bell, like an actual bell, with a card that said Ring for Service in calligraphy.
“Well?” Stella looked at Jamie.
Jamie fidgeted. “I’m not sure I can—”
“You can,” I said gently.
“No, but if I can’t, though . . . I mean, if I screw up, what if she calls the police?”
“Then you’d better not screw up.” I smiled.
“Don’t be such a dick,” Jamie said, but he was smiling too. Then he rang the bell. He looked ready to bolt at any second.
“Just a moment!” The three of us heard shuffling, and then a pair of doors swung open. A bespectacled elderly woman appeared, beaming at us. Well, not all of us.
“Oh my,” she said as she got a good look at me. “Oh, sweetheart, are you all right?”
I mustered up my most winning smile. It did not have the desired effect.
“Um, we’d like to book a room,” Jamie said quickly as the woman held her hand to her chest. Stella nudged him. “Two rooms. Three rooms,” he amended.
“Dear, what happened to you?” she asked me. “Do you need a doctor?”
“Um, no—We were just—Jamie,” I said through gritted teeth, still smiling awkwardly. “Do something.”
I could see the woman’s confusion turn to nervousness and then to fear as she looked from me to the others. “Three rooms, you say?” Her voice wobbled slightly. “You know, I think I have just the ones for you. I’ll just run and do a quick check and make sure they’re ready. It’s been a while since we’ve had anyone up in the suites. Won’t be but a minute.”
“There’s no need to check,” Jamie said suddenly. His voice wasn’t loud, but it still felt like it was the only sound in the room. “The suites will be perfect. What floor are they on?”
“Third,” the woman said, blinking at him. “Third floor, rooms 311, 312 and 313.”
“Those will be perfect.”
The woman nodded, looking a bit dazed. “Yes. Perfect. I’ll just need your names?” She took out a guest book and a pen, and looked at Jamie expectantly.
Something came over Jamie then. He lifted his chin as he said, “Barney.” I cocked my head to the side. “Rubble.”
Stella put her head in her hands.
“And this,” he said, a smile spreading across his lips as he sidled up to Stella, “is Betty.” He put his hand on her shoulder. She smiled weakly. “And this is our daughter.” Jamie placed a hand on my head. “Bamm-Bamm.” I stepped on his foot.
“Ow,” he said through a clenched smile.
The woman clapped her hands together, clearly pleased. “What a lovely family you have, Mr. Rubble.” Her green eyes twinkled as she wrote our names in the guest book. “I’ll just need a credit card and one form of ID?” she asked Jamie.
“We already gave it to you,” Jamie replied.
“Oh yes!” she said, shaking her head. “You already gave it to me. Of course you did. Forgive me. The old brain’s not what it used to be. And how long is it that you’ll be staying?”
Jamie looked at me. I shrugged.
“Indefinitely,” he said, flashing a dazzling smile at her.
The woman handed him three keys. He handed one to Stella, one to me, and pocketed the last for himself.
“One last thing, Mrs.—”
“Beaufain,” the woman answered.
“Mrs. Beaufain, are there any security cameras on the premises?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said. “We had some once, right by the entrance, but they broke, and my son’s not out here often enough to help me fix them, so I just let it go already. Life’s too short.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Jamie said, and thanked her.
Stella and I began to head up the stairs. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Jamie said, looking shaky and gray.
“You okay?”
“I’m—I don’t know. Mrs. Beaufain, is there a bathroom down—downstairs?”
She shook her head. “Just in the rooms, Mr. Rubble.” I
t was a testament to Jamie’s amazingness that she said it with a straight face.
Jamie nodded and turned on his heel. We watched him push open the glass door and heave into a hedge out front.
“Ugh,” Stella said. “You think he’s okay?”
“Should we wait for him?” I asked. As the words left my mouth, I felt a prickle of awareness, like I was being watched. I glanced at Stella.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” I peered behind us. My skin was still crawling; it felt tight, stretched over my bones. Even when Jamie appeared, looking normal and healthy under the circumstances, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was deeply wrong.
“You look weird,” Jamie said, as we headed up the stairs. “You okay?”
I shook my head but said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.
We unlocked the doors to our rooms, but congregated in one for a powwow about what just happened. Jamie and Stella did most of the talking. My tongue felt thick in my head even as my thoughts raced. I couldn’t focus on what had happened—I was thinking about what would have to happen next.
I crossed the room and looked at Noah’s bag. My fingers unzipped it before I realized what they were doing. And then my hands settled on something familiar. The textured cover, the spiral binding—I pulled out my sketchbook. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.
I heard Jamie say my name, but I ignored him as I opened it. My heart turned over when I saw the pictures of Noah that I’d drawn at Croyden. In every stroke of the pencil, every smudge of charcoal, there was a sense of cautious happiness, of restrained excitement. It felt like someone else had drawn those pictures. It felt like another life.
I moved through them quickly without knowing why, but then, when I turned the next page, I stopped.
I was staring at a picture drawn in negative space. The entire page was black, except for the figure at the center of it. It was unmistakably Noah, etched out in white; his messy hair, his sleeping face. His eyelids were closed, and I thought I’d drawn him sleeping until I looked at his chest.