“Hey, Ray,” one of his friends says, pointing two fingers at me like pistols. “Virgin.”
His eyes do their pass again as he says, “Nice.”
I don’t like his friends, but I’m still more than a little captivated by the image of Ray Parsons, a guy who never glanced at me three years ago, now unable to look away. I lean against him as I drink, not caring that the present version of Ray has slightly greasy hair and an obvious drug problem. I’ll make him take a bath. Clean him up in all the ways and finally get the prize I wanted as a freshman.
“I always thought you were cute,” I try to say, but my words are tripping over one another, endings running into beginnings and middles being left out completely. My knees give out but I don’t go down. Ray’s got me pressed against him so that I don’t fall, his blue eyes no longer on me but scanning the crowd as he edges us into the shadows.
A hand is on my spine, pushing down into my pants and past my panties, fingers twisting in search. I know it’s not Ray because he’s practically carrying me now. There’s a voice in my ear that says, “Come on, Preacher’s Kid. We’ll take you to church for real.”
They’ve almost got me out into the darkness, and a nearby fire pops, bringing a brief flash of light as my eyes slide shut. I see a cartilage stud in Ray’s ear as my head falls forward onto his shoulder.
And then I’m gone.
23. JACK
I’m going to catch hell from Park, but I haven’t been able to stay away from Alex all night. He’s doing what he does best, playing the room, making every girl there feel like she’s the one he’s thinking about even if he is talking to somebody else. But I can’t even pretend. Yeah, I still notice stuff. I’ve always thought of Peekay as someone I could borrow decent class notes from, but tonight she’s sporting a pair she might’ve bought from Victoria’s Secret but she’s wearing them like they grew on her. So it’s not like I’ve gone blind or anything.
I just don’t care.
I don’t care about any of the other girls because Alex accepts a beer from me, even if she doesn’t drink it. I don’t care because when I take her hand she lets me, and we’re sitting next to each other on the rubble pile. I’d rather be there than on a pew with Branley, or in a sleeping bag with anyone else.
I’m halfway toward being drunk and swimming in her when I go to get Peekay another beer, partially to be a gentleman, but also because Branley has taken it upon herself to transfer all her body heat to Adam (even though she can’t be retaining much—put on some clothes, Branley, it’s November) and I know that can’t be easy for Peekay.
Branley looks perfect, as usual. I’ve never seen the shirt she’s wearing so it’s probably new, and I doubt it’s got two tiny holes in it like all mine do because I buy everything at the thrift store where they staple the price tags on. Her family can afford real new clothes, not new to me but it belonged to someone else two weeks ago.
I pull two beers from my cooler and am headed back from the altar when Branley snags me, her fingernails digging past T-shirt and down into skin.
“Shit, Bran,” I say, stumbling back. I bump the altar but it doesn’t even shiver. Dad says that thing is the most solid-built piece of furniture in the whole county, which is a good thing because I bet more than a few of us here tonight were conceived on it.
“Seriously?” Branley is up in my face, my spine braced against solid oak. “Seriously?”
“Going to need more to go on than that,” I tell her, but I’m not stupid.
“Alex Craft?” she says, practically spitting the name. “I thought maybe it was that Alex cheerleader from Twin Rivers, or, God . . . maybe even a dude, but Alex Craft? Seriously?”
“So, it’s more realistic to you that I would want to bang a guy than her?” I say, trying to make it sound like a joke. Trying to ignore the burst of anger in my gut. I don’t like the way Alex’s name sounds in Branley’s mouth, like a poison.
I try to shove past her, but her claws are in me and I’m not going anywhere until she’s finished. “It doesn’t make sense,” Branley insists. “I mean, look at her.”
And I do. She’s so normal, perched on the crumbled pile of stone. Not like a girl in a magazine, or even Branley, so impossibly gorgeous she would never, ever be crawling around in rubble. Alex has a smudge of dirt across her cheekbone that only accentuates the paleness of the skin under her freckles. She’s picking at the label on her empty beer bottle, and I love the fact that she couldn’t give less of a shit about her fingernails.
“I am looking at her, Branley,” I say. “I can’t not look at her.”
“Whatever,” she mutters, releasing me in a huff. I leave her behind me without a second thought, perfectly aware that any number of guys there will be happy to reinflate her ego.
“Jaaaaaaackkkk.” My name stretched into as many syllables as possible. Park is done making his rounds, so happy to see me it’s like he forgot we were just talking twenty minutes ago.
He sails toward me, arms spread wide, when he sees Alex and hits the brakes so hard that shards of glass spit out from under his shoes. His face goes blank and for the first time in my life I’m seeing Park at a loss for words.
“Hello,” Alex says.
His grin is plastered back on. “Hello,” he says, his tone almost mocking her but not quite. He bows low. “Please do not crush my balls, madam.”
“Don’t touch me without my permission and I won’t.”
“Okay, cool.” He joins us on the pile, taking the spot Peekay vacated a few minutes ago. His eyes move in between the two of us. “So is this, like, going to be a thing now?”
“Yes,” I say.
“In that case, you need to be my friend,” he says to Alex. “Jack and I are a package deal so you’re my friend now. Okay?”
Alex looks him up and down, taking her time before she answers. “Yes.”
“Sweet.” He holds out his fist for a bump. “No hard feelings?”
“Is that even possible?” she asks, her mouth going up in a teasing smile I haven’t seen before, her gaze directed at his crotch.
Park howls with laughter, clapping a hand down on Alex’s shoulder to keep from rolling off the rocks. “It took a while, if you really want to know. I was out of commission. And there was much weeping. All the girls you see here were devastated. Back in business now, though,” he adds, tipping her a wink as he finishes off a beer.
He suddenly seems to realize he has his hand on her and he lets go quickly. “Sorry,” he says. “And sorry about those asshole tweakers saying Com . . . you know, saying his name like it was no big deal. A joke or something.”
She nods, accepting the apology. “His name means nothing to me.”
“Really?” Branley’s friend Lila pokes her head out from her sleeping bag, her short blond hair sticking out in spikes. “Because I couldn’t even handle that.”
Alex shrugs, a slow rolling movement like a cat unfurling in the sun. “It means nothing to me because it’s already been handled.”
Lila nods, the words resonating with her.
“I heard his face was beaten in so bad they found teeth down his throat,” a freshman pipes up, his eyes bright with drink.
“No, man,” a buddy corrects him. “He chewed off his own lips ’cause he was left there to starve. Needed teeth for that.”
“That’s all bullshit,” someone else says. “It was a clean execution. Head shot.”
I feel Alex’s hand tense in mine as they keep going, a demented Greek chorus rising up from the fires around us, echoing bits of urban legend that have grown and coalesced, spawning off each other in a town that has so little ugliness to celebrate that the story can’t possibly be dark enough to penetrate the truth.
“None of those things are true,” Alex says calmly, her words stopping the spray of myth around us. Everyone looks to her, myself included, our faces like little children around the campfire, ready for our story.
“He was drunk,” she says slowly. “Incapaci
tated by a blow to the head.” Her words, always careful, come even more cautiously than usual.
“I heard it was his own baseball bat, that he used it to prop the screen door and whoever did it hit him upside the head with it,” the freshman says before his buddy smacks him into silence.
“That’s possible,” Alex acknowledges, and he smacks his friend back. “They put him in one of his own kitchen chairs and bent him forward, chest resting on his own lap. There were a hammer and nails lying out because he was working on the porch railing. They wrapped his arms under his chair and drove nails through the palms, up through the seat to hold him in place.”
“Then what?” Lila asks.
“Then he woke up, I imagine,” Alex says, and the boys start laughing until Lila kicks at them from under her sleeping bag.
“I mean what killed him, then?” she asks. “You said he wasn’t left to starve and you don’t die from being nailed into a chair, no matter how bad it hurts.”
Alex watches everyone carefully and I squeeze her hand. “You really want to know?” she asks.
“Yes,” everyone says in unison, Alex’s story the first sermon this place has heard in a long time.
“He was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver, puncturing one of his lungs.”
“Holy shit,” Park says.
“I heard there were two chairs,” the freshman adds. “Like someone sat across from him. They sat there and watched him die.”
“That is actually true,” Alex says.
“Fuck him, anyway,” Lila says. “He deserved it.”
“That’s why nobody tried too hard to find out who killed him,” the freshman says, eager to contribute. “Everybody knew it was Comstock who killed that girl; they just couldn’t prove it ’cause the animals got to her and all the evidence was contaminated.”
He says contaminated very carefully, drunk tongue enunciating syllables, then plows on. “My mom went to school with Comstock, said he was a nasty son of a bitch. She said he dated this one girl for a while but she broke up with him real fast, said he got off on hurting her, you know? Mom wasn’t surprised at all when they questioned him after that girl turned up dead. Had him up at the station for hours, asked him all kinds of stuff but couldn’t hold him because they didn’t have any proof.”
Lila sits up in her sleeping bag and pounds her fist onto his foot. “Would you shut up?”
“What?” He looks around, eyes wide until his friend whispers into his ear, probably explaining that girl who turned up dead was Alex’s sister.
“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Lila says to Alex.
“I don’t mind. But there is something I have to take care of, if you’ll excuse me,” Alex says politely, and hurls her beer bottle against the far wall. Glass sprays in a shower above the heads of the tweakers, who look like they’re finally leaving. They duck instinctively, and Peekay slides to the ground between them, hair spilling out in a fan around her as she hits the stone floor.
“Oh, hell no,” Adam says as he stands up from the pew, dumping Branley off his lap.
Alex beats him there, Park and me half a second behind, her sober strides cutting a straight path to where Peekay lies. “What are you doing?” she asks, each word heavy and cold.
“You throw a fucking bottle at me?” the guy with the chain asks.
“What are you doing?” Alex asks again, this time spacing each word out, as if to give him the benefit of not understanding her the first time.
“Just having some fun,” he says. “You got a problem with it?”
People are up now, shadows thrown from fires reaching long as they gather to see what’s going on. Sleeping bags unzip, and couples with messy hair emerge.
“Yes,” Alex answers.
“Really, Adam? Just throw me on the ground, that’s fine, that’s awesome,” Branley complains, forcing her way through the crowd until she sees Peekay. “What the hell?”
“She’s just drunk,” one of the other tweakers says, the lilt of panic in his voice giving away the lie. “She asked us to take her home.”
“Oh yeah, where’s she live?” Park asks.
“She’s not drunk,” Branley says, suddenly on her knees, cradling Peekay’s head in her lap. “She’s totally out. Dead weight.” She holds one of Peekay’s hands in the air and it drops to the ground heavily. “She was walking around a few minutes ago.”
Branley looks up at them, her face set in a fierceness I remember from the night she went ballistic on me. Branley is about to blow.
“You roofied her,” she says.
“I’d like your mouth better with my dick in it, bitch,” the blond says, and I go for him, but Alex’s arm is across my chest.
“No, Jack.” She presses me back, pushing me a couple of inches behind her. She looks the guy up and down for a second. “What is your name?”
“What’s it matter?”
“It’s Ray Parsons,” somebody yells from the back.
“Ray Parsons,” Alex repeats, and Park shoots me a questioning glance, like he doesn’t know if we should take care of this shit now or let Alex do her thing.
But she’s shifting her weight, so subtly I doubt anyone else sees her moving. She’s back on her heels, torso turned to the side, her hands (long unclenched from mine) open and palms up. Alex is ready to fight, and she looks like she knows what she’s doing. I remember Park crumpled on the hallway floor in two seconds flat and I shake my head at him. Right or wrong, I think she’s got this.
“Yeah, I’m Ray Parsons,” the blond says. “And you’re a fucking bitch who should mind her own business.”
“By which you mean I should let you rape my friend,” Alex says.
All around us people flinch at the word rape, and it’s so ridiculous I almost start laughing. Peekay is unconscious, her body flowing like water through Branley’s arms as she tries to get her into an upright position. Her shirt is torn open so far I can see her bra. Her jeans are unbuttoned, already pushed a few inches below her underwear. Yet the word rape still jolts people, like maybe these guys were just dragging her out to the woods to help Peekay take a piss.
“By which I mean,” Ray mimics Alex’s words, his temper punching through, “that I think you need to shut the fu—”
Alex’s hand shoots out, her finger resting lightly on his lips. “Shhh,” she says, almost whispering. “It’s my turn now.
“Ray Parsons, you have no soul,” she says, her voice gaining volume as she speaks. “You are a bag of skin. You are a pile of bones. Every cell that has ever split inside of you was a waste of energy. Where you walk you leave a vacuum. Your existence should cease.”
Ray’s mouth hangs open as he formulates a response, the church quieter now than it has ever been, even in prayer. One of his friends finds his voice first, saying exactly the wrong thing.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Alex hooks one of his feet with her ankle, spinning his back to her and punching him right above the ass with enough force that I hear a crack. He moans, a soft, defeated sound, and slumps forward, one hand on Ray’s knee. I picture the bruise that will be left behind, a pattern of broken blood vessels tracing the path of pain that just streaked through his body.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ray demands as he reaches for his friend.
Alex smiles. “Whatever I want. Just like you.”
Her hand flashes out, a pale arc that connects only briefly with Ray’s face. There’s a ripping sound, like denim giving out at the seams, except it’s his cartilage letting go as she swipes his chain off, bringing a chunk of nose and his earlobe with it. It dangles in Alex’s hand, fleshy weights on either end as Ray falls to the floor shrieking.
The third guy backpedals with his hands in front of him even though Alex isn’t advancing. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks over and over. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Alex fades away from my side, no longer interested in the tweakers. She’s on the ground
with Branley, the two of them propping up Peekay to get her to her feet.
“You need to get them out of here,” Park says to the only guy left standing. “Don’t any of you come back, either. If Jack and I ever find you here again . . .” He trails off, any threat he could deliver paling in comparison to what Alex did to them.
But the guy nods, eager to agree. “Okay, okay, man.” He hauls Ray to his feet, who’s still making noises like a deer that’s been hit by a car and hasn’t had the luck to bleed out yet.
“Dude,” Park says to me, “your girlfriend is, like . . . fucking scary. But also totally awesome. Is it okay if I’m half in love with her right now?”
“Yeah, man. It’s cool,” I say, my eyes still riveted on three dark drops of blood against the stone floor.
Because I feel exactly the same way. On all counts.
24. ALEX
What is wrong with you?
I know this game, have played it often. It’s a question asked many times, always in Mom’s voice, following my vocalization of something I’m not supposed to say. When I was younger, Anna would turn it into a joke, our version of family prayer at dinnertime, when something I’d said or done came to light over the potatoes and corn.
Like the time I punched Phil Morris at a basketball game after he snapped Anna’s bra. Her cheeks had been red with humiliation, the straps still new to her body and the burn of vengeance something she’d never owned. My hands were small, sticky with the remains of a sucker. When I hit him in the gut, it knocked his breath out and left a child-size fist-print on his T-shirt, neon blue with chemical flavoring.
Usually Anna’s comebacks to Mom’s favorite question were silly, designed to make me laugh. “Let’s see . . . what is wrong with you, Alex? Do you have smallpox? Are you allergic to wheat? Are your legs broken? No? Hmm . . . I guess there’s nothing wrong with you,” she’d finish pointedly.
But when Phil’s mom called, there had been no jokes, no diversions. Anna had set her fork down after Mom’s diatribe, which ended with her favorite question. “She’s defending her sister,” she said. “And there’s nothing wrong with that.”