“That new girl isn’t yours,” Alexandra’s voice hisses in my ear. “She’s for us. You don’t touch her. Don’t make friends with her. Don’t talk shit about one single person.”
I nod, my chin pressing into her forearm. I can feel the point of the glass blade against my skin.
“That’s your one warning.” She flicks the blade and a sharp razorlike pain slashes across my nerves. I try to cry out, but the sound is nothing more than a froggy gasp. All at once her arm loosens, and in a split second she’s five, eight, ten feet away, walking easily down the hallway, her hands empty.
I pull in a deep breath, then touch my throat and look down at my fingers. They’re red and glossy, but not drenched. It’s a nick, that’s all. I tug the shoulder of my blouse higher to stanch the blood, then continue down the hall. Without remark the C.O. slides my wrists into the cuffs and locks me into my place along the chain, to return to D-Block in an organized fashion.
Penelope is still asleep when I step back through the bars. She’s on her stomach with her limbs spread out sloppily as a child’s, a spare blue prison shirt draped across her eyes to shade them and she is snoring faintly. I wad up some toilet paper and press it to my neck, at last allowing my breathing to go ragged and my heart to race wildly. I press my back against the wall and slide down to sit on the floor, where the cold concrete feels comforting and certain, the cinderblock wonderfully unyielding.
In spite of myself I’m skittish all through the Monday that follows—shooting glances over my shoulder in the chow hall, bristling when the air-conditioning comes on and flutters my uniform blouse. I know they’re watching me and I need to project a self-possessed confidence, but my nerves are on edge. When yard time comes around I claim to be ill, giving up the chance to cuddle with Clementine, and in the quiet cell I take out the latest letter from Emory Pugh—the one in which he, wounded, accuses me of neglecting him, even floating the idea that I’m using him, without quite coming out and saying it. From time to time he does this—he has for two years now—and it’s a game I’ll usually play, sending along reassurances and friendly observations about my cat and the weather here in California. But now, merely reading over his words makes my throat feel tight and stirs up something oddly akin to resentment. I don’t want to answer this letter. Emory Pugh is only the latest in a string of men stretching back more than two decades—men who want to be close to me, claim association with me, draw some sort of thrill from even my most indifferent attentions. Men who watched the news or saw the movie and believe they know me, or like the idea of the little blonde holding a gun in her shaking hands, or believe I imagine them as my white knights waiting for me on the outside. I’m tired of responding to their misspelled little efforts, their flaccid attempts at gallantry, all in return for the mild entertainment they bring me. I’m not going to do it anymore.
I crumple the letter and drop it into the trash, then take out my half-finished tactile drawing of Intérieur. For this final draft I managed to bring back a piece of the workshop’s thick white paper, luxuriously cottony and soft to the touch, by sliding it under my uniform shirt and wearing it against my torso. Of course I’ve known all along why I wanted to recreate this particular drawing, using my own hands and my own hard-won skills, and send it out into the world. The image, even half-finished, takes my mind back to those winnowing moments, the last hour before the police arrived.
It was the disagreement between Chris and Ricky that did them in. Ricky wanted to drive south to Mexico, Chris north to Oregon. Chris changed his mind after the crimes at the rectory and decided the shorter drive would be the only safe choice. As they bickered on their way back to the Cathouse to grab their things, at first I was in disbelief. I got in the shower, the way I always did after Clinton’s worst assaults, hoping the water would make me feel purified in the wake of all that filth and restore me to some sense of being human. That didn’t work, so I got high—very high, as fast as I could. And then I went upstairs to hide.
Ricky came in and closed the door behind him, pressing his back against it in a stab at privacy. There were no functioning locks in the Cathouse; we’d been walked in on more than once. I was sitting on the floor by the dresser, my back resting against the wall, listening to the melancholy strains of the music from a pop station filtering up from downstairs—the Phil Collins song that Forrest later professed to hating. The two cats who liked Ricky best, Brundibar and Mischa, had taken up residence on our bed in the corner, stretching out their languid limbs in the nest of our bedspread. “Pack what you need and let’s get on the road. Chris can go wherever he wants. We’re going to Mexico.”
“You go,” I said. “I’m not running. I’ll get in more trouble if I run.”
He cocked his head sharply and threw me an impatient expression. “You’re obviously high. Get up. Grab your stuff.” He reached to the floor and threw me the canvas tote I used to ferry things to and from my parents’ house, the one that said “Le Bag” on the side. It landed with a soft thump at the base of the chair, a few feet in front of me. “Come on.”
At the sudden sound Brundibar leaped up and darted across the floor, and I stopped him with one hand and lifted him as I stood, hiking him to my shoulder like a baby. He was a beautiful ash-colored tomcat, delicate in his bones, and he looked around with alert yellow eyes. I stroked him and clucked to him as if he was the one who needed comforting, settling into the chair that was turned at an awkward angle in the center of the room. Above the broken secondhand dresser hung an enormous piece of art Ricky had made—a maze done in India ink, filled with black-inked monsters and colorfully dressed, winsome-eyed children. The cool thing about the maze, he always pointed out to people, is that there’s no way out.
“Goddammit, Clara,” he said, his tone rough, and began shoving things into my bag himself. “Let’s go. We can’t stay here.”
“I’m not leaving my mother.”
“Your mother? What are you, seven years old?”
I snuggled Brundibar against my face and clicked my tongue at him. “Jesus Christ,” Ricky said. His voice had grown strident, and there was a growing note of panic to it. “Don’t make me leave without you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Clara.” He dropped the bag and came over to me, leaning down and planting his hands against my upper arms, but gently. His voice was calmer now, pleading a little. “Get in the car. All right? It’s just a drive. A road trip. We’ll go to Cancun, and it’ll be awesome. Remember when we drove to Spiral Jetty, huh? Remember how much fun that was?”
I started to cry anew, and he uttered a low grunt of frustration. “Fine,” he said. “I’m not leaving unless you do. We’ll both go to jail. Is that what you want?”
From the bottom of the stairs came Chris’s bellowing voice. “Dude, come on. We’re ready.”
He pressed his forehead against mine. “Please, Kira. Work with me.”
I buried my face in the cat’s fur, and Ricky pushed away from me with a defeated sigh. The bedroom door slammed, and I was alone. I was alone, and I stayed there, waiting. I didn’t leave until I heard the sirens drawing closer, and then I panicked and ran out into the hallway so they wouldn’t burst in and terrify me further.
I wanted the world to know that story. I wanted Annemarie to know it most of all. But now, having seen the heartbreak in her eyes at learning how she came to be, I don’t want to tell it that way anymore. She came to me searching for answers to the mystery of her origins, and I owe it to her to turn this tale of apocalypse into her creation myth.