Little shivers raced up and down my forearms.
Get the hell out.
I straightened up from my kneeling posture, examining the sand drawings. And then I was eye to eye with my whole reason for being out in Deane’s room: a stuffed cat.
Not any old stuffed cat. This was my lost kitten, Marmalade.
Not even for an instant did I believe she was still alive, that’s how poor the taxidermy job was. But it was definitely Marmalade. Stuffed in a sausagecasingesque way unlike any shape she had ever assumed in real life, she was positioned upright, her blue glass eyes wide, wider than ever a living creature, as if she could see things in a beyond-the-grave panorama that was beyond the limit of my imagination. A red and green Christmas bow was grisly around the stiff fur of her neck.
Oh, Marmalade! My first kitten, all my own. And I thought she’d run away.
This was adult anger, my first, and it ran hot and cold flashes the length of my spine. Fury. Hurt. Deane was a fiend, and not my sister. I despised my pity for her; I had come out here to help, but now I wanted to destroy.
That sweet kitty, her life wasted; I felt sick. There she sat in that nasty pack-rat den of cheap debris. I wanted to burn the whole thing down, preferably with Deane in it. But I wasn’t convinced that would hurt Deane as much as it would Stan and Linwood.
Revenge. How could I get revenge?
Well, it was weird. As if I were a Geiger counter, and the object uranium, I automatically walked into the bathroom, opened the cabinet beneath the sink, and rifled through a large box of Kotex. (I wasn’t exactly sure what they were, except that they somehow made the difference between being a kid and being taken seriously.) Anyway, my hand closed around something soft and slick. I pulled it out of the cardboard box.
I held a small, red leather book. It was bound by a tiny gold lock, which I immediately cracked with my teeth.
The first page was elaborately scrolled with Deane’s ornate penmanship. She wrote all three parts of her name, and her address, including the galaxy and the universe. Then there were a couple of pages of what looked like poems, in a language I didn’t understand. Deanish? Egyptian? The next page, though, was scary: a skull and crossbones, and the warning:
DANGER! TURN THE PAGE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
I turned the page.
FINAL WARNING! A CURSE ON THE PERSON WHO STEALS THIS BOOK, OR READS IT UNLAWFULLY.
Well, I went for broke. I turned the page.
ANCIENT MAGICK & SECRETS, THE UNKNOWN
This page was even more ornamental than the title page. I hesitated. What was I doing here, exactly?
I was stealing.
One of Deane’s curses was no laughing matter—like Stan’s arm when he tripped in the grove, for instance.
Nevertheless, I wanted to steal, to steal something important and valuable. The first step in revenge. And the moment that I decided to go ahead and take it, I heard the outside door open.
“Freeze, you little bitch!” The voice was rough and male.
I froze, but was this unknown person talking to me? Automatically, the book dropped from my hands and back into the Kotex box.
“Get the fuck out here!”
I did that too, rounded the doorway to see two big men dressed in jeans and black leather jackets, with handkerchiefs over their faces, cowboy style. One looked Mexican and had dark greasy hair, and the other had a ducktail bob suspiciously like that of Tommy, Deane’s old boyfriend from over the hill.
“It’s the bitch’s sister,” the one who seemed to be Tommy explained to the Mexican.
The other guy grunted.
“What are you doing out here?” Tommy asked.
Not really scared yet, I only shrugged. The whole thing was rolling along without me, like some kind of James Cagney movie. Or, to be honest, what I imagined was a James Cagney movie—I knew who he was only because I’d seen him “impersonated” so frequently on cartoons. Him and Cab Calloway. I’d had to ask Linwood who all those mice and ducks were pretending to be.
“I said, what the fuck are you doing out here?”
“I’m only…” And then I felt the warm trickle down my leg. I was mortified.
“She peed her pants,” said Tommy.
“Puta estúpida,” said the Mexican. “Where’s your sister?”
“Not here,” I managed to squeak out, sounding like those cartoon mice.
Tommy sat heavily on the bed. There were stockings and underwear and shoes and stuff all over it.
He pulled a large, black gun out of his jacket.
“Unless you want this stuffed up your little twat, I suggest you tell me where your sister is.”
The wet legs of my PJs were cold and sticky. I didn’t know what a “twat” was, I was scared to death, but I was still able to figure out that these guys had better not find out that Deane was with the police. Better for me.
“She ran away,” I began.
“Yeah, yeah,” the Mexican said, lighting a cigarette.
“And the policeman came to the house today”—Always tell as much of the truth as possible when you lie, June had once instructed me, unlike Xtbay—“to tell us that they still couldn’t find her.”
Tommy and the Mexican exhaled simultaneously.
“Let’s beat it,” the Mexican said. He crushed out his cigarette on the carpet.
Tommy stood and nodded. “What if she’s lying?”
“Let’s go, man.” He went on out.
Tommy stood looking at me. Before I knew what he was doing, he yanked down my pants. “Little cunt,” he said. “You bitches are all alike.” He put his hand between the Y of my legs and I felt the worst pain in the world.
“Don’t!” I screamed. My legs felt like they were being ripped apart. I had to pee again.
He showed me his hand, covered with blood. “If you tell anyone you saw us,” he said, “I’ll come and get you, wherever you go. You think that hurt? If you lied to me, you don’t know what pain is.”
“Come on, man!” the Mexican hissed from the doorway.
Tommy ran out. Then he reappeared in the doorway. “You remember,” he said.
He was gone.
I pulled up my pants, curled into a ball, and things kind of stopped.
Chapter Two
A week or so after The Bad Thing, I came home from school and found Linwood standing in the kitchen, arms crossed over her chest. Her presence was unusual; with low thyroid, she always took a prolonged afternoon nap. That half-hour I had to myself in the house, before June got off, was a luxury.
“Pack your suitcase,” she said.
My heart sank, but it was inevitable they would find out what I had done. Guilt, horror, pain: everything bubbled up in a terrible soup. My glass of milk remained untouched on the yellow tile counter.
“We’re going on a trip as soon as your father gets home.” Absently, Linwood took a sip of my milk.
The convent. They were going to commit me to Deane’s grisly Catholic school. Two big tears like worms rolled out of my eyes. But this was just, it was what I deserved.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” Linwood put down the glass and walked over to hug me.
Her skin was soft and warm. She smelled like flowers and ironed cotton.
“Deane’s in lots of trouble. We’ve been getting phone calls from some of her, uh, friends. We’re not safe here.”
Tommy, I thought, my legs throbbing. But my fear was overwhelmed by my relief—they didn’t know. Reprieve was a feather bed to sink into.
“I know you’re worried about school,” Linwood continued.
Who cared? It was so hard to pay attention lately anyway.