American Girls(51)

“What is so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“I need two minutes,” Roger said, and opened his backpack. He pulled out stacks of pictures from inside, eight-by-tens of women, most beautiful, all young. Some looked like high school pictures, others like head shots, others like amateur porn. He taped them to the walls rapidly and without any seeming order. “These women, he took pictures of them before killing them. I could find pictures of some of the women but not all. So some are now Manson girls. Some are from the magazines. I think it is better not to be too literal.”

“Is there a mirror here?”

“In the bathroom,” Roger said.

“I’m going to fix my face,” Delia said. “What’s left of it.”

About nine pictures from the end, Roger put a picture on the wall that I recognized. Olivia Taylor. It must have been from her early pop-star days. Her hair was still curly and she was blowing a kiss. Three pictures later came Susan Atkins. The music from above switched to a pounding bass, and I checked the door to make sure that it was locked.

“It is good, no?” Roger said, backing away.

I nodded. It was creepier than any slasher film, smile after smile of hopeful faces, faces beautiful enough to be easily loved, unloved enough to be easily fooled. For the first time in my life I was glad that I didn’t look like that, that I wasn’t the kind of pretty that turned a girl into prey.

“I can’t cover the splint,” Delia said, emerging from the bathroom. She had camouflaged the rest of the evidence of the mugging. Her face was heavily powdered and her eyes were wild. “Are these real?” She was pointing at the wall.

Roger had started to film her.

“I want you to look at the pictures.”

It was impossible to look at anything else. Delia ran her hand across one of the middle rows, and then went from face to face for a while, stopping on a girl who seemed quietly beautiful, straight brown hair parted down the middle, a crucifix around her neck. The girl could have been Delia’s younger, clean-scrubbed twin. Maybe she’d been glad to be approached by a handsome photographer. Who wouldn’t want to have her face on someone’s wall, right?

“This is f*cking depressing,” my sister raged, pulling the pictures off with both hands, crumpling them and then going back for more. “Fuck this wall and f*ck this film.”

Roger kept filming. He didn’t smile, but I could feel the charge in the air. He was getting exactly what he wanted.

“Is my picture in that bag?” she asked. “Do you have a picture like that of me?”

She went over to his bag and dumped the rest of the contents. An energy bar, his phone, what looked like a pair of shorts for working out, a condom. Nice.

“We’re done for today. Come on, Anna. My head is killing me. It feels like someone put an ice pick through my face. And I saw a liquor store across the street. Roger, you are buying me the strongest thing they have in that store. I am going to roofie myself, frat-party style, and then no one is allowed to touch me. Got it?”

“Of course,” he said.

Delia flopped back on the bed, closed her eyes, and rubbed the skin around her nose. I felt like telling her that she should be careful not to get bedbugs, but I didn’t want those to be my last words.

“We can go now.” He had packed his camera and opened the door for us.

“What time is it?”

“Four o’clock,” I said.

“Dex is coming at seven.”

“Dex,” Roger said.

“Yes, Dex,” I repeated. “D-E-X. It’s his name, not a curse word, okay?”

“I said nothing.” Roger wasn’t above being smug with me, no matter how much he’d take from Delia.

“If I’m sloshed, you explain, Anna.”

“Okay.”

But I couldn’t explain my sister, not to myself or anyone else. Dex had even texted me to make sure that she was okay. Then he called. I told him that her face was messed up and she didn’t want him to see her like that. He told me that was crazy, and I agreed, but the person whose opinion really mattered was having none of it.

We got back into the car and drove across the street to the liquor store. I waited in the car with Delia, who was moaning like an injured animal.

“Why did he throw those pills out the window? I’m going to die of pain. Die.”

She was talking with her mouth almost closed, because when she moved her lips it hurt more. Roger returned with a bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag, and passed me back a can of orange soda. Delia opened the bottle and drank straight from it, right there in the front seat of the car. A vagrant sitting outside the liquor store pointed at her through our window and gave two big thumbs-up. Delia didn’t stop drinking and gave him a thumbs-up with her free hand. It was like the opposite of how they tell you to live your life everywhere else on the planet.

“How much of this do you think I can drink without ending up back in the hospital?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d slow down.”

“Good idea,” Roger said. He looked nervous but weirdly happy. I think he liked my sister unchained. He probably had her face knocked in on purpose and now he was scared and lying, but loving it.

“Can we go somewhere besides this parking lot?”