Girl One(26)

An isolated attack. The words that had always comforted me as a child, back when a copycat attack felt inevitable. “But he was never caught,” I pushed. “We still don’t know who he even was.”

Bonnie stared fixedly across the room, lost in thought, at the shag carpet and flowery wallpaper, all turned gray with moonlight. She reached up and touched her face. I imagined the skin opening at her touch—the pinkish muscles, the gleaming, carefully bleached teeth shining through. “You know why I wear these stupid face masks? When I look in the mirror, and my scar’s hidden, I pretend he never hurt me.”

I stayed quiet.

“I was only a kid. I was walking home from a friend’s house. I can’t even remember her name now. My first normal friend, not just somebody wanting an autograph. It was a reward for behaving nicely at the reunion. My mom let me walk there and back all by myself. I felt so grown-up. It was only four houses down. On the way back, I could see my living room window all lit up. I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around because I thought it was my friend, running up to tell me how much fun she’d had. I was so fucking stupid.”

“You weren’t,” I said, but Bonnie didn’t even pause, just brushed this off.

“I was smiling, and I was still smiling when I saw the knife because I didn’t know what it was. There was this flash in his hand, like a match. He was wearing a hat or a hood or something, so I could see his nose, his jaw a little, but he just ran at me so fast, and I stepped out of the way, still smiling, too dumb to be scared … it didn’t even hurt at first.”

Something brushed my cheek and I yelped, heart hammering, fist-hard, inside my chest. Bonnie pulled her hand back. “Shit,” I said.

“He only stopped for a second.” Bonnie continued as if nothing had happened. “I started bleeding. My mother was screaming in the background—she’d come out onto the lawn, looking for me. That was when I understood that something was wrong. They say you can’t remember pain, but I remember that. Like my whole face was just going to fall off. I’d worn this dress with stripes and buttons, because it was something Shelley Hack would’ve worn on Charlie’s Angels, and it was just covered in blood.”

I’d experienced this story at roughly the same time, only on an alternate plane, at home in Illinois. For me, it had been secondhand. My mother and I, nervous that we’d be targeted next, had left home for a few days, lying low in a motel in Carbondale. I remembered the shivery dread of waiting for a knife blade against my skin. Wishing I had Bellanger there to protect me.

“The police showed up pretty quick and they searched for the guy,” Bonnie said. “Nothing, nada. No reports from the rest of the neighborhood. This is the only evidence he was ever there.” She made a circling gesture around her face.

“So he could still be out there,” I said. “He could have come after my mom.”

Bonnie laughed. “You’re such an asshole. That’s your takeaway? Really?” She flounced back against the pillows. “I was a baby. An easy target. Like shooting little baby fish in a tiny barrel.” She made a gun out of her fingers, pew-pew. “Setting fire to a house? Kidnapping a full-grown woman? That’s different.”

“There was a car,” I said, remembering. “When I went to my mother’s house. I saw a sedan hanging around. Maybe that was him. I should’ve written down the plates or something.”

“You’ll waste time if you get hung up on this.”

“It’s one of the only things I’ve got right now.” It was disconcertingly easy to imagine my mother catching the wrong person’s attention. A deranged loyalist of Ricky Peters spotting an easy excuse to hunt down Mother One.

“Seriously.” Bonnie grabbed my arm. “It’s not the same guy.”

“How do you know?” I didn’t hide my impatience.

Bonnie was on the verge of speaking. Then she smiled, an expression I couldn’t read, and rose from the bed. Under her T-shirt, her body was outlined perfectly, and I was struck by her: by the fact that she was an entire human being who existed when she shouldn’t have. Awareness of my own strangeness reverberated through my bones.

“You know, it gets old being the poster girl for shit situations.” Bonnie moved toward the door, languidly unsteady. “Whenever anything bad happens to any of you, you’re all coming to me like I’m the expert.”

“Wait.” I crawled to the end of the bed. “This has happened before? Who’s come to you for help?” I tried to remember if I’d heard anything about the other Homesteaders getting into trouble recently.

Bonnie paused near the door. Her face mask was so cracked that she was like an ancient statue of herself. She balanced one foot in the crook of the opposite knee.

“Who?” I pressed.

“The Bowers.” Bonnie unfolded her leg, stretched her body to one side in a broad arc. Her T-shirt rose over her hip. The Bowers: Tonya and Catherine. Mother Three. Girl Three. “It was a while back. They’d had some guy hanging around their house. Catherine called to ask me for details. Sort of the way you are now. I bet you and Catherine would like each other.”

The air-conditioning left my arms stippled with goose bumps. “And?”

“And—it was nothing. The Bowers are fine, as far as I know.” Bonnie sighed, softened. “I’ll give you their phone number so you can check for yourself.”