Nice Girls(88)

The basement went dark, except for a little square of light from the bedroom above. The floorboards barely creaked under his weight. At the top of the stairs, he stopped. Slowly, he looked back in my direction.

Then he disappeared.

When he closed the hatch, I was alone in the dark.





43




I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed anymore—it was all the same darkness. I could only hear my heartbeat in my chest, the panic swelling in my ears.

I was trapped where John Stack had murdered Olivia and DeMaria. This was the place where he had brought them, then butchered them. I didn’t know what else he had done to them in the meantime.

But he would do the same to me. Once John Stack came back downstairs, it was all over.

My breath rattled. Tears leaked out of my eyes. Snot dripped down my nose, soaking the fabric in my mouth. My body was shivering—whether because of the cold or the panic, I didn’t know. I closed my eyes, sinking into the dread that rushed through me. I heaved over from my side onto my stomach. My face was smashed against the plastic tarp. My tied wrists were raised behind my back.

I tightened the muscles in both arms. I pictured myself tearing the rope apart like it was paper. And then I pried. I kept moving my arms, trying to work up enough force to loosen the rope from my wrists.

But in a few seconds, the rope started to cut into my skin, the flesh turning raw where the rope had bitten into it. I was breathing heavily, my arms already sore. I kept struggling until I realized that the rope hadn’t budged at all.

I stayed there on the plastic tarp, my face buried in the blue plastic.

And I felt the tears pool under my cheeks.

I was bound up and left to rot on a piece of plastic, like meat left to thaw.

I was pathetic.

My mind kept darting from one thought to another:

I was close to graduating. I was doing well. If I had ignored Carly and my own bitterness, I would still be in school.

But school didn’t last forever. And I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do afterward. I just wanted to be successful and thin, and I wanted other people to see it. I wanted my success to make them feel small.

And Madison and I—we were supposed to do that together. We were unloved, but we worked hard. And if we worked hard, then we would get what we deserved.

But there was always that unspoken rivalry between us. As much as we loved each other, one of us had to come out on top. The other one had to lose. We knew it was inevitable.

And Dad—he was at home, sitting on his armchair in front of the TV. He wasn’t worried about me. I’d told him to fuck off—that was the last thing I said to him.

I couldn’t even remember the last time we’d hugged. Dad and I had never been that kind of people. But I wished I could remember.

And then there was my penance. After confession, Father Greg told me to pray the rosary twice. I drove away from St. Rita’s without thinking about it. I hadn’t purged those sins—I’d only added more.

And now I was going to die. And I was going to find out that God was real and Mom was in heaven. And she would tell me that I’d wasted my whole life not believing. Now, since I hadn’t believed, there was no way to help me.

I was going to hell and I was going to suffer. And Mom would glow like an angel, and she would kiss me on the cheek and fly away.

The end.

But first I had to die.

My stomach lurched. The vomit suddenly projected up from my stomach. It lingered in my throat, the burn of acid slipping into my mouth. But I swallowed it back down.

I couldn’t hear anything from upstairs. No footsteps above the ceiling or the murmur of a voice. No sound except my heartbeat.

The darkness made the silence more deafening. The more I stared into it, the more I felt it closing in on me. It would crush me completely.

And I realized how stupid I seemed—inevitably bound to die, but still afraid of the dark.

I was still the same person that I’d been at age five and twelve and now twenty-two.

I buried my face deep into the blue plastic. It was comforting. I tried to cry, harder than I ever had in my life, but nothing happened. My eyes were swollen and dry. My body was exhausted. I was a husk lying prone in the plastic.

I felt calm, empty. I wondered if it was normal to feel this way. When other people knew they were going to die, maybe they also stopped caring.

And I wondered how Olivia and DeMaria had fared. Maybe they had felt this way. They had learned to accept it. Maybe this was my way of accepting it, too.

I closed my eyes.

I let my body go lax.

I stopped thinking.

Everything else seemed to grow in clarity in the darkness. I noticed the bumpy, cool texture of the plastic beneath my cheek. The scratchiness of the denim against my legs. The hardness of my ankles as they rubbed together.

My hair was loose around my face. My arms were propped up behind me. My wrists were bound by a rough piece of rope.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain in my wrists. The small fibers cut into me, making my skin raw and sore.

I couldn’t think of anything else.

My wrists hurt.

I wanted it to stop. Just one thing to leave me alone.

I started twisting my left wrist around, back and forth against the rope, while I planted the other wrist against my lower back. The rope bit into my skin. It stung so badly that I chewed on the fabric in my mouth, stifling a moan.