Nice Girls(94)

She was standing at the edge of a cliff.

It was the one spot that I could remember in the park reserve.

She peered over the ledge at the drop below, her sneakers barely teetering on the earth. I stood several yards away, sweaty and uncomfortable.

“What are you doing?” I asked lightly.

Olivia said nothing. She only turned around and looked at me, unsmiling.

We stared at each other for a moment.

“I already know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’d push me, right?”

I shook my head.

But I had thought about it, in that brief second—Olivia tumbling down and smashing into the stream below, her body punctured by the rocks. It was wrong to think that way, but I couldn’t help it.

Something was changing between us—an imbalance. Next to her light, I was lackluster. My clothes seemed frumpy, my personality flat. And her words grew sharp. I hid my stomach when she complained about her weight. I asked her why no boys liked me, and she said I came off as gay. And when I said I was ugly, she told me I was fine—it never stopped anyone.

She was drifting away. I got used to it—being ditched, ignored.

But it hurt the most when we talked. Her eyes lit up around other people. They fascinated her. She listened to them. But when it was the two of us, she barely seemed to look my way. My words flew right past her.

I was no longer worth the attention.

With junior high on the horizon, she would make a clean break.

I would be left behind.

But if she tumbled off the cliff, Olivia couldn’t abandon me. I could beat her to it.

For once, she could feel my pain.

“Can we please go back to your house?” I whimpered finally. “I don’t like this.”

Olivia sighed and took one final look at the drop.

That was the end of us. During the rest of the summer, I waited for Olivia to call. But she never invited me out again. We stopped talking entirely. At the start of junior high, I found Madison. Olivia found her people. Our lives diverged.

And we grew up away from each other. We learned how to wear makeup, how to kiss, how to pretend. We piled on the clothes and grades and accolades. And we learned that our lives revolved around other people—beating them, using them, winning them over.

We learned to be women.

And if we wanted to get far, we had to be cruel.

We hadn’t changed that much, had we, Olivia?

Our bodies had become taller, curvier. We knew how to hide things better.

But we were still the same hungry, angry girls.

My throat burned. But I didn’t have it in me to cry.

I kept moving.

Slowly I began to see it—a plain white field beyond the trees. I was nearly at the edge of the woods. If I could make it to the road, flag down a car—

I stumbled faster, closing the distance. Only a few dozen yards and I would be free. The road was somewhere just beyond that. I only had to keep going, one foot after the other.

A growl tore through the air.

I flinched, ducking down. The growl was angry, violent. It echoed through the trees, coming from everywhere at once. And it was coming closer.

Behind me, I could see two pinpricks of light in the distance. They seemed to glow brighter as the growling continued. John Stack’s car was revving now, the engine roaring as the tires smashed through the snow.

John Stack was catching up to me, following my footprints.

I could feel my stomach starting to curl in on itself. There were no bushes in sight, no brush to hide in. I staggered forward, my brain starting to melt.

Only a few more yards, and I was passing a gap between two large elm trees. And I was out in the clearing, a blanket of pure white snow stretching out before me. The wind was whipping in my face. I was so close. I just needed to reach the road.

But the faster I moved, the faster John Stack seemed to follow. The car revved again, the growl bursting into a deafening roar. I suddenly saw my shadow in the snow, illuminated by the car’s yellow lights. I could feel flecks of snow flying into my back from the tires. John Stack was right behind me.

I saw the basement all over again: the body, the blood, the ax, the table saw—

I slipped, crashing into the snow. There was a muffled, weak scream. I realized it was me, I was screaming, burying myself in the snow, waiting to be crushed—

Nothing happened. I saw the car’s yellow lights around me. But the roaring had stopped. I could only hear the engine idling. Then a car door slammed.

I stayed frozen on the ground, watching as a shadow crept up on my right. Then it stopped.

I finally peered up.

John Stack was standing over me.

The hunting rifle in his hands.





51




I would splatter like a deer, my blood speckling the snow.

John Stack squatted down, his rifle propped up on his knees. He wore his brown deerskin jacket and a pair of black leather gloves. There was gauze near his collarbone—he’d cleaned and dressed his wounds. That was why he hadn’t chased after me right away.

John Stack was only a few inches away from my face, his eyes dark and flat behind his glasses.

We’d been in this exact same position back at the cabin—me on the ground, John Stack leering over me.

Except this time, I would splatter.

“You lack manners,” he said softly.