The Collective(79)

My legs feel wobbly, my head light. I understand. I don’t want to, but I do.

“But you didn’t even appreciate my help. You didn’t get to feel the joy of Harris Blanchard’s death because, in spite of everything, you are still too self-absorbed to feel.”

“I . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

“All that time with me when you thought I was Wendy. All those hours of spilling your guts out about Matt and Emily and Luke and your boring job. You told me about your fucking Playboy spread and yet not once, in that entire evening, did you ever mention my daughter.”

“I . . . I loved her.”

“Bullshit. You needed her. You called her at two in the morning and made her fall down the stairs and you were never punished,” says the woman, whose real name, I recall now, is Dianne. Friendless, joyless Dianne, Joan said. Ruined forever by the death of her child. . . . “You weren’t even questioned by the police,” Dianne says.

I stare at her, those wide-set eyes. Same as her daughter. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“They’re always sorry,” Penelope says. “When they know they’re about to go and they’re begging you to let them live, they say they’re sorry and they expect you to believe it.

“It’s insulting, really.” Penelope looks at me. “I mean, did you ever even attempt to apologize to Dianne?”

“No.” I’ve spent years feeling sorry for myself, drowning in guilt and self-pity and using it as a weapon against the one person who truly helped me. I caused her death—I’ve always known I did—and I never sought out her grieving mother. Never sent a note or flowers. Never owned up to destroying her life. I hid from her because it was easier to focus on the part of myself I have no control over—the victim part.

“I just wanted to talk to her,” I try. But that isn’t true. I wanted to rip her from sleep. I wanted to hurt her, the way she hurt me. . . .

You’ve got to stop calling me, Camille. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for me. You’ve gotten into my head, and I’m living with your hate, and your guilt and your rage and your bitterness, and it’s making me drink too much and lose sleep and you’re not getting any better. I can’t help you. No one will ever be able to help you, Camille. . . .

Her last words to me. Her last words to anyone.

Dianne says, “I’m going to give you one more chance to do something right.”

Gently, she lifts Luke’s head from his chest and rests it on the couch, his face pointed toward the ceiling. “This was actually Penelope’s idea, so I’ll let her explain.”

“It’s pretty simple,” she says. “You get to make a choice. Either we kill this young man, stopping your daughter’s heart. Or we kill you. If he dies, we’ll dispose of the body and wipe the emails from his server. You can go on with your life, free of the collective—as long as you never speak of it.”

“And if I die?”

“He lives.”

As Penelope speaks, Dianne stands above Luke and raises the knife over her head, the blade a few feet above his heart, my daughter’s heart. My best friend’s heart. “Basically,” Dianne says, “you can either live or save your daughter.” And then she lowers the knife.

It happens in a series of frames, the knife traveling through space, the glimmering blade nearing its target as I stand watching, unable to move. I’m aware of Penelope taking the gun from my back, of memories churning in my mind. Laughing with Luke at Applebee’s, watching the Academy Awards with him and Nora, getting drunk with him one night when he lost a part, telling him, You’re too good for them.

You’re too good.

“Stop!”

Dianne puts down the knife, and I feel the barrel of the gun at my back again. There’s nothing I can do. But maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen. Maybe there’s nothing I should do.

No one will ever be able to help you, Camille.

“Give her the juice,” Dianne says.

Penelope hands me a small bottle of orange juice, just a few sips taken out of it. The gun never leaves my back. “Drink all of it,” she says.

I watch Luke, sound asleep on the couch, the rise and fall of his chest. And I raise the bottle to my lips. There’s a chalkiness to the taste, but at least it’s cold. I drink it all, my thoughts slowing and fogging over before I’ve reached the end. The room starts to blur at the corners, and then that blur bleeds into the center and everything turns syrupy. Dianne moves closer to me, that blazing candy cane sweater of hers, the torture of it, all that red in my eyes. I feel nauseous. She puts an arm around me and I can’t fight, I can’t move. . . .

My tongue is thick, my feet useless as she drags me up the stairs. To bed? Is that where I’m going?

We reach the top, and I search her blurring face. Is there something there? A hint of mercy?

“Die like Joan,” Dianne says.

She shoves me hard, and there’s no time for anything, even surprise. I sail in space for a moment, and then my head smacks the floor. Something explodes within me. I’m in pieces. I’m dissolving. Nothing working together anymore.

I want to say Emily’s name, but I don’t have enough breath for that. I’m seeing her now, though, as a baby blinking up at me, her tiny hands grasping the light. I’m seeing my own mother when I was little, her soft fingers on my cheek. I’m kissing Matt for the first time, then dancing with my dad at my wedding, then weeping at Emily’s funeral, my heart ripped in two. I’m screaming at Joan over the phone. You never loved me. You never cared. And then, at last, this past month. From that subway ride on, every second plays out again in this one final gasp of time. It’s all too much—too loud, too pointless—when all I want is to be with Luke. Watch him breathe. Listen to his heart.