The Turnout(29)

“Class is over anyway,” Dara said gently, “and he’d be happy to talk to you—”

“Madame Durant,” Corbin said, his face as red as Marie’s mouth, “I don’t want to talk to anybody.”



* * *



*

Moments later, she was in the parking lot, smoking, when Derek appeared, pulling out a drugstore vape. She had the feeling he’d followed her out.

It felt strange being alone with him after what she’d seen. After the things Marie had told her. And the way he was looking at her now. She drew her sweater tight across her chest.

“Can’t be easy for a boy,” he said, shaking his head. “Jesus.”

“What?” Dara said. Then realizing he must have seen her with Corbin. Must have been watching from behind the plastic curtain.

“I almost feel sorry for the kid,” he said, a whisper of a smile. “Quite a spot you put him in.”

Dara felt her face grow hot.



* * *



*

Back in the stairwell, she took three long breaths, shook the forgotten cigarette free from her hand, the ash burning her knuckles.

She would simply have to tell Charlie. Marie had emboldened him, this contractor. Now he felt like he could say anything, do as he pleased. Charlie had to know. She would have to tell him.

Tonight, she resolved, smearing the cigarette butt with her shoe, a black smudge the shape of an X.



* * *



*

But it turned out she didn’t need to.

Just before the late-afternoon crush, Dara was heading to the back office when she heard his voice.

“Who do you think you are,” Charlie was saying, a laugh in his voice, light and delicious like she seldom heard anymore, “Isadora Duncan?”

Dara stood outside the door for a moment. That laugh, that tone—it reminded her of the sneaky elation they once felt, after the grief over their parents’ death, after a year or more of nightly check-ins from Madame Sylvie and quarterly visits from the nice woman with the thick brown shoes from Child Protective Services. Suddenly, they were grown-ups, with an entire big house to themselves, and they’d spend those evenings, bodies loose and muscles springy and hot, making pots of spaghetti they’d barely eat, drinking party-store wine, trying on their mother’s dressing gowns, Charlie wearing that foil top hat from the party-store spin rack.

She opened the door just as Charlie’s hand reached out, his fingers tangling in the fringe on Marie’s scarf.

“Dara,” Charlie said, straightening himself. “You’re just in time. Can you remind your sister of Isadora’s fate?” He made a jerking motion across his neck.

Dara winced. A hangman’s fracture. There were so many ways to injure yourself. Like poor Isadora, one of her famous long scarves caught in the wheels of a car.

“I’m not afraid,” Marie said, smiling faintly, moving away from Charlie, smoothing her scarf, untangling its fringe. “Of that, at least.”

“Your back must be feeling better,” Dara said to Charlie, reaching for his mug and dumping his tea bag into the trash, cold tea splashing.

“Stop!” Marie let out a gasp and Dara looked over in time to see Charlie yanking Marie’s hideous scarf free. (“Free Marie! Liberate the neck!”)

Charlie, teasing Marie like he used to years ago in dance class, calling her Snap-Crackle because of the way her hips used to pop-pop-pop.

Abruptly, Charlie froze, Marie’s scarf still in his hand, drooping and forlorn.

Dara turned and saw too. Marie, the marks on Marie. On her neck this time, and fresh. They were violet and obscene. Dara couldn’t stop looking at them. Fleshy dabs from Derek’s fleshy thumbs. Like little Jack Horner, his finger in the pie.

“Jesus,” Charlie said, voice low. “Did Tessa Shen kick-spin you again?”

“No,” Marie said, running her hand across her throat, stroking it.

The gesture undid something in Dara, who could feel her chest burning. This whole business, the scarf—another way of drawing all the attention. Marie and her body, like a golden hummingbird. Marie and her mysterious sex organs, the part she had that no other woman had. Marie, Dara thought, the freak. Marie and her freakshow.

“Stop showing off,” Dara said, fingers to her temples. “Nobody cares.”

Charlie turned and looked at Dara.

“What is this?” he asked, gesturing to the bruises. “Did you know about this?”

Both of them looked at Dara, as if she were the problem.

“Didn’t you?” Dara said. Then, “Marie likes it rough.”

Charlie’s gaze wobbled to Marie, a look on his face like a lost child’s.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ask her,” Dara said, her eyes fixed on the violet, imagining the contractor’s meaty fingers pressing. She thought she might choke from the thought, from the picture in her head.

“Someone better tell me,” Charlie said.

Marie looked at him, both her hands wrung around her neck.

“My sister’s screwing the help,” Dara said.



* * *



*

    His hands,” Marie whispered, both of them lying on their backs in the empty studio in between classes, holding on to their ankles, feeling like they might crack, “remind me of that belt Dad used to have, remember? The leather splintered, but he wouldn’t stop wearing it. He said it was made from gators. Maybe it was.”