The Weight of Blood (88)

“I tried to pray it out of her: the sickness, the evil. Mama just laughed at me. She was always laughing at me. But I couldn’t leave her. I was all she had. She saw . . . saw all the unclean thoughts I was having about your mother. Said ‘no son of mine is gonna be with some nigger.’”

Maddy leaned back into the vanity, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. Her fingers, searching for a talisman, wrapped around the silver paddle brush handle, nails biting little half-moons into her palm.

“Your mother wanted to love it out of you. But love wasn’t going to cure you. Didn’t cure Mama. You would grow to become her, taunting me until the end of my days. And if Negroes knew what kind of evil you wield . . . they would’ve used you. Your mother tried to leave with you, and I said I’d kill you first before I let you out of my sight. Couldn’t let you out in the world to be a sickness to everything you touched. So she left, in the dead of night. She left me. Left you.”

Maddy didn’t like this story. Nor the emptiness in his voice. She didn’t want to hear how her mother had abandoned her. It was too much to bear.

“Mama . . . she always called me stupid. Lazy. Weak. And I was weak.” He looked right into Maddy’s eyes. “I should’ve killed you the day you were born. I should have stopped the evil from spreading long ago.”

Maddy’s stomach sank. Tears pooling, she lowered her eyes. Her power wasn’t from her mama. It was from Papa. He’d given it to her. He also hated her. Just like everyone else.

Except Kendrick. Kendrick doesn’t hate you.

But Kendrick is gone!

The shot was so loud, so sudden, Maddy thought she’d imagined it. The entire night felt like a fever dream. But she looked down at her shoulder and saw blood blooming out of a burning, gaping hole. She floundered, tripping over the vanity bench, and flopped down on the ground with a shriek.

Papa stood over her, lips in a hard line, gun in his hand.

Papa has a gun!

She scooted backward, whimpering, her wound throbbing, blood leaking down her arm. “No, please, Papa.”

He muttered a prayer and aimed for her head.

“No,” Maddy whispered, and the bullet meant to end her life stopped inches from her eye, the thread vibrating like a plucked violin string.

They stared at the brass slug hovering between them before it dropped to the floor, rolling under her bed.

Maddy raised her hand and squeezed it into a fist.

Papa’s face spasmed. He dropped down to his knees, hands at his temples, emitting a gurgling scream. After five seconds of his open-mouthed horror, she let go. Papa gasped and dropped flat on his face, panting.

“Please stop. I don’t want to hurt you, Papa.”

She touched her wound with a whimper. The bullet had passed right through, inches from her heart, drilling itself into the wall of white faces surrounding the vanity.

Papa arched his head up to look at her, a face of warring emotions. He had failed. He kept failing. He glanced at the gun beside him. The air charged. Maddy straightened.

“No . . . Papa, don’t!”

He snatched the gun, turned it, and fired.

Wet concrete churned through Kenny’s veins, his head a thousand-pound rock on his shoulders, weighing him down.

He was going to pass out again.

He fought against the indescribable pain as he leaned on his sister, taking staggering steps away from the Barn, smoke and flames edging closer.

“Damn,” Kali groaned, trying to hold her balance under his armpit. “You heavy as hell.”

Some students had run toward town, ripped dresses flying in the wind, desperately trying to reach their parents. Others limped into the woods to hide, worried Maddy would be back to finish what she had started. But what had she started? Everyone cried about flying cars and trains running off the track, all while Kenny had lain unconscious. His fuzzy thoughts couldn’t comprehend their wild imagination and yet, deep down, he felt a sense of calm, like he’d known all along of her secret.

Blood dripped down his face, his eye swollen shut as he dragged a tongue along his broken teeth. The pressure of his swelling brain pulsed behind his eyes and temples. Despite the agony, all he could think of was the terrified look in Maddy’s eyes as the baton came down on him. He recognized the look. The same expression she’d had in middle school, the day of the water balloon fight. He replayed the moment on repeat, recounting the way he’d watched his friends torment the new girl while he did nothing. If he had only stopped them that day, if he had only befriended her . . . would it have all ended differently?

“Mind your own business, and be so good they can’t ignore you.”

His father’s words were tattooed on his skull, now cracked by an officer’s baton. It didn’t matter how many times he minded his business or how good he was; at the end of the day, it hadn’t saved or protected him. Just like how Maddy pretending to be something she was not hadn’t protected her. Dread mingled with angst as he thought of his future. The future so many had constructed for him. He couldn’t go back to a life of pretending not to see what was right in front of him, to minding his business. Maddy was his business.

“I can’t go back,” he moaned.

Kali huffed. “We’re not. We’re gonna get to town and get you to a hospital.”

“No, K. I can’t go back home.”