Girl in Snow(39)
She sidled right up to me, wineglass in hand. Dragged one long plastic nail down my cheek, so hard she’d leave a scratch that would stay all night but disappear by morning. Ma pinched my chin between her thumb and her finger like a vet inspecting a sick dog’s teeth.
“Lost,” she murmured, breath foul and reeking. “You’re a lost cause.”
Ma swigged and gulped. Drained the glass.
“Your sister, though. Your sister, with that pretty red hair. Get her down here.”
“No,” I said, as I closed my eyes—
Ma socked me in the stomach so hard I doubled over, her fist a freight train. As I gasped, winded, Ma pushed past me and started up the stairs.
I don’t remember the next part. Only the aftermath: somehow, with the air knocked from my insides, I jolted after Ma up the stairs, hooked my hands onto her shirt, and yanked her backwards.
The wineglass went down first. It rolled down each carpeted step in slow motion, shattering at the foot of the stairs. A slice of glass embedded itself between my heel and the floor, but I did not have time to feel pain—only to jump aside as Ma came tumbling past me.
She looked like a rag doll, a small, shrieking bundle of thrift-store designer clothes, as she flipped, neck over head over waist over legs, all the way down the stairs.
“Stay!” I screamed to Amy, who had come running at the sound. She stood at the edge of the landing, sparkly leotard tucked up against her right butt cheek in a wedgie. “Stay right there.”
But Amy didn’t need to be cautious, or afraid: Ma was lying seven steps down, with a bruised collarbone and a broken wrist, looking up at me with shocked and furious eyes. Like I was the devil incarnate. And for the first time, I wondered if maybe I was—if maybe this was the only worldly gift I’d been given.
Now, Amy stomps in on high heels and turns on the TV. She sits in the armchair across from me and gnaws on a Pop-Tart. Crumbs of frosting stick in her lip gloss.
“The investigation continues as the sweep of the crime scene wraps up,” a shiny reporter says. “In a statement from the Broomsville police chief, we’ve learned they have substantial leads. He revealed nothing further.”
A photo of Lucinda appears. The same photo they’ve been showing since she died—the yearbook picture.
“Change it,” I say.
“No,” Amy whines.
I grab the remote, flick one channel up.
People hanging from rafters. A documentary about the Salem witch trials. It’s February 1692, and more than two hundred people have been accused of practicing the Devil’s magic.
Two more channels up, a Spanish-language soap opera. One busty woman screams at another.
“You killed her!” she shrieks. “You killed her!”
I click the TV off. A dusty quiet.
“What the hell?” Amy says. “I wanted to watch that.”
I don’t even bother bringing my backpack. I stomp out of the house and slam the front door behind me.
It’s clear I’ve been called upon to finish Lucinda Hayes’s business. Maybe this is punishment for the ritual, or maybe it’s because I’ve seen what I have. But there’s only one person who might know what happened to her. Cameron. And I know a place where honesty comes easy.
The sun is cold today, the wind a whip. I tilt my head to the sky and give Lucinda Hayes a double-handed middle finger.
Cameron
Cameron buttoned his funeral shirt in the bathroom mirror. He tried not to be afraid, but he did not like crowds, especially not crowds of kids from school, and especially not when they would all watch him.
They’d gotten three hang-up phone calls last night. One caller growled, in a whisper, If the police don’t get you, Cameron Whitley, I will. Mr. O had called twice, but when Mom knocked on Cameron’s door he had pretended to be asleep. He would not talk to Mr. O about the diary. There was nothing to be said. Mom and Mr. O murmured to each other over the phone, but Cameron couldn’t catch Mom’s side of the conversation.
Cameron wet a comb and ran it through his hair. He looked like Dad did in the mornings—when Dad got out of the shower and brewed coffee with a towel around his waist, his hair all mussed and bristly.
It was like this:
Cameron and Dad loved all the same things. They liked sunsets at Pine Ridge Point, they ate breakfast before they brushed their teeth. Mini-Wheats and orange juice. They both watched Mom practice ballet, sitting together behind the banister on the basement stairs: Mom was the most graceful thing in the world.
For most of Cameron’s childhood, Cameron and Dad would retreat to the living room after dinner. No TV. Cameron would draw in the sketchpad on his lap, and Dad would sip whiskey in the armchair, appreciative. Silence was their practiced language, and these nights—as Mom did the dishes, or the laundry, or read a book in bed—Cameron and Dad were the same. Father, son. A thick tree trunk and its rustling little leaves.
After Dad left for good, Cameron wondered where his own muted wanting would find its breaking point.
The girl from the principal’s office was waiting in front of Cameron’s house.
She wore a white summer dress—the kind you’d buy in the kids’ section of a department store—and a camouflage army jacket. Her legs were bare, though it was barely thirty degrees.