Girl in Snow(73)

Jade





Ma once told me I have a heart made of stone. I’ve never forgotten this. Often, I imagine my heart sitting heavy in my chest, a rock sunk to the bottom of a muddy lake.

Cameron lifts the small black handgun, and I have the brief, stupid thought that this will save me. You can’t hurt someone made of minerals.

I have no idea what just happened. But I sense it, clear and electric: danger. I am in danger.

Cameron’s head is thrown back on his neck like the beginning of a laugh. He fiddles with the gun, hands in his lap, bitten nails traversing the barrel, the magazine, the trigger. The gun is small, less than five inches long, but it looks massive in Cameron’s hands. The air smells like iron. Urine.

The wind picks up, and my hair snaps across my shoulders. At the sudden motion, Cameron sits straight again. Laces his finger through the trigger.

What do you want? I try to ask myself, because I think it might be over. I want to see New York. I want to write something like lava, like gravity. There are things beyond the border of Broomsville, and I want to know how they taste. Somewhere, there is a person who will stand with me under the bathroom fluorescents, and when they say I want you, they will mean it. I want to be unafraid of death, but my heart is not made of stone, it’s made of the same thing as everyone else’s. I want to be unafraid of memory.

For the first time, my future is manifest, material—hovering just feet away from me, in the hands of a boy who barely understands he holds it. I could reach out and touch it.

“Mr. Thornton,” Cameron says. “I remember. It was Mr. Thornton.”



I first saw the ballerina on Eve Thornton’s dresser. It always looked out of place—the thing is too delicate to look natural anywhere in the Thorntons’ house, which is still packed in boxes from their move two years ago.

For a short period—maybe a month—they moved the figurine to the table next to Ollie’s crib. This was around the time Eve got really sick: she spent days locked in the bedroom with curtains drawn, leaving me or Lucinda with the baby.

Once, during those first weeks, Mr. Thornton came home drunk. I could tell he was wasted from how he whistled under his breath, off pitch and unnervingly cheery. I was in the living room with Ollie when he came in, tie hanging open, the first three buttons of his shirt undone. He sang to himself in the doorway, eyes closed, arms held to support an invisible girl in an invisible waltz while Puddles ran excited circles around his legs.

Ollie cried. Loud. Every day. Eve got sicker and sicker, until she was gone, for the most part, just a locked door at the end of the upstairs hall.

A few days after the waltz, the figurine disappeared.

I didn’t think anything of it.

Now, the signs from the dead. Not signs at all. Just the world, turning as it does.



“Cameron,” I say, careful to keep my voice even. “I don’t think you’re someone bad.”

Lying flat in his palm like a peace offering or a cold fish: the gun. A few more words of explanation: I saw, Cameron said. He hit her, and then she was so still.

One motion, exaggeratedly slow—I slide my hand over the gun. When Cameron looks at me, it feels like surrender: he does not protest. The gun is heavier than I expect, metal warm from where it has kissed his skin.

“Come on,” I say, thinking of the inconspicuous times Mr. Thornton had asked Lucinda to babysit instead of me. “Let’s get you home.”



It’s like all those nights with Ma. Her purple wine teeth, the chill of the wall behind me, the endless wait for the blow to come. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn’t—but in those moments of wait, there is always fear. Fear and I do such a familiar dance. Even tonight. But now, I help Cameron stand up and I do not feel like my usual self, cowered in a corner, waiting for the punch or the slap or the shove to take away the scared. No; I am taller. I am the one who holds.

Ma’s bruises spread across my legs, and I poke them, bare in the cold.

Pain. Bearable.



We stumble down the melting mountain. Cameron can hardly walk: he smells like musty soil and urine. It’s soaked through his pants and down his leg. I hold the gun, Cameron leaning against me.

We are an accident. Strangers. Both at fault, in theory. In actuality, the irony makes my hands tremble. Cameron doesn’t notice. He’s breathing fast, a panting dog, and his hair is stuck to his forehead. His breath is stale—I turn away.

It’s almost funny: you think you matter to someone. They’re the center of your universe, the sun you revolve around. You’d give anything for their details. You inch closer, closer, with tentative steps. You can walk as far as you want, but it won’t matter. You’re not even on their map.

We are not the killers. We are silly kids. Casualties.





Russ





Russ stretches out of the car. He has been here too long, at the base of the cliff, forehead on the steering wheel, counting heartbeats. His legs are sore from sitting; when he climbs out, feeling returns to his thighs. Pocketing his keys, Russ slams the door and raises his arms above his head. The pull of muscle wakes him. The evening is so cold—he should have brought his gloves, maybe a hat. A semi truck rumbles past, and Russ coughs in the exhaust.

The sun has just begun to set. The color: snowy tangerine.