Girls on Fire(66)

She’d painted the walls black.

“The Bastard had a fit,” she said.

Lacey sat on her bed. I sat on the floor, cross-legged, next to where she’d kept her tapes. They were gone, too. Everything she had left, she kept in her car. A handful of tapes in the glove compartment, everything else in the trunk. “You never know when you’ll need a quick getaway.”

I’d thought we would go on a drive; we always went on a drive. But Lacey wanted to show me something, she’d said. To tell me many things.

She smiled a fake Lacey smile. “So, how was the mall?”

“Fine. You know. The mall.”

“I know you went with Nikki Drummond,” she said.

“Are you following me?”

“I notice you’re not denying it.”

“No, I’m not.”

“So, what? You two are friends or something now?”

I shrugged.

“Well, not officially friends, I’m guessing. Not in public, not at school, where people could see.”

I didn’t answer, but I didn’t have to. She put on a real smile once we both concluded she’d won. And then, very quickly, it went away again. “Sorry,” she said, and she never said that. “I heard some other crap, too. About that party last spring . . .”

“It’s bullshit,” I said quickly.

“You know I don’t care what you did, Dex.”

“I didn’t do anything. People are f*cking liars.”

“Okay . . . but if someone did something to you, we can handle it. We’ll—”

I needed it to stop. “If someone did something to me, I don’t see how that’s your problem.”

“What is it? What did she say to you?” Lacey asked.

“Who?”

“You know who. The bitch. Nikki. She told you something about me. That’s what this is.”

“No, Lacey. There’s no conspiracy.”

“Whatever she told you, I can explain.”

It was the wrong thing to say; it was an admission.

“Go ahead. Explain.”

“First tell me what she said.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you think she said? Or, even better, the f*cking truth.”

“Language, Dex.” She tried another smile. I didn’t. “It’s complicated.”

Fix this, I willed her. Before you can’t.

“She’s using you to get at me,” Lacey said. “Tell me you see that, at least.”

“Because someone like her would never actually want to be friends with someone like me.”

“It’s not you, it’s her! She uses everybody. It’s how people like Nikki operate.”

“Right. People like Nikki.”

“Believe whatever you want about me, Dex, but promise me you won’t believe her. She’ll do whatever she can to hurt me.”

“And why is that, Lacey? Why would she go to all that trouble?”

It took me a long time to understand that this expression on her face, the one that made her look like a stranger, was fear. “I can’t tell you.”

“Have you always thought I was this stupid?”

“Can’t you just trust me, Dex? Please?”

That would have been so much easier—and so I did it; I tried.

“I see,” she said, as if she did, and it hurt. “But you can trust her. If it’s between me and her, you pick her.”

I reminded myself it wasn’t her fault that she’d left. That she’d molded me from wet clay, and it was law to honor thy creator. We were Dex and Lacey; we should have been beyond ultimatums. I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t have to trust Nikki. That was the most appealing thing about her: She didn’t ask that of me. She didn’t ask anything.

“It’s stupid to be jealous,” I said.

“Jealous?” She was a wild thing, suddenly. “Jealous of what? Of her? Of you? Do you know what a f*cking favor I did for you, Dex, turning you into something? If I wanted a charity project, I could have gone and read to old ladies or joined the f*cking Peace Corps, but I didn’t. I chose you. And you? You choose the f*cking mall?”

She was the one who’d taught me that words mattered, that words could make worlds, or break them.

“I’m going, Lacey.”

“Forget I said that. I shouldn’t have said that,” she said, talking too fast. “The bitch doesn’t matter. You matter, Dex. Me and you, like before. That’s all I want. Just tell me what I should do.”

Tell me what I should do. This was power.

I couldn’t say, Go f*ck yourself.

I couldn’t say, Tell me what I should do. Be the person you were so I can be the person you made me.

Somewhere below us, the front door opened and closed, hard. A baby screamed, and Lacey’s mother shouted her name in a witch’s howl; it broke the spell.

“I’m going, Lacey,” I said. “I’m done here.”

“Yeah.”

But I didn’t need her permission anymore.


I DIDN’T MEAN FOR IT TO be the end.

Or maybe I did.

She came back to school in head-to-toe black, with a silver pentagram around her neck and a bloody tear painted beneath her eye. We didn’t speak. By lunch, rumor had congealed into fact: Lacey had Satan on speed dial. Lacey had snuck into Mrs. Greer’s room and turned her contraband cross upside down. Lacey had fallen into a trance on the softball field and started speaking in tongues. Lacey drank pig’s blood for breakfast; Lacey kept a bloody rabbit’s foot in her pocket for luck; Lacey had joined a death cult.