Girls on Fire(70)

Nikki had taught me better.

“Nothing like that,” I said. Polite, composed, good-girl Hannah Dexter. As interesting as a bowl of oatmeal. “Can I go back to class?”


HANNAH, HAVE YOU SPOKEN WITH her?” There was maternal concern in the question, but there was also judgment. Once again, in my mother’s eyes, I’d failed.

I shrugged.

“Have you considered it? I don’t know what went on between you—”

“That should be your first clue.”

Usually that would be enough to derail her, start an argument about my attitude, land safely in my room. Not this time.

“The girl is obviously troubled. Regardless of your differences, maybe you owe her a little compassion?”

“Aren’t you the one who forbid me ever to speak to her again?”

“That was in the heat of anger, Hannah. I was worried about you.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m worried about her.”

“Fucking unbelievable.” I said it under my breath, loud enough for her to hear.

“What was that?”

This time, I enunciated. “Fucking. Unbelievable.”

“Hannah! Language.”

“I love how when I wanted her around, Lacey was basically the devil. And now, when she’s literally worshipping the devil, you assume that whatever happened between us is my fault. Or, like, forget fault. It’s just whatever I decide to do is the wrong thing. By definition. Is that it?”

“I realize that you prefer to see me as a villain when at all possible.”

I couldn’t stand it, the simpering voice, the affected elocution, every bit of her behavior fake—and that wasn’t even the worst of it. I could have forgiven her fancier-than-thou act if she hadn’t been so bad at it.

“I’m not saying anyone’s at fault here, Hannah. I’m just worried about her. She’s obviously gotten involved in something she shouldn’t have. The things they say about her . . . I’m worried something terrible might happen.”

I could have told her, things didn’t just happen to Lacey. If something terrible happened, it would be because Lacey had willed it to. I could have told her, I was the one things happened to.

She’d caught me downstairs on the couch, watching TV, which these days I could only do when my father wasn’t hovering around me at home. Of course she’d positioned herself squarely in front of the screen. I looked away, at the Sears photo framed on the wall, the most prominent picture of me in the house, if that chunky toddler could be considered in any way contiguous with the lumpen, scowling creature I’d grown up to be. She must have had her doubts sometimes, wondered if I was a changeling, if her perky girl who loved tutus and Parcheesi had been snatched away in the night, an angry monster child slipped into her place. I hated the girl in that photo, because I knew how much easier she was to love, all soft skin and smooth edges. How could my parents not want her back?

“Lacey’s fine,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about her.”

“That’s patently false. Maybe I should call her mother—”

“No!”

“Well, if you won’t talk to her . . .”

“She’s worshipping the devil, Mother.” I couldn’t remember when I’d last said that word because I needed it, because it meant home. “Any other mother in this town would be taking me in for an exorcism or something, just in case.”

“Aren’t you fortunate, then, that I’m not every other mother?”

“Yeah, I won the lottery.”

“I hope this isn’t really you, Hannah. It’s fine, to put on this little show for me. I understand. But I hope it isn’t you.” She didn’t sound angry, and that somehow made it worse when she gave me what I asked for and left me alone.





LACEY


Something in the Way



WHAT I LEARNED FROM KURT: It can be a good thing, people thinking you’re bad. When Kurt’s neighbors worried they were living next to the devil, Kurt strung up a voodoo doll on a noose and hung it in the window for them to see.

I’m not what you think I am, Kurt says. I’m worse.

I won’t tell you what I did that first night, after I sent you inside to your happy family: how empty the car felt on the drive home, how I had to turn off the music and endure the quiet you left behind in case, if I listened hard enough, the night could tell me what to do.


I DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH, NOT ANYMORE. The dreams came for me, came even when I hid under the covers and tried to stay awake. A ring of clasped hands around the bed, singing their love for Jesus; the nightmare girls closing in, fingers like spiders, creepy-crawling across bare skin. I was always naked. I never struggled, in the dream. I went stiff, corpse-like, made myself into dead weight. They chanted about Christ and I chanted to myself, light as a feather stiff as a board light as a feather stiff as a board, magic words from a time when we were all little pagans summoning ghosts.

They carried me away into the night, into the woods. Down the dark path, where the bad things live. They tore out my beating heart, their jaws sticky with my blood, and buried it in wet ground. They knew my secret self, the scarecrow Lacey built of twigs and mud and bark, the Lacey who was made of forest and would someday be summoned home.