Girls on Fire(89)

Lacey told her to start at the beginning, and so Nikki told us how in sixth grade she’d gotten bored with her then best friend, Lauren, and convinced all the other girls in their group to ice her out for the rest of the year. I remembered this: I had joined the I Hate Lauren club—which never existed as anything more than a membership list circulated to half the class, then left anonymously on Lauren’s desk the next morning, just as the I Hate Hannah list had the year before—not because I did hate Lauren, but because it seemed to have slipped into the zeitgeist that Lauren was hateable, and it was safer to be against than for. She told us about how she’d dared Allie to accuse Mr. Lourd of feeling her up in the computer lab, but when Allie came crawling back to complain about the subsequent mess—Mr. Lourd getting fired, then getting drunk and trying to throw himself in front of a bus, Allie landing in therapy with a guy who actually tried to feel her up—Nikki laughed and claimed she’d never dared her, that Allie was just imagining things, and maybe she should do whatever that therapist wanted because she was clearly losing her mind. It went on and on—the time Sarah Clayborn was arrested for shoplifting because someone had slipped a Calvin Klein scarf into her bag; the day Darren Sykes was roughed up by a couple of thugs from Belmont because someone told them he’d screwed their mascot, and the months Darren spent trying to live down the rumor that he’d f*cked a goat; the way Jessica Ames dumped Cash Warner without explanation or opportunity for apology because someone had told her he’d cheated with the sexy-for-a-sub replacement math teacher—so many catastrophes, all of them bearing her devil’s mark but not her fingerprints.

Midnight came and midnight went.

When the stories trailed off, somewhere toward the end of tenth grade, and she said that was enough, she was hungry, she was bored, she was done, Lacey dunked her again, holding her down longer this time, until the thrashing stopped.

When she came up, she was still breathing, and I had a momentary lapse, wondering if I should stop Lacey before things went too far, whatever that meant. That Nikki could make me feel for her, fear for her, even for that one moment—maybe she really was a witch.

I reminded myself it had to look real. Nikki had to believe we meant to hurt her.

She was dripping wet, and crying too hard to speak.

“I’m going out to pee,” Lacey murmured. “Watch her.”

And then there were two.

“It’ll be a while,” Nikki said, tears drying. “She probably needs a smoke.”

“Lacey doesn’t smoke.”

Nikki only smiled, or tried to.

She coughed hard, and spit. I aimed the flashlight at the ground. It was harder to look at her without Lacey there. Harder to remember that we weren’t the bad guys.

“You can just untie me before she comes back,” Nikki said.

“Why would I do that?”

“If you’re scared to piss her off, tell her I got away somehow. She’ll believe it.”

“I don’t need to lie to Lacey,” I said. “I’m not the one who should be scared.”

“Are you f*cking kidding me, Hannah? Look around you! You should be f*cking scared out of your mind. She’s nuts. You think she’s ever letting either of us out of here? She’s totally lost it. Sane Lacey is gone. Sane Lacey has left the building. Look what she’s making you do to me, for God’s sake.”

“She’s not making me do anything.”

“I’ll be sure to explain that to the cops.”

“What cops? I thought neither of us was ever getting out of here.”

“Listen, we were friends, right? We were friends, I know that was f*cked-up of me, I know it, but it was also real. You know me now enough to know I’m just f*cked-up enough to do it. I felt bad about . . . you know, everything, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t remember and, yeah, I wanted to f*ck with Lacey, but then, Jesus, turns out I actually liked you.” She was talking so fast, the words running together, lying with the speed of light. “You liked me, too, Hannah, you did, you know you did. You can lie to her all you want, but I know that.”

“There’s something very wrong with you,” I told her.

“Fuck.” She started crying again. “Fuck.”

Come back, Lacey, I thought. I could go to her now, but I couldn’t be that girl, not for either of them. I had to be the girl who could hold onto the flashlight and the knife, who could stand guard in the dark, who could fend off all enemies.

This time, I would keep the faith. Lacey was in control; we both were. This night would go only where we wanted it, and no further.

Then Nikki spoke again. “She was mine first, you know. Lacey was mine.”

“Shut up.” A knife is only as powerful as the person holding it. Even then, she knew the truth of me.

“She used to drive me around in that shit Buick, just like you. She still have those candy cigarettes in the glove compartment? She still like to listen to ‘Something in the Way’ when she’s sad?”

She did.

“Oh, I’ve been in her car,” Nikki said. “And in her room. Watched her make out with that stupid Kurt Cobain poster, kneel in front of it like he’s some kind of god. Did you think you were the first to catch her act? Did you think you were special?”

“I said shut up.”