Girls on Fire(93)

“No,” Lacey was quiet. “I’ll tell.”

There was no more yelling. I felt it again, what Nikki had once told me, that this was a sacred place, haunted by all the ruined futures of the past.

“So you can lie to her? Again?”

I didn’t see Lacey’s hand move, only the silver blur of the knife. Then there was blood, just a dab of it, on Nikki’s collarbone, and a tiny yelp of pain.

“I’ll tell,” Lacey said, quieter still. “The truth this time, Dex. All of it.”

I was not afraid of Lacey.

I would not allow myself to be afraid of Lacey.

She would tell her story, prove her faith in me. I would repay her by finding a way to believe. “Tell me, Lacey. Everything.”

“Go ahead then, tell her,” Nikki allowed, magnanimous in victory. “Tell her the story of us.”





LACEY


1991



NIKKI DIDN’T JUST WANT TO watch; she wanted to conduct. I tried to teach her chaos, but she understood only control. So it had been from the beginning: Nikki leaning against a tree, head cocked, eyes narrowed, ordering us from one position into another, telling Craig to lick my neck or turn me over and drive my face into the ground. It made three more manageable: two bodies and one will.

Craig didn’t want to do it, not at first. That’s something else to remember. He could never say no to Nikki.

“On your knees, bitch,” she said to him, and he dropped.

He should see what it was like, she said. She should get to watch him seeing it.

She hated him, if you want to know what I think.

What I think is, she wanted to take that gun and shove it up his ass and pull the trigger. His punishment for the person she was when they were together, the act she put on that required a Craig by her side. But Nikki Drummond doesn’t get her hands dirty.

I held the gun. I held it where a dick would be.

“Not gonna happen,” he said, even though he was already on his knees. “That’s totally gay.”

“It’s a gun, not a dick,” Nikki said. “How is that gay?”

He grunted.

“You know what’s gay, Craig? Two naked girls writhing around together. Panting. Sucking. Sweating. You don’t mind that, do you? You ever want to see that again?”

She knew so much, Dex, and yet somehow she hadn’t clued in that he really, really didn’t.

“You ever want me to touch your gun again? Or you want me to tell the whole school it’s got warts?”

“Like anyone would believe that.”

“Have you met me, sweetie? They believe anything I tell them.”

This, for them, was foreplay.

“Do I have to?” Even the question was a sign: He’d given in.

“Take it slow,” she advised. “Flick the tip. Tease it a little, it likes that. Remember what you told me, the first time? Just like eating an ice cream cone. You love ice cream, Craig. You love it.”

She didn’t need to talk me into anything. I stood steady, kept the gun erect as Craig closed his mouth over it. Maybe I was curious, too.

Darkness swirled around us, the station hissed with ghosts, and my blood was half vodka. Not an excuse, Dex. Just setting the scene.

He was tentative, at the start, like a girl sucking it for the first time, not sure where to put his hands or his tongue, licking and flicking in sorry, frog-like spurts, then easing his mouth around the barrel and holding it there, like the mere ambiance of his warm, damp cave would get the job done.

“Friction!” Nikki shouted, clapping her hands together in a steady beat. “Friction and rhythm. Get it together. And mind the teeth.”

I started moaning. A gasp here, a pant there, partly to help him along and partly to mock him, all for show, until, somehow, it wasn’t anymore. Because it felt good, Dex, his head under the palm of my hand, bobbing with my rhythm, his lips finding their pace, his fingers doing their work, one hand wrapped around mine on the gun, the other climbing my thigh and finding its way to where it needed to be, hot against my heat, rubbing in time and pressing hard, harder the louder I moaned, and maybe it was the booze or his fingers or just the fact of the gun, but I’m telling you, Dex, I felt it. Felt him, against me, sucking hard, swirling his tongue around just so, breathing hot and fast, felt him pulling back, pulling away for the hint of a moment, playing with me like I always played with him, then taking it all in his mouth again, swallowing us whole. And it was me, metal but also somehow flesh, and as it came over me—a full-on flash-bang explosion, zero to sixty to holy shit—I thought, this is some kind of black magic at work, this is science fiction and I am a cyborg of skin and steel, this is how it is for them to look down at us on our knees, but it wasn’t just that, one great erotic leap for women everywhere, it was this particular boy on his knees and me on my feet, it was this boy’s girl in the shadows, screaming my name, needing me to see her, to forget about him and need her back, it was the game and the show and the love and the gun, it was a split second of wild, muscle-clenching, teeth-rattling, tip-your-head-back-and-howl-at-the-sky pleasure, and then it was over.

I was crying and laughing at the same time when he seized up, went rigid—and if I was thinking of him at all, I was thinking how Nikki would never let it go, that he’d gotten off on it, loved the feel of something hard swelling in his mouth as much as any of us—but then he fell away from me, and only when Nikki stopped screaming my name and started screaming his did I realize that the crack of noise had not been some overload of neural circuitry but an actual, world-shattering sound. That the world had shattered. That the wet beneath my fingers was blood.