Boring Girls(106)

“Shut the f*ck up,” she said, hissing down at him.

“Fern, what’s going on?” I whispered, feeling a jumpiness of my own beginning, clenching and unclenching my fists.

“I’m not sure. I’m not really sure, Rachel.”

“Okay. Okay. Who is this guy?”

“I was coming out of the venue,” she said. “I heard a girl, she screamed. It was some druggie chick, some homeless girl.”

“A stupid bitch like you,” the guy said, and Fern kicked him again, this time connecting the toe of her boot to his jaw, and my mouth filled with saliva as I saw his face tilt to the side to spit out a tooth in a drool of blood.

“He grabbed her,” Fern said. “He was touching her and he hit her, Rachel, and he dragged her into this alley. And I just followed him in. He had her down on the ground. He was pulling off her clothes, and she was crying, Rachel. She sounded like a little girl.”

“I bet you bitches’d love to know what I was gonna do to ’er,” the guy slurred.

“What did you do, Fern?”

“There’s a bunch of old liquor bottles lying around.” Fern gestured absently. “I grabbed one and I just hit him in the head with it. A couple times. He sort of rolled off her. She ran away.”

We stood silently. The only sounds were his ragged breathing and spitting. I felt blood race through my veins, making them feel icy, cold, snaking through my body. I knew where this was going. I was stunned by her violence. Her excitement was contagious, and I wanted it to continue, but I wanted it to stop. I didn’t want to get caught here. I dimly thought about Toad, about the guys, if they came off the bus. They would come looking for us.

“What do you want to do?” I said.

She didn’t say anything, her hair hanging in her face, her eyes locked to mine. “He’s a dirty son of a bitch rapist.”

We stared at each other, trapped in this weird purgatory, and I swallowed hard, not sure what to say or do to tip the scales and cause whatever was going to happen to happen. I knew at any moment someone could find us, and my ears were alert, almost aching to catch and decipher any sound.

Fern looked around, and I watched as she bent and picked up a dark piece of cinderblock or brick. She turned her full attention down to the man on the ground, who, for some reason, was making a repetitive, low, raspy chuckle like a skipping record. Fern stepped over him, paused for a moment, and then raised the brick over her head.

I have a snapshot in my mind’s eye of Fern in this moment, her hair blocking her face from my vision, her long, lean arms stretched high. To be honest I don’t know if I could have done it — been the one to change things forever the way she did, been the one to raise the brick. As she brought it down, I felt the way you feel when you go down that first hill on a roller coaster. That relief, but at the same time, that twinge of regret. Here we go, too late to stop it now — do I want to stop it? Is this terrifying or f*cking amazing —

I don’t know what sound was made when she slammed that brick into the guy’s face because a shriek of laughter erupted out of me at the same time it impacted.

You know, I wish I could say that all the fantasies I’d had, the weird convoluted images of Judith and the maidservant and putting me and Fern into those roles, came to life for a moment. I wish there had been this sort of mysterious, mythological, candlelit romance to it all — but there wasn’t. She brought that brick down onto that guy’s chuckling face a few times, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. And I was trying to keep quiet, trying to keep that laugh in, with my hands over my mouth, gasping. It was really weird. And she ended up falling, I think she was crying — and by this time it was pretty horrible, the guy on the ground didn’t have much of a face. It was too dark for me to really tell, and I didn’t want to see, really. But he was making this weird whistling noise, this wheeze, so he wasn’t dead, it was like air was still moving in and out somewhere. And she was just sitting there and she was crying and told me to finish it, to finish him.

And I was still laughing. Fuck, I don’t know why. I reached down for the brick, I tried to carefully avoid the wet end of it. It was heavier than I’d expected and my arms felt rubbery and weak — for a second I wasn’t sure if I was going to drop it. But I grasped it in both hands and I brought it down on the mashed dark blur where it seemed his face used to be. I raised it and brought it down again, trying to ignore the warm splashes on my arms and face. I mean, this really was disgusting. I shut my mouth pretty quick — I didn’t want any of that shit going in my mouth and giving me diseases or whatever — but I still managed to laugh through my nose, like a true maniac. At least Fern cried.