*
Maya is lying in her bed, slipping so sleeplessly in and out of consciousness that she sometimes thinks she’s hallucinating. She’s stolen some of her mom’s sleeping pills from the bathroom cabinet. Last night she stood alone with them lined up neatly on the sink and tried to work out how many it would take for her not to have to wake up again. Now, as she blinks up at the ceiling, it’s as if she’s still hoping everything might be a dream, as if she could look around the room and realize that she’s back in reality: that it’s Friday, and nothing has happened yet. When awareness hits her, it’s like having to live through it all again. His grip on her throat, the bottomless fear, the absolute conviction that he was going to kill her.
*
Again. Again. Again.
*
Ana is eating dinner with her dad in that very specific silence they’ve been practicing for fifteen years. Her mom always hated it. It was the silence that made her leave. Ana could have gone with her. But she lied and said she couldn’t imagine living anywhere where there were no trees, and the only trees where her mom lives now are planted outside shopping malls as decoration. But of course really she stayed because she couldn’t abandon her dad, even if she doesn’t know if that was mostly for his sake or hers. They’ve never talked about it. But at least he’s drinking less than he did when her mom lived here, and Ana loves both parents more as a result.
She offers to take the dogs out. That obviously strikes her dad as odd, because he usually has to nag her to do it. But he says nothing. Nor does she.
They live in the old part of the Heights, in one of the houses that was here before the more expensive ones started to be built. They became Beartown aristocracy by association. She takes the long way around, via the illuminated jogging trail that the council is so proud of having built so that “the women of the district can exercise in safety.” By sheer coincidence the lights were, of course, first installed next to the Heights rather than in the forest beyond the Hollow. And by another fortunate coincidence, the two companies that won the contract from the council were both owned by men who lived in houses right next to the trail.
She lets the dogs off their leashes under the lamps and lets them play. Trees and animals—they always help.
*
Kevin comes home, passes his parents in the kitchen and living room without having to look them in the eye. He goes upstairs and closes the door to his room, and does push-ups until his vision starts to fade. When the house falls silent and the door to his parents’ bedroom is closed, he puts on his tracksuit and creeps out. He runs through the forest until he has no energy to think anymore.
*
Ana follows the dogs as they zigzag across the running track. Kevin stops abruptly fifteen yards away. At first she barely reacts, thinking that he must have been startled by the dogs. But then she sees that it’s her presence that’s made him stop. A couple of days ago he wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a class photograph, even if she were the only person on it, but now he knows who she is. And he looks neither proud nor embarrassed, which are the only two facial expressions she’s ever seen on a guy from school after he’s slept with a girl on the weekend.
He’s scared. She’s never seen a man look so terribly scared.
*
Maya tries to play her guitar, but her fingers are shaking too much. She’s sweating under her big grey hoodie, but when her parents ask she says she’s shaking with fever. She pulls the hood tighter around her neck, to hide the bruises. Pulls the sleeves halfway down over her hands to conceal the blue-black marks on her wrists.
She hears the doorbell ring; it’s too late to be one of Leo’s friends. She hears her mom talking outside, relieved and anxious at the same time, the way only her mom can. There’s a knock on her bedroom door and Maya pretends to be asleep, until she sees who’s standing in the doorway.
Ana closes the door gently behind her. Waits until she hears Kira’s footsteps go off toward the kitchen. She’s out of breath. She ran all the way here from the Heights, in a mixture of rage and panic. She sees the marks on Maya’s neck and wrists, no matter how her friend tries to hide them. When she finally looks Maya in the eye, tears find their way into every crease in their skin, every furrow, running in streams and dripping from their chins. Ana whispers: “I saw him. He was scared. The bastard was scared. What did he do to you?”
It’s as if the event hasn’t properly existed for Maya herself until she says the words out loud. And when she does, she’s back in that boy’s bedroom with its trophies and hockey posters. Sobbing, she fumbles her hands over her hooded top for a blouse-button that was never there.
She falls apart in Ana’s arms, and Ana holds her as if her life depends on it, and wishes with all her being that they could change places with each other.
*
Never again do you find friends like the ones you have when you’re fifteen years old.
28
When Ana and Maya were children—it feels like only yesterday—they always talked about how they would live in New York when they were rich and famous. Maya was the one who wanted to be rich, Ana the one who wanted to be famous, which surprised anyone who had spent time with them. They had strikingly different dreams: Maya dreamed of a silent music studio, Ana a noisy throng of people. Ana wanted to be famous as a form of affirmation, Maya wanted to be rich so she didn’t have to care what anyone else thought. They are both unfathomably complex, the pair of them, and that’s why as different as they are, they understand each other.
When she was very little, Ana wanted to be a professional hockey player. She played one season on the girls’ team in Hed, but she was too restless to do what the coaches told her and kept getting into fights the whole time. In the end her dad promised to teach her to hunt with a rifle if she stopped making him drive her to training sessions. She could see he was ashamed of the fact that she was so different, and the offer of learning how to shoot was too good to turn down.
When she got a bit older she wanted to be a sports commentator on television, then high school started and she learned that girls were more than welcome to like sports in Beartown—just not the way that she did. Not that much. Not to the point where she would lecture the boys about rules and tactics. Teenage girls were primarily supposed to be interested in hockey players, not hockey.