“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
And then she heard her mother’s stern voice. Pray, Mira.
Mira walked as if through water and kneeled next to Connie. Francesca swayed now, her eyes upturned. Mira’s eyes widened as she marveled at her own voice soaring back to her tenfold.
Mira’s fingers flexed around the pen.
Francesca prayed louder. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. On Earth as it is in heaven.”
Mira straightened her back and prayed louder too. Francesca reached across Connie’s waist to grab Mira’s wrist, chanting, her eyes smiling at the corners. She shook her wrist, still chanting, and suddenly Mira realized her sister needed her, needed her voice to join the chorus or Connie would die.
Mira closed her eyes and prayed.
“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.”
Mira listened to her own voice multiply and divide. A thousand Miras surrounded her, and their voices were beautiful.
She swayed.
“As we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation.”
She chanted louder.
“But deliver us from evil.”
As if obeying an unspoken command, the girls fell silent, but their voices carried for another minute across the chasm. Mira opened her eyes. Francesca looked down. She dipped her head over Connie, and her hair spilled, draping her in darkness. Her ear pressed against Connie’s mouth. Mira froze, staring at the black crown of Francesca’s head for a full minute.
“Oh no,” Francesca whispered, convulsing over Connie.
Mira blinked hard, shaking herself awake. Her hand that clasped the pen had gone numb. She switched the pen to her left hand and raised it to the sky. With a primal scream, she jammed it down hard. The needle pierced Connie’s jeans and punctured her thigh. The pen stood upright as her hand moved away, her fingers aloft and quivering in the air, her scream echoing across the chasm.
She didn’t respond, and Mira knew that was not good.
PART 8
Ash
DECEMBER 2016
On the same day Ben walked out of Piggy’s basement for the last time he ever would, he waited for his parents to fall asleep before slipping into his moonlit backyard clutching Mira’s notes against his chest.
Stealth was required. His parents had been watching him closely since the incident. His mother had collapsed at his feet; his father had wept. Drenched, cocooned in a Mylar emergency blanket, the cops pushed Ben over his own doorstep. Now, his father’s wing tip toe nudged the side of his sneaker under the kitchen table, his mother’s fingers brushed the tops of his shoulders. Constantly, they touched him. Ben couldn’t blame them, since it seemed like the teenagers of Bismuth were disappearing into the ether. Ben had even agreed to weekly dinners with Mr. Falso, which had to be easier than seeing a real therapist. Like his parents, Mr. Falso had accepted his excuse: that he’d gone to the ledge that night to get peace. His swim was deemed a sad reenactment of what his lost girlfriend had done months before, but resulting in hypothermia instead of rigor mortis. What they didn’t know was that he’d brought something back with him from that night. Something he couldn’t shake.
In the yard, a wet click click in his ear.
Softly, he placed the notes inside the patio chiminea and lit the match, each time snuffed by the wind, until the third time when it caught. The smoke blew away from his house, the smell of ink and char rising out of the neighborhood and over the Neck, out across the water and toward the city, where it would mingle with the smells of salt and city and new beginnings.
He no longer needed the notes. He could tell their story now using his own words. Mira’s and Francesca’s and Connie’s.
Do something to one of us, you do it to all.
But first, there was business.
He stepped lightly across the frozen grass to his front yard, flush against the house so as not to set off the sensor lights his father had installed to discourage further escapes. From the bush in his front yard, Ben could see Mr. Cillo in his office, hunched over his desk, head resting on forearms. He had watched Mr. Cillo every night since he’d hidden in the man’s dead daughters’ closet. Graying gelled hair on a massive head. Meaty hands with scarred knuckles cupping elbows. Epaulettes of an ancient Members Only jacket worn indoors. Always the same.
Ben checked his watch: 11:19—arguably too late. But he was still a kid. Harmless if he showed up on a doorstep. He knew vaguely that the old Ben would have realized it was inappropriate to ring his neighbor’s doorbell after eleven o’clock at night. But somewhere on the altar ledge, the new Ben had lost the compass that told him what normal kids did not do. For sure, his new lack of a filter had contributed to his near-friendless state. Since that night, Ben had felt Francesca’s disapproving presence.
The sense of Francesca hit a crescendo in Piggy’s basement, when Piggy began comparing the Miller girls to the Cillo sisters and everyone started weighing in, sizing them up. Ben’s indignance had risen with every jaw-click in his ear. He’d yelled at Piggy, then each of them, and when they laughed at him, he threw his Xbox controller at Louis’s lap, nailing his balls and starting a fight. Kyle tried to call them off, even said it was Ben’s meds making him a nutbag, though to his knowledge, Ben was still faking his daily dose.
The sense of being watched was growing stronger.
And then, without remembering he had walked across his own driveway and the small patch of lawn that separated them, he was ringing Mr. Cillo’s doorbell.
The door creaked open slowly. Framed by the indoor gloom, Mr. Cillo’s form was rumpled and aged. A belly had developed that winter. Streetlight glare caught in a pair of never-before-seen glasses. Behind Ben, the wind whipped up. Something about the house seemed cozy, and for the first time in ages, he wanted to be inside.
“I know it’s late, sir. But I have something to say to you.”
“I’d say it’s late, boy. It’s almost midnight. Do your parents know you’re out here?”
Ben looked down at the stoop, his cheeks hot. Mr. Cillo was referring to Ben’s runaway escapade, one that he had been drawn into, a favor that he knew was unwise, hadn’t wanted to give. The sureness of purpose Ben had had moments before evaporated.
“No, sir. But I couldn’t sleep. I know you can’t either. I see you awake every night.”
Mr. Cillo wrinkled his brow, and Ben noticed his eyebrow hairs were long and tangled. He crossed his arms over his gut. “You peeping in my windows, son?”
“I can’t help but see. We’re so close, our houses…” Ben was fumbling. In his ear, the impatient click click of bone in socket.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” Ben blurted. A leak had given way, and something hot and heavy poured out of him.