“And she loved those girls. They were the sisters she never had. I shouldn’t have said that, about her being led. When she died up there on the hill, they were just having fun.”
It seemed to Ben that Mira and Francesca were always leading Connie away from things that could hurt. Like stopping her from heading behind the boathouse with two dudes. Running interference between her and Piggy, both drunk. Just the way she died—running after the girls, forgetting her EpiPen—smacked of Connie’s refusal to be left behind, and her recklessness.
Eddie slumped forward.
“They’re coming. Hold on, buddy.”
“It’s like I’m bein pun’shed. You eva feel that way? Like you’re bein pun’shed?”
Ben didn’t like the way Eddie was slurring his words. “Punched? You’re talking gibberish. Try and relax. That siren’s for you.” Ben tapped his sneaker on the floor, eyes sweeping the locker room desperately. He was starting to think Eddie might be the next Bismuth teen casualty.
“Not punched, knucklehead,” Eddie whispered. “Punished. For not having protected them good enough.”
“Shh now.”
“You. Them.” Eddie shook his head hard at the floor. “I could’ve protected you, too, but I didn’t. I didn’t tell when I knew.”
“That was a million years ago.” Ben didn’t like where Eddie was heading. Coach Freck had been in jail for seven years. His list of baseball players he touched—and Ben’s place on it—was old news; Ben was better now, and Eddie would never have said anything if he wasn’t half out of his mind with blood loss.
“You’re talking nonsense,” Ben said, a little roughly.
Eddie’s head tipped up, and he held Ben’s eye. The door banged open and a girl and a guy, paramedics not much older than Ben and Eddie, charged in, the guy pushing a wheelchair. The girl was small and pretty and grim looking, with a hard fringe of honey-colored bangs and a turned-up nose. The girl felt Eddie’s pulse while her partner kicked out the feet of the wheelchair.
Eddie raised his good hand weakly. “I ain’t walking out of here in that.”
The guy shoved Ben out of the way and lifted Eddie underneath his shoulders. “You ain’t walkin’,” the girl said, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his bicep. Eddie’s head lolled. Ben followed them out, suddenly conscious of his own shirtlessness, which seemed disturbing even though they were at a pool. He avoided the eyes of the mothers whispering “Villela” like an answer, or a curse. Little kids stared at Ben’s ribs. He looked down and saw blood smears across his torso like war paint. Walking behind the paramedics in their navy pants and white button-down shirts, Ben felt like a savage. He took mental inventory of the gawkers’ feet: tan toes, wrinkled toes, fat smooth kid toes. When the ambulance whined away, Ben wandered back into the locker room. Under the bench, Mira’s tiny note was speckled with blood. He snatched his nylon bag out of the locker and tucked the note inside, his thoughts flashing to a story where a man sewed a leather bag for a woman who carried her heart outside her body. Ben had found it hard to read—the descriptions of the heart made him gag—but it was exactly the kind of bag in which he could keep Mira’s letter (and the notes he would find. Oh, the notes!) protected, near his heart.
His cheeks grew hot at his own familiar dorkiness. Where the Cillo sisters made other guys behave worse than they actually were, Mira made Ben want to commit heroic acts.
Ben slunk back to the snack bar. Because they had no more shirts, the manager ordered Ben home immediately, and he waited for his mother in the parking lot, leaning against the plaster pelican with the Bismuth Boat Club sign in its beak, hugging his elbows to hide the blood.
SEPTEMBER 2015
Mira rolled off the bed and into the bathroom, unwinding her arms, pajama pant cuffs swishing above her ankles. She shifted on her hip and sighed.
Francesca had been scraping for close to an hour. She tore the brush through her hair, ripping from the roots, creating tangles. Mira thought of other times she’d seen her sister in the same trance. Like when their father found the tablet Francesca had borrowed from school, and she’d gone glassy-eyed under his hollering, tearing sheets of skin from the sides of her fingernails. And when he blocked her from getting her driver’s permit, biting the insides of both cheeks so hard they swelled, which made her look pouty. Even further back, after their mother died, and Bambi Maggiore appeared in the doorway with a pan of lasagna. They’d sat on the couch watching their father’s ears turn red, Bambi’s drugstore Vanilla Musk invading the room. Mira had watched Francesca file her fingernails into points and make fists, leaving four purple marks on the heel of each hand.
And though she knew the answer, Mira asked, “What’s wrong?”
The black nest of hair in the bristles grew.
“You’re going to be bald,” Mira warned.
The brush caught a snag. Francesca’s mouth twisted as she yanked. Mira eased Francesca’s hand from the handle. “Let me,” she said, tugging the clump. She cupped her sister’s shoulder and skimmed the brush lightly over the tangle.
Francesca stiffened.
“I’m trying to be gentle.” Mira set the brush on the slim edge of the pedestal sink. “Here, I’ll use my fingers.”
Mira weaved her fingers into her sister’s hair. Francesca relaxed slightly, her arms falling to her sides, eyes half closed, exhausted. Mira caught a bright red flash, a trick of light in the mirror, she thought, until she saw the tendrils of blood trailing down Francesca’s lax fingers.
Mira sucked in her breath. “You cut yourself!” she gasped, pointing into the mirror.
Francesca raised her hands, fingers curled into claws, twisting at the wrists. The blood reversed direction and curled back on itself, past the palm and the wrists and down the blue insides of her arms.
“What did you touch?”
“Nothing! I didn’t touch anything!” Francesca bent her elbows and gazed about her waist, as though admiring a pretty dress. “Am I bleeding from anywhere else?”
Mira shook her head. “Just your hands. Let me look at them.”
Francesca offered her palms to Mira, who lowered her head over the dark puddles. A thin stream bled from identical holes in her palms and crested the creases of her cocked wrists.
Francesca started to shake. “It keeps coming.”
Mira grasped her hands and squinted. She could not place where the bleeding started, or how such a thing could happen without cause, and she blinked to clear her vision, but nothing changed.
“Make it stop!” Francesca cried, her voice warbling.
Mira dropped her hands and shook a towel from its metal hoop with a hollow clang. She pressed it between Francesca’s fists, squeezing the tops between hers. As the towel grew bright with blood, a sticky warmth inside Mira’s own palms made her pull away.
“What?” Francesca squeaked.
“The blood is coming from both sides,” Mira sputtered.
Francesca swayed, her face draining of color.
“I’m getting Daddy!” Mira said.