Harry pointed to me, to himself, to Denton’s driveway flanking the left side of his house. I inhaled the ocean air, held it in, and nodded. Low to the ground, careful where my shoes landed, I tiptoed. We skirted the police cruiser parked by the garage. Near the bottom of the flagstone staircase I withdrew the gray cast from my hoodie. It was dense and pliable like a rubber stamp.
The stream of blood from the water bottle wetted the pads. I coated the paw and stamped the prints in the pattern of an animal hunting in the yard. Coated the paw again. From the lawn to the flagstone stairs to the white planks of the porch, it stalked. Meanwhile, Harry painted the porch in blood. The nozzle of his water bottle skated the white banister. Red trickled down the white pickets in a charnel candy cane stripe.
Never had I smelled that much blood. My knuckles were weak at the scent; stomach roiled; nose twitched. It was not completely unpleasant. Closer to the moist potting soil of the vegetable garden than the chemical emergency room.
The animal pawed at the sunshine-yellow front door. I bared my teeth, unable to resist falling into the character of a beast. Blood smeared in determined streaks. Harry was working on the windows by then, squirting the blood in zigzags that ran to cover the panes.
I leaped down the front steps, crouched on the narrow path that meandered to the sidewalk. The animal left a trail down it. It cut onto the grass and took up its bloody mission by the mailbox. I made it rain, transfixed at the path each scarlet drop cut, wanting to dance to the pitter-patter on the cement. Harry doused the windshield of a white sedan parked on the street and the animal joined him, leaving its tracks on the car’s hood.
Harry and I paused to take stock of what we’d done, of each other. He was rounded over, his elbows bent like the bowing front legs of a prowling beast, his hair locked into place by a blackening splash, and a bloody pendant at his throat. My chest heaved. I straightened up from my animal hunch. Had to consciously will myself to smile like a girl and not a dog baring its teeth.
We’d dressed Denton’s porch in death. Painted in blood like it was finger paint. My chest rose and fell faster at the rush. A manic giggle escaped. My fingers played with their slippery coat of blood.
The mechanics of the plan had seemed tidy and remote. A series of supplies to be gathered. A night to show up. A message to send. My chest tightened with hope that Denton would get that message. Her blood is on your hands.
The ambush of blood our plan created was art. A forsaken, animal art. Like revenge. Like hunting prey. And now that we’d painted in blood, was there anything taboo or forbidden?
Graham and Viv met us in the waist-high grasses behind Denton’s. Viv spun as we approached. Giant black pupils latching onto us, yet no recognition registered in them. Her white dress, slick and glistening with red, clung to her chest. A thumbprint of blood had dried on the corner of her mouth and both knees were capped in red like she’d been crawling. Graham’s sleeves dripped on the dirt. The tip of his mask’s long-hooked nose was black and wet.
None of us spoke. In hindsight, how bizarre not to compare notes or to check that all went according to plan. My tongue pushed against the back of my teeth as we jogged. I drew loud, openmouth breaths. Pants. Words didn’t exist. We were wolves, bounding, the scent of blood on us driving the insects louder.
Not until we reached the Orchard did Izzie click on. I was shivering—how long had I been cold? Viv had disappeared from my side—when?
I cut off from the boys and sprinted in the direction I sensed her in. I burst upon our street. There was no more fog, only houses watching with their gaping black eyes. I know what you did stares. I went to retreat for the orchard. But there she was, materialized in the distance, down the street. I let my mask sag at the base of my skull, the ribbon taut on my throat as I ran. Viv was covered in blood. We both were. Anyone peering from between their curtains would call the police. I laughed, because would they? Would the neighbors who didn’t give a shit about dead Goldilocks worry for us?
I closed in on her as she stood from the sidewalk and stared, spellbound by something on the roof. I checked behind me for Graham and Harry. If they noticed we were gone, they hadn’t caught up with us.
“Viv,” I attempted whispering, her name coming out a formless sigh.
I crept up on her like she was an animal that would startle. Or strike. She didn’t react as I took her limp hand. “What?” I murmured.
“Mr. Kirkpatrick’s house,” she said, and I winced at the clarity and scrape of all those consonants.
“So?”
“He hoses off the sidewalk every morning. I always see him.”
I could picture it. Mr. Kirkpatrick, hose in hand, wearing gardening gloves and clogs, power spraying the sidewalk. I’d seen it often enough.
“There was blood on it the day before we found her. He washed it off.”
I closed my eyes and opened them like you do after a sneeze. Tingling. Dizzy. The whole night scene changed, though I couldn’t say how. Words were easy then. “That’s the morning after Goldilocks left the Ghost Tunnel for the gas station. Blood on the sidewalk that coincides with her time of death.” I glared at the dark recesses of Mr. Kirkpatrick’s house. No curtains or drapes. A sleeping, middle-aged man lying unconscious somewhere inside.
“He found blood and Mr. OCD freaked that it soiled his pristine sidewalk,” she said, and then spat angrily at the ground.
My hands fisted around the plastic bottle, acutely aware of the lightness of the remaining blood. “It’s not enough.” Perhaps I meant the blood I had left or her spitting or both. I poured the blood onto Mr. Kirkpatrick’s mailbox. The water bottle gave a last, wet gasp aimed at his living-room window. “Not fucking enough,” I muttered.
“What are you doing?”
Graham and Harry were in the street.
“What the hell?” Graham whisper-shouted. Harry’s hands were frantically waving; the spirit of the night still mystifying him.
One last look up at the dark, unshuttered windows of the second story and I said, “C’mon,” to Viv.
She yanked her hand away.
“No,” she said, eyes panicked. “There’s worse.”
“Worse what?”
“They heard her, Izzie. They heard the girl crying and they ignored her.”
“Who are they, Vivian?”
17
Viv wrung her hands free of blood as she stood before us in the barn. It stained her wrists and forearms like a rash. The mask’s ribbon at my throat rubbed the skin raw. I let it abrade the softness there. I focused on the manageable burn. It was easier waiting for Viv to explain with a distraction. They. They heard her crying. Goldilocks made noise. I had often wondered what kind. A tiny moan caught in her throat because she didn’t see it coming. A harsh scream full of despair and understanding.