After Janey was taken, the girls remained on the beach, ignoring the sunrise. At first they clustered together for support in her absence, but they have remained there ever since her return. They squat and sit on the sand in varying distances from Janey, watching Mary tend to her. Some look anxious, some furtive, some furious, some tired.
“What do we do now?” asks Mary, voicing the question in everyone’s head. “Carry on like we did before? If this continues, Janey, they’ll kill you. They already found us once.”
“We could stay separate all the time,” says Brenda. “Never gather, just hide.”
“Please, no,” says Brianna. “If we can’t all be together, I can’t do it. I’d have to go home.”
“We won’t separate,” says Janey. “Being together is the only thing we have. And we have to keep going as we were before, after what Rosie did. She shouted the truth to everyone—she did what Amanda wanted to do—we can’t just go back now.” Janey pauses and sighs, her face growing longer. She hadn’t meant to mention Amanda.
“But nobody will believe Rosie,” says Fiona. An incandescent sheath of fading bruises sweeps across her face and throat. “It doesn’t matter that she said it—they won’t believe her.”
Janey is silent for a long time, as the truth of this washes over her. The girls shift uneasily. Their feet, chill and bloodless, look as if they are made from wax.
“Maybe she planted a seed,” Mary finally says. “Maybe someday—”
“If we go back,” says Janey gravely, “it means we agree, that it’s not the truth, that it doesn’t matter. We keep going. It’s daytime: we should be hiding, we should be sleeping. Tonight we’ll meet at the beach—” She thinks. “Meet at the stretch behind the fields next to the spinner Saul’s house. Maybe they’ll find us again, I don’t know. Right now, you should sleep.”
“I can’t sleep,” says Violet.
“Well, you can’t stay here,” snaps Janey, and slowly, painfully, rises to her feet. The slices of seaweed draped around her writhe in the wind like snakes, and suddenly she resembles some sort of arcane goddess, a silvery, flame-crowned deity wreathed in serpents and blood. Power crackles from her like electricity as she stalks forward, parting the girls, and they scurry to do her bidding.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Vanessa
Vanessa was never particularly fond of Rosie, annoyed by her constant brashness and resentment. Yet she can’t help but admire her courage in trying to stop Mr. Balthazar’s whip. Vanessa is sure she must have suffered a harsh beating after her removal from Janey’s shaming. She wonders if Rosie has already returned to the beach, or if, like Letty, she is having a long and painful recovery at home.
She cannot stop picturing her last glimpse of Rosie, being carried limp and sobbing by Mr. Joseph like a dripping side of meat, her limbs swaying, her filthy hair covering her face. Over and over again, Vanessa sees Mr. Joseph’s rapid, purposeful strides, Rosie bumping against the side of his knee, disappearing into the fields.
After a couple of days, Vanessa stops by Rosie’s house after school. It’s a small, tightly built structure, and yet it shines like a palace next to the Jacobs’ ramshackle house slouching almost drunkenly next door. Vanessa knocks, waits a minute, and then knocks again.
Mrs. Gideon slowly opens the door, her pretty round face splotched with weeping, her eyes scarlet. Vanessa draws back a little and then whispers, “I’ve come to see Rosie…”
Mrs. Gideon begins sobbing in loud, hiccupping heaves. Tears wash down her face, laminating her cheekbones. She continues to cry, like a bleating sheep, while Vanessa stands there with her mouth slightly open and her hands half outstretched. Suddenly there are loud, angry footsteps, and she catches a glimpse of a furious Mr. Gideon, his dark, scowling face resembling Rosie’s, before he slams the door shut.
Vanessa stands shocked for a few moments and then makes her way home, so lost in thought that she has to redirect herself a few times after absentmindedly walking into random fields.
The next morning, instead of walking to school, Vanessa takes the path back to the Aarons’. Settling in the grass near the Gideons’ house, she watches for activity. For what feels like hours, nothing happens. Vanessa yawns, thinks vaguely of food, pokes at an anthill with some dry grass, daydreams. In the early afternoon, her patience is rewarded as Mr. Gideon leaves the house with a bag of tools. The hammer clenched in his hand makes her doubly glad she didn’t attempt the door again.
She waits a little longer, in case he forgot something and decided to return home, and then creeps to the Gideons’ door and knocks. There is no answer, despite her continued knocking. Finally, taking a deep breath, she simply opens the door and walks inside.
Mrs. Gideon is sitting at the kitchen table, her frizzy light hair haloed in sunlight, and she slowly raises her head and stares at Vanessa as if she were an apparition. “You again,” she says.
“Hello,” says Vanessa awkwardly, crossing her arms in front of her and shifting her weight to one hip.
“You wanted Rosie,” says Mrs. Gideon.
“I just wanted—”
“Rosie is dead,” hisses Mrs. Gideon. “She’s dead and you can’t see her.”
They stare at each other, Mrs. Gideon’s light blue, flooded eyes meeting Vanessa’s shocked stare.
“Brian says they were beating her,” says Mrs. Gideon. “They were beating her and she fell and hit her head. He says it was an accident.”
“An accident.”
“But I don’t believe him,” whispers Mrs. Gideon, her face suddenly contracted and ugly with hate. Her eyes narrow and radiate fury.
“No,” says Vanessa. “No.”
“They never showed me her body,” she cries bitterly. “They never let me see her. I wanted to dig her up and say good-bye but he won’t tell me where she is. He won’t tell me—” She breaks down in sobs, her tears falling gracelessly, splattering onto the kitchen table. Vanessa rises to comfort her, and realizes that her embrace would mean nothing, worse than nothing. She stands for a moment, respectfully witnessing Mrs. Gideon’s savage grief, and then walks quietly out of the house.
Vanessa knows who to tell at school. She whispers the news to Letty, whose face is now amber with old blood. She tells little Edith Aaron. She tells Dorothy Abraham, a year older than her, slow and unpopular and constantly trying to win affection with secrets. She tells Mildred Balthazar. She tells Frances Joseph. She watches the sadness and anger and confusion bloom on their faces.
Vanessa’s promise to stay home latches to her feet, weighs them down like shackles, like animals with their teeth cleaved to her ankles. She finds she cannot break it. And yet she is not completely powerless after all.
Chapter Forty
Janey