His face reddened and veins stood out under his scalp. He tried to break loose and she squeezed tighter with her legs. He tried to push himself up off the floor, and she uncrossed her ankles and kicked out one of his legs. He managed to get his hands on the floor and push himself up, and she hung on, squeezing harder, crying now, screaming, a lifetime of fear and grief and hatred and rage surging up through her arms and out her mouth. His eyes bulged more and his tongue stuck out and a sound came from his throat—a rattling, gurgling, breaking sound. She screamed louder and squeezed harder, looking into his dying, terrified eyes, imagining herself squeezing so hard her arms would go through his neck and cut his entire head off. Harder. Harder. She couldn’t have stopped if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t want to. Stopping was the last thing she wanted.
All at once, his struggles faded. His eyes rolled up, his tongue flopped loose, and his body went limp on top of her. She hung on, sobbing, squeezing.
She wasn’t sure how much time went by. A few seconds. A few minutes. Then the door opened. Livia looked up and saw Mrs. Lone, her mouth hanging open in shock. She must have heard the commotion, and become so concerned she couldn’t ignore it. Her face contorted. And then she screamed.
Livia squirmed loose from under Mr. Lone’s limp form and got to her feet, panting.
“What have you done?” Mrs. Lone screamed, her eyes wide and horrified. “You little whore, what have you done?”
The red haze was fading now, colors returning to normal. But Livia’s breath still felt as hot as smoke.
“You . . . you killed him! You filthy little slut, you whore, you killed him!”
Livia pulled down her sweater and glanced at him. He was lying facedown, his arms at his sides, not moving. Had she killed him? She hadn’t meant to. Or had she? She hadn’t been thinking. Something had just . . . switched on. Taken control.
“I’m calling the police,” Mrs. Lone said. “Right now.” She turned to go.
“Yes, call them. I want to tell them how your husband has been abusing me since I was thirteen. And how you knew all about it.”
Mrs. Lone stopped and turned back to her. Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You filthy, lying whore,” she hissed.
“If you didn’t know, why do you keep calling me a whore?”
For a long moment, Mrs. Lone stood frozen. Then she made a hitching, choking sound, as though she was going to vomit, and began to cry.
“You killed him!” she sobbed.
A strange coldness came over Livia. The dragon was suddenly gone, replaced by a feeling of perfect clarity. She picked up her panties and pulled them on, then her pants.
“No one has to know,” she said. And it was true. She was amazed at how quickly and clearly she was able to see it, see all of it. Almost as though some part of her had realized tonight might happen, and had been prepared for it. “No one has to know anything.”
Mrs. Lone raised her hands to the sides of her head. “What are you talking about? My husband is dead! You killed him!”
“No. We think he had a heart attack. He came to my room to congratulate me for winning the tournament, and then he collapsed.”
Mrs. Lone stared at her mutely.
“If you tell anyone I killed him,” Livia said, “I’ll tell them why. It’s that simple.”
“No one’s going to believe you, you lying piece of refugee trash!”
“I don’t know. Why would I have killed my great benefactor? For the rest of your life, they’ll always look at you, and wonder whether I was telling the truth. And how it could be that you didn’t know.”
Mrs. Lone made the vomiting sound again, but otherwise said nothing.
“Call nine-one-one. Tell them you heard me yell. He was lying on the floor when you got to my room. I told you he collapsed. You tried to revive him. CPR. But you were panicked and you didn’t know how. You were hitting him, trying to wake him up. That’s why he has marks on his neck.”
“They’ll do an autopsy. They’ll know it’s a lie.”
Livia realized on some level that the woman was listening to her, her objections now only practical ones, as though she wanted to be persuaded and just needed to be presented with a way.
“You know the police. They’ll listen to you. They were all tied up with him, I could see that, his friend Chief Emmanuel especially. Chief Emmanuel won’t want a scandal any more than you do. I think he knew more about your husband than you’d like. I think a lot of people knew, like you did, and won’t want anyone to know they knew. If you tell the police the right story, they won’t investigate.”
Mrs. Lone shook her head. “I won’t be part of this. I’ll see you in jail first.”
“Maybe. But I’ll be out in two years, when I’m eighteen.” She looked into Mrs. Lone’s eyes, letting her feel the truth of it. “And I know where you live.”
Mrs. Lone shook her head. “I can’t live with this. I can’t.”
“You won’t have to. After you call nine-one-one, call your brother. Rick. You’re upset now over the loss of your husband. You don’t want me in your house. You never did. You want Rick to take me in, just for the rest of this year and for my senior year, while you deal privately with your loss. Do that, and you’ll never hear from me again. Don’t do it, and the whole town will know your husband was nothing but a sick, disgusting child molester.”
Mrs. Lone brushed away tears. “Don’t you talk about him that way, you tramp. He had his flaws, his demons. But he was a great man.”
“It’s not me talking about him you have to worry about. It’s the town. And when they learn what he really was, I think you’ll be hearing more about his flaws than his greatness.”