“They did.” He turned to face her and he never looked so sad. “I’ve seen it already.”
“You knew about it?” Bridget couldn’t keep her voice even. But then it clicked, of course he did. He knew everything they did. He watched them, their lives his own personal play. She pushed her palm against her forehead to stop the spin. “Nate, help me help you, for God’s sake—”
“Bridget, she told me about the party. She told me and I didn’t believe her.” He let out an indistinct sound, like a guttural groan. His fingers went to his lips, tracing the edge with his thumb. His eyes darting, his voice a whispered regret. “I told her that I didn’t believe her.”
CHAPTER 33
Lucia, April 18, 2015: Three days before the birds fell Party at Temp’s, the text said. Taylor.
They would go days without talking and Taylor would come back, sickly sweet and sorry. Lucia didn’t care: only a few more months and then Taylor was gone. So was everyone else, scattering like leaves in the wind.
Gonna be lit.
She pocketed her phone, the screen cracked and broken. It only worked half the time; she’d gotten it from Walmart and paid for month-to-month data packages with her check from the Goodwill store. She could just pretend she never got it. No way was she going to Temp’s house. God, she hated that guy.
She hated all of them. Except Taylor. And Andrew. She didn’t think about Andrew.
Come over. Randy from the Goodwill. She wanted to go there less than Temp’s.
Taylor had asked her once, her nose wrinkled, are you dating him? Fucking him?
No, neither. Well, except that one time. He’d texted her all the time ever since. Even begged her one, just one more time, just the tip in.
It was so fucking desperate. But sometimes it felt nice, to be that wanted.
C’mon, hooker. You’re coming w/. Taylor again. Drinks for days.
She hadn’t heard from Taylor in a week. Why now?
C’mon, we’ll Xbox and chill. Randy.
Oh God. Lucia rolled her eyes.
She texted back to Taylor. You gotta get me.
OMW. On my way.
She muted her phone.
?????
Taylor brought her clothes. A tank top and jeans, decent ones from Free People. Like a hundred dollars. Lucia changed in the bathroom, running her hands up and down the denim, softer than anything she’d ever felt. The top was thin, a flimsy black, but silky. So hot; Lucia had never worn anything so perfect.
She brushed out her hair, wore it long, worked hair cream into her scalp until it flowed, clean and billowing down her back, her chest, dipping into the cleavage. She slid her fingertips along her scalp, above her neck over the healing scars. She hadn’t pulled in days. The pain was dull, like the tip of a safety scissor.
She stripped and quickly put on her red bra, the one with the lace that Randy had bought her from the store. The nicest lingerie she owned, and it had been someone else’s first. There was a rip under the right tit, but who would see it besides Randy (he liked to slip his finger into it, called it easy access).
You were no one if you were poor in this town. More accurately, you were just like everyone else who didn’t matter.
Taylor gave her booties, gray and soft suede, a zipper up the side. She felt like goddamn Cinderella.
“You look ridic,” Taylor said, and Lucia laughed in the mirror, her red mouth open. There was a crack there, from when Lenny punched it a year ago. She heard the glass break from her room and rushed out to see the blood all over his hand. A piece of the mirror had fallen out of the middle, weirdly in the shape of a jagged heart.
When she laughed, the spot where the heart used to be fit perfectly into her mouth, and it looked like her face was cracking wide open.
Maybe for the night, she could just be wide open.
?????
It was so loud she couldn’t even think. Josh’s house was the biggest house she’d ever seen. She’d never been inside.
Andrew handed Lucia and Taylor two cups, his arm around each of them, like they were his. She downed her juice; it tasted like fruit punch Kool-Aid, the kind Jimmy used to make them before everything went bad, when the mill was still open and Lenny was just a kid. They were all just kids. It would be so much fun to be like that again, filled with bright red Kool-Aid. She could feel it there in her blood, right away, pulsing like something alive, all that sugar and sweetness.
She wanted to spin like that time with Taylor in the fountain.
Andrew looked at her, not Taylor. His eyes up and down her face, her body. He smiled.
She wrapped her hands around his arm.
He kissed her neck.
Taylor got them all more drinks, more juice in clear cups.
“Selfie!” Taylor demanded, her face pushed up against Andrew’s mouth. Andrew pulled Lucia against him, his body unyielding like a stone wall. She could feel the bones in his shoulder under her fingertips. He was thin, but strong. His eyes sleepy.
“My girls,” he said in her ear, his breath sweet, his skin moist, tangy, like cologne and sweat.
Lucia pushed her face against Taylor’s, all their lips together, like a three-way kiss.
They all laughed and Andrew leaned his body against hers.
“When’d you get so hot?” he breathed.
?????
Later, the rooms ran together, so many rooms. She was sure she’d never been in so many rooms in her life. She found the bathroom, a full mirror the size of a wall.
She’d hardly ever looked in a mirror that didn’t have a crack in it.
She looked. She stood there in the soft bathroom light (so many lights, why did they need pink lights? But God, the pink made her skin look nice) looking in the mirror in the red bra. What had happened to her shirt?
She heard them call her, Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu “Come upstairs! I’m upstairs!” she yelled out, running her nail along the tear in the red silk.
Back in a bedroom, she didn’t know whose, but she assumed Josh. Trophies everywhere. So much gold, was it real?
On the bed, she lay down. Her eyes so tired, the room spun around her.
?????
Sometime later, Heyyyyyy baby. Wake up babbbbyyyyyy.
Her stomach roiled, flipped with the sweetness.
There were two Andrews, one Porter.
“She’s wild like that.”
Lucia smiled, she never wanted to be wild. To be the witch, the weird one with the white hair.
I want to go home now. Can I go home now?
“Say you want it, honey. Say yes.”
Yes. I want to go home.
“Say you want it, honey. Say yes.”
“Yes.” Her voice wasn’t her voice, it was like the voice of an alien. Or a monster. She laughed then, spinning, spinning, spinning in her mind. The voice of a witch.
?????
Even later, Taylor, somewhere Taylor, Luuuuuuuluuuuuuuuuu. Luuuuuuuuuuuuluuuuuuuu!
Andrew’s face, a bead of sweat there on the side of his nose. His bare skin beneath her hands. Her hips lifted up to his hips.
A pain, sharp and cutting right into her center, a hot knife through butter.
Like she was being split wide open.
CHAPTER 34