“I should go.”
“Wait—don’t,” he says, and then he turns red. “I mean, I want to show you something.”
I’m in the passenger side of Michael’s car, watching Hallowed fly past, a picture of midmorning quiet. It’s overcast and cold, and the sun barely kisses the houses lining the streets. After a while, Hallowell disappears and we pull onto a dirt road that leads out of town. I watch, as the wheels kick up dust in the rearview.
Michael is a quiet comfort beside me. I like him beside me. After thirty minutes or so, the road goes smooth and then rough again. Another dirt road. We stay on this one a long time, until a familiar black convertible comes into view.
My chest tightens and my hand goes for the door.
“It’s okay,” Michael says quickly. “Regina, he’s not here.”
I stare at the convertible parked on the side of the road. Donnie’s not here. It sinks in slowly. What that means. Donnie’s not here. But his car is.
And then I feel like I’ve chased a bunch of speed with twenty cups of coffee.
Michael eases the Saturn to a stop behind the convertible.
“He’ll never find it out here.” He pulls a different set of keys from his pockets. I recognize the little Swiss Army knife keychain. “Left them in the ignition. Idiot.” He tosses them from hand to hand. “No one’s going to give him a ride anywhere. He’ll have to hoof it for who knows how long. So I was thinking we put the top down, because it’s supposed to rain all week, and leave the keys inside for anyone to find….”
Michael hands me the keys. I close my fingers around them. They’re warm from his grasp and now they’re in mine. Donnie loves that convertible.
It’s the only thing he has.
I get out of the car and approach it carefully, slowly. I don’t even know where to start, so I get into the driver’s side, where Donnie sits every day, and think. And then I put the top down and shove the keys in the ignition. I feel empty. It’s not enough.
And then I get an idea.
The coffee-and-speed feeling comes back more intensely than before. I grab the keys again. This is perfect. I get out of the car. So perfect. I fingernail the knife out of the cover. I’m vaguely aware of Michael watching as I drag the tip of the knife down the driver’s side of the convertible. I press in hard. It’s a beautiful sound.
It’s a beautiful scratch.
And then I do it again.
Again. Again.
I step back and admire my handiwork. Four perfect scratches down the length of his classic convertible, but it still isn’t enough. I could do better.
I need to stop looking at it like a car and more like a canvas.
I drop to my knees. My fingers are wrapped so tightly around the keys they hurt, but it’s a good hurt. I move to the farthest side of the car and start making art—a big letter D. I follow it with an O. U . I carve deep, going over the letters as hard as I can. C. H. E . It takes a while. My fingers go numb. I stop at the E and uncurl my fingers. I rub them and wait for the feeling to return. That takes a while, too.
“Nice,” Michael says, coming up behind me.
“I’m not done,” I say, and then I get to work on the B. The letters cross over the original lines I made and this is definitely art. This feels good. I imagine the car is Kara and I imagine the car is Anna. I imagine the metal as their skin, and it feels even better. That’s sick. Even I know how sick that is.
It’s as sick as locking me in a closet with the guy who tried to rape me.
I drop the knife.
For a minute, all I see is us. Me and Anna. Kara and Jeanette and Mara. No Josh, no Donnie, no Michael. Nothing is complicated. We are the sweet side of thirteen, traipsing down the main street, and we’re eating out for lunch, the first time off campus. It’s a Big Deal. We have to get permission slips and everything. I see Marta and Jeanette, and they’re oblivious, happy. Kara is overweight, dour even when she smiles, and we’re not close but we’re not there—here—yet. And Anna is this carefree vision that makes my heart ache, because I don’t know what happened to her, but she used to be good.
We’re sick. We’re sick. We’re sick girls.
Michael kneels down beside me. “A,” he says.
I get back to work: A .
G.
Done. I’m drenched in sweat and my bangs are stuck to my forehead. I take a deep breath and press my hands against the ground and just ride it out, and when I’m sure I’m not going to cry, I lean back and stare at the car, and I can feel how close Michael is beside me.
“You did this for me,” I say slowly. “But we’re not friends.”
“Regina,” he says, “I…” But he never finishes.
I stare at the ground and all I can think about is Michael’s mouth against my mouth and Donnie’s keys in my hands and how funny they felt against my palm, like a metal revelation.
It’s like the evolution of anger. It doesn’t have to be loud all the time .
Now it’s just quiet and it’s all of me.
I cross the school parking lot and feel like a junkie looking for a fix, but I’m not sure what my next fix is. I just know it’s in this building. I pull the front doors open and step into three-quarters of my old crowd. Anna, Kara, and Jeanette stare at me like they can’t believe I’ve done it, and now that I’ve done it, I can’t believe it either. And then I just stand there, paralyzed. I can’t move. Something is going to happen.
I’m just not sure what.
“Jesus Christ, Regina, just go”
I study each and every one of them, committing their faces to memory. I know what they look like, but I want to make sure I remember them this way, post-locking me in a closet with Donnie. My fingers curl. in on themselves, and I bite my tongue so hard, I taste blood. I hate these girls I hate these girls I hate these girls.
“Are you fucking deaf?” Kara.
“Forget it,” Anna says impatiently. “Marta can find us at my locker.”
She moves out and Jeanette follows after her, but Kara stays behind to smirk. All I’d have to do is reach out and choke, she’s that close. It’d be so easy and it would feel so good. But I can’t move.
“Kara.” Anna. Her Here, girl, voice. I remember that voice.
Kara gives me one last look and hurries after Anna. She’s fucked if she thinks I’m done with her. I take a sharp breath in, and my body comes back to me; I can move, but now I have to wait. I lean against the wall and watch people filter in until the bell rings. When it finally does, I head up the stairs and down the hall to her locker, and she’s there.
Alone.
She doesn’t see me coming until I’m shoving her against the locker. She makes a startled noise, but she rallies quickly and shoves me back, and I shove her again and it’s my palms on her shoulders. This beautiful adrenaline rush. I will kill her.
She sees it in me and manages to slip away before I can do it.
I’m not going to chase her. Not yet.
The hall is empty. Class noises ghost in. I lean against Kara’s locker and come down, but I don’t want to come down. Someone shuffles my way. I turn. Donnie. He looks like shit. There are bags under his eyes and his hair is greasy. It’s weird that we’re living in two separate but similar hells. That Anna has found a way to make him miserable and I’m not a part of it.
I really would have liked to have been a part of it.
“Where’s your car?” I ask.
He stops and looks at me, confused. Not confused about what I’ve asked him, but that I’ve asked him and that I’m not scared. I like the way it feels.
“None of your fucking business,” he mutters. And then, “It’s getting work done.”
“No it’s not.”
I steel myself. I watch him process it, watch the color of his face start building to a good red.
“What did you do to my car?” he growls.
“Don’t worry, Donnie,” I say. “It’ll turn up. Eventually.”
He comes close, so close. At-the-party close. My heart beats crazy in my chest, but I know none of it is on my face, so I just keep going. “What? It still runs.”
He brings his fist up and slams his knuckles into the metal beside my head.
“Tell me where it is or you’re dead, Afton.”
He’s breathing heavily. He wants to hurt me, but I’m not entirely convinced that he will. We stare at each other, our eyes locked, and I raise my chin.
Do something.
“What’s going on?” We turn, startled by this new voice. Brenner stands in the middle of the hall, his arms crossed. Donnie backs off. “Get to class, both of you.”
Donnie goes one way and I go the other. That was stupid. That was stupid. That was stupid. That was really, really stupid. But I’d do it again in a second, just to have that moment that felt like it was mine.
I walk down the hall. All I can think about is what’s next, the next moment that’s mine. I’m not going to class. I’m not going to find it in class. I wander the halls seeking it out until the adrenaline fades, and the bell rings again.
It’s strange walking with these bodies, all on their way to class. This is their day-to-day. Nothing bothers them, and the things that might bother them are nothing. I roll my shoulders, I flex my fingers. There’s something inside me that needs somewhere to go. I feel quiet-reckless-crazy. I feel like …I could shove my knuckles into metal and it would never hurt. I feel dead inside.
I round the corner and spot Michael at the end of the hall talking to Liz. I stop. My heart stops. I duck into the spaces between rows of lockers because I’m avoiding him. After the closet with Donnie, the kiss, the car, I see him and I can’t breathe. I’m scared of what I felt both times—when my mouth was on his mouth and after he put his hands on my wrists and told me no.
I peek around the corner and watch him talk to Liz. I want to see what that looks like—if there’s something there when he talks to her that isn’t there when he talks to me. It’s effortless. They aren’t into each other like that, but he’s leaning against the locker and she’s close the way friends are close. She says something to him and he says something back and smiles and laughs. I’m struck by how amazing it is and how sad that makes me, because I’ve never seen that. He’s not like that around me. The way his mouth quirks and lights up his eyes. He should smile more often. It’s so innocent.