Catch the ball, he says, and I catch it. Are they my hands or his?
Chase me, he says. Find me. It’s too easy. To lose him, I’d have to lose myself.
He wants me to laugh. Shows me how. Shows me funny things. Cats that fall off tables. Teenagers skateboarding into lakes.
You’re my only friend, he tells me sometimes. But that’s only true because his mother keeps him home from school. Because he has dirty clothes. Because he can’t invite anyone over.
I’m scared she’ll die. I want her to hold me when I am crying, when I am feverish, when I am afraid. Want her to smooth back my hair. Kiss my forehead. I hate her. Maybe I’d be better off if she were dead. None of those feelings are mine, but they become mine. They become me.
Sometimes she takes us to the supermarket and only puts the cheap, heavy stuff in her cart. Sugar. Flour. Milk. She tells him to shove packages of chicken breasts and pork chops into his backpack.
No candy, she says. They expect kids to steal candy. That’s how they catch you.
There are mirrored pieces of the ceiling that let people watch. There are security cameras.
But none of them are watching me. We take what she wants. We take candy. We take everything.
Then his grandfather takes us to his big house, where there is a girl to play with and enough food for everyone. If Remy is hungry, someone makes him food. If Remy cries, someone will come. But Remy doesn’t cry anymore. He gives all his tears to me.
The arrangement is simple. We can stay here so long as I do bad things. People have a spark inside of them, and what I have to do is put it out. Every time I do, some of the spark gets on me, in me like the smear left behind from crushing a lightning bug. Killing is easier than stealing, but I don’t like the way that Remy looks at me when we’re done.
I am changing. The sparks are doing something.
I am having trouble going back to sleep when Remy doesn’t need me.
I am restless. Something is wrong with me. Something is right with me. I can do things that Remy doesn’t know about. When he’s asleep, I wander the house, the thin tether never growing taut. I can juggle oranges, and turn on the radio like a poltergeist. Read books, draw a picture in the condensation on the windows.
It’s my idea, the first time. I want to see what will happen. Cut the cord. And then when it happens, I am scared. There is an emptiness where Remy was, and it feels like falling through the night. I have never been alone. There isn’t enough of me to be alone.
Each time it happens, I forget things. Little things. Where I was. How long I was gone.
Adeline tells me things, but they’re not all true. I don’t want to listen to her anymore.
Sometimes, the air around me feels charged, like a storm coming on. I think I might be angry. I think I might be furious. I think I might be about to do something I am going to regret.
Remy makes me a promise. Shhhhh. We’re going to run away. Then it will be just me and not me and not him. He’s going to fix me. He’s going to help me.
But first, blot out a few more sparks. Drown a few more stars.
19
CANDY CRACKS TEETH
Charlie texted Doreen that she’d gotten the ring and then took herself to Blue Ruin to wait and think through what she was going to do with Knight Singh’s book.
The bar was in a tiny, grotty brick building, far from the downtown. On the outside, a faded sign proclaimed it “The Bluebird.” No one ever called it that, though. It was a third-shift bar, opening at five a.m. and announcing last call at two a.m. Between two and five, it became a restaurant with an extremely limited menu. If you ordered enough cocktails to get you through the three-hour lull in service, you could drink for twenty-four hours straight.
The five a.m. crowd were usually nurses and doctors from Cooley Dickinson Hospital, mixed in with maintenance workers, hospital concierges, and second-shift restaurant workers looking for a place to go after exhausting all other venues.
Blue Ruin wasn’t pretty. The scarred bar and tables in it had been purchased during the liquidation sale of an old tavern and didn’t fit well into the space. The floor was sticky all the way to the door, the liquor was served in plastic cups, and the only thing they had for garnish were sad-looking limes.
If ever there was a bar that perfectly captured how Charlie felt that afternoon, it was Blue Ruin. She sat down on a stool, reassured to know she could stay all night.
* * *
A n hour later, she was three Maker’s Marks in, with no desire to slow down.
Doreen had texted to say that she was on her way over and a lot of other things that Charlie hadn’t bothered to read. Charlie had another text from her high school friend Laura about missing her barbecue, plus one from her mother about her new boyfriend’s birthday and how she was hoping they could all get together. Maybe the girls would like to host, since their place was bigger?