He kept his eyes on me as he unclenched his fingers, pulled his hand away. It hung awkwardly next to him. He seemed to have forgotten his hand belonged to him. The stranger was scrawnier with all his bluster scraped away. The smell of his sweat reached me, stringent, bitter. I was slowly recognizing that he couldn’t do anything to me. Not as long as I kept my gaze on him. It felt unnatural, dangerous, like I was standing outside in an electrical storm, daring the lightning not to strike.
“You’re going to stand here,” I said, and then made my words clearer, smoother. “Stand here while I go back to my room. And then go away. Go far away from this motel.”
He gave no indication that he’d heard except for a muscle in his jaw denting inward. But he didn’t move. I’d never experienced this before. Somebody held in place by my words alone. I laughed, the laugh cracking around the edges so it sounded closer to a sob.
Then I began to walk away. Cautiously. Slowly. There was no rush behind me. No hand on my shoulder.
I’d only gone a few feet when something occurred to me. I turned back around. The stranger watched me, warily blinking. I caught fear mixed in with the anger now—he’d thought he was free of me. “Tell me what you were going to do to me,” I said impulsively.
His mouth moved for a few seconds, soundless.
“Tell me,” I said, stepping closer, “what you were going to do to me.”
I was right in front of him now. Our eyes locked again, and his big dark pupils had soured with rage. “I was going to have some fun,” he said.
The euphemism was so stupid and insulting. I was ready to push him for more, when I realized that he’d already confessed: he was going to have some fun. Whatever that meant to him in the moment, I was meaningless. A means to his end.
I shut my eyes, opened them again. At the edge of the lot, the halogen glow flickered. I swore I could hear the underwater ebb of his heartbeat. “Have fun, then,” I said. And I leaned in close, so close that my words stirred the hair at his temple, and I told him exactly what he’d do. Exactly how he’d get his fun. I wanted him to know what it had felt like when he’d grabbed my shoulder. What it felt like to be reminded that you were small and helpless.
He listened. He obeyed.
* * *
I’d never had the anxiety dream about losing my teeth, incisors and molars shedding out of my gums. In my dreams, I was already toothless, empty-gummed, my mouth loose and hollow. I knelt in ashes, stirring them with my fingertips, searching, searching, until I found all of the teeth. Fiona’s teeth. So tiny, like seed pearls, and still blazing hot from the fire, searing the tender skin of my palm as I collected them one by one. I fit them into my adult mouth, sending electric waves curling right up into my brain.
15
“Tom,” I said, impatient. “Let me try.” The morning sunlight was warm on my skin, the air already humid. We’d been in Goulding for half an hour without tracking down the Bowers. Between my mother’s notebook and Tom’s careful research, we knew we had the right town, but nobody would share the Bowers’ exact address with Tom.
Tom hesitated. “What if somebody recognizes you?”
He had a point. As her doppelg?nger, I was a walking WANTED poster for my mother. Growing up, there’d been a reminder of our similarities pinned in the eyes of anyone who saw us together. The double-takes. The comments: Why, you two could be twins! Never with that twinkly friendliness they used with other mother-daughter pairs. With us, it was an accusation, a demand for explanation. It had only gotten worse since I’d sprouted into puberty.
“Just let me try,” I said. What had happened last night was still buzzing around in my head. I wanted to feel it again.
Tom lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Yeah. Go ahead.”
Goulding was a small town, accessible only via a long, twisting road, dropping off steeply on one side. Beyond the road, a vast ocean of Ozarks forest, trees for miles. The town proper was an unexpected tourist trap. Gift shops selling hillbilly souvenirs, hand-carved mallard ducks and walking sticks. Bins of mix-and-match healing crystals next to airbrushed Tshirts. I waited, watching the faces going past. A woman approached, her kind, sun-roughened face marking her as a likely local.
“Excuse me,” I called, and she paused, patient in the way of someone who dealt with lost tourists on a regular basis.
At the back of my mind, I knew I could lock my eyes against hers and tug the information right out of her. I wanted it so badly. I let my eyes rest against her unassuming gaze. Her eyes a watery green, ringed in liner—but I realized that I’d be doing this in broad daylight, out in front of everybody, making it real, and I pulled back at the last moment. “Sorry, but do you know where I can find Tonya Bower?”