It would be so easy.
Jade opens and closes her right hand, going through the motions, licking her lips with anticipation.
Except… she’d sort of thrown up just from stabbing that dead bird with her litter stick, hadn’t she? Wouldn’t pushing a coat hanger into a human ear require her to muscle through some membrane or thin bone or something, to get to the brain?
She’s a gorehound, a horror fiend, the more brutal the better, bring it on, faster, pussycat, kill kill kill, but that’s all on-screen. And at some level she never forgets that all the blood’s corn syrup.
Still, she tells herself, she could do it.
Just, not tonight.
Rather, some other time when her alibi is bulletproof. And maybe not both at once, maybe not even Rexall at all, since he’s no more aware of being alive than a jellyfish or mushroom. And, just one of them doesn’t draw the same suspicion, does it? Especially when that one’s whole life since his car wreck in high school is time he’s been stealing. This is just Final Destination: Death, calling in its marker. That coat hanger in the ear would be more just a function of nature, wouldn’t it?
Jade nods to herself about all of this, part of her fully aware that she’s made this same plan twenty times before. Fifty times. Ever since junior high, really, with all manner of household implements, with every last screwdriver in the toolbox, with all the rakes and shovels and hoes in the shed.
This time she means it, though.
“Bang,” she says, looking down her finger at her father, but she also sort of sees herself standing here, adopting that pose —sees herself as Hardy would, as Mr. Holmes would: another teenager who hates the parent she’s stuck with. And that’s the only way they have to see her, too, which is the catch-22
bullshit of it all.
Still, Jade angles the barrel of her finger over, drills a bullet into Rexall as well, just for good measure, and then freezes when Rexall hikes a leg up in an obscene pose, almost in response.
Jade angles her face up to stare through the ceiling, away from this moment, only slowly realizing she’s listening to something. She cocks her head over to let the sound drain in better: somewhere far above Proofrock, Mr. Holmes’s tiny rotors are whapping at the air. Either him or that’s another LifeFlight up there, and, if it is, then who for this time? Who for and how late?
Let Letha handle it, though. Which means: let Letha witness it. Let it all stack up in her head, because she’s the one who’s going to need it as fuel for her big turnaround.
What Jade needs is… sleep?
Except, as much as she hates it, here in her living room are two survivors, two witnesses to what happened to Clate Rodgers. Two idiots who could tell her if the Umiak had been tied to the pier or not. That her father was wet in the alley meant he had to have been the one wading past the crusty pylons to find a latchpoint on that sleek white hull, Rexall high and dry playing lookout, Clate bobbing under the pier, psyching himself up. Well, shotgunning another beer anyway.
Same difference.
Problem is, asking Tab Daniels for a version of this will be putting him up on a throne for as long as Jade needs that answer, won’t it? When she’s promised and sworn and vowed to never ask him for a single thing again, no matter what.
Jade comes back to her father’s sleeping face. There’s a beer in the crook of his arm, its longneck nestled in his armpit.
When he shifts, it starts to seep into his pearl snap shirt, a slow flower of darkness to match all the faded-out flowers in the print. Jade watches it bloom as long as she can, finally has to ghost forward, tiptoe between, sneak the bottle up and out.
What she tells herself is that she’s Ripley, crawling over a sleeping alien. She’s Sidney, squirming over an unconscious Ghostface. But really she just doesn’t want her dad feeling that wetness and waking.
Much better to let him sleep on.
Instead of taking a swig of the warm beer, she settles it onto the taped-together coffee table with the other empties. That’s another thing she’s promised and sworn, mumbled vows about: never to drink beer like him. Cigarettes, sure, smoking doesn’t make you stupid, just dead. But if she ever drinks, then that opens the door on a future where she someday shares a beer with her dad, and that’s not a door she’ll ever let life drag her through.
She could nudge Rexall awake, she supposes. Tricking him into telling her about what happened to Clate would be cake, less than cake. Except… talking to him would mean talking to him, and she’s not that desperate. Even at four in the morning.