“What is … what are you…” An insect landed on his mouth. He dragged an arm across it, whimpering, then screamed as a fresh drift settled over him. “No,” he said. “No no no no—”
Then he stopped talking, mouth seamed tight against the onslaught. He was down, he was screaming with his lips closed, he was mashing his face into the sand. I didn’t know whether the insects were stinging or biting or just crawling over his skin, but they kept coming.
I hung back, horrified. Fee kicked sand at the guy, I think in an attempt to drive off the bugs. Marion stared. Her mouth was open, her face like a room someone had just walked out of, slamming the door.
“Help!” Sunburn screamed. “Help us!”
Down by the water a man in a backpack slowed down to watch. On the path a pair of cyclists swung off their bikes, peering across the sand.
“Time to go.” Fee was gathering our stuff, her voice calm but rising. “Let’s go now, now, right now, Marion, mueve tu culo!”
Marion snapped back to life. Her eyes were hot with shock, taking in the scene as if she were blameless. Then she ran.
“Wait!” yelled Sunburn, kneeling close but not too close to the man writhing on the ground. “Come back!”
We pounded over the sand. Marion’s boombox was in my arms. My eyes were watering, my legs rubbery with shock, and by the time we hit Morse I could barely stand.
“Stop,” I said, “stop.”
We held on to each other, we held each other up, the sounds coming out of our mouths something like laughter. Marion cut out abruptly and turned, vomiting French fries and Mal?rt over the grass. When she was done we held her up, rubbing her back while she cried.
* * *
What did you do?
“I don’t know,” Marion kept saying. “I don’t know.”
How did you do it?
There was vomit on the toes of her shoes. She scuffed them against a curb. “Please. Stop asking.”
We could hear that she meant it. We were quiet for as long as we could stand it. Then:
Could we do it, too?
We were sitting at the edge of the Dominick’s lot, empty snack bags sifting around our feet. Fee had run in to buy Marion water and came back with Bugles and Pop-Tarts and Cool Ranch Doritos. All of it tasted so good, so electric, blasted with fake flavor that singed my tongue. We kept laughing with fresh surprise, mouths full of sodium crumbs, remembering the way the Ferret had fallen to his knees, then farther, embracing the sand.
“Yes,” Marion said. She said it so shyly. Like an old-fashioned bride. “If you want to. We could do it together.”
If, she said. If we wanted to learn how to be ferocious, how to have power, how to bring shitheads to their knees. We’d never wanted anything as much as we wanted this.
CHAPTER TEN
The suburbs
Right now
I wheeled up the drive to find my brother sitting in the sun, rolling a joint. He squinted at me.
“Your mouth looks better. I thought you were grounded, though.”
I dropped my bike by the garage. “Whatever. You get away with so much worse.”
Hank shrugged, like Yeah, I do. “Dad told me what happened with your King Shit boyfriend. Need me to do something?”
“Ex-boyfriend. And definitely not.”
“Just call me next time, dumbass. If you need a ride.”
“Fine, but you better answer when I do.” I sat beside him. “So. Hank.”
“So. Ivy.”
“I know you don’t want to. Like, ever. But we need to talk about Mom.”
He kept his eyes on his work. “That’s actually the last thing we need to do.”
“I’m serious,” I persisted. “Something’s going on with her. You haven’t talked to her lately, have you?”
“Talked? To Mom? That’s funny.”
Their rocky relationship was a scab I tried not to pick. Usually. “Listen to me. Last night I saw her burying something in the backyard. So I dug it up.”
He took a beat. “Yeah?”
“It was a jar of blood. And broken glass. And blood! I mean, what the hell?”
“Was it a full moon last night?”
My heart sped up. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Why?”
“That’s totally the kind of thing a New Age white lady does under a full moon. It’s probably some prosperity thing she read in a book.”
That was so annoyingly plausible I got out my phone and pulled up the dead rabbit. “Fine, except someone left this on our driveway the other day. And I was just at the shop. It’s closed for no reason, and I’m pretty sure someone left another rabbit on the floor.”