“Those things that came out of your back? Are those real?”
“Yes.”
“And is that head…？”
“She was a bad woman,” said Vern.
The boy snapped his head around to look at her. “And what are you supposed to be?” he asked, exasperated. “A good guy? Yeah, that’s you, a real fucking saint, huh?”
Vern deserved it, but she rolled her eyes. “Shut up and drive.”
The boy hooked his phone into the SUV’s system. “Speaking of,” he said, flicking. Seconds later, a song played. “I hope you like Rihanna.”
Vern did because Lucy did. She used to sing this song all the time at the compound, to her father’s dismay as well as Reverend Sherman’s.
“Shut up and drive.” As the pop hit thudded through the speakers, bass-heavy, Lucy appeared at Vern’s side, dancing with arms in the air. She swayed, carefree.
“Lucy? Are you there?” asked Vern. “Is it you? Can you help me? Please fucking help me,” she yelled to the haunting.
She caught the driver staring at her through the rearview mirror. He probably thought she was talking to herself, that she was crazy. Fine. There was nothing wrong with being crazy.
“Lucy!” Vern cried out to her dead friend.
“Shut up, Vern. I haven’t heard this song in forever.” Lucy looked about thirteen years old.
“I’ll make him play it again. Just talk to me.”
“Whatever,” Lucy said with an eye roll and a sigh.
“Please, help me. Do you know something?” asked Vern, anything that might help her
“I live in the hyphae of an ancient fungus being. I know everything, Vern, and so do you,” she said with a dismissive shrug. “Remember? I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young, like Langston said. We both did.”
Then she was gone, the only remnant of her the smell of JAM extra-hold gel.
“Come back!” Vern called, but Lucy, as always, was her own spirit. Still a young girl mostly interested in her own whims, she would never come to anybody’s beck and call.
Vern cradled Gogo in her arms. She ripped her blood-soaked shirt open so she could put her hand to her chest, warm her up. Gogo’s body was cool, and she gasped for air. At least Ollie had bandaged the wound, removed the bullet.
After a sharp intake of breath, Vern kissed Gogo’s lips, her eyelids. She closed her eyes and exhaled, blowing into Gogo’s mouth.
“Love you,” said Vern, and grabbed Gogo’s hand, unsure if she meant it, but knowing surely she wanted Gogo to hear it from her. Love. She’d only ever thought of that feeling in relation to her babes, and she only supposed that was what it was called. That deep feral caring that made her despair at the thought of their loss. And her Cainland family? Did she love them? Was that what that was? When she thought of not getting to Cainland in time to save them and it was like wind blowing through a gapped tooth, swelling the gums?
Vern stuck to saying things to Gogo she could verify easily. “I’m pathetic with words and feelings both. I’m wretched as a skinned cat,” she said. “I want to be with you. I want you to be beside me, alive.”
Like all of Vern’s attempts at emotional maturity, her affections were too little, too late. Language was like a wedding—speak now or forever hold your peace. Words mattered now, in the moment. They spoiled quickly when held inside, and what did they mean when offered too late but nothing at all?
I know everything, Vern, and so do you.
Maybe there was a way for Gogo to hear her now, to put thoughts into her. Remembering Queen, Vern closed her eyes and called to mind the child blowing the dandelion. It was about propagation. Spreading parts of herself into Gogo.
The spores didn’t come. She didn’t have the ease or command with the fungus that Queen had.
Vern flexed her shoulders and tensed her back, feeling around mentally for the mechanism that would set the mist free. Tendrils of bone and connective tissue sprang like plant shoots outward, tiptoeing in the stuffy air of the SUV’s back seat. Despite all she’d learned since the fungus first rooted out her insides and replaced them with its own, superior matter, her body would always be a stranger now. It had always been a stranger, the way bodies tended to be, constantly surprising, never being good enough.
Spray, spread, unleash, contaminate. Go forth and multiply. Tell it on the mountain. Vern called every phrase to mind that might bring on the ability to liberate the spores. Queen had unfolded her entire exoskeleton, but Vern couldn’t do that now without compromising the vehicle.