Cuts Like a Knife (6 page)

“I'm sorry,” Mom said. “She's not home.”

I dropped my head to my chest, both arms folded over it like I was in a cocoon. “Mac's uncle—his name is Devin McCauley—and Mr. Hanson are on their way over to Mac's grandmother's house, to see if she's there. Mrs. Robinson is calling her other friends.”

“She doesn't have any other friends,” I snapped, my voice partly muffled against my chest. “She has me and Ren and Alex. That's it.”

For a moment, Mom's hand stayed on mine, warm and steady. Then she reached up and pulled my arms away from my head. “Okay then,” she said, “you're it. You're just going to have to figure out where she is.”

“I don't know,” I shouted. My nose was running again, and I wiped it with my sleeve. My cheeks were wet. I didn't even know I was crying. “She already went to all of her favorite places—the park, her grandmother's house, Frankie and Johnnie's, the music room at school.”

And then I knew.

“What?” Mom said. She must have seen something in my face.

I swiped my sleeve across my face again. “The merry-go-round, you know, the one I told you about where I saw Mac that first day. She loved that thing. When they took it out, she tried to get a petition going to bring it back. Didn't work.”

“The city was worried about liability,” Mom said, more to herself than me.

“When we were at the house earlier, she said something about the day we met at the merry-go-round.” I was shaking. I looked at Mom. “She's there. Not at the park, I mean wherever they took it. She's there.”

Mom was already pulling out her phone. “First we have to find out where
there
is.”

“Who are you calling?”

“Someone from church who works for the planning department.”

“It's almost midnight,” I said.

She put the phone to her ear and reached into the backseat with her other hand to grab the sweatshirt I'd left in the kitchen. “Good,” she said. “That means he'll probably be home.”

My hands were shaking so bad, I could barely get the shirt on and zippered. By the time I did, Mom was off the phone, starting the car and doing up her seatbelt all in one blur of motion.

“Buckle up,” she said to me, and she put the car in gear and did a tight U-turn in the middle of the street.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“City garage.” Her eyes were fixed on the road. At the corner she looked both ways and then ran the red light.

My thoughts were falling all over themselves. What if Mac was at the merry-go-round? What if she wasn't? What if we couldn't find her? What if… what if I was right and it was already too late? I closed my eyes and sent up one more prayer:
Please, God, let me
be wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

The car tires squealed as we whipped into the parking area of the city garage. Mom shot across the pavement, stopping with a spray of gravel, nose in the far corner of the lot.

The fenced storage space was down an embankment. Mom slammed the car into park and was out the door before I even had my seatbelt off. We half slid, half fell down the hill. I looked at my watch. I saw that it was almost midnight. Almost tomorrow.

What had Mac said? Tomorrow everything would be gone. Did she mean herself too?

I looked at the fence in front of me. “Boost me up,” I said.

Mom laced her fingers together, and I put my foot on her hands. She was stronger than she looked. She grunted, pushing up with both arms, and I managed to grab the top metal edge of the fence. I reached one arm down, and she pulled herself up.

“Go,” she said. “I'm right behind you.”

I swung myself over and jumped, landing on the other side. The whole space was full of crap, everything from bulldozer tires to old truck beds and broken park benches. It wasn't a garage. It was a dump.

I looked for the old merry-go-round, but I couldn't see it anywhere. There was a stack of three oversized tires, maybe four or five feet high, and I scrambled up on top of them and scanned the lot.

Where are you, Mac?
was the only thought running through my head. Mom climbed down the fence, wiped her hands on her jeans and looked around.

And then I saw it. I jumped off the tires, and one leg twisted and almost gave way underneath me, but I managed to stay upright.

“Call nine-one-one,” I yelled, and then I started to run. I didn't look to see if she was doing it or if she'd even heard me. I just ran. Chest heaving, arms pumping, legs flying, I weaved around piles of junk, keeping my eyes locked on that merry-go-round at the far end of the fenced lot. Everything else blurred out of focus.

My lungs were burning, I'd never moved so fast. I didn't know I could. I banged against some jagged-edged metal thing. My shirt tore and I felt the metal slice my skin, but I kept running. Behind me I could hear my mother pounding over the pavement, running too, breathing hard and heavy.

My mouth hung open as I tried to suck in air, and then we moved into an open space and…Oh God, I saw Mac, I saw Mac hanging by a rope from the top bar of the old merry-go-round.

Hanging by her neck.

“No!” I screamed. I stumbled and almost went down, but somehow I got my legs working again. I tore across the broken pavement and threw myself at the bottom half of Mac's body, hugging her legs, pushing up to make the rope looser around her neck.

She was warm. She was warm.

Tears ran down my face. “Take her!” I shouted at my mother. “Take her! She's not dead.”

Mom wrapped her arms around Mac's legs and lifted up to keep the pressure off the rope. She clenched her teeth, breathing hard, and I could see the veins in her neck pulsing against her skin.

I let go and reached for one of the side supports of the merry-go-round, stretching as far as I could to pull myself up onto the top bar. I lay on my stomach on the narrow metal pipe and tried to undo the rope. The knot was too tight and too complicated, no matter how hard I pulled at the rope. I couldn't get her loose.

No! I pounded my fist on the bar.

No! I wasn't going to let this happen.

I looked down at my mom holding on to Mac, holding her up with every bit of strength she had. I wiped my face against the torn sleeve of my shirt and somehow my brain started working again.

“Mom.” My voice was rough. “Do you have your knife?”

Her stupid knife. My dad had bought it for her because she was the kind of person who cut everything into small pieces and hated to get her hands dirty.

She nodded. “In my pocket,” she said, her voice strained from the effort of holding on to Mac. “But I can't let go of her.”

The sleeve of my shirt where I'd caught it on that stupid metal thing was wet with blood, and my arm was shaking even when I wasn't trying to use it. If I jumped down, could I climb back up again?

I wrapped my legs around the pipe and with my good arm reached down for Mac, catching her under both armpits and taking some of her weight from Mom. I only took one quick look at Mom's blotchy red face. Her eyes were closed and her face, like mine, was wet with tears.

“Throw it,” I yelled.

Mom kept one arm around Mac's legs and fished the penknife out of her jeans pocket with the other.

I used every bit of strength I had to hold Mac up with my one arm even as her weight pulled at me, trying to take both of us down. Except I wasn't going, and I wasn't letting her go either. I didn't care if my arm ripped right off my body, I wasn't letting go.

Mom threw the knife up in the air. It sailed toward me, end over end, and I could see it clearly, even in the darkness, like it was moving in slow motion. Mom grabbed on to Mac again with both arms, and I leaned out and snatched the knife out of the air and by some miracle managed not to fall.

I pulled the knife open with my teeth, jammed the blade between the metal pipe and the rope and started to cut, using both hands. My legs were knotted with cramps. There were shooting pains going up both of my arms, but I wasn't going to stop. I gritted my teeth and worked at the rope with the knife.

Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer. The rope began to fray and split as the blade sliced at it.

I was almost through. I slung my arm around Mac again, sawing with my shaking left arm, and suddenly the rope let go and we had all of Mac's weight. It almost pulled me over.

My legs started to give way. I let the knife fall to the ground and grabbed Mac around her chest with my other arm and somehow, with Mom's help, got her down to the ground without dropping her.

Mom's legs buckled. Her face twisted with pain, but she didn't make a sound. She crawled across the ground to Mac, put an ear to her chest, and then she straightened and started chest compressions.

I jumped down, and my left ankle turned in when I landed, so I fell sideways onto my butt. There were raw, red marks on my hands from pulling on the rope. The same red marks I could see around Mac's neck.

Mom kept her eyes fixed on Mac's chest. I shoved my hair back off my face and put my mouth over Mac's. Something from my first-aid class kicked in and I remembered to tilt her head and check inside her mouth. Then I just breathed for both of us and focused everything else on the sound of my mother's voice calmly counting beside me.

Chapter Fifteen

The sirens got louder, drowning out my mother's voice, drowning out everything but the sound of my heart, pounding in my ears.

And then it happened. Mac's body jerked. She made a kind of strangled sound and tried to suck in a breath.

I pulled back as Mom turned Mac partly onto her side. Her breathing was ragged and slow, but she was breathing.

She. Was. Breathing.

And then the ambulance was at the fence, red lights swirling. I tried to get to my feet, but my ankle wouldn't work right. Mom reached over and pushed me back down. Then she stood up herself, took a few steps forward and raised her hands over her head, waving so the paramedics could see us. And all the time I could hear Mac behind me, working to pull in every breath.

Alive.

The paramedics ran across the lot and pushed past us. Mom helped me move off to the side, out of the way. One of the paramedics came over to us but I shook my head. “I'm all right,” I said. “Just take care of her, please.”

Mom noticed my arm for the first time. “Daniel, you're hurt,” she said.

“Just let them fix Mac first, please,” I said.

Wordlessly she pulled off her own sweatshirt and draped it over my shoulders, putting her arm around me at the same time. We stayed like that while the two men worked.

Finally, after what seemed like a long time, they lifted Mac onto a stretcher. Her eyes were open, and I struggled to get to my feet, ignoring the pain in my ankle. I wanted to tell her I was there. I wanted to tell her she'd be okay. I leaned over, laying my hand on the blue sheet they'd covered her with.

She looked up at me. “Why didn't you let me die?” she rasped, her voice raw and low. Then she turned her head away and closed her eyes, tears slipping out from under her lashes.

I stood there as they moved the stretcher across the uneven ground. There were two police officers walking toward us.

Mom got to her feet. She held on to my arm with one of hers, and I looked at her. “She hates me,” I said dully. I wasn't so stunned that I didn't know this was what Mac had done to Shannon when she'd tried to warn us that Mac was hurting herself. What we'd all done, me and Ren and Alex. And I wished I had a time machine so I could go back and do it differently, and maybe Mac would never have gotten to this.

Mom's face was pale and dirty. Half her hair was hanging in her eyes. She hugged herself with her free arm. She'd done all this for Mac. She'd done this for me. Was it all for nothing?

Then she looked up at me and smiled. She gave me this huge beautiful smile that didn't make any sense. “Yeah, she hates you right now,” she said, “but the thing is, she's here to hate you, isn't she?”

Then she wrapped both her arms around me, still smiling that shining smile, and I put my head on her shoulder and cried because Mac hated me.

And I cried because Mac was here.

She was still here.

Darlene Ryan is the author of
Responsible
,
Saving Grace
and
Five Minutes More
. She is at work on another teen novel.

o
rca s
o
undings

The following is an excerpt from
another exciting Orca Soundings novel,
Viral
by Alex Van Tol.

978-1-55469-411-2 $9.95 pb
978-1-55469-412-9 $16.95 lib

MIKE HAS FALLEN FOR HIS BEST FRIEND,
Lindsay. And he's pretty sure she feels the same way, until a simple misunderstanding destroys Lindsay's trust.

When Lindsay ends up in a compromising situation, someone is filming the whole thing, and the footage goes viral. Mike has to help Lindsay in her time of greatest need.