Fell of Dark (7 page)

I got to the back stairs and the locked door the janitors use. No Mala, so I waited.

Five minutes, ten minutes, a year.

Finally. Mala. Mala, covered in sun.

I smiled. Stupid, stupid. I smiled.

Mala. Then, after Mala, after the dream, I woke up.

What was this? Another girl, another girl, three boys, two more girls, one girl and two boys, until half of the sixth grade, some part of the fifth grade, maybe a fourth grader or two stood in front of me. It's hard to count when you think you're going to explode in fear and shame. The laughing started. I couldn't make out who was standing there laughing.

The laughing mob, a bright white devil walking on split hooves, came closer. I wanted to escape. I took the steps too fast. I tripped and fell face-first in front of the devil. She picked up her shining goat heel and crushed my left hand. The tip of my left ring finger. The nail would fall off a week later. At that moment, I yelped and snarled. I was a kicked dog. I got to my feet, pushed my way through the crowd.

The last person was Mala, behind the beast. At the back of the crowd. It made no sense. She looked sad. No sense.

Her hair almost caught my ankle. I would've fallen down again.

I ran and ran. Opposite from home, so I had farther to walk once I stopped. On one block or another, something caught my eye, a frog in the street. Tears, rage, shame, pain, and still I see a frog trying to make its way across the street. I stood on the sidewalk, watching the frog. I looked up and down the street. No traffic. How long could this last?

Come on, frog. Jump.
Thinking. Thinking.
Jump, frog. Get out of the street.

Why didn't I walk out into the street and grab the frog, save it, drop it into someone's front yard?

Jump, frog.

The frog jumped and jumped, but it was still in the street. My anger.
What are you doing? Jump. You're almost here.

Cars drove past in both directions. One missed the frog by a hair.

Come on. Jump.

The frog. Stupid, so stupid. What kind of creature lets itself get caught in the middle of the street? I walked into the road and picked up the frog. My stomped finger throbbed, and I started crying. I crunched my teeth. I swore revenge.

Revenge on who? Mala? The goat?

I crushed the frog.

The frog survived the street, the traffic, and I killed it. It died in my hand.

I'm sorry.

I threw its body into a hedge and wiped my hand on my jeans. “I'm sorry.” I said it out loud. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

Then the rain came.

Splash splash splash splash

Lightning.

I should be killed for killing the frog. I don't want to die. I run.

I call for help. Please let me live, dear God. Please let me live.

Thunder everywhere and the unbelievable rain and the lightning and the breaking frog and my splashing.

The frog. Thinking about it right now, all kinds of time and other terrible things happening since then. I still get sick about that frog. But would I do it again? I don't know, which is almost as bad as saying yes.

A lot of blood. A nail through my foot. A bone, my ulna, snapped in two and breaking the skin. Blood vessels in my eyes. My wrists, my hands, and skull. Lips and knees. My brain, my stomach. Ears.

Scars. Yes.

How? Cigarettes, an iron, hammer, nail, fist, fingers. Belt. Cysts. Chicken pox. Stairs. Slippery grass and a rock. Popped bicycle tire. Tine test. Acne.

Why? I don't always know. Some of this was my fault. Being foolish. Most of it not. Most of it done to me by my father and mother.

Did I mention razors? Train tracks?

Crying against a wall. Disintegrating. Sobbing. In public, a public mall. Corner. Nothing behind. Nothing now. Nothing ahead.

I always get fevers whenever I'm sick, high fevers, dangerous fevers. The kind that cook the brain like an egg in its shell. Hard to know if these fevers are really my body fighting infection or if they're the battles between my minds that come so close to the surface.

This time, I woke up with a tattoo on my right forearm. The letter
F.
In black, just below the scar where my ulna broke the skin, and the letter was bleeding. Blood smeared down to my hand. Fingerprints. Not just the tips, whole fingers, someone holding my arm. Maybe the person who gave me the tattoo. One of my Guardians? Or my mother? I don't know. What does
F
signify? Fire? Frenzy? Fever? Fuel? Fall?

The letter bleeds, and it won't stop. Or am I bleeding at all? I can't tell.

On the other side of my bedroom wall, there's another apartment. In that apartment, there's a man. This man owns guns. If I press my ear to the wall, I can hear him pulling triggers and making the sounds of little explosions with his mouth.

Pow, pow, pow.

A trestle where I thought I'd die. I had to do a lot to get there. I had to fight through the Sawmen and the Guardians. The saws.

I sat on the bridge, looking down at the tracks. The wood, stones, and rails. How long before a freight train comes through?

Then, as I sat there, prepared and ready, another me showed up. He stood on the bridge, a witness. He didn't judge me. He didn't beg me to jump or beg me to think again. He had no emotion at all. He was me, a little older, a little taller.

Then, another me, a third Thorn, appeared. He stood behind the second me. Definitely wider and taller; he could see over the second Thorn's head. Not a man, not yet, and he, too, didn't say a word.

I stood up and walked over to them. I looked back on the me sitting with his legs over the side of the bridge, waiting to jump. The fall would've broken my legs in front of an approaching train. No escape.

I started thinking.

You've been shortsighted. You haven't seen anything, done anything.

I thought and thought.

You haven't climbed a mountain. You've never gone anywhere on your own. What do you know about anything?

I watched myself for a little while longer.

You've never been in love.

I slid off the bridge onto the sidewalk. The other Thorns, already gone, had disappeared into me or the air.