Slice Of Cherry (30 page)

“Change sucks. Almost as much as Kit’s disgusting boy-friend.”

“She’s not gone stop loving you just because Gabe’s in her life. She’s your sister.”

“And Daddy’s your husband. You stopped loving him.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You don’t even talk to him. Or about him.”

Madda rolled onto her back, her arm over her eyes. “Know why?”

“Cuz you found out he’s a killer and now you hate him.”

“It’s because I found out he’s a liar.” The AC was so loud Fancy could barely hear her. “If he had told me about the people he’d killed . . . maybe I would have left him, maybe not; that’s not the point. The point is, he didn’t trust me enough to give me a choice. It’s a big risk to show someone the real you. It takes a lot of courage, the kind of courage a woman could admire. But he chose not to show himself to me. I had to catch him in the cellar with that poor man’s arm and then hear about it on the goddamn news. I can’t forgive him for that.”

Silence, and then Fancy asked: “Do you know the real me?”

“You’re fifteen. I don’t know if there is a real you. Not yet. But when you find out, I hope you’ll know you can trust me. You and your sister.”

Fancy listened to Madda’s breath even out as she slipped back into sleep. She did know who she was. Knew exactly. She wished she were brave enough to let Madda see it.

Fancy awoke in Madda’s bed. It was dark, nearly ten o’clock according to the red numbers glaring in the dark. Fancy couldn’t believe she’d slept all day. Or maybe she could. She’d read somewhere that excessive sleeping was a sign of depression.
That’s how she felt—deflated and low. Fancy turned on the lamp.

Old jam jars decorated nearly every surface in the room, full of things like loose change, bright yellow esperanzas, even goldfish. Fresh Dickies were folded on the cabbage-rose-printed chair, out of place in the feminine room. On the nightstand beside Fancy sat a crystal decanter of bloodred strawberry wine, a half-empty wineglass, and a bottle of Tylenol PM.

As Fancy drained the wine from the glass, she saw the note on the nightstand near the clock:
Kit loves you and so do I. Remember that.

Kit had wanted her to remember it too. Her and Daddy. But what was the point of love if it didn’t keep people from leaving you?

Fancy got up to get some water, shuffling along the cool floor. She came to a sudden halt in the living room, where she found Gabriel and Kit nude and intertwined on the couch.

Madda had gotten rid of the TV after Guthrie had been arrested and replaced it with the fish tank. The glow of the aquarium washed over their bodies, over the tangle of clothes littering the floor before the couch. The dragon fish was hiding in his cave, possibly traumatized by whatever he had witnessed.
Gabriel moaned like even in his sleep he and Kit were . . . Fancy hurried to the toolshed and rummaged until she found a pair of shears. When she turned around, Gabriel was there. Stark naked.

“What’re you doing here?” he had the nerve to ask.

“Looking for these.” She snapped the garden shears. “Cuz I’m gone cut off your wiener. Good thing you brought it with you.”

“You think I’m scared.”

“You should be.”

“I’m so used to you after all these years. When you bleed, I feel it. When you eat the flesh of the young, I taste it. I know your dreams.”

While she tried to process what he was saying, he snatched the shears. She reached for them, but he took her by the throat.

“I knew you’d come out sometime. And I’d get my hands on you. And I’d show you what it feels like to have someone crawl inside you.”

He shoved her to the ground, falling on her heavily. “There’s space just behind your amygdala. Just enough room for me to nest.” He tried to kiss her, but Fancy head-butted his mouth and scrambled away.

He grabbed her foot and hauled her back beneath him. He
snapped the shears, which made a horribly sharp sound. “It doesn’t have to be kisses,” he said, smiling despite his split lip. “There are other ways.”

“Kit!”

He used the shears to cut open Fancy’s nightie, the rusty blade cold against her belly. “There’s no one here but me. And when we join, there won’t even be that. Just . . . we.”

He put the point at her belly button and pushed.

“Gabe.” Kit appeared in the shed like an angel of mercy, her pink gown floating around her like mist. She took the shears from Gabriel’s suddenly slack grip. “That’s not the right way to kick someone’s ass, remember?” Kit tugged him off her sister and kissed him gently and patted his cheek. “Wake up, Buttercup.”

“Wake up?”
Fancy clutched her gown together. “You think he’s
asleep
?”

“He sleepwalks. Gabe.” Kit slapped his face the way Fancy wanted to, only Fancy wanted to use a two-by-four.

Gabriel put his hand to his head and squinted at Kit. “What happened?”

She ran her hand over his wild hair and looked at Fancy. “You were sleepwalking.”

“The hell he was! He tried to gut me with the shears.”

He looked at the shears Kit had set aside and rose to his feet so he could back away from them, from Fancy. “I’m so sorry.”

“The hell with sorry!” Fancy tried to kick his balls, but she was still sitting on the floor and the angle was bad.

“Fancy, let him alone.” Kit pulled him out of the shed.

“He tried to kill me!”

“You tried to kill him first, in the happy place,” said Kit unsympathetically. “Now you’re even.”

She tried to help Fancy up, but Fancy smacked her hand away.

“I told you not to touch me!”

Fancy stood on her own two feet and ran into Madda’s room; she locked the door and shivered for a long time. But once the trembles worked their way out of her system, she picked up the phone.

“Your brother just tried to kill me.”

Ilan said, “I’m on my way.”

Fancy was sitting on the back porch steps when Ilan arrived. A guy in a pickup truck dropped him off. She heard Ilan say, “Thanks, man,” before the driver disappeared down the road.
Fancy hurried to Ilan as he approached the front of the house.

“Is my brother still alive?”

“So far.” Kit and Gabriel were back in the living room, murmuring in the dark, so Fancy led Ilan to the back porch so she wouldn’t have to hear them.

“What’d he do?” Ilan asked when they were seated on the steps.

“My sister.”

“Well, you knew about that.”

“They were on the couch! I have to
sit
on that couch. After I saw them, I went to the toolshed to . . .”

“To get a weapon. And?”

Fancy was silent a moment, surprised that Ilan could read her so well. Surprised and irritated. “He’s the one who jumped all over me, so don’t make me out to be the bad guy.” She told him what happened.

“He gets like that sometimes,” Ilan said, as though they were discussing a case of the sniffles. “If it was anybody but you, I’d be worried.”

“I was lucky Kit came out. Or he’d’ve cut me open. You don’t even care, do you?”

“I care. But karma’s a bitch, Fancy.”

“That’s all? You came all the way out here to tell me that what goes around comes around?”

“No.” Ilan hopped off the porch and held his hand out to her. “Come walk with me.”

Fancy looked at his hand a long moment before she took it. The pads of his fingers were very rough, but the rest of his hand was baby soft.

“Look at that.” He pointed across the backyard, at the moontree in bloom. Fancy looked up and saw a full moon, its bright white light mirrored in the moonflowers. Ilan squeezed her hand. “You know it’s bad luck to tell lies under a moontree?”

“Der. But you can ask me anything. I got nothing to hide. Not from you.” Fancy was surprised that she meant every word. But Ilan was nothing if not discreet.

“Must be nice to be such an open book,” he said as they neared the moontree. “I think God made me out of secrets.”

“God made me out of steel.”

“You don’t seem that tough to me.”

“Well, I am.” Fancy let go of his hand and marched through the mahonia bushes ringing the tree. “Tough as—”

Ilan followed behind her. “Tough as what?”

“Cacklers.” But even as she said the word, Ilan saw them himself beneath the moontree, outlined in the moonlight.

They were short, only four feet tall when they stood upright. These were on all fours and had looked up at Fancy’s intrusion. They were thin and had fat round heads that were almost cute, but their many rows of teeth were less cute, as were their screaming laughs, the sound they made whenever they spotted prey. They weren’t laughing, though; they seemed more startled than hungry, their normally pink eyes red in the moonlight. But when Ilan and Fancy didn’t leave, they reared onto their spindly hind legs and rushed Ilan and Fancy in a mad, cackling run.

Fancy remembered the advice the Mortmaine had given her, about how she should never run because only prey ran . . . but she ran anyway. And was tackled from behind. She fell into the bushes, and something poked her in the back—fangs?— but almost as quickly as the weight had landed on her back, it vanished.

Trying to outrun a cackler was pointless; they were speedy and tireless. But they were much lighter than humans, and their big pumpkin heads were their weak spot. Ilan had pulled the cackler off Fancy, and once he had the writhing creature
on the ground next to its dead companion, Ilan beat against its head with his boot.

It fought back, clawing Ilan’s arms with its horny nails and its teeth. Fancy tried to help with the stomping, but it snapped at her bare foot and nearly bit it off. Fancy decided to stay out of it, but Ilan kept up the attack until the thing’s head was a pulpy mess and it lay still.

Ilan dragged the carcasses away, deeper into the woods, and then came back and sat next to Fancy beneath the moontree, breathing hard and cleaning goo off his boots. “You can sit up now, scaredy-cat.”

“I’m not scared of anything. Except monsters.”

“But you’re made of steel, Fancy. Remember? So why would you be scared of one measly cackler?”

“There were two, and I
am
made of steel. And shut up.” Fancy continued lying on the grass, fighting a weird urge to fall asleep. “They were so busy fighting each other, I’m surprised they even bothered attacking us. They probably wouldn’t’ve if you hadn’t come barging in and spooked ’em.”

Ilan hauled her upright, and Fancy let him, marveling at his sturdiness as she snuggled next to him. “Fancy, it’s mating season.” It sounded like he was trying not to laugh. “They
weren’t fighting. Why’d you think yours had a boner?”

Fancy remembered the hard spike that had been jabbing her in the back. “Puke. And stop laughing at me. Excuse me for not being fascinated by monster genitalia, unlike
some
people.”

“I never said I wasn’t a pervert.”

“I guess it runs in your family.”

Ilan froze beside her.

“Well, he is a pervert. How would you feel if a perverted maniac was dating
your
sister? Wouldn’t you do whatever it took to protect her?”

Ilan kept quiet.

“You’re sitting under the moontree,” she reminded him. “You have to tell the truth.” She reached up and plucked a sweet moonflower, holding it before Ilan’s mouth like a microphone.

“Gabe would never hurt your sister.”

“Of course he would. And it wouldn’t be the first time he hurt someone he loved. Would it, Ilan?”

Ilan scooted away from her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I know one of your secrets.”

“Gabe loved Pop. So whatever crazy thing you’re thinking—”

“That Gabriel’s the one who went crazy and killed Mr. Turner, not—”

“—stop thinking it!”

Fancy knew she should have been put out by him raising his voice, but there was something . . . exciting about the way he yelled.

“Even if Gabe killed him,” he continued, oblivious to Fancy’s thoughts, “even if Gabe killed a truckload of people, who are you to judge him?”

Fancy decided to back off, not because she was afraid of Ilan’s anger, but because she could hear beyond the anger, hear the hurt underneath it all. “Pain is relatives,” she said, almost to herself.

He sighed away his anger in one long breath. “You have no frigging idea.”

Fancy didn’t want to hurt him. But she didn’t mind teasing him. “I know some things.”

“Like what?”

“I know what you want to do to me. I had a dream. . . .” Fancy remembered something—Ilan framed in the window— but then lost it. She reached out and touched his face, saw the moonlight flash in his eyes. There wasn’t nearly enough light for what she wanted to see, which was everything. “Or maybe you’re so upset about the whole
I hate Gabriel
situation that you don’t want me anymore?”

“I still want you.” Ilan touched her face the same way she was touching his. “I don’t love Gabe
that
much.”

Fancy laughed, relieved and slightly in awe that such an understanding boy could want someone like her. “You still have my cherry?”

“Nope.” She felt his cheeks stretch into a smile. “Ate it. Couldn’t resist.”

“How was it?”

“Sweet.” He leaned forward and kissed her.

“Wait.” Fancy pushed him back, cursing the dark that hid his face.

“Still not ripe?” he said, giving her space, disappointed but not surprised.

“I do want you to kiss me,” she explained. “Just warn me first. So I can pay attention.”

“Okay,” Ilan said, laughing but taking her seriously. “Ready. Steady. Go.” When he kissed her that time, she didn’t push him away.

He tasted sleepy. Like a dream. She kept her hands on his face, thinking that if she stopped touching him, he would vanish and she would wake up kissing her pillow. She caressed his lips as they moved against hers, was just getting used to
the press of them when his tongue got involved and made it harder to pay attention. “I like that,” Ilan said, and touched the tip of his tongue to her upper lip, delicate as a hummingbird. “The way you taste.”

“What do I taste like?”

“Pancakes.”

Fancy laughed, and the fact that she was laughing during her first kiss made her laugh even harder. She’d always thought it would be . . . different. That there would be roses and violins somehow. But here she was in the bushes with the smell of cackler blood in her nose and a boy she couldn’t even see who thought she tasted like breakfast.