The Girls of No Return (41 page)

Gia's hand was on my arm, squeezing. “Lida, listen. I
didn't
know,” she was saying. “I'm sorry I blamed you — you can't know how sorry.” Her voice broke. Then she added, “Lida, I need you.”

I yanked my arm free with a sharp twist. “No!” I was out of breath, shaking, tears and snot running down my face and into the collar of my jacket. I stood quickly, backing away from the fire. Even then, at the moment when I most wanted to be free of her spell — even then, I could still feel the imprint of her hand on my arm like a yoke, pulling me toward her. But I kept backing away. I could feel the snow tingling my bare hand as each flake landed and dissolved.

Boone watched me. Her face held a mixture of regret and understanding, but not anger. She didn't move as I kept stepping backward until I stood equidistant from both of them, the three of us making a perfect triangle. Then she spoke in a voice so calm and certain that she could have been a school counselor.

“I should have known,” Boone said to me. “I mean, I had a feeling you might have . . . I guess I just hoped . . .” She raised her hand and pointed her finger at me. It was shaking slightly. “Don't think you're off the hook,” she said quietly. “You'll have to . . .” She broke off suddenly, let her hand fall to her side, and drew a deep breath. Then she directed her words at Gia, never losing the lucidity of her tone. “But you. I've known people like you before. You all think you're unique, but you're not. There are too many of you, and you play the same games. And you're charming; I'll grant you that.”

Boone took a step toward Gia, who stood up.

“But charm isn't enough. Everything you do is a facade, a performance. And it won't be enough to get you through life unscathed.” She took another step. “It can only mask who you really are for so long. And what you are, what you really are,” she took another step, “is rotten. If I cut you open right now” — she was only a few feet from Gia, so close that she could have reached out and grabbed her by the neck — “I'd find a gaping, festering, black hole where your heart should be.” Boone drew her shoulders back. “Wouldn't I?”

Gia lunged. While I was clothed in shadow, the two of them were backlit by the fire, and I could see Gia's face as clearly as if it was a photograph: Her eyes were wild and dark, and her mouth had turned into a wavering line so that she looked like she was about to either laugh or scream. She grabbed Boone's shoulder, digging her nails in, and swung at her with the other fist. The impact was dampened by the fact that Boone's hand had come up suddenly and wrapped itself around Gia's face, holding her chin as though in study. Then Boone shoved her back, and Gia stumbled, taking three steps before regaining purchase. “Hate you!” Gia was shouting. “I have always hated you!”

But Boone said nothing. She just advanced. The palm of her hand snapped across Gia's face once, twice. And with a primal scream, Gia dove forward and wrapped Boone in a vicious hug. She was pinning Boone's arms, pushing her closer and closer to the fire. Boone stepped back, her foot landing so close to the flames that I was sure she could feel the burn before it started. She lifted the leg and swung it around, catching Gia's knee and sending them both tumbling forward to the ground, their heads only inches from the fire. They started hitting each other then, fists flailing wildly so that I couldn't tell their limbs apart.

“Lida!”

That was when I felt my own feet moving beneath me. I had been watching it all from my place in the shadows, everything unfolding in front of me in slow motion, the fists moving through the air as though pushing through taffy, but when I heard my name, it all sped up. I ran toward them both, my arms waving stupidly like an air traffic controller's. I don't know if I was making any sound; the only noise I heard was a rush, like wind gusting through trees, that seemed to emanate from my own ears. The snow had quickly picked up momentum, and I had to push my hair back from my face so that I could see past its frozen white veil.

That's when I saw the book.

It was lying near the fire, so close to Boone's and Gia's feet that either of them could have easily grabbed it. But they hadn't seen it. They were too focused on choking, punching, pulling at each other's hair. I still couldn't hear them, though I'm sure now that they must have been making noise, something animalistic and primitive.

I ran to the book, opening it and relieving it of its cargo. Then I turned to Boone and Gia. I stood over them, holding the one thing that had ever given me strength and control. I felt its smooth contours in the palm of my hand, remembered what it was like to draw it slowly across the skin, leaving a faint crimson line. I looked at the tangle of muscle and bone that writhed on the ground below me. And I glanced up, once, to see the snowflakes as they made their way toward the earth, fat and heavy with purpose. Then I knelt to the ground.

In the morning, snow would blanket everything, covering all evidence of the night before, revealing nothing until the thaw of spring. And the permissive woods would keep their secrets, veiled in a white so clean it looked like forgiveness. But in that moment, I wasn't thinking of absolution. I looked at the two reaching, grasping hands: one rough, one smooth. One finger with the smallest lint of cashmere in the nail bed, one finger callused and raw. I looked at them both, and then I placed the knife in her outstretched hand.

 

 

I've come too far to turn back now.

Fact. Later, I wanted to die.

Fact. Much later, I wanted to live.

Fact. For over a year, I wanted to forget.

Fact. I knew exactly what I was doing when I handed her the knife.

 

 

AFTERWARD, NO ONE COULD FIGURE OUT HOW WE ALL ENDED
up at the same campsite. Bev wanted to know because the parents wanted to know. The parents wanted to know because the cops wanted to know. I imagined a team of Alice Marshall trustees who looked at the situation, saw a lawsuit, and wanted answers. How did three girls who clearly had issues with one another end up on the same patch of ground on a moonless, snowy night, miles from the nearest authority, a weapon in their possession? Who let this happen? They looked at Bev, who looked at Margaret, who looked at me.

“What happened?” she asked, and I told her, there in the cold green plastic bucket seats in the Hawkins Memorial Hospital emergency waiting room in Boise. When I was done, she looked at me and asked again, “But what happened?” And I started all over again.

I had already told Bev everything, after they came for us in the waning dark and hauled us off the mountain in the snow. Katia heard my whistle first, and she'd apparently radioed Margaret immediately, even as she was running down the trail toward the sound. I don't know how Margaret and the others got there so quickly with the makeshift stretchers, but they did — when they arrived, I was still holding the whistle in my hand, staring at the pocket in the backpack where it had been all along. Katia had done what she could with the small first-aid kit that we'd each packed, but I don't remember anyone saying anything. I don't remember any words at all until I heard Margaret's voice. There hadn't been time to drive to the hospital, so we'd flown in from the airstrip at Runson Bar, the tiny plane skidding once before takeoff and then rising above the white peaks and turning toward Boise. Margaret had been grilling me since we landed, and I hadn't changed my story yet. What did it matter? It was all settled now, anyway.

“I just don't remember much,” I said for the twentieth time. “I mean, it must have been the firelight. It was in my eyes.”

“You really didn't see anything. You didn't see who had the knife, or where it came from.”

“No. After she hit her the first time, I couldn't see anything else.”

I stared at the sliding glass doors, beyond which lay the nurses' station. Doctors were crowded around it, passing a pink file back and forth. Most of them were frowning, though one doctor said something and opened his mouth for what must have been a self-satisfied laugh. Even from that distance, I could see his teeth glinting in shiny white rows.

Margaret placed her palm lightly over my hand, which had been tapping a disjointed rhythm against my jeans. “Lida,” she said quietly. “Stop. You don't have to do this anymore.”

I stood quickly. It was suddenly too hot, and I needed air. So I started walking around the waiting room, refusing to glance back at Margaret, whom I couldn't look at. No, that's not true: I couldn't bear to have her look at me. I looked around the room, instead. One woman cradled a baby in her arms, singing softly. An old man slouched in his bucket seat, sleeping, his mouth opened wide like a bass. Some kids crouched on the ground with a set of dominoes, constructing a long row of black-and-white tokens before knocking one over and sending the whole line toppling.

I stopped by a corner table and picked up an old copy of
Highlights
, flipping through it restlessly. There were the familiar exercises — rhyming games and hide-and-seek picture puzzles. How easy it had been, I remembered, to pick out the incongruous elements: the basketball in the kitchen, the sailboat in the jungle, the tiger in the apple tree. The picture blurred suddenly, and I put the magazine down, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

What could I have possibly told Margaret that would have made any sense? What was the truth in all of this? Somehow, I didn't think she would understand if I told her that a fire, once lit, will consume everything. It will turn abruptly if you try to contain it, and will dissolve even the water you throw at it. And that's not all, I wanted to say. The smoke is as dangerous as the flame.

I walked back and sat down again.

Margaret didn't say a word.

We sat there for what seemed like hours. We were both waiting, though for different reasons. Margaret was waiting for a doctor to walk past the nurses' station, step through the glass doors that divided the healthy from the hurt, and stand in front of us with a verdict. She kept going outside to call Bev on her cell phone — I guess just to let her know that there hadn't been any updates so far. I got up once to get another magazine and saw her outside, sitting on the curb where the ambulances parked, smoking a cigarette that she must have bummed from some paramedic or lab technician. I stepped away from the exit doors before she had a chance to see me.

I was waiting for my dad and Terri.

Of course I was going home. Right back to where I started. We all were. Dad and Terri had been on the road, I imagined, since about five minutes after they got Bev's phone call, which meant they would be arriving within the hour. But no other parents had shown up, and I was beginning to wonder if anyone would.

Finally, I asked Margaret about it. She'd come back from a phone call with Bev, and had been reading a magazine from cover to cover. She was on the last page. I watched as she finished reading, closed the magazine, and then opened it absentmindedly to the first page again.

“Um,” I said.

She looked up.

“Are the other parents coming too? I mean —” My voice trailed off.

Margaret sighed and placed her index finger halfway down the page to mark her spot. “They've been called. Boone's guardian . . .” She paused as though trying to decide how much she could tell me. “Well, someone'll turn up at some point, I expect. And Gia's father couldn't get out of a meeting in Des Moines, so he'll be here tomorrow.” She looked back at the magazine.

“Des Moines? What does he do?”

“Something with taxes,” she said, and glanced at me. “IRS. I'm surprised you didn't know that.”

I mumbled something noncommittal and studied my fingernails. There was still dirt and grime embedded under each one from the day before. Taxes.
My father works for the government.
Of course. I let it sink in. Then I asked the question that had been worrying me the most. “If they — I mean, if the doctors can —” I swallowed the fear that was making my mouth dry, and tried again. “What's going to happen to them?” What I meant, of course, was
What's going to happen to us?
But I couldn't ask that.