You're Next

nicer than the motels they’d been staying in. He bathed Kat, tilting her head back beneath the faucet to wash her hair. The lice were still in there, sure, but he didn’t have the heart to cap the evening with a chemical rinse.

Tucked into bed, her skin flushed and clean, Kat said, ‘Tell me a story.’

Mike realized that he’d pulled his flowery armchair bedside like a nurse on deathwatch. ‘About what?’

‘About next month. About us going home.’ Her blinks were growing longer. ‘Mom’s been cooking all day. You know how she gets with Thanksgiving. And there’s turkey. And pumpkin pie. And those oranges we stick cloves into. And we sit down, all together, and…’

She was asleep.

Mike remembered when she was first handed to him at the hospital, a fluffy bundle with a pink face, how he’d looked down at her and thought, Anything you ever need for the rest of your life. He rested his head on her chest, listened to the faint thumping, breathed her breath.

He stepped out onto the balcony. Smog had wiped away the stars. He asked Annabel if he’d be forgiven for doing what he was about to do, but no answer came back from the firmament.

In the morning Kat wolfed down a tall stack of pancakes, pausing only to scratch her scalp. Back upstairs, Mike packed her few things into the rucksack, laying aside his gun and a chunk of cash. Standing before the bathroom mirror, he brushed her hair slowly, meticulously, and drew it back, at last, into a perfect ponytail.

She smiled and flicked at it. ‘Nice, Dad!’

She lingered in the bathroom and came out wearing her new yellow dress. She pinched out the sides in a show of self-conscious theatricality. ‘Well?’

He swallowed hard. ‘It was made for you.’

He drove the route he’d been given over the phone yesterday as he’d sat in the back of that arcade. The referral chain to the address was too convoluted to remember – a caseworker to a social worker to a character reference – but that was partially the point. Somehow, through prevaricating, cajoling, and begging, he’d managed to arrive at a name he thought he could trust.

He looked straight through the windshield, his hands fastened robotically on the steering wheel, his gaze on the dotted center line, yellow streaks on black tar. He was heartless, insentient, a thing of steel and purpose. He sensed Kat’s gaze tug over to him once, twice, then stick, and he felt his resolve melting away. But then they were there, parked across the street, and she looked out the window and saw the rambling ranch house and the backyard crammed with play structures and girls.

She breathed in, a sharp intake of air. ‘Why are we here.’ It was not phrased as a question.

He couldn’t talk. He could barely breathe. There is no forgiving a parent who could do that to a child.

‘Why,’ she repeated, ‘are we here.’

He forced words through the tangle of his throat. ‘I need your help, honey.’

‘Dad?’

‘Mommy’s in danger, and I need to… I need to go with Shep to help her.’ He couldn’t look over at her. ‘And I can’t do that and keep you safe at the same time.’

‘No, Dad. No no no. You can’t.’

‘I need to make sure you’re safe first. Before I do anything else.’

She was crying, little-girl crying. ‘What did I do? It’s not my fault I got lice.’

‘No, honey, nothing is your fault. Remember that. Nothing-’ ‘I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I got lice.’ She was twisting one hand in the other like a wet rag. ‘Please, Dad. Please. You can shave my head like Shep said. I don’t care.’ She’d popped up to her knees on the seat, eyes wide, pleading. ‘You can protect me.’

‘This is how I am doing that.’

‘You always protect me. I’m safe with you. You’ll take care of me.’

He struck the wheel. ‘I can’t.’ His words rang around the car. His fist throbbed. Choking back panic, he searched for words soft enough. Jesus – how to put this in terms she could grasp. ‘This… this is what you can do to help Mommy right now.’

Kat wilted in the seat. ‘How long?’

He lifted his hands from the steering wheel, spread his fingers, lowered them again. ‘Whatever happens, you’ll be okay. It may not feel like it. But you will.’

‘What do you mean whatever happens? What does that mean? So if Mom… if Mom dies and they get you, then I… I…?’ A breath shuddered through her, and then she was still for a moment, her shoulders curled, arms hugging her stomach. ‘I’m eight,’ she said. ‘I’m only eight.’

He did his best to fight his throat open, his chest still. His jaw was clamped shut, but he could feel the muscle pulsing at the corners. Still, he could not look over at her. The silence lasted ten seconds or ten minutes.

‘If that happens’ – his fingers, clenched around the steering wheel, had gone white – ‘you’ll think I won’t know how great you turned out and how you built a family and what a wonderful woman you grew up to be. But I do. I know already.’

‘No. No no no no no.’

He had to get it all said before his will deserted him. ‘However long you’re here, you can’t tell anyone your last name.’ An echo from his childhood tore into him like a drill bit. ‘You’re Katherine Smith. Listen to me, Kat. You’re Katherine Smith now, do you understand? Don’t give my name. Don’t give your mom’s name. Don’t say where you’re really from. You have to make it all up and memorize it, and never forget it.’

Each word ground like broken glass on the way out. She had buried her head in her arms and was shaking her head violently.

He thought, I am damned for telling her this. I am going to hell. My heart will fall out of my chest and disintegrate into a cloud of ash.

‘You need to be tough. Your life is at stake. No one can know anything about you.’

It was every lesson he wanted not to teach her, every Bad Parent caricature. But he steeled his back and drove on into the face of it. ‘Swear it to me, Kat.’

‘No.’

‘You have to. They’ll find you.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘There is no choice here, Kat.’

She looked up sharply, her face streaked with tears. Her words warbled through sobs. ‘Then you swear to me. If I stay here and I keep my mouth shut about who I am then you have to live and come back for me. You have to. Promise. Or I won’t go. I won’t.’ She stuck out her hand. ‘Deal?’

He stared down at her trembling fingers, his blood rushing so fast and hard that it vibrated his vision. Was that a promise he could make? Did he have a choice?

She kept her hand pointed at him, her bruised gaze on his face. He blew out a breath, pinched his eyes closed, then reached over. ‘Deal.’

Her hand was warm, and it trembled.

‘You will come back for me.’

‘I will come back for you.’

‘You swore it, now,’ she said. ‘You swore it.’

He lifted the rucksack from the backseat, and they headed for the house.

A plump woman answered the door, drying her hands on an apron. Behind her, four girls older than Kat were glued to cartoons while a toddler played with a one-legged Barbie. The sounds of the kids playing outside wafted through an open window – laughter and thumping and someone crying. A visceral reaction set Mike’s gut roiling. He looked around to assess the surroundings, but past and present were fused. There sat the Couch Mother on the sofa, fanning herself with a TV Guide. There, the yellow cushion with its effluvium of cat piss. Sure, shithead. My momz, too. All our parents is coming back.

Mike’s eyes stung, and he blinked his way back to the present. There was no Couch Mother, no cat-piss reek, but there was a bay window, put there as if to tempt kids to watch and wait. The couch