He’d pulled her back from the hole, dragged her kicking across the dirty floor, her shoes marking trails in the dust—they were still there, if you knew where to look. She’d screamed, and the scream had raced around the empty building unheard. It was still there too, if you knew.
“Please, Shaun, stop!” She cried, begged and twisted.
He laughed, pushing her down, booze seeping from his sweating pores, his stinking breath. Hands fumbled with the buttons of her cutoffs. Her stomach lurched. She twisted under him, shoving, and she puked sideways into the wood chips, into her hair, dark trees spinning, sour vomit up her nose.
She tried to crawl. He scratched her legs and back, tried to hold her still as she kicked.
The pictures in the deck had stopped making sense.
This piece doesn’t fit. There are no wood chips at the Grains.
She turned, elbow raised, and brought it down hard against the boy’s temple. He cried out, falling sideways. She turned again and kicked him in the balls as hard as she could. Booze-rotten air left his lungs, and he curled around his groin like a shrimp, whimpering.
She scrambled up, wobbling on her feet, backing into a tree. A picture of Shaun lying there, red in his hair. A skateboard in her hands with bloody trucks.
She staggered back. She couldn’t breathe. Was this real?
Her knees ached, long scratches down her legs; cheek burning hot where he’d slapped her, temple pulsing bright where it had hit the wall. “Stop it, Shaun,” she’d said through tears, “just stop it, please.” But he’d never listened. Not when he was mad, not when he was drunk.
He’d pushed himself to his knees, one hand on his bleeding head. “Evie,” he’d croaked, reaching for her again, and she had swung, grip tape tearing the pads of her thumbs.
“Don’t touch me!” she’d shouted. “Don’t touch me ever again!”
She’d known what those words would mean. No more King. No more front seat. No more fireworks on the roof. She would no longer be part of the tribe. But she hadn’t cared anymore. Tired of pretending it was always okay. Tired of Shaun always getting his way. Crashing over her, knocking her down.
She turned from the heap at her feet and ran until her feet splashed into water, ankle-deep.
Free from the woods, the moon hung low and not quite full overhead, pouring cool light over a pond as black as an endless void. Moon-white ripples circled out from where she had walked into the water. When it got too deep to walk, she swam, all her cuts and scrapes stinging like bright lightning in her skin.
She rolled onto her back, watching stars spin pale blue overhead. The ice-cold water calmed her racing heart till it stood, pawing and snuffling in her chest like a vexed horse. Then she tipped her head back, covering her ears, silencing the world, and let everything slide into black.
Evie dreams she is the fetus inside herself. A Möbius loop. A dreaming thing in a black lake inside a dreaming thing. She gets to start over, at the beginning, before everything was irreparably fucked.
She sees Ré’s goodness hidden under a silver shield, and now it’s him driving past her house last summer, acting shy. And then someone good like him chooses her mom years before, and Evie is never born. None of this ever happened. There is no dreaming thing.
Sunny’s skinny arm slid under her rib cage and yanked Evie up into moonlight.
Water spluttered out of her lungs as she was dragged to shore.
Sunny threw her down, and she curled onto her side, coughing and shaking in the sand at the edge of the pond like some giant fish Sunny’d caught with her bare hands.
“What the hell are you trying to do, Evie? Fucking kill yourself?” Sunny snarled.
Evie just coughed, breathing wet sand and spit, her cheek pressed into the dirt.
“Are you seriously that wasted, Ev? I mean, come on! Aren’t you pregnant?” Sunny had her head inside her black sweater, wrestling it back on over wet skin.
Evie rasped, “Someone…”
Sunny got her head out of the neck hole and stared at her, impatient. “Someone what?”
“Dosed me,” Evie whispered. “Someone dosed my drink.”
Sunny said nothing for second. “Fucking ketamine,” she finally spat. She shoved her feet back into her black leather boots. “What a bunch of dead little ravers. This party is so stupid.”
She stood and grabbed Evie under the armpits, hauling her up to her feet. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get Ré and ghost. Alex can apologize to us all tomorrow when he realizes what a loser he’s being.”
“Sunny,” Evie said, wanting to tell her everything. To tell her about Shaun and the bruises, the skateboard, the Grains. About the guy in the woods. Was he even real? “There was a guy…” Her voice trailed off, trying to remember.
“Okay,” Sunny said, “a guy.” She had her arm around Evie’s waist, and they stagger-walked together, bumping three-legged into the woods again.
“He attacked me, I think,” Evie said. “The guy who dosed me.”
“Jesus,” Sunny breathed. “Are you okay?”
Pictures flashed through her head. “I think I killed him…”
“Holy fuck,” Sunny shot back. They stopped, and Sunny turned to face her, propping her up by the shoulders. “All right, tell me exactly what happened.”
“He was mad about the baby,” Evie mumbled.
“What?” Sunny shook her lightly. “What are you saying? Who is this guy?”
“I think…” Evie felt breathless, exhausted, confused. “I think it was Shaun. He was here. He was really mad.”
Sunny just looked at Evie for a minute, then gathered her up under her swan arm, marching them both forward again. “I think you need some sleep, Ev,” she muttered. “You’re so high right now.”
Evie could see splinters of amber light cutting through the black trees. The distance from the barn had felt endless before, going the other way. She saw now that it really wasn’t so far from the barn to the pond. Maybe there hadn’t been anyone in the
