It was night by the time we reached the house. The street was hedged in by trees, many overgrown with kudzu, so despite the asphalt and power lines and the Trans Am, the street felt like part of an old civilization being reclaimed slowly by a jungle.
The house was clearly abandoned, the walls tagged with graffiti and the windows boarded up. We snuck into the house through a hole in the back wall covered in plywood. Inside, we found Susannah, sitting in the dark against a wall, eyes closed, face bruised, a fresh needle mark in her arm. Then Luco stepped out of the shadows and cracked me over the head with a pistol before holding us at gunpoint. He had been embarrassed in front of his boys, frightened by a girl with a tiny gun, and now he was relishing his revenge. He had shot heroin into Susannah’s veins, and now he was going to shoot both of us and leave Susannah alive so she would know what had happened to us.
There was an electronic squawk from outside, like a klaxon burst. A police car. Uncle Gavin had called the cavalry. Luco turned toward the sound, and Frankie jumped him, causing Luco to drop the pistol. They fought while I scrabbled around on the floor, head still reeling from being hit over the head by the pistol I was searching for. Luco threw Frankie off him and grabbed me just as my hand closed on something—a syringe, maybe the same one he had used on my sister. Luco drew back a fist, and I swung and jabbed that syringe straight into his ear. He shrieked and dropped me, stumbling away and out the front door, then fell down the outside stairs, breaking an ankle.
That’s the moment when it should have all gone right, the universe rebalanced, justice served. Frankie and I had gone into the dark cave, fought the ogre, and rescued my sister. We would go home, bruised but alive and victorious. But I should have known, more than anyone, that the universe does not work that way.
Someone stepped into the doorway, blocking the light. It was Frankie, looking out. Blue and red lights flashed beyond him. I could hear Frankie talking with someone. He raised his hand as if he was pointing at something below him. Then a sharp crack. Shouts came from outside, and a bright light shone on the front door, revealing Frankie in silhouette, dropping to his knees, hands empty and up over his head.
UNCLE GAVIN PULLED out all the stops, hiring a defense attorney for Frankie and calling in favors. But there were no magic phone calls for Frankie, no councilman in Uncle Gavin’s back pocket who could make this go away. Frankie had purposefully shot a man to death in front of two police officers. He was charged with voluntary manslaughter. Later, when he was out on bail, Frankie told me that when he found the gun and stepped to the front door to see Luco writhing in pain on the steps and two police officers getting out of their patrol car, Luco had told him that when he got out of prison he would find and kill all of us. And so Frankie had lifted the pistol and shot Luco in the head, then dropped the gun and raised his hands so the two cops wouldn’t shoot him. “It was like you would kill a snake,” Frankie said, but his voice trembled when he said it.
When Susannah got out of the hospital, she slept late every morning. Hibernating, she said. She went to outpatient therapy at Birchwood every afternoon, Monday through Friday, for two weeks. In the evenings she slogged through whatever school work she had been sent. She wasn’t attending classes, with the school’s permission, but Uncle Gavin, who otherwise treated Susannah as if she were made of glass, insisted that she keep up with her work.
One night after dinner I knocked on the door of her room. She was sitting on her bed, doing geometry. “I hate proofs,” she said. “I mean hate them. When in my life am I going to need to prove that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle equals a straight angle?”
“Mrs. Markham says geometry is good for sharpening logic and developing your argumentative skills,” I said, referring to my English teacher.
Susannah scowled at her textbook. “Mrs. Markham can bite me,” she said. “No offense.” She wrote something in her notebook, then looked up at me. “What?”
The doctors had told us that they had given my sister Narcan to counteract the heroin in her system and that there had been no permanent damage. They had also told us that Susannah had been raped.
“Nothing,” I said. I walked around her room, glancing at her empty desk, the poster of Munch’s The Scream on her closet door. “Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m even more committed to not becoming a mathematician,” she said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Worried I’m using heroin?” She turned out her forearms for inspection. “No needle marks, see?”
“Jesus, Susannah.”
“If you want to make sure I’m not shooting up between my toes, I can take my socks off.”
“All right, enough. God.”
She sighed and set her notebook off to the side, then crossed her legs. “I’m fine, Ethan,” she said. “I’m pissed off at the world in general and really pissed off at Luco, but I’m okay. Really.”
“How can you just … say that stuff so easily?”
She shrugged. “Hours of therapy. And not giving a shit.” She considered me. “Thanks, by the way. For coming to rescue me.”
“You’re welcome.”
She tilted her head. “You okay?”
“Me? Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh,” Susannah said. “Your best friend might go to jail
