She slumps down onto the bed and leans back, resting on her elbows. I see thin cuts up both arms and know she"s been practicing again, taking the sc.r.a.ping glances of the stick. She looks at me, like she"s ready to get back down to business.
"She just calls you up," she says, twisting a little, her elbows nestling in her pillows, "just like you just happen to find those cigarettes. You just happen to have suddenly remembered the car. The cigarette b.u.t.ts under the tree."
"I"m helping," I say, and even saying it aloud, as true as it is, as much as I know it, feels like a lie.
The lie isn"t in what I"m saying, though. The lie is somewhere else and I won"t look for it. But I"m so aware, all of a sudden, that all I do is lie.
She just looks at me, but I can see a sneer in it, I can. In that Dusty way, like when we"d underhit a short pa.s.s, or use our foot on the ball.
"What are you doing?" I jump at her. The only way to fend off Dustya"Evie always said it, even if she could hardly ever do ita"is to strike back. To take the bigger shot, the harder hit. It"s the only way. "You aren"t doing anything. You don"t even help your dad."
I think she"s going to jump to her feet, but she doesn"t. She just watches me. The stillness, it throws me. I don"t know what to do with it.
"If you think I"m lying," I say, trying to keep my nerve up, "how come you haven"t said anything? How come you haven"t told your parents what you think?" I can"t believe I"m saying it. The thought of her telling her father, making him doubt me, is unbearable.
"Lizzie," she says, the words slipping slowly from her and with such coolness. "You don"t know anything. You don"t know anything about Evie. About him."
And something, the thing that"s been clicking around in me, tapping odd corners of my head, springs to the center.
Weeks ago, that conversation with Dusty, about Mr. Shaw. You were always smart, she"d said to me. I was sure you knew.
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is this," Dusty says, singsongy, like a bored teacher. "She knew he was watching. You get it? She knew."
Like when you"re in the bas.e.m.e.nt and you find the old book with the golden-foil spine, the frizzle-haired doll with the painted freckles, a dozen things you didn"t know you remembered until suddenly you do, and it fills you with all kinds of crazy aches inside and you don"t know why.
"That"s not true," my voice sputters. "You"re making it up."
"I"m not," she says quietly, calmly. "We"d see him out there. Evie and me. We"d see him under the tree, at night, the glow of the cigarette. Looking up at her window. We"d see him out there all the time."
I feel my teeth clicking against one another.
Because hadn"t Evie said it to me, crouching over those cigarette stubs?
Sometimes, at night, he"s out here.
Almost sighing, Dusty flips a shoe off with her other foot and it lands on the floor in front of me.
The casualness of it flares something in me. The way she is reclining there, so regal and a.s.sured.
"Why didn"t you tell?" I nearly shout. "If you knew he was out there, why didn"t you tell?"
She shakes her head slowly, like she"s not sure about me, like if I"m dumb enough to ask that question, I"m too dumb to deserve an answer.
"Why didn"t you?" she says. "She told you, didn"t she? Why didn"t you tell?"
"I didn"t know," I stutter. "I only knew a little bit."
She looks at me with those slitted eyes of hers.
The feeling in the room, it all starts to pile on top of me. The smell of bubble gum and pink sugared perfume and cloudy face powders. My head feels light and I"m thinking of all the Dr Peppers I drank in the backyard with Mr. Verver and the thick carpet catching under my feet.
Why didn"t I tell? Sometimes, at night, he"s out here. I never told. I never even thought to tell. It was mine, and I held it close to my chest.
It was mine, and I didn"t want to share it.
"What are you saying?" I ask, almost moan. "So she might have known he was watching her." Even saying it out loud, had I ever said such things out loud? "But she couldn"t have known he would take her away. That he would take her away from all of us."
The look Dusty gives me is a long one, those green-gold eyes p.r.i.c.kling on me, p.r.i.c.kling along my skin.
Oh, she knows even more, doesn"t she? She knows so much. Why won"t she say, why won"t she say?
"Can"t you figure it out?" Dusty says, her voice low now, a throaty whisper. "Can"t you now?"
"Figure out what?" I say, my voice breaking, my hands flailing at my sides.
I feel that Dusty is on the cusp, I feel it so close, a truth so tantalizing I have only to let my eyelashes bristle against it, my lids shutting fast.
She lolls her head back slowly. "Oh, Lizzie, she knew. She knew he was coming for her. She knew."
"You don"t know that," I say. Because she couldn"t.
But she"s not even listening. She"s someplace else entirely, her face going soft, like when she"d lose a game, years ago, when she still lost games.
"Isn"t it rotten," she says, "the way everything is happening, all this stuff everyone has to feel, and nothing can be like it was? And it"s all because of her. She"s so selfish."
Everything is so close in the room, powders clogging me, heavy smells and choking cotton b.a.l.l.s, and I wonder if this is what it always feels like to Dusty.
"She thinks she can just do whatever she wants," Dusty says. "She can get whatever she wants. Why does she get to have whatever she wants?"
That"s not how it is, I think. That"s not how it is. And how can she talk about Evie this way? Except Dusty"s not Dusty right now and you can"t believe her, metal sc.r.a.ping sidewalk, sparking ruin on herself.
"Look at what she"s done to him," Dusty says, and for a second I think she means Mr. Shaw. But she means Mr. Verver. I know because her voice goes high suddenly, and it starts to shatter into tinkly pieces. She shakes her head back and forth, back and forth. She can"t seem to stop. "You see why I can"t tell. I can"t tell him that. What his daughter"s done to him. What she"s brought down on all of us. How she destroyed everything for all of us. I can"t tell him any of this."
I can feel my breath catch. I do see it: Evie can break his heart, she is saying, but I won"t.
"Don"t you want to save her?" I say finally.
"Lizzie," she says, her eyes lifting up to me, "what makes you think she wants to be saved?"
I sit on our back patio for a long time, my thoughts jumping on one another.
I already knew, in part, the things Dusty said, but it still felt like an explosion in my head. There was a world of difference between knowing something on some sneaking level in your own fevered head and hearing it banked into hard little syllables by Dusty.
Sometimes, at night, he"s out here. She"d said that to me. I had never told about that. Why had I never told?
What was there to tell? Evie herself said she guessed it was a dream, all confused, like a dream.
And it didn"t seem like something you could tell.
It was something Evie showed me and, after learning about Mr. Shaw, the way he loved her in such secret and powerful ways, why wouldn"t Evie be moved by that? Why should she be afraid? It didn"t seem strange that she might have known and said nothing. Kept to herself, a most private feeling. Evie who never had boys buzzing, swarming. Never had many things.
But the idea of night after night the two sisters seeing him. And sharing it. There is a hurt in there. Evie sharing things with Dusty, but not with me. Dusty, who always stood apart, yet Evie shared it with her.
But, thinking about everything Dusty said, in some way I"m not surprised by any of it, am I? Are there any more surprises?
In bed later, I hear Dr. Aiken"s voice from down the hall, low and even. I can"t make out what he"s saying, but there"s a calmness in it, a stillness. Somehow I am glad for it. I hope he"ll keep talking on and on, and he does. It"s the sound that sends me, finally, to sleep.
In the dream that follows, the phone rings next to me. "Lizzie," the voice tingles in my ear.
And I know it"s Evie, in that dream-way of knowing things, even if it doesn"t sound like Evie at all, her voice, high and trembly, like a pull-string doll.
"I don"t know where I am," she says, "and there"s so much blood."
"Evie," I say, and it"s a whisper, like a secret no one can know. "Where are you? Tell me. Tell me."
"I don"t know," she says, and she sounds so small, like when she has to talk in Algebra, standing at the chalkboard.
"Where are you?" I say again, and there"s a pounding in my ears. "Is it far?"
"Lizzie, I couldn"t get the blood to stop. I used three towels."
"Evie, please," I cry out, "where are you?"
"I don"t know," she says, and I can hear her breathing go faster and faster. "How do I find out?"
"Evie, are you far away? Are you far?" And suddenly the tingling feeling on the back of my neck, the uncanny feeling suddenly of Evie right there, right there.
"Are you close?" I whisper. "Evie, can you see me?"
"Lizzie," comes the whisper, now a sizzle in my ear. "What did you do? What did you do?"
It is four o"clock, maybe five o"clock in the morning. I can"t see the glowing numbers on my clock, and then I feel a cord twisted in my legs. Yanking it up, I see I"ve dragged the clock into the bed with me, its plug hanging loose, its face black and hopeless.
I don"t know what woke me, but then I hear the squeaking of a screen door and I peek out the window into the darkness.
Craning, I can see the front door of the Verver house is wide open.
I tumble down the front stairs and hover there a moment.
What did you do? What did you do? Evie"s dream-voice still blazing in my ear.
I feel a twitch under my eye. That happens right before the noise comes. The noise is loud, it"s a scream, the screeching sound of something, some animal caught under a car and crushed from tire to tire. It"s the worst sound I"ve ever heard.
I run out the front door and that"s when I see Mrs. Verver standing in her doorway, her hands over her open mouth.
She"s looking down the street, and my eyes follow.
There"s an eeriness about it, the thick of predawn and the streetlamps with the shimmery moths and bugs, and, my eyes adjusting, I can"t see what Mrs. Verver sees, what she"s screaming about, until suddenly I can.
Until the ghostly thing limps under one of the streetlamps.
The ghost with the pale white legs, the sear of bright green soccer shorts.
I am running now, my summer-hard feet pounding into the sparkly asphalt, and suddenly it seems like that game we used to play when we were kids.
It"s like I can hear that chanting, Ten o"clock, eleven o"clock, twelve o"clock, MIDNIGHT! b.l.o.o.d.y murder!
And I want to scream out, my lungs exploding, Home base, Evie! It"s here, Evie. It"s here, you just need to touch the door, the lawn, the curb. I promise you, it"s here!
I hear myself screaming.
I am screaming and I can"t stop.
Running, running, my arms swinging wide.
I"m nearly there, nearly there, just a few feet away from that candescent circle under the streetlamp, when I feel something hoist me back and it"s Mrs. Verver, her arms on me hard, pushing me to the side.
I nearly stumble backward but catch myself.
Hand to my chest, I watch Mrs. Verver hurl her arms around the ghostly thing in front of us.
And I watch the blankness on the ghost"s face.
A blankness that makes me start.
Why, that"s not Evie, I say to myself, and I think: This is a dream, and that"s a ghost, a phantom. A trick.
It"s not a dream, but it can"t be Evie.
I"m looking at the bright yellow hair hanging in hanks around her face. I"m looking at the funny texture of it, like flossy batting.
The strange sweatshirt, gray fleece, torn at the wrists.
The odd flush to her face, the way her arms hang stiffly.
Her fingers, the nails torn and red-rimmed.
Mrs. Verver, she is sobbing and on her knees and she is holding the girl, arms wrapped around her waist, and the girl looks startled, unsure. She turns and looks at me, her head bobbling slightly, like a doll.
She looks at me, and I look at her.
The eyes, the eyes like an oil-slick rain puddle. The eyes I know better than my own. The eyes that hook onto me and dig in fast.
Oh, Evie.
Oh, Evie.