Laura Lippman - Every Secret Thing

That would feel good, screwing the paper and that girl who had tried to trick her.

Ronnie Fuller had taken almost two hours to walk home after running away from the flashlights in the woods. She had tried to stick to alleys and side streets, venturing out on Route 40 only when absolutely necessary. Once she arrived at the house on St. Agnes Lane, she had stood across the street, looking for signs that her parents were up and waiting for her, searching the street for a patrol car. But the house was dark, her parents out somewhere, and there was no cop car in sight. She crept up to the front door, only to jump when a small rectangle of paper floated to the ground. It had been stuck between the storm door and the frame.

“Mira Jenkins, Beacon-Light,” said the front of the card. On the back, in neat block letters, someone had written. “I really, really need to talk to you. Call me!”

Ronnie let herself in, and all but crawled up the stairs to her room. Sleep. She would sleep.

But once on her bed, sleep would not come. All she could think of was Alice, her threats, her taunts. Alice could make a person do horrible things. It would be nothing for Alice to make others believe that Ronnie had taken this child and carved her up. The newspaper knew her name, just as Alice said, they were going to tell people about her. Alice always got her way, in the end.

You be the daddy and I’ll be the mommy and this is our baby.

That was how the game had begun, and it was only a game at first. They were going to take care of the baby they had found. She lived in a big house, Alice said. Her parents would probably give them a lot of money for finding her and keeping her safe. But it might take a day or two before a reward was offered, so they had to take good care of her until then.

How much money? Ronnie had wondered.

Oh, a lot, Alice had said with confidence. Enough so I can go to St. William of York again next year.

And me, too?

No, Alice had said, looking vague. You still have to go to public school. But you might be able to buy your mother a new car.

It was on the second day that the baby had gotten sick and fussy. Alice stopped talking about the reward and started imagining the kind of life that a sick little baby would have in a big house where everything was perfect. Except for her.

No one loves her, Alice had said mournfully over and over. No one will ever love her.

Should we take her back? Ronnie had asked. Should we call someone and tell them where she is?

They’ll only leave her on the porch again, hoping someone else will take her. They don’t want her. She’s not pretty, and she cries all the time, so they want her to disappear.

It was so hot tonight, especially in Ronnie’s windowless room. Unable to sleep, she decided to run a tepid tub, something she did when she needed to cool off. She locked the bathroom door, even though no one was home. Naked, she slipped into the tub, frowning at her body. She had never liked having such big breasts, which looked silly and out of place on a skinny girl. Clarice had once asked if they were fake. Even her dad sneaked looks at them, although not in a gross way. He seemed dismayed, as if he were scared for Ronnie, as if he knew how other men acted around her.

You be the daddy and I’ll be the mommy and this is our baby.

As the daddy, Ronnie had been responsible for bringing food to the cabin and Alice had served it. The baby hadn’t liked what they gave her and she cried, and her poo turned green, and that’s how they knew she was sick. The only scarier thing than her crying was her not crying.

By the third day, she became listless and dull, probably from eating the wrong things, but Alice had insisted they could not take her back. The baby was dying, she announced. It was only a matter of time. She had been sick all along, and her parents had left her outside, hoping someone would take her off their hands. Funny, Ronnie always remembered the exact phrase: off their hands . She had never heard that before.

“You have to take care of this baby,” Alice had told Ronnie. “You have to help her. If you use a pillow and then get rid of it, no one will know. They’ll think she died in her sleep. Babies do that all the time. And this baby is going to die anyway. It’s cruel to let her suffer.”

“Can’t we take her back?”

“It’s too late,” Alice said. “They’ll think it’s our fault. But it’s not. You have to do this, Ronnie.”

She hadn’t used a pillow, though. She had brought one as Alice had instructed, the one from her bed, still in its Scooby-Doo pillowcase. But in the end, it had seemed wrong to put something so large over the small face. Instead, Ronnie had placed her hand over the baby’s mouth and turtlelike nose, counting her own breaths until the baby’s stopped. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. This was how they had been taught to count seconds back in third grade, and Miss Timothy, a lay teacher, had told them to put their heads on the desk and raise their hands when they thought a minute had passed. Four one thousand, five one thousand, six one thousand. Ronnie had not raised her hand until she began to hear small giggles around the classroom. She had forgotten to count, and ninety seconds were gone before she realized she should fake it. Seven one thousand, eight one thousand, nine one thousand. It seemed to Ronnie that the little girl’s eyes, which had been dull and unfocused for the past two days, met hers with gratitude. She knew she was sick and unloved. She wanted to die. Ten one thousand, eleven one thousand, twelve one thousand.

When the body was still and the baby quiet, Ronnie realized the enormity of what she had done and the impossibility of taking it back. Instead of crawling into her house through the bedroom window she had been using to come and go that week, she hid beneath the honeysuckle vines in Helen’s backyard, waiting to be discovered. She knew Helen would find her somehow. And she did, drawn to the hiding place by Ronnie’s sobs. Once there, she listened to Ronnie’s story without comment or criticism, rocking her in her arms.

It was Helen, not Ronnie, who said they should take the jack-in-the-box back to the cabin in the woods, so people would believe Ronnie when she said Alice was there. Helen understood better than anyone what a good liar Alice was. But if one of Alice’s toys was there, if Ronnie told the part about the pool, and how they had gone home together-then, just then, people might believe Alice had done it. Helen had said, Helen had promised.

“I can’t undo what you’ve done,” she told Ronnie, holding her, stroking her hair. “But I can make sure that Alice doesn’t go unpunished. I can make it fair.”

Now, Ronnie knew. Alice had gotten what she wanted: She had made Ronnie go away. But she had to go away, too, and that was the grudge she carried to this day. Alice would not rest until she succeeded in banishing Ronnie again. Alice was the good girl, and Ronnie was the bad girl, and Alice would keep insisting on those facts. If she knew how Helen had taken Ronnie’s side, she would only become more fierce in her determination to drive Ronnie out. She would never let Ronnie be, which was all Ronnie really wanted. Just to be.

Ronnie’s hair, which she had piled on top of her head with a clip, was beginning to slip, and she sat up to rearrange it. Her elbow caught her father’s razor, knocking it from the ledge of the tub. Her mother must have used it to shave her legs, which always pissed her father off. Ronnie ran it along her own legs, which still showed the scars of her long-ago handiwork. Cutting herself hadn’t been a plan, not at first. She loved the sensation of breaking through her own skin, the taste of blood as it gathered beneath her fingernails. Surrendering that lovely habit had been the price of staying in Shechter Unit, but it had been hard. She missed the sensation of drawing blood from herself, of attacking the places that itched and taunted her. She had only stopped because she wanted to stay in Shechter. She could resume if she wanted to. Those rules no longer applied.