B. Johnson - Deadgirl

But what had happened? Hadn’t the worst happened?

Had I just…recovered?

“Who attacked you?” he asked.

“Aren’t you calling my parents?”

“It’s already been done. I told them I’m on my way with you.”

“What about my friends?”

“I imagine your parents will call them,” Sykes said. “Who attacked you?”

I sighed and painted a loose, watercolor version of the truth. Five guys—I gave him good descriptions of only the guy who caught up with me first, the bald guy, and Fatty. None of the rest of them had stood out, beyond being total creepers. I explained I’d been a little too freaked out to whip out my camera phone, which didn’t exactly quell Sykes’ pissed-off tone. I told him about the gun, and from there I veered into true pants-on-fire territory.

“I don’t think he wanted to shoot me,” I said. “We struggled, and then. He hit me. On the head.”

“Where?”

Panic. I took a deep breath.

“The back of my head.”

Sykes gestured for me to turn around.

“Could you hold your hair out of the way, ma’am?”

I felt for the raw patch, rubbed red by the asphalt, and prayed to Oprah that it would fool him. I split the hair around the back of my skull to give him a better look.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“And then what happened?”

I shrugged, “I woke up in the parking lot.”

“What parking lot?”

I told him the name of the office building. His pencil scribbled long graceful A-plus penmanship lines into his pad.

“Were you sexually assaulted?”

My breath caught in my throat.

“Wuh…”

The officer’s face softened. He tugged off his glasses and slipped them into the pocket of his shirt.

“Sorry,” he said, pale blue eyes staring into mine. “Were your clothes in disarray, any pain or discomfort?”

“No, no,” I said, and that was true. Not from lack of trying—those bastards probably thought I was too dead to party with. They were like real knights in that way. “I think…I think they freaked out. Thought I was dead, I don’t know. They didn’t seem like experts. Or human. Or subhuman—”

“Anything stolen?”

“No,” I said.

“How does your head feel?”

“Fuzzy,” I said. “But it doesn’t hurt very much.”

He nodded, his pencil flying.

“I think it’s time to take you home, let you rest,” Sykes said. He reached over to pop the back door open. I climbed into it.

He moved around the car and slid into the driver’s seat. I noticed his ink-black glasses were already back on his face, and his nothing expression had returned.

“I don’t need to go to the station, or the hospital, or—?”

“Do you feel like you need to go to the hospital?”

“Not really.”

“And I’ve got the information I need. We’ll be calling you with more information or questions.”

Sykes keyed in his car radio and spat out the short version of my story, and the location of the parking lot where I’d been attacked. Another patrolman squawked back that he’d check it out. My chest boomed like a cannon. They’d find the gun in seconds, find it open. Find a bullet missing.

Sykes put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb.

There’d be no bullet casing. I knew they could tell when a gun had been fired, but without the casing they’d have no evidence of anything. And without a bullet, wherever the hell that had gone, they’d just guess the gun had been emptied. At the very least, the story I’d told the cop didn’t seem to break with reality on any major parts. The gun would confuse them, but that’s it.

They’d get my fingerprints off the gun—but that fit my story about the struggle. They’d get Baldy’s fingerprints, too, and maybe they’d catch him. As the police car turned onto the freeway, my mind wandered further.

I felt a cold lake sloshing in my belly. A million doubts, a million worries. What if I did go to the hospital? What if they x-rayed me and found a little lump of lead in my stomach, with no bullet hole or trail? What then?

The strange heat had died, I realized. It had faded to just a point of warmth in my chest as soon as the car had pulled away from the mall. I wasn’t awash in flames anymore, and I even had a hard time recalling the sensation. It had been like being immersed in warm honey.

The car pulled up to the curb in front of my house. My belly wasn’t going to expel the thick knot of terror any time soon, I realized. Neither of them were outside, but that didn’t mean anything; they were probably inside, making calls, making assurances. Trying to bring my friends back, maybe, tell them I was safe. When the car creaked to a stop, Sykes half-turned in his seat.

“Need me to come up with you?”

I frowned.

“No,” I said. “Do you have to?”

“It’s not protocol,” he said. “You’re healthy, you’re safe. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”

“Thanks,” I said, and reached for the door handle. After a second of groping, I sighed.

“I have to let you out.”

“Ah.”

I climbed out of the car with Sykes’ help and stepped out onto the grass.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Thanks for not being dead.”

I snapped around toward him, to catch the look on his face, but he’d already turned his back to me. He popped open the driver’s side door and slid into it without another word. Before the car pulled away, he gave me the granite stare I’d come to know well in my brief hour in his care. He cruised down the street at the same even pace he moved at—like he had no hurry in the world, but at the same time, like he might spring into furious motion. Call me wacko, but I think I liked him.

I turned and walked up the driveway. I didn’t make it to the second porch step before the screen door flew open and banged against the wall. My mother, her face red, blasted out through the dark hole into the house and wrapped her arms around me.

The heat inside of me flared to life again, burning through my core. I sucked in a breath and felt an icy sting on my tongue. It rushed down my windpipe, into my lungs, my belly, throwing a spray of fine white ice on the erupting flame. My skin cooled almost instantly.

Something leaked into me, flooded my senses—a fumbling primal grasping in the dark…tears being kissed away…oh God our little Lucy…

Aftershave, stinging and musky and pleasant. The little tug of his lips…oh. Of Dad’s lips. On my Mom’s neck. Oh. Oh! Blargh! Yuck, ack!

The little brain-movie faded, and I staggered under a rush of vertigo. What the hell? How did I…what was I seeing? Whatever it was, it combined terror and heartbreak and comfort—for them, at least. I kinda longed for a lobotomy to scrape that image out.

What had I just seen? And more importantly, why was I seeing it?

Mom held me at arm’s length, her eyes flashing across my body, looking for drug marks, cuts, bullet holes, who knows. The dark silhouette shape of my father crowded the doorway into the house. “Lucy,” Dad said, his voice low. “Are you hurt?”

I looked up at him—my mother turned, her arms still grabbing at me, to look back at him, too.

“A little,” I said.

The sound of the gunshot—Baldy’s hands, the leer in all of their eyes. The terror. The helpless stand in the alleyway where they could do anything they wanted. The…

…black…

…long wide ribbons of light, snaking through the dust-motes. Noon no longer—evening leaned into the living room in long dusty strokes of amber and red. The over-stuffed sofa beneath me, cradling me on a cloud of upholstery and fluffy pillows. My head had been used to pound in nails. The hand and knee on my right side ached. The TV was dark.