Lindsay Hunter - Ugly Girls

There wasn’t any blood that she could see, and Baby Girl knew it was probably like someone took a meat mallet to his insides, everything a mush now, blood running wherever, all dams burst but the dam of his skin. That’s how it was with Charles, his head like a thick balloon swelling with blood.

She didn’t see the gun. “Where did the gun go?” she heard herself ask. She had wanted to say, We need to do something for him , but the thing about the gun had come out instead. Her voice as toneless as a bee’s whine. I didn’t know! she wanted to scream. It’s not my fault! How could I know? I take it back! I take it back! She should push Perry over, too, and then jump in after. Dive headfirst so her brain would go splat.

“Look,” Perry said, pointing into the quarry with all the fingers on both hands, like she was frozen that way, like she was about to dip them into a vat of something, or was showing off her nails. Baby Girl looked. The socked foot was pedaling fast. The fingers on his flung arm were fluttering, like he was typing in his sleep.

“He is,” Perry said. “He’s alive.” She sounded fascinated, lured in, like she was narrating her own dream.

“We have to go down there,” Baby Girl said. “We have to get him.” When Charles had his accident he’d lain by the side of the road for ten minutes before someone finally stopped to help him. People had come forward later to say they’d seen him but figured someone else had called for help already. But no one had, his brain swelling the whole time. When the paramedics finally arrived his head looked like it was near to popping. In the hospital they’d opened up his skull, stuck tubes in, the blood they drained out as black as ink.

There was a winding, rocky path that could get you to the bottom, and Baby Girl started walking toward it. It was Charles down there, Charles with the pulled taffy neck and the flung arm and the eyes that couldn’t look nowhere but up. The thought had her nearly running.

“No,” Perry shouted. “Don’t.”

“You think we should call nine-one-one instead?” Baby Girl asked. She hadn’t thought of that until now. She’d just wanted to be down there, holding his ruined head in her hands, calming his pedaling leg as best she could. Like he’d wake up just fine if someone came to see him. Calling 911 seemed like something she’d heard of, not something she could actually do.

“No,” Perry said. “I think we should go back to the car and drive home. Get out of this rain. Get out of these clothes.”

“We can save him,” Baby Girl said.

“He’s dead, Dayna.”

Perry hadn’t said her real name in a long time.

“He’s dead, and he was trying to hurt us, and it was self-defense.” Perry’s hair was coming out of its ponytail, tentacles of wet hair clinging to her face. She looked pale, drowned. Ugly.

Baby Girl looked again. The leg had stopped.

“We can’t just leave him down there,” Baby Girl said, but she felt herself weakening. What could they do? Drag him up? Then what? She let herself remember him lunging, remember the fear she felt. Remembered that it was she who’d pushed him. Her fault, self-defense or not.

“We’ll go home and decide what to do from there,” Perry said. She backed up a couple tentative steps, keeping her eyes on Baby Girl. Turned. Walked toward the car.

Baby Girl followed.

THE TRUTH WAS PERRY WAS ELECTRIC with the horror of what had happened. There Jamey went, over the edge, over and over and over, nothing to be done. She hadn’t meant … but that was a useless thought. Of course she hadn’t meant it. Tons of shit she hadn’t meant, but it had all happened anyway.

Another truth: she didn’t want to have this with Baby Girl. They were done with each other, it was clear, would have gone their separate ways right as soon as Baby Girl dropped Perry off back at the trailer. Until now. Now they had this secret to share.

And so already Perry was trying to make it something else. Something tidy. He’d wanted to hurt them. He’d fallen, he was probably dead. He was not who he said he was. It was an accident.

She could even feel herself wanting to shout something like Get over it! at Baby Girl. Could feel herself actually believing it was nothing to get upset about.

But there was no need to yell, Baby Girl was right behind her, both of them nearly at the car now.

“Where are we going?” Baby Girl asked once they were inside.

“Just drop me home,” Perry told her. Her voice came out in a croak.

“I thought we were going to decide what to do.”

“We have decided,” Perry said. She looked out the window, away from Baby Girl.

“You’ve decided,” Baby Girl said. But she started the car, didn’t say nothing more. The wipers clearing the windshield, time already passing.

Perry pulled down the visor to look at herself in the mirror, something she always did when she felt shaken loose, something she had started doing back when she had first had sex, with a man who worked at the same shop her momma did. He was nineteen and Perry a few weeks into being fourteen. She’d watched him whenever she went to visit her momma after school. He had a genuine fang and a tattoo of something sharp peeking below his shirtsleeve. Later she found out it was a quill, quill , a word she didn’t know until he’d said it. She’d wanted to laugh but hadn’t. And he’d watch her, too, black glinty eyes on her while he mopped or stocked the cold case.

It was the first time Perry felt how curiosity could shift, black and churning and alive, into desire.

He’d called in sick one day, which meant Perry’s momma had to go in, and he came by the trailer when Perry was home alone from school. “Hey, show me your bedroom” was all he said. They’d done it quickly on the top of her bedcover, him saying “Ready?” at the exact moment he’d pushed into her, the pain as jagged and bright as a small explosion, though there’d barely been any blood. Then again in the shower, which Perry had pretended to enjoy as much as he did, but really it just felt practical, like some kind of a procedure. Easy. And the way he looked at her during. Bow down , she nearly said, and she knew he would have.

After he left, Perry looked at her face in her momma’s hand mirror. She looked the same as she always had. It was a letdown. Nothing had changed, only everything had.

But when she looked in the mirror now she saw that she was different. Smudge of Myra. Faded and fading. And then she allowed the thought she allowed whenever she felt like she might be disappearing: Least I ain’t Baby Girl. Bloom of relief. She could get through this, past it. No more than a tick on her timeline. Just had to stay strong till the next tick.

Plus, it hadn’t been her who’d pushed him. There was always that: it hadn’t been her.

TONIGHT HE’D APOLOGIZE to Herman. Make it clear that he didn’t take kindly to being asked about his daughter by a man in prison for taking one alive, leaving her naked and mostly dead in a farmer’s hayfield. But Jim knew that if you treated prisoners like animals, they tended to act like exactly that. If you treated them like they were human beings, with real emotions and brains, they’d act the part.

Herman was curled in his cot like always, hands in his armpits, facing the wall. Jim rapped on the cell bars with his nightstick.

“Hey,” Jim said, trying to force some kindness into his voice, but still the word landed like an embroidered turd.

Herman uncurled, lay flat on his back. Jim took it as a good sign. He saw that Herman’s bandage was smaller now, and it didn’t wrap his head. Another good sign.

“Herman, I’d like to apologize for jabbing you in the eye. It wasn’t right. I should have explained to you that you don’t talk to no one about their kin rather than putting the hurt on you.”