Robin Wasserman - Girls on Fire

“God loves you all,” promised the woman with the stack of pamphlets who’d planted herself just outside the front door. “But He cannot protect you if you willingly put yourselves in the path of temptation.” It was beak-faced Barbara Fuller, who wore her clothes like a hanger, who’d snubbed my mother more than once at a PTA bake sale, suggesting not so subtly that someone who settled for store-bought was no more deserving of the title mother than Entenmann’s donuts were of the title food . Barbara Fuller was the type who wrote letters to the editor about loose morals and garish Christmas lights, and she had a voracious hunger for the failures of others. That day, she didn’t seem to care that her audience consisted of a handful of bored retirees and one abashed bald guy who looked like he would gnaw his own arm off if his wife — Barbara Fuller’s only avid listener — didn’t let go.

“Satanists slaughter fifty thousand children each year.”

The bald guy picked something out of his nose.

“This is a national emergency. And don’t fool yourselves — there is an active satanic cult operating in this town.” She raised her voice. “Your teenagers are at risk.”

It was a joke, this woman preaching to us about risk — pretending she knew who was in danger, and of what.

I walked quickly, head down, focusing on the slap of my flip-flops against pavement, the gravel beneath some old lady’s Chevrolet, the crying cicadas, the pulse of blood flushing my cheeks, the jangle of the bike lock as I fumbled with the key.

“They prey on the vulnerable and confused,” she screeched, and I suspected she wasn’t just trying to penetrate the old folks’ hearing aids. I would not look up to catch her looking at me. “They prey on the fallen.”

SUMMER STRETCHED ON. OUR HOUSE whirred day and night with the apologetic wheezing of fans. They stirred hot air; we endured. More than once I read through Barbara Fuller’s pamphlet about satanism, a copy of which I’d liberated from the trash. Written by one Isabelle F. Ford, PhD, and jointly published by Parents Against Satanic Teachings and the Cult Crime Research Institution, it suggested that an underground network of tens of thousands of satanists was diligently pursuing a program of grave robbing and child sacrifice.

If only, I thought, because imagine: If there were such a cabal, veins of dark power threading through Battle Creek. If there were others like me, a coven of girls whose secret selves throbbed with pain, who needed blood to feed their hearts of darkness. I’d always longed for a shadow world, ever since I was a kid, searching out garden sprites and bridge trolls, wishing myself into a faerie changeling waiting for the summons home. Now, a new fantasy: spindly arms carving strange symbols in the night, robed silhouettes against the full moon, a bloody altar and a cloud of incense, ritual and invocation, the promise of power. We laughed , Lacey had told me; we hefted an axe in a moonlit field, loomed over something large and vulnerable, and there was joy in power, joy in drawing blood, slashing and slicing and destroying. When I let myself remember, I could almost believe it, that there was, that we did. If only the Barbara Fullers of the world were right and all I had to do was summon the forces of darkness and let them consume me.

I threw the pamphlet back in the trash. One more empty promise.

Lacey never called.

No one called.

Until one night — as if the forces of darkness had materialized after all, in response to my silent request — my mother shouted upstairs to tell me I had a call. . from Nikki Drummond. When I wouldn’t come to the phone, Nikki called again the next night, and the night after.

On the fourth day, she came to the house.

HERE WAS NIKKI DRUMMOND, PERCHED prettily on the blue velour couch in my living room, sitting in a spot where I’d peed as a baby, more than once. She was dressed for summer in Battle Creek, which meant straddling the narrow line between socially acceptable and buck naked, somehow making a strapped cotton shell and sweaty cutoffs look both girl-next-door sexy and living-room-small-talk appropriate. Kid-tested, mother-approved. I was dressed nearly the same, but looked like a homeless person.

“So,” Nikki said.

Lacey had taught me that the best way to unnerve people was to let them marinate in silence. I watched her, waiting, and she watched me, waiting. I broke first.

“What do you want?”

“Are you mad at me or something?”

“Seriously?” It was strange to talk to someone like everything was the same as it had been, like only I was different.

“Come on, what did I ever do to you, Hannah?”

“For one, you ratted me out to my fucking mother.” It felt like forever ago; it felt laughably small, considering. But it was easiest to say out loud.

“That was for your own good.” Her voice, sweet as syrup. Sticky. “She got you to break the law, Hannah. Come on, what kind of friend is that?”

“Dex.”

“What?”

“My name is Dex .”

She laughed. I’d never actually punched anyone — growing up an only child had deprived me of the wrestling and black eyes that came with siblings — but I could imagine it, the bite of nails against my palm, the crunch of knuckles against cartilage, the spatter of blood, her wide-eyed surprise, her pain, her awe. That I had it in me to break something. That she could be broken.

She must have seen it, because she swallowed the giggle.

“Sorry. Dex. ”

“Please go.”

“Not yet. I came by to see if you were doing okay, and you’re not even giving me a chance to ask.”

“Lacey’s gone,” I said. It was the first time I’d said it out loud. “So you don’t have to worry about me anymore. No more bad influence.”

“God, Hannah, I don’t give a shit about Lacey, I’m talking about you . How are you? After. . you know?”

I did know, and I didn’t. Maybe that was why I’d let Nikki Drummond sit on my couch and scuff her flip-flops into my rug. So she could tell me.

“Fine,” I said.

“Yeah, so fine you’ve been playing hermit all summer. You look like an albino.”

I stood up. “You came to the circus, you’ve seen the freak. Now you can go.”

Nikki sighed. “Look, Hannah—”

“Dex.”

“Yeah. Whatever. It was my party, sort of. Okay? So I feel responsible for how it ended up. For you.” She said it like she was expecting credit.

“How it ended up,” I said, slowly. Lacey would say: Show no fear. Lacey would say: She should be afraid. “With me dumped out back like garbage?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Nikki said. “I left way before then, don’t you remember?”

I shrugged.

She leaned forward. “Wait, you don’t remember? Oh my God, you totally blacked out!”

What I did remember: How it felt, to want to touch, to be touched. The heat and prickle of it, the fire.

“It must be killing you,” Nikki said. “Not knowing.”

I said nothing.

“You want my advice?” She said it like she wanted to help, and it was all upside down, Lacey leaving me, Nikki refusing to go away. “Decide nothing happened. Decide you’re fine, and you will be.”

Believing was the hard part, Lacey always said.

“I told you. I am fine.”

“Any of us could have gotten snagged by that rent-a-cop,” Nikki said. “Don’t think we don’t know that. You have more friends than you realize.”

“I have enough friends.”

She snorted. “Come to my place this weekend. My mom’s throwing some god-awful mother-daughter pool party, it’ll be a nightmare. You’ll love it.”