Robin Wasserman - Girls on Fire

“It’s getting old, Lace. You want to use it, use it. I’m tired of secrets. That’s what all this is about, right? No more secrets.”

I wonder, now, if Lacey knew that once it started, it wouldn’t stop. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Maybe she wanted to tell me, needed Nikki to make her. More games, more marionettes, all of us pulling one another’s strings, turtles all the way down.

Neither of them was looking at me.

“There are worse things than death,” Lacey said. “Maybe you need another bath.” She seized Nikki’s hair, rougher than before, shoved her face into the bucket, held her hard and tight as her limbs spasmed, and it went on and on and then on too long and I shouted at her to stop.

She didn’t stop.

I screamed it. “Stop!” and “You’re going to kill her!” and “Lacey, please ,” and only then did she let go. For a long, terrifying second, Nikki didn’t move. Then she coughed up a bubble of water and took a shuddery breath. Lacey did look at me then, hurt painted across her face.

“You still don’t trust me, Dex?”

“I trust you.”

“Then why do you look so scared?”

“Gosh, I wonder why.” Nikki’s head was hanging limp, her voice hoarse, mouth wide and sucking air, and still she managed to sound smug.

“This is getting boring,” Lacey said. “We got what we wanted. Let’s get out of here. Untie her and go home.”

Just like that. She said it like a punishment, like I’d been too loud and whiny in the backseat and she’d been forced to turn the car around.

“We have her on tape,” Lacey reminded me. “She won’t tell anyone. Will you, Nikki?”

Nikki shook her head, dog obedient.

“See? It’s over. Let’s go.”

It could have been that easy. We could have gone home, the three of us, safe and sound and only a little bit fucked up for life by what happened in the woods. Lacey set that before me on a platter, and all I needed to do was reach for it. On the other side of yes : the empty highway, our artist’s loft in Seattle with its lava lamps and dissipated men, the future we’d promised ourselves. That easy.

Nikki looked hopeful, but not only that. She looked satisfied. That’s not why I said no.

We couldn’t stop, not yet. Because Lacey was too eager; because there were still secrets. Because if I let it be over, I would never know what was true.

Secrets were a claim, and as long as they shared one, they owned each other. I needed Lacey to be only mine. We would stay in this boxcar until everything was said. For Lacey’s own good, whether she knew it or not.

“Not yet,” I said. The air hissed out of both of them. “One more confession.”

“You need a break,” Lacey said. “Let’s go sit in the car for a while, listen to some music.”

“That’s right, Saint Kurt will solve all your problems,” Nikki said. “And if that doesn’t work, you can always knock her out and leave her in the woods to rot.”

“Shut up!” Lacey screamed.

I didn’t like her losing control. Nikki shouldn’t have been able to make her do that. Nikki could have no power over Lacey. I couldn’t allow it.

“We should stay here,” I said. “We should listen.”

Nikki laughed.

“We promised ,” Lacey hissed, and the we was them, not us. “You promised.”

“And you tied me to a fucking chair and tried to drown me,” Nikki said. “Pretty sure that means all promises are void. Let her hear what you did.”

“What we did. You always forget that part.”

“I’m done with that. This sad story of how we’re both to blame. Fuck that.”

“Enough,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Hannah, I tried to spare you from finding out that your friend here is a sociopath, but you wouldn’t let me. So now you get to hear the whole truth.”

“I’ll kill you,” Lacey said, like a growl. “I actually will.”

“Right, because you’re so scared that Hannah will find out what you’re capable of that you’d kill me right in front of her? That’ll convince her you’re a good person. Foolproof plan.”

Then they were shouting at each other, about who was a monster and who was to blame, and they didn’t hear me tell them stop; they didn’t see me at all. I thought maybe I was the ghost. Maybe I wasn’t there, never had been.

“Tell me the story,” I said finally, and these were the words that summoned silence. “Tell me everything.”

“Smartest thing you’ve ever said, Hannah. See, Lacey and I used to come out here—”

“No,” Lacey was quiet. “I’ll tell.”

There was no more yelling. I felt it again, what Nikki had once told me, that this was a sacred place, haunted by all the ruined futures of the past.

“So you can lie to her? Again?”

I didn’t see Lacey’s hand move, only the silver blur of the knife. Then there was blood, just a dab of it, on Nikki’s collarbone, and a tiny yelp of pain.

“I’ll tell,” Lacey said, quieter still. “The truth this time, Dex. All of it.”

I was not afraid of Lacey.

I would not allow myself to be afraid of Lacey.

She would tell her story, prove her faith in me. I would repay her by finding a way to believe. “Tell me, Lacey. Everything.”

“Go ahead then, tell her,” Nikki allowed, magnanimous in victory. “Tell her the story of us.”

NIKKI DIDN’T JUST WANT TO watch; she wanted to conduct. I tried to teach her chaos, but she understood only control. So it had been from the beginning: Nikki leaning against a tree, head cocked, eyes narrowed, ordering us from one position into another, telling Craig to lick my neck or turn me over and drive my face into the ground. It made three more manageable: two bodies and one will.

Craig didn’t want to do it, not at first. That’s something else to remember. He could never say no to Nikki.

“On your knees, bitch,” she said to him, and he dropped.

He should see what it was like, she said. She should get to watch him seeing it.

She hated him, if you want to know what I think.

What I think is, she wanted to take that gun and shove it up his ass and pull the trigger. His punishment for the person she was when they were together, the act she put on that required a Craig by her side. But Nikki Drummond doesn’t get her hands dirty.

I held the gun. I held it where a dick would be.

“Not gonna happen,” he said, even though he was already on his knees. “That’s totally gay.”

“It’s a gun, not a dick,” Nikki said. “How is that gay?”

He grunted.

“You know what’s gay, Craig? Two naked girls writhing around together. Panting. Sucking. Sweating. You don’t mind that, do you? You ever want to see that again?”

She knew so much, Dex, and yet somehow she hadn’t clued in that he really, really didn’t.

“You ever want me to touch your gun again? Or you want me to tell the whole school it’s got warts?”

“Like anyone would believe that.”

“Have you met me, sweetie? They believe anything I tell them.”

This, for them, was foreplay.

“Do I have to?” Even the question was a sign: He’d given in.

“Take it slow,” she advised. “Flick the tip. Tease it a little, it likes that. Remember what you told me, the first time? Just like eating an ice cream cone. You love ice cream, Craig. You love it .”

She didn’t need to talk me into anything. I stood steady, kept the gun erect as Craig closed his mouth over it. Maybe I was curious, too.

Darkness swirled around us, the station hissed with ghosts, and my blood was half vodka. Not an excuse, Dex. Just setting the scene.