Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

Lestat squeezed Danger-Prone Daphney's hand and pumped his strength into her, and though Daphney's palm was limp and clammy, she was still there, squeezing back, giving what she could. Now the end of the reinforced gurney hit the double doors; Daphney whimpered and kept her eyes closed tight. The gurney continued down the hallway and underneath the fluorescent lights, an orderly kept sponging Daphney's brow, and Daphney looked calm to Lestat, like some sort of angel, and this terrified him to no end. Where Daphney's shirt had been cut open, her stomach was engorged and bright with sweat, it was rubbery and unreal. A needle had been jammed into the vein at the crook of her elbow and her arms were strapped into Velcro restraints and Lestat did not take his eyes off of Daphney, but kept gripping her hand. Presently, he spoke and it was as if he were swatting at a fly over his shoulder, and he told the ER administrator to hold off, not to call child welfare. This milk carton, it had Daphney's parents’ address on it. Lestat swore the milk carton was in Daphney's backpack and, and, Just give me a second, goddamn it.

He leaned into Daphney's cheek. “Hold on,” he pleaded. “It's all gonna be fine. I'm here for you. Stay with me.”

After some time the girl began to stir, and pulled her socks up from around her ankles and toes, where they'd bunched. She did not hurry, but felt along the ribbed stripes, delicately patting away the dust. One by one she then removed the thorns from the cotton. When she was finished, one boot went back on. Then the other. The ends of a shoelace were filthy, but she took the lace and evened it out anyway. Instead of relacing, she wrapped each end of the shoelace all the way around her boot's calf, bringing the strings back together at the front. The tongue interrupted, flopping down, getting in the way. As the girl straightened it, she constructed excuses as to her whereabouts this evening, and tried to convince herself that her lies were indeed true. Possibilities began, but were not concluded, her thoughts wandering down silent alleys, and if the wisps of madness were not exactly gathering momentum inside her, nonetheless, a withdrawal was under way.

Soon enough the girl with the shaved head would drop her old friends. Her soliloquies would give way to glares, her outbursts to empty shrugs. The girl's mother would notice the fragile shell her daughter had retreated into, and would be concerned by the absence of music from her daughter's voice. How the girl's anger had lost all traces of its former grace, her mother would want to know. Why the eloquence of her outrage had given way to such an unsteady quietude. The girl frequently stayed out late at night, there was nothing new in this; however, in future years the mother would tell a string of therapists about the morning when the aggrieved parents of a twelve-year-old boy showed up at her door with a stringy teenager in tow. They demanded to speak with the girl and, in the living room of her mother's apartment, the girl mostly stared down at the ground. Sometimes she looked over to Lincoln, Lorraine, and Kenny. In halting words, the girl told a story that corresponded with what Kenny had told Lincoln and Lorraine. The boy's parents glowered at the girl, horrified at what she might say. Frequently the girl stopped and restarted, and when she was finished, nobody in the room doubted her veracity. The girl with the shaved head would be cleared of any involvement with Newell's absence, as would Kenny, and this would be one less thing for the girl and her mother to worry about. However, this did not mean her mother was satisfied with the girl's explanation as to why she'd been walking out in the desert alone at that time of night. The party wasn't any fun, nobody would give her a ride — this is all the girl would say, telling her mother to just drop it, storming off or just shutting down. Something had to have happened out there, the girl's mother would conclude, and a significant amount of her next three years would be spent thinking about this night, that it had to have something to do with the change in her daughter. Even more of her time would be spent on the phone with health care representatives, discussing, for the umpteenth time, why exactly payment for the girl's psychiatric sessions kept being denied when the policy clearly stated… The girl with the shaved head would have her bachelor's and her master's and would be well into adulthood and still would not feel the comfort or security necessary to bring up the events that happened inside the ice cream truck. Relationships, intimate and working, with men and women alike, would be affected by her reticence, her anger, her temper, and what partners and teachers and employees would call a difficulty with trust. Shying away from physical contact, the girl would repel people. She would be defiant, resistant, abjectly negative. The girl with the shaved head would not be happy with all the anger that was inside of her, nor with how she moved through each day, and she would work diligently on addressing these things, and while this work would not be easy, nothing in this world that matters is easy. The girl with the shaved head would be a work in progress for quite some time, as all of us are.

For now, however, she was slipping backward, into that silence.

And, nominally, she was aware of a pair of high beam headlights. The Plymouth slowed, veering to the right, its tires crunching softly over the gravel, the car pulling up with maybe a yard of space between the girl and the passenger window.

After all this time driving around looking for people to nail, the strangeness of her appearance — this straggly girl, served up on a rock out in the middle of nowhere — felt like it could be a big deal, although Newell did not know how. Like she had been put here for him.

“Yo.”

She would tell authorities about believing the Plymouth to be the kind of car driven by the undercover drug officers at her school. She would admit to freezing up, thinking that if the cops took her in, they'd call her mom. An hour or so and she'd be home.

“Yo,” he repeated. “What are you doing?”

His voice belonged to a child. And beneath this child's attempt at nonchalance, he was tense, the girl could tell that much. Keeping her head low, she raised her pupils, and made out a basic form in the window space.

Another voice now, from inside the car. “You okay?” it asked. “Need a lift or something?”

The engine lulled. The quarter moon sat luminous and large.

Her legs were bent at the knee, her heels firmly planted on the dirt. Reaching down to her untied boot, she took up its loose laces.

“We're not going to hurt you or nothing,” the boy said.

She started a knot. Turned it into a bow.

“Hey.”

From inside the car now, the second voice: “Newell. You better not.”

“I'm not,” the boy answered. “Yo there.”

“I think we should just—” went the second voice.

“I just want to know something.”

“If she's walking, we can't be too far away.”

“Nothing bad, fawck.”

A rustling in the windowsill, the boy moving something, repositioning his body. Again he addressed the girl, this time as if he were making contact with a deaf person: “I JUST WANT TO ASK A QUESTION.”

Now her head rose incrementally, in the movements of someone betraying her better instincts. Her face remained impenetrable, the few traces Newell could make out seemed to form to a resigned and dignified grace.

This was how it worked, she thought. This world was warm promises and sweet breath on your ear and girls who got into cars and were never heard from again.

The only way to know anything, she knew, the only way to the truth, was in blood.