The man grabbed his wife from behind, pinned her arms down, and began dragging her down the street toward the home. The little girl was left lying in the street and her mother screamed and shouted, and tried to extricate herself from her husband’s grip. But he was too strong. Already, the distant sound of doors and shutters automatically opening hummed in the air.
Ashley June’s father opened the front door for them. Quickly, just enough for them to slip inside. The doctor entered first. But as he twisted his body to slide in, his grip on his wife loosened. She torqued her body and fled from his grasping hands.
“No!” the doctor shouted, spinning around to go after her.
But the door slammed shut in his face. Ashley June’s father pushed his body against the door, faced the doctor. “No! It’s too late!” her father said, spit sputtering out of his mouth. “For heaven’s sake, you open the door, we’re all dead! All of us!”
The doctor pushed back, shoving Ashley June’s father against the door.
A scream from outside. The woman’s scream.
The doctor, hand frozen on the doorknob, stood rigid. Whatever he was feeling, anger, fear, panic, it was expressed only through the bunched muscles of his back and bulging veins along his neck. He did not move.
Outside, the woman ran to her collapsed daughter. Neighborhood shutters were fully opened now, revealing thumbprints of pale faces peering out windows. Within seconds, front doors were slammed open, windows smashed right through by people leaping out. Their flannel pajamas fluttered like ripples across a windblown puddle as they raced down the street. Faster and faster toward the mind-blowing discovery of two live hepers lying right there in the middle of their street.
The mother had draped her body like a blanket over her daughter. Ashley June would forever remember how the woman gazed at her child as if there were nothing else in the universe. The woman’s expression was not of panic nor of despair. Rather, a maternal stillness—as if she were singing a soothing lullaby over her sleeping baby—glowed from her face. Then, a second later, the mother herself was blanketed, but this by the arrival of a dozen people, with violence, with obscene force. They flung themselves at her. And a split second later more arrived, pummeling her with the force of a hailstorm that separated her from her daughter, separated the mother from even herself in a thousand bloody pieces.
Inside the house, no one spoke, no one moved. But everyone found a wall—or a door, or the floor—against which to press their faces and shield their eyes and cover their ears from the loud mauling of flesh and spillage of blood.
And all Ashley June could think about was the doctor’s poor son at home, how he was oblivious to what was happening, how he did not know his mother and sister were being ripped apart, how he did not know that his life had just irretrievably changed. And a sadness clamped around her heart, for she felt for him, and for just a moment she wished she could absorb some of the pain and loneliness that would shortly and surely visit him like the cold, stark arrival of night.
Twenty-five
ASHLEY JUNE’S BATHROOM is as I’d hoped it would be. Intact, filled with cleaning agents. Her homemade concoctions are similar and in many ways superior to mine. Everything is placed in orderly compartments, on shelves, racks, in cabinets and hampers. Skin powder, odor neutralizers, bars of soap, nail clippers. Next to the mirror on a glass shelf are bottles of a translucent liquid I realize is hair soap—in liquefied form. Ingenious. In the top drawer of a small sundry tower are her fake fangs. Over a dozen of them, varying in size, all the fangs she’s worn since she was a toddler. She’d kept them, for whatever reason. I rub my thumb over the blunt tip of one of the smaller fangs. So tiny. She was maybe only five when she last wore them. The sight of these fangs, the span of years they represent, make my throat go suddenly thick.
“We should start,” I say, my voice low. “Sundown is less than an hour away.” I check the water level for the shower. Good. The two overhead containers are filled to the brim with rainwater. They haven’t been used in weeks. Since the night of the Lottery, I think to myself. That was the last time Ashley June was here, in the pre-dusk hours before the Lottery.
“I’ll go first,” Sissy says.
I nod, walk out.
A minute later, I hear the sound of water splashing. Sissy will need a change of clothes—what she’s been wearing is grungy and stinks. Shouldn’t be a problem finding clothes. She and Ashley June are close enough in size. I browse through a chest of drawers, grabbing a pair of roll-up capri pants, a casual denim shirt. And underwear, quickly chosen, which I fling between the shirt and pants, sandwiching it.
I knock gently on the bathroom door. “Hey. I picked out some clothes for you.” She doesn’t answer. Concerned, I push the door open and step in.
She’s fine. There’s no shower curtain and I see everything. Her soaked hair, dark as a horse’s mane, pressed halfway down her back. Water streams down, pooling briefly in the small of her back, then over her pale-white buttocks. Glides down over the curvature of her calf muscles. Her face is upturned inches from the showerhead, her mouth gaped wide, drinking in some of the water as it splashes noisily over her. That’s why she didn’t hear me knock.
I quickly drop my gaze. I place the clothes on top of the hamper, turn to leave. But not before I notice she’s holding the bar of soap in her right hand, is softly grazing it across her left arm. Too delicate, too soft. She’s not cleaning herself.
I begin to step out. I’ll speak louder from the other side of the closed door, tell her that she has to scrub harder.
“What is it?” she asks, jolting me. “What’s wrong?”
I’m sorry is on my lips, one foot already stepping out. When I stop.
She’s turned sideways to me. There’s no shame, no embarrassment, no shielding. Just her eyes, honest and open. Her arms by her sides, the water splashing on her shoulder, creating a mist of tiny water droplets.
I shift my eyes away. Cold tiles, metal frames, gray containers. Swing my eyes back to hers and the warmth in them is like a flame suffusing me.
“You have to really scrub hard,” I say.
“I am.”
“You’re not.”
She holds my eyes. “Show me,” she says softly.
I walk over, take the bar of soap from her hand. I remove the coarse rag from a hook on the wall, soak it in the water.
“Turn around,” I tell her. My voice sounds hollow in the confined space, the words muted by the splish-splash of water.
She does. Water flows in waves down her back, coursing down the vertical dip of her spine.
“Don’t think of it as washing,” I say. “Think of it as erasing.”
I lather her back with the soap, moving in small circles. Trying not to let my fingers touch the skin of her back. “Erasing everything that makes you different. Erasing everything that is human.”
With my other hand, I press the towel against her skin. I rub down, gently at first; then I scrub harder and harder until her skin is chafed red, until it must feel like I am scraping her raw. She does not complain. She does not move.
“We have to erase everything. The smells. The oily secretions. The dead skin cells. And later, we need to cut our fingernails and toenails, pluck our eyebrows, shave the hair from our legs, arms, armpits. We erase all signs.”
“You did this every day?”
“Every night.”
She stares ahead at the tiled wall in front of her, not speaking. The water comes down, washing away the lather, curtaining over her skin. “I can’t imagine doing all this every single night. I don’t think I can do it even now.”
A fine spray of water, soft as mist, drifts onto my face. “I’ll show you how,” I whisper. “I’ll help.”
She turns her head to look at me and her eyes are dove soft.
I take her arm and slide the soap down its length. She shivers at the touch, goose bumps protruding out. I press the bar of soap harder into the soft give of her flesh. She keeps her gaze on me, and a film of something translucent layers over her eyes. A flash of doubt, suspicion even. But just as quickly as it appears, it vanishes.
“Okay?”
She nods. I rub the bar of soap over the ridge of her forearm. Then to the soft underside. She flinches.
“I’m sorry. I forgot about that.” I turn her arm over. The X branding has scabbed over into what will become a thick scar. Softly, I guide her arm under the showerhead, letting the water sweep down her arm, over and over, as if the water will wash away, will smooth, will erase away all the unwanted marks and protrusions.
And she turns fully around, cups my face with her hands. Her eyes pierce deep into mine. Dark circles rim her eyes, slanted black half-moons, and the sight of them stirs a protective instinct in me. Her eyes never waver from mine, not so much for even a blink. They hold mine, damp yet strong, like a long embrace in the rain.
This is what draws me most to Sissy. Not so much her beauty or inner strength. Nor even her loyalty to those she loves. It’s her utter lack of guile. This openness—it is something I’d over the years tamped down and shunned. For the sake of survival, I have instead worn a mask, thick and impenetrable as a calloused scar. And, denied exposure to the elements, I’ve shriveled beneath it.
Sissy stands naked and open before me. She strokes the side of my face, over and over, as if trying to peel something away. I feel the outer layer slipping off, and the sensation is akin to how I felt when I leaped off the mountain on the hang glider. Frightening and exhilarating.
Her fingers stroking my face. My hand trying to wash away her scar.
And in that moment, something breaks in me. I brush her upper lip with my thumb, follow the gentle curve of her cheek.
And that’s when I realize. My plan to use her for her blood, to put her at risk in order to save Ashley June—that is a plan I could never follow through on. I won’t do that to Sissy.
Not even for Ashley June.
We will go ahead with our plan. In a few short hours, I will put a bullet through Ashley June’s skull.