Hit (3 page)

I gave him as much of a deadpan look as possible, considering his gun was still mostly pointed at my mom, held loosely in his hand. If he'd done his homework, he'd learned about
my
homework. I'm not a genius, but I try hard. I mostly get A's and B's because I really want
to get into community college, maybe get a grant or a scholarship to a state school. No awards for me, no after-school activities. I stay out of trouble, although I was once caught selling parsley to some freshman idiot in the last stall of the girls' room, having convinced her it was weed as a joke. While the other girls in my class went for jobs at the mall or the Cracker Barrel, I'm content to sling cheap-ass pizza because that means I can walk home if I have to. If I was a star, then the sky was getting pretty freaking bleak.

“We don't care about your grades,” he said as if reading my mind. “We have your test scores. You have the exact qualities we're looking for.”

I turned to my mom and gave her my usual, careful smirk.

“And you were worried about my career prospects,” I said. “I'm being recruited!”

I guess that was what broke her and, in effect, me. My mom sobbed and doubled over, dropping the rosary, her arms wrapped around her belly. She'd gained a lot of weight since the accident, and she couldn't really hug herself anymore. As she rocked back and forth, crying, I realized that it was the saddest, most hopeless, most desperate I'd ever seen her. When Dad left, when she'd lost her good job and had to take a worse one, when I saw her in the hospital, covered in dried blood and bruises—all these experiences had been torture for me to watch, helpless.

But this was worse.

“Karen, this is no reason to cry,” the man said, and I sensed a cruel glee under his carefully manicured facade. “It's not like she had any real future. It's not like she was going to college. And you'll be able to afford the treatments you need now. If she succeeds.”

My head shot up. “Treatments?”

Mom just sobbed harder and turned her face away like she was trying to bury it in her shoulder.

“She didn't tell you about the lump they found in her breast?”

I scooted closer to her, laid my head against her shoulder.

“Is it true, Mama?” I said as quietly as possible. It should have been a private moment, not one acted out in front of the government's new robotic grim reaper.

She laid her head against mine and whispered, “Oh, Patsy. I should have told you.”

I wanted to be angry at her. I wanted to pitch a giant fit, slamming doors so hard that things fell off the thin walls. But I couldn't. All that hugging herself, hiding in her robe. I thought it was just the pain left over from her broken clavicle and busted ribs. But she'd been keeping it from me. The money, the gun, the terrifying wax robot man in our beat-down living room—none of that mattered compared to what was going on under her worn terry-cloth collar.

The gun twitched in the man's hand. “Look at it this way. If I shoot her, she won't be in any more pain, right? That's better than a long, slow death by cancer.”

“You know I won't let you do that,” I said, low and deadly.

“The algorithms indicated you would feel that way. And you will be compensated for your time. Your mother's debts will be released. You'll receive all the supplies you need. As long as you satisfy the terms of our contract within the time frame specified while meeting certain prearranged criteria, this could possibly be the best thing that's ever happened to you. You might even get a bonus.”

“So I should thank you for ruining my life?” I asked.

He put the gun in my lap and smiled. I didn't touch it. But I already hated it, cold and heavy on the pile of bright yellow yarn.

“You can thank democracy and greed for that,” he said.

After he left, my mom showed me her scans, pointed out the lump cradled by broken bones that even a blind person wouldn't have missed. She showed me the printouts from the oncologist, how much it was going to cost to have surgery and undergo chemo without insurance. Even with the best insurance around, it still would've been impossible on our budget.

I sat there on the threadbare couch, shaking my head. On the coffee table in front of us, the gun rested on a thick envelope of crap I was supposed to read but couldn't. The robot man made me sign something before he left, and after everything I'd learned, I should have read the fine print. Maybe it was suicidal, but leaving my signature without bothering to read the document first felt like my last act of freedom.

They pretty much owned me anyway.

“I'm so sorry,” my mom started, but I just grabbed her hand like a kid being torn away in a crowd, like holding on to her puffy fingers was the only thing I had left.

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said. “It just sucks, and it's happening, and talking won't change it. You'll get what you need. Don't worry.”

“But they want you to kill people.” She tried to pull her hand out of mine, but I wouldn't let her.

“Better them than you,” I said. “Better them than us.”

She nodded. I don't think she agreed. But my mom has always tried to be a good person and play by the rules. She goes to church and leaves something in the offering plate. She pays her taxes—or she used to. Mama taught me from a very young age that if I worked hard and pulled my weight, I would eventually succeed. We scoffed at people who got evicted and at our neighbor, who sometimes chose a new phone over paying her water bill and had to borrow our shower.

Turns out we were screwed either way.

Now I'm more practical, more ruthless. I've always liked little rebellions and sticking it to the Man, whoever he is. And if I can solve all our problems in five days, then I will do whatever it takes to live through it and keep my mom safe.

Or so I told myself two nights ago.

The next morning, I pulled the yellowed scrap of notebook paper out of my locket, uncurling it and running a finger along uneven, childish script.

I want to find my dad.

More than anything, that was what I'd wanted every day since he left. Just to see my dad again. For every birthday, I didn't want a party—I just wanted him. I asked Santa and the Easter bunny and even left a note for the tooth fairy. He'd become this mythical, larger-than-life figure of my imagination, and I was too faithful to give up the dream, even after thirteen years without a single card or phone call.

But the suddenly grown-up version of me had bigger problems than wanting love and answers for childhood abandonment, than wishing for a picture of my dad to put in the locket he left behind for me. I scratched out my old dream and turned the paper over to write something new.

I want to survive the next five days.

Now here I stand, on the doorstep of Eloise Framingham's house. I kiss my lucky locket and tuck it back down my collar. The welcome mat I'm standing on is worn, but the small porch is swept clean. There are two cars in the driveway, a minivan and a compact, both with ghosts on the hood. I shift the fake fruit basket to my hip, check
the gun in my waistband, and ring the doorbell. It feels like three years pass by the time a shadow darkens the window glass. I pray for the hundredth time that she's ancient and nearly gone.

A guy in his twenties answers in a ratty sweatshirt. “Can I help you?” he says. He looks like he's forgotten what sleep is.

“I have a delivery for Eloise Framingham.” My smile is so big he has to know I'm screaming inside.

“Jesus, who would send that?” he says, voice raw. “She can't even eat anymore.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just . . . I just deliver them.”

“So leave it on the porch or whatever. I don't care.”

He turns to go inside and is about to shut the door in my face. I can't let that happen.

“There's a message, too,” I say, desperate. “A singing telegram.”

I don't even know if they have those anymore, or what you would sing to someone who's dying, but I've got to get to Eloise. Now.

“A message? You can give it to me.”

I shrug in apology. “Sorry, if it's not in person, I don't get paid.”

“Fuck your getting paid!” he shouts, his face screwed up. “Just let her die in peace. She deserves that much.”

“Who is it?” a reedy voice calls from inside the dark house. “Is it Stephanie?”

I shove the guy aside and shoulder my way through the door,
using my big plastic basket. He shouts and follows me, but I'm too fast. Grief makes people slow, like moving through water. My mom was like that when my dad left. I was just a little kid, but I remember.

I barrel down the hall, toward a room where machines hiss with quiet rhythm. An old woman huddles in the center of a swaybacked bed, surrounded by pillows. The smell of urine and worse lurks under the cheap air fresheners lined up on a windowsill. I slam the door shut and twist the lock, and the guy curses and yanks it from the other side.

“Stephanie?” she says, squinting.

“Are you Eloise Framingham?” I ask, breathless, before I lose my nerve.

“Yes,” she rasps. She's got tubes cascading down her face, and a pink silk scarf struggles to stay tied around her bald head. She's nothing but bone, just paper skin collapsed around a flat, hollow frame. Her smooth, well-manicured hands are the only sign that she's much younger than she looks, that she's being eaten inside by disease. One hand flutters to her concave chest, the nails fake and thick and a beautiful, rosy pink. “Is that for me?” she asks.

I smile and nod, my lips wobbling. “Could you sign this, please?”

Her signature is just a jerky line, and she falls back against her pillows with a gasp of pain at the effort. I have never pitied someone so much in my life. And I hate myself for being grateful that what
I'm about to do will be as much of a mercy as it is a murder.

I hold the first button of my shirt up to my mouth and whisper, “By Valor Congressional Order number 7B, your account is past due and hereby declared in default. Due to your failure to remit all owed monies and per your signature just witnessed and accepted, you are given two choices. You may either sign your loyalty over to Valor Savings as an indentured collections agent for a period of five days or forfeit your life. Please choose.”

“I'm sorry?”

I've read it so fast and low that there's no way she could have heard anything over her machines. I walk across the worn carpet and hold out the card, and she takes it, her beautiful fingers trembling. And there's no way she could do what I'm doing because there's no way she can even stand up.

“What the hell did you just say to her?” the guy shouts through the door, his body slamming against the wood. I just need it to hold a little longer.

Eloise looks over the card, and my heart wrenches in my chest at how spastic and yet elegant her movements are. She must have been a dancer once. She's like a dying queen, like a deer struck by a car trying to stand on severed legs. Her carved ivory eyes scan the card from purple hollows, and she meets my gaze and nods.

“I don't mind.” She holds her chin up. “And I forgive you.”

She closes her eyes. I sit the basket gently on the ground. The
flimsy door is banging and slamming behind me, the lock about to break. Just as it flies open, I whip out the Glock and shoot Eloise Framingham in her bird-bone chest. She falls back onto the pillows with every bit of grace I imagined. Her lips curl up in a smile. I'm trembling, but she's not. Not anymore.

“What did you do?” the guy shouts. “What the hell did you just do?”

He runs past me to the bed, holding the woman's broken body to his chest and sobbing.

“What was that?” a worried voice calls from the hall, and a college-­age girl in a tracksuit appears in the doorway.

“Call the police!” the guy yells. “She shot my mom!”

The girl gasps behind her hand and disappears, running down the hall.