Hyacinth Girls (25 page)

I was embarrassed
, she whispered.

“She seemed really thankful, but embarrassed, too,” I wrote.

By the time I got to my tenth interaction, Rebecca had made about a hundred phone calls. She'd called Robyn's mom and the police and this guy named Danny she'd met at the cemetery. I'd let her read our first five interactions, but I was saving the rest for after. I wanted to disappear before she found out we were more than just friends. Right now, Rebecca only knew that Robyn was depressed last Christmas, which made sense to her with all the notes. But it also made her calls to Mrs. Doblak sound more and more crazy. I imagined Mrs. Doblak eagle-eyeing her daughter.
Why does this weirdo think you're going to jump off a bridge?
I hadn't meant to mess with her life again, but it was the only way this would work.

I looked at my screen and typed #10 as Robyn chewed gum beside me. She popped a big bubble right next to my ear.
Don't lie
, she said.
This is your last chance
.

“After Dallas spread it around, everyone started calling Robyn Bullets,” I typed.

After YOU spread it around
, she hissed.

No, I only said it that once!

Robyn cracked her gum and looked away as I kept writing: “I couldn't apologize because I couldn't get through to her, and I couldn't catch her eye in class because she wouldn't look at anyone.”

I felt my chair jump. Robyn had kicked me.
You said it at least twice. Probably more
.

Okay, twice. I wish I could go back
.

Robyn hunched over, like she was sitting at a desk, and then I smelled paint and looked down at my hands. I held a paintbrush in one hand and Ella was sitting beside me, dabbing yellow dots on her papier-mâché mask. The windows were open and I could hear a PE class yelling outside, and when Adam Liebowitz did a pratfall, Miss Dimmock pointed at the door. I was painting lips on my mask, wrinkly red lips, and when Miss Dimmock walked out of the room, I glanced over at Robyn. She wasn't wearing her coat that day—it was a warm April afternoon—and her wrists were bare in her summery white top.

“Bullets,” Ella called. “Ooh, your bullets are so hard.”

You looked so lonely. I wanted to go over
.

Robyn pretended she couldn't hear me and I heard Ella screeching. I could only repeat the past now. I had to do it all over again.

“Why are you such a bitch?” I asked Ella, and then I got out of my chair. My legs felt like rubber as I started stumbling forward, and Robyn was a million miles away, but also closer than ever before. I knew I was losing DH. I already knew what they would say. But all I wanted was Robyn and I thought she wanted me.

Bullshit
, Robyn snapped.
You weren't coming over to be with me
.

Yes, I swear. I told you before
.

I stopped in front of her table and I was ready to change things. I could leap over mountains, bend the rays of the sun. I breathed in Robyn's air and I wanted to stand there forever, looking at the top of her head, watching her move her brush.

What were you painting?
I asked.

A dog
, she said.
Duh
.

Two guys shouted something and I glared back at them. I needed to get a chair. I would need someplace to sit. But Robyn still hadn't seen me.
Maybe she didn't know. “Robyn,” I said louder, and then the hairs on my arms stood up.

Her eyes were cold and wet, and her mouth was sort of open. I could see some of her teeth as her lips moved. Then my face was burning and my insides were exploding and I felt the bullet hit me and start tearing me apart.

“Total odium,” I wrote. “I saw it on her face.”

That's not right
, Robyn said, knocking my hands off the keyboard.

You hated me
, I cried.
I saw it in your eyes
.

No
, she stared back at me.
I was totally scared of you
.

I found Rebecca in the kitchen. “Has her mom answered yet?”

Rebecca hadn't talked to her and I realized this was my chance.

“But I have to tell her I'm sorry,” I said. “I need to see her before it's too late.”

Robyn sat behind me in the car on the way to her house. Then she floated around her front step and laughed when nobody came out.

“OMG. We went away for the weekend!”

“Are you okay?” Rebecca asked me. “You look a little pale.”

“Fine,” I said.

Rebecca put her arm around my shoulder like she understood everything. Then I felt Robyn pinch me with her sticky fingers. “She has no idea. Don't you feel bad? You made her think
I'm
the creeper jumping off a bridge.”

Late on Sunday night, Rebecca came into my room, ready to drive to the bridge over Flint Street. She was wearing light pink lip gloss and she kept patting my shoulder because she didn't want me to worry that Robyn might die. And I wasn't worried. Robyn was safe. She was leaning against my window, holding Papa in her hand.

“Are you sure you don't want me to come?” I asked.

“Yes. I'm sure.”

Rebecca patted me again and I sat up quickly and gave her a kiss. She'd be free of me soon and could live a normal life. No more meetings at my school, no more fights and crying. No unthankful kid, dragging her down.

“Callie, are you okay?”

“I just wanted to thank you,” I said. But then I was almost crying because I couldn't list all the things she'd done. Giving me milk shakes when I got chicken pox, working so hard to support us, pulling back her covers and sharing her bed when I couldn't sleep. She used to throw me these crazy-themed birthdays—she once bought ten sombreros—and she always forgave me. She thought I would make her proud.

“I won't let anything happen to her,” she said, kissing me back.

Rebecca waved as she left my room. I hadn't thanked her for anything. Robyn didn't wait; she got right up in my face. “Did you see her eyes? She's really worried.”

“She's not worried about me. She's worried about you.”

“Because you tricked her. Don't you know what this will do to her?”

We heard the front door shut and it was time to begin.

First, the messages for Alex Penders, Irene Lutz, Josie, and Robyn. Robyn leaned over my shoulder as I pressed send. “You're not doing this for me,” she said. “Don't pretend you're doing it for me.”

The second step came when I logged in to Ella's e-mail account and changed her password. I imagined how she'd type in “credit” again
and again, confused and then growling with frustration when it didn't work.

“It might not work out the way you imagined,” Robyn warned.

Next I went to the site where Phoenix Drake destroyed me. I typed in Ella's e-mail address and then I clicked “I've forgotten my password.” When the link arrived in Ella's account, I reset the password to something she would never guess. Then the screen opened and I saw the profile for Phoenix Drake along with the picture of the Grim Reaper.

I pinched my cheeks. It was all working the way I'd imagined. Robyn shook her head. “It might not make any difference.”

I took a final screen shot of the group “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?” along with the names of the forty-six members and put that in my folder marked evidence.

“People forget quick,” Robyn said.

“I didn't forget you.”

As Phoenix Drake—group creator—I could change the name of “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?” and I did. The next morning, when the forty-six members of “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS?
” logged in they would find a message telling them that the group had changed its name. They were now members of “I Killed Callie McKenzie” and they would see the following post:

This is not a joke. By joining this group you have committed murder. A girl died tonight because of you. Callie McKenzie—who you called Babyshits—was not nothing. Her life wasn't meaningless. But you decided to kill her anyway. Ella Brooks and Dallas Price led you here, but you still had a choice. You could walk away or you could stab her with lies, steal her name, make every moment of her life a burning hell. And you know what you chose. You can try to say you didn't know what you were doing, but we know that's not true.

You took her life. And now she's going to live inside you—right behind your ribs, where you were empty before. Every time you think about hurting someone else, she'll be there. She'll feel like a choke, or a thick swallow, and you'll remember her and stop.

P.S. It's too late to remove your name and try to get away with murder. A list with all forty-six of you has already been sent to the powers that be. Credit.

I felt okay then, seeing what I'd written. There were just a few more steps left.

I went back to my e-mail and began writing our confessions. I sent Rebecca the last five interactions I'd had with Robyn, and apologized to her one last time. Then I opened Ella's account and started writing. Ella admitted to trying to drown me, to sending hundreds of threatening texts, to starting a war against me with Dallas. She included the evidence I'd collected—the screenshots of “
HAVE YOU SMELLED BABYSHITS
?”—and she explained how she and Dallas had got away with this kind of thing their whole lives. She told about Alex Penders, Mrs. Lutz, Josie Dixon, and Robyn. Then she signed her own name and sent the message to the e-mail address list I'd prepared: everyone in the school, the principal, the local newspaper. She would take responsibility now; I knew how a dead friend could live inside a person.

Then there was only one thing left for me to do and I had to do it quick.

I rubbed my arms and put on my new-old shirt. I picked up the leaves like stars and skeletons and memories, and stuffed them in my pockets. My blood felt cold and slow as I wrote one last note to Rebecca, and left it with my phone on the floor outside her room. Then I tiptoed out of the house.

“You didn't ruin my life, if that's what this is about,” Robyn yelled.

“You're not even real,” I told her. “So how do you know?”

She made a face and pretended she wasn't coming, crouching down by the side of the road. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was chilly as we walked to Ella's house. The hairs on my arms stood up, and the green air cleared out my lungs, and it was easy to listen to the crunching sound of my soles on the street, and the snowy-shush that my thighs made as they brushed together. Overhead, I could hear the trees. At night they were like us. They breathed in oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide. We breathed together, still growing, a little while longer. Robyn didn't speak as she walked beside me. Then suddenly she fell behind, and when I looked back she wasn't there. At one point, I turned around quickly and squinted into the shadows. Was that someone's face? “Robyn!” She disappeared. I could still feel her following me, and sometimes I heard her footsteps, but when I stopped to wait for her, she hid behind the trees.

At dinner that night, Rebecca had blamed Robyn's mom. We were eating vegetable stew—the last thing I'd eat. I crunched an ice cube between my molars as she talked about Mrs. Doblak, saying she should've taught Robyn how to handle her problems. Like if Robyn knew how to cope none of this would be happening. Like adults could control everything, including how their kids thought.

“You guys can't protect us from everything,” I said. “You can't control our minds.”

“We can protect you from a lot. If we're careful we can.”

“But what if Robyn doesn't want to cope?” I said. “It's her choice, not her mom's.”

Rebecca stared into her bowl of stew like it had turned into cold jelly.

“If I was her mom I'd sleep in her room tonight. I'd chain her down if that was what it took.”

“But what if she convinced you that she wasn't going to do it?”

“She wouldn't be able to. I'd know that she was lying.”

I stirred my stew and picked out a soft round potato for my last bite.

Ella's house was dark. I stood on the lawn and stared up at her empty bedroom window. It was hard to see as I passed along the side of the house, but I'd walked here so many times, I knew the way. I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out a handful of leaves, dropping them as I went. I didn't feel sad as they disappeared in the inky air, so I kept moving forward. When I was in the backyard, where the wooden deck overlooked the lake, I couldn't even see where the water began. My feet squished in the mud, and I listened for the sounds. A frog belching. A fish singing. Green leaves flapping in the breeze.

“Robyn?” I whispered. “Robyn?”

It was so dark that the earth and water and sky turned into a single thing—a confusing muddy ball—so I closed my eyes. The black behind my eyelids was thick and familiar, and as long as I didn't open up, I could be anywhere, forever. The icy water started seeping into my shoes, numbing my toes and biting my legs. It sloshed and sucked at my body, rinsing away the last of Babyshits, rising to my waist. Eyes closed, I leaned back and felt ice and water and body like a single edge and I wanted to let go. Then, when I opened up, I would see everything. Stars bursting in the sky, the world cracking open, rings and rings of history spreading out like ripples around me. The water would turn warm, and I'd see the yellow flash of eyes from under the pines, along the banks, at the muddy edges of the lake. A girl collecting moss, wild horses listening to my watery splash, an ancient fox peering from under the trees. My parents would be there. And there would be children from the future, watching me with their hands over their hearts. They would stand in the
shadows, and I'd wonder:
Are they sorry or are they thanking me? Are they pressing their hands to their chests because they can't breathe or are they hiding something?
A pledge they can't understand; words that lost their meaning.