The Girl Who Fell (38 page)

The forest is too dark for dusk, even for early winter. I lean forward suspecting one of my headlights is out. And that's when I see it. A mass of red fur curled in the road. I slow to a stop, switch on my high beams and squint into their spray of light.

“Finn?” I pop my seat belt, open the door into darkness. Cold air stabs me.

My heart reels as I kneel beside the lump of fur. “What's happened to you?” I gather his head into my lap. He is warm. His middle labors with the rise and fall of breath. I reach over his fur, under him. My hand returns free of blood. “You'll be okay.” It is a promise I want someone to make me. “I'll get you to the vet. Come on.” I cradle him in my arms, set him onto the passenger seat. He lets out a groan from the faraway place he inhabits. “Stay with me, buddy.” I pet his head and something catches the dim interior light, throws it back at me like a knife's edge. Something that is not his collar.

It is shiny.

And sharp.

My necklace. The heart Alec gave me at Christmas.

It hangs around Finn's neck.

My own heart catapults, leaping my pulse.

The air swallows me, the woods scurry too close. I run to the driver's side and lock the door.

I can't go to the vet; that is what Alec wants. I try to imagine where he'd be waiting for me along the way. Fear propels me to the house where it is warm and bright and I can shut out the dark.

I bolt the door behind me, swim into the light that floods the kitchen. “Mom?” I call.

I place Finn onto the couch, recheck the locks. I find the card for the twenty-four-hour emergency vet clinic and pluck it off the fridge.

“Mom!” Only stillness answers, reminding me it's Monday. Date night. I fumble in my pocket, my keys falling to the floor. I pat my jacket, my phone is in my car's console.

I pick up the landline, dial Mom's cell. It takes too long to connect. There is only the static silence of a dead line, and that's when I know I'm not alone.

I drop the phone onto its cradle and eye the door, my car keys on the floor in my path. In seconds I calculate how my body will need to scoop the keys as I run from the house. I move just as a metallic snap echoes from under the house.

The breaker.

In the basement.

Someone has thrown the main switch, pitching me and this house and my escape into blackness.

Fear roils in my blood. Becomes me. I kick around for my keys but with each sweep, I am losing time.

I reach for the island, my eyes adjusting, carving light into the shadows. The smell of spearmint bleeds through the air, through my memory, as my senses conjure the last time panic joined me in this space. And how my fingertips reached for the knife set even then. But the block of knives is gone now. The counter cleared. I open a drawer, rifle for utensils, scissors. My fingers meet with the smooth wood of inner drawer and nothing else. I fumble around the sink, but even Mom's pruning shears are missing.

The phone rings and I freeze from the impossibility of its sound. A second ring sears through silence. I wade across the black, remove the handset, place it at my ear.

I pray that it's anyone besides him.

Terror climbs the ladder of my spine. My voice, reluctant. “Hello?”

Silence.

Then the dial tone cries
beep beep beep
and I hang up, quickly dial 911. But he's quicker.

The line falls dead again.

He's in the basement, where the phone line enters the house.

But then, no.

He could be outside. At the junction box.

All at once the woods feel too hungry, haunted.

My body tells me I need to flee, protect. My brain tells me to fight, engage. I tuck into the forgotten corner of the laundry room, quiet as my fear, and wrap my hands around the butt of my field hockey stick. I hold it tight against my chest, a weapon.

I try to reverse my breathing. Make it soundless. Make it so I cannot be found. The darkness is a comfort, a cloak. I blend into it. For anonymity. For safety. There was a time when I feared darkness. As a child. Alone.

Not now.

Darkness doesn't have fingers that twist into my flesh. Darkness can't stalk me. It can't drive me into the shadows because darkness is fleeting. Not like the threat before me.

Then, impossibly, Joan Armatrading joins me. The familiar steel guitar notes creep over my skin, unseaming my flesh. Alec manipulates electricity now, just as he did in our forest bed. I grip the stick tighter and trace the music to my bedroom. I picture him at my desk then, a flashlight in hand. He will be so much more prepared. All of this carefully planned.

Does his beam of light scamper over my Boston College catalog? The faces of friends in photos? Does he see the absence of his tokens? How they are smashed into the well of my trash can?

I want to run for the door but can't drive without my keys. Still, I know the woods. Better than anyone. And I can run. I'll come back for Finn. I tiptoe one foot toward freedom, until Alec freezes me.

“Your favorite song.”

His voice surges through the air, galloping my pulse. He is close. In the kitchen close. Inches away. I grip the neck of my stick tighter, silently retreat my foot. My breathing impossibly loud.

“You don't have to answer me, but you should. I know you're here. And you know I'll find you.”

Then, Joan:

Oh the feeling

When you're reeling . . .

All those times I reeled from Alec. His touch. His promises.

“You know, this really isn't a love song.” He raps his knuckles against the butcher block top of the island, a slow, dull metronome that lets me know he is patrolling its outer edges. “You should have listened more carefully, Zephyr. This is a song about rejection, something you know too much about.”

She'll take the worry from your head

But then again, she put trouble in your heart instead

“I want you to hear it for what it is. You put trouble in my heart, Zephyr.”

His voice tracks to the living room. I tighten my grip, plan my escape. Then, only Joan:

Can bring more pain than a blistering sun

But oh when you fall

How did I not hear the heartbreak in this song? How did I miss so much?

Alec calls over her lyrics. “Favorite song to hear again?” he asks the darkness.

The universe pauses. Joan sings.

“No? Nothing.” Another pause. “I vote for a repeat. Let's play it again, shall we?”

I raise my foot, waiting to step, to escape. I wait for the shuffle of his footsteps on the carpet, his shadow skulking to my bedroom, toward the source of the music. I wait for Joan. A noise to locate him, any little sound that will buy the seven seconds I need to get a head start out the door.

But the room hangs motionless for a dozen eternities.

“Choosing to stay put, are you? Smart girl, Zephyr. You make the chase fun. You always have.” The curtain in the living room draws back too quick over its rod. Metal scratching metal. He's searching. It's only a matter of time and he can't find me cowering.

“Oh, hello mangy dog. Not feeling so hot?” Finn. On the couch. The playfulness in Alec's voice distorts reality. “You know it didn't have to be like this, Zephyr. I gave you every chance to come back to me.”

His words bounce off the photos in the hall, the path to Mom's study. I move from the laundry room, marrying my back to the wall, my stick firmly in my grasp. The front door is within reach, its knob glistening in the dense dark. I step quietly, my feet barely touching the floor. I reach for the doorknob and that is when I find my keys. They clink underfoot, kicked by my creeping toes. The clanking is a bullhorn, a siren, the dull foghorn call of a lighthouse.

I grab the knob with lightning quickness, turn it, and pull.

But my fingers slip, clutching air. A hand grabs the back of my hair, yanks me away from the freedom of the woods. I fall to the floor. Crashing onto my hip. I writhe against the siege of pain as my body is stretched, dragged.

Then there is my scream.

The only sound in a sea of dead air.

He tugs harder on my rope of hair, uprooting me. “Quiet.” His word is clipped, hard. “Be quiet and I'll let you go.”

I have to trust his words. Mute mine.

Every follicle, every inch of my scalp screeches in protest. And then, my head drops, hitting hard against the unforgiving floor that blunts and swallows my cry.

A minute. Maybe two. Maybe a hundred.

He stands over me and there is a beam of light casting a dance of shadows around the room. A flashlight rests on the island. It is enough to illuminate his face. His eyes, the cut of his jaw. Malice makes the person tented over me unrecognizable. I work up a scream but then Alec's fingers are at my throat.

He straddles my waist, pins my arms under his knees. The pressure of his weight on the inside of my forearms is too great to fight against. I cut my eyes to my stick, just out of reach.

Then, in an almost intimate gesture, he brushes back my hair, floats it onto the floor around me. “Such a beautiful neck.” He presses against the tender cords hidden beneath. My throat becomes smaller, pushed into submission.

“Don't,” I choke. “Please.” Finn groans and my heart breaks.

Alec pushes harder, my voice box bruising. “I like it when you beg. Remember how you'd beg me, Zephyr? With that arched back? Your eager tongue? I know you still want that.”

“Alec, don't.”

“I will.”

Cold rushes down my neck as he unfastens my buttons. I swim my fingers along the floor searching in vain for my stick.

He opens my coat, pins its sides under his knees along with my arms. His hand releases from my throat and I cough out the bruising irritation, my chest convulsing.

“Tell me you love me.”

“Alec,” I beg. “Please.” I wriggle to kick, but he's pinned me fast.

“Yes, like that. Beg me.” His hands pull at the bottom of my tee as if he'll rip it.

“Alec, don't!” I yell, but the words only find life as a whisper. “You don't want to do this.”

He traces his finger along the lines of my lips. His skin tastes sour. “I didn't want any of this, Zephyr. I only wanted you to love me. I wanted to be there for you. After Finn got sick. After Slice was hurt. You made me do those things.”

I gasp. The sound is thick, underwater. “What did I make you do?”

“It was nothing that would kill him, just some herbs to make him sick enough for you to need me. And Slice, well, you needed me then, too, didn't you?”

Gregg's skates. Finn's health. My future. Blue turns to black in this ocean under the ocean where no light can penetrate.

Then his lips are on mine, his tongue forcing its way into my mouth, pressing too hard, too fast. I twist my head to gasp for air. I heave oxygen into my lungs, panting.

“Alec, let me up. You're scaring me. I'll do anything.”

“You'll apologize?”

“I apologize.”

“Hah.” A slap singes my cheek. The sting is vicious and rings across, under, through my skin. I twist my head, press it against the floor. “You don't even know what you're apologizing for.”

“Please don't hurt me.”

“Hurt you? Can't you see I love you? You're the one threatening to call the police. What am I supposed to do? Just walk away? I don't walk away from love, Zephyr. I'm not a quitter. We planned a life together.
We
planned it. You don't get to ditch that.”

He stands then, towers over me. I scramble to sit up, a trickle of blood seeping into my mouth.

“Who do you think you are to dump me? You're lucky I even looked at you.”

I used to think I was lucky. Now I wish I never imagined what Alec smelled like or what his skin would feel like under my fingertips.

Time slows. His foot leaves the ground. It moves back, away from me. Gains momentum. Too quickly. His shoe thrashes into my ribs and I double over from the pain firing up the side of my rib cage.

And there is a brilliant flash of light, from the pain or something else I cannot say, because I am being pulled. Up. Up. By my hair. The pain is excruciating. Alec laughs, “I always like it when you wear your hair up.” And then, release. I hit the floor hard and I am grateful. Until another kick smashes against the back of my thigh.

My brain screams, but I can't make a sound any louder than a moan.

“That's it, Zephyr. Moan for me. Tell me you like it.”

Kick.

An anvil to my chest. I tuck myself into a small ball, bracing for the next jolt, fearing where it will land, how much it will hurt.

When I hear the sound of bone meeting bone I wince and tears squeeze out of my eyes. It takes a few seconds to realize the blow brought no pain. Am I numb? Is this the blessing of adrenaline? I scramble to the edge of the room, find my stick. I hoist myself to stand even though my entire body wants to give over to gravity and crumble. I try to see clearly, but the dark only sprays a heap of shadows.

I raise my stick, fix my grip.

There's a moan.

Someone yells a muffled
“Fuck!”

The unforgiving ice of air joins us.

Knuckles crack, a body falls. Two bodies on the ground together. Wrestling. Grunting. Punching.

“Zephyr, get out of here.” It is my father's voice. Impossible, but here. Oh god. He can't see me like this. He'll kill Alec. And go to jail for it. I can't ruin him too.

“Go to your car. Call for h—”

One figure rushes another. Strangles Dad's word. I grab for the flashlight, shine the light along the two figures. One has gone limp. It is my father, his strong frame wilted.

Alec scrambles over the threshold and onto the porch. He comes for me and I drop the light. “Stay back.” I raise my field hockey stick over my shoulder. I can see he's winded, that Dad slowed him. Blood trickles from his mouth, but I taste it on my lips. “How did you think this was going to end?”