We Can Only Save Ourselves Read online

  Alice and the other girls monitored his behavior like scientists in a lab, analyzing his moods and hypothesizing in quiet voices about why now, what now:

  Hannah Fay’s expanding stomach, fatherhood approaching. Encroaching? He always had seemed excited about the baby, though.

  Creatively stalled. After the girls moved the easel back into the garage, Wesley hadn’t taken it out again. His brushes sat next to the kitchen sink, their bristles growing crusty and stiff. Then one morning he left on a photography excursion, but when he got home, he ripped the film out of the camera, overexposing it. “There weren’t going to be any good ones,” he told the girls.

  The house itself. Too dusty? Too dark? Too small? Too full? When Wesley was home, Alice tried to make herself small, imagining herself as physically shrinking, just in case he was feeling cramped with so many girls around him. One night, after Wesley distributed the tablets to the girls, Alice felt herself begin to shrink, and though by that point she had taken many trips with Wesley and knew that no matter what she felt, no matter what she saw, it was only an illusion, she began to panic that what she’d been imagining was really happening. Limbs thin as toothpicks, eyes like pinheads, brain and heart and stomach still thinking and pumping and pulsing but so small they would have to stop, wouldn’t they? Alice began to cry, but the tears felt normal size, the tears of a normal-size girl, and she was so tiny, and she knew she was going to drown in an ocean she created herself. “I want to be bigger,” she kept saying. “Wesley, please, let me be bigger. I’m going to die. The water is rising.” That was all she remembered.

  “So dramatic,” Apple said to Alice the next morning. “You cried so much.”

  “I was worried,” Alice said defensively. “It seemed so real. What did Wesley say?”

  “He said he likes small things,” Apple said. “Easier to hold.” She opened up her hand wide, palm as open as the desert, and then closed her fingers into a tight fist until it wasn’t a desert but a stone.

  (We know that outside our neighborhood, the world is different. We have traveled. We have been young. We have seen it. Streets of other cities and towns so dirty, cramped, smelly—the men there aggressive, the women desperate and sad. Things we want no part of. Children abducted, women killed, men with guns in their hands, knives, ropes. Those things they use to stop you, hurt you, tie you up, tie you down. Even their hands, empty, are dangerous. Sometimes they are the most dangerous because they are empty.

  Our neighborhood is different from the world outside. We work to keep it that way. Look what happened to Rachel Granger, even though she wasn’t, technically, one of us. Look what happened to Alice, when she left. Blood on her hands now. That’s what waits for us outside.)

  A couple of days after Charlie’s death, the single dad from next door knocked on the door. He was just checking in, he said, because he noticed Wesley was gone a lot, and it had to be scary to be a group of girls on their own. “It’s so crazy,” he said. “That kind of thing never happens here.”

  “That kind of thing can happen anywhere,” said Apple.

  “Well, if you need anything, just come knock on my door,” he said.

  “Anything?” Apple asked, a wink in her voice, and the man smiled.

  After that, he made a point to wave at the girls when he saw them, but somehow it always seemed to Alice that the greeting was really meant only for Apple.

  Once they happened to be outside at the same time—the man closing his car door as Apple and Alice sat together in a sunny patch of the front yard, the last place the light touched before it was gone. Already the shadow was covering Alice, leaving Apple alone in the golden light, and Alice could see how lovely it made her friend look, like a girl from a painting, highlighting her sharp cheekbones, painting the lids of her closed eyes so they glowed, and Alice even thought, briefly, of putting her mouth on Apple’s throat, the way Wesley always did, like he wanted to take a bite out of her. (She also thought, just in passing, of the night of the fire, when the boys had caught the love between Susannah and Alice, had egged them on, how she thought about kissing Susannah if only to make the boys happy, to give them something to talk about, to think about later that night as they went to bed. But that was just foolishness. The stakes were so low.) So when the man’s car door closed and the girls looked up, and Alice saw him see them, two pretty girls in the dying sun, she knew how he must have felt.

  “Hey there,” he called.

  “Hey,” said Apple. “How was work?” Like she knew him. Apple had her legs straight out, one crossed over the other, the palms of her hands flat on the grass.

  He shrugged. “Another day, another dollar,” he said. Like he knew her.

  “I feel that,” Apple said, grinning. Like Alice wasn’t even there.

  “Do you even go to work?” he asked. But he was grinning too.

  “I do all kinds of things,” Apple said.

  The man began walking toward them, like Apple had conjured some kind of spell.

  “I’m about to go inside,” Apple said. “The light is almost gone.”

  “Are you a vampire?” he asked.

  “That would be the opposite,” Alice said, and two sets of eyes looked over to her.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re right.”

  “Good night for now,” Apple said, standing up. She brushed off the bottom of her shorts—cutoff, denim, the fraying fringe of white bright against her tanned skin—and Alice stood up too. Now they were all in the shadow.

  “See you around,” the man said.

  On the porch, Alice hissed, “Wesley would be so mad at you, flirting with that man like that. You know Wesley hates him.”

  “Aren’t you ever bored?” Apple asked.

  Alice thought of Carl Miller. She thought of Ben. She thought, again, of Susannah, the desire to do something memorable, if not for herself, then for others. The walk to the school in the dark, slipping inside, the dark hallways, the dark room, and finally a bright, burning light. “Not really,” she said.

  That night, Alice woke up when it was still dark outside and realized that Apple wasn’t next to her. She went out into the living room, where Janie was sleeping on the couch, the crocheted blanket over her body, one foot peeking out, then peered into the study where Hannah Fay slept. Only Hannah Fay, no Apple. Alice put a hand on Kathryn’s door, as if she could somehow sense through the wood if Apple was in there, but Alice knew she wasn’t—Wesley had gone in there with Kathryn hours ago. She opened the front door and the screen door and stepped onto the porch, the wood cool under her bare feet.

  From somewhere down the street, Alice could hear laughter, loud snatches of conversation she couldn’t quite make out, and Alice remembered it was Friday night; other people, people her age, were still awake, and they might not sleep for hours more, might not sleep at all. To think that sounded exhilarating once. Now it only seemed exhausting. And meaningless. All those people seeing nothing, doing nothing important, trying to create meaning out of nothing. Alice felt angry at Apple, who was taking for granted that Wesley had chosen her, had taken her out of the darkness and invited her into the real world. Into the now, and soon into the future.

  She went back inside and into the bedroom, where eventually she slept. In the morning, Apple was beside her. “Where did you go last night?” Alice asked her.

  Apple frowned, rubbed at the corner of her eye. Smudges of makeup that Alice was certain she hadn’t gone to sleep wearing blackened the outline of her eyes, softened them. “Nowhere,” she said.

  “I guess I must have dreamed it,” Alice said.

  “I guess so,” said Apple.

  “Weird,” said Alice. “I just don’t remember any other parts of the dream.”

  Apple leaned in closer to her, so their foreheads were nearly touching. Apple smelled like smoke, like silvery night air. Alice reached up and rubbed at the black makeup under Apple’s left eye. “Maybe you’re still dreaming,” Apple said.

  Alice pulled away. “S
top,” she said. She turned away and slid off the bed, searched for a bra in the pile of clothes at its foot.

  “Are you mad,” asked Apple, “because you dreamed I was gone but I wasn’t?”

  “That would be dumb,” said Alice, standing up and clasping the bra. “No, I’m hungry. I’m going to eat breakfast.”

  “Fine,” said Apple, flopping back onto the pillow. “But don’t be mad at me for something you made up.”

  Alice left the room without responding, and she shut the door behind her. In the kitchen, she found Wesley eating cereal. He was, miraculously, alone. “Morning,” he said. “Was that you I heard creeping around last night?”

  “Where is everyone?” Alice asked.

  “Kathryn and Janie went to the grocery store,” he said. “Hannah Fay walked to the post office. Apple, I’m sure, is still asleep.”

  “She’s awake,” Alice said. Wesley’s hair stuck up a little in the back, mussed from sleep, and a few drops of milk dotted his beard like tiny snowflakes, and something about the messy hair and beard—the innocence of it, like Wesley was a clueless little boy—made Alice’s anger with Apple sharpen. On the one hand, she couldn’t prove Apple had done anything wrong, but on the other hand, she would hate for Wesley to be the last to know if she had.

  Wesley, the spoon paused before his lips, looked at Alice. “What?” he asked.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, and she took the seat across from him, and words rushed out of her, as hot and angry as lava.

  Chapter Thirty

  THAT NIGHT, WHEN it was dark and they had eaten dinner and cleaned the kitchen, Wesley suggested they sit outside on the porch. On one side, the house was dark—the elven couple was gone for good—and on the other side, the single father with the face Wesley hated had a light on in the living room, so that the window that faced their house glowed yellow. Wesley walked down the steps. His hands were in his pockets, and his hair had gotten longer, almost to his shoulders, and now it had a curl that bounced as he descended. When he got to the bottom, he turned around to face the girls. Alice didn’t know what was going to happen, but she felt certain that this would be how Wesley handled Apple. The girls were standing together in a loose line on the porch, and Alice leaned forward to see Apple’s face, but it was still. Her hair was in a ponytail, baby hairs around her ears curling a little in the night air. As if she felt Alice noticing, she smoothed them down against her head, but they sprang back out. Something about those hairs made Alice soften toward Apple. But it was too late.

  “Tell me what you see,” Wesley said to them.

  “Where?” asked Janie. “Outside?”

  “Just look around,” Wesley said. “This is the world.”

  This, Alice knew, was Wesley giving them a clue about what he wanted them to see. If you were listening, people almost always told you what answer they were looking for. What was the world? “Darkness,” said Alice.

  “No shit,” said Apple. “It’s night.”

  “You know what I mean. Physical darkness, yes, but also evil. Moral darkness. People who want to hurt us,” Alice said.

  Wesley nodded. “It’s everyone,” he said, “who isn’t us.”

  They could name anyone in the world—their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, their old teachers, the cashier at the grocery store, the man who delivered the mail. “Be polite,” Wesley had warned them. “Don’t get on anyone’s radar. They’ll be able to sense it on you anyway, how different you are from them, and we don’t want to give them any more reason to hate you.”

  “The driving man,” said Janie. Alice often thought about the driving man, the one who picked up hitchhiking girls, but she hadn’t known if any of the others did. Until recently, she had always thought of the world as an essentially good place: if not flawless, then like an imperfect diamond, still brilliant and lovely despite its shortcomings. And sometimes still she looked out at the world around her and could barely believe what Wesley had taught them. That there were people who would present themselves as one thing, but in their heart of hearts, be something else entirely. That the world was so full of badness that it eventually would crack under the weight of it and shake off all the people who lived there.

  Other times Alice saw for herself the darkness Wesley described. The old magazines Wesley kept around were full of it—stories of wars and deaths and disease, all of it years ago, and now things were only getting worse. If she didn’t see it for herself, she heard about it from Wesley, and then she would start to notice it. It made her want to weep, these pictures of the world she saw in her head, but it also made her heart beat faster because everything Wesley said was going to happen was happening, right now.

  “If anyone out there had a chance to get at you,” Wesley said now from the bottom of the steps, “they would. They’d hurt you because you scare them. People are always scared of what they don’t know and especially what they don’t understand. Evil can’t understand goodness. Darkness can’t understand light. They’d kill you.” He paused, and Alice watched him swallow, as if he didn’t want to say what he needed to. It was like there was a voice speaking through him, a voice older than the light, older than the darkness, and he wanted to stall that voice, to put off what it was telling him to do: Tell them how the world will hurt them. “Slit your throat,” said Wesley. “Rip your clothes off, rape you. Tie you up, keep you alive for days to torture you. Then strangle you. Poison you. Stab you. Shoot you. I don’t know. How many ways are there to kill a person?” Beside her, Hannah Fay swayed a little, and Alice put her hand on her friend’s back to steady her. “Don’t lock your knees, Hannah Fay,” Wesley instructed.

  “Wesley, I don’t want to be rude,” said Hannah Fay. “But I need to lay down. Everything is hurting.”

  Below them, Wesley nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Go inside. This doesn’t concern you, anyway.” And then Alice knew she was right, that the person this concerned was Apple.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah Fay said softly to the others. “Nights are so bad for me.”

  “We know, Han,” said Janie, who opened the door for Hannah Fay. When she was inside, Apple didn’t close the gap her absence left, and Alice felt cold.

  “The driving man, though, might pick you up for the opposite reason. Because you seem lifeless, asleep. Because you don’t seem special,” he said and shrugged. “He might pick you up because you aren’t really special.”

  Alice felt a panicky wave building up inside her, beginning to crest, and she worried she would drown in it, and it would wash her away.

  That morning, when Alice had told Wesley about the man next door, he’d listened carefully, had one hand on Alice’s on the table as they spoke, his face creased in various places: forehead, the space between his eyebrows, around his mouth. “Okay,” he said when she finished. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Okay,” Alice replied. “I feel kind of bad.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Wesley said, picking up the spoon again and pointing it at Alice. “We don’t all have to like each other here. We don’t even really have to get along. We just have to agree that we all have the same vision, we’re all on the same page, and that our issues won’t jeopardize that vision.” He sighed. “Apple isn’t the easiest. But I’ll take care of this.”

  “I love Apple,” Alice said. “I love all of you.”

  “I know,” Wesley said, then leaned across the table to kiss her. He tasted like milk and honey.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Wesley and Alice pulled apart then to see Apple standing in the doorway. She had washed her face and was wearing Alice’s yellow dress.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Alice was just telling me how much she loves you.”

  Apple looked at Alice, and Alice felt her face burning. Apple cocked her head to the side, her ponytail listing, the tips of it brushing her shoulder. “Is that right?”

  “You know I love you, Apple,” Alice said.

  “Of course,” Apple said. “I lo
ve you too.”

  “Kiss and make up,” Wesley told them.

  “We weren’t fighting,” Alice said.

  “Weren’t we?” Apple asked.

  “I wasn’t,” Alice said.

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Girls,” Wesley said, and Apple walked over, put her hands on Alice’s shoulders, and Alice thought of a bird perched on each side, talons sharp. She felt Apple’s lips on the top of her head, a quick brush. “There,” said Wesley, and then her hands were gone from Alice’s shoulders and picking up Wesley’s bowl and spoon from the table, and she walked over to the sink.

  “Apple,” said Wesley now, from the bottom of the steps. “Come here.”

  Without looking at the others, Apple slipped past them and walked down to join Wesley. She turned to face him so Alice could only see her profile, the pretty sweep of her nose, the point of her chin. “You need to remember the rules,” he said. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed last night. We’ll see if your luck continues.”

  “God, Alice,” said Apple, whipping around to look at her. In the night, her eyes looked even darker than normal.

  Alice said nothing, heart thumping. She put her hand to her chest to feel it, but from the outside she was still, and this calmed her.

  “Wesley, we’re broke,” Apple said. “Did you know that? It’s a problem. He thought I was a prostitute, that we all are. He hired me.” She shook her head, and her ponytail swung from side to side, making Alice think of a noose. “You’ve never had a problem with it before,” she said.

  “You’re lying,” said Wesley.

  Beside her, Alice felt Janie shift her weight forward. Don’t say anything, Janie, she thought. You’ll only get punished. Alice grabbed her wrist, and Janie went still.