Shine - Lauren Myracle [76]
Except the ugly was there. It was inside me. I tried running from it, but that didn’t make it go away. I dropped Patrick and Bailee-Ann and the rest of my friends. That didn’t make it go away, either. I looked back on those wasted years and here’s what I saw: a spook retreating from the world step by silent step, until I was a ghost instead of a girl.
I came back to the present, here in my room with a dead cow tongue flung yards away in the dark . . . and I wasn’t a ghost. My body was real and strong and capable, just as my brother was real and strong and capable. As for what happened three years ago . . .
Of course, Aunt Tildy was outside by the fire. She dashed out as soon as she heard the explosion. That she was already there before I thought to look for her meant nothing, just that my eyes had gone first to the flaming motorcycle. So had everyone else’s.
As for how flushed and sweaty she was, that was from standing by the hot stove, stirring blackberries as they boiled and broke down into pulp. She’d been making jam, not kicking over a burning shed.
I felt dizzy.
“Talk to me, Cat,” Christian said. “Tell me who done it.”
“It was you,” I said, my words as new and uncertain as a baby’s. I was sixteen, and in my bedroom, and I shook my head in an attempt to unscramble my thoughts. “Not the tongue. The fire.”
I shut my eyes, then opened them to make sure I hadn’t made this thing up.
Aunt Tildy had found something to mess with on my dresser, and it was my brush. She lined it up straight alongside some loose hair bands, and then she tidied the hair bands, too. Her expression was as blank as meringue, smooth and bland with no place for anything to latch hold.
But Christian hadn’t taken his eyes off me, and in his expression I saw a slew of emotions: shame, defiance, fury. Fear, but not for himself. For me. I saw my big brother, who carried me off the ledge at Suicide Rock when I froze up. Who came after me when I skipped off to visit Wally with his rottedout leer. Who thought I was a fool and had no problem telling me so, but who stuck up for me anyway.
Christian stepped toward me. “Who wants you quiet? Is it Tommy? Is he after you again? If so, then say it, goddammit.”
Aunt Tildy tutted, this close to hysteria. “You children stop picking at each other. Pick, pick, pick, when some of us got to get up early in the morning.”
I blinked at her. Her image wavered.
I looked at Christian, and he was solid. I found my voice and told him, Yes. Tommy.
“I’ll fucking kill him,” Christian said, heading for the door.
Aunt Tildy got in front of him, a flapping moth. “I don’t know what you two are up to, but I won’t have none of it.”
“Move, Aunt Tildy,” Christian said.
“Getting yourselves into a tizzy over a joke!” she exclaimed wildly. “Nossir! You don’t even know what it means, that business with the . . . with the . . .” She was practically hyperventilating. “Boys will be boys. They tease a girl when they like her. That’s what they do!”
“My pillow has blood on it,” I said.
Christian moved Aunt Tildy aside. He wasn’t rough about it. I watched him stride out of my room, and I noticed how broad his shoulders had grown.
“I’ll tell your daddy!” Aunt Tildy called after him shrilly. “I’ll tell him to spank you! I will! You ain’t never too big to be put over your daddy’s knee!”
Please, I told her. Just leave.
When I first saw the tongue on my pillow, and I screamed, it felt like Tommy had won. Now I felt calm, almost frighteningly so, although I wished Christian would get on back. But Christian knew how to take care of himself. Anyway, it was ten o’clock on a Monday night, which meant Tommy’s parents would be there. Tommy wouldn’t try anything with his parents there.
I also felt a strange, floaty sense of amazement. I knew things someone didn’t want me to know. I’d figured out things someone didn’t want me to know. The tongue on my pillow was proof of that. It was also proof that knowledge was power, not