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Just the biggest.
“I don’t know,” I tell Sara. “He’ll ask questions. He’ll want to know who was there so he can talk to them, and then I’m giving him a list of people who were out at the church partying. I don’t think anyone will thank me for that.”
“Yeah, but wasn’t that kind of what he said at the assembly?” she says. “You’re too scared about ratting out your friends to report a crime so it doesn’t happen and he just gets away with it.”
“He hardly got away with it,” I point out, and Sara looks away from me.
“I’m kinda wondering if we should report that, too,” she says.
“What?”
Sara starts tugging on the fringe of my quilt, like unraveling it will help piece this conversation together. “Alex is . . . I know that you’ve gotten to know her working at the shelter and all that, but . . . have you ever seen the way she watches people? It’s not normal, okay?”
“No,” I shoot back. “Not okay. Maybe if you had a sister that was torn into pieces by another person you might not be normal either. And maybe I’m glad she watches people because if she didn’t, I’d be sitting in a clinic choking down morning-after pills right now.”
“Fine,” Sara says. “But she tore part of a guy’s face off like it was nothing. You didn’t see that, Peekay. I did. Girl didn’t even flinch.”
“I wish I did see it,” I say, and Sara shudders.
“No, man, you don’t. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but . . . God, I don’t know.” She looks up at the ceiling, tears sitting in her eyes. “It was fucking awful. He kept screaming like he couldn’t stop. You remember that time your cat caught that mouse and he played with it for like an hour before killing it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We tried to take it away from him so he freaked out and actually bit down.”
The noises that mouse made as it died were impossibly loud, a panicked sound of incomprehensible pain that faded as my cat ran off to the field with it twisting in his mouth, still trying to free itself even though it was obviously too late.
“Ray sounded like that mouse,” Sara says. “I couldn’t hear that coming from a human being and not feel like something bad just went down. Something wrong.”
I think about Alex’s bathroom and pouring rubbing alcohol on my crotch. I probably sounded a lot like that mouse, too.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say. Because it doesn’t matter how much we talk about it; we’re not going to agree, and I don’t know if there is a right answer anyway.
“Fine,” Sara says, but it’s not, and I know it. We sit together in silence a little longer, pretending everything is fine.
30. PEEKAY
I’m sitting in Branley’s driveway, counting out the beats for the new marching band routine because that’s easier than going up and knocking on her door. I may be grounded, but when I told Mom and Dad that I had some apologizing to do, that seemed to lift the ban momentarily. I drove into town with the playlist for the fresh show on repeat, and I’m sure I am going to be stuck walking in four-four time for the rest of my life if I don’t get out of this car in two seconds.
Branley lives in one of the old houses in town, the ones that people built expecting their great-grandchildren’s grandchildren to live in. It’s all brick and has a porch that looks like someone should be sitting on it reading a classic novel at all times. Even once I’m in front of the door I don’t take the final step of knocking until I force myself. I’m not the hot girl. I’m not the smart girl. I might not even be the funny girl. I’m just the preacher’s kid. But I do have my pride, and this is one crow pie I’m not looking forward to eating.
Branley’s little sister answers the door. She’s got chocolate in her eyebrows, which seems like an accomplishment, and a freshly painted rainbow on her cheek that smooshes together when she smiles at me.
“Hi,” I say. “Is your sister home?”
“Bran,” she yells over her shoulder, before bounding away. “For you.”
“Coming,” I hear Branley yell, and then the door is pulled open wider. It takes a second for me to recognize her. It’s a Saturday afternoon and she’s fresh-faced—no makeup, no eyeliner, no layers of mascara that make her look like she’s auditioning for manga porn. Her usually smoothed and perfected hair is up in a sloppy ponytail, her typically designer-clad body wearing nothing more revealing than a sweatshirt and pajama pants. And she’s got face paint splattered on her fingers from decorating her little sister’s cheek.
But she looks like a million bucks. Like the girl next door who will play touch football, then slam a beer and doll up a little bit to go out to dinner. Why can’t she just have one obtrusively large pimple right in the middle of her face like everyone else?
“Hi,” she says cautiously.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I talk to you?”
“Um, yeah, sure,” she says, but she doesn’t open the door any farther, so I don’t ask if I can come in. She’s like the people who will feed a stray cat all summer but not let them in their house when winter comes.
Those cats die, by the way.
“Okay, well . . . Alex said that the other night out at the church that you helped her”—no, that’s not right—“that you helped me. And I wanted to thank you for that. So . . . thank you.”
