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  “Oh my God! A gun!” It was a stupid thing to say considering the situation, but she wasn’t thinking. She kicked it a few inches away and got back on her feet.

  “Where’s Kirin?” Josie waited a few seconds for an answer. “She wasn’t in school.”

  The muscles around Valerie’s mouth twitched.

  “Just go,” Valerie said. “Go away. It’ll be all right. It’s getting close. Just forget.” She reached over to give Josie a pet.

  Meredith noticed the phone on the nightstand with the receiver off the hook. She hung it back up.

  “I’m calling you an ambulance.”

  “No . . . no . . . don’t . . . please . . .” Valerie waved her one good hand trying to take it away from Meredith who hung up the phone to calm her down.

  Josie backed out of the room. She almost tripped over the dog. She didn’t know where she was going.

  The dog led her down the hall, back along the trail, to another bedroom and nudged at the door with her snout.

  The door opened onto a white carpet mottled with blood. Josie stepped out of the dark hallway and into the brilliant natural light of Kirin’s room.

  The dog hopped onto the bed and started whining.

  Josie looked at the form lying there. More blood. Lots more blood. The form was perfectly still with a giant red bull’s-eye on the back. Josie slowly walked around, past a menagerie of stuffed animals piled on a bench, past swim team ribbons pinned to a cork board, past a round globe with bumpy raised mountains and wide blue oceans, to the other side of the bed.

  It was Kirin, lying there, still in her cows-jumping-over-the-moon pajamas, lying there, under the covers, being swallowed by blood. Her face was puffy. Her body looked strangely jangled, out of place, limbs blown out of sockets, as though the small girl was simply a bag of bones someone had shaken up and dropped on the bed. Blood was soaked through the front of her pajamas. The little cows had all turned red. They had been slaughtered in their sleep.

  Josie reached her wet hand across the gulf that stood between her and the bed. Her fingers shook as they traveled over the sky-blue blanket that lay in a heap on the floor. They danced through the air and landed on Kirin’s shoulder.

  She was cold.

  Josie didn’t want to touch the red front of Kirin’s pajamas to feel if the girl’s heart was still beating. But she had to check. She had to prove that it wasn’t real. She let her fingers slide into the crevice of Kirin’s neck and felt for a pulse at the jugular. She had learned to do this when she took CPR at the Promenade. She thought it was a good idea at the time. She thought, you never know when you might need it.

  Josie didn’t feel anything.

  Maybe she wasn’t doing it right; maybe her hand was shaking too much. She lifted her free hand up to her own neck and felt around for her pulse. She felt it right away, throbbing out of the side of her neck so strongly, she was sure it could be seen from the outside. She moved her finger a little farther under Kirin’s jaw line and then removed her hand from her own neck.

  The pulse disappeared. She closed her eyes and listened hard. She tried to listen with her fingers. In the blackness behind her eyes, she felt a momentary sense of peace. She thought it was quite possible to fall asleep standing up.

  Josie’s head tilted toward the floor. In her serene, blissful state, she allowed her eyes to open. When she saw her hand touching the dead child, she opened her mouth and screamed.

  Meredith was suddenly in the room. Josie didn’t know how she got there. Everything sounded muffled, everything looked hazy. Meredith started screaming. She ran over to the bed and fell onto it with her knees. She waded her way across the bloody sheets and rolled Kirin onto her back. Josie batted Meredith away and straddled Kirin. She placed her hands on the wet spot of her chest and tried to do compressions. She pinched the girl’s button nose and puffed air into her mouth. Josie was slowly becoming covered in blood. But she didn’t care now. She could have shit smeared on her and she wouldn’t care. She had lost control. She didn’t know who she was. She certainly wasn’t Josie, Meredith’s timid tagalong, the bored mother with a decade-old, half-finished master’s degree in a useless subject she could scarcely recall. She was now a screaming CPR machine barely capable of counting out ten pumps on the girl’s chest.

  Meredith pulled Josie off of the girl. Meredith could tell the girl was dead. Josie kicked out at the world as Meredith grabbed her around the waist. Meredith was bigger than she was. Meredith could handle Josie’s tantrum.

  “What did she do? What did she do? What did—” Josie screamed over and over.

  “It was probably an accident,” Meredith cooed. “She probably came in here to say good-bye before she killed herself and Kirin got in the way. That’s all. She didn’t mean it. She didn’t mean it to be like this.”

  Josie jerked herself free from Meredith’s grasp and ran back down the hall to Valerie’s room.

  “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?” Josie screamed at her.

  “Don’t be mad. Just go away.”

  “No! Tell me! What did you do?”

  “Don’t be mad, Josie. Just go away.”

  “Are you out of your mind? Did you shoot her on purpose?”

  “Just let me die, Josie. Just go away.”

  Meredith walked back into the room. Valerie craned her eyes to look at her.

  “Do you have a cigarette?”

  Meredith instinctively pulled one out of her pocket and pressed it in Valerie’s good hand. Valerie tried to place it in her mouth but she dropped it and the cigarette rolled between ripples of sheets. Meredith picked it up and stuck it in Valerie’s lips. Then she leaned over and lit it for her.

  “Thanks,” Valerie said with almost a smile.

  Josie was sitting on the floor sobbing. She covered her face with her hands and when she lifted her head, her fingers had smeared blood across her cheeks and forehead. Josie was starting to look worse than Valerie.

  Valerie lay there with the cigarette pointing out of her mouth parallel to the floor. A mirage of smoke clouded her face.

  “YOU KILLED HER ON PURPOSE!” Josie screamed.

  Valerie looked at Josie as if she couldn’t possibly understand. She looked at her with pity.

  “Did you call 911?” Josie asked Meredith. Meredith looked at her confusedly, with her lips pouted like one of her French friends who couldn’t come up with the word she wanted to say.

  Josie scrambled to her knees and crawled to the nightstand. She stained the receiver with her palm and pointed a long, shaky E.T. finger at the touch pad.

  “What are you doing, Jo?” Meredith had regained her mastery of the English language, but she looked exhausted. This was enough to wear out even the glamorous, coke-sniffing, ambassador-screwing, diplomat-dinner-party Meredith.

  Josie had to catch her breath in order to push a button.

  “I’m calling the police.”

  Meredith reached over and pressed down on the clear plastic nodule that matched the color of her French nail polish.

  “Let’s think about this. I’m not sure if that’s the best idea.”

  Josie couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but something in her instinctively obeyed Meredith. Meredith had the command of a cool teenage baby-sitter who would let you stay up late as long as you didn’t tell. Josie thought she was doing the right thing, that for once, being the good girl put her in the lead.

  “Let’s just wait.”

  The furrow and lump returned to Josie’s face and throat. Wait for what? Valerie obviously needed a doctor. And what were they supposed to do? Bury the girl in the backyard like a dead cat?

  “Let’s just wait. Give her a little time. See what happens.”

  Meredith gently pried the phone from Josie’s fingers and placed it back on the hook. Josie stared down at her red fingerprints covering the ivory phone. She couldn’t look at either of them. She didn’t know where she was. She knew she was physically in Valerie’s bedroom, in Valerie’s house. She had be
en here before. The three of them would sit on the back porch, sip spiked iced tea, and listen to tales of Meredith’s sexploits on the Beltway trail, about how she once took an eighty-dollar taxi back from God knows where in Virginia after a wife walked in on her with her doggy bag from a state dinner. Josie had never cheated on her husband. She never had much to add to the conversation except retelling the same old tales from college. The last time she was in this room was during Valerie’s and Carl’s Christmas party. She had come up here to use the bathroom and found Valerie sitting on the edge of her bed with an untouched glass of eggnog, staring into the vanity mirror. Josie had stuck her head in the mirror and made a funny face, but Valerie hadn’t noticed. She was in another world until Josie spoke her name.

  And that’s where Josie was now, in another world. A bizarre, twisted, fairytale land. She was a princess condemned to be a slave. She had to work in the evil castle. She had forgotten what her own home was like, what her own family was like, she had forgotten, even, that she had her own thoughts. An evil witch had drugged her and she was obeying. Loving, honoring, and obeying.

  But why?

  Meredith could read her mind now. That must have been part of the spell. Meredith could be trusted to pull something off. Josie was unfairly maligned as a tattletale, which she wasn’t. Her whole life was arranged around being someone she wasn’t. Josie never felt the freedom to be who she was. Even Valerie the space cadet had the freedom to lose her mind.

  “It’s what she wants.”

  Valerie’s eyes peeled open again. She wasn’t dead yet. The ash was building on her cigarette. Valerie separated her lips ever so slightly and the cigarette titled out of her mouth and rested on the covers. Josie watched as the waning butt toasted a brown spot on the sheet before extinguishing itself.

  Josie had to leave.

  She didn’t know what possessed her, she just started walking. She kept her eyes on the carpeted floor as she made her way into the hallway and down the stairs, the dog following at her heels. Meredith called after her, but Josie didn’t look back. If she looked back, she would lose it again. She would lose all sense of herself. She had to get outside to prove that she still existed, that she too hadn’t been obliterated by a shotgun in her sleep.

  Meredith followed her halfway down the stairs, calling out, “Josie, wait.” Josie flung open the front door and stepped out into the spring sunset. People were coming home from work, parking cars, heading inside. A couple of boys were riding their bikes in circles trying to pop wheelies, which Josie always thought was dangerous. She tried not to look at the boys being boys and all of the other early-evening normalcy, and no one noticed Josie as she trampled off the brick walkway and across the bright green lawn. No one noticed the bloody monster right under their noses, the gory middle-aged girl in blood-drenched tennis clothes and pom-pom socks, with blood staining her white inner thighs as though she had just gotten her period for the first time. No one noticed the war paint smeared on her face. She kept her head down and pointed her invisible antennas forward to guide her home.

  Josie clumsily pushed open her front door with both hands, barely noticing the smudges she left behind. She walked into her kitchen observing for the first time how similar the layout was to Valerie’s house.

  Gretchen was sitting on a stool, talking on the phone, as she flipped through the pages of Josie’s Mademoiselle. Gretchen didn’t really read the magazine, she just liked to flip the pages with a loud snap. She was an odd mix of child and teen, swinging her legs back and forth as she flipped past “Do You Know How to Please Your Man?” questionnaires.

  It was in the middle of one of Gretchen’s “uh huhs” that Josie entered the kitchen. Gretchen’s eyes exploded and she screamed something unintelligible. She dropped the phone and it dangled from the wall mount gently knocking the floor as it bounced up and down on its springy cord. Josie couldn’t see her daughter. She didn’t quite want to register that she had a daughter. She walked toward the bouncing phone and pulled it up as if she were lifting a dead fish out of the water. She hung up the phone, picked up the receiver again, and this time had control over her alien fingers and was able to punch the three numbers to get the police. She explained in shaky breaths what had happened, and said, “Send an ambulance.” She hung up and thought, fuck Valerie. If Josie had to live with life as a punishment, so would she.

  Josie looked over at Gretchen who was glued to the opposite wall. Josie opened her arms; she needed a hug. She wasn’t the monster here.

  Gretchen ran upstairs to her room. Doesn’t she realize, Josie thought, that is the worst place to hide.

  From very far away, Josie heard the sirens cross the border into the nice neighborhood, turning off the busy Wisconsin Avenue rush-hour traffic and onto the leafy side streets that stretched into Friendship Heights. Josie walked outside and back across the padded grass to Valerie’s front porch. She sat down on the concrete steps and waited as the sunset became intensified with swirling red lights. The dog emerged from under a shrub and sat beside her, unable to run away.

  YOU’RE INVITED!

  WHAT: Tammy’s birthday slumber party!

  WHEN: Friday, April 9, at 7:00 P.M. (after dinner)

  WHERE: Tammy’s house

  NOTE: Bring your sleeping bags and overnight gear!

  Tammy didn’t want to write “overnight gear” on the invitation—that was her mother’s idea. Tammy didn’t want to write anything in the note section. She thought “slumber party” made it clear to bring a sleeping bag and pajamas and stuff. But her mother made her write it so people wouldn’t think that she was going to provide sleeping bags. She also made Tammy write “after dinner” so people wouldn’t be confused. Her mother said they could have cake and snacks, but they couldn’t provide dinner for all those people. Tammy had asked if they could order a pizza and her mother said she could have a pizza party or a slumber party, but not both. Tammy opted for a slumber party. Everyone had slumber parties, or sometimes movie parties where they would all go see a movie together, but Tammy knew if she did that, her mother and Nick would make her write “please buy your own ticket,” which was embarrassing. Tammy also hated that Nick’s birthday was right before hers. The first year he lived with them her mother said, “You two can have a joint birthday and share a cake!” Her mother thought this made them more of a family, more related. Also, Nick’s favorite cake was carrot cake, which Tammy did not like. She didn’t believe vegetables should be in cake. She hated carrot cake, zucchini cake, and zucchini bread. Everyone was making zucchini bread now and it was gross. Tammy liked yellow cake with white icing and little sugar flowers on top. She just wanted a normal birthday cake.

  The day before Tammy’s party, her class made plaster masks of their faces in school. One by one the sixth graders went up to Mrs. Perkins and smeared their faces with Vaseline. Then Mrs. Perkins layered on gauze soaked in plaster over their cheeks, foreheads, noses, and lips. They had to keep their mouths shut, breathe through their nostrils, and be very still while it dried, otherwise it would come out cracked.

  Someone said that a lady had gotten killed this way. She was letting her plaster mask dry and someone tied her up and stuck cotton balls up her nose so she couldn’t breathe. She suffocated to death.

  While Tammy’s plaster was drying, the only part of her face she could move was her eyes. It was like being underwater. Tammy had a cousin who used to dunk her head in the pool when she visited one summer. He would hold her head underwater and not let her up. When he finally let her come up for air, she would be coughing on chlorine water. Tammy would try and swim away from him, but he would follow her, saying, “Come on, come on, I won’t do it again, I promise.” Then he would do it again. Every time.

  Mrs. Perkins had the kids in an assembly line at the front of the classroom. She would put someone’s plaster on and then take someone’s plaster off. Everyone who was still drying would shift down the row of chairs. When Mrs. Perkins pulled off Tammy’s mask, bits of plaster g
ot stuck in her hair. She was allowed to go to the bathroom to wash it out.

  Tammy walked down to the girls’ room on the first floor. As she got to the door, she could hear Gretchen and Monique talking inside.

  “Are you going to go to her party?”

  “I guess.”

  “She’s not allowed to stay up all night.”

  “They have a computer.”

  “Yeah, but I bet she’s not allowed to use it. Besides, the only game on it is tic-tac-toe. It’s pretty boring.”

  Tammy thought for a second about using the sink in the hall where they washed out paintbrushes, but she decided that was gross. She stood by the door for another second and then walked in.

  When they saw her, Gretchen and Monique both smiled and said, “Hi.” Tammy could feel Gretchen looking at her as she splashed her face with water and picked the white plaster bits out of her hair.

  Gretchen said it was too bad there wouldn’t be any boys at Tammy’s party. Tammy wondered for a moment if Gretchen had forgotten that she was having a slumber party because boys were never invited to slumber parties. Gretchen said her parents had told her she wasn’t allowed to go on dates with boys until she was in high school, which Gretchen thought was way too old. Her parents told her that because Josh and Kenny started stopping over at her house after school. Gretchen said if her mother wasn’t home, she’d let them in and they would go down into her basement.

  “What would you do?” Tammy asked.

  “Suck face,” Gretchen said. Now she was looking directly at Tammy with a smirky smile like she knew everything. “You know, French-kiss.”

  “Both of them?”

  “I French-kissed with both of them, but I really only like Josh.”