Say Goodbye

“Did you bring the necklace?”

“Well, I did, just in case, but-”

“Gimme the necklace. I’ll wear the ring on it, beneath my shirt. It’ll be our secret, something just the two of us know, at least until school is out. I don’t need a big show to know you care. Already, this moment, what you’ve managed to do…” Her voice was growing edgy again. She forced herself to finish more brightly: “It means so much that you thought to do this.”

Tommy’s face lit up. He dug around in his pocket, finally producing a tiny ziplock bag containing the necklace. He’d probably bought it at Wal-Mart. Fourteen carat: It would turn the skin on her neck green.

Damn, all that for this?

She took the chain, looped it through the band of the ring, gave him a reassuring smile.

He grabbed her for a hard kiss. She let him. But then he started fondling her again, obviously intending to cement their new relationship with a rut in the woods.

Christ, she was tired.

With a bit of effort, she pushed him back, having to strain against one hundred and eighty pounds of testosterone. “Tommy,” she admonished, panting. “Curfew, remember? Let’s not start our new relationship with me grounded.”

He gri

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back in the truck, big boy. Let’s see how fast you can drive.”

Tommy could drive fast. But they still didn’t make it to her house until ten minutes after eleven. Front porch light was on, but nothing moved behind the shades.

With luck, her mother was out and would never know. After the night she’d had, Gi

Tommy wanted to watch until she was safe inside her house. She assured him that would make it worse, her mom might come out, make a scene. More coaxing. The cost of five valuable minutes, he finally drove off.

Her hero, she thought ironically, and turned toward her home.

It was small and gray, with no excuse for a lawn. Dull outside, even duller inside. But hey, as the saying went, it was home. At least it wasn’t a trailer park. See, once Gi

Her daddy had died one day. Coming home from a dry-walling job, catching his front tires on black ice. Insurance money had paid for the house.

Her mother had turned to other activities to pay for the rest.

Gi

Gi

Her mama had done it. Gi

Fuck it. She’d go for a walk. Maybe in an hour or two, her mother would decide she’d made her point.

Gi

She’d just hit the intersection with the rural road when the black SUV zipped by. She saw the brake lights flare up, dragon eyes, as the SUV screeched to a halt twenty yards away. A head poked out the driver’s side, too dark to see much other than the outline of a baseball cap. A heavy male baritone inquired, “Need a lift?”

It took Gi

Gi

He didn’t say much. Just took another left, another right, before abruptly pulling behind the giant self-storage warehouse and killing the engine.

Gi

But then he turned and she found herself staring into a flat, unsmiling face. Hard square jaw, tight lips, eyes oversized pools of unending black.

And then, almost as if he knew how she would react, as if he wanted to savor the moment the expression crossed her face, he slowly pushed up the brim of his baseball cap and showed her his forehead.

Inside the pocket of her denim jacket, Gi

Because this man was never, ever letting her go home.

Some girls were smart. Some girls were fast. Some girls were strong. Gi

“All right,” she said briskly. “Let’s cut to the chase: Why don’t you tell me exactly what you want me to do, and I’ll start stripping off clothes.”

ONE

THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT NO ONE TELLS YOU, THAT YOU must experience in order to learn:

It only hurts the first few times. You scream. You scream and you scream and you scream until your throat is raw and your eyes swollen and you taste a curious substance in the back of your throat that is like bile and vomit and tears all rolled into one. You cry for your mother. You beg for God. You don’t understand what is happening. You can’t believe it is happening.

And yet, it is happening.

And so, bit by bit, you fall silent.

Terror doesn’t last forever. It can’t. It takes too much energy to sustain. And in truth, terror occurs when you are confronted with the unknown. But once it has happened enough, you have been systematically violated, beaten, cowed, it’s not unknown, is it? The same act that once shocked you, hurt you, shamed you with its perversity, becomes the norm. This is your day now. This is the life you lead. This is who you have become.

A specimen in the collection.

TWO

“Spiders are always on the lookout for prey, but predators are also on the lookout for spiders. Clever disguises and quick getaways help keep spiders out of trouble.”

FROM Spiders and Their Kin,

BY HERBERT W. AND LORNA R. LEVI, A GOLDEN GUIDE FROM ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, 2002

“WE GOT A PROBLEM.”

“No kidding. Widespread production of methamphetamines, a middle class that keeps falling further and further behind, not to mention all the ruckus over global warming…”

“No, no, no. A real problem.”

Kimberly sighed. They’d been working this crime scene for three days now. Long enough that she no longer noticed the smell of burning jet fuel and charcoaled bodies. She was cold, dehydrated, and had a stitch in her side. It would take a lot, in her opinion, to qualify as a real problem at this point.

She finished up the last swig of bottled water, then turned away from the tent city that currently comprised command central, and faced her teammate. “All right, Harold. What’s the problem?”