Ella watches, frozen, her fingers clutching Brooklyn’s arms so hard that she’d probably yelp if they weren’t both so fixated on what’s going on. Their dad is clearly insane, and if their mother isn’t careful, she’s going to get everybody killed.
Because if there’s one thing that’s utterly clear, it’s that their mom has changed.
She’s not meek, cowering, apologetic, making herself small.
She looks…bored.
Unimpressed.
A snake preparing to strike.
Her hip is cocked, her hands loose and open as she watches Dad strut around. Every time the gun waves in their direction, Ella clutches Brooklyn to her and curls around her. Ella doesn’t want to die, but this is what her body does, an instinctive urge to wrap around Brooklyn and protect her no matter what.
If her dad will point a gun at Brooklyn, a little five-year-old kid, someone on whom nothing can be blamed, all bets are off. And Ella already knows he wouldn’t mind hurting her, the older, rebellious, sulky, more annoying sister. He’s done it before, and she’s seen it in his eyes—the wanting to.
He wants to silence her, and he’s now in a position to do it.
When he walked onto the bus, he didn’t rush to his daughters. He showed his gun to the girl in the front seat, broke her phone, and shoved her in the bathroom, promising to shoot her if she made a single noise. And then, gun still in hand, he looked to Ella.
“Stay out of my way,” he told her. Not Nana and Brooklyn, just her. Like it’s Ella’s job to make sure no one interrupts his—fuck. Whatever this is. Monologue.
It’s funny how time runs when someone is thinking about killing you.
It stretches out. Things slow down. She’s frozen only because there is no move to make.
Can’t escape.
Can’t fight a gun.
All she can do is watch, helpless, as her mother makes it clear that her father is boring her with his threats.
His threats to kill everybody.
C’mon, she shouts telepathically. Apologize! Make him stop!
But her mom does not apologize, doesn’t say anything comforting or placating, doesn’t beg Dad to let the girls go, doesn’t promise to be good. She’s acting out in a way that Ella was never allowed to, and Ella feels a slow, steady fury start to build like an oven warming up.
How dare her mother pick this moment to defy him?
Out of all the moments when she could’ve said no, could’ve walked away, why now?
Finally, Dad puts down the gun, and Brooklyn sags in Ella’s arms like a puppet with cut strings. Ella feels a tiny lift of relief, but she’s all too aware that Dad barely has to lean over to have the gun right back in hand again. Plus, there’s a knife on his belt. It’s just a trick.
It’s always a trick.
He starts talking, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll give them a way out, make some offer, reveal some tiny crack that will let light shine in and clear out all the terror.
There has to be a way through this.
There has to.
And then, out of nowhere, her stupid goddamn mother attacks him like a goddamn idiot.
There’s no sound, no clue that it might happen. Dad is mid-sentence, and Mom tackles his legs, knocking him to the ground. He falls in the aisle between the bunks, the curtains rattling as he grabs for some kind of purchase. His head bangs off the floor with a bouncy thunk that stuns him, and Mom straddles him, her legs pinning down his arms.
“Chelsea, you’d better—” he growls.
Her mom yanks something out of the lowest bunk and—
Jesus.
Jesus.
Hits him over the head with it, bringing a blocky, pinkish something down on his forehead with both hands, with all the power in her body.
Again and again, she hits him in the head with it—
Ella sees it now.
It’s a Caboodle.
A fucking Caboodle.
A pink plastic makeup case, all rounded edges, now all splattered with blood.
Bash. Bash. Bash.
Not a sound from her mother, not a word or a grunt or a pant.
Complete silence but for the goosh, goosh, goosh of the plastic slamming into her father’s head and, sometimes, his head bouncing off the carpeted floor. Just like with the two boys at school, like when Thomas had the Violence in the cafeteria, but this time no one is running to stop it.
“What’s happening?” Brooklyn asks, her voice muffled.
Because while Ella is watching the horror unfold, her body has wisely tucked Brooklyn against her side, wrapping her arms around her sister’s tiaraed head so she can’t see what’s happening.
Ella’s focus shoots to Nana. Her grandmother is watching the scene as if it’s a boring TV show, her eyes glassy and unfocused, her smooth, tan skin an uncomfortable, hammy pink.
A high fever, she said.
Ella shakes her head. Too much to take in.
She looks back to Mom and Dad on the floor.
That’s not—
She can’t—
His…head…
Her mother rises, silent but for the lone pop of her knee or her spine, some random bone’s complaint.
She drops the makeup case on Dad’s chest.
Dad’s chest isn’t moving anymore.
His face looks like a dropped cherry pie.
Ella turns her head, feels her gorge rise.
Nothing but acid.
Acid. Acid. Acid.
Just like with Mrs. Reilly’s cats, just like with Uncle Chad.
She’s an emptiness that will never be comfortably filled again.
It’s been years since she ate soup with Leanne and River.
Her mom is walking toward her, still silent, her hands bloody to the wrist, her Florida Woman shirt’s fake blood spatters proven all the wrong color by the real blood spatters layered over them. For the longest moment, Ella thinks maybe her mother is still under the spell of the Violence, that she’s going to hurt someone else. But no. That’s not how it works.
Her mom is awake. The storm is past.
Her mom has to be okay.
But wait.
She looks to her mom’s eyes.
Her pupils are nearly normal.
She…doesn’t look confused.
Ella remembers what it feels like to wake up from the Violence.
It’s like waking up from the middle of a dream—you don’t know where you are, what you’re doing, what happened.
Her mom doesn’t look like that at all.
“Mom?” she says, voice shaking.
Mom sits on the sofa beside them, prim. She holds out a hand, glances at it, gets up, washes both hands at the tiny sink, dries them off on a roll of paper towels, leaving pink streaks. She shrugs out of her bloodstained white robe like a snake shedding an old skin. All this time, she says nothing. Then she comes to her place on the sofa.
“Sweetheart, I’m here. It’s okay. You don’t need to be afraid anymore.”
She holds out her arms, and before Ella can really process what’s real, Brooklyn slides into her mom’s lap, her thumb stuck stubbornly in her mouth. “Oh, Mommy. Oh, Mommy,” she says, over and over again. Mom strokes her hair with blood under her fingernails. Some of them are torn. She meets Ella’s eyes. The look on her face is blank and calm with the smallest hint of a smile, but also like she’s not quite in her own body.
“Mom, I have the vaccine,” Ella says, stumbling over how to make words. “I have enough for you and Brooklyn. If I’d gotten here sooner, this wouldn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have—I—”
Mom reaches over, pulls her into the hug.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she whispers.
“Yes, it would,” Ella insists, wishing she’d found Craigslist earlier, wishing she’d driven here just a little faster. “It’s a therapeutic vaccine—”
Mom pulls her closer, puts her lips to Ella’s ear. “That wasn’t the Violence,” she says, so softly no one else can hear. “That was me.”