Stop! she tries.
No good.
Stop, stop, stop!
There is no stopping. No stopping The Taker, no stopping her thoughts, no stopping her pumping legs, because she goes and goes and the thoughts come and come, and he’s here. She is calling him. She is in her bedroom, and she calls him because she can’t stand a minute more of this. She needs to smack that creature dead, because enough is enough! He picks up on the first ring.
“Belle,” he says. “You’re killing me, here.”
“You’ve got to stop this. You’re a great guy, but we were just friends. I care about you so much, but you’ve got to let this go.”
She’s lying. She doesn’t care about him so much, not right now, not anymore, because he’s scaring her. She just wants him to go away.
“I know we’re supposed to be together. I know it. If I don’t have that anymore, the hope of it . . .”
“Do we need to call someone? Are you—”
“What, going to hurt myself? Like you’d care?”
“Of course I’d care. I love you, like a friend, but I do. We all do. We care about you.”
“I can tell,” he says.
He knows she’s not telling the truth. She doesn’t love him. He’s acting too frightening to love, and her lies are another rejection, but she’s in an impossible bind she can’t fake her way out of. She is tired. He’s wearing her out. Enough is enough? Enough is never enough.
It gets worse, because he keeps this up. For days. He texts late at night. She spots him parked outside Sunnyside Eldercare. She switches tactics. She manages him. She tries to manage him, by being nice but not too nice, present but not too present. She thinks that if she just helps him through to the other side, kind of like Kat, kind of like how Kat helped Annabelle to the other side of her hurt after Will, then The Taker will be fine. She’s responsible. She caused these feelings. She encouraged him, she was unclear, and now she’s finally being clear. She hurt him, and dealing with that hurt is her job now. It is a big, uncontrollable, scary job. An exhausting one. She can’t even run. She hasn’t laced up her shoes in days. They sit empty by her bed.
After a week of this, he calls at two a.m.
“You need to stop calling me,” she says. She hangs up. She shuts off her phone. There are no tactics left except this one: no contact. None.
And then, the next afternoon, right after school, she calls the QFC, where The Taker works. She asks to speak to Lucy. She asks to speak to Adrian. There is no Lucy. There is no Adrian.
She can’t believe it, and yet she suspected this all along. She is utterly and completely done now. A big X goes up in her mind over every single piece of the unnerving, unsettling idea of him.
That’s it. Over. Finished. Discard.
• • •
Annabelle runs and runs down this awful Pennsylvania road, because now there is a car in a driveway, and its stereo is on, and music is pumping. Stop! Stop!
She puts her hands to her ears and presses. She can’t. She can’t go there or do this.
She has gone thirteen miles. Three short of her destination. After all of those lost days in Hayward, Minnesota, she has to stay on track now or she won’t get to DC before she has to appear in Seth Greggory’s office.
She wants to call Grandpa Ed to pick her up. She has been running a half marathon every day for nearly a month since Chicago, and her body is suffering. Suffering? It’s been doing that for weeks and weeks. No, it’s breaking down. It is saying no more. Way back in Cherry Valley, she started feeling the pain of runner’s knee, and she’s been trying to shorten her stride and avoid hard downhill runs, icing and wrapping it afterward, wearing a compression sleeve during the run itself. And every morning lately, she’s also been dealing with a dull ache along the arch of her foot and a constant jab in her heel, which surely means plantar fasciitis, tears and inflammation of the tendons from her heel to her toes. Right now, her head starts to throb in the way that she knows means dehydration. She is breaking down and depleted and her mind is too full and she just can’t go on.
She just can’t.
• • •
“I’m taking you to a clinic.”
“No.”
“Don’t argue. You’re dehydrated. You’re . . .”
Brittle, breaking, destroyed, because The Taker is sitting right next to her. She feels his warm breath on her cheek, hears him whispering in her ear. It’s happening because the Carnegie Mellon students are waiting. Seth Greggory is waiting. The Taker himself is waiting. He is waiting, because he’ll always be waiting.
She feels his fingers, pressing into her arm as he grabs it outside of class. After she hung up on him at two a.m., after she’s gone 100 percent No Contact, he was absent for three days, and she’s almost surprised to see him. In those three days, Gina called Mr. Curley, guidance counselor, and Mr. Curley pulled Annabelle out of class to tell him what was going on as she sat in his office surrounded by posters of Whitworth. Geoff’s dad called Principal Garvey, too, after The Taker posted a photo of a gun on social media and then told Geoff that he was feeling fucking dangerous. It shook Geoff up. He thought it meant suicidal. People were talking, whispering. Making guesses as to why he was out of school. Rumors swirled, but then they heard that The Taker was getting help. It was all under control. Annabelle felt terrible, but after that call to QFC, she was glad he was gone, too. It’s not your fault, everyone kept saying. She felt like she was walking on glass, and the three days of his absence felt pretty great. He was getting help, and she could breathe.
But now, here he is. Standing outside her last class. He grabs her wrist.
“We need to talk,” he says.
“I have nothing more to say to you. Nothing,” Annabelle says.
Geoff spots them. “Hey, man. Let her go,” he says.
Let her go? Never.
• • •
Grandpa Ed has all three fans going in the RV and all of the windows are open, but it’s still so hot in there.
“Porca miseria! I am not a doctor!” Porca miseria: Damn it! Literal translation: pig misery.
“Please. I just need to lie down.”
“It’s been over eighty all week. What if this is heatstroke? I don’t know nothing about heatstroke.”
“I’m fine. I promise you. Let me just lie down. Please. Please, no doctor.”
They park at a rest area next to the Ohio River. Olivia calls. Grandpa Ed answers Annabelle’s phone.
Annabelle listens to the low conversation. Grandpa Ed tells Olivia that he’s not sure how much farther Annabelle can go. The summer heat is more than they anticipated. It is brutal. She’s killing herself, he says. He tells Olivia all of the things Annabelle hasn’t—how her knee pain has grown so that even prolonged spans of sitting hurt. How the compression sleeve doesn’t seem to be helping anymore. How she’s been popping anti-inflammatories and rolling her foot on a bottle of water to ease the agony in her arch. How her eyes are vacant and her body is so thin, because her muscles are actually shrinking and breaking down now. Her shorts barely stay up.
He buys food in town. Grandpa Ed and Annabelle eat burgers outside by the river. She is too tired for food. Too tired for nature. Too tired for whatever is living and flowing around her.
She sits in a camp chair and stares out until it is cool enough in the RV to sleep. She climbs into her bunk. Grandpa Ed begins to snore. The Saint Christopher medal shines in the moonlight, but even a saint seems small and powerless against what’s coming.
She closes her eyes, and when she does, Annabelle hears the thump, thump, thump of the bass from the car she saw in that driveway today. She puts her pillow over her head, but she still hears it. Bump-tha-thump-bump.
“I have nothing more to say to you. Nothing,” she says again to The Taker.
“Hey, man. Let her go,” Geoff says again and again.
Because she knows then, doesn’t she? The way The Taker’s fingers drop suddenly from her wrist—Annabelle knows it’s bad. She knows, because she’s suddenly scared. Really scared. Something is coming. She knows and she doesn’t want to know, so she tells herself she doesn’t.
She tells herself he’ll go away. She tells herself that everything is fine. She tells herself that it’s no big deal. She tells herself that people older than her have things under control.
She tells herself that violence is something that happens to other people.
Annabelle gets dressed for the party at Geoff Graham’s house. She wants to get excited for it, but she isn’t. She feels sick about The Taker grabbing her at school, sick about shaking him off like that. She saw his face as she walked away. He wasn’t just tearful and hurt. He was pissed.
Well, she’s pissed, too. She’s sick of him. She is so entirely, completely finished with him.
Annabelle tilts her chin up toward the bathroom mirror at home, puts her mascara on. It’s a barbecue, a backyard party. It will get chilly later, so she wears her jeans and an orange T-shirt. Geoff Graham’s parents have a hot tub, so she wraps her bathing suit up in a towel. She calls Will. He’s meeting her there. He’s working late, and he’s driving over from the Eastside.
“I’m bringing my suit,” she says. “In case we get a chance to get in the hot tub.”
“Oh, nice,” he says. “I’ll bring mine, too. See you soon.”
“See you soon.”
She hunts for the keys to Gina’s car. She spots them in a heap by Gina’s purse.
“Don’t be too late,” Gina calls. “You know I worry. You know I wait up.”
Of course Annabelle knows.
Annabelle stops at Greenwood Market. She buys a package of chips. She buys some mints. She plans on kissing Will a lot, and dancing, and having fun. All of her friends will be there—Kat and Zach and Olivia and Zander, lots of Geoff’s friends from band. But The Taker won’t be there. Geoff told him it might be best if he didn’t come, and The Taker said it didn’t matter anyway—he was going away for the weekend with his parents. What a relief. It’s going to be nice to shake off some of the weirdness of what’s been going on. School is almost out, and this’ll be pre-summer fun.
There are lots of cars already. Annabelle parks behind the last one in the line on the street. Music is bumping. She can hear it from where she parks. Bump, tha-thump, bump.
She feels good. She feels mostly good. She’s relieved to be there. Relieved that The Taker is gone and that Will is coming. She sees Kat’s car, meaning Kat has already arrived.
She rings the bell. Geoff Graham answers. “Hey, chips. Thanks.” He squeezes the bag twice in appreciation. “No one else brought anything. Losers.”
“Hey, thank you. I mean, I smell barbecue.”
“My brother’s in charge of the hot dogs, because I cremate them. Beer’s over there.”
She shouldn’t, her mother will smell it, but she does. She gets a beer, pops the cap, and takes a swig. It’s cold and great. She rarely drinks, so the alcohol hits her immediately. She starts to relax. She can’t wait until Will gets here.
“Belle Bottom! Get your sweet little ass over here!” Kat is in high spirits. She’s talking with Sierra and Destiny. Zach and Olivia are dancing, and more people are pouring in. Annabelle hears loud laughter out in the backyard. People are getting into the hot tub already.
“Sister,” Annabelle says to Kat, and flings her arm around Kat’s shoulder. They have to shout a little over the music. Kat kisses her cheek.
“Oh my God, you guys are too much,” Sierra says. “Did you plan that? You look like twins.”
She’s right. Annabelle and Kat are dressed alike. They both have on their jeans and orange T-shirts.
“Best friend mind meld,” Kat says. “We don’t have to plan, we just know. Is Will working?”
“He should be here any minute.”
“Aww. Young love. I miss being in love.”
“Poor Kit-Kat.” Annabelle makes an exaggerated frown.
“Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love.”
Kat’s at the end of her beer, maybe a second one, who knows. She’s a tiny bit goofy and sloppy. But when Annabelle looks over at her, she realizes that Kat’s serious.
“What?” Annabelle says. “What about Noah? You were crazy about him.”
“Nah. I don’t think so. It hasn’t happened yet.”
“That makes me sad!”
“Don’t be sad, be glad. It’s still coming.”
“Yeah. That is good.” Annabelle smiles. “God, I can’t drink beer. I’ve got to go pee.”
“We’ll save your place,” Sierra says.
Annabelle goes upstairs. She passes Trevor Jackson coming down. Two girls from band, Desiree and Hannah Kelly, wait in line by the door. “A line, really?”
“Josie’s been in the parents’ bathroom forever,” one of the girls answers.
Annabelle waits. Finally, it’s her turn. She’s fussing with her makeup. She’s putting on lip gloss. She wants to look good for Will. Her beer is on the bathroom counter. She washes her hands. She’s about to grab the bottle, when she hears it.
Downstairs, someone screams.
Someone screams, and at first Annabelle thinks it’s a play scream, but it doesn’t sound like a play scream. It sounds like a terrified scream. And now, someone else screams, a guy, and people are shouting. These are the sounds of something awful happening, and so Annabelle thinks, I’ve got to leave. She wrongly thinks she must get out of this bathroom and this house, and she is at the top of the stairs when she hears a pop-pop-pop. It is a horrible pop-pop-pop and then lots of people are screaming, and there is the sound of something large falling, a sickening thud, and Annabelle is terrified because she knows, she knows that whatever just happened is bad, bad, bad, but she goes down those stairs anyway. It is the wrong direction, but she goes down and the front door is open and she can see the back of him. She sees The Taker, it’s him, and she doesn’t understand because in her mind he is not going to be here tonight, but that is his coat.
That is his coat, and he is fleeing, running from the house and down the sidewalk, and he is carrying a rifle. He is carrying a rifle, and Geoff Graham is yelling and sobbing, and when Annabelle gets to the bottom of the stairs, she sees something unreal, so unreal. People are crying and in shock, crouched down and covering their heads, and nothing is making sense. Sierra has wedged herself into the far corner of the room, her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving, and one of Geoff’s friends from band is half hanging out a window attempting escape, and she sees Zach and Olivia hunched behind a chair, holding each other. There is blood everywhere, blood everywhere, and pieces . . . and pieces of—
She sees Kat on the ground. Kat is on the ground! Her face is to the floor but that is her orange T-shirt, and blood is flowing down her back into her jeans, and beside her, lying beside her—Jesus, no, Jesus, God—it’s Will. It’s Will! He’s here, and he is on the ground, and he’s in his jeans and his favorite hoodie, but he is crumpled and folded strangely, and some of his face is like . . . It looks like . . . It’s just raw flesh and blood, it’s gone, and his eyes are flat, just flat, and his chest . . . There is blood and blood just flowing and flowing from him.
Annabelle is screaming now, too; it’s coming from her unbidden, and she goes to Will and Kat, the people she loves. She goes to them, but they terrify her. Their bodies terrify her, and someone grabs her. She feels the tight squeeze on both her arms, but she screams and screams and wrenches away and runs outside, into the street. People are in the street, too, kids from the party, kids trembling in their swimsuits wet from the hot tub, neighbors coming from their houses. The music is still going. The bamp, thump, ba-bamp goes sickeningly on and on in the background of the sobs and the crying, and now, the sound of a siren.
Annabelle crouches on the pavement, just crouches, because she was in the bathroom and then she heard a pop-pop-pop and then she came down the stairs and then there was Will and Kat and blood was flowing down the back of Kat’s orange shirt, and Will’s face—Annabelle shuts her eyes and puts her hands over her ears and she rocks and rocks back and forth because nothing is real. There are cars coming already, more sirens, lights. They’ve arrived so fast, but who knows how much time has passed. She is out in the street rocking and she throws up right there, and hands are on her, lifting her from the ground. Are you all right? Are you injured? Are you all right? Are you injured? they keep asking and asking. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. Nothing is real. None of it can possibly be real, but it is real. It is.
She is crying now. She is sobbing and crying in her bunk of the RV. Grandpa Ed is awake. He’s there with her. His arms are around her.
“Sweetheart,” he says.
“I saw, I saw, I saw, I saw, I saw,” she says.