Shaylene lets me go and backs away into the room. She stands by the bed, looks at me for the longest time, or maybe just a fraction of a second, and then says, I’m sorry, Shelby. I’m sorry for everything I did to you.
Then she lifts the shotgun and puts it under her own chin, ready to blow her face off.
Through the dirty curtains, reddish highway glow comes weakly shining.
The Gideon bible sits there, doing nothing. I wonder how many screwed-up things like this it has seen. I wonder how objects cope, when something terrible happens in front of them. How they get past it. How they can ever be the same again.
If she pulls the trigger, I think, this bed and this bible and this nightstand are going to have to witness it.
Maybe that’s what haunting really is: the way violence affects the things around it, the world in which it happens, the objects that can’t look away.
Objects like me.
I can’t look away.
Shaylene’s finger is white on the trigger. She’s looking right at me and there are tears on her cheeks.
Then I realize something: I’m back in the Crone’s cottage, and this is the same moment, come again, only this time I didn’t kick the door down to get here; this time I was dragged. But the heart is there on the plate again for me to eat.
As soon as I see this, anger surges in me; it feels like the color of lightning. She is not the moon, I realize, yanking at the tides, yanking at me. She is a broken window on the plane, pulling me toward the cold outside. I take a step forward. There are probably people shouting things from the other side of the door, cops, but of course I can’t hear so I don’t know for sure.
No, I say. You don’t get out of it that easily.
What? she says. She has to speak with her mouth; her hands are full of gun.
You told me you would die before you let anyone hurt me. When we were at the campsite.
She looks confused. Yes, she says. That’s why. I hurt you. I have to pay.
This is going to hurt me more, I say.
She shakes her head, whole body shivering, a metal bar struck against stone, humming with fear and adrenaline.
You did something terrible, I say. To the Watsons. To me.
I know, she says. That’s why—
I ignore her. As long as I keep talking, I keep her from splattering her nose and eyes and brain all over the ceiling. You stole me, I say. It’s like you killed me. The real me—Angelica Watson. You killed me and you put someone else in my place. Shelby Cooper. Like in those stories where the fairies take a baby away and put a different one in the crib.
Changelings, she says. She is looking at me with something like fear, and something like wonder.
I know what they’re called, I say. That’s what you did to me. And I will never ever forget that.
The tears are really flowing from her eyes now. She’s one trillionth of a second away from pulling that trigger.
But you don’t get to just leave, I say. You don’t get to make it all go away.
I take another step. One foot away from her now.
Don’t come any closer, she says.
No. You’re not pulling that trigger, I say. I am thinking of my body, closing around that dead heart like a tomb, making me a coffin. You kill yourself and I have to carry you around forever. No way.
Back off, she mouths. I’m going to shoot.
No, I say. Drop the gun.
I can’t go to jail, she says. I can’t lose you.
Suddenly she reverses the gun, and points it at me. I stare down the barrel. I can SEE what she’s thinking, on her face, like reading a book. She’s thinking: two cartridges. Take us both out. And then all of this goes away, and she doesn’t have to pay for her crime, and she doesn’t have to be alone.
No, I say, shaking my head. You won’t lose me. That’s too easy.
She blinks. What?
I’ll visit, I say. In prison. I’ll come see you.
She is like a cartoon of shock. Why?
Because that’s the only way to move on, I say. If I don’t, then you’ll always be there, with me, in my mind, wherever I go. What you did will always be there. Unchanging. But if we visit … then what you DID will only be one thing, and the other thing will be what you DO.
I don’t get it, she says, as much with her shoulders and her eyebrows as with her mouth.
You made a mistake, I say. But you have to LIVE with that mistake. No one forgives a dead person. I’d never forgive you if you died.
Then both of us—
No. You don’t really want to kill me. Do you?
I can tell because of the way she’s shaking. I can tell because of the way she’s crying. But I am worried that the gun might go off, accidentally, so I don’t get any closer.
For a moment, there’s stillness, which is like silence, but my version. Light is blazing through the gauze over the window, a spotlight, maybe? But then I notice that it’s shifting and moving, raking the walls, filling the room, making it a vessel of light. A helicopter, then.
Her eyes twitch to the door.
What is it? I say. What did they say?
They say to surrender. To come out. Or they have been authorized to [ ].
I don’t catch what she says there, but I guess it means: kill.
I see a reptilian flicker in her eyes.
They gave an ultimatum, didn’t they? To see if I was alive.
She nods. They said they wanted to hear your voice, or they would come in. You didn’t hear.
Of course I didn’t hear, I think. And you were willing for them to assault the room, to maybe get us both killed. Because you were scared. Scared of being alone. I would pity her, if I didn’t hate her more. I don’t say any of this with my hands though.
But there’s hating someone, and then there’s wanting them to die, or allowing them to die so they get off the hook, and I’m a long way from either of those things.
We still have time, I say. Put down the gun. Let’s open the door. Hands in the air. You’re descended from warriors. You can’t let prison defeat you.
What?
It’s something someone said to me, when I was afraid.
Another moment of stillness.
I love you, Shaylene says eventually. I love you all—
—the way to Cape Cod and back, I say with my hands. So drop the gun. Drop the gun.
She lowers the shotgun, then throws it down on the bed.