Ten Years before the Accident
JULY 1973
Although Kat was next door and Violet two doors down, and there were dozens of bodies filling the houses, and all sorts of sounds and calls spilling from windows, and a colorful riot of humanity parading around their block, and the constant bark and snarl of the wild dogs, Jude felt her world constrict, tightening around her mind like a belt. The Plan involved a regimen, one that required the monitoring of sleep and the parsing of food, the repetition of tenets and the analysis of poems, the playing of games and debates about strategy, and the marking of days on an oversized calendar, all of them slashed with bright red ink. They were counting down to something—exactly what, no one knew.
The calendar told Jude she had been living in King Bash’s row house for one month when he called her aside, spreading his silver curtain and asking her to sit, serving her milk in a vintage crystal goblet.
“Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet with me, Jude,” he said. “How are you settling in here?”
Jude gulped her milk. Somehow, despite the chaos outside, King Bash’s office was quiet, almost uncomfortably so; the sound of her swallowing filled the room.
“It’s tough,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. He twisted his initial ring. He had clean nails, perfectly shaped; she had never seen such pristine nails on a man. The diamonds caught the light from his window and threw slim rainbows around the room. “But you’re tough, too, and I have confidence you will persevere.”
“No, King Bash, you misunderstood,” she said. A quick heat spread through her, reddening her face. “I meant ‘tough’ as in good. That’s what tough means. So I meant to say it’s going good. Or well. You know what I mean.”
He laughed, a real laugh, throwing back his head and dropping his hands to the table.
“I didn’t know, but now I do. Thank you, Jude. You all teach me something new every day. And I am glad it’s going well.”
Her mortification passed, returning her face to its normal temperature. She considered telling him that she missed living in the same house as her twin, but no—the moment called for stoicism. She placed her finished goblet of milk on his desk and folded her hands in her lap.
“Now, King Bash, sir, what can I do for you?”
He leaned forward. “Yes, Jude, thank you for insisting on efficiency. First, I want to say that during my visits to the Big House, I speak often with your mother. I’ve been telling her about your remarkable progress with The Plan, and that you are an inspiration to everyone. She sends her love and says she’ll visit soon.”
Jude could not speak without risking tears. She nodded and smiled, tight-lipped.
“I am holding very important seminars in the coming weeks,” he continued. “Seminars where I hope to achieve major goals for The Plan, regarding our continued growth and success. I’ll be coming and going, a hectic schedule. While I’m gone, I have very important work for you to do.”
“Does this have to do with the countdown on the calendar?”
“It does. And thank you for connecting the dots.” He stood, his old leather chair scraping against the floor, and leaned against the bookshelves. From Jude’s vantage point, he seemed tall as a castle or a tower, a gleaming landmark to stop and admire. “Do you remember the last time I called you for a private talk, and we discussed vetting candidates for The Plan?”
She remembered all of it, of course—the questions to be posed, the keywords to use, the insistence that candidates should ask questions in turn.
“I remember. And if it’s time to do that, I am ready.”
“Good, Jude,” he said. His tunic clung to his slick chest. “It is time, and you will be a leader. You will hunt and gather new members. Think of yourself as a monkey, the most intelligent animal, and the potential candidates as rabbits, which can sometimes be tricky and elusive. The more rabbits you gather, the more important you will become. The more important you become, the more privileges you will have. Do you understand, Jude? Can you handle this very important job?”
“I do understand, King Bash. I really do, and I can.”
“Far out,” he said, and Jude did not want to tell him that the phrase was passé. “In honor of the occasion, let’s read the Poem of the Day. I’ve picked ‘The Rabbit Catcher’ by Sylvia Plath. Seems apropos, don’t you think?”
She told him she thought it quite apropos. He began to read, his hair darkened with sweat, his tongue wetting his lips, each word clear and emphatic—words about the black spikes of the snares, so close together, close like birth pangs, and how they awaited you, those little deaths, waiting like sweethearts.
On the night of the first hunt, the residents of all three houses spilled out onto Rodman Street. Jude spotted Mr. Ronald and Mr. Donald, the RonDon, their respective black and silver heads looming over the crowds of children. She saw Kat the same moment Kat saw her, and they ran toward each other, chests colliding, arms entangling.
“Sims ouy I,” Jude said.
“Sims ouy I oot,” Kat said.
I miss you. I miss you too.
Jude found Violet next. The streetlight yellowed her tissue-paper skin. Her limbs seemed whittled down to sticks. Her long black hair resembled party streamers left over from last Halloween. She looked lost and terribly beautiful.
“Hey,” Jude said. She did not know what to do with her hands, whether to pet Violet’s hair or her back or give her a hug or bury her nose into the sweet, sharp crook of her neck. Kat put her own hand on Jude’s shoulder, as though to still her.
“Hey,” Violet said back.
“Let’s go,” Kat said.
“Perform or perish,” Jude said.
They set off in one wild pack, skipping and hooting. Jude was at the front, Violet and Kat on either side. “I’m huntin’ for wabbits!” someone called in his best Elmer Fudd voice, and all of them joined the refrain: Huntin’ for wabbits, wabbits, wabbits. One stream of kids reversed course, heading for South Street and beyond. Another headed east. Some internal compass turned Jude north. The packs of wild dogs came circling, but this time kept their distance from the wild children. She pushed farther to Sansom Street, passing discos and nightclubs and stores with glittery platform boots posed behind the windows, and encountered the most exotic humans she had ever seen, hippies and rockers and druggies and people who seemed to straddle the line between the sexes, glamorous men and handsome women, everyone open to each other.
She doubled back to Rittenhouse Square, with its wide brick lanes and cherry trees in furious bloom. A fat rat scuttled across the tip of her sneaker. Tall iron lamps cast beams of light, stretching the shadows of strange men. From a thicket of bushes came the sounds of rutting and grunting. They came upon a bronze statue of a lion, its mouth frozen in a permanent roar, its paw poised over the head of a hissing snake. “There,” Jude said, and pointed to a cluster of benches along the perimeter, where the brick road met the grass.
They chose a bench in the middle. A few feet away, on the adjacent bench, sat a girl and two boys. A rabbit for each of them. Jude pulled out a stack of playing cards and three sleeves of quarters that King Bash had given her. “Five-card draw,” she said. “Deuces wild.” One round of betting later, and the strange trio had moved closer. The boys were about twelve years old—one fat and blond; one thin and dark. The girl seemed a bit younger, maybe ten or eleven. She had hair as red and wild as Verona’s, stretching up from her scalp in thick flames, and her face was freckled and full. She wore a T-shirt that read “Music Maker and Dreamer of Dreams,” the bright rainbow lettering scrolling across her chest.
“Hey,” Jude said. “Do you guys want to play?”
“We don’t have that kind of money,” she said, and pointed at the quarters.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kat said. “This game’s on us. It’s more fun with six players.”
The girl shrugged. “I guess so,” she said, and sat down on the ground in front of Jude. The boys followed, the dark-haired one sitting near Violet, and Jude watched as she leaned toward him, whispering in his ear. She couldn’t stand the sight of it and turned to the girl instead. “What’s your name?”
The girl seemed to ponder the question before responding. “Genesis.”
“Dig it,” Jude said. “From the Bible?”
“Yeah. The beginning. I think I was supposed to be a new beginning for my parents. Too bad they hate each other and got divorced. It’s dumb. Just call me Gen.”
“Not dumb,” Jude said. “Mine’s from the Bible, too. Judith, officially. Verona—my mother—said Judith is the only woman in the Bible who asked God to make her a good liar. But you can call me Jude.”
“Dig it,” Gen said, imitating Jude’s tone. “Are you a good liar?”
“I’m getting better at it every day,” Jude said.
“Ha,” Gen said. “I told my mom a lame lie tonight. Said I was going to the movies when I am really sitting here waiting for someone to give me another beer.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know if she heard me. She made up with her boyfriend and I no longer exist.”
Jude laughed, a sincere laugh. She liked this girl and saw glimpses of their lives intersecting. “I know that story. My mom was always having people over after…” She stopped herself before saying “my Dad left.” She did not want to think about her father. She did not want to remember the night that either she or Kat closed the door in his bloodied face.
Instead she leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “This is going to sound crazy, but there’s a way to train your mind so that it changes everything around you. It makes you the best liar in the entire world. A liar so good that you lose the ability to doubt even yourself.”
She thought of King Bash, twirling his diamond ring.
The neon lights played on Gen’s face. She smiled at Jude and told her it didn’t sound crazy at all. In fact, it sounded cooler than cool—refrigerated cool, like a new beginning that was all her own.
In the days after King Bash returned from his seminars, boasting of booming numbers and frenzied interest, he again asked Jude to his office. This time, the RonDon was there. The Donald part of the RonDon held a camera, and the Ronald part of the RonDon stood near a door Jude had never noticed before. It was in the far corner of King Bash’s office, hidden by a tapestry of a jungle, the monkeys and lions and birds all posing together in peace.
“Jude,” King Bash said. “I hear that, in my absence, you went recruiting several times and were quite successful. I hear, in fact, that you recruited the most rabbits of everyone.”
“Yes,” Jude said. She allowed her voice to sound bold, prideful. “I just wanted to do The Plan as best as I could.”
“So you did,” he said.
He rose from his chair, and Jude did the same.
“And as I told you, with good work, you become important. And with your importance comes privileges and rewards. What would you say if I gave you a new opportunity to master The Plan? What if I said you could be an even bigger part of its success? And that your very important contribution would also be fun?”
“I would say yes,” Jude said, and shot her fist into the air.
“That’s it!” King Bash said. “Your enthusiasm will take you far.”
In one fluid movement he crossed the room and met the RonDon at the back door.
The door opened to reveal a plain square room, no decoration on the walls, no rug on the floor—the only furniture a bed with a flowery pink sheet. Off to one side stood a strange contraption, something resembling a white umbrella blown over by the wind. King Bash lowered his long body and looked her in the eye and told her it was okay, it was only pictures—and weren’t pictures fun? She was posing just for herself, by herself—imagine she was Natalie Wood or Audrey Hepburn or Sharon Tate—
“Wasn’t Sharon Tate murdered?” Jude said. “Like stabbed up a bunch of times?” She wanted King Bash to keep talking. If he kept talking they might forget about taking pictures. “I do not want to be Sharon Tate.”
“Not Sharon Tate,” the Donald part of the RonDon said. “Just be you. We won’t want you to be anyone but yourself. There is power in who you are.”
“And this is a reward for your power,” the Ronald part of the RonDon said. “Not everyone is as important as you are, Jude.”
“I’ll stay here with you in case you get scared,” King Bash said. “But I promise you have nothing to be scared of.”
This scene marked the part where, years later, Jude pulled the drapes across her eyes and locked her heart away. Memories came and continue to come anyway, pushing themselves into her, whispering just loud enough to be heard. They appeared in flashes, as though illuminated by strobe light, gone as quick as they came, so fast she sometimes wondered if they’d ever happened at all. In that moment, she did not think of Natalie Wood or Audrey Hepburn or Sharon Tate. She pictured her mother, Verona, in her past life as Very Sherry, her arms raised and her legs spread and her face turned over her shoulder, looking hungry for strange eyes. Jude thought to herself that doing pictures was not so bad after all, thought it so hard that it seemed to be true.