CHAPTER THREE

“Help,” she yelled, over and over again. “Someone? Please, help me!”

She blinked hard against tears, but they splashed forth as she continued to shout. And then somewhere along the way the words turned to screams until her throat was raw and her ribs hurt and her head threatened to explode into a thousand shards. Blackness washed over her as if she’d taken a dive into a vat of ink, and then nothing.

Minutes? Seconds? Hours? Ari had no idea how long she’d been passed out, but she came to still curled up on the dirt, arms hugged around her cramped body. The truth crept like cold snow into her heart: no one could hear her.

And no one—not her mom or her dad or Lynn or Coach—was coming.

Where was she? Her mind was dull. She couldn’t think past the pain pulsing near her right eye. Putting her fingers to her head, she investigated the pulp of matted hair and the congealed mass of blood. It made her fingers tacky, and the metallic tang caused her stomach to heave again.

Was she concussed? Or worse? A traumatic head wound? Was that why she was unable to see? She felt for her tiger’s-eye bracelet, the beads warm from her body heat. Tiger’s eye for bravery. Lynn had one too, and Ari almost seemed to hear her friend’s voice. For fuck’s sake, grow a pair, sweetie! Which was basically what she’d said when Ari had hemmed and hawed about trying out for first string on the swim team. And you know what? She’d made it. So…

When they were young, before they’d conceived of the signal-flag-out-the-window idea, she and Lynn had been convinced they could communicate telepathically. They felt the same way about so many things—from Oreos to Iceland to The Little Prince—that they often finished each other’s sentences.

Come find me, Lynn, she prayed.

The tears were gone, sucked up by the desperation that gripped her now. What if she were never found? Where could she be? How had she gotten here?

Think, Ari.

Okay, start with what you know. She took a deep, calming breath. She knew her name. “Ariadne Isabel Sullivan,” she said into the black. What else? “Seventeen years old, five foot seven inches tall. 132 Fox Street, Dempsey Hollow, 453-8678. Best friends with Lynn Lubnick. Likes swimming, mushroom pizza and glitter nail polish. Dislikes centipedes, turnips and mean people.” Her voice sounded so thin, so weak. She straightened her spine and spoke louder. “Absolutely hates what chlorine does to my hair.”

She reached into her back pocket. No phone. Where the hell was her phone? Had it slipped out when she fell? She patted the ground all around her but found nothing. She felt the feathery slither of a many-legged insect as it scuttled over her hand. Centipedes liked damp, dark places. She’d seen one crawl out of the basement sink drain once. She leapt to her feet but lost her balance as another wave of dizziness assailed her. Fuck fuck fuck! Crashing forward, she connected with something solid. Pressing her hands and then her forehead against the rough, slimy coldness until the white flecks stopped their frenzied dance before her eyes, Ari felt her head clear a little. The surface felt like a wall and was slightly curved under her palms. She detected the indentation of bricks. She tried to hook her fingers in but they slid free; no way to climb, then. She stood on her tiptoes and stretched her hands up; it extended beyond her reach. She crouched down and felt along the bottom until she touched the gritty soil. There was no door or opening. A bitter draft blew from somewhere up above, carrying the autumn scent of decaying leaves. She crumbled a pinch of dirt between her fingers. It was slightly damp, though whether from rain or ground moisture she didn’t know.

She realized she could just make out the shadowy shape of her limbs. She placed her palm against the wall and walked. It was circular. She pushed off from it and inched forward, hands held defensively in front of her, counting steps under her breath. Her shoes were almost silent on the hard-packed earth. Eight paces toe to heel, roughly eight or nine feet in diameter, before she hit the bricks on the other side. Walls surrounding her, stretching up who knew how high. A childhood memory sparked. Summer in the country. Her grandmother warning her to “stay away from the cistern where the old barn used to be. The cover is all rotted away.” She hadn’t listened of course, but spent hours on her tummy throwing rocks and sticks into the deep water. And once there had been a desperate rat swimming around and around in circles, unable to find a way out. A cistern. Like a big well buried below ground. She was at the bottom of a big fucking well! She made a circuit, clawing at the bricks, feeling like the rat. Perhaps there was a ladder bolted to the side? A rope with a bucket?

A flicker of hope rose in her and was extinguished just as quickly. No escape. The rat had just stopped swimming at some point, even though Ari had thrown down the biggest chunk of wood she could find, thinking it could use it as a raft. It had just given up.

She turned around and sank down on her butt as her legs gave way beneath her. Turning her face up, she squinted, trying to see to the top of the wall, but it seemed miles away and still too dark. No silhouettes of trees, no stars. A well with a cover over it, then.

She yelled again, caught up in the terror, even knowing it was no use. Cisterns weren’t located in the middle of town. They were on private land, out on the country back roads where town water couldn’t be piped in, far from anywhere.

How had she even gotten here? Had she driven herself in her dad’s VW? Had she come with someone else who even now might be going for help? Lynn? Lynn didn’t have a car either but maybe….She grabbed onto that slim hope and tried to calm herself.

The pitch blackness continued to weigh down on her like some tangible thing occupying all the space. Was enough air getting in? Her brain was a lump of unresponsive flesh. It was hard to follow the broken trail of her thoughts.

“The well cover is on,” she said out loud. Saying the words helped her think. It reminded her of struggling her way through algebra with Lynn. “It’s a series of logical steps,” Lynn would say. “You go from here to here until you get to the answer.”

“Therefore, someone must have placed it there.” She squinted upward again.

Someone is coming back for me.

But who? She saw a figure, silhouetted, face in shadow, a mouth moving with words she could no longer recall. The last thing she remembered was—what? Her brain fuzzed, the headache back again, pounding with a furious intensity.

Big blocks of time seemed to be missing.

Shopping. She remembered shopping. She tried to hold on to the thought as she felt her consciousness rush in and out, scrambling for the fleeting image of clothing racks, and Lynn’s familiar smirk. She hooked into the memory, desperate.

It was Friday, after school, and they had been looking for dresses for the big fall dance at the end of October.

“What do you think?” Lynn asked, holding up a short, tight red number with tiers of net flounces, and spaghetti straps.

“Sure, if you want to look like an eighties reject.”

“Like early New York, Madonna cool? Or Kajagoogoo groupie?”

Ari whistled a few notes of “Too Shy.”

Lynn’s face fell. “Really, poppet?”

Ari shrugged.

They’d recently scored a crate of record albums from the Goodwill junk shop. All eighties New Wave, pretty-boy bands with bleached-out hair and tons of eyeliner. Luckily Ari’s dad was a hoarder and still owned a turntable and a pair of gigantic speakers. It was funny how big all the electronics were back then; those boat-like boom boxes, the headphones that covered half your head.

Lynn put the dress back, an exaggerated pout on her lips.

Ari skimmed along the next row, passing pastel dress after pastel dress. Mint green seemed very unpopular, judging by the number left on the rack. She sighed. “Movie? Cherry licorice? My treat.”

Lynn didn’t even look up. “We’re on a mission. Victory or death!”

“Does it matter? Really? In the bigger scope of things?”

“Of course it does. It’s the little things that count the most. Like a rite of passage.”

“I’d rather be spending the night in a haunted house, or hunting a polar bear with a fork,” Ari grumbled. “And my feet are killing me.”

“That’s because you have no arch support in those cute flats. And you can’t kill a polar bear with a fork. You’re a girl, for Pete’s sake. You’re supposed to live for shopping.”

“I’m not that kind of girl.”

“Oh really? What kind of girl are you then?”

“The boring kind who’s boring.”

Lynn shushed her, intent on something in her hand.

“This,” she said on a slow exhalation, holding up a draped bodice, one-shouldered, off-white dress with a pearly sheen to the material and a dramatic slit up the side.

“You’ll have to wear some super high heels with it,” Ari said. Lynn was curvy but petite. “Or you’ll look like a scoop of whipped cream.” She swallowed a snort of laughter.

“Not for me, twit, for you.”

Ari opened her mouth to argue but Lynn cut her off. “Remember the jeans? You thought they’d make you look doughy.”

“Dowdy.”

“Same difference.”

“Not really. Are you saying they did make me look dowdy?”

Lynn made an exasperated noise. “No. What I am saying is, aren’t you glad you listened to me?”

Ari nodded. They had looked pretty good: not too flared, not too straight, and they’d done wonders for her non-ass. She’d picked up a gorgeous linen blouse with delicate lace panels and cap sleeves to go with them. Her arms, toned from swimming, were about the only part of her body she liked. Well, her upper arms. Her lower arms were too downy with hair.

“It looks so…grown-up,” she said.

“Hello, we’re seventeen. In some cultures we’d be considered spinsters already.”

“Oh yes, where’d you read that? Wikipedia?”

“Wikipedia rules, ducks. You’ll look smashing in it.” Kajagoogoo and the rest of the British New Wave invasion had given Lynn a thirst for British slang.

“I—” Ari began and then couldn’t go on. She was no match for Lynn’s energy when it came to shopping, or her skill in arguing. They’d already been to all six of Dempsey Hollow’s upper-tier stores, and the so-called secondhand alley, and now they were on to what Lynn had named Attack Phase II. It was easier just to give in.

They walked toward the changing rooms, Ari examining the dress more closely and trying to figure out what kind of material it was made of. Silk? she wondered, walking into the back of Lynn, who had stopped abruptly.

“Well, lookee lookee,” said a smarmy voice. “Teen dykes on a shopping spree.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lynn said. “Following us again?”

She turned to face Ari, her lips pressed into a thin line, and grabbed her by the arm.

“Let’s go this way.”

They moved to the left, slipping between the narrow racks of clothing. Jack Rourke cut across and stood in the middle of the aisle with his arms folded over his wide chest. He eyed Ari’s dress. “So you’re the woman,” he said with exaggerated emphasis, “which means that you”—he moved toward Lynn—“must be the man.” His voice dropped in register. “Do you feel like a man, Lubnick? Under those clothes do you look like a man?” He rubbed his hand suggestively over his crotch. “Want me to break you in? She can watch.”

“Go away, Jack,” Ari said, wishing her voice sounded more assertive.

Jack flicked his flat eyes over her briefly and then lasered in on Lynn again.

“You don’t know what you’re missing.”

Ari could feel the anger shimmering off Lynn. Jack Rourke constantly dropped innuendos. “For fuck’s sake, Jack. Do you have to be such a pig?” Lynn snapped.

He stared at her for a moment, guffawed, and then started squealing. The sound followed them all the way to the dressing room.

“I hate that guy,” Lynn said. “If I could get away with it, I’d set fire to his car. Stupid entitled wanker.”

Ari pressed her arm.

“I’m okay, I’m okay. I just get so sick of it.” She forced a smile. “C’mon, forget that asswipe and his microscopic penis. Let’s see gorgeous you in that fabulous dress.”

Ari submitted to being hustled into an available cubicle. Lynn pushed her toward the chair, twitched the curtain closed behind her and stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Strip.”

“Aren’t you going to try anything on?”

“I’m going back for that tight kimono deal.”

Ari tried to remember which one that was exactly. Lynn had modeled dozens, most of them with accessories, bags and shoes. Go big or go home was one of her mantras.

“The turquoise in the vintage shop?” She kicked off her flats and then slipped out of her shorts and T-shirt, wishing she’d put on something other than her grimy sports bra today. She should have remembered these oh-so-attractive walls of mirrors, which showed side and back views as well as front, all bathed in lovely fluorescent lighting. They brought out all the shades of dingy yellow in her sagging white cotton underwear. She folded her clothes carefully and put them on the chair, stalling for time.

“It was teal,” said Lynn, snapping her fingers to hurry Ari along. The vibrant color had been spectacular against Lynn’s creamy skin and dark hair. And the wrap bodice had accentuated her boobs.

“It won’t fit,” Ari muttered, more to herself than to Lynn. She was crap at picking out the right clothes for her body, and was therefore always disappointed. “Or if it does it’ll look like a potato sack.”

“I picked it out, remember?” Lynn said.

“It doesn’t matter. My shoulders are too broad, my calves are too muscular.” She broke off, having caught sight of the back of her head. The humidity was doing something outrageous to her split ends. She smoothed them down and then reached for the dress.

“Five…four…three…two…,” Lynn counted down. Ari knew she was perfectly capable of throwing open the curtain so that everyone would see Ari standing there in her underwear.

The material was silky under her fingers—without that stiff polyester feel that set her teeth on edge—but it didn’t look like lingerie. This was probably way out of her price range. She tried to read the tag and became aware of Lynn’s tapping foot. Her friend was practically vibrating with impatience.

“I could move with even more agonizing slowness,” Ari remarked.

“I could loudly comment on that saggy bra of yours. Then the sales lady will come in with her tape measure and insist on measuring you in front of everyone and their mother.”

“That’s so mean. You know how scarred I was by that experience.”

“I survived it.”

“That’s because she let everyone within a two-mile radius know that you are a perfect C cup. Not”—she dropped her voice—“barely a B. She said I had a ‘measly bust-line.’ ”

“You’re still growing. Just trust me.”

Sighing, Ari tugged the dress over her head. The material rustled as it fell toward the floor, ending just below her anklebone. In the mirror behind her she saw Lynn’s eyes widen, and then her friend jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “I knew it!” She grabbed Ari’s thick reddish-brown hair and gave it a quick twist, holding it against the back of Ari’s head with one hand and achieving a casual-though-elegant style that Ari had never mastered. Ari turned slowly, looking at every angle. Somehow the dress, with its draped neckline, narrowed her shoulders and gave her the illusion of a waist. No, not just a waist—a figure with hips and everything. It hung in soft folds, hugging the slight curves of her body, shimmering with a pearly light that brought out the tawny color of her skin and added depth to her pale green eyes.

“Oh,” Ari said.

“Yes, ‘oh’ and ‘wow’ and ‘I told you so.’ I understand women’s bodies.” She sounded so smug, Ari choked on a giggle.

“You can borrow those strappy red satin shoes I have,” Lynn continued, batting away Ari’s hand as she once again tried to see the price tag. “So that’ll save you a wodge of money.”

“Wodge? You going to keep that up?”

“As long as I possibly can, love.”

“Listen, I know I can’t afford it, so this is torture,” Ari said. She’d scrounged and saved her tips from the café and had done extra yard work around the neighborhood to augment the allowance her parents gave her, but still—there was no way. “And it’s not like I’m wearing it for anyone.”

“Yes, you are going with me, and, yes, I appreciate it since the lack of teen lesbians in this town is outrageous. But don’t pretend that you’re not going to be staring at Stroud Bellows the whole time, hoping and praying…”

Ari tried to think of a snappy rejoinder. Stroud Bellows was new to the school, but given his natural gifts and abilities, he had shot straight to the top of the social ladder. He was on the swim team and played water polo and had the most amazing upper body, just the right amount of chest hair, and dimples. He smelled like the pool, which, as it turned out, worked like an aphrodisiac on Ari. Her eyes were continuously drawn to him even when she was supposed to be practicing her strokes. Inhale, stroke, Stroud; stroke, exhale, Stroud. He had seriously messed up her rhythm to the point that Coach Jenkins had asked her what the hell was going on and whether it was “a female thing.” Coach never spoke below a shout, so pretty much everyone in school had heard. Ari had sunk beneath the surface until the cold water cooled her cheeks and then crept the walk of shame all the way back to the changing rooms. The thing with Stroud was entering its seventh month, having lasted all through the summer, and had she said anything to him besides, “You dropped your towel,” in a voice too mouse-like to be audible? No, she had not.

“He just bettered his time in the butterfly,” Ari said.

“Yup, he’s one stellar dude, all right.” Lynn’s voice positively oozed sarcasm. Ari raised her eyebrows, but her friend had turned away.

“Anyhow, why don’t you give him something to look at besides you in that drab Speedo?” Lynn said, kneeling to flare the skirt of the dress out to check the hem length and peeping up at her with a serious expression in her eyes.

“I’m going with you,” Ari said firmly. It would fuel the lesbian-duo rumors but she didn’t care. She would do this one thing even if deep down inside she harboured the wish that Stroud would ask her to be his date.

Lynn sat back on her heels.

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’m going to give you the action you’re looking for. And, by the way, ditto. I just want to dance and make out with a cute girl who likes me. Is that too much to ask?”

“Maybe there’ll be some kids from Center and United.”

Their high school, Parkview, was small, so dances were open to other students from the surrounding areas.

“Have you heard of a sudden influx of gay kids?” Lynn got up and gripped her arm in mock excitement. “Did I miss an explosive article in the Bulletin?”

The Bulletin was the local newspaper Ari’s father edited.

“Sorry.” Reaching out to hug Lynn, she said, “If I was ever going to crush on a girl, it would be you.”

“That’s sweet, ducks. And also what all the straight girls say. But none of you ever put out.” She softened the words with a hug back. For a moment they stood together looking at their reflections in the mirror. Ari could still see the two little kids they’d been. She half-wished they’d never had to grow up. Everything felt complicated, and she yearned for simple.

“Does it suck so bad?” she asked, pushing the dark curls off Lynn’s face.

“I feel like I’m stuck in a box with a black-and-yellow caution label on the outside. ‘The Lesbian.’ Next September can’t come fast enough for me. I’ll finally be treated like an adult. An individual.”

Ari moved from side to side listening to the swish of material against her legs. She didn’t share Lynn’s excitement for college. Lynn had six younger brothers and sisters and lived in a small house with her mother, who also happened to be their high school principal; she couldn’t wait to break out. To Ari, the Hollow was familiar and comfortable. She knew who she was here: squarely in the middle, academically and athletically. Coach and her parents might as well have been different species, but one point they agreed on was that the only thing holding her back was herself. “Reach, goddammit—be a shark, not a tadpole!” was how Coach so eloquently put it. Her parents just wanted her to dream bigger. “The Hollow will always be here for you, Ari. It doesn’t change,” her mother said. “It’s not as if you can’t come back.”

But Ari didn’t want to come back, because she didn’t want to leave.

Next year, Stroud was probably going to be playing water polo at the tiny local community college. It was stupid to not be able to see further into her future than some boy who had never even looked at her apart from checking out her form during laps, but she couldn’t help it.

Was she stuck in a box? She didn’t believe so. It felt like a nest, safe and warm and lined with soft feathers, but the idea of Lynn thinking less of her was unbearable.

“I want to make all my own mistakes,” Lynn said. “Hundreds of them!”

She smiled, but then caught sight of Ari’s face in the mirror. Her beautifully thick eyebrows rose.

“Nothing,” Ari said, avoiding Lynn’s gaze. With a groan she continued, trying to inject some backbone into her voice. “It’s not that I’m scared or anything. I just want…”

How to word it? Familiarity made her sound like the most boring person on earth. What was that expression? Familiarity breeds contempt? Other synonyms? The expected. Routine. Rote. Rut. Oh god! It was just like when she’d tried to explain why she preferred swimming in a pool to open water. Because there, sitting at the bottom, looking up at the swimmers above and the four walls around her, she felt completely in her element, in control of everything from her breathing to her calm, collected thoughts. Finally she said, “Anything could happen out there.”

“Exactly.” Lynn did a little pirouette. “Anything. Everything! God, the thought of it makes me feel as if I have never been able to take a deep breath.” She smoothed her hands over her ribs. “As if I’ve been trapped inside myself. Don’t you feel like that?”

“No. But I like it here, remember?” It was hard not to be transported by Lynn’s enthusiasm. She felt the corners of her mouth turn up.

“Fair enough. So—two-point-four kids, two-car garage, Stroud in the master bedroom?” She paused and looked closely at Ari. “My god, you’re obsessed. You should see your face right now.”

Ari stopped smiling. “What’s your deal with him? He’s never done anything to you, has he?”

“Not directly. He’s one of those people who gets other people to be mean for him, like his good buddy Jack Rourke out there. And he pretends to be less smart than he is. Why would someone do that?”

“No. That’s not him.” Ari thought of his eyes. They sparkled like pool water. They had to be a window to a soul that was deep and pristine.

“Yes, yes it is. Seriously, is that all you want?”

“Not all I want….Swimming, college, I can do that stuff here.”

“But there’s so much more. Things you haven’t even imagined yet. Roads you haven’t taken. People who will completely change your world.”

Ari stared at her reflection. Her gooseberry eyes looked back at her, all watery and without spark, as usual. She thought about the animation in every line of Lynn’s face, the way she carried herself as if she were six foot three as opposed to five foot three, and straightened her shoulders out of their customary slump. Maybe if she looked the part, she could act the part.

---

Ari drifted in and out of consciousness, the blood singing loud in her ears, agony worming around her body. Half her world was made up of the dark unknown, the other half a series of bright snapshots awash in artificial light: Lynn’s face; the changing room; storefronts; people, fuzzy and indistinct. With an effort, she struggled to think. Her head hurt so badly, the dizziness was so intense, that she felt trapped in a chaos of thoughts and images, like a fever dream. Slowly her prefrontal lobe threaded the memories together. What had happened next?

She’d bought the dress, though the number on the cash register window had made her gasp. Lynn’s hand on her arm had gripped and then tightened until Ari released her death hold on her dad’s credit card and handed it to the cashier. It would take at least two more months of extra jobs to pay her father back.

“Take a walk on the wild side,” Lynn said.

Afterward, they’d returned to the vintage shop, where Lynn found an only slightly flea-bitten antique fur muff to go with the teal kimono dress.

“Look, it’s granny’s dachshund,” she said, making it leap at Ari’s giggling face, and then they’d bought ice cream cones—raspberry for her and chocolate-chunk hazelnut for Lynn—and ambled in the direction of home, reveling in the end-of-September smell of bonfires and the tiny maelstroms of falling leaves, talking about the importance of accessories.

Autumn was Lynn’s favorite season. She couldn’t pass a heap of leaves without jumping in it. It was right at the end of the tourist crush and residents were tidying up their yards, the summer people locking up for the winter. They’d spotted a mountainous pile just across the road on the back lawn of the big hotel and run toward it, hands linked.

The squeal of brakes was earsplitting. A camouflage-painted pickup truck swerved, fishtailing over the road as the driver spun the wheel and plowed into a metal garbage can, coming to a screeching stop in a flurry of broken glass and flying trash.

A great hulking shape wearing green khakis hurled itself from the truck’s cab. Lynn and Ari skipped backward to the sidewalk. Ari almost tripped on the curb.

“Oh shit,” she said. “Sourmash.” So called because he distilled his own whiskey.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sorkin Sigurson yelled. He pointed a filthy finger at the traffic lights. “That light was red, you stupid bitches.”

Ari felt Lynn tense up beside her. She threw her arm out to hold her friend back and watched as her pink scoop of ice cream toppled and fell.

“Fucking redneck alcoholic hillbilly meth-head freak,” Lynn muttered, foregoing her nouveau British slang. “How dare he call us stupid!”

“Just keep walking,” said Ari, but Sorkin was blocking their path. He looked back at his truck, idling at an angle half on the sidewalk, at the road now littered with refuse and glittering chunks of glass.

“My headlights!” he roared, running over to check the front end. “My freaking BMW adaptive frigging headlights!” His swarthy face had turned purple, his eyes bulged. “Twenty-five hundred apiece,” he moaned. “Rocky, you’re my witness, right? These bitches ran out in front of me.”

Ari’s heart dropped like a stone.

Until then, she hadn’t noticed the other man in the truck, even though he was only a few feet away. He was slumped low in the seat, one arm dangling from the open window, his greasy head lolling. Sourmash’s bellow made him jerk like a marionette and then shrink down even further.

“Rocky, get your sorry ass out here and help me wrangle these girls!”

Ari had seen Rocky around, a skinny, shaky man who followed Sourmash like a whipped dog. He shook his head and mumbled something incomprehensible. Ari could see his Adam’s apple going up and down like an elevator, and he picked a crusty sore on his lip. Drunk or high, she thought.

“I’ll fucking get you, you kusser!” Sourmash yelled, pounding on the hood of the truck. From the venom in his voice, Ari guessed that was some kind of Scandinavian insult. She was glad she didn’t understand it.

Lynn shook with anger. “I told Mom she should have let me order the pepper spray,” she said. “I’d use the whole can on him.”

His head whipped around and he fixed them both with a beady eye. And then he was suddenly within arm’s length. Gunk was spattered all over his shirt and pants. His fingernails were caked with something black and he smelled really bad, as if he’d been sleeping outside all week.

“I’ll report you to the cops. I’ll sue your parents. It was red. You were walking on red,” he yelled.

“It was about to change,” Ari blurted out. “You weren’t even near the intersection and you were speeding.” Shit, what’s wrong with me! She pressed her lips shut.

Sourmash made a sound like a wounded bull and some spit flew out of his mouth.

“Cell phone?” Lynn said quietly.

“Recharging at home. Yours?”

“Nelly hid it ’cause Mom won’t get her one.”

“Shit.”

“You! Girl!” With horror, Ari saw that Sourmash was pointing a stubby forefinger at her. “How much do you have in your purse?”

“Not five thousand dollars,” she said, staring at his hands. They were huge. She thought one of them could encapsulate her head, or wrap all the way around her throat and break her neck like a pencil.

“I’ll take what you’ve got,” he snarled. “You can owe me the rest.”

She was frozen in place, skewered by his finger like a bug mounted on a board. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lynn edge sideways a few inches, bristling with an energy that meant she was seconds away from breaking into a full-on panicked run.

Good plan, but Ari couldn’t will her legs to move.

Lynn bolted.

She stopped a dozen yards past the truck and looked back. Ari had no trouble reading her lips. “Ari! What the f—”

Ari shook her head; still her feet remained glued to the ground, as if she were in a nightmare. The air grew thick while Sourmash circled around her like a shark.

“Give me that!” he roared, grabbing at her shopping bag. “You owe me.” She tried to hold on to it but he ripped it loose, inspected the contents with a sneer and then tossed it in the back of the truck. Could she elude him? Grab the dress and run? It was just out of reach. Three hundred dollars down the drain. Rocky was apparently passed out with his trucker cap pulled down over half his face. Not that he’d be any kind of help.

Suddenly, she was possessed by a white-hot fury. How dare he do this? How dare he take from her?

Go for the eyes—and the balls—if he comes any nearer. She was wearing soft, broken-in ballet flats with no toe protection. Could she get her keys out of her purse before he was on her? Use them as a weapon? She fumbled at the clasp with stiff fingers.

“Ari, I’m calling the police,” Lynn yelled. “The po-lice!”

“What are you going to do about my lights?” Sourmash demanded, ignoring Lynn, who was pretending she had a cell phone. His finger stabbed at her again, and Ari jerked back and dodged to the left, finally shocked out of immobility. She got the truck between them, feeling instantly safer. She could evade him all day if she had to. Taking the opportunity, she hooked the shopping bag with one finger, hitching it over her shoulder.

A tarp draped on top of a hulking mass in the back lifted in a gust of wind and slipped to the side. Staring back at her was the bulbous eye of a deer, the head hewn from the body. Its skin had been removed in a neat segment from the neck down to the hooves, and the belly cavity was split wide open. Broken ribs gleamed like the bleached planks of an old boat, and there was a warm, rich smell that reminded her of raw hamburger. Her stomach churned. And then a hand clamped tight on her arm. She jumped, feeling her stomach ricochet into her throat.

“Ari,” Lynn yelled in her ear. “Run, goddammit!”