Chapter Three

They were on her. Feet pounded up from behind, hands grabbed, voices grunted. Terror surged through Maddy, a flock of birds exploding every which way. No! she thought, trying to push back against the bodies that pressed in on her. Please, no! But a hand clapped itself across her mouth, a hand that shut down sound. She couldn’t speak—

Breath tearing her lungs, gasping, Maddy came awake and sat bolt upright in bed. Whimpers skittered from her mouth, followed by a long grinding whine. Yeah, you like it, hissed a voice in her head. Don’t play hard to get with us. White masks leered, their identical features luminescent in the dark. Groping desperately, Maddy clicked on her bedside reading lamp. Light attacked her eyes; half-blinded, she sat blinking, then pulled open a drawer in the small table next to her bed. The pack of cigarettes lay hidden under a notebook. She extracted one and lit up; then, without hesitating, she brought the glowing ember down to her left inner thigh.

The pain was immediate – sharp-edged and gouging her flesh. Eyes smarting, Maddy held herself rigid, her entire being focused on the ember’s brilliance, that enemy-friend teaching her flesh. Teaching it to be strong, teaching it to overcome. Teaching it to destroy, to take what had come before and turn it into nothing…gone now. Gradually, as Maddy sat holding agony a hair’s breadth from her skin, the voices in her head, the grabbing hands, faded from her mind. Just as it faded from her flesh – flesh that insisted on reliving every sensation she’d felt during the rape, so her arms and legs ached as if freshly bruised, and between her legs….

But fire cleared all of that. Fire was a cleanser. Fire took away memory and pain, and what it left behind was nothing – a pure, blessed numbness that poured itself through Maddy like the water that followed fire and put it out. Emptied of pain, emptied of all sensation, she sat staring at the cigarette she now held midair before her face, watching the ember wisp out. On her left thigh, a heat blister was rising, an angry red weal surrounded by pink, healed-over scars. Seventeen – Maddy didn’t have to count to know this blister was the seventeenth on her left thigh, or that she had eight on her right. None of them hurt now the numbness had come, and that was all that mattered – that nothing hurt, that she feel nothing at all.

Maddy butted out the cigarette in an ashtray she kept hidden on her bookshelf. Then she headed to the bathroom for some Polysporin and a bandage to cover the memory of what she could not seem to forget.

. . .

Monday afternoon, English buzzed with the usual chatter. Head down, Maddy scurried across the front of the room and sank into her seat. One row ahead, Jeremy Dugger had turned around and was talking to Kara, who paid him little heed. From the far side of the room, a hyena laugh sounded, high-pitched with a hysterical edge. Maddy didn’t have to look up to identify the laugher – Harvir was famous for his manic giggle – but still she did, her gaze flicking across the rear row to the right of the doorway.

And found herself looking straight into the eyes of Ken Soong – hard, direct, and right on her. Not only Ken – beside him, David Janklow also had his gaze pinned on Maddy, his expression less intense, more…. Dropping her own eyes, Maddy focused on watching her right thumbnail drive itself deep into the back of her left hand. The shakes – she couldn’t get the shakes. Not here, not now. Get a grip, get a grip! she thought. Heartbeat – why did they call it that? It was more like being body-slammed from the inside out. Were they still looking – Ken and that other guy, David Janklow? Why was David looking at her? Did he know about what happened last March? Had Ken told him?

She had to know – Maddy had to know if Ken and David were still watching, but she could feel the heat pulsing in her face. She was beet red, she knew it, and if she glanced up now, the nuclear fusion lighting her up would be a dead giveaway. As soon as Ken saw, he’d know. He’d know for sure that she knew…what? A frown creased Maddy’s forehead, and her thoughts slowed. Last March, all five of her attackers had been wearing masks. Which meant they’d probably assumed she’d never guess their identities. And even if they hadn’t assumed this, there was no way they could know for sure that she’d figured out three of them from their voices – Ken from the get-go, and Pete and Robbie from overhearing them later in the halls.

Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It changed everything. Bathed in relief, Maddy sat mulling over this revelation: Ken didn’t know that she knew he’d been involved. And if Ken didn’t know, none of them did. Which meant, she thought giddily, she was safe. Because if she couldn’t identify them, they were safe, and as long as they were safe, they’d leave her alone. All Maddy had to do was act as if Ken was no one in particular – just another guy – and she’d be okay. None of the five would bother her again, and she wouldn’t bother them.

A finger floated gently through Maddy’s thoughts, and touched the back of her left hand. “Why do you do that?” asked Kara, tracing one of several fresh welts.

Convulsively, Maddy jerked her hand away. “Do what?” she mumbled, her eyes on her lap. “I’m not doing anything.”

Kara’s hand retreated. Her tone, when she replied, was carefully noncommital. “Sure,” she said. “Whatever.” She went back to her phone.

The classroom chatter was cut by Ms. Mousumi’s voice. “Class,” she said. “We’re about to begin. Julie, please come up and read your chapter.”

A low cheer rose from the area around Julie’s desk. As she stood and made her way to the whiteboard, Maddy didn’t bother looking up. She knew, without checking, the exact contours of the smirk that would be parading across the other girl’s face. That smirk was always there – Julie seemed to consider it a basic fashion accessory. Or, perhaps, a personality accessory. Certainly, Maddy would have been the first to agree that the smirk suited Julie. Smirks didn’t belong on every face, but on Julie’s, a smirk looked home-grown.

“Okay,” said Julie, consulting the tablet in her hand. “The Pain Eater, chapter three. Here we go. Poor Farang. Not only did she have no friends, but she was ugly. She was so ugly that even if she hadn’t been the pain eater, still no one would’ve talked to her. So her fate was doubly sad – not only did no one like her, but she couldn’t even like herself, because she hated her own face.”

Beside Maddy, Kara gave a quiet hiss. “Figures,” she muttered.

“But here’s the weird thing,” continued Julie, her voice taking on a sing-song quality. “When Farang ate the allura leaf poison and felt all that pain, she went away from it. She went away from the pain and the way no one loved her, to a place she made up inside her head. This place was a place of beauty and love, where everyone was kind to her and was her friend. She was beautiful there – so beautiful, suitors came from far and wide to ask for her hand. Farang loved this place, and she called it ‘The Beautiful Land.’

“But the thing about The Beautiful Land is that it only came alive when she ate the allura poison and was in horrible pain. She had to feel pain like lightning shooting through her first. She had to be sweating buckets and screaming before she could see The Beautiful Land inside her head. No matter how hard she tried to imagine it at other times, The Beautiful Land just wouldn’t come to her then. The Beautiful Land and the pain went together, and that was all there was to it. ‘No pain, no gain,’ as the saying goes.

“And so Farang started to love pain. Because that was the only time she was happy. It was the only time she was beautiful. Sure, it wasn’t real, but what did that matter? And sure, too, she had to feel some of the terrible pain first, before she could go to The Beautiful Land in her head. But then she was gone into The Beautiful Land, and when she was there, she couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Mind over matter, I guess, but if your life is as down-and-out as Farang’s, you might as well.

“So now we know – Farang loved her pain. It worked for her, it got her what she wanted. So, really, we shouldn’t feel too sorry for Farang. She was happy, sort of, in a weird way. And she was helping the tribe out – she was feeling their pain for them and taking care of their problems. So she had her place in life, and it was a good thing for everyone.

“So that’s the end of my chapter on Farang, the pain eater. Farang, the ugly pain eater, who got high on her own pain. It was like a drug to her, a beautiful poison. That poison was her best friend, really. And we all know besties are hard to come by. So hang on to them when you find them, and count your blessings the way Farang counted hers. She knew she was good for something. She was happy with her fate.”

Silence followed the end of Julie’s reading – dense, absolute. All across the room, no one spoke; no one seemed even to be breathing. Head down, Maddy stared at her hands. Wrong – something was wrong with what she’d just heard, and it was more than the smirk that had been riding Julie’s mouth. But what was it? What were the words to put to the confusion she felt shifting around inside?

“Okay, that’s everything,” said Julie, turning to Ms. Mousumi with a questioning look. “Can I sit down?”

Before the teacher could reply, Kara’s hand shot up. “Excuse me,” she said.

“Yes, Kara?” said the teacher.

“Well,” said Kara, her tone clipped. “That’s not the way the story was set up. It’s just not the way it should go.”

Julie’s ever-present smirk faltered. “Why not?” she asked.

Kara took a sharp breath. “The first chapter didn’t say what Farang looked like, so I guess it’s okay she doesn’t look as beautiful as you,” she snapped. “But I didn’t say the pain was good. Plus, I said Farang didn’t believe in her fate – that was the point of my last sentence, remember?”

A flush colored Julie’s face. “So things changed,” she shrugged. “The plot is getting better. Anyway, you only get to decide what goes on in the first chapter, not the whole thing.”

“Yeah, but you have to follow what’s gone before!” burst out Kara. “You can’t just go ahead and pretend it never happened!”

“I didn’t—” Julie started to reply, but Ms. Mousumi cut her off.

“Okay, ladies,” said the teacher. “Things are getting personal, but I do think an interesting point has been raised. What does the rest of the class think? Has Julie moved too far away from the plot and characterization as it was established in chapters one and two? Julie, you can sit down now, thanks.”

Julie returned to her seat in the midst of a thinking silence. In the back row, two desks over from Maddy, a hand went up.

“Yes, Theresa?” asked Ms. Mousumi.

“I think it’s okay about pain causing The Beautiful Land and all that,” said a heavyset girl with glasses. “That’s interesting, and it can happen in real life. I read about it in A House in the Sky – that book by Amanda Lindhout, where she gets tortured in Somalia. She made up things in her head to survive her pain, sort of like Julie made Farang do. But I think Kara’s right too – if she said Farang doesn’t believe in suffering for the tribe anymore, that’s how the rest of us have to write about her.”

“Weeeeell,” drawled Julie, “I didn’t say she did believe in suffering for the tribe. I just—”

“You said she was happy with her fate,” interrupted Theresa. “Farang can’t be happy with her fate if she doesn’t believe in it.”

Julie’s smirk went into another falter, and she slouched down in her seat.

“Any response to that, Julie?” asked Ms. Mousumi.

“Not really, I guess,” said Julie. “Except that I thought that when it was my turn, I was supposed to take the story where I thought it should go. I didn’t know I had to worry about keeping Kara happy.”

Kara hissed something indecipherable under her breath.

“Does anyone else have a comment?” asked Ms. Mousumi. Another hand went up. “Yes, Harvir?”

“I thought Julie’s chapter was okay,” said Harvir, a diplomatic expression on his face. “I’m not taking it personally that she didn’t mention the high priestess or the soul stones. She just added a new twist, like I did.”

“It’s twisted, all right,” muttered Kara.

And it was, thought Maddy. Kara was completely and totally correct – Julie’s version of the story was twisted. Hunched in her seat, Maddy could feel the wrongness of Julie’s chapter almost writhing inside her. But why was it wrong? And what were the exact words to describe the wrongness of it?

“Anyone else?” asked Ms. Mousumi, her gaze roaming the class. But she didn’t see. She didn’t see the thoughts raging inside Maddy, the words so close to forming on the tip of her tongue.

“All right then,” said the teacher. “We’ll leave it there for today. Paul – you’re next, with chapter four on Wednesday.”

And the class moved on.