Black Chuck Read online

  Then Sunny said, “You are an ice-cold bitch, Evie Hawley. Did anyone ever tell you that?” She turned and started walking away.

  “At least I’m not crazy.”

  Sunny stopped. “What did you say?”

  Evie’s head swirled with pictures, words formed and fell apart—she wasn’t even sure what was happening anymore, if any of this was real. “I saw you,” she said, sticking a tack in the picture of Sunny at the medical center. “Leaving that clinic.”

  “What clinic?”

  Evie’s mind narrowed in on the sign beside the door. She read it aloud: “The Cold Water Center for Mental Health.”

  Sunny scoffed. “Oh, I see—you think I’m crazy because you saw me coming out of a mental health clinic. Stellar detection, Sherlock.”

  Evie said nothing. It had made perfect sense before, two and two together, but now that Sunny was challenging her, she wasn’t so sure.

  Sunny stepped closer. Evie shrunk into herself and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for her to strike…

  And Sunny hissed very quietly, “I have an eating disorder, you dumbass. I go there for counseling. You know—to stay alive?”

  Evie wrapped her head around those words. Sunny was so skinny, she had nothing but bones in her clothes. Ribs and hips. She was like a wire hanger, just a collarbone with nothing underneath it. Evie had always been jealous of her—she made thin look so effortless. “Oh my god,” she said, blinking. “I thought it was ’cause you’re Asian.”

  “What?” Sunny blurted.

  “You being skinny,” Evie said. “I thought it was ’cause you’re Korean.”

  “Jesus Christ, Evie,” Sunny said, rolling her eyes. “Am I, like, the only Asian person you know? Not all of us are skinny, okay? And anyway, it’s not even about my weight. It’s about my fucking parents never being happy. It’s about me not being a golden child like my stupid brother. So I go to a mental health clinic instead of bingeing on cheeseburgers and puking my fucking guts out till I’m dead.”

  The girls looked at each other. Evie wasn’t sure they’d ever talked to each other like this. Honestly. How could they be the only girls in the group and not even really be friends, not even know each other? Evie almost said, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. But she didn’t speak.

  After a moment Sunny said, “Are you really, for real pregnant?”

  Evie couldn’t answer. All she saw was Shaun, that night, his grin—

  “God, he is such a liar!” Sunny said, looking at the sky and almost laughing.

  The picture of Shaun skewered. “Who?” Evie said, confused. Her eyes tried to catch Sunny’s shape, slippery in the dark. And then she understood. “Sunny—it’s not Réal’s baby.”

  Sunny’s shape fell still again. She said nothing for a second, and then the pieces clicked together. “Oh my god. It’s Shaun’s?”

  “Of course it’s Shaun’s!” Evie said. Guilt tapped at her chest. Shaun’s face by the fire, all that blood in his hair. Nausea crept up her throat.

  “Oh…shit,” said Sunny.

  “Ré was just trying to help is all,” Evie slurred, feeling so, so tired now. She wanted to just sit down for a minute, maybe take a little nap. She flapped a hand at Sunny. “If you want him so bad, just take him.”

  Sunny laughed under her breath, and then she sighed. “Ev, I don’t want Ré,” she said quietly. “And I’m not using Alex. I just love them, okay? Both of them. They’re my best friends. I can’t help it.”

  Evie nodded. She understood. She really did. But she was just so tired. “Okay,” she said. “That’s okay, Sunny.” She couldn’t really tell if she was saying things out loud anymore, or if they were making any sense. “My drink…” she managed, swirling her finger to draw the mouth of a cup.

  Then she turned and stumbled farther down the hill.

  “Ev?” Sunny called after her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Evie waved a rubbery arm at her. “Okay,” she repeated. “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t okay. Sunny’s words were like razor blades in her chest. Of course she loved Ré. Of course she loved Alex. She’d probably loved Shaun too. And they all loved her, obviously. The four of them had known each other for a long time.

  Evie was the outsider. The fake.

  I’m nobody, she thought. I’m nothing. Just some dumb girl King Shaun had picked to keep from being alone. A poison apple.

  Well, look where that got him.

  She reached the edge of the tree line, lawn dissolving into mulch beneath her feet, and the dark limbs of the woods gathered her in.

  30

  E

  Evie stepped between the trees, sliding her hand along their rough trunks, feeling her way by their skins. She felt like she was floating outside of her body, looking down from above. An outsider, even to herself. Whatever was in that drink was strong, and the farther she got from the party, the more detached she felt.

  She was dreaming.

  She dreamed.

  She dreams…

  “I wondered where you got to,” he says.

  She smiles, turning. It’s Ré’s voice. Sweet.

  No. Darker than that, lower.

  Shaun’s.

  A hand closes on her wrist. Pulls her into a cloud of alcohol, boy sweat, hot, damp breath. “How you feeling now?” he says. Laughter, deep and muddy and mean. Hair in her mouth as he tries to kiss her. She turns away, spitting.

  “Come on, don’t be like that.” He pulls at her again. “We’re gonna have fun, I promise.”

  She stumbles, falls against his chest, pictures, pictures, like a deck of cards, flipppppp, together then cut, sharp. Shaun, that night. Crashing over her. “No!” she says, shoving back.

  He grabs her other wrist, twisting hard. “Come on,” he says. “Just be good. I’ll go easy.”

  “Stop it!” she cries, drifting out of herself.

  Shaun lunges, pushes her to the dirty ground. She kicks away, but he catches her, pulling her ankle hard toward him. “Shaun, stop!”

  He kneels between her legs, one hand pushing her head into the dirt, the other hand sliding under her shorts. “Shaun…please…” Her plea muffled against his palm.

  That night. He’d said, “It’s my baby, too, Ev.” And he wasn’t stopping. He’d come up those stairs, sweating and drunk and mad as hell, skateboard in one hand, a bottle in the other. He’d thrown the board down by that hole in the wall at the Grains and smacked her so hard her skull had bounced off the doorframe. “It’s mine too!” he’d shouted. “You can’t do this.”

  He’d got her out of bed for this. Worked up his rage downstairs, skating and drinking, and then he’d heaved it all up here like a hurricane, ready to blow.

  He’d pulled her back from the hole, dragged her kicking across the dirty floor, her shoes marking trails in the dust—they were still there, if you knew where to look. She’d screamed, and the scream had raced around the empty building unheard. It was still there too, if you knew.

  “Please, Shaun, stop!” She cried, begged and twisted.

  He laughed, pushing her down, booze seeping from his sweating pores, his stinking breath. Hands fumbled with the buttons of her cutoffs. Her stomach lurched. She twisted under him, shoving, and she puked sideways into the wood chips, into her hair, dark trees spinning, sour vomit up her nose.

  She tried to crawl. He scratched her legs and back, tried to hold her still as she kicked.

  The pictures in the deck had stopped making sense.

  This piece doesn’t fit. There are no wood chips at the Grains.

  She turned, elbow raised, and brought it down hard against the boy’s temple. He cried out, falling sideways. She turned again and kicked him in the balls as hard as she could. Booze-rotten air left his lungs, and he curled around his groin like a shrimp, whimpering.

  She scrambled up, wobbling on her feet, backing into a tree. A picture of Shaun lying there, red in his hair. A skateboard in her hands with bloody trucks.

&n
bsp; She staggered back. She couldn’t breathe. Was this real?

  Her knees ached, long scratches down her legs; cheek burning hot where he’d slapped her, temple pulsing bright where it had hit the wall. “Stop it, Shaun,” she’d said through tears, “just stop it, please.” But he’d never listened. Not when he was mad, not when he was drunk.

  He’d pushed himself to his knees, one hand on his bleeding head. “Evie,” he’d croaked, reaching for her again, and she had swung, grip tape tearing the pads of her thumbs.

  “Don’t touch me!” she’d shouted. “Don’t touch me ever again!”

  She’d known what those words would mean. No more King. No more front seat. No more fireworks on the roof. She would no longer be part of the tribe. But she hadn’t cared anymore. Tired of pretending it was always okay. Tired of Shaun always getting his way. Crashing over her, knocking her down.

  She turned from the heap at her feet and ran until her feet splashed into water, ankle-deep.

  Free from the woods, the moon hung low and not quite full overhead, pouring cool light over a pond as black as an endless void. Moon-white ripples circled out from where she had walked into the water. When it got too deep to walk, she swam, all her cuts and scrapes stinging like bright lightning in her skin.

  She rolled onto her back, watching stars spin pale blue overhead. The ice-cold water calmed her racing heart till it stood, pawing and snuffling in her chest like a vexed horse. Then she tipped her head back, covering her ears, silencing the world, and let everything slide into black.

  Evie dreams she is the fetus inside herself. A Möbius loop. A dreaming thing in a black lake inside a dreaming thing. She gets to start over, at the beginning, before everything was irreparably fucked.

  She sees Ré’s goodness hidden under a silver shield, and now it’s him driving past her house last summer, acting shy. And then someone good like him chooses her mom years before, and Evie is never born. None of this ever happened. There is no dreaming thing.

  Sunny’s skinny arm slid under her rib cage and yanked Evie up into moonlight.

  Water spluttered out of her lungs as she was dragged to shore.

  Sunny threw her down, and she curled onto her side, coughing and shaking in the sand at the edge of the pond like some giant fish Sunny’d caught with her bare hands.

  “What the hell are you trying to do, Evie? Fucking kill yourself?” Sunny snarled.

  Evie just coughed, breathing wet sand and spit, her cheek pressed into the dirt.

  “Are you seriously that wasted, Ev? I mean, come on! Aren’t you pregnant?” Sunny had her head inside her black sweater, wrestling it back on over wet skin.

  Evie rasped, “Someone…”

  Sunny got her head out of the neck hole and stared at her, impatient. “Someone what?”

  “Dosed me,” Evie whispered. “Someone dosed my drink.”

  Sunny said nothing for second. “Fucking ketamine,” she finally spat. She shoved her feet back into her black leather boots. “What a bunch of dead little ravers. This party is so stupid.”

  She stood and grabbed Evie under the armpits, hauling her up to her feet. “Come on,” she said, “let’s get Ré and ghost. Alex can apologize to us all tomorrow when he realizes what a loser he’s being.”

  “Sunny,” Evie said, wanting to tell her everything. To tell her about Shaun and the bruises, the skateboard, the Grains. About the guy in the woods. Was he even real? “There was a guy…” Her voice trailed off, trying to remember.

  “Okay,” Sunny said, “a guy.” She had her arm around Evie’s waist, and they stagger-walked together, bumping three-legged into the woods again.

  “He attacked me, I think,” Evie said. “The guy who dosed me.”

  “Jesus,” Sunny breathed. “Are you okay?”

  Pictures flashed through her head. “I think I killed him…”

  “Holy fuck,” Sunny shot back. They stopped, and Sunny turned to face her, propping her up by the shoulders. “All right, tell me exactly what happened.”

  “He was mad about the baby,” Evie mumbled.

  “What?” Sunny shook her lightly. “What are you saying? Who is this guy?”

  “I think…” Evie felt breathless, exhausted, confused. “I think it was Shaun. He was here. He was really mad.”

  Sunny just looked at Evie for a minute, then gathered her up under her swan arm, marching them both forward again. “I think you need some sleep, Ev,” she muttered. “You’re so high right now.”

  Evie could see splinters of amber light cutting through the black trees. The distance from the barn had felt endless before, going the other way. She saw now that it really wasn’t so far from the barn to the pond. Maybe there hadn’t been anyone in the woods after all? No one clawing her legs, knocking her down.

  Tears suddenly spilled down her face. “I’m so sorry, Sunny,” she said. “I didn’t know about you and Ré. He was only trying to help me with the baby. And then I kissed him, and now everything is a mess.”

  She could feel the other girl stiffen against her, but Sunny only sighed. “It’s okay, Ev. It was a mess before you got here.”

  “We aren’t even anything,” Evie went on.

  “Yeah, okay,” Sunny said.

  “I don’t even know if it’s real. It’s just how I feel.” Evie sniffled, wiping her nose with her sopping-wet sleeve. A picture of Ré asleep outside her door, not asking for anything at all. “An anchor in the water.”

  “Okay, Ev, whatever.” You could practically hear Sunny rolling her eyes.

  They stepped out of the woods, at the bottom of the lawn. Above them, the bonfire still blazed, and music still thumped into the night, but there was no crowd around the fire pit. The whole place was empty.

  “Where did everybody go?” Evie asked, blinking up at the hill.

  Sunny’s voice was wary. “I don’t know,” she said.

  The girls picked up their pace, Sunny still guiding Evie, stumbling, her wet shirt balled up in Sunny’s fist. They crested the hill and saw the fire pit deserted, red cups everywhere, spilled booze, cigarette butts, half destroyed bowls of chips. It was eerie. Like the party had just vaporized. Cars still peeked out from the other side of the barn, so no one had actually left. They were just gone.

  Evie started shivering in Sunny’s arms. “What’s going on?” she asked, though it was obvious Sunny had no more clue than she did.

  “How big is this property, Sunny?”

  “Huge,” Sunny said, her big black eyes sliding around, taking in the details, piecing things together.

  And then the song on the boom box ended, and in the lull, the girls heard a sound that drove a chill up both their spines. In the not-too-far distance, voices were chanting. Some low, others high and shrill, saying one word, over and over. The girls looked at each other wide-eyed to confirm they’d heard it right:

  Psycho, psycho, psycho…

  And then the next song started, and the voices disappeared, washed up into a swirl of synthesized beats and bright loops and a voice cawing about Puerto Rican girls, all legs in tight skirts, all rising into the night sky like sparks from a dying fire.

  31

  R

  Ré stood in a ring of faceless faces. White eyes peered through the dark. Black shapes of bodies all sharp-edged with excitement. Mouths twisted and jeering, like he was some kind of animal. Psy-cho, psy-cho, psy-cho.

  But he didn’t care about them. He worried about the ones circling just beyond the chanting crowd. The guys Ré didn’t know. Alex’s people. He could see them slipping like shadows, like wolves, just past the ring of rabid kids, weaving through the darkness, keeping it close.

  Psycho Ré. It was a setup.

  Inside the ring, Alex paced, seething, reckless. He was not a fighter. That worried Ré too. Guys who fought knew where and how hard to hit. Intended to win with the least amount of effort. And they knew when to quit. When they were beat.

  Guys who didn’t fight were just dangerous. Scared. Thoug
ht the point of fighting was to win at all costs, however violent.

  And Alex was wiry, thin and lanky. He wasn’t built, like Ré, out of muscle and steel, a machinist’s son, fighting from day one. If this were real—if Ré was mad or had any right to be—he’d break Alex in seconds. The problem was, he wasn’t, and he didn’t. He stood in the circle, wary, ready, hands at his sides, lightly rubbing his fingertips against his thumbs, eyes jumping from dark wolves to bright Alex and back again.

  Alex was talking to him as he paced, but it was meant for the crowd, the show. Ré wasn’t really listening. At each pause, the kids all bayed for blood like cue cards had flashed the words Applause and Make Some Noise. But they didn’t really hate Réal. They were just afraid of him and, like all fearful things, wanted to see him cut down, made weak. They’d get their wish. He wasn’t planning on fighting back.

  There was some movement to his left. Voices rose, and then the crowd parted and Evie and Sunny shoved through. Ré blinked like they were a mirage. Why are they both soaking wet? Mascara ran in sinister streaks down Sunny’s pale face, transforming her into a sexy ghoul. Doesn’t take much, he thought, with a twinge of that old desire.

  Beside her, beautiful Evie shivered, eyes as big as saucers, as big as Jupiter, or maybe Venus, ’cause they were blue. Goddess of love, bellyful of baby. God, I’m greedy, he thought. WTF is wrong with me? About to get my ass kicked for these girls I can’t resist…

  Evie didn’t look like she was really there, but then, she almost never did. And then he remembered something. A word. The one he’d wanted the very first time he’d seen her, sitting in Shaun’s car, dark hair veiled around her, shy Mona Lisa smile. Ethereal. She’d looked ethereal, then and ever since. Too delicate for this world—not to mention this particular moment. The word popped into his head now, and then it was gone.

  “What the actual fuck are you doing, Alex?” Sunny shouted, a protective hand on Evie’s shoulder.

  Alex only laughed, turning on her slowly. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “You’re a good actress, Sunny. You should go to Hollywood.” His hackles rose when he looked at her. He ground his boot heel into the gravel, skinny arms held tight. “How stupid do you think I am, Sun?”