She was thinking more clearly now. That wasn’t good. She wanted the numbness back. By the time they made it back to the single ruined room where Bile and the other Burnouts ate, drank, slept, and huffed, Lucy was dangerously close to stone-cold sober.
She sat on a backpack full of empty water bottles, with her back to the sticky wall. The room stank of armpits and sour breath and clogged toilets. She looked around and saw vacant eyes peering at nothing, faces sagging toward the floor. Bottles of sewage stacked by the wall. Horse sat crumpled up in the corner, plucking her eyelashes out one by one.
Lucy shifted her weight. She felt cold. The aches of her battered body made themselves known to her again. She groaned softly. Her brain volunteered memories she yearned to forget. She shook her head.
Bile sauntered into the room with a newfound confidence. He held a stinker in each hand. The soup of human waste sloshed around inside the bottles, and the inflated latex gloves wobbled from side to side like they were waving at her.
“Where’s the gas?” she said. Her voice was desperate.
“Running low,” he said. “We have to save it.”
He plopped down beside her with an assured grin that was almost suave. He extended one of the stinkers out to her. Lucy clamped her mouth and turned away. The urge to vomit was barely containable. She closed her eyes. She saw her child twitch in her hands. She put her head between her knees.
“Need a minute,” she said and blew out a long breath.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said, holding up the other bottle.
Lucy shook her head. She could feel Bile’s elbow rub up and down her thigh as he twisted the base of the glove. She could hear the light snap of rubber as he pulled the glove off the bottle, the squeak as he tied it off like a birthday balloon. Lucy dared to look up at him. She pinched her nose shut. Bile grabbed the middle finger of the engorged glove and bit the tip off. He sucked in the methane, squeezing the life out of the glove to make sure he didn’t waste any.
She thought he’d never exhale. She watched his eyeballs roll back until she could see only the bloodshot whites of his eyes behind fluttering eyelids. Finally his jaw drifted down and his lips pulled apart. Foul air spilled from his mouth. He moaned from deep in his chest and it sounded like a colony of bats escaping a cave.
When his corneas sank back into view, he stared through her, at something far away. Thick spit dripped off his lip like glue.
“You’re here,” he slurred.
She had to cover her nose from the rank smell of his toilet breath.
“Where else would I be?” Lucy said.
“I missed you so much,” Bile said.
“Are you all right?”
Of course he wasn’t all right. She remembered her own experience with stinkers, and she knew whoever Bile thought he was talking to, it wasn’t her.
He grabbed her hand.
“Momma,” he said.
The word formed icicles in her stomach. She tried to yank her hand away, but his grip was iron.
“Bile, let me go.”
She felt her stomach acid climb her throat. She yanked and yanked but his fingers dug into her wrist like tent stakes.
“I love you, Mommy,” he said.
She punched him in the ear. It hurt her knuckles, but he let go. His eyes were wide like a little boy’s. Tears spilled.
“Why’d you hit me? Why are you mad at me?”
Lucy ran out of the room. She dashed down ruined hallways, knocking into rubble, fleeing the sound of his voice.
“Please don’t go, Momma, I’m sorry!” he shrieked after her. “I didn’t mean to do it, Momma. I didn’t!”
17
THE HALLWAY WAS AS EMPTY AS HER UTERUS. Lucy wept, curled in a ball, inside a hall so dark she couldn’t see a foot in front of her face. Only the ceiling lights at each end of the forty feet of hallway were operational. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks. She couldn’t understand how she had gotten to this point. What had happened to her life? She used to have friends, a gang, a place to sleep, the food she needed. Now life was an unending horror show, and she didn’t know how much more she could take.
Mommy.
Bile’s broken voice echoed through her skull.
The thought of her baby-that-would-never-be drove more tears from her eyes. She couldn’t help but blame herself. Maybe all the bad things that had happened were her fault. Maybe they’d grown out of her cowardice. She’d hid behind David in the Loners. Behind Violent in the Sluts. And now she was clinging to Bile the same way. Maybe if she’d stood on her own two feet for once, this wouldn’t be where she was right now. Maybe the universe was punishing her, taking everything possible from her until she toughened up. No. That didn’t make any sense. Lucy wasn’t thinking straight.
She wished Violent were there to tell her what to do. She wished Violent were alive. She wished it wasn’t her fault that Violent was dead.
Lucy kicked a nearby closet door. She heard it clap against the closet wall, then drift back on vibrating hinges. She couldn’t get ahold of herself. Her anguish wouldn’t release its grip on her. She wanted it all to stop. She wished there was a way she could escape the pain and leave it all behind.
Her bladder cried out to her. She had to pee. Lucy stood up and walked through the dark, toward a bathroom ahead, arms outstretched and waving through the air like insect antennae. Lucy heard the creak of the bathroom door. Blaring light streamed out of the bathroom in front of her as the door swung open. Figures filed out, backlit by the bathroom, their translucent white hair glowing atop their heads.
Saints.
Lucy froze. And so did they. She was lit up like a fugitive in a spotlight. They pushed her up against the wall. There had to be fifteen of them. Different pairs of hands pressed her into the wall. They were all in her face, staring at her like she was a silverfish in their soup. One of them held open the bathroom door to keep light on the situation. Their faces crowded around her, eyes hid under long shadows.
They berated her, said vicious things. They mocked her and ripped her clothes. A tiny, bird-boned hand reached out and clamped Lucy’s neck. It belonged to Lark. She leaned in close, into the light from the bathroom. Dark circles stained the skin under Lark’s eyes. Her hair was a mess, roughly collected in a rubber band atop her head. The fingernails on the hand that wasn’t choking Lucy had been gnawed down to gummy crescents of red enflamed skin. Her middle fingertip was bleeding, and there was a string of thinned blood framing her upper lip. Her eyes seemed to swirl.