Page 139 of The Initial Insult

“So I’m ready for the next time I fall,” I add.

“Well . . .” Mom stares at the ceiling now, her voice floating up to my rotating fan, her eyes following the shadows there. “I guess so, yeah. But I’m a mommy, and mommies don’t like to think their little girls are ever going to fall, and we do everything we can to stop it.”

“So who stops Tress from falling now?” I ask. “What about her cracks? Is she seeing a doctor to make her better, too?”

“I kind of doubt it, honey,” Mom says, rolling over to face me. “But she’s not my little girl—you are. You’re the one I’ve got to think about, worry about, and protect.”

Suddenly, I understand.

“You think being around Tress is going to make me crack more.”

She nods. “I think it might.”

I fall back on the one argument I’ve got, the one that should be the strongest, knock down anything else. “But she’s my friend.”

Mom’s mouth goes tight, words she’s not saying pulling her lips down.

“What?” I ask.

“Jill said that Tress hurt Gretchen the other night,” Mom says, eyes boring into mine. “Is that true?”

I feel heat in my stomach, the need to defend Tress hot and strong. “Gretchen was being nasty.”

“But did Tress hurt her?” Mom asks again. I think about the marks on Gretchen’s wrist, red and bright, matching her lips. I shrug.

“Felicity, I know that you and Tress were close—”

“We were best friends,” I say, then correct myself. “We are best friends.”

“—but you have to think about the fact that Tress’s life is different now. And that means Tress probably will be, too.”

I want to tell Mom she’s wrong, but I remember how Tress reacted to my hug, like she was expecting to be hit instead. I remember how she watched Gretchen, warily, always on guard.

“Okay,” I say, tears pooling in my eyes as I stare upward at the ceiling, begging them not to fall, not to overflow and run down into my ears, where the voice lives, feeding it.

Mom gives me a hug and a kiss good night, turns on the night-light I had to start using again after the—well . . . after. She leaves the door open a few inches, in case I need to sneak into bed with them in the middle of the night—something else I’ve started doing again.

I let the tears go eventually, sliding down the sides of my cheeks. I tilt my head so they won’t go into my ears, creating hot, salty pools on my new pillowcase.

I think of Tress, how she’s a wild animal now.

I think of the creased-new sheets underneath me and the matching bottles of shampoo and conditioner lined up, ready for me to use them to smell good, be pretty, take care.

I think Tress isn’t the only one changing.

Chapter 38

Tress

Sixth Grade

The cat is waiting for me when I wake up in the morning. It paces inside the cage, watching me as I wait for the bus. I fed it last night, hauling the head of a steer over my shoulders into the cage, the cat locked inside the enclosed section. The corrugated metal had rippled and rolled as the cat lunged against it, smelling meat, smelling blood. The head was freshly cut, the jagged end of the spinal column poking my shoulder where Cecil had decapitated it, tossing aside different sections for the animals. The blood had run down my arms and legs in rivers, the cat, wild to get at it, howling at the scent. After I was out and Cecil loosed him, the cat sniffed the head, then looked at me through the cage—the other bloody thing.

He’d bitten into the carcass, but kept his eyes on me while he did.

It’s the same now, the cat’s eyes following my movements as I climb onto the bus, the other kids pressing against the windows, checking out the new addition. Their heads swivel as the bus pulls away, the blue smoke of diesel fumes finally obscuring their vision. I imagine the cat doing the same in his cage, gaze following me until I am out of sight. Whether he views me as the person who brings his food, or actual food, I don’t know.

At school I keep my head down, funnel through the other kids to get to my locker, where someone has stuck maxi pads on it. There are three, the wings opened like the frogs we’d dissected in science, skin pinned back to show their vulnerable insides. I blush furiously and tear them off. I try to throw them on the ground but one sticks to my hand, and I have to shake it, hard, the pad flapping like a terrified bird before it falls off. Someone giggles. A phone comes out.