Like a slow-motion movie, I watched Mandy and Tamara wrestle Philomena to the ground. Tamara started kicking and punching with all her might and Mandy reached down for something on the ground …
No!
When Mandy stood up, she was smiling, and I saw the knife gleaming mercilessly in her hand.
She was going to kill Philomena after all.
Still holding the ripped shower curtain in my hand, I ran straight for her, knocking her off balance. Once again, the knife hit the floor.
Somewhere in the background were grunts and groans – Tamara and Philomena scuffling for the knife …
My focus was on Mandy. Her backside was rammed against the bathroom door, but she simply pushed off, gaining more momentum, and propelled herself straight for me. Before she could collide into me, I sidestepped left then swooped around, grabbing her from behind. I wrapped the plastic curtain over her face and squeezed with all might.
I thought about my mother and the jingle of her laughter in the kitchen. My father and the smell of dusky old smoke at dawn. And then I thought about the stupid drunk driver who’d not only killed them, but who’d killed me that day too – a huge chunk of me gone with them, certainly the most important parts of me …
And my uncle, so mean and menacing; I hated living with that freaking prick.
Mandy fought for her life, slamming her heels into my shins, even whipping her head around and clipping me so hard on the chin I thought I saw stars for a minute, but Mandy’s fear was no match for my rage. I refused to let up or let go …
I was still squeezing when her body went limp in my hands.
Two shaky hands grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Stop. You have to stop now, please.” It was Philomena. When I turned to look at her, she was so pasty white that I almost didn’t recognize her.
“For a moment, I forgot … I forgot …” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The thought had become dislodged.
I let go of Mandy, watching her body slump to the floor, the see-through plastic curtain still covering her entire face.
“What did I do?”
“It’s okay.” Philomena forced me to look away, to turn around and face her instead. She wrapped her arms around me, drawing me in for a hug, repeating, “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay; I promise …”
And then she said, “You saved my life, Andrea. They were going to kill me. If you hadn’t told me beforehand, it’d be me dead on the floor, not them.”
Them?
Over Philomena’s shoulder, my eyes locked on another limp body on the ground. Tamara lay curled up next to the commode. She was facedown; blood spread out like a fan beneath her …
Oh my God.
Moments earlier, Tamara was fake-puking and Mandy was snarling … and before that, we were laughing and sitting around my living room … and now two of them are dead.
They are dead.
Philomena squeezed me tighter and suddenly I realized I was sobbing, loudly and hysterically.
“What did we do?” I moaned.
“Look at me. Look. At. Me.”
When I lifted my eyes to hers, I realized that hers were red and puffy, too. She was just as traumatized as I was.
“We did what we had to do. They were going to kill you. And when they found out I told you … well, they probably would have killed us both,” I said, trying to be the strong one now.
“I know …” Philomena rubbed her face with her hands. She glanced over her shoulder at Tamara’s body, at what she had done, and I swear her face turned green.
“We have to call the police. We have to tell them the truth about what happened,” I told her.
“You know we can’t do that. Think about those other girls in the news …”
My mind drifted back to those other murders. A young girl, a few years older than us, brutally tortured and murdered by three of her peers. It had been a media circus, still all over the news a year later …
“They’ll never believe us,” Philomena spoke softly, more to herself than to me. “They’ll think we’re cold-blooded killers, just like all the other kids you see every day in the news …”
“But they have to. They have to.”
“They won’t,” she said, firmly. “Life isn’t fair. If it were, you wouldn’t even be standing here, talking to me. You’d be home in Clarkton, with your mom and dad, not in this stupid trailer with your piece-of-shit uncle …”
“Listen,” I said, my mind made up. “You go on home. I’ll take care of this. No one will ever have to know you were here. I’ll tell them it was only me …” But as the words flowed out, I knew they weren’t true. Mandy’s older sister had dropped off the girls. She knew Philomena had been with them …
Come morning, Mandy and Tamara’s parents would be calling or coming by to get them. There was no hiding what had happened here.
“I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone. No way,” Philomena said, puffing out her chest. “Whatever we decide to do, we decide together. Just me and you, okay?”
Despite the horror surrounding me in the bathroom, I felt a glimmer of hope shine through. It had been so long since I’d had a friend – a real one. Philomena was not only pretty and kind, she was brave too.
If I went to jail, I would lose that. I would lose her.
“I know what to do,” I said, drawing her in close to share my plan.
Chapter 24
NOW
Two dead sparrows, black and blue.
One for the lady. One for you.
I couldn’t remember where I’d heard the poem, but it came floating back like it’d never left my subconscious in the first place.
Two bodies on the floor in my uncle’s trailer.
Two bodies in my bedroom now.
Only this time, I don’t know how they got here. I didn’t kill them …
“Hello? Are you still there? Please answer me, Ivy.”
The phone rested between my shoulder and cheek. The room spun, the shadows of the two dead bodies dancing on the walls like a cinema of macabre silhouettes.
I couldn’t remember the year, but Delaney couldn’t have been much older than four or five. A had windstorm knocked all the power out, and it had taken nearly six days to fix it. Michael had been out of town, but we hadn’t minded. We’d made shadow shows on the wall, and I’d told her stories – wild, elaborate, silly stories – and she’d laughed so hard that she’d peed the bed.
If only Delaney knew the truth. That her mother was a monster. A killer.
“Dammit, I hear you breathing! Talk to me. Say something.”
I opened my mouth but only one word came out: “Philomena.”
There was a small intake of breath on the other end.
“Please don’t call me that.” But she didn’t sound angry, just sad.
“He’s back.”
“How do you know?” she asked, voice steady.
“Because I was just in his apartment,” I whispered.
Chapter 25
BEFORE
I stared at the food on the table, slimy chicken and overcooked potatoes displayed on a platter. Peas and carrots in a bowl. A package of store-bought rolls, unopened.