Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,20

even dimmer with disappointment. I try again. “Or how about she goes to jail for a while.”

Ambrosia shakes her head slowly, like I’m the biggest dimwit she ever met in her life, and now she has to provide the answer herself. “Meg, instant death or slow, excruciating torture?”

“Excuse me?”

“What do you want for this miserable leech? Death or torture?”

At that, Alix laughs hard and uninhibitedly. Ambrosia’s choices are so unexpected, so wild, that I laugh, too, a real giddiness flooding through me. Stephanie joins in, bouncing on the window seat. “Why not? That’s punishment fitting the crime, all right! For being part of a system that abuses kids? Death, definitely,” she says.

“Hold on!” Alix insists. “It’s Meg’s life of misery. Maybe she wants torture.”

I giggle nervously as they wait for my decision. I’ve never allowed myself to consider getting even with someone to this level. But it’s just a game, so why not? No one’s going to get hurt. I reach down past my usual forgiving thoughts to a more primal part of myself. As Stephanie asked, Why not? “You’re right! It’s my revenge. I guess I do want some torture first.”

“Excellent!” Ambrosia mimes writing my answer in her book. “Would you prefer the torture of actual physical pain or excruciating mental anguish?”

“Pick mental,” Alix advises. Her eyes go hard like she’s remembering something important. “Bruises heal, believe me. You can get used to bruises.” She launches into a cheerleading chant, giving it a hard rock beat: “Mental anguish, mental anguish, mental anguish.”

I give Alix a thumbs-up, warming to the game. “Mental anguish it is.”

This time Ambrosia actually does write it down. I get a jolt of satisfaction from watching her pen glide across the page and knowing that my deepest, meanest fantasy of revenge is down in ink and can’t be erased. She addresses me with a solemn expression: “What is this leech’s legal name?”

“Lottie Leach.” I spell the name like each letter is drenched in oil.

“By the way, you’re a natural at mental anguish,” Ambrosia compliments me.

I feel myself blush. “Thank you.”

She writes the name and closes the book.

We’ve gotten so lost in my revenge fantasy that we haven’t noticed how dark the room has become, even though it’s still afternoon. The new storm is rolling in fast, the sky almost black except in one spot, as if an invisible moon has come up and is sending down a celestial spotlight. The all-white garden with the stinking plant glows in the center.

Stephanie leans against the edge where the wall meets the window, and she yawns. “Wow, I’m tired,” she says. Alix’s face and the muscles in her back and arms are slack and relaxed. I’ve never seen her look so … peaceful. There’s no other word for it.

“Good time,” she says dreamily. “Too bad it’s fantasy.”

I, too, suddenly feel tired, like years of tension have drained out of me. Maybe it’s the aftermath of the revenge game. Maybe it’s the low pressure of the unusual weather. Maybe it’s something else.

Ambrosia starts humming a tune. I know that tune. It’s the tune, and I want to ask her about it. I try. My mouth opens, a question forms, but I go limp, so limp, too limp to even talk. Nine notes rising and falling. I count them. I hum along. Alix and Stephanie’s soft voices join in.

I let myself drift off thinking about the Leech, her cat, and my revenge. I feel exhausted in a totally satisfied way. Like when you use up every minute of your day, not wasting time by wishing that you had done something else or regretting where you are or who you’re with or what you did or didn’t say.

When you’re totally aware that this is your life, and for the first time, you know exactly how you’re supposed to be living it.

8

Time for the stasimon. In Greek tragedy, a musical interlude, a helpful aside to make sure you, the audience, understand what just transpired, a face-to-face so that we can be mind to mind.

In times past, it would be up to the chorus to sing the stasimon. But that was then. Big choruses and girl groups are a thing of the past. We now live in a culture of solo acts, live journals, celebrity autobiographies penned by those who are known around the world by one name only.

Jesus. Madonna. Tupac.

Ambrosia. I fit right in.

In case you’re wondering, Ambrosia is not some nom de stasimon to hide my identity. I am not unavenged Clytemnestra,