smells of childhood dreams gone wrong. Of wishes made on birthday cakes that never come true.
It’s a drawing of Becca and me from the back, our hands clasped together, walking toward the empty house. I rest my elbows on the desk. Prop my fingers beneath my chin. Try to keep memories from rushing in. Try to keep from screaming. The drawing was there in the house that night. She’d hung it on the wall. I’m the one who took it down.
Becca and I are in the foreground, the house farther back than it was in truth. Done in colored pencil, it’s faded where it was creased, yet faded in old creases too, where it’s been folded even smaller, small enough to perhaps fit into a pocket. I hold it close to my nose. In that instant, I feel her hand in mine, hear our tandem breath, see her eyes and the conviction there.
Even with the passage of years, some of the pencil marks still appear sharp, defined. Our hair was drawn loose, but where Becca’s is flat against her back, mine is swirling in tendrils, as though I’m walking through my own private windstorm. And there are no marks of delineation on our hands, so they appear as one. Guilt claws at my heart, ripping holes too big to ever stitch closed.
You were a child, the clinical part of me says. A child.
And so were the two ten-year-olds who beat a toddler to death in England. So was the teenage girl in Missouri who strangled her nine-year-old neighbor because she wanted to know what killing someone felt like. So were the girls who lured their friend into the woods and stabbed her nineteen times in the name of Slenderman.
But I wasn’t like them. Not even remotely similar. Some people are born with an innate cruelty; others have to work at it. And even if they’re successful, it doesn’t mean it will ever occur again.
I close my eyes and see images of us laughing, of an angry face in a dark basement, of blood and a knife, of running across the field. How quickly it all seemed to happen.
When things begin to fall apart, they do so with shocking speed.
There’s no doubt as to the picture’s authenticity. On the bottom right corner is Becca’s signature with its distinct curlicue. Every artist has a signature.
She drew us wearing calf-length dresses and shaded the ground beneath our feet red, so we appear to be stepping in, or out, of blood.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I say, hunching forward with arms folded over my belly. “What do you want?”
* * *
Two hours later, Cassidy is sitting in the cartoon chair, staring at the floor. “And the princess ran away, but she couldn’t run fast enough, and—”
Even though I have the volume down, the light on my office phone begins to blink. “Cassidy, honey, can you hold on for a second? Miss Ellie needs to talk to me.”
When I call up front, Ellie says, “I’m sorry, but there’s something here from Dr. Carlson that you need to sign for.”
To Cassidy again, I say, “I’ll be right back.”
I return with an envelope of patient notes for a referral to see Cassidy standing next to my desk, holding several pieces of paper. Irritation flashes bright, but I tamp it down. It’s my fault for not wanting to touch Becca’s picture again, for covering it with other papers instead of putting it away. Out of sight, not of mind. Part of it must’ve been exposed, and Cassidy has an eight-year-old’s curiosity.
“Who’s the lady in the window?” she asks.
“Where?” I ask.
“See?” She points to the window at the top left of the house. “Right here, peeking through the curtain.”
I grip the edge of the desk tight. Cassidy’s right. There’s a figure drawn in the upper window, partially obscured by the fading and a crease. The more I stare, the clearer she becomes. Beside the half-open curtain, a hint of red, a pale face, dark hair. Drawn as though she’s watching me and Becca as we approach.
“She looks hungry,” Cassidy says.
“What?”
“The lady. She looks hungry, like maybe she’s not a lady at all but a monster wearing a lady face. That’s how they trick you, monsters. They put normal faces on so you think they’re real, but they’re not. And when you get too close to run away, they show you their real ones,” she says, eyes serious and far too knowing.
My fingers spider to the hollow of