The Dead Girls Club - Damien Angelica Walters Page 0,87

lips, her breath like spoiled milk and rancid meat. “If you do, I’ll hate you forever and never talk to you again.” She paced back across the room, elbows cupped in her palms. “But she’s going to help me. The Red Lady’s going to make things right. And I need your help, too.

“Rachel and Gia were lying. They didn’t see her or hear her. I know they didn’t. They just pretended to, but I know you really did. She said so. Once we do what we have to, everything will be okay. She promised.”

Her eyes were wild, darting like lightning bugs. Her mom hadn’t just hurt her body, but her head, too. She must have, to make Becca say things like that. To make her think a made-up story would help her. We had to tell my mom. I had to tell her, no matter what Becca said. But part of me wanted to run away right now, because I was scared. Her bruises scared me. She was scaring me, too.

“Please, stop,” I said. “Please just stop.”

“No, this is way too important. She’s too important.”

“She’s just a story.” Even if Becca couldn’t see that, I could. But my mom was real and she could fix it.

Becca spun on her heel and stalked toward me. She got so close I could feel heat coming off her body. “Don’t you say that! You know she isn’t. You know she’s real. Know how I know?”

I held out my hands, not wanting her to get any closer. “I don’t want to talk about her anymore. Please, please, let’s talk about something else, anything else.”

“No!” she yelled, her heat burning me up. “We have to talk about her. There’s a lot we have to talk about.”

I backed toward the door, away from her eyes, her fire. I felt shaky and sick.

“She knows you felt her. She told me you did.”

“I didn’t. You have to stop all of this. We can talk to my mom. We can figure out a way—”

“And if you don’t help me, if you don’t do what she wants, she won’t leave you alone. She won’t ever leave you alone.” She grabbed my wrist, and I cried out. “Do you understand?” she said. “You have to help me.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you about her. I didn’t tell any of you. Before they put her in the hole, a woman who was her friend, who was afraid to speak up because she knew they’d kill her too, gave her a hug. But she didn’t just give her a hug. She stabbed her in the side, so she would die fast instead of being buried alive, instead of suffocating under all the dirt. But you already know that, don’t you? She said she showed you that, too. She had to, to make you understand.”

I shook my head, hard, and yanked my arm free. I touched my side, remembering the sharp pain I’d felt when I woke up in the kitchen. When I crouched by the basement window.

“You’re lying. I can tell. I’ve known she was real since the first time she came to me. Everything else was to prove it to you, Heather. To prove to you she’s real.”

“She’s a story,” I said, the words small and powerless. “And stories aren’t real. They’re not.”

“But she is real, whether you want her to be or not,” she said, her cheeks red and spotty. “She’s more real than almost anything.” She caressed one of the pictures, stroking the Red Lady’s face, her own soft, the way a mom looks when she’s holding a newborn baby.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” I shouted.

I stomped over, pushed past her, and ripped down the picture. “She isn’t real!” I tore another free, and another, and another. Becca stood to the side, watching. When I had one wall half bare and a pile of torn paper on the floor, my legs went rubbery. I sank down on top of the shreds.

She knelt beside me. “The pictures aren’t that important. I can draw more.”

I burst into tears. I didn’t want her to be this way, and I didn’t know what to say or do. She put her arms around me, like she was a mom and me a kid, and I kept crying. After I stopped, she brought me a wad of toilet paper for my face and nose. Maybe if I did what she wanted, everything would be okay. She’d understand that the Red Lady couldn’t help her. Then