Lucretia and the Kroons (11 page)

They were still twenty feet up.

A moment later all three of them fell through the sky. Loochie and Sunny cried out.

The males heard them but were so shocked that they were caught stiff, standing frozen, on the other side of the sphere. All five gawked at their sister, Alice, through the grillwork of the globe.

The only one who didn’t hesitate was Alice. She landed and the girls fell off but she didn’t even look back to check on them. There wasn’t any time. She sped forward, stepping onto the concrete barrier and leaping across the pond of muck. She landed on the base of the Unisphere and braced herself against its bottom. She slammed her right shoulder forward and strained against the steel sculpture. A long, high cry played from Alice’s throat. Loochie clutched at her own neck when she heard the sound. Then there was a terrific cracking, an echoing snap, and the Unisphere rose, just slightly, into the air. It came off its cocked axis. On the other side the male Kroons looked up in quiet fascination. Alice had hurled the world at them.

The Unisphere plowed through the Kroons. The 700,000-pound steel globe hit the Twins and Chuck directly. It crushed them. Loochie heard their bones crack even from where she still lay. All three bodies were pulverized; what was left was liquid. The earth kept moving. The globe now caught one of Lefty’s legs and his pelvis. The Unisphere rolled over it, turning both to powder. Lefty lay there howling, almost blind with pain. His right leg was gone. He flailed on the ground. He spat. He bled out. Loochie had raised herself to a seated position and watched it all, horrified and dimly elated. Confused. Was it okay to cheer when a devil dies?

The only male left was Pit, who hadn’t been hit directly. He was knocked on his back, dazed, but that was all. Already he sat up. He watched with amazement as the Unisphere kept rolling, clanging loudly as concrete crunched beneath it. That sphere didn’t stop until it reached the closer meadow, where it settled into the dirt and grass. It stopped after a moment.

“Holy shit!” Sunny shouted, pointing at Alice, who was already climbing back over the concrete barrier to get the girls.

“Holy shit,” she repeated.

Sunny couldn’t stop marveling over Alice’s triumph, but Loochie couldn’t stop staring
at her friend, possibly the best friend she would ever know. Loochie stared as if she were focusing for a snapshot of Sunny. Something to remember the girl by. Loochie hadn’t realized she’d made a choice, a decision, about what to do next, until right then.

Loochie took off her mother’s wig. She walked to Sunny. Loochie set the wig, delicately, on Sunny’s small head. Sunny looked up at it, surprised.

“My mom will get worried if I don’t come back,” Loochie said.

Sunny nodded and it made the wig slip forward, almost over her eyes. Loochie was about to adjust it when Alice’s big hand pulled it back into place. Loochie looked up and smiled at Alice. Then she felt a throb of regret. She’d given Sunny her mother’s wig, but what had she given Alice? Alice who’d saved her half a dozen times in here. Alice who looked like a monster. Alice, who wasn’t a monster anymore. Loochie had nothing else to offer. So she waved for Alice to crouch. Alice did so a little warily. The last time she’d crouched in front of Loochie like this Loochie had bashed her with a tennis racket. Loochie brought her face right alongside Alice’s. From here she could smell Alice’s burnt plastic body and she couldn’t avoid the gaping emptiness below her upper jaw, but Loochie didn’t hesitate. She brought her lips to Alice’s upper cheek. Loochie gave Alice the only thing she could. She kissed her gently.

“Friends,” Loochie whispered, and Alice cooed in her ear.

In a flash, Alice lifted both girls, as easy as always. She turned to run, toward the stadium, but before Loochie could resist Sunny said, “She’s not going.”

Alice barked out a handful of desperate-sounding notes. She looked across the barrier, at Pit, who was doing worse than he first seemed. He struggled to rise, a feeble growl lost in his throat, then he stumbled backward again, flat on his back, still stunned.

“She says you have to find someplace to hide,” Sunny told her. “We’ll get Pit to chase us. We’ll draw him away.”

Alice set Loochie down. Loochie looked up at Sunny. Already, even from this close, it seemed harder to focus on her friend. To really see Sunny’s face. As if it were already being erased, little by little, from her memory if not her heart.

“Hide.” Sunny pointed to the barrier. “Lie flat.”

Loochie followed the order. On her back like that she was hidden. Alice howled at the top of her voice. It was like a taunt, a challenge.

Pit sat up again. Looking more like himself. Menacing and manically focused. He found his sister’s face. She stared at him and he glared at her. He scrambled to his feet. Just before Alice ran, Sunny kicked her feet wildly and her rain boots flopped off. They smacked the ground. Loochie had given her the wig. Sunny gave the boots in return.

Sunny shouted, “I love you, Loochie!”

Loochie couldn’t respond for fear of letting Pit know she was still there. But inside her head she could hear her own voice, loud as a siren:
I love you, too, Sunny! I loved you!

Loochie lay flat and watched them go. Alice took off, carrying Sunny, horse and rider exploding down a track. And Pit chased after. Soon enough they were all just figures in the distance. Now there was no denying it. Loochie’s best friend, Zhao Hun Soong, was gone.

Loochie finally got the courage to sit up and look around. Even though she’d seen Pit trailing after Alice and Sunny, she hadn’t entirely believed it was true. After all, this place was a kind of nightmare and in nightmares the worst can always happen. She half-expected to find Pit standing on the other side of the murky pond when she sat up, an evil smile below his dented skull.

But he wasn’t there. The place was quiet enough that she could hear herself breathing and she listened to that. If she was breathing then she must still be alive. If she was alive she could move.

She stood. The concrete dug into her soles. Her socks were pretty much shredded. But she had a pair of rain boots. Loochie grabbed them and slid the first boot on. It felt so
wonderful
to have them between her feet and the concrete. Loochie stretched her foot and listened to the rubber stretch. The boots were purple with white polka dots and, right then, Loochie had never seen anything prettier in her whole life. She slid the other boot on but felt something against her heel. She took the boot off, turned it upside down, and out fell Sunny’s lighter.

Loochie weighed it in her open palm. Its body was made of red opaque plastic. She held it to her ear, shook it, and heard the faint swish of the remaining lighter fluid. The last cigarette was in one pocket so Loochie put the lighter in the other. She popped on the other rain boot.

Go home
, she told herself.
Get home
.

But she didn’t move. She did not go home. It was as if her body wouldn’t follow orders.

After a time it seemed as though she was going to collapse. Loochie’s body began to melt. Her knees buckled. It seemed as though the faint was coming on again, but do you know what made her do otherwise? What made her turn instead and start to run? The ice-cream cake. It was sitting out on a plate in the middle of the kitchen. She imagined that by now all of it, except the wafer cookies, had turned into a soupy mix. That it had spilled over the plate and across the table and even run down to the kitchen floor. One hell of a mess. Her mother would be so angry! And, strangely, she wanted to hear her mother’s voice so much right then that even a month of
yelling at Loochie was preferable to the silence, the isolation, surrounding her now. So she turned and made the long walk.

Following the concrete pathway until she reached the Playground for Lost Children, she saw no rats but still kept a good distance from the gates. She reached the first meadow and here she found the upside-down Unisphere. It looked like an enormous Christmas ornament that had fallen off its tree. Seeing it reminded her of Sunny, the two of them crouched on top and looking out across the park. How long ago had that been? Minutes? Why did it already feel, in her bones, like it had been weeks? Loochie walked the meadow, but she moved slowly. She wasn’t tired exactly, but sore. Deep down. Heartsore. It took great effort to lift her legs and her shoulders felt heavy. By the time she reached the double row of trees she could hardly stand. She had to sit beneath one of the great trees, on its gnarled roots. She could see the next meadow. She knew the kitchen, the open window, the fire escape weren’t far ahead, but she couldn’t get herself to stand. The overcast sky thundered and soon rain fell across the meadow. It fell on the tops of the trees and trickled down from limb to limb until the drops reached the dirt. The rain fell on Loochie. She had leaned forward because she was so tired, elbows on her knees. Her head and back were soon wet. Her T-shirt stuck to her skin. A quick run across the next meadow and she’d be away from all this.
Just get up
, she told herself.
Just get up
. But she couldn’t.

The rainstorm grew stronger. Quickly the meadow was drenched. Above Loochie the tree limbs sagged with the weight of the water. Loochie looked up and the rain doused her face. Had Sunny made it all the way to Gate C by now? Had she reached Shea? Maybe Loochie should have gone with her. Had she really been thinking of her mother’s worry when she decided not to go with Sunny, or was she just saving herself?

The storm became a torrent. Loochie couldn’t even see beyond the tree line anymore. The rain became like a great, gray wall. It came down with such force that the ground seemed to shake. Loochie had abandoned Sunny. Why didn’t Loochie fight harder to bring her back? The trees were no protection against the rain anymore. It came down so hard that it scoured Loochie’s skin. What kind of best friend was she?

Then Loochie heard an incredibly loud groan. Not a living thing. Loochie squinted back to the meadow she’d come from. The groan came again. Her curiosity was what finally made her stand. She walked to the edge of the tree line and what she saw she couldn’t quite understand.

The Unisphere was disappearing.

She could only see about half of it out in the field now.

Once more she heard the groaning, the steel beams being battered and, while she watched, the Unisphere disappeared even more. That’s when she finally understood.

“It’s sinking,” Loochie whispered.

The whole meadow had turned to mud under the tremendous rainstorm. The steel globe rose and fell now, bobbing as if it were a plastic ball in a pool. There was one more groan of metal and, just like that, the entire Unisphere, twelve stories tall, was gone. Sucked down into a sea of mud and lost.

Loochie tried to turn around but found that she couldn’t move. But this time it wasn’t because she was too tired or too scared. Her rain boots had sunk into the dirt. They were in the mud, all the way to her shins. The rain continued to fall. A deluge. Loochie strained and pulled one boot out of the soft earth. She stepped backward and barely got the second boot out.

She’d taken a step back but now the ground beneath her feet was already softening, too. Her boot soles sank into the dirt. If she stayed in place she’d be up to her shins in minutes. She had to run, out beyond the trees, into the next meadow.
Get away
.

She ran out into the open. Without the shelter of the trees the rain hit her as hard as a punch. She ran three steps and was knocked down, face-first to the ground. When she put her arms out to push herself up her hands sank down to her wrists.

Loochie scrambled to her feet. The rain fell and she could barely see a few inches ahead of her. Her face was slick. Her hair already soaked and heavy. Three more steps and she sank again, her legs lost below the knee. The mud surged around her. The meadow had become a swamp. Two more steps and she’d hardly moved forward, but she was sunk down to her waist.

Her breathing sped up. She paddled forward. But in a second the mud was up to her chest. How much farther did she have to go? She couldn’t tell, she couldn’t see.

When the mud was at Loochie’s chin she simply couldn’t keep going. She was stuck and the rain continued. Loochie had abandoned Sunny to save herself and now look what happened.

“I should’ve stayed with you, Sunny,” Loochie said, as if she was issuing an apology.

With her mouth open the mud flowed in. She spat it out and tried to move, but which way was forward anymore? The rain obscured the world. It overwhelmed her like grief. The worst thing in life was to be left all alone. That’s what Loochie felt. And yet that was how she found herself. Loochie desperately gulped in one deep breath.

Then she sank into the mud, all gone, nothing left, and she had no one there to save her.

Loochie floated in darkness. Using the technique Sunny had shown her while trying to smoke, she’d filled her lungs before going under. Now she held her breath. She couldn’t see anything. Not enough to tell east from west, north from south. She’d sunk down below the mud and found another layer. She kicked her feet and paddled her arms but couldn’t be sure if she was moving back up toward the surface or just swimming deeper down. It was darker than a starless night down here. This was the longest darkness, the shadow without end. This was death. She floated in death and didn’t know how she could ever find her way out. Her cheeks burned, her throat tightened, her lungs were already straining to hold on to the oxygen inside them. But how long could that last? In a minute or two, maybe a few more if she was lucky, she was going to have open her mouth. When she did she’d swallow all that death around her. She would drown in it. And that would be the end.

But Loochie Gardner wasn’t ready for her end just yet, thank you.

She kicked harder, swam upward—at least she hoped she was swimming upward—but she couldn’t tell and became confused. She changed direction, but that wasn’t any better. She might’ve just sent herself back where she’d been a moment ago. Loochie needed help seeing. She needed light. As her lips strained to open, as her lungs demanded air, she reached into her pocket and pulled out Sunny’s lighter.