The Bullet List (The Saving Bailey Trilogy, #1) (25 page)

“You denied it. And you told the teacher it was me who had spilt the water. She didn’t know who to believe, did she?”

I shrug.

“You know why?”

“I don’t remember any of this,” I scowl.

“Clad backed you up, he told the teacher that he had seen me spill the cup. The two of you lied through your teeth. It was all just an elementary lie, a fight in the sandbox if you will, but it turned into something much worse!”

“So, I went home that day, and my dad he got a call from the school. He was pissed. No, outraged. No, he wanted to kill me the same way I want to kill you.”

“Because you spilt a cup of water?” I ask with a crooked smile.

She drives her boot into my ribcage, and knocks the wind from me.

“Because YOU spilt a cup of water, Bailey!” she barks. “He was boiling water for soup, or pasta, or rice, or who gives a fuck. He was just boiling water. He pushed me into the stove, and the pot fell off, and the scalding water landed on my torso, burning my stomach.”

Tears appear in Miemah’s eyes, they fall down her face. Her hand wipes at the tears as fast as if they were made from the boiling water that burned her stomach years ago.

“I’m sorry,” I wheeze. “I was only a kid.”

“So was I,” she says, and stares off as if she has lost her will to continue the story. “That is why I hate you, Bailey, because every day I have to look in the mirror and see these scars.”

Technically, her dad gave her the scars, and technically shouldn’t she be angry at Clad as well for playing a part in concealing my lie? And technically, don’t we have so much in common?
We both wake up every morning and are reminded of one another by our scars
.

“So, you get back at your dad by beating me up?” I ask, and then turn to Trenton and say, “And by letting her kill me, you are avenging your dad?”

Trenton refuses to answer me; he locks his eyes on the tip of his cigarette, watching as the ash grows too long, and then falls off.

“Beating up sounds too soft, like a black eye, or fat lip. No, I get back at my dad by torturing you,” Miemah says. And with that, she sends another blow to my ribs, and I swear I can hear the bones crack beneath the crushing force of her boot. Trenton exhales sharply, as if he is not enjoying this. I can’t cry, breathe, or speak; my eyes are wide open in pain, like those of the severed head of a deer mounted on a hunter’s wall.

“I think I broke them that time,” she says, and grips the handle of her knife tighter.

Black orbs cross my vision, then the orbs grow wings, and shift shape into vultures that fly at me and peck my eyes.

“Stay awake, I’m not through,” Miemah says, shaking me aggressively. When she is finished shaking me, my body gives out and slumps against a tree, my head resting against the silky bark.

“Stop,” Trenton whispers. Whose ears it was meant for, I cannot tell. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

He stands up and takes a few steps forward, blocking my view of Miemah. “Can we finish this?” he says to her, caressing her arm.

With their attention no longer on me, I franticly scan the ground for a weapon. A rod, a metal rod, is half-buried in the dirt, only a foot away. I slip my feet out of my boots, and let the ropes fall from my arms. In one swift motion I grasp the rod with the few fingers Miemah has not broken, and jump to my feet.

Trenton backs up, like he is a character in a movie on rewind, away from Miemah, away from me, his hands up in surrender. The end of the rod is sharp, sharp enough to slice flesh; I can see now that it is the broken handle of a golf club.

“You never let me fight back,” I say to Miemah, and slap the rod against my cast. “You are a coward; you will go down like one!” I stab the rod into her face, just centimeters from her eyes, and rip open a gash that sprays blood. Then, before she can recover from the strike, I cut open her stomach.

She has one hand on her forehead, and the other pressed against her stomach, and the tears she had tried so hard to wipe away, make a second appearance. For once, she is the one crying in pain. The tables have turned in my favor, and I realize I need to make a run for it, before she recuperates. I turn to go, but I am tossed to the ground by Trenton.

“She is my girlfriend, Bailey,” he apologizes.

In the time it takes for me to scramble back up, Miemah is no longer stunned, and has started at me once more, her knife raised. I dig my feet into the mud, try to gain my balance, but I am too weak and injured. My body freezes as her knife digs into my thigh. She drags it down in one plunging sweep, all the way to my knee. Warm blood flows from the wound, and makes little puddles on the leaves, like red pools for the insects to swim in. I am blinded by the pain that radiates from my thigh. I stretch my hand out, franticly seeking the rod, but find only clumps of dirt.

“Just do it already!” Trenton yells at her. “Please!”

I black out, my mind receding to a place of numbness and green fuzzy edges, only to wake, drenched with blood, my eyes, nose, and mouth burning from being doused with what I realize to be gasoline. I feel like I have woken up in the engine of a car.
Dirty and with a mechanically working mind, like rusty gears ticking against each other.

“Wait, maybe we shouldn’t,” Trenton says. He puts the container of gas down, his hand furtively brushing against my forehead.

“Why not?” Miemah asks, frustrated.

“Because if her body doesn’t burn to ashes, they will find her bones, and then they will trace the murder back to us. It is too risky, Miemah. Let me drown her. Then they will never find the body.”

I am off in another place, in the sky looking down, through the canopy of trees at my body pulled apart like a thousand-piece puzzle.
They can’t be talking about me, and they can’t be deciding how to dispose of my body.

“Fine, dispose of it,” Miemah says.

Am I dead already? Trenton’s hands find their way under my body, and he lifts me. A pain flashes through me, and confirms that I am still alive.

“Go to sleep now,” he says, his fingers combing through my hair. “It won’t, hurt I promise. Now, rest.”
In pieces
, I think.

The water washes over my feet, wetting my socks, then my jeans and shirt, spreading over my face. I am being submersed in the retention pond, Trenton holding me down like I am a bag of kittens.

“You won’t die alone,” I hear him say.

I have never felt more alone than being here in his arms, underneath the water. I suck the water in; let it fill my lungs, because if I am going to go this way, I want it to be fast.

“One more thing,” I hear him say. “Say hi to my dad for me.”

When I come to the point that my lungs feel like balloons stretched beyond capacity, begging for oxygen, and my head feels like it will explode, I struggle, but the effort is futile.

A hand grips the locket around my neck and yanks it off. I open my eyes, and stare at the murky green water; see tiny fish and plant debris floating in it, the clear fish bodies lit by sunlight. It is beautiful, especially with my blood turning the water pink, and the fish drinking it like strawberry-lemonade.

My eyes don’t close; at least I do not think they do. Something as trivial as blinking your eyes holds no importance when you are dying. There is no bright light, or red fiery hell; rather I am brought back to a memory.

It is Easter morning. I am a toddler, my parents and I are on the front lawn of our home. The grass is a bright moss-colored green; it was freshly planted in neat rectangles the day before. Mom had decided that our crab grass was not luxurious enough for her taste, or rather the neighborhood’s taste. I am dancing where the grass meets the road, and picking up fistfuls of weeds. I think they are flowers so I lovingly drop them in my mother’s lap as an Easter gift, and then continue on dancing.

Dad is dressed in his finest clothes: a pastel yellow shirt, and Mom is in a sky-blue designer dress. They both sit in the grass, talking, smiling, with my weeds in their hands, as I twirl before them. My dad lifts his finger and points at me,
“Look at our little flower dancing in the wind.”

Chapter 32

Clad

My stomach felt the way it does after a roller coaster ride, not sure of its place inside my body. I drove home, and feeling uneasy about letting Bailey walk home for the first time in a week, I decided to drive by her apartment to ascertain she had made it there okay. When I knocked on the door, I found no one was home. I looked into the window, and saw that not a single soul was stirring. It was an hour after school had let out, and I knew that she would have walked the short distance to her house by now.
Something must have gone wrong
, I thought, my heart plunging.

I drove up and down the roads she would have taken, and when I came to a small wooded area just outside the school zone boundaries, I saw her tote bag lying on the ground. So many things went through my mind in the time it took me to leap from my truck and run to the retention pond. There I saw Trenton standing waist high in the water.

What if he hurt her?
What if he killed her? What if I’m too late?

Trenton takes one look at me, and then springs from the pond like a gazelle at a watering hole spotted by a lion. The water is tainted with Bailey’s blood, its surface slick, like an oil spill. I can see her black hair wispy in it, as she floats at the top like a dead mermaid.

“Nooo!” I scream out in anguish, and splash through the water to her.

I lift her cold, rigid body out of the water, and realize with a scream that she is not breathing, her chest is not rising, and her eyes are wide open, staring up at me, their blue core dead.

I rest her on the ground, rip her shirt off, and press the heel of my palm into her sternum. I check for a pulse in between blowing oxygen into her lungs. Tears are flowing from my eyes and into her mouth as I try to revive her. I feel like I am someone else, a different person trying to save Bailey, and save myself, because if she is gone I am also gone.
Dead on arrival
, I think.

I wail and scream her name.
God, why did you have to take your angel back so soon?

“Wake up damnit! I don’t believe you, Bailey, you are not gone!” I shriek at her, my voice tormented. “Wake up now!”

I wait for her eyes to blink, her head to turn, and lift from the ground. She is as still as a puppet without its master.

“Wake up!” I scream
again and again and again.
“You can’t leave me!”

I might as well, be yelling at the trees for the response I am getting out of her.

My eyes blur with tears, I curl into myself with my face locked between my knees. A rustling of the leaves jars me from my stupor, and I raise my head, not really seeing Bailey, because the idea of a dead girl unravels me like I am a ball of yarn in a cats paws. Not just any dead girl,
my dead girl
.

Her hair moves, and at first I think it is the wind blowing over her, but then I notice her eyes are shut, her lashes twitching. Her mouth is opening, her hands are clawing at the ground.

I keep my distance, scared of the zombie she must be turning in to. I stay huddled against the tree, my knees knocking together until she coughs, and moans my name. Then I take baby steps to her, still in shock that she has come back from the dead.

“Clad,” she says, her voice raspy and sounding much older than that of a young girl’s.

“Bailey?” I say, my voice a hum.

“Did you die too?” she asks, flexing her hands, the motion seeming new to her, like a calf gaining its legs.

“Bailey!” I blurt out.

“Oh my God.” I fall to her side and kiss her lips, her hair, every part of her because she is not dead. I touch her wrists, lay my hand over her chest and feel the beating of her heart.

I pull her tightly to me, my hands gripping the back of her head, her arms wrapping around me.

“Clad, where are we?” she asks.

“By the school.”

“Not heaven, not hell?”

“No, you are not dead,” I say, and pick her up. I don’t care about Trenton or Miemah, who have probably scampered away by now.

I put her in my truck; lay her head in my lap as I drive. This is better than Christmas, Easter, and Halloween combined:
Bailey is alive
.

I call my sister while I am driving, and tell her to get towels set up, because I’m bringing home Bailey and she is covered in blood. “I’m so sorry I didn’t drive you home. Imagine how things would have turned out differently,” I say to Bailey.

“They would have anyway, Clad. It was inevitable,” she says, her eyes moving back and forth spastically.
Maybe she has brain damage
. My throat goes dry.

“Just stay awake, okay? I am taking you to my house, and I will fix you up. You can rest when we get to my house.”

She nods, and catches her breath.

“You won’t let me take you to a hospital will you?” I ask, knowing the answer already.

“No. They will take me away from you, and put me to sleep with drugs,” she says, tears filling her eyes.

“It is okay baby, I won’t take you. I promise you will be alright,” I say. I brush my thumb across her cheek to wipe away a tear, while still keeping an eye on the road.

I pull into my driveway the same way I do every day, except this time it is different. Bailey bleeding in my arms is all I can focus on. I carry her to the door, where Alec is waiting with a stack of towels, like we are at the gym and she is handing them out to wipe away our sweat with.

“Are you crazy! Take her to the hospital, Clad!” she yells at me, as I sidestep her on the way to my bedroom. There, I place Bailey on my bed.

“Give me the towels,” I say, ignoring my sister.

“Here,” she says, holding them out of reach.

“Help me!” I bark at her, when she just stands there watching me soak up the blood.

“Did she only cut you once?” I ask Bailey, who is squeezing her eyes shut in pain.

“Yes,” she murmurs.

Alec wraps towels around the cut on the back of Bailey’s leg while I gently wash away the dirt from her face.

“You are out of your mind, Clad, she needs serious medical attention,” Alec says.

“Are you going to help me or not? Because if you are just going to keep criticizing then you can get out.”

“I’m going to help her,” she huffs.

With scarves and bandannas, Alec ties the towels on like a bandage. I cover Bailey with three blankets because her teeth are chattering.

“I have to get her medication; she has a whole bottle of Vicodin pills that could really do some good. Will you stay with her while I get them?” I ask Alec.

She shakes her head no, but says, “Yes.”

“The key is under the pot,” Bailey says in a frail voice.

I hurry out the door.

The seat of my truck looks like something out of a horror movie, bathed in Bailey’s blood. I keep my eyes on the road, trying not to get distracted by everything that is cascading through my mind.

Once inside, I grab the bottle of pills. I pilot my truck down all the back roads at seventy miles per hour, going as fast as my mind is spinning. When I get back to my house, I turn the door handle, and hurry inside.

I feed Bailey pills, and then collapse onto the bed with her.

“He has my locket,” she says, her hand rubbing the bare spot on her neck where it once hung. Alec has removed her wet clothes, and her leg is neatly bandaged. There is a roll of duct tape at the foot of the bed, and I smile to myself at Alec’s clever way to stop the bleeding from Bailey’s leg.

“I’ll get you a new one. Hush now, sleep, and when you wake it will all be just a dream.”

“Because dreams can’t hurt you right?” Bailey asks, her voice sounding exhausted.

“Unless they become real,” I say, letting her hair fall between my fingers.

“Mine are real,” she says, and nuzzles up to my shoulder, the pills working, putting her to sleep.

I stay awake, watching her breathe. I may never sleep again, now that I know what it feels like to lose her.
Spencer has the right idea
; I can’t carry on without her. I’m not obsessed,
I’m in love
. Deeply, madly, truly in love with her. I love every strand of hair on her head, every eye-lash that curls around her sparkling violet eyes.

I kiss her broken hand, and hold her fingers to my lips to warm them. She is everything I need, and everything I can’t live without.

Having her in my bed next to me solidifies the fact that she is on Earth, her soul still trapped in her broken body. It isn’t that I don’t want her to go to heaven and have all her suffering ended, it is that I am too selfish to force myself to be without her.

Alec opens the door, and smiles at the sight of us lying peacefully together, like two doves in a nest.

“Is she okay?” she whispers to me, nodding her head at Bailey.

“Not by a long shot,” I say. “But she will make it. I have faith.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” Alec asks, shyly.

“In theory, yes.”

“I remember when you guys were little,” she says, coming into the room, and sitting on the edge of the bed. “Chasing each other around the house and Mom would send you both outside because you guys were too wild.”

“Do you remember when Mom made me a cake to give to Bailey on Valentine’s Day?”

“Yes, and she dropped it on the ground, right in the middle of school, and you ran out of the class room crying!” She breaks out laughing. “She rejected you in so many ways but you just kept trying to get through to her.”

“That was our game though, always has been; I do something sweet, and she repays me with bitterness. But it’s not because she doesn’t love me back.”

“Then why does she do it?”

“She is playing hard to get,” I snicker.

“More like impossible to get!”

“But that’s the trick, you see,” I say mischievously. “I already have her; I had her the first day we met. Hook, line, and sinker, only she wasn’t sly enough to recognize I knew it.”