The Dream Where the Losers Go (12 page)

“Jigger,” Rosie singsonged.

“Oh baby,” Jigger breathed and lowered his face.

With a cry, Skey turned and ran, stumbling on ground that seemed to be throwing itself upward. The air clenched and unclenched like a heart, the blue sky cracked open and white forks of lightning struck everywhere. Houses crumbled, trees fell.

“Skey!” Behind her, she could hear Jigger coming after her. But she had reached the sidewalk and was close to the bus stop, the bus one block away. Pounding down the sidewalk, Skey hit the bus door as it arrived at the stop. The door slid opened and she stepped into the bus’s warmth, its smell of upholstery and too many people.

“Don’t pound on the door,” said the driver. “Next time I won’t let you on.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Skey.

Edging onto a crowded seat at the back, she closed her eyes and settled into the sound of the engine. Down, down, the sound pulled her down. Relief flooded her as she recognized the dark tunnel taking shape around her, its silence and emptiness. For several days she had been trapped in the tunnel of light, but now she was back. Cautiously she began to feel about herself for a wall, trying to remember that she was also on a bus and surrounded by people. No carvings, she couldn’t find any carvings. Where had the meaning gone? Desperately she ran her fingers further into the dark, looking for a moon, a star, a running horse—some sign that would tell her why this was happening, why she deserved it, how she had brought it upon herself.

Abruptly the tunnel shattered, wisps of dark scattering into the afternoon light. “Sorry, honey,” said a voice, and Skey opened her eyes to see an enormous woman bending down to pick up her binder. “Didn’t mean to knock that off your knee,” the woman smiled and handed it to her.

To her surprise, as Skey tried to reach for the binder, she found that she first had to tug her right hand out of the inside of her left sleeve. For some reason, she had jammed her right hand in there so tightly that a red mark had appeared on her wrist where the circulation had been cut off. Bewildered, Skey stared at her left arm. What possible signs could she have been seeking inside the tunnel darkness of her left sleeve?

A
S THE BUS LET
her out, Jigger’s car pulled up behind it. The bus drove off, leaving Skey on a quiet residential street, with three blocks to walk to the lockup. A single car drove past, then turned the corner. Shutting off the ignition, Jigger got out of his car.

“Skey,” he said, coming toward her. “C’mon, it was a joke. Rosie’s easy, you know that. She was laughing. Everyone was just having a good joke.”

Fighting the panic that reared through her, Skey shifted from foot to foot. Nothing was making sense today, especially her feelings. How many times had she watched the gang roll around in front of a TV, pin down a girl and grade her assets? When it was her turn, Skey had always gotten a ten and earned a few of Balfour’s slasher jokes. She remembered laughing too. No one had hurt her, and they had left her bra and panties on. Sometimes they went farther, she didn’t like to think about what they had done to a few girls at parties, but those girls had been outsiders, not members of the Dragons. They had been loaded up on booze and pills first, but still...She didn’t like to think about it, she didn’t. Anyway, that was with other girls, and she belonged to Jigger. No one would treat her that way, no one would cross him by tampering with her status.

“What’s with you?” Jigger asked cautiously as he came to a halt in front of her. “Why’d you run?”

Biting her lip, Skey glanced away from him, down the street. The wild fear she had felt in the alley was draining away now, leaving her with a tired emptiness. For a moment she remembered her mother leaning toward her, tapping a slender finger on one of her scars and saying, “This is what
It
gets you.” Then the memory faded and she let it go, let go of everything that had just happened—it was all over now and there was no point in getting upset about it, that never got you anything anyway.

Gently Jigger wrapped his arms around her and they folded together, Jigger solid and warm, Skey whimpering and shaky. “I’m yours,” Jigger whispered into her hair. “Just begging to be yours. You know it, Skey, you know it.”

“I’m just not used to everything,” she said apologetically. “In a lockup, it’s different. People act different. There’s no guys. You forget what it’s like.”

“I’m trying to help, aren’t I?” Jigger asked quickly. “Aren’t I helping you get used to things?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I just lost it, that’s all.”

“Rosie’s nothing,” said Jigger. “She’s too easy, even Balfour says so. You’re just right, Skey. You give it, but you’re loyal. You’re loyal to your one guy.”

Skey shivered and glanced away again. “Remember when Balfour stepped on his sister’s gerbil with his bare foot and killed it?” she whispered. “For a joke? When he’s finished with Rosie, he’ll cut her throat.”

“Don’t think like that,” Jigger said softly.

But Skey couldn’t stop thinking like that. “She goes out with him because she thinks she can’t get anyone better,” she said. “I’d never go out with him. Never.”

“C’mon,” said Jigger. “Bals isn’t that bad.”

“I dunno, Jig,” Skey muttered, looking away.

“I dunno what?” He pulled back a little, his eyes honing in, intent.

“I dunno about the Dragons,” she said, “and all that. You know.”

“You don’t want to be with me?” he asked slowly.

“Yeah—you,” she said immediately. “Of course you. It’s just the rest of it. Night Games. Rosie and Balfour...” She trailed off, not able to find the words she needed.

“You’re just tired,” said Jigger. “C’mon, it’s twenty-five after four. You have to get back, and I have to wait until Monday. See how you’re making me suffer? You still taking those pills?”

“I brought two with me for the weekend,” she said. “I put them in my bra so you’d find them.”

His eyebrows rose teasingly. “Where?” he asked. “In here?”

“Jigger,” she said, “we’re on the street.” They wrestled, laughing as his cold fingers moved inside her sweater and found the pills under her bra.

“Should’ve put them lower down,” he said, tucking them back in.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

J
ANEY UNLOCKED THE SIDE
entrance door. Then, to Skey’s surprise, instead of continuing up the staircase, she turned left at the first landing.

“This way,” she said, and led the way into the visitor’s lounge.

“Why are we in here?” asked Skey, her eyes skimming the empty room.

Closing the door, Janey turned toward her. “I have to do a search on you,” she said quietly.

“A search?” Skey’s mouth dropped. “You mean a frisk?” she stammered.

“That’s what I mean,” said Janey, her eyes grim.

“What for?” demanded Skey.

“We have to be sure you aren’t bringing anything in for the other girls.” Janey held out her hand. “Give me your books and jacket, and I’ll check them first.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Skey, her head spinning. As Janey began to go through her things, she tried frantically to remember if she had left anything in her pencil case, then
realized with relief that she hadn’t. Freaking out over Rosie had made her forget to ask Jigger for some weed, and she had been ditching the bus tickets at school so no one would get suspicious. Janey wouldn’t find anything in her stuff

But what about the birth control pills? Acid nausea swept Skey. The small piece of foil was still sitting inside her bra, where Jigger had tucked it back in. How carefully would Janey frisk her? Would she be embarrassed to feel up a girl’s breasts?

“I’m going to have to search you now,” said Janey setting down Skey’s jacket.

Skey took a step back, her face flushed. “Did you find anything in my jacket?” she demanded hotly. “No. You haven’t got any evidence, Janey. You’re just doing this because you like it. You’re a lez, Janey. A lez.”

“Take off your shoes, Skey,” said Janey with a tired look on her face.

“You’re going to make me strip?” shouted Skey. “What are you, a pervert?”

“You just have to remove your shoes,” said Janey. “You can keep the rest on.”

“My dad’s got money,” screamed Skey. “His lawyer will sue your ass.”

“This will be a lot easier for both of us if you cooperate,” said Janey, then moved around behind her. Skey couldn’t believe the moment the woman’s hands flattened themselves against her back. Hot and cold waves swamped her, and she shook as the hands shifted downward and ran the inside of her legs.

“Turn out your pockets,” said Janey.

The only thing in Skey’s pockets was the rock. Slowly she pulled it out. The rock lay in her palm, gray with white
markings, unbelievably ordinary. Would Janey be able to see it if Mr. Pettifer hadn’t?

“There aren’t any drugs in it,” she muttered, glancing sideways at Janey. “It’s granite or something.”

Janey frowned briefly, glancing from Skey’s hand to her face. Their eyes held, Janey’s searching, Skey’s blinking rapidly. If they took her rock, she would lose everything.

“It’s just granite,” she said again.

Hesitantly Janey reached out and touched Skey’s palm, her fingers passing right through the rock. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

Skey stared at the warm brown fingers resting on her palm. She could see them superimposed over the rock, taking up the same space.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

Confusion flickered across Janey’s face, and then she moved on to the next step. “Could you lift up your sweater?” she asked. “Just to your stomach.”

“
Fuck
,” Skey whispered. Abruptly Janey and the visitor’s lounge vanished, and the dark tunnel took shape around her.

“You’re in trouble,” said the boy.

Skey could feel Janey’s fingers running the inside of her waistband.

“Someone’s touching me,” she hissed at the boy. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

And then she did. Without warning, Skey vomited the remnants of Tammy’s lunch all over Janey’s surprised face and sweatshirt. Heaving and sobbing, she stood clutching Janey’s mucky arm for support until she was finished. Then silence took over again, the dark all around, close as breathing.

“Sounds like you just did a number on someone,” observed the boy.

“Yeah,” said Skey. She began to smile.

“Feel better?” asked the boy.

“Yeah,” she said.

A
NN STOOD IN HER
doorway, openmouthed. “She frisked you?” she demanded.

“Yeah,” said Skey.

“And you threw up in her face!” Ann squeaked.

“Yeah,” said Skey.

Upon her return to the unit, Skey had taken a shower in one tub room cubicle while Janey had showered in the next. Now she was sitting on her bed, her body clenched like a fist as she stared out her window at the nothingness of gray sky. With an effort, Skey turned her head and met Ann’s dark gaze. At that moment, it hit her—how wrong she had been. She wasn’t different from the girls in this place. It had just taken her a while to understand their loud voices, their constantly pounding stereos and the rigid way they held their bodies as they stalked their cage. She was one of them.

“I’d kill her,” said Ann.

“I feel like it,” Skey whispered.

“C’mon,” said Ann. “Let’s tell the others.”

They emerged into the unit to find most of the girls sprawled on the couches in front of the TV, waiting for dinner.

“Skey just got frisked,” Ann said loudly, approaching the group.

Skey watched the girls’ heads come up, their nostrils flaring.

“Who did it?” asked Viv.

“Janey,” said Ann.

“Bitch,” said another girl.

“Like to see her try and feel me up,” said someone else. En masse, the group turned and stared at the office.

“She find anything?” asked Viv.

Skey shook her head, and Viv gave her a tight grin. Behind that grin, Skey could feel it—anger like black fire dancing from Viv to the rest of the group. Two more girls came out of a bedroom, and Viv beckoned them over. Now every girl in the unit was huddled around the couches. In the office, staff were grouped around Janey, conferring.

“Skey’s been strip-searched,” Viv informed the two girls.

Standing to one side of the couch, Skey opened her mouth to clarify, then closed it again.

“We’re one for all and all for one in here,” Viv announced loudly. “Skey’s done things for me, and now we’re gonna do something for her. We gotta stick up for ourselves or they’ll start doing that to all of us. Got it?”

The girls nodded.

“We gotta show them,” Viv said intensely. “Now. Let’s turn this place upside down. Get us some blood. Blood for blood.”

Getting to their feet, the girls formed a close circle around Viv, and Skey moved into the circle with them, feeling rage pull the entire group into one thought, one mind—a mind she understood now, a mind where she belonged. This was her rage, and even though she had never felt anything like it, she pushed deep into it, calling it to herself like blood and breath. At the center of the circle, Viv picked up a lamp and began to swing it. Quickly, Skey reached for a second lamp that stood nearby, but as she did, something invisible began tugging at her mind, pulling her
away from the lamp, the couches and the TV. Without consciously deciding to, Skey began moving away from the rest of the girls, out of their black fury into a different darkness, where she could be quiet and rest. In the tunnel, there was only the sound of breathing—the boy’s and her own, separate from the rest of the enraged seething world. She began to shake violently.

“No,” she whispered. “Not blood. No blood.”

“Whose blood?” asked the boy.

“They’re taking it away from me,” she said. “They’re stealing what happened to me and making it theirs. It’s not theirs. I don’t want blood.”

“Can you get away?” the boy asked.

“I could go to my room,” she said.

“Do it,” he said.

To her left, the girls had shifted into a half circle and were moving toward the office, overturning furniture as they went. Someone kicked at a wall, and a gaping hole appeared. Without a sound, Skey slid along the opposite wall to her bedroom door. As she slipped through it, she glanced back to see Janey standing by the office, watching her. The staff gave her a quick nod and tears burned Skey’s eyes. She closed her door and locked it.