Can I borrow your pencil? Dougie asked when LaRose sat down.
No, said LaRose.
Dougie made a sad face and raised his hand.
Mrs. Heaper, Mrs. Heaper! LaRose won’t let me borrow his pencil!
You have your own pencil, Douglas, said Mrs. Heaper.
Dougie grabbed LaRose’s sharpened pencil when Mrs. Heaper wasn’t looking, and drove it into LaRose’s arm so hard the tip broke off under the skin. Dougie laughed and said he’d given LaRose a shot. That night, LaRose showed his shoulder to Maggie, the pencil tip driven deep.
Her face swelled up. Her lips tightened. Her golden eyes went black.
When she was six years old, her teachers started calling Maggie “a piece of work.” But after her brother died, her work came together. She revved up the other kids by picking friends, rejecting those who displeased her, pitting them against each other for her favor. Although she didn’t exactly talk back to the teachers, there was sarcasm in the elaborate politeness she showed.
Yes, Miss Behring, she would say, and in a whisper only the other children heard, Yes, Miss Boring.
She rolled her eyes, made spasmodic faces, behind her teachers’ backs. They never caught her when she periodically dropped a BB from her jeans pocket and it rolled around and around on the unlevel floor. It made a high, thin, zinging sound that kept everyone in suspense. She kept it up, flicking a BB out every few days until Miss Behring searched everyone’s pockets. Maggie’s were empty like the others. She told nobody what she’d done so that nobody could rat her out. She was a disciplined piece of work.
Maggie had a list.
Dougie Veddar was now on it.
Recess came. He ran thumpingly around thinking he was safe, with his blond crew cut and rabbity teeth. Maggie was friends with an older girl, Sareah, who was fast and tough. The two girls closed casually in on Dougie and herded him away from the other boys.
Wanna share?
Maggie waved a candy bar from her lunch. He came around the playground tree. Sareah stepped behind him and pinned back his arms. Maggie had worn her hard-soled shoes for this. She reared back and kicked him between the legs. Then as he doubled over she stuffed back his shriek with the candy bar.
Don’t touch my brother, she said in that scary-nice way she had, her eyes turning gold with satisfaction. Please?
Sareah dropped Dougie and they ambled off, talking. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Go whine? Two girls dropped me. Kicked my nuts off. He’s gonna lay there, maybe puke. I dunno. They puke in movies when you kick their nuts off. Let’s go see if there’s chocolate milk left.
They paused to watch the action before they ducked into the lunchroom.
Maggie had made sure LaRose was on the other side of the tree, that he saw what happened. But she told him to be running past and just watch out of the corner of his eye. He should disappear immediately to the other side of the playground. LaRose saw it as he ran past them and then pulled himself high into the monkey bars. He sat on top, pretending to pay attention to the children around him, but watching as the girls sauntered slowly back inside.
There was a stir of energy. The teachers ran past. They were running toward Dougie; some kid said in awe, He’s blue, he’s blue. The teacher hefted Dougie. Heimliched Dougie. Two teachers held him upside down by the legs and shook him. Finally, a scream from Dougie, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relief and cynicism settled once more over the teachers as they threw playground sand on a puddle of Almond Joy.
Maggie now slept in Dusty’s old room, and LaRose had a bunk bed, new. It was red metal and the bottom was a double. Just right for sleepovers, said Nola. When she said that, LaRose looked away from her. He knew that she meant other kids from school while his first thought was sisters and brothers. Anyway, some nights Maggie would come sleep with him. She’d sneak away before morning because her mother had made a rule about them not sleeping in the same bed anymore.
Dougie won’t bother you now, Maggie said. Lemme see your arm.
Maggie put on LaRose’s bedside lamp and studied the arm.
Does it hurt? She touched the spot.
Not no more.
Not anymore, LaRose. You have to say not anymore.
LaRose didn’t say it. Maggie looked at his arm from many angles.
I think it looks cool, she decided. It’s a tattoo. I want one.
She went over to LaRose’s backpack, took out his pencil bag. There was a sharpener on top of his dresser. Maggie sharpened a pencil with great care.
Okay, you’re gonna stick me like Veddar stuck you. Same place. It will be like we’re getting engaged or something.
LaRose was almost six.
I’m only almost six, he said.
Age doesn’t matter.
I mean, I’m scared to stab you.
You mean you’d cry. Maggie studied him sharply.
LaRose nodded.
Okay, watch.
Maggie gripped the needle-sharp pencil like an ice pick. She peered at LaRose’s tattoo and licked her lips. She made a light mark on her arm the same place as his. Then she lifted her hand, drove the pencil into her arm. The tip came off. She threw the pencil across the room and fell onto the bed, kicking, holding her arm, biting the pillow to smother her noises.
After a while she sat up. There was some blood on her hand but the graphite tip stuck in her arm blocked most of it.
That hurt more than I thought it would, she said, wide-eyed, looking into LaRose’s eyes. Now I’m glad Veddar almost died.
Huh?
He choked on that candy bar. I smashed it down his throat. It went down the wrong pipe. He turned blue as a dead person. Even maybe he was dead until Mr. Oberjerk lifted him up by the ankles and shook out Veddar’s puke. You saw it all, right?
LaRose nodded.
So now you know what revenge looks like.
Maggie was apt to say things like that, not only from reading her mother’s discarded gothic romance novels. Peter worried about her when she asked — she still asked — exactly what had happened to Dusty. Specifically, his body. Was he bones? Was he jelly? Was he dust? Air? Was she breathing him into her lungs? Was she eating something grown from his hair? Were his molecules in everything? And why do you still have your guns? she asked. I hate them. You should get rid of them. I’ll never touch one. That, at least, made sense.
Peter worried about her when she kept checking out a book from the library called Dark Creatures. He was relieved when she stopped checking it out. Disturbed when the librarian called to tell him it was mutilated. He worried over how Maggie snatched snakes from the woodpile and let them twine up her arms, how she tamed spiders then casually smashed them. How she opened a neighbor’s brooding chicken egg before it hatched to see how the thing inside was coming along. How she took the dead chick home to bury and dug it up every day to see how the world digested it. There were days when the dog ignored Maggie, even walked away from her, as if he didn’t trust her. These things worried Peter.
Nola, however, was reassured by her daughter’s compulsion to tear aside the plastic wrap that divides the universes. It was only natural, thought Nola, to live in both. When you could see one world from the other world, the world for instance of the living from the world of the dead, there was a certain comfort. It relaxed Nola to imagine herself in a casket. She dreamed variations on her look much the way, during high school, she’d mentally put together the perfect outfit. The jeans, the tailed shirt, the funny socks, the shoes, heart necklace, hair sprayed up or falling loose. Of course, she couldn’t wear those clothes, so out-of-date, when dead. Or maybe yes. . what a hoot! When all the steps leading to Nola’s death were assembled, her anxiety faded. On the other hand, a blue buzz took hold of her when she went past her death and imagined everyone, everything, going on as before, only without Nola. All of this made her feel so guilty, though. She rarely allowed herself. It was like when she ate the whole stale cake and the sugar put her straight to sleep.