Grace takes Claire by the elbows, locking them together from behind, and Marjorie puts the cob of corn up Claire’s dress, and presses.
“Ow,” says Claire, biting her lip. “Don’t do that please, Marjorie.”
Marjorie presses harder and Claire yelps. The scene resembles agreement, for Claire is not writhing, despite pain, despite fear. It’s terrible. The only thing that it isn’t is surprising. To any of them.
“Ow-hahoww….” Claire is not screaming, just whimpering. Like a child who knows she is going to be punished.
“Don’t hurt her, Marjorie,” says Grace, still holding Claire.
Marjorie’s arm thrusts upward with a twist, because it can. Claire screams and jolts forward, but Grace prevents her from falling and hurting herself. Marjorie watches. Isn’t it strange that someone right in front of you can be screaming about something that you don’t feel? Like rain falling two inches away and you stay perfectly dry. “What are you screaming about, little girl?”
Marjorie takes the corncob out from under Claire’s dress. There’s blood on it. Claire is sobbing.
Grace lets go of her. “It’s okay, Claire — hey Claire — Claire, can I see your charm bracelet?”
Marjorie tosses the corncob away, into the grass. A crow drops down to investigate. Claire raises her wrist, hiccuping, and shows Grace her bracelet.
“Oh, that’s the prettiest one I’ve ever seen,” says Grace, fingering the charms. “Can I try it on?”
Claire shakes her head, and Grace says, “Okay I won’t, Claire, it’s yours.” Grace lets go of the bracelet.
“Lie down, little girl,” says Marjorie.
Claire doesn’t move.
“She doesn’t want to,” says Grace.
Marjorie sighs and says, resigned, “Strangle her, Marjorie.”
Grace obeys. She doesn’t shriek with laughter at Marjorie’s mistake in calling her by the wrong name, because she doesn’t notice. She squeezes and squeezes.
Now Claire looks surprised. That’s how people look — as though they have just remembered what it was they meant to say. Marjorie watches.
It’s all very quiet. Grace isn’t grinning, just staring, and it ceases to be funny, ceases to be anything at all. Not anything, just doing this, quiet quiet like under the ocean, the air has slit open. What was there all along, behind the air and woods, and grass and the sky, that painted sheet, is Nothing. You can’t stop. You aren’t doing anything.
It goes on, it goes on, Grace not doing anything, just not stopping. Marjorie watches.
Falling so fast, all is still, so empty there is no change. It goes on, it goes on, it happens, nothing happens, doing nothing doing nothing doing nothing.
And finally, Claire pees.
Grace lets go and Claire drops to the ground.
It’s a sunny day again. They are in a field. Claire McCarroll is there. Insects are there, and from the dirt road beyond the woods, the sound of a car going by. It’s Brownies tonight. We are flying up.
“Get up, Claire.”
Marjorie will remember that the grass was yellow, but it is newly green. Grace will remember that they were in a cornfield, but there is no corn here. There is the long pale grass. There is the high elm. The corn-syrup sun. All around them is the month of April. It’s twenty-five to five.
“Stick your tongue back in.”
Claire does not obey.
“Get up.”
She will not do as she is told.
“Marjorie …,” says Grace, going wavery. “Ohhh,” moaning, “ohhh nooo….” Oh no Marjowieeee….
“Shut up Grace”—fed up and bored, the teacher marks the failed spelling test.
“Ohhhh…,” Grace is turning round slowly, pulling tall grass, bending over, hugging herself, “oh noooo….”
Marjorie relents, as a long-suffering mother might, when her child’s misbehaviour has run its course and been replaced by contrition or exhaustion. “It’s all right, Grace,” she says. “I won’t tell.”
Grace must make things nice. Pull Claire’s dress down. Fold her arms. Bluebells to cover her, Queen Anne’s lace, which some people call stinkweed but which is pretty like a doily. Marjorie helps with two long cattails for a cross over her chest, because we may as well do this properly.
“She’s sleeping,” says Grace, and bends to kiss Claire good night but can’t because of the eyes. Claire’s face is already changing. Grace finds Claire’s underpants in the grass, tiny yellow butterflies on clean white cotton, and places them over her face.
It is time to get out of here.
They walk Claire’s bike from Rock Bass back to the dirt road and take turns riding it, but when they reach the intersection with the old Huron County road, Marjorie points out that they don’t want anyone to think they have stolen it. They hide it under the willow tree, leaning it against the trunk, where it will be safe from robbers.
Grace pulls one of the pink streamers from the handlebars. “I’ll give it back.”
That night, Grace called on Marjorie and Marjorie said, “I can’t come out, it’s too late, I have to do my homework then go to bed.”
It was dark. Grace had been out long after Brownies, loitering at the end of Marjorie’s driveway with the dented trash cans. Marjorie had seen her from an upstairs window. She rapped on the glass with her knuckles, then opened it and hissed down, “Go home, Grace!” Grace was shivering as though she was cold. Well, the nights were still cool. She wandered slowly away, not in the direction of her own house, not in any particular direction.
Five minutes later she knocked on Marjorie’s door again. Marjorie’s mother was not pleased. She was sick a lot and it really was a bother. “Marjorie,” she called over her shoulder, while Grace waited on the front step. “It’s that kid again.”
Marjorie came to the door in her housecoat, kiss-curls taped to her cheeks. “What do you want?” she said through the screen door.
And Grace said, “We’re best friends, right?” Best fwiends.
Marjorie did not invite her in. Grace’s lips looked sore and she was gnawing the cuff of her Brownie uniform. Marjorie had just had a bath. She wondered now why she had ever been friends with dirty Grace Novotny.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“We are so, Marjorie!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“We are so,” Grace whispered.
“So?”
“So just come out for a minute.”
“I can’t, I’m ready for bed.”
They stood there for a moment, Marjorie behind the screen, Grace on the step below, her eyes starting to wander. Marjorie’s mum said from inside the house, “Marjorie, close the door, there’s a draft.”
“I have to go.”
“Claire never came home,” said Grace.
Marjorie glanced over her shoulder and tightened the cord of her housecoat. “Are you retarded, Grace?”
Grace looked bewildered. She reached for Marjorie’s sleeve but touched the screen. “Marjorie …?” Her voice trembled, tears filled her eyes and she asked, “What happened to her?”
“You killed her, Grace, that’s what happened. Now go home.” And Marjorie closed the door.
MY HUCKLEBERRY FRIEND
THE SUN IS HALFWAY DOWN the sky when Madeleine puts her car into first and rocks up the stony track toward a log house just coming into view.
The day feels as endless as summer itself, suspended in heat. Trees bask in a cinematic light so rich that every pine needle glints, sharp as resin, against the hot blue. In the upper boughs of a Douglas fir, a spiderweb glitters, prismatic, and a crow sits, as crows like to do, atop the central spire. Birch leaves, responsive to the slightest breeze, blink back the sun with their silver undersides. Birdcalls sound intimate and precise; Madeleine is aware of having entered their home. And appearing with the rise in the road, in the distance between slim scaly trunks, the blue sparkle of Lake Huron. A dog barks. Several dogs.