CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We wait at the top of the stairs, listening breathlessly to the scuffle below us. They’ll be through in a matter of seconds, but we bought ourselves enough time to come up with something that qualifies as a plan. And all that it cost us was an armchair, a microwave, a coffee table, and four plastic cutting boards. What a bargain!
I look toward Maeve, who stands at the edge of the staircase, blade in hand. As she brushes her hair behind her ear, I can’t help but notice how strong she looks, how striking. I want to ask her why she came back. I want to ask her what made her change her mind. There’s nothing I want more right now than to tell her the thousands of things swimming around inside my brain, but I know that now is not the time. Later, when my heart stops trying to jump out of my chest and my hand stops shaking, we’ll talk.
I place the hammer down on the counter and select a chef’s knife, its rubber handle sticky in my sweaty palm. I’m probably no good at wielding a knife, but it’s better than being the only one without a proper weapon, no matter how cool it might have looked. I back up, assuming my assigned position once again as the back door is pulled from its hinges with an echoing crack.
Maeve’s eyes shift from the cut on my neck to the knife I still hold in my hand, fingers pale and shaking. Then she exhales, her chest collapsing in on itself as she reaches out toward me. I let her hold the back of my head and press my forehead against hers.
“We don’t have time,” she whispers, her breath on my lips. “But I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too—” I start, but she interrupts me.
“We’re going to make it out of this. We’ll have time for apologies later.”
And then she lets go, and we’re apart again. The world is back in motion, Tristan’s face visible at the bottom of the stairs.
I straighten my spine as Maeve looks back at me, a slim trace of a smile on her lips.
“We’ve got this, right?” I ask, wondering if I really want to know her answer.
Maeve shrugs. “Sure, we do. I’ll get them into the bedroom. You just have to stall for a bit and keep the others away. Don’t open the door, no matter what, and I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” She pauses. “Easy peasy, right?”
It’s not quite a vote of confidence, but it’ll do.
Tristan is the first one to come through the busted doorframe. He pauses, staring at the living room furniture that blocks his way before cursing to himself and starting the climb. He’ll be up here in thirty seconds. All I can do is wait, assuming my assigned position.
“Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” I murmur to Maeve as Tristan shoves his way past our coffee table.
“What? I don’t have a gun,” Maeve says. I wish I did.
But I just shake my head. “It’s a Revolutionary War joke.”
Becca scrambles up the stairs behind Tristan, and Maeve stumbles backward, positioning herself between the doorframe and the kitchen counter. The dynamic duo will have no choice but to take their fighting into the bedroom, just as we planned. What happens after that is up to Maeve. It’s go time.
As Becca reaches the final stair, Maeve pounces forward with a wide slashing motion, sending Becca and Tristan skittering backward into the bedroom. Maeve follows, crouched in an offensive stance, sending one last look at me over her shoulder. With a wink, she disappears inside.
It’s just me, Benji, and Eva in the empty living room. I lower myself slightly, my knees bent at odd angles, the chef’s knife out in front of me. Benji quickly does the same before turning to Eva, who slowly lowers herself into position.
“So, Eva,” I start as we begin to circle one another. Benji swipes at my leg, and I carefully sidestep. He’s not subtle, and I can see his moves coming from a mile away. “Long time no see, huh?”
That sounded cooler in my head.
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Eva replies, narrowing her eyes.
“I don’t like this either,” Benji chimes in, but I send him a death glare.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Benji.” I turn my attention back to Eva, who adjusts her grip on her blade. “I thought I knew you better than this.”
Benji seems eager to say something about how he also once held a blade to my neck, but Eva jumps in before he can.
“If I had any other option, I wouldn’t be here.”
“So you were forced to come…is that it?” Maybe then this would all make sense. Maybe then I’d be able to understand what changed.
“I do what I have to in order to survive,” she murmurs.
“And what about my survival?”
I watch as Eva’s cheeks burn red. “I tried to get you to leave!”
“But you betrayed me! You were supposed to be my friend!” And that statement seems so small, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Before she can respond, Maeve appears in the doorway, her silhouette looming large. Blood stains the back of her sweatshirt, trickling down the back of her leg. I want to know what they’ve done to her, but I know I can’t do anything about it. Not yet. Tristan and Becca stand in the center of the room, quickly advancing as Maeve reaches above her. She waits until they’re in position. She waits until they’re right underneath the tarp before she pulls it away, revealing the stormy sky.
I watch Tristan’s face as he feels the first drops hit his skin. Eyes wide. His mouth hangs open before he lets out a scream, tongue catching the droplets like a kid on a snow day. I feel the hairs prick on the back of my neck, my skin crawling and cold as he wails and the rain floods in. And it doesn’t stop. It spares no one. I know that all too well. I’m transported back to my kitchen at home, ears brimming with the sound of Thea’s wails as she tried to find shelter. The way I just stood there, doing nothing, unable to save her.
I’m frozen now—we all are—my legs refusing to budge as Maeve escapes through the bedroom door, slamming it shut behind her and holding the knob closed. It’s as if we’ve forgotten why we’re here. Instead, we stand paralyzed, listening to the echoing sound of death. And even though it wasn’t me who pulled the tarp off the ceiling, and it wasn’t me who shut the door, I still share responsibility for the aftermath.
Maeve doesn’t turn to face me, still staring at the sealed door. I hope that she knows that I understand what’s going on inside her. That I feel her pain, and I share her burden.
We do what we have to in order to survive.
Benji is the first to speak, striding toward Maeve with his knife held out in front of him.
“What the hell have you done?” he howls, his shouts no match for Tristan’s, but he tries anyway.
Maeve slowly pivots, her jaw clenched as she meets Benji’s glare.
“I did what you would have done to me. I did what those two were planning on doing to me.” It’s a ragged defense, but Benji doesn’t respond.
The shouts have quieted, the only sound left in the room being the raindrops as they pound on the roof. Do we keep fighting?
But the bedroom door slams open, propelled forward by a gust of wind, and shock radiates up my spine, rippling across my eardrums. All four of us turn to look, and Maeve adjusts her grip on her knife, taking a step back to prepare herself for what waits inside. I don’t think I want to see a dead body. Another one. But it’s like fate wants us to see. Like it wants us to understand what we’ve done.
Standing in the open doorway, however, isn’t a dead body. It’s Becca, limping but alive. Blisters cover the left side of her head like something out of The Phantom of the Opera, and when she reaches a shaking finger out toward Maeve, the skin is raw and bloody.
I blink, wondering if I’m seeing things. Maybe this is a manifestation of the guilt simmering inside me. Was there a way she could have survived the rain? But then I remember the bathroom, nestled in the corner of the bedroom, closed off and shielded from whatever came in through the roof. Becca was close enough to run, but behind her is a dark shadow. Tristan wasn’t so lucky.
Becca strides toward Maeve, her finger pointed straight at her chest. Maeve stumbles backward until she hits the wall. Until she can’t retreat any farther.
“You killed him,” Becca growls, pausing a few feet away from Maeve. Then Becca turns to me, a crazed grimace forming. “You killed him.”
Maeve sways slightly, like every ounce of life within her has been sucked out. Her lip trembles as she searches for the right response. I don’t think there is one in this situation.
I watch as Becca grips her weapon, pulling it back as she prepares to go in for the kill. Maeve stumbles, reaching toward the wall behind her for support, her fingers tense. She makes no move to save herself.
As Becca moves forward, I do the same. I know what I have to do, and I know that I have to stop the cycle that seems to follow me wherever I go. I can’t just stand by anymore as the people I love die. I can’t just watch as everyone I care about leaves me behind.
Maeve’s eyes go wide as she looks at me. As I move forward, ready to position myself between Becca’s blade and Maeve.
I’ve almost made it when I feel a strong hand on my shoulder, dragging me out of the way. Seconds pass like molasses as Eva lunges in front of me and Becca recognizes what’s happening. But she’s already in motion. She’s too close. And the blade plunges in, maroon welling from the wound. Becca wanted to go for the kill, and she did.
Eva falls to the ground, a knife wedged into her stomach.
The four of us—Maeve, Becca, Benji, and I—stand motionless. And then it hits me like a wave. I rush to Eva’s side as my knees buckle, slamming against the hardwood floor as the blood continues to pour from her torso. Too much. Too fast. And I don’t know what to do. To my surprise, no one stops me. No one, not even Becca, makes a move.
My hands start to shake as I look at Eva’s face. I watch as it goes from pale to gray, her skin fading into monochrome as she grimaces from the pain. I pull off my sweatshirt, wildly thrashing to get my bad arm out as the worn fabric clings to my skin. I bunch it up into a wad and press it onto her torso, wrapping it around my knuckles as hard as I can even though I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing. But this is what I’ve seen in the movies, when people yell: Put pressure on it! So I do it because it’s better than doing nothing. I do it because there is nothing else that I can do. Eva grimaces when I press the fabric against her skin, doing everything she can to avoid showing that she’s in pain. But her eyes look like they’re on fire.
Eva finally exhales, a gust of air escaping from her lips. “Liz, please.”
I’m not sure what she’s begging for. Salvation or release?
I try to keep my voice level as I respond. “You’re going to be okay.”
Eva laughs. Not her usual warm laugh, but she laughs because she has to. “Am I?”
I meet her eyes until I can’t look any longer, swimming in them. Drowning in them. So I stare at my hands, and my fingers, now painted with red. I stare at my knuckles, turning white from the pressure. And I thank my lucky stars that my sweatshirt is red, because that lets me imagine that I’m anywhere else but here. I just stare at my hands and listen.
“I’m sorry,” Eva whispers, her voice cracking on the last syllable. “I want you to know that I’m sorry.”
“Please, Eva. Not right now.”
She groans, and I hear the floorboards creak as Becca paces across the room. She runs her fingers through her dark hair.
“I’m sorry that this is what it had to come to,” Eva murmurs, her face hollow. “I’m sorry that I turned you into this. That I didn’t protect you.”
“It wasn’t your job to protect me.” I feel like I’ve swallowed sawdust.
“You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve any of this.”
“No, no, I do. When you left, the first time, I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see that you were in pain too. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The apologies tumble out of my mouth like dominoes. I can feel the blood pooling around my fingers. It’s still warm. “I understand why you left. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you go.”
Eva shakes her head, biting down on her chapped lips. “I only wanted a life bigger than all of this.”
I stare into Eva’s blue eyes as her lip trembles. I don’t know what to say to make things better. I don’t know if there’s anything that I can say at all. I can only watch as the light fades completely from her eyes. Until I realize that my hands aren’t moving up and down anymore as I hold them to Eva’s torso.
She’s gone.
No. Not now. Not right now. Not on top of all of this. No.
I lift my hands, finally realizing whose blood they’re covered in. The person who I thought would always exist, even if she existed far, far away from me. These are not my hands. They are someone else’s. They shake as I inspect them, looking for some small familiarities in these now-foreign objects. My limbs are not my own. This is not real.
I rub my knuckles against my thighs, scraping off the red with pure friction. I wipe them once, then again, then again, as the skin stings from the rawness. I rake my hands against my thighs until I no longer feel anything at all. Until there is no pain left for me to feel.
And then the tears start, sliding down my cheeks one after another and falling toward the ground. Toward Eva. I let my chest heave like it’s about to burst apart. I let the wail escape from my lungs because holding it back would make me fall apart completely. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. It was all supposed to stop before it came to this.
She didn’t deserve this.
I run my bloody fingers through my hair, allowing my fingernails to scrape their way across my skin. I want to hurt like Eva did. I want to feel her pain. I want to bleed like she did, in a way that matters.
I rub my hands against my legs once again, over and over until the raw skin turns so pink that I can see my blood well up beneath the surface. I want to feel her pain. I need to feel her pain.
“Liz, stop.”
Maeve’s hand appears on my shoulder, and I reach for it, clinging to her fingers like they’re all I have left. Maybe they are. I stare at Eva as the blood continues to leak from her wound, even though her heart has stopped beating. I watch as it stains the floor.
When I was little and would scrape my knees on the concrete sidewalk by the playground, Dad would lift me up into his arms. With his strong fingers, he’d brush the bits of stone that were still stuck in my skin and carry me over to the water fountain. As he let the water flow over my minuscule wounds, he’d murmur that he wished he had scraped his knee instead of me. I never understood why he’d want to take my pain away, because then he’d have to feel it instead.
But now, as Eva’s blond hair is splayed across the floor, I feel what he felt. I know what he meant. As if in a trance, like I’ve lost control of my limbs, I reach for the knife that juts from Eva’s torso. It’s a chef’s knife. A chef’s knife like the one I brandished moments ago, now abandoned on the floor. That’s all it took. With my hand wrapped around the handle, I pull it out.
As I rise from the floor slowly, like Lazarus from the dead, Becca stops pacing and looks at me. Everyone that’s left looks at me, and my bloody hands, and the knife that they grip.
The question rises inside me, spewing from my lips like volcanic ash as I stalk toward Becca. It’s an eruption.
“What the hell are we doing?” I bellow, my voice as coarse as sandpaper.
Becca stumbles backward, turning to avoid the open bedroom door. “This isn’t on me,” she retorts, reaching for a small steak knife sitting on the kitchen counter. “You killed Tristan. Don’t you think you deserve to die?”
“Did Eva deserve to die?”
“She jumped in the way! How is that my fault? She did it for you! This is your fault.”
Benji scampers around the perimeter of the room, eager to join the last remaining person who’s still on his side.
Becca looks down at the body on the floor before turning toward Maeve. “I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t want this to happen.” She pauses. “I meant to kill you.”
Maeve moves closer to me, reaching for my hand with hers. It’s warm. It’s safe. For an instant—just an instant—I forget Eva. Then, no sooner than it came, the feeling is gone.
“So do we just keep going?” I ask, my voice shredding. “Do you want to keep killing each other?”
Benji looks down at the body on the floor, and Becca follows, standing motionless. Thunder growls outside, shaking the windowpanes.
Before I can answer my own question, I feel something hot on my shoulder, small and spreading like flame. Maybe this is the pain I deserve, finally arriving, a few minutes too late. But as I look up at the ceiling, my breath catches in my throat. When I see the crack forming and growing by the second, paint chipping and falling as the roof caves, I grab Maeve’s hand, lacing my fingers through hers. The entire room creaks from the force of the raging Storm. Acid rain has started dripping down from the ceiling, splashing violently onto the worn floors. We need to get out of here.
Now.
Without saying a word, I rush down the stairs, pulling Maeve behind me, my nails gripping her forearm and creating half-moons in her skin. She doesn’t fight it, following blindly as her feet trip over each other. But Benji doesn’t follow, Becca still at his side, rooted to the ground. He hesitates, seeming to wonder whether to abandon his last remaining ally.
I think of Becca, who seems still filled with anger and about to detonate, a thousand thoughts whizzing through her brain. It would be easier to say nothing and solve one of my problems without doing anything at all, but too many people have died today. We don’t need more bodies.
“Get out of there now,” I bellow up at Benji, praying he can hear me over the sound of thunder that looms outside. I don’t have to tell him twice.
He reaches for Becca, hair flying as he pivots and makes his way through the door. Although she tries to resist, her husk of a body is no match for Benji’s survival instinct, her knees bending and following as if on autopilot. He drags her down the stairs after us, feet thudding against each step, just barely out of the apartment as the ceiling buckles and the rain rushes in.