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“It’s a full moon tonight.”
Misty proclaimed it to the room, unprompted.
Everyone was still fatigued from their morning chores. They had a whole day of nothing ahead of them. Nat and Travis were still out. So was Shauna. Tai pretended she didn’t know what Shauna was doing, but she was sure everyone else had caught on by now. It didn’t take that long to ration out what little meat they had left. None of them were going to confront her about it.
“So what, Misty?”
It was Van, building the world’s shittiest house of cards on the table. Tai knocked it over on purpose, and Van scooted away from her and restarted without a glance. Her hands shook as she concentrated.
“Don’t any of you pay attention to the celestial bodies?” Misty asked in disbelief. “It means the veil is thinner.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Mari desperately wanted a nap, but it was a tall order with Misty fucking Quigley in the room.
“It means we can speak to the dead,” Misty said.
“How?” Tai asked flatly.
“Let’s make a Ouija board.”
The lack of motivation was palpable, but Tai saw Van fidgeting under the table.
“We tried that shit already,” Tai snapped. “And it went so well the first time, remember?”
Someone had to shut it down, and as usual, it fell to Tai.
“Will it work?” Van pointed her question at Lottie, who’d been staring out the frosty window with her elbow on the sill, waiting for Nat to come back.
Tai glanced furtively at Van, feeling betrayed. Why are you entertaining this?
Van’s eyes stayed fixed across the room, still avoiding her.
“I…I don’t know,” Lottie mumbled, clearing her throat. “I’ve never used one.”
“It won’t work,” Tai said definitively. She said it to the room, not to Van. “It’s a waste of time.”
Van decided to take it as a challenge.
“Well, I still have some burning questions for The Beyond. Maybe we dialed the wrong number last time.”
The eagerness flooded back into Misty’s face. Suddenly she was on her feet, running on jet fuel.
“What do you say, Mari?” Van rose from her stool. “Wanna help with some arts and crafts?”
“I don’t care,” Mari grumbled. She was lying on her side, faced away from them, her hood pulled over her eyes. “Whatever gets you to shut the fuck up.”
Akilah turned away where she sat, unwilling to be included or even perceived.
Van pried the backing off an old picture frame to use as a board, and Misty painted the letters on using nail polish scavenged from Lottie’s makeup bag. Van found a triangular piece of scrap wood for the planchet and spent the whole afternoon chiseling a hole into the center by hand. As Van worked, Tai held up the deck of cards, play with me, but Van didn’t give in, just eyed her steadily. I’m not off the deep end like you fucking think.
Tai thought Van looked through her like she was made of glass.
Shauna came in later that afternoon with meager portions of bear meat and said the Ouija board was a stupid fucking idea. Van made a face and kept carving the planchet on the floor. Tai got Shauna to sit down and play Rummy with her for a while. They didn’t speak or keep score, just scooped up cards and fanned them out on the table again and again in a quiet trance. Then something shifted in Shauna as the day grew thinner, and when the windows turned inky her waterlogged eyes wavered over the completed board as though the firelight had transformed it into something mystical, something with answers.
Tai was surprised to see Shauna join the circle, given her usual annoyance with Lottie’s fantasy bullshit, but even Tai couldn’t deny how things always felt worse when the sun went down, when the only thing that existed between them and oblivion was this squalid, stifling room. It fucked heavy with the mind, made thoughts grow too many edges. Maybe Shauna was just looking for another distraction.
“Lottie,” Misty called. “We need you.”
As Lottie and Shauna sat down, Nat and Travis came in, emptyhanded and freezing to the bone. Travis didn’t ask any questions, just sank into the circle across from Lottie, as though it was only natural to melt in with the others. Nat took one look at the board in the center of the circle and skirted away to the far side of the room, her face indifferent and gray. Nat wanted a cigarette more than anything. Lottie looked after her, distressed. Then she looked down at the rows of letters, at the miracle gel pink nail polish she’d stolen from the Wiskayok mall and never used.
“Are we ready then?”
Lottie sat at the head of the board, the conduit between yes and no. Misty, Van, Shauna and Travis drew in closer, waiting on her word.
“Everyone think of someone you’d like to speak to,” Lottie said.
“Can we call Judy Garland?” Misty asked excitedly.
“Shut up Misty, it doesn’t work like that,” Shauna snapped.
Misty’s face grew sour. “It was my idea, you know.”
“Um, it probably works better if you don’t say the name out loud,” Lottie said uncertainly.
Lottie shifted, sitting up taller, tucking her knees underneath.
“Just think about the person. Don’t say their name. Let them rise to the surface of your mind, as though they could be seeing through your eyes right now. Seeing through you. When we put our hands on the board, one of them will come through.”
Nat spat something shiny into her hand as Tai approached. Tai huddled on the floor across from Nat and cinched up her hoodie. It was colder over here.
“You’re okay with this shit?” Tai whispered tensely.
Nat nearly rolled her eyes as she looked towards the fire. “Personally, I don’t fuck with it. But just let them do it, Tai. It helps them deal.”
“It’s not healthy. It just gets everyone worked up on shit we can’t do anything about.”
“What part of this is healthy to you?”
Tai paused, leveling her bite with Nat’s. “The fresh mountain air.”
Nat chuckled quietly. The fresh mountain air was scarlet windburn on her cheeks. She’d had enough of it for the rest of her life.
“They’re going to think about shit anyway,” Nat said. “At least this gives them something to do.”
“A distraction.”
Nat pointed a finger and nodded. “Let them have their toys.”
“It’s a dangerous fucking toy,” Tai sighed. “Speaking of, what are you doing with that?”
Tai had just noticed that Nat still had the rifle slung across her back, its barrel extending out behind her brown roots like a horn.
“Nothing. Keeping it warm.” Nat removed the strap from her shoulder and placed the gun an arm’s length away from them. “There. That comfier for you?”
Tai regarded the gun solemnly. It used to be their lifeline, but it wasn’t worth much anymore.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something soon,” Nat offered. She sensed Tai’s despair, but the words still came out tepid, devoid of any reassurance.
Excited murmuring bubbled up around the board. All their arms spidered together around the planchet, their eyes ravening as it moved imperceptibly between consonants and vowels. Tai didn’t like the energy she felt jittering by the fire, growing like an ominous wave. Tai's stomach sank as Van let herself be caught in it, whatever it was, her gaze swallowing up the contour of every agonizing letter, never peeling away to meet Tai. Van felt as unreachable to Tai as when the wolf’s jagged maw snarled between them like fetid chaos, and Tai remembered seeing it from above at first, like an omniscient dream, how the screams from below twisted into laughter as they echoed up to where she perched
on the Ferris wheel I’m on the Ferris wheel
and Tai saw the wolf turning Van into gore like strange theater, and when she tried to jump down, she didn’t fall because her hair was still long and got caught in the spokes
branches
but Tai could have sworn she ran right down the tree instead, like something intangible was impelling her straight to Van.
Now that same part of her wanted Van to quit Lottie’s stupid fucking charade and take her upstairs, and there they could take out everything they were feeling on each other instead, take it out in the only way that didn’t hurt, give each other the only thing that didn’t feel like violence or make-believe.
But it didn’t happen, Van wouldn’t look at her, so Tai tipped back inward, searching for some other part of herself that was lost when she beat the wolf so far beyond the point of death that it was all blood and sinew, until it had no earthly shape, as though it would undo everything, bring Van back, bring the others back, bring them all back to States so Tai could make them lose to the other team that she didn’t even remember anymore so that they’d never end up here. She’d never feel the unbridled power rushing through her as she charged the ball up the field like a fucking tank, and Jackie wouldn’t score the winning goal that’d been so beautiful that it had left Tai in sheer awe of her. Instead, they’d cry on the bus ride home, feeling like they’d lost it all, but then they’d never have to find out who they really were.
Tai’s face was long when she turned back to Nat, like she was stuck in her own gravity. Her vision turned grainy and the small gaps between the floorboards all swam together. Tai was always spacing out like this, and every time she got the same hounded look on her face, like she was seeking something buried deep underground. Nat couldn’t let herself get lost like that. She had to stay grounded, because whenever she closed her eyes, she only saw the white nothingness of the snow, felt herself unstitching in its stupefying infinity.
“You know,” Nat resumed softly, trying to distract them both. “That’s who they should be trying to contact. Someone who can send a fat fucking moose to our door.”
“Or a…”
Tai stopped herself short of saying pizza. She blinked but didn’t look up from the floor. It was a pointless, childish thought, so she put it away. Not only that but talking about real food meant automatic shit bucket duty. She’d already had it twice in a row. Both times she took it in place of Van.
“Do you just love shit or what, babe?” Van had quipped earlier.
“No,” Tai muttered sorely, tying a bandana around her mouth as she went to get the bucket. “But you deal with enough of mine already.”
It was the only thing they’d said to each other all day.
“…or just one cigarette,” Nat said loftily. “I picked a really bad time to quit.”
Tai was spinning out again.
“Hey. Here.” Nat reached into her pocket and put a bullet in Tai’s hand.
Tai looked at her confused, curling her fingers around the small warm casing. Shoot myself? The idea didn’t seem so evocative. All her thoughts were washed out, too light to leave any lasting impression.
Nat fumbled in her other pocket, thumbing the twin of Tai’s bullet. She pulled it out, flashed it at Tai, and put it in her mouth.
“This hell hole is full of candy,” Nat said, pushing it to the corner of her cheek like chewing tobacco. “It’s weird, but it helps me. Just tasting something.”
“It’s not weird,” Tai whispered as she mirrored Nat.
The sharp tang of the bullet tasted just like her Nena’s silver ring. Tai had worn it on the plane for good luck. It was the only thing she’d brought from home that was unequivocally hers. Everything else was spread out where it was needed. Shauna had her good sweatpants, Akilah had her other scarf, and Van had damn near all her socks, because hers were full of holes before they even fucking crashed. Nothing they owned had an origin anymore, it was always here, ricocheting between them all like shrapnel, and unraveling a little at a time, then all at once, just like them.
Tai lost Nena’s ring. She couldn’t remember when, only that it was after everything had turned white. Maybe she’d been sleepwalking. It was out there somewhere, buried in the silent snow.
Maybe she swallowed it.
Tai forgot about Nat. The muscles in her neck grated as she watched Van search for Vicky on the board. Van tried so hard to hide how bad things had been at home, but Tai had been there on the worst day, when they walked into the house after school and Vicky was turning blue on the couch, all alone. Now Van must be thinking Vicky’s dead, there’s no way she’s still alive without me there to clean up after her, and Tai was pleading for Van’s eyes to break away, to find hers and just stop with the stupid board and take me upstairs and we could talk about it we could fucking talk—
“Can you tell us your name?” Lottie was speaking louder now.
“N…E…”
Tai heard the letters rising up from her friends in collective fervor, heard the rest before they finished spelling it out.
“…N…A.”
Tai was standing over them, livid flames reflecting from her eyes. Their hands decoupled from the planchet in twos, and Tai saw how easily it could have slid back and forth to spell the name by chance, but still, what were the odds? Van was the only one who knew Nena’s name, and Tai cried into Van’s chest after she lost Nena’s ring, even though it was just a thing, a small, tarnished piece of silver that could have been anyone’s. Van had been so patient, had held her for what felt like hours, and twice she told Mari to fuck off when she complained that Tai’s chores weren’t done. Van did all of that, just to go behind Tai’s back and say hey Lot, can you cure my girlfriend? She’s fucked in the head over this stupid ring, and Van still wouldn’t look at her, she could only manage to trace the weary outline of Tai's posture before tossing her eyes towards the fire, as though she’d rather burn them out than meet her gaze.
“Tai…” Lottie whispered, her dark eyes enrapt with her own invocation. “She’s here.”
“No. She is not.”
Tai felt the words breaking as they came out.
"Tai,” Lottie tugged on the frayed end of her joggers like a child, her face opaline under a sheen of sweat. “Just sit down for a minute, I swear—”
“No!”
But what if—
“This fucking game is over,” Tai declared, and then the board was burning, swept into the fire like yesterday’s newspaper.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Tai?” Shauna leapt at her, yelling. “How am I supposed to talk to Jackie now?”
No one had spoken her name in ages. It fell like an anvil where the board had been. Somehow, she was still at the center of everything.
Tai reeled. She felt like her legs were crumbling sand. Yet, she still had to be the voice of reason.
“You can’t talk to her, Shauna. She’s gone.”
Tai couldn’t keep anyone’s face glued on. They kept sloughing off, bleeding into the fire.
“You don’t know that, Tai,” Shauna snarled. “She could be out there.”
Tai disastrously miscalculated what patience she had left. Turned out, it was none. She started screaming.
“She’s not fucking OUT THERE Shauna, she’s in the fucking shed, like she’s been for weeks, like YOU have been for weeks, and—"
The ashen walls of the cabin vaulted end over end as Shauna slammed Tai backwards into the floor and smacked her across the mouth, knocking out the rest of the words before Tai could sharpen them. Tai made a fist, then the swell of Shauna’s belly overwhelmed her vision as Shauna spun back for another blow. Tai screwed her eyes shut and shielded her face instead, blood running over her teeth from the split seam in her lip, and as she grimaced it tore wider, because her lips were so dry, like fish scales left out in the sun. Shauna’s fist crashed into her again, then a third time, wild like shooting stars. Tai felt new blood erupt in her nose, cloying like the first time she’d ever jumped into the deep end at the community pool, and as it dripped into the back of her throat she thought it tasted good, fucking vital and honeyed, and something lurched awake in her, something rooted in the deepest, insectile part of her brain, detached from any illusion of control.
“Sh-Shauna,” Tai gulped under her heaving weight. St—”
Then Shauna was ripped aside, and in the next instant Van’s hands closed around her throat. Shauna gasped, and Mari came to life out of nowhere screaming Van stop, the baby! Nat rushed over to pry apart Van’s wordless chokehold—Jesus Christ Palmer—and Travis wrenched her away just as Van realized what she was doing, and her eyes went wide as she toppled backwards into a stool, wood filing against wood. She stayed sprawled out on the floor, breathing heavily, her face contorted in shock. Shauna squirmed away towards the bed pile, gasping raggedly and Akilah rocked back and forth at the other end of the tattered quilt, crying. Lottie was still on the floor, rocking like Akilah with her head squeezed between her hands, chanting
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry as Natalie gaped down at her like she was a stranger.
Misty watched by the crackling fire, awestruck.
The scene clipped into Tai’s awareness like uneven gears, and it was too much, too tangled, so she staggered to her feet and out the door. The cold enveloped her like a dive, and she dumped herself over the porch onto the frozen ground, her arms doubled under her chest as she spat thick beads of blood into the snow, making abstract art, an inverted constellation. The wind snatched the plume of her breath and needled her face, and she heard the labored creak of the meat shed door as it swung open on its ancient hinges and clattered against the siding. When Tai looked up Jackie was standing in the doorway, all her color drained except for shades of blue, the #9 blazing out from her chest in sickly, infected yellow. Her right leg was bowed out in that specific Jackie Taylor way—get to the point before I die of boredom—and she beckoned Tai to come over with her hand, the first two fingers gnawed to gristly stumps where Tai had bitten them off
or wanted to
and they had felt like alligator skin when Tai woke up with them in her mouth, thawed up to the second joint. Tai bit down and was startled by how easy it’d be to sever them, like baby carrots, and she gagged as the bile rocketed up her throat. She stumbled out of the shed into the powdery sunrise, shoveling snow into her mouth to wash it out, to freeze out the leathery texture of Jackie’s dead flesh. When Tai stumbled back to bed with ice glittering in her hair Van whispered what happened? and Tai said you have to tie it tighter from now on
and now Jackie crawled back up Tai’s throat, a fingernail’s edge each time she waved her disfigured hand, and there was no presence behind her pallid face, just the spastic movement, caught somewhere between living and porcelain. Tai buried her face in the snow, pleading for it to erase Jackie again like it had when they found her frozen outside, and when it felt like the ice would drown her, Tai dared to look up a second time.
Jackie was gone.
The shed door still hung open, its lopsided threshold framing an opaque darkness. Tai didn’t believe her eyes, so she scrambled towards the shed, half-bent against the howling wind, her feet turning into cinderblocks as the snowfall seeped through her socks.
Tai saw Jackie’s silhouette, fixed and silent, but she couldn’t see her face, didn’t want to see it. Tai looked up at a murky corner of the ceiling and reached down into Jackie’s unyielding space, fumbling along the cold creases of her letterman jacket until she counted five fingers, then five more, all intact, all frost burned and bent at different angles, fused together.
Tai swallowed the itch in her throat and started to shuffle away, dreadfully persuaded that this was the real version of things.
Fuck you, Jackie.
If she said it out loud, it would have been a sob.
They were going to cremate her body tomorrow. Tai wasn’t taking no for an answer.
When Tai came back inside, the others were migrating to bed. There was nothing left to do. The sound of the door slamming made Akilah jump under the blankets. She hadn’t said a single thing to anyone in three days. Tai made another mental note to check on her, but it kept bleeding out of her memory like watercolors.
Shauna was sitting up, her journal propped on the blanket heaped over her knees. Her eyes rattled away from the pages when the door closed and they landed on Tai, tumbling over all the marks she’d made. Shauna’s expression was wounded, nearly begging. Tai returned something heavy but not bitter. By now they all knew what faces to make, how to bury things without words.
Tai went up to the attic where Van was waiting for her in the candlelight. Tai left wet footprints as she approached their threadbare pallet. She lowered herself slowly, still dizzy from the volley of Shauna’s fist, the aftershock throbbing dully at the bridge of her nose. Tai peeled off her wet socks as Van scanned over the damage on her face. Van dipped a rag into a mug of hot water and blotted away the caked blood. Tai didn’t wince. Her face was still frozen from being out in the night.
Van started tying the rope. They’d found ways to laugh about it the first few times.
“Come on, do it,” Van had insisted, the tendons in her wrist jutting out like violin strings as she held it up to Tai. “You’re telling me you didn’t get the knot tying badge? Big overachiever like you?”
Tai took the rope in her hand and started turning it. “No, I was too busy learning how to eat pussy.”
Van was blindsided by her sudden humor, laughing loud enough to wake the others downstairs. Tai splashed a frigid hand over her mouth to shut her up, but then she was laughing too, and just in the fleeting space of their quickened breath they forgot where they were, what they were doing.
But that was the first time. It wasn’t funny anymore.
Van mouthed the number of loops as she folded the prickly fibers over Tai’s wrist. Then Tai performed the same sequence on her, distant and clinical. It had to be tight enough to barely fit a finger under. It didn’t matter. Either way they woke up numb. They took turns sipping the hot water until it was gone, then Van blew out the candle. It smelled like burnt crayons.
When they laid down, Van reached around, the rope snaking between them as she pressed her bound hand into Tai. She tapped against Tai’s chest three times with her thumb. They didn’t have to use their code up here, but sometimes it was easier. Tai wrapped her hand over Van’s and tapped back two times.
We’re good.
They had to be.