Page 89 of She’s a Doll

No, I thought before I could stop myself. But do it anyway.

She ripped my head off my moldy, broken fabric body, ran glue around my neck, and stuck me down onto the metal plate. For a few sickening moments I felt myself fade out of my old porcelain limbs and wondered if we’d fucked up, if I wouldn’t be able to possess the metal the way I had the porcelain, fabric, and wood. But once the glue started to dry, I felt myself spill out into the long, spindly metal legs, the nut-and-bolt joints, and the sturdy, square claws.

She watched as I shivered and jerked to life, stumbling and staggering, clanking and squeaking. I didn’t need a mirror to know what I looked like. A cracked porcelain head glued onto a mechanical spider.

Fit check? I asked anyway.

“Honestly? I know this is probably the IKEA effect talking, but . . .” Nicola’s smile was slow and toothy. “You look killer, Lu.”

30

It ended the same way it began. With a phone call.

I didn’t have Kyle’s number. I didn’t need it. His family’s business, Lawson Quarry, had a website with a 1-800 on the Contact Us page. I memorized it, singing out the digits in my head over and over again, an off-key jingle, while Nicola watched on, chewing unhappily at her thumbnail.

After she’d glued my head onto my new body, we’d talked about the idea of calling Kyle again. It had been a long conversation, but only because we’d kept cycling through the same points, like a ball in a pinball machine, pinging constantly back and forth, back and forth. She wanted me to go with her, I didn’t want to go. She was scared, I was scared. She trusted me, but she still didn’t want to be apart from me, and I trusted her, but I needed to do this. In the end, that was what it always came back to.

I was a ghost . . . and I wasn’t done haunting Kyle.

Not yet.

And so she’d done what she’d said she would do. She’d bought me my own phone, and, as promised, it was crummy. A flip phone with a large, chunky number pad, a square screen, and countable pixels. But that was OK. Actually, it was great. It was a relief to know I wouldn’t have to try and work a touch screen with my new metal crab claws.

One eight double oh, I sang to myself as I dialed in the number. That murdering freak has got to go.

“You sure about this?” That had been the last thing Nicola said to me before leaving. She’d been about to go pick up Ginger and drive to Sydney to meet Sandy Brown, a journey that would take hours. “You can still come with, you know.”

Three one six three, I’d replied. I won’t forget what he did to me.

She’d left . . . and I’d waited a full five minutes before wriggling out of the cat flap and making my way here.

The mall construction site.

That was the part I hadn’t told Nicola about. I knew that if I told her I was leaving her house, she’d get anxious and upset all over again. But the more I thought about it, the surer I was that this was where I needed to be.

It was a long walk for someone with eight metal spider legs. It would’ve been daylight by the time I made it if the time stream hadn’t been so abnormally accommodating. It stayed gluey and gelatinous as I stumbled from block to block, across roads with cars that moved like glaciers, down footpaths filled with people frozen mid-stride. Finally, with the moon hanging fat and low overhead, I’d wriggled through the mesh fence into the mall’s construction site. I felt like I’d been walking for days, the bolts loose from exhaustion, my limbs as heavy as lead. But according to my phone, cradled in my crab claw, the journey had taken less than a minute.

Four nine double two. I finished the phone number and hit the flashing green call button. Kyle, I’m coming for you.

It started to ring, a digitized warble, harsh and high-pitched, that echoed around the construction site.

The dark, disorganized, dangerous construction site. It was the scariest place I could think of. The one place that had made me, the dead girl, cringe.

The moon had robbed those shadows of their depth and the rain had left muddy puddles, but otherwise, it was unchanged, the ground still pocked with open foundation holes, the equipment still scattered about.

I could see myself, spidery and strange, reflected in one of the puddles, ancient flip phone held in my claw, porcelain face cracked, coy smile bleached of color, but still there, still smiling.

I hoped this would work. It’d worked when I’d sent my message to Krissy. It’d worked when I’d tested it out with Nicola. I had no reason to assume it wouldn’t work now. All I had to do was focus my voice a little louder, push it into the universe a little harder, and demand to be heard. It wasn’t as easy as talking to Nicola, but I could do it.

The call connected with a pop of static.

“Hello,” a feminine voice answered. “This is Lawson Quarry. Brenda speaking.”

“Good evening, Brenda,” I responded in my best adequately competent business administrator voice. “This is Stacy James from Earnsway Construction Suppliers.” A fake name, a fake company. “I just got a call from one of our drivers. He’s got the shipment at the site now.”

“A . . . shipment?” Brenda repeated uncertainly. “To the quarry?”

“No. Our driver is at the construction site. The Deluxe Shopping Experience Center. Yes. I think that’s the name. Anyway, we’re ready to unload. It’s a thousand dollars an hour to have these materials on the flatbed. We did send notice that we’d be arriving today. Where’s your representative?”