Page 98 of Hell Bent

She slipped through the wall and down the hall to the living room. She saw Ariel on the couch in his undershorts. But she didn’t want to think about him or the things he’d done to her. The shame felt distant, like it belonged to someone else. That was okay. She liked that.

What was she waiting for? No one was going to speak for her; nothing was going to change. There would be no real goodbye, no sign she had ever been in the world. Her parents. God. Her parents would wake up to a call from the police or the morgue telling them that she’d been found in an alley. She was so sorry, so terribly sorry, but soon the guilt would be gone too, as if all that was left of her was a shrug.

Len and Betcha were fumbling with the apartment door while Alex cried, and Ariel said something. He laughed, a high-pitched giggle, and it was like being thrown back into her body, hearing him laugh as he pushed his way into her. This wasn’t supposed to be the end of it all.

Alex was staring at her. She could still see Hellie when no one else could. Hadn’t that always been the way with them?

But had Hellie ever really seen Alex?

Because now that she was looking, really looking at her, she could see Alex wasn’t just a girl with warm skin and a clever tongue and hair shiny as a mirror. A ring of blue fire glowed around her. Alex was a doorway, and through her, Hellie could see the stars.

Let me in. The thought comes from nowhere, a natural thing: She sees a door, and so she wishes to walk through it.

Alex hears her. Hellie knows this because Alex says, “Stay.”

Let me in. Is it a demand?

Alex extends her hand.

Hellie is ready. She is pouring into Alex. She is baptized in blue flame. The sorrow is gone and all she knows is how good the bat feels in her hand.

She is stepping out onto the field, and her teammates are chanting, “Give ’em hell, Hellie!” Her parents are in the stands, and they are beautiful, copper bright, and kind. This is the last moment she remembers before everything started going wrong and kept going wrong, when she still knew who she was.

She is standing at the plate in the sunshine. She knows how strong she is. There is no confusion in her, no pain. She flexes her gloved fingers over the handle of the bat, testing its weight. The pitcher is trying to give her eyes, psyche her out, and she laughs, because she’s that good, because no one and nothing can stop her.

“Do you get nervous?” her little sister asked once.

“Never,” Hellie said. “What is there to be nervous about?”

She doesn’t want to die. Not really. She just doesn’t want to feel anything anymore because everything feels bad. She wants to find her way back to this moment, to the sun, and the crowd, and the dream of her own potential. There is no worry about college or grades or the future. It will all come easy as it always has.

She shuffles her feet against the plate, tests her swing, the weight of the bat, watches the pitcher, sees the sweat on her brow, knows the girl is afraid.

Hellie sees the windup, the throw. She swings. The crack the bat makes when it connects with Len’s skull is perfect. She pictures his head sailing over the fence. Going. Going. Gone.

She could swing that bat all day. There is no regret, no sadness.

They swing the bat. They swing again. This is the way they say their goodbyes, and only when every last word has been spoken does she notice there’s a rabbit in the middle of the room, sitting on the blood-soaked carpet.

“Babbit Rabbit,” Hellie whispers. She picks him up, seeing the red smears her hands leave on his soft white sides. “I thought you were dead.”

“We’re all dead.”

For a second Hellie is sure the rabbit is speaking to her, but when she looks up, she sees Alex. The old living room at Ground Zero is gone, the blood, the bits of brain, the broken bat. Alex is standing in an orchard full of black trees. Hellie wants to warn her not to eat the fruit that grows on them, but she is already floating, fading away. Not even a shrug now. Going. Going.

27

Alex wasn’t sure what had happened. There was something warm and soft in her arms and she knew it was Babbit Rabbit. Hellie had— She had picked him up. Where was she? It was too dark to see and she couldn’t quite make sense of her thoughts. She went to her knees and heaved once, twice. Nothing came up but a mouthful of bile. A dim memory surfaced of Dawes telling her to fast.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to Babbit Rabbit.

But her arms were empty. He was gone.

He was never there, she told herself. Get your shit together.

But she’d felt him in her arms, warm and alive, his little body whole and safe as he was meant to be, as if she’d done her job and protected him from the start.

The ground felt soft beneath her hands, covered in damp, fallen leaves. She looked up and realized she was staring through the branches of a tree, many trees. She was in some kind of forest … no, an orchard, the branches black and glittering and heavily laden with fruit, its skin darkest purple. Where the peel had split, she saw red seeds that gleamed like jewels. Above, the sky was the plum of a bad bruise. She heard a soft humming and realized the trees were thick with golden bees tending to black hives high in the branches. I was Hellie. Hellie in death. Hellie at the plate. The misery of that night at Ground Zero clung to her like the smell of smoke. She’d never get free of it.