I’ve finally gotten to the point with running where I don’t labor over it so much, where I don’t have to think the whole time Keep going, keep going, you’ve got this. Isn’t it funny that I’ve mastered this right as I’m about to give up on everything else? I think it’s funny. Not funny ha-ha or funny weird. Funny like OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK.

Betchyer gonna come chill with me up in my room and tell me all about your audition!

Sigh.

Crunch, crunch, crunch. My feet sound so good on the dirt. My breath is beautiful against the cool, still air. It smells so clean out here, so crisp and earthy. Palm fronds reach out into the path, brush my arms as I whisk by, and I feel they’re cheering me on like the spectators along a race course who slap hands with the runners as they pass. That’s nice, isn’t it, that thing that happens during a race? Once when I was little, back when our family was still “perfect,” we went to Disney World without realizing it was the day of the Disney Princess Marathon. I was little and didn’t understand all the commotion, why we had to wait at the ropes before we could cross over to Tomorrowland to ride Space Mountain. I looked up at my mom, who’d extended her arm out over the ropes to slap hands with the sweaty, exhausted runners as they flew by. She had tears in her eyes.

“Why are you crying?” I asked, worried.

She shook her head, her nostrils flaring with the effort of holding back tears, but her whole face was pink. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just so amazing. Can you feel the energy?”

I can feel it now. I’m all by myself in the woods, but I can feel it. It’s under the ground and in the trees and in the air, and of course in the palm fronds as they slap my shoulders when I run past under the bright afternoon sun, encouraging me and pushing me forward.

You can do this.

The river is up ahead already—it seems like I’ve gotten here much quicker than usual. I wonder if it has to do with the energy being different today, or maybe I’m imagining that too. Maybe I am just too confident in myself right now.

I slow as I reach the ledge that leads down to the water, my legs shuddering to a stop. Once I’m no longer moving, the silence of the woods is magnified, the little bird calls and critter scamperings punctuated only by my thick inhales and exhales.

Without thinking, I disrobe. I want to go in the water one last time. I think those words, one last time, and my heart crumples so fast and so hard that my whole body rumbles and quakes and my knees almost give out. It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

I make my way down the slippery embankment to the edge of the water and notice something smells…off. A skunk? I wrinkle my nose and look around, and on my second sweep of the water, I locate the source of the smell: a hulking lump, maybe fifteen feet to my left and wedged awkwardly between the mangrove knees, half in and half out of the water. Gray and scratchy and hacked up. A dead manatee.

My understanding is realized in stages. Stage one: I am angry at whoever would dare bring a motorboat into this shallow little bend in the river at speeds high enough to do that kind of damage. Stage two is that I am suddenly, painfully conscious of my nudity. I try to cover myself with my hands, jerking my head left and right checking for an audience, but not relaxing even after I’m sure I’m alone. Then comes stage three, the recognition that a boat is not responsible for the carnage before me.

The wounds aren’t random enough.

I’m a balloon, a great, inflated pillow of air, and someone has just poked a hole in the bottom of me, and now I am draining, deflating, sinking, falling. My naked bottom hits the ground with a splat as the breath whooshes out of me.

That beautiful creature. That perfect, gentle beast, with its thick, elephant-like skin…my god, slicing through that flesh must have been a fight. My lungs are spasming, struggling to take air.

What a waste. What a terrible, senseless waste of life. This isn’t fair. This isn’t right. I push myself back up to standing, my breath still wheezing out of me in rough little bursts, my heart surging in my chest. I need to see.

Still naked, I make my way through the cold, murky water, stepping over mangroves and the limbs of downed trees on the side of the waterway. A flapping sound from above startles me and I gasp, look up to see a heron flying away overhead.

I gather myself and step closer, fear nearly strangling me as I inch toward the carcass. I’m feet away now, close enough to see the extent of the damage, the gory holes where its eyes should be, the deep, violent wounds around the creature’s thick neck, and I try to fathom the cold determination required to pierce through that tough, dense hide. Maybe the eyes went first, as a way of disabling the poor animal.

I want to touch him, to lay my body over his in a great big hug and tell him I’m sorry he had to suffer. He was beautiful, majestic, and deserving of life, strong and graceful and trusting. I think of how the manatees accepted Garrett and me into their midst, how they brushed lightly against us as if in greeting. This innocent creature has been exposed to such darkness. This is not how things are supposed to be.

I climb out and sit in the dirt before the sunshine-speckled water, lay my head in my arms and sob, a deep, mournful wailing that I feel all the way to my core.

This is not how things are supposed to be.

This…is not…how things…

I lift my head. Look around. My breathing is slower, but heavier, more viscous. Fear crawls over me, squeezes me by the throat, injects itself into my bones. Hurry. I’m scrambling now, urgent for cover, tripping over a branch and splashing on my hands and knees in the cold water but then hopping right back up and scurrying over the sloping embankment for my clothes.

Fumbling fingers, damn fumbling fingers—hurry—I need to get back. I need to see Rome. I’ll tell him about my red water visions, my blade-meets-vein fantasies, and he’ll help me. It will drain away, this courage built on fear, built on anger—drain and vanish and I will go right back to where I was before. I need to find Rome. And Liza. I’ll tell her, too. She needs to know.

I pull my shorts up, jerk my sports bra on. Little squeaks escape me like I’m a tiny, scared rodent, running uphill from a flood, in search of higher ground. Hurry.

I’ll go straight to Rome’s. Maybe we’ll go to the police, too. I know, as surely as I know my cello—my cello—is made of wood, that this is a moment of clarity, and all the other moments leading up to it have been clouded with a terrible, truthless plague of doubt and insecurity and self-loathing.

You can’t touch me like that.

My mother would want better for me. My mother would not blame me.

I jam my feet into my socks and look again at the manatee, just a glance, to remind myself of what could be. To bolster my indignation. I picture myself submerged in a bathtub full of blood, just like that poor manatee, a life cut short.

It’s just so amazing. Can you feel the energy?

Yeah. I can.

I’ve got one shoe in my hand, ready to pull it on, when I look up and see Garrett standing not ten feet away from me and almost leap out of my skin. I squeak again, scared little rodent that I am.

His face is neutral, but his gaze roams past me, searching, assessing…landing on the body of the manatee, then shifting back to me. Calculating now.

By his side, from his right hand, dangles the silvery blade of a knife. My knife.

A tiny bit of urine leaks out of me, and crazily, I yawn. I’m not bored by him, for fuck’s sake. I’m stiff everywhere. Coiling or shutting down, I don’t know.

He smiles.

I stand up, fast, like it isn’t my legs that power me upward, but some invisible hand yanking me to my feet. I have to think. Think.

“I wanted to do it in the bathtub,” I tell him, my voice tremulous and small, reminding me of Liza’s mousy voice from my perfect family memory. But it wasn’t perfect, really—there was always that window at my back, that obsidian glass with its persistent, slow-pulsing wickedness. And I’m facing it now, looking right at it, staring past my own reflection at the unknowable horrors that lie on the other side. “The bathtub,” I say again. “With the red water. That’s how I imagined it would be.”

“You’re speaking in past tense, Malory.”

Run.

There’s no trail this way, but what choice do I have? He’s blocking the path. I’ll have to double back in a bit so I don’t get lost, but holy shit I’m fucked if he catches me. This guy is a fucking runner.

But so am I.

No shoes, just socks, but I’ve got no choice—I spring off through the palmettos like a gazelle, spurred by a rush of adrenaline that lights my muscles on fire. I have only a vague sense of the underbrush, savage as knives against my shins and calves, or of the living things skittering away from me. My muscles, all of my body is being taxed to its limit, and I barely notice.

Run.

I don’t look behind me. Looking backward is illogical because it would slow me down, and knowing how close Garrett is won’t help. He’s either got me or he doesn’t. There is no in between.

So I plow forward through the bushes, dodging around trees or more densely packed palmettos to find a way through. My feet are being sliced open, I’m stepping on very sharp things, but, again, these details are incidental and somehow I don’t feel the pain.

RUN.

I do.

But I need to double back or I’m going to get lost. The path is to my left. I’m scanning ahead, thinking, deciding, and then BOOM to the back of my head, fuck, I’m falling, shit, where did the world go, onto my hands and knees on a layer of pine needles. Garrett. Fuck. I flip myself and kick, making purchase with his shin, and he grunts but comes down on me, just falls right the fuck on top of me. He’s desperate, clawing my arms, grabbing my hair, and he won’t let me go, not now, not ever, and this was always the plan, for me to go crashing through the obsidian glass.

I elbow him in the face, a really good FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKER blow right to the nose and he says, “You little cunt!” and drops the knife. I’m supposed to grab it but I realize that too late because in my head there is only RUN, and before my brain can create coherent thought I’m already out and away and back on my feet. Running.

And Garrett is behind me.

I see the path up ahead. I’m almost there, almost, almost, but then he shoves me from behind again, knocking the wind out of me and shit, he really is quite a lot faster than I am.

I turn and kick, but now he expects it and I miss, and he throws himself on top of me again and now I’m screaming “Wait, wait, wait! Please!” and miraculously…he does wait.

“Please,” I beg again, trying to quiet my breath. “This is just…not how I pictured it. Please. Give me a minute.”

He jams a forearm into my throat, and I think he’s going to snap my neck, crush my windpipe, just like that. “You said you were going to come over after your audition,” he says. “You’re a liar.”

“One more run. I wanted one more time to come out here…sit with myself in a quiet place. One more time to just…be alive.” My words are strangled. I’m not fighting him anymore, but he is still heavy on me, his arm buried in my neck, pressing downward.

“I knew I was going to have to do it myself,” he says. “I fucking knew it.”

“Fuck you, Garrett.” Rage, what little of it I’ve got left, comes burbling out. “You took everything from me and now you want to take this, too? Really, just fuck you.” It is a lackluster last gasp, fury choking on defeat.

“I didn’t take anything. You were a worthless whore when I found you. Too pretty for your own good, and the moment I first looked at you I could see by your shifty, sad eyes that you were damaged goods. I saw you twiddling your little fingers, just begging to be fucked with. And I was right. You were so easy. The easiest I’ve ever had.”

But then I see my mom, sunk down in the bathtub with the red water. I had no idea that she was planning to take herself away from us. How could I have missed it? If I’d been paying attention even a little, I would have known. I could have done something. Instead I defied my father, riled him, provoked a punishment that was both complete and irrevocable. I think of the manatee, the gory, carved-out holes where his eyes should have been, try to keep a picture of it in my head. But my indignation is slipping away. “It’s true, Garrett,” I hear myself saying. I’m worthless. “I don’t deserve to live.”

“Then why are you running from me? You seem pretty fucking determined not to die.”

Silent tears drip out of my eyes and down my temples into the dirt beneath my head. “Can’t I just have this one thing, Garrett? To die on my own terms?” The bathtub with the red water. It would be so poetic. Such a perfect cliché for an unoriginal girl like me.

“We can’t go back.” Matter-of-factly, like You should know this.

I’m crying harder now, and my sad little death fantasy is shifting and molding before my eyes. No red water, just…stains in the mud. Ugly and earthy and dirty, just like me. “Right here, then.”

His eyes narrow. He doesn’t trust me. “How?”

My heart rate explodes into a sprint, like it wants to squeeze in all its allotted beats in the next several moments before I finish this. “Just like I was going to do in the bathtub.” I pull my arms from underneath Garrett, a movement that feels natural, a movement that is allowed. He releases me then, and sits back a little, the knife clutched in his fist. My wrists are covered in mud, scratched up all over the place, but I don’t feel the sting. The other pain, the one that is unbearable, is less like a thing and more an absence of a thing, a yawning gorge of nothingness, a massive, sucking black hole, ready to suck me in and compact me into nothingness too.

There’s a rustling sound in the bushes nearby as something slithers away from us.

“When the paramedic saw my mom’s arms,” I tell Garrett, “he said, ‘Damn, that had to hurt.’ She’d sliced straight through the muscle, almost like she couldn’t feel the pain.” Because her other pain was unbearable. I imagine my own wrist opening up, the parting of flesh, the quick and final revelation of my fragility. Will the blood gush or pour or drip? How long will it take? Will the nerves around the cut become starved as my life leaks out of me, and will that hurt? How long before I lose consciousness, drift away?

I’m getting that sick, bad feeling, that wet-between-the-legs feeling I always get when Garrett reduces me to nothing. I lick my lips, and my accelerated breathing is no longer from fear; it’s from anticipation. And he can sense it. He knows.

I hold out my hand and watch as his eyes brighten and dim. Finally, after a few moments’ deliberation, he sets the knife in my open palm, with the blade tip facing him. My fingers close around the handle. My heart is slowing now, pounding its death march. I didn’t leave a note for Liza.

“Fuck,” I say. “I didn’t even think about how to do the other wrist.” What did my mom do? How could I not have thought this through? I really am a stupid, stupid girl. “Will you help me if I need it, with the other?”

He nods, his blue eyes serious. “Of course I will,” he says, as if I’ve just asked him to be my baby’s godfather.

I set the knife against my wrist and close my eyes. Liza. Mom. Rome. Daphne…fuck, will she be okay? Bethany. She’ll be fine.

“I really wanted that red water.”

The knife goes in, but not easily; there is resistance first, and then sinking, a deep sliding feeling, and the blood is seeping as if multiplying on itself, dripping, the color much darker than I expected. Garrett is gasping, like he can’t believe I’ve done it, and neither can I, until he pulls the knife from his stomach and swings it at me, gets me in the cheek. I feel nothing. I only know because I saw the blade come at me, saw the gleam of metal flash beneath my eye. But I know enough to—

The knife slips from his hands, thunks on the ground. He grabs for it, but I’m faster. The blade is warm and sticky with his blood.

RUN.

There is the trail, and I’m on it, fast, pounding the roots and sand and mud in my socked feet, still with the understanding that looking back would be futile. The only way is forward. And there is his hulking figure crashing down the path toward me and Jesus, Garrett really is some kind of fucked up Superman, because he’s managed to run ahead and double back on me, and he’s stabbing at me, but…no, not stabbing. Waving. Helping. “Rome!” I scream, and fall into his arms but I’m pulling at him, grasping at his clothes, strange animal sounds coming out of me.

“Run. Run!” I take off. Don’t look back, don’t look back.

Rome jogs a few steps with me, but then he grabs me by the arm, jerks me around so forcefully I almost slap him. “Where?” he demands, his voice sharp and urgent. “Where is he?”

I whip my head in all directions, frantic. Then I point. “Back there. I stabbed him instead of…I don’t know what happened.” I’m jumping up and down, pushing at Rome, trying to get him to run.

His eyes widen. “You…stabbed him? Is he…”

Dead? I fill in the last word in my head.

I glance down at myself, and Rome’s gaze follows mine. I look as if I’ve bathed in blood. I’m still holding the knife. “Jesus,” he says, and gently he takes the knife from me and moves back up the trail. “I’m going to check.”

“No.” I grab him by the arm. “Rome, no.”

“I want to make sure.”

I’m shaking all over now—hyperventilating. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh fuck.” I can’t get enough air.

“Listen, Malory.” He grips me by the shoulders again. The handle of the knife presses into my left shoulder. Somewhere high overhead, an aircraft buzzes through the clouds. “Malory…listen.”

I blink, try to focus, but my whole body is clattering like a sack of bones.

“He won’t stop.” Those earnest brown eyes. “You know that, right? He won’t ever stop. Not now that you know.”

I breathe deep, trying to steady myself. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. But it has to be me.”

“We’ll go together.”

“Give me the knife.”

For a second he looks like he might not give it to me—I can see by the hate in his eyes that he wants to do it himself. But finally he hands over the blade.

Still trembling, I pick my way back through the brush, listening for Garrett. Now that my breathing has slowed a little, he is not hard to hear. He is moaning, twigs are snapping, and there’s some lumbering movement like he’s staggering or dragging himself. I think I’ve injured him. Badly.

I find him on the ground a few feet from where I stabbed him, and there is a trail of blood, a great black stain on the earth behind his body. Dirty. He looks up at me, his eyes filled with tears, but not tears of sadness or hopelessness—tears of rage.

“Are you sure you can do it?” Rome asks.

I picture that poor, defenseless manatee lying dead among the mangroves, and a rush of fresh, warm anger wells up inside me. Garrett grunts and jerks, shoves himself up on one elbow—he’s still trying to propel himself toward me, still trying to dispose of me even as his own life dribbles out through the wound in his gut.

“I’m sure.”