Chapter 15
I call Dee from the car, sobbing as I weave through city traffic. I can barely cough up the words.
“I can’t come home! I can’t come home.”
“T, take a breath! What are you talking about?”
“How was I this wrong? How did I not know?”
“What happened?”
“I thought he— ” I am struggling to articulate anything.
My brain feels broken. “I thought he was good. I thought he was . . . was at least just a person!”
“Who? Did someone hurt you? Who were you with? I thought it was Alice!”
“No, no, I lied. I’m a liar. Always have to lie.”
“Did a man hurt you?” Her voice tightens. “Do I need to call the police?”
I laugh hysterically, more a frantic bark. “The police! What the fuck would they do? No, he didn’t hurt me. Yet. He’s going to. Going to try!”
“Whoa. Who is going to try?”
“Joel!”
“Joel?” She sounds incredulous. “T! Do you have any water you can drink? Are you driving right now? I’m worried about you!”
I glance down. My water bottle is there in the cup holder.
I shake it—it’s empty. “Fuck,” I mumble.
And then there’s a beep and my phone has powered down.
I screech, scrabbling for the charge cord.
Nothing can work. Nothing can be even a little bit okay.
The phone shimmies out of my grasp, dives into the crack between my seat and the center console.
I scream at the top of my lungs.
I am screaming and crying and stuck in traffic entering the Holland Tunnel and nothing will ever be okay again.
And then eventually, because time—that relentless fucker—never takes a break even for a second, I’m on the turnpike doing ninety and my throat hurts and I can’t scream anymore. My brain has churned itself in a thousand circles and now is stumbling to its knees.
I am realizing that maybe I can’t tell Dee the truth.
When I wasn’t sure if I would make it, when I didn’t know what the point was, telling Dee the truth saved me.
But for all her generous listening and sisterly compassion, she didn’t believe me.
And if I tell her that Joel is a killer, that he is a murderous mythical hunter of my kind, what will she hear?
What does that sound like to someone who doesn’t believe in terrible hereditary curses?
There has to be a line, even for Dee. A line that, when crossed, suggests that the person who has crossed it should no longer be in charge of your child’s upbringing.
If I make it out of this alive, I need to think about Ella. About what I’ve built.
“Think,” I whisper to myself, slapping the steering wheel. “Think!”
Smokestacks in the sprawling postapocalyptic industrial complexes on either side of the highway whiz by in a blur of toxic fumes. Small bursts of open flame make little streaks in my peripheral vision, belches from the belly of hell.
I was right, in what I shouted on the phone to Dee. Even though Joel won’t hurt my family—will he hurt my family?—I can’t go home. I can’t let him hunt me down, whatever that looks like, in front of Ella.
I’ll just stop in to get some clothes and tell Dee . . . something. That I’m hitting a rough patch with my depression and need to take some mental health days? Shit. I’ve already said too much. Now I need to backpedal.
My exit flashes up on the right. I take it like a stunt driver. There’s a sound from behind me like automatic gunfire, but clunkier, and I yelp. Ella’s long-forgotten bucket of chalk is shooting its contents against the door. I am under attack from inside my own car, from inside my own life.
Thank God Ella is asleep when I get home. Mom is out. Dee is agitated. She hugs me and I think I will cry all over again, but then, surprisingly, I don’t. I seem to have run out of tears.
“I need to leave. Just for a little,” I say.
And then I launch into the story I composed in the car: I saw Joel, I found out he’d lied to me about being single.
He’s still in a relationship. He swore he’s breaking it off.
I’d finally felt like I’d found my perfect man, I was considering breaking my vow for him, and of course it was all for nothing.
Lying is easier than it should be. It isn’t just that I know Dee can’t possibly process the horrible truth.
As I speak, I understand that I am ashamed.
I am bitterly ashamed of my own foolishness.
Because, of course, there’s some truth mixed into what I’m telling her.
The agony of falling in love with Joel and never being able to have him.
That is real. Was real. I truly felt that way for a man who wants to kill me.
A man who killed my only ally, my baby brother.
“I’ll take off from work,” Dee says. “We can all go away for a little. We’ll just get on a plane. Get some space.”
“No. Just me. I’m sorry I’m leaving you with Ella. Maybe Mom can— ”
“We’ll all go,” she says, firmer this time. “We’re a family. Mom can watch Ella for once in her life. We’ll stay in a hotel for a few days. Will that make you feel better?”
I don’t know. I don’t know anything at the moment.
I’ve trailed after her into the kitchen, where she’s pulling things out of the freezer. Ice cream, frozen cookie dough, a burrito. “Does it have to be tonight?”
“Yes. I’m worried he’s going to . . . come over.”
“I won’t let him in!”
You won’t be able to stop him, I think, picturing Joel’s formerly appealing frame, the breadth of his chest, the heavy muscles. I wish for a second that we had a gun.
“Dee. Just let me go by myself.”
“We’re all going.” Her tone is final. “How about that stupid water park hotel—what’s it called? SplashVille? SplashTown?—remember we talked about taking Ella there?”
When is next time? I text Joel. This is a perk of being in close contact with the man who wants to kill you.
But he doesn’t answer.
I’m gathering Ella’s stuff, putting bags by the door. Mom is out and so far unreachable. Dee is eating the burrito really quickly. “Ow, fuck, that’s hot,” she says. “I didn’t eat dinner. Who are you texting?”
“Alice.” The lies are flowing freely.
I write: You know I’m the only one in my family who is like this right?
You seem like a totally shitty demon hunter since you didn’t even figure out it was me.
So maybe you don’t know. Stay away from my family.
They are completely innocent and have never hurt anyone and you really need to believe me about that.
And then: They’re all related to me through my father.
The Dows. It feels faintly odd, referring to Dick Face as my father, even through the storm of my more relevant feelings.
I didn’t know until FL. Do you understand that my family isn’t involved?
They’re related to me through my mom. They’re just regular people.
He doesn’t respond.
My father will hunt you down if I die, I write, feeling utterly alone. He’s some kind of demigod.
Okay, that could have been more threatening. But at least “demigod” sounds better than “super old hypnotist.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mom gets home really high. The yoga club doubles as a weed club, and Mom doesn’t count pot as a drug. Dee is yelling at her as she wafts through the door, beaded necklaces swinging in long loops.
“What? Why are we going?” Mom is bewildered. “It’s a beautiful night!”
It’s a bumpy transition to the car, Ella crying in confusion, but then the caramel-flavored NPR voice of the storyteller on her folktale podcast is intoning: “The banker had taken all of their money! Michael, the youngest—and cleverest—son of the humble tailor, had to come up with a plan,” and Ella curls against me in the back seat.
I am brilliant for somehow remembering the purple iPad and charger.
Ten mom points! Not that saving them up ever gets me anything good. Not that I’m an actual mom.
My own mother is up front, trying to tell us about tonight’s tarot reading and how this period of unease was predicted by her friend Tammy.
No one has explained to her what the unease is about, exactly, but she’s sure it has something to do with Dee’s refusal to go on that low-acid/high-alkaline diet she suggested.
* * *
It’s 11:17 PM.
I’m standing between one of the beds and the single chair crammed against a small desk in the hotel room I’m sharing with Mom.
Dee has talked her way into a two-room reservation at SplashPalace, only thirty minutes from home, just over the Pennsylvania border.
I’m pretty sure Molly’s whole family contracted a weeklong norovirus here not too long ago.
I’m also pretty sure Joel won’t think to track me here for the purpose of killing me among the vacationing children on their bobbing rainbow inner tubes.
There are photos on the walls of waterslides and ice cream and someone in an inexplicable giraffe costume with a lopsided giraffey grin.
Mom is on the phone in the bathroom, loudly explaining to Barry that she feels like he isn’t handling his stress well.
“You aren’t fully present in the moment with me,” she tells him.
“I need you to be fully present. In the moment. Which is all we have, Barry. Do you agree with that?”
I have already posted on the Discord server Grub set up, looking away from the messages about his death.
I gave Joel’s name, a description of his appearance that says nothing about how beautiful he is, and Dick Face’s advice: Strike first. Use your power, even if you’ve been running away from it your whole life.
(Which they haven’t, let’s be real. That was just Grub.
And me, once.) I also gave a quick overview of Dick Face’s version of reality and asked everyone if they have a missing bio dad.
Then I sent a flurry of private messages, shared the screen name Joel used, warned everyone not to post publicly, warned them he’s watching.
I don’t know how much good any of this will do. No one is in the area. The people who Grub IDed as victims weren’t on here, as far as I know. Which means Joel found them somewhere else.