Chapter 19

19

Naomi collapses back into the snow, wheezing. I shift to my knees, staring at the rabbit carcass, at the tiny pile of innards beside it.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She wipes her mouth with her sleeve, then cries out, “I ruined my favorite jacket.”

She’s serious about the jacket. She’s had it since high school. She loves that thing.

“You can get it dry-cleaned,” I say.

“It’s your birthday. I ruined your birthday.”

“Honestly, I was dreading my birthday. I was freaking out about getting older,” I say. “Now it doesn’t seem so bad. I’d be so lucky to grow old.”

She doesn’t have anything to say to that. She gets on all fours and takes a shallow breath.

“You need help getting up?” I ask her.

Somewhere behind me, a twig snaps.

Her eyes dart over my shoulder, and she’s on her feet.

“What?” I ask, turning around just in time to see someone slip behind a tree, too slow to hide, and too smelly to be discreet. Whoever it is, they reek of weed.

I remember the second set of footprints.

I turn back to Naomi. She’s covered in blood. There’s a dead animal between us, in plain sight. What a scene to happen upon. I don’t blame the person for hiding.

Do we run? Hope they didn’t get a good enough look at us? Is it illegal to eat live rabbits in the woods? Would we get in trouble? Kicked out of our cottage? Reported to the police or to the wildlife authorities? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Naomi’s expression alerts me to the fact that I’m asking the wrong questions, worrying about the wrong things.

She’s past me; she’s at the tree; she’s pulling the person out.

It’s the porter. Michael. No, Matthew. He wears his dorky uniform under a North Face fleece. Naomi’s got him pinned to the tree, with her hand clamped over his mouth. She bounces his head off the trunk, and it hits with a loud crack . He’s out.

“Naomi! Stop!”

I know she won’t. Naomi always gets what she wants. She doesn’t ask for permission or consider the consequences. She reaches out and takes it.

I watch her eyes go wild again—chillingly savage. I watch her jaw open wide, too wide. I watch her push up the boy’s sleeve and bite down on his wrist.

I clench my jaw tight, so tight that I might grind my teeth to dust.

I watch her drink. I watch the ferocity fade, replaced with satisfaction.

I watch his other arm hang limp. Available.

I know I won’t. Because I don’t let myself get what I want. Because I’d rather starve than feast. Because I’m scared. I’m too scared.

“Stop! You’ll kill him!”

Naomi lets her head back, coming up for air, letting the porter crumple. He’s a heap of limbs. There’s a crescent moon of crimson holes on his wrist. Naomi’s tooth marks. He’s bleeding out of them. He’s going to keep bleeding. Keep spilling.

“Damn,” Naomi says, licking her lips. “It tastes so fucking good.”

I can’t keep looking at the blood. I can’t keep smelling it.

It smells briny. Like the sweat on the back of a lover’s neck. Like your shoulder when you come out of the ocean, which you lick when no one’s looking. Like the lightning-charred air from a summer storm. Like the quiet moments when you feel most alive. An elusive aroma.

And he’s at my feet now. I’m above him.

If he’d bothered to look at me when he met me, would he have thought I was capable of this? I was so preoccupied lamenting my invisibility as a woman getting older, I didn’t realize it could be weaponized. I didn’t realize it’s part of our power, no one thinking we have any.

I’m in the snow, coiled up next to him. I’m thirsty.

Another decision. Another thing I can’t come back from.

His bleeding wrist so close to my lips. My teeth. My tongue.

“Have some,” Naomi says. “You don’t need much. Just enough. Just enough…”

I take my first sip. It’s even better than I remembered, than I imagined it would be. It’s better than anything. My tongue starts to dance, now fluent in joy. I flood my throat with gold and my head with sweet emptiness. There are tiny stars where my worries once were. Pretty colors in place of bad memories. I’m brand-new.

And I might stay this way forever, silly with bliss, if I couldn’t hear his heart beating. If I couldn’t hear it getting weaker as I steal what’s most precious.

Before I can change my mind, I pull away. I rip the sleeve of his uniform and wrap the scrap of fabric tightly around his wrist to stop the bleeding. I prop him up against the tree, his arm up above his head.

He looks a little pale, but it’s not dire.

“Do you think we could leave him here?” I ask Naomi. I check the pockets of his fleece. “He has his phone. He might be concussed, but…”

Naomi stands in the middle of the clearing, continuously licking her lips, breathing heavily. She’s a mess.

“Should we go get our stuff and leave and then call nine-one-one anonymously?” I ask. “Are there anonymous calls anymore? Should one of us stay with him in case he wakes up, to…I don’t know. Shit. We’re going to need the valet for my car. I think he’s the valet.”

“I’ll watch him. I’ll stay,” she says, with a zealousness that stomps out the remaining glimmers of my blood-sipping serenity. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Look at me.”

“I can stay with him. I can stay….”

“Naomi.” I snap my fingers at her like an asshole. “Look at me.”

She struggles to make eye contact. She’s not breathing right.

I walk over to her and put my hands on her shoulders. “Hey! You’re not thinking straight.”

Her tongue sneaks out to the corner of her mouth, where there’s the tiniest speck of blood. “But he’s seen us. He knows. We can’t leave him alive.”

“Do you hear yourself right now?”

“I…”

“You love people, right? This isn’t you. You aren’t a killer.”

“I…Fuck,” Naomi says, sounding like herself again. “Ah, fuck . He’s still out?”

“Yeah,” I say. “You…”

“What?”

“You hit him pretty hard.”

She puts her head in her hands. “He was stoned.”

“Yeah. So?”

“I think…I think we’re high.”

“I’m not high,” I say. Only it’s been so long since I’ve been high, I don’t really remember what it’s like.

“Your eyes look funny.”

“Stop. Let me think.”

I almost suggest that she go inside and get our stuff and call reception for a valet, if there even is one who isn’t currently bleeding in the snow. Except I don’t trust her to be on her own. But I can’t leave her with Matthew. I also don’t want to risk leaving him alone, because what if he comes to and tells someone what he saw, what happened? What will we do then?

What if we’re arrested? What if Naomi’s bloodlust takes over and she attacks the police?

What if they shoot us? Will we die? And if we don’t die, will they turn us over to the government? Put us with the aliens?

And what if…what if I am high?

“We could get your car, and then, like…go,” she says.

“What about him?”

“He didn’t lose that much blood. He’s already making more,” she says. “Can’t you feel it? I can feel it. Like a…sixth sense. You know, I could— we could—probably have a little more. One for the road.”

“No,” I say.

“One sip.”

“No sips,” I say, sidestepping the rabbit corpse to grab her by the arm and drag her through the snow. I snap a branch off a tree and pull it behind us, covering our tracks.

“Look at you, Nature Lady,” Naomi says. I prefer her being stoned and goofy to her being bloodthirsty, but none of this is ideal.

And I can’t shake the sense that we’re being watched. That the trees have eyes, or that there are eyes peering out from behind them, or from above. We’re being spied on. There are witnesses to our crimes.

I look up, searching the sky for drones.

Does the Waterfront have cameras? Will they have security footage of us going into the woods, coming out? Will they be able to zoom in, see how bloody we are?

Am I being paranoid because I’m high, or am I justified in all this worry?

“We need to change before we leave,” I say. “No one can see us like this. We need to hurry.”

When we get to the edge of the woods, I ditch the branch and start walking backward, swiping my feet from side to side to disturb our footprints in the stretch from the woods to the cottage.

“This would be easier without all this fucking snow,” I mutter to myself. Naomi shuffles beside me, her mind elsewhere, on another planet.

“The taste,” she says. “Remember making lemonade? Hot summer day, cold lemonade. Pink. The pink kind. The pink taste…”

We make it to the cottage, and I nervously fumble the key twice before finally managing to get the door open.

“Go,” I tell Naomi. “Hurry.”

I lock the door behind us, like we’re being chased by monsters, which is stupid, because we are the monsters.