Slice of Cherry Read online

  “I’m trying to get a damn snow cone. Here.” Kit dug a few bills from the pocket of her leggings. “Now go on.”

  Fancy crumpled the money in her fist and set the dress bag on the driest bit of the ground she could find. “Promise you won’t—”

  “I’m not gone kill her,” Kit yelled, exasperated. “Now would you leave? Jesus. You act like you think I don’t have any self-control at all.”

  You don’t, Fancy could have said, but Kit was the oldest, and Franken had used up all of Fancy’s bargaining chips. The best Fancy could do was try to hurry back before any real damage was done.

  On her way back to the alley with the snow cones, as she carefully crossed back to Claudine at the corner away from the wreckage farther down the street, she saw Gabriel Turner. He was a tall, skinny boy with butterscotch-colored skin and long black braids that curled girlishly against his shoulders. Fancy usually didn’t notice boys the way Kit did, let alone remember their names, but even she knew who Gabriel was. His father had been Daddy’s last victim.

  Gabriel was standing in an empty parking space in front of a music store, the kind that sold instruments, with his black shirt tied around his bare shoulders like a cape. A line of golden saxophones gleamed in a display window behind him that was streaked with blood. Fancy wondered if Gabriel had put the blood on the window, since a similar streak decorated his bare chest. And because he was prodding a severed human head at his feet with a stick.

  “You don’t want any kisses from me, do you?”

  Fancy faltered, thinking he was talking to her. But Gabriel was staring down at the head, frowning at it. He startled her when he jabbed the stick through its eye—it made an unforgettably wet sound.

  “It’s too bad,” said Gabriel. He used the stick to raise the head to his face; he spoke into its ear. “Real monsters eat you from the inside out.”

  She edged around the bright blue car that was in her way so that she could get a better look at what insanity looked like, but before she could get close enough, Gabriel’s older brother, Ilan, came out of the store. He froze when he saw what Gabriel was holding, and then he grabbed his brother and slapped him across the face. Fancy was sure she saw pearls of blood arc through the air, it was that hard of a slap.

  Gabriel staggered back into the blue car and clapped his hand over his mouth. “What was that for?” he cried, his words muffled.

  Ilan kicked the severed head and sent it flying into the ruined street before he turned to glare at his brother. “It happened again!” He had a gravelly voice, like he spent all day screaming at the top of his lungs. At Gabriel, from the looks of it.

  Fancy got a good look at Gabriel then and saw not insanity, but fear and confusion in his eyes.

  And then pain as Ilan slapped him again, this time on the ear.

  Ilan was much darker than his brother, with none of his brother’s immature softness, but they both had the same light brown eyes. If not for the resemblance Fancy wouldn’t have believed they were really related. Kit would never have treated Fancy the way Ilan was treating his brother. “It’s gotta stop, Gabe,” he said.

  Gabriel pushed Ilan in the chest. “I don’t know how to make it stop! You act like there’s a switch I can turn on and off.” Gabriel crouched and hid his head in his hands. A customer walking out with a violin case nearly tripped over him.

  “I don’t wanna be like this,” Gabriel muttered, rubbing his thumb against the gold cross dangling from his neck like it was a lucky rabbit’s foot. “I’m trying so hard not to be like this.”

  “Try harder.” Ilan hauled Gabriel to his feet and gave him a shake. “You think I wanna chase after you my whole life? Cover for you?” Ilan let him go and looked up and down the street as if he wanted a taxi to drive by so he could hail it and take off, but taxis weren’t thick on the ground in Portero. Ilan turned to his brother, his face dark with resentment. “I shoulda strangled you the day Ma brought you home—we’d all be better off.”

  Gabriel stilled at Ilan’s words, his fist tightening around his cross as if he wanted to rip it off and whip Ilan across the face with it. Instead, Gabriel let go of the cross, unknotted his shirt, and pulled it on over his bloody chest.

  Both brothers wore tight, punk-rock clothes, but they didn’t really look the part—they seemed more wretched than rebellious. Ilan caught sight of Fancy standing and gaping at him and his brother, and the resentfulness seemed to leave him all at once. He wiped his hands on his jeans and sidled in front of Gabriel, as if hiding him from sight. “Got any wet wipes?” he asked her.

  Fancy’s reply was to run away from Ilan and his weirdo brother as fast as she could. When she made it back to the alley, bursting with gossip, the sight of the shopgirl sprawled on the ground at Kit’s feet—the puddles ruining her black silk dress—killed Fancy’s urge to speak.

  “Finally!” Kit yelled, grinning. Her face was spattered in blood; not much, but Fancy could have played connect-the-dots on it. “Is that pineapple?”

  “I knew it,” said Fancy as Kit took the snow cone from her. “All that talk about trust so you can stand out here in broad daylight and kill some stupid girl—”

  “She’s not dead.”

  Fancy checked the shopgirl’s pulse and, upon finding a strong, steady beat, released a huge breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  “I just smacked her upside the head a little.” Kit flipped the brick and caught it behind her back with one hand. “Kit Cordelle aka the Bludgeoner.”

  “Bludgeoner. Bonesaw Killer.” Fancy fished a wet wipe from her pocket, pushed back the newsboy cap, and cleaned Kit’s face, scrubbing harder than necessary. “I ain’t gone let you follow in Daddy’s footsteps.”

  Kit dodged the wet wipe long enough to take a bite of her snow cone. “I guess I am too pretty for jail.”

  “You didn’t have to send me away like that.”

  “I thought . . . maybe you didn’t like seeing me go to work on people.” Kit looked down. “Like maybe you don’t like that side of me.”

  Fancy studied Kit’s blood-free face and shoved the wet wipe back in her pocket.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Kit. I like violence just as much as the next person.” She thought of the Turner brothers and their horrible relationship and hugged Kit tight.

  “And I like you. Just the way you are.”

  FROM FANCY’S DREAM DIARY:

  THAT CHUBBY-CHEEKED BOY I HAD A CRUSH ON IN KINDERGARTEN ASKED ME AND KIT IF WE WANTED TO GO ON A DATE; HE DIDN’T CARE WHICH ONE OF US. WE SAID WE’D BOTH GO OUT WITH HIM BUT WE HAD TO CHANGE FIRST. SO HE FOLLOWED US HOME AND WAITED WHILE WE WENT IN THE HOUSE AND CHANGED, BUT WHEN WE MET HIM OUTSIDE IN THE GARDEN WEARING NOTHING BUT OUR SKELETONS, HE RAN AWAY SCREAMING.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The sisters sat in Madda’s car on Seventh Street before one of the tall, skinny houses that adorned the streets near Fountain Square, a white one with an orange-sorbet trim.

  Madda craned her neck and frowned at her daughters slumped miserably in the backseat of her Honda. “What’re y’all waiting for?”

  “You to come to your senses,” Kit cried, “and rescue us from this scam!”

  “What this is,” Madda said, “is a sweet, elderly woman named Annice who’s gone blind and needs help. Not a scam.”

  “Why do we have to do some old lady’s chores? Nobody ever does our chores.”

  “Yeah,” said Fancy. “Can’t we just chip in and buy her a maid?”

  “This is about being a good neighbor, not throwing money at a problem to make it go away.”

  “She ain’t my neighbor.” “She’s a fellow Porterene, Kit, and that makes her your neighbor. Look!” Madda pointed out of the car window. “Everybody’s pitching in.” The old lady herself sat in a rocking chair on her stoop as people filed into her house or worked industriously outside of it weeding flower beds, painting the shutters, and washing the windows.

  “This is how people behave in a community,” Madda said, sta
ring gravely at her daughters. “They help each other.”

  “Help schmelp. Just because they’re all jumping off a bridge doesn’t mean we—”

  The stern expression on Madda’s face silenced the rest of Kit’s griping and sent the sisters scrambling out of the car. The heat was miserable after the coolness of Madda’s Honda.

  “I’ll be at the Super Seven,” she said. “While I’m in there, I’ll pick us up some empty bottles for the ceremony. Pink ones, if they have any.”

  “You’re not coming in with us?”

  “You can’t hide behind me your whole life, Fancy. Now go on. And be nice!”

  After Madda drove off, Kit took Fancy’s hand and led her up the old woman’s stoop. Fancy couldn’t remember what Madda had called her. She smelled unpleasantly fruity, like the statice Madda grew in the backyard, straddling the thin line between overripe and rotten.

  “Hey, Miz Annice,” said Kit. Kit always remembered people.

  “Hay is for horses, child,” croaked Miz Annice, but she was smiling. She wore a muumuu and slippers and thick black sunglasses like she secretly wanted to be cool. “You here to help ole Miz Annice?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Kit. “Just tell us what you need, because we live to serve others.”

  “That refrigerator of mine needs a good cleaning.”

  “Then will you make us the happiest children in creation and allow us to clean it for you?”

  Miz Annice reached out, and when she happened upon Kit’s thigh, she gave her a good swat. “You’re a real cutup. And a real sweetie to help out an ole lady like me.”

  “I know it,” Kit agreed, so exuberantly that Miz Annice laughed.

  After they’d escaped into the house, Kit said, “She was all right, huh?”

  “She didn’t even say anything to me.” “She’s blind, stupid girl.

  She probably didn’t know you were there.”

  The sisters went into the kitchen, hoping they’d have it to themselves, but a boy and girl were at the sink, washing dishes. At least they were supposed to be washing dishes. Mostly they were splashing each other with suds and giggling and stealing kisses from each other.

  Fancy ignored them and opened the refrigerator, which was disgusting, the shelves grimy and full of expired food. The sisters trashed everything and then scrubbed the refrigerator from top to bottom. When they were done, the fridge was spotless but empty.

  “Maybe she doesn’t eat,” Fancy said. “Maybe now that she’s blind, she can live off her sense of smell.”

  But Kit wasn’t paying attention to her. She was frowning at the dishwashers.

  “Hey, lovebirds!” Kit yelled. “Y’all think Miz Annice wants your sweaty passion leaking all over her fine china? Go get sweaty someplace the hell else.”

  The dishwashers looked like they wanted to comment, but when Kit narrowed her eyes at them, they decided to do as she said.

  When they had gone, Kit turned to Fancy, pouting. “Why can’t I find a boy to make out with me while I do the dishes? How dare they stand there and rub my face in their love?”

  “I’ll find you a boy.”

  Kit perked up. “You will?”

  “Lemme just get my boydar.” Fancy pulled out her imaginary boy radar device, and scanned it around the kitchen. “I’m registering activity in the garbage can.”

  “Garbage can, my ass.”

  “Wait. I’m getting something.”

  Kit squealed. “Who?”

  “Tall, dark, handsome. Enjoys good food, walks on the beach, and”—Fancy double-checked the boydar— “evisceration.”

  “Me too!”

  Fancy put the boydar away. “You never even been to the beach.”

  “I never eviscerated anything either, but I can tell it’s something I’d like. So where is he?”

  “I’m expecting him any second.”

  Almost as soon as the last word left Fancy’s mouth, the Turner brothers came in through the back door.

  “Great timing,” Kit whispered, while Fancy stood there, dumbstruck.

  “Hey, Kit,” said Gabriel, the sunlight following him inside and glinting off his teeth as he smiled at her and set his plastic bags on the counter. He looked much less crazed than he had outside the music store, and there was no sign of blood or severed heads, which was promising. “Maybe you don’t remember me, but I’m Gabe. That’s Ilan.”

  “We know who you are,” said Kit cheerfully. “Our dad killed your dad.”

  “Yeah,” said Ilan in his gravelly voice. The sunlight bathing his brother seemed to have shunned him. “That was kinda memorable.”

  Kit leaned against the counter as the Turners put away the groceries, chatting with them, in full social mode. She was very good at it. So bubbly you could almost believe she was that girl. She usually only got like that before she went to work on someone: the shopgirl, Franken. Maybe she wanted to kill the Turners and finish the job Daddy had started. Fancy had to admit that the symmetry of such an act had some appeal, but Madda would be coming for them soon. They didn’t have time for poetic justice.

  “Wanna help me carry stuff to the pantry?” Gabriel asked Kit, waving a jar of beets at her.

  “No, she doesn’t.” Ilan gave his brother a hard look, before addressing Kit. “Best not to leave him alone with young girls.”

  “Is he dangerous?” asked Kit, intrigued.

  “He’s just joking,” Gabriel said, and then looked to Ilan to back him up, but Ilan wouldn’t.

  “The last girlfriend he had,” Ilan explained, “he locked in his room and wouldn’t let her leave.”

  “I didn’t lock her in! I was locking things out.”

  “What things?” asked Kit.

  Gabriel stared at the jar of beets in his hand, shamefaced. “I used to think things were following me. Trying to get me. But I don’t think like that anymore. Hardly ever. I’m much better now.” He said this to Ilan. “Penny forgave me. We even go to Bible study together. Everything’s cool.”

  Nothing’s cool, Ilan’s face seemed to shout, but he said nothing.

  Fancy almost felt bad for Gabriel, having a brother who didn’t seem to trust him, or even like him.

  Kit touched the cross hanging around Gabriel’s neck. “You got religion?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That work for you?”

  “So far.” He sidled closer to Kit, no longer ashamed. “That and being in the right place at the right time.”

  Fancy stopped feeling sorry for him. Instead she inched toward the back door, but Kit wasn’t paying attention.

  “Pig Liquor?” Kit squealed, laughing at Gabriel’s black T-shirt, which had a decal on the front of a fat pink pig floating inside a liquor bottle.

  “That’s our band name,” Gabriel said. “Stop laughing. We spent two weeks coming up with that name. You’re required by law to be impressed.”

  “Well, I do pride myself on being a law-abiding citizen,” Kit said as she picked lint off Gabriel’s impressive T-shirt, some teasing thing in her eyes, which turned to laughter when Gabriel slumped next to her against the counter, as if her touch had drained the strength from his legs. “Y’all going to Cherry Glade?”

  “Yeah.” Gabriel was scant inches from her, close enough to do who knew what, and yet Kit didn’t back away. “Had my fifteenth birthday last week.”

  “Fancy’s old enough too this year. We had to go shopping for new dresses and everything.”

  Gabriel studied Kit’s leggings. “Have I ever seen you in a dress?”

  “I haven’t worn one in years.”

  “This is why I believe in karma,” Gabriel told his brother. “We buy Miz Annice groceries, and now I get to see Kit in a dress.”

  “I’m your reward?” The hard tease in Kit’s eyes was replaced with simple surprise, and like Gabriel she slumped against the counter. “I never been anybody’s reward before.”

  “What do you think, man?” Gabriel asked his brother without taking his eyes off Kit, as
though her sudden bonelessness were . . . appetizing.

  Ilan glanced at Kit. “She wouldn’t fit in the trophy case.”

  Fancy found herself smirking at Ilan’s ironic tone, glad she wasn’t the only one who found Kit and Gabriel’s behavior irritating.

  “I mean about seeing Kit in a dress.”

  Ilan looked at Fancy. “Not if it’s anything like what her sister’s wearing.”

  He lacked Gabriel’s artful hair, instead sporting a joyless buzz cut with ruler-straight sideburns. He lacked his brother’s height, as well, as if his own growth were happening more insidiously, not in a great spurt but in stages, slow and relentless as the Himalayas. He bent his craggy attention on Fancy. “You’re fifteen?”

  “Yeah,” Kit answered when Fancy wouldn’t.

  “You look it,” he said, ignoring Kit. “If you think a skimpy little-kid dress is gone hide all that,” he waved a hand at her body, “you’re wrong.”

  Fancy crossed her arms over her chest. He was long-boned like Kit, as if he’d been fashioned to spend his days chasing things through fields. He looked like he wanted to chase Fancy—something predatory and unsettling filled his eyes as he watched her.

  Ilan turned his disturbing gaze on Kit. “Y’all should have a family intervention about the way she dresses. It’s criminal.”

  “Don’t talk to us about family,” Fancy told him. “The way you treat your own family is what’s criminal.”

  Everyone gaped. The jar of beets Gabriel had been holding dropped to the floor and exploded like brains.

  “Am I dreaming,” Ilan said, “or did you just talk?”

  “She did, man!” Gabriel exclaimed. “I heard it too.”

  “People kept saying she could talk,” Ilan told his brother, “but I always thought it was, like, an urban legend.”

  Fancy, who couldn’t believe she’d allowed herself to be goaded into talking to strangers, ran out the back door.

  Kit chased after her, calling:

  “Fancy’s got a boyfriend, Fancy’s got a—”

  “Shut up!”

  Kit caught up to her, laughing.

  “Where’re you going?” When Fancy realized her headlong dash down the street was attracting attention, she slowed to a fast walk. “To the Super Seven. We can meet Madda up there. I’m not waiting in that house another second.”