13 Views of the Suicide Woods Read online

  The princess muttered something that Leslie couldn’t make out. She thought she heard the words “thirsty” and “Coke.” The girl in the pastel outfit shifted her legs and the shackle clanked loudly against the floor. Her mouth dropped open and then closed. Open. Closed. Like she was trying to formulate a question but couldn’t wrap her head around the situation well enough to sufficiently form the right one. Open. Closed.

  She looks like a fish. He sounds like one and she looks like one. It’s a people-aquarium!

  Leslie stifled a grin, shoving her face down into her arms. Their situation wasn’t funny. Still, she couldn’t seem to help but want to laugh. Maybe I’m crazy and all of this is just going on in my head. I’m sitting in a padded room somewhere and this is just what I think I’m seeing instead of all the people who are actually trying to help me. Except she knew she wasn’t nuts.

  She was fucked.

  There was a world of difference.

  “What’s happening?” the princess whispered.

  Leslie hunched her shoulders up tighter. Her neck cramped. She wanted to say, “What does it look like?” Instead, she pointed at the door at the top of the stairs with one hand while holding a finger in front of her lips with the other.

  “Where are we?”

  The princess wasn’t any good at charades, apparently.

  “It’s a basement,” Leslie said. Her throat was dry and hurt when she tried to talk. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said anything to anyone. It was long before she’d been abducted and woke up in chains, anyway.

  “Whose basement? Where the frick are we?”

  Really? You’ve been kidnapped and locked in a cellar and you still can’t swear? Leslie pointed again, this time toward Wilden. She had to stifle another smile as the princess tried to scream, but instead vomited down the front of her clothes.

  “I don’t get it,” the dweeb said. “Why us? What did we do? I didn’t do anything, I shouldn’t be here.”

  “And I should?” Princess answered, wiping her face. She turned away from the jock and refused to look back. She sat smoothing out her pink and teal skirt like it wasn’t covered in grime and puke. Futilely trying to make herself as presentable and perfect as she always looked.

  Whatever helps you keep it together.

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that I’ve never, like, done anything that would, you know,” he held up a portion of his chain before dropping it with a loud rattle, “justify this.”

  Leslie shushed them again, louder.

  “Shush, yourself, weirdo. I didn’t do anything to deserve being down here either.”

  “You sure about that, Princess?” Leslie asked.

  “My name is Allison.”

  “Everybody knows who you are,” the dweeb said. “I’m Reginald. Some people call me Reggie but I prefer Reginald, you know? My grandfather’s name is Reggie and it’s confusing if someone calls the house and my—”

  “Like anyone cares, Reggie.”

  Reginald tried to get his wheezing under control. He seemed to be growing more alarmed and twitchy with each increasingly difficult breath.

  “What about you?” Allison asked. “Do you deserve to be here?”

  Leslie shrugged. She briefly considered the repercussions of trying to gnaw off her foot. If it meant being able to get away from these two it might be worth it. Still, they were in this together; she wasn’t coming up with an escape plan on her own. Princess Allison wasn’t likely to have any bright ideas unless she knew how to pick a padlock with a hair clip. Reggie, on the other hand . . . he probably wasn’t a Houdini, but he was a brain and maybe he knew something about something.

  “Leslie.”

  “What?” Reggie leaned in, cupping a hand to his ear.

  “My name’s Leslie,” she said a little louder.

  “I know your name. You’re Lezzie Leslie,” Allison said. She might not have ever noticed Reginald, but she had P.E. with Leslie three times a week. Sometimes Allison and her friends did horrible things like putting Leslie’s gym shorts in a pissed-in toilet or hanging a couple dozen tampons on the outside of her locker. Being taken captive was bad enough, but chaining Leslie in a cellar with the princess was a special kind of torture.

  “I’m not a lesbian.”

  “But you are Lezzie Leslie.” Allison scooted away from the puddle of her vomit and pulled her feet under her to try to find a more comfortable way to sit; she fidgeted with the chain and shackle for a second before giving up with a sigh.

  “I’m not gay.”

  “The all-black mumble-mouth thing. Totally gaaay.”

  “I think she means it figuratively, Leslie,” Reginald said. “You know, more like ‘that’s gay’ instead of ‘that’s homose—’”

  “Shut up, nerd. She knows what I mean.”

  “I’m just saying, if her objection is that she’s not actually a lesbian—”

  “Shut up!” both girls shouted.

  Leslie stared up at the ceiling, knowing for certain that outburst would get a rise out of their captor. When nothing happened, she began to feel a faint glimmer of hope. Maybe he killed himself. Maybe he realized that what he’s doing is totally fucked and he committed suicide instead of letting himself be taken alive by the cops. And now all we have to do is escape. All I have to do.

  “I said, do you deserve to be here, Leslie?”

  “Does it matter? I could disappear and nobody would even notice.”

  Reginald coughed and cleared his throat. “You did disappear.”

  He’s right. We all have.

  “So what do we do about it?” Leslie asked.

  “We have to figure out a way out of—”

  “No shit, Sherlock! How?” Allison shouted. Leslie watched the flash of pain and disorientation unfocus the girl’s eyes as she swooned. The princess let out a long sob and buried her face in her hands. Whatever their abductor had used to knock them out was hitting the skinny girl a lot harder than Leslie and the dweeb.

  Upstairs, a door slammed. Heavy steps moved slowly from the distant end of the house toward the cellar door. The sound of something being dragged across the floor above them accompanied the pounding foot falls. Leslie tried to listen but Allison’s sobbing was too loud, too near. A shaft of light grew and shone down from the open doorway before a shadow blocked it out. A body crashed down the stairs, tumbling part way, coming to rest in a twisted heap halfway down. Behind it, Leslie heard a gravelly voice say, “Goddamn it!” A few plodding footsteps followed and then the body lurched and fell the rest of the way to the cellar floor.

  Leslie renewed her attempt to shrink from the light, stopped once again by the length of chain and the rock wall at her back. Reginald skittered away from the staircase like a beaten dog. And Allison just sat. Crying.

  The shape walked the rest of the way down the stairs. At the bottom, it grabbed the body’s ankles and dragged it toward the table. Leslie recognized the unconscious boy. His liberty fin mohawk was wilted, but unmistakable. There were plenty of punks in Shermerville, but Freddie was the only one with hair as white as that. At least it had been white. Now it was stained pinkish red and was growing increasingly brown as their captor dragged him though the dirt. The shape bent down and hoisted Freddie up on his shoulder like a fireman. It crouched low and lifted the gangly boy on his shoulders like the jocks did when doing squats in the weight room.

  Is he a coach?

  It slammed Freddie’s body down on the table with a loud thump. His head made a hollow sound as it hit the wood like the gourd Leslie’s hippie band teacher made her play. Reginald’s atomizer cracked and skipped off the table, bouncing into the center of the room. The dweeb lunged for it. Grasping the dented tube in both hands, he took a hit. The quick hiss of the medicine sounded like a librarian’s warning. Shh! The shape slipped into the light and kicked the boy in the face with a brown wingtip shoe, audibly crushing the dweeb’s nose. Reginald gagged and fell on his back, clawing at his face, the sma
ll canister of medicated aerosol wedged up into his mouth. The heel of the wingtip came down on the boy’s stomach. The atomizer popped up like a stomp-rocket and the shape caught it in mid-air. The shape held it between thumb and forefinger as he bent over the gasping boy.

  “Do you have a doctor’s note for this? We have a no-tolerance policy for drugs,” it said before stuffing the medicine in his suit pocket.

  Mr. Brendan!

  She’d only officially met with her guidance counselor once, but he remembered her name and said it every time he ran into her in the halls. He was one of the only people who used her name without appending “Lezzie” to it. She was sure even some of the teachers called her that when they sat smoking in their special lounge. Mr. Brendan never used the lounge—not that she saw. He roamed the halls in between classes. He said “hi” to her like she wasn’t invisible. Leslie almost ran toward him looking for comfort and freedom.

  She stayed in the shadows when he stomped on Reginald again. Leslie thought she heard some of the kid’s ribs break. She wasn’t sure. Allison barked fearful yips at every hit. Like she gives a shit what happens to Reginald.

  “Stop!” Leslie shouted.

  Mr. Brendan straightened his back and looked at her. Fading into the shadows was worthless if you couldn’t keep yourself from screaming.

  “Do you have something to say, Leslie?”

  She shook her head. Her hair dropped into her eyes. For an instant Mr. Brendan was the shape again, obscured and dark. Something you could turn your back on and hope it was just a shade dispelled by turning on the light or waking up. Her eyes focused and he was the guidance counselor once more. Firm and distinct. Unbanishable. He stared with hot malice. He pointed at her with his forefinger and pinky and said, “I didn’t think so.”

  “Please let us go,” Allison said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  Brendan turned to the princess and pointed the cornuto at her. “You want to add something, missy? You think your time could be better spent somewhere else? Let me tell you . . . let me tell all of you, you’re not going anywhere. You should take this time to reflect on what you really are. Not who you think you are or what you want to be when you’re trying to impress people, but what kind of little monsters you really are beneath all of this superficial bullshit.

  “I hear you in the halls. Making jokes about the guidance counselor. How useless my job is; how useless I am. I work and I have the respect of my colleagues. Nothing’s coming to me from dear old daddy and his Wall Street larceny. I help you punks get into college. I help you fill out applications and schedule tours and arrange your class schedules so you can make something out of your lives and then you laugh at me? At how little I matter?”

  “I don’t laugh,” Leslie said.

  “Yes you do. I see you, Ms. Lasseter. You don’t have any friends to mock me in front of, but I see the way you look at me.” Brendan adjusted his suit coat and popped his cuffs. He stood for a silent moment composing himself before returning his gaze to the boy lying at his feet. He gave Reginald one last kick in the face before heading back to the stairs.

  “I’m going to be right on the other side of this door. If I hear another sound out of any of you, I’m coming back down.”

  “Let us go,” Allison said. “My father will pay you whatever you want.”

  “Pay? For all of you?”

  Allison looked taken aback by the question. She nodded. Brendan chuckled. “No. I’m not going to let you go. I’m gonna come back and kick the living shit out of each one of you. But first, I want you to do some thinking.” He pointed at Wilden’s body. “Then I’m going to hang you all up like that.”

  “Because we make fun of you?” Leslie asked.

  “Because I don’t like Mondays,” he said, climbing the stairs. The door slamming behind him echoed through the basement. No amount of sobbing or choking could out-compete its gunshot finality.

  Reginald lay doubled up like a pill bug. His sparse breathing more labored than ever. Leslie supposed he was dying in front of them. He was suffocating in open air and there was nothing anyone could do.

  She looked at Freddie’s body lying on the table. She’d made out with him a couple of times, even let him feel her up. One time she’d even been ready to go down on him, but he was too distracted by some other something she couldn’t remember—a band, probably—and had killed the mood. Still, she kind of liked him, even if he only ever treated her like a back-up piece of ass when he couldn’t find one of his regular punker chicks. Maybe, like everyone else, he thought she was a basket case. Nevertheless, every once in a while he squeezed her tits and said nice things to her.

  Brendan killed the kids who could have taken him out, she realized. Freddie and John Wilden. The rest of them—the princess, the dweeb, and her, the maladapt—he didn’t fear them. He was as bad as all the bitches who took Leslie’s notebooks and laughed at her poetry or the jocks who slapped Reginald’s game manuals out of his hands and kicked them down the hall. Spencer Brendan was as bad as the punks and goths who laughed behind the backs of the popular girls and joked about how much their knee-pad allowances had to be. As bad as calling the wrestlers, “mat-fags.” Everybody was shitty to each other. Everyone relentlessly bagged on everyone else like high school was some Hobbsian state of nature where life was brutish, ugly, and short. And for some of us, it is.

  Freddie’s arm slipped away from his body and dangled off the edge of the table, startling her out of her reverie. A glint of light sparked off his hand. He still wore all of his rings. Brendan had taken their things away, but he’d not removed Freddie’s jewelry. Leslie rose to her haunches and clenched her fists. She squinted and held her breath and pushed down her fear until she had enough resolve to open her eyes and stand. She took a halting step forward. And then another. And a third. Eventually, she made it to the ring in the center of the room. It was welded to a big square plate bolted to the floor. She pulled at her chain. It held fast. The plate wasn’t coming up without Reginald and Allison’s help and maybe not even then.

  “What are you doing?” Allison said.

  “I need to get to Freddie.”

  “What for?”

  “He has a ring.”

  Allison raised her eyebrows to silently ask the question, “So what?”

  Leslie just looked at her and said, “Give me a hand?”

  Allison crawled over to the center ring and together they tried to loosen it. No luck. Leslie figured that Brendan had used extra-long bolts or something that went way down into the concrete.

  She sat down and stripped off her boot. The shackle had bitten into the flesh around her ankle, but only irritated it. She hadn’t tugged at it enough to break the skin. She spit on her hands with what little saliva she could work up and rubbed at her foot and ankle trying to slicken her skin. It didn’t help.

  Reginald groaned a little half-croak and a high-pitched wheeze of air whistled through his throat.

  Leslie crawled to him and rubbed her hands over his face. She could feel where his skull was broken. Soft places that should have been hard and rough, grainy-feeling spots that should have been smooth. His skin was hot and tight with swelling. He groaned in pain as she smeared his blood on her hands, getting then as wet as she could. She sat beside the boy and wiped his gore on her foot, saying, “Sorry.”

  She shoved and pushed and pulled at the cuff. It was tight, but she wore oversize shoes and her foot was smaller than it appeared. She got the thing halfway over her heel before the hinge pinched a nerve in the top of her foot and pain lanced to the tips of her toes. She fell on her back, biting at a hand to stifle the scream.

  “You almost got it,” Allison whispered. “Keep trying.”

  “I can’t. It hurts.”

  “You have to do it. He’s going to kill us.”

  Allison lurched toward her, grabbed the shackle cuff and yanked. Leslie thought her ankle was going to break. She stifled a scream, biting down hard on her thumb. It felt like a knife sla
shing her foot wide open. Still, the other girl pulled until she fell away, the chain clattering across the floor. The cuff thunked hollowly on the concrete. Empty.

  Leslie rolled onto her side, clutching her shredded foot. It was hot and throbbing in time with her heart and hurt so badly she couldn’t take a breath. She thought she might suffocate right next to Reginald if she didn’t get a taste of clean air. Wiping away the tears with a black sweater sleeve, she opened her eyes and looked at her blurry foot through the tears. A ragged, shallow gash opened from where the cuff had once sat, extending to her middle toe. It bled. A lot. She pulled her sock out of the shackle, tearing it as it snagged on the hinge that had done her flesh such damage, and slipped it back on, trying to pretend that the pain didn’t make her want to throw up and pass out.

  “Okay, now what?” Allison said.

  Leslie didn’t answer. She collected herself, stood, taking a moment to find her balance, and hobbled over to Freddie’s body. She pulled up one of his hands and looked for the right ring. It wasn’t there. Just a bunch of rocker bullshit, horned skulls and iron crosses. The other hand! She reached over his body, bumping against Wilden’s feet. He swayed away, twisting and bumping back into her. A drop of crimson drool spattered warmly on her shoulder. She held her breath and ignored it. Don’tfuckinlookdon’tfuckinlookdon’tfuckinlook! Allison let out a strained squeak from across the room. Leslie heard the sound of the girl’s hands slapping over her mouth. She went back to work, pushing herself. Everything took effort: leaving the house, going to class, not collapsing in on herself like a black hole. She was always pushing against that thing that told her to stay home, stay alone, live in her head. She pushed harder. This time she thought she might break.

  Getting up on tiptoe, she reached across and dragged Freddie’s left arm out from under his body. The ring she wanted was on his third finger. She pulled but it wouldn’t come free. Reginald’s blood on her hands was drying and tacky and wouldn’t be any use. She stuck his cold finger in her mouth and pulled it out slowly trying to slick it. His skin tasted like cigarettes and engine oil, like he’d been working on his scooter when Brendan took him. She closed her lips around his cold digit and sucked, suppressing her gag reflex as his fingernail tickled the back of her throat. Her mouth was dry but the effort was rewarded when the ring eventually slipped off.