“If you did this to Yates,” Daisy said, “they won’t find your fucking body, Sideways.”
Jing’s gaze cut away from Yates. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. I blistered where her eyes met mine, and I shook my head, opened my mouth. My voice box wasn’t working.
Three little deer, all laid in a row. Acid lurched up the back of my throat. There weren’t any wounds on them. There should be gory bullet holes or arrows jutting from their stomachs, or knife wounds, gashes, lesions. But the bodies were pristine. If their eyes were shut, they could have been sleeping, but they weren’t. The whole thing smacked of magic.
Jing moved her mouth against Yates’ temple. Her lips moved. She kept looking at me, her gaze fixed on my face. Yates shook her head. She moved her head to murmur something into Jing’s hair, then tossed her arms around Jing’s shoulders and collapsed against her. Jing pulled her tight, furrowed her brow, tore her gaze away from me. She kissed her forehead. “It wasn’t Sideways,” she said.
It felt like a sip of cold water. Daisy loosened her grip and I pulled myself free, shook off the sting with a hiss. Angry red welts bloomed up where her fist had been.
Jing hauled Yates upright. She went boneless, crumpled against Jing’s sternum, and Jing braced herself against the wall with a sharp inhale. Yates wrapped one arm around Jing’s waist and the other around her shoulders and patted her arm, looking up at us beseechingly.
My throat tied itself up in knots.
I stepped off the ledge. It was a six-foot drop, maybe seven, and the impact threw me. My boots skidded on the cement. The impact wrenched the breath out of me, and I sucked in a hard breath, tossed an arm around my stomach. I took a step forward and froze, recoiled. A wave of nausea struck me. The toe of my right boot was an inch from the first doe’s nose. My ankle was reflected in its glossy black eye.
My palms dewed up.
I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet. My steps were lighter, quicker than felt natural, but stomping felt inappropriate. What if I woke them up? I shivered. Gritted my teeth. Yates was under the diving board, at the deep end’s deepest point, and the ground sloped under my feet, drew me down to where she sat. I stopped beside the two of them and shoved my hands in my pockets. Words didn’t come. I wasn’t good at helping people. I wasn’t good at any of that. I swallowed, gave Jing a tight little nod.
Yates threw herself at my chest. The impact rocked me. Her arms looped around my neck and she shuddered, heaved a ragged breath into my hair. Her cheek felt wet on my collarbone. My mouth popped open. I looked at Jing, eyes wide, but she didn’t look up to tell me how to deal with this. Her eyes were on Yates’ back. I swallowed, awkwardly placed my hand between her shoulder blades, and patted her spine.
“The way you were laying there, I thought you were dead.”
I looked down. Yates’ eyes were enormous. They consumed my entire line of sight. Deer eyes, living deer eyes. Her lids were magenta and raw.
“Lila. Hey.” Jing rocked toward us, jammed her tongue in her cheek. “Hey. Let’s go. Sideways and I are going to walk you over to the stairs over there, okay?” She shot me a glance. I nodded, shifting so that Jing could slide her arm around Yates’ shoulders. We braced her between us. I gnawed my bottom lip.
Lila. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Yates called by her first name before. Lila Yates.
One of the flowers slipped from her temple and fell to the concrete floor.
Daisy edged around the pool, displacing mounds of blackened leaves as she went. She stopped by the shallow end’s staircase and sat on the topmost step. She reached out a hand, wiggled her fingertips. The snarl from earlier melted off her face and she softened, gave Yates a strange, crooked smile. “Come on, Baby Yates. Come inside.”
We led Yates forward. She wasn’t walking, but she let herself be whisked. Between Jing and me, she felt like air. Her breathing was easier, still raw, but measured. I tried not to look at the deer as we went around them, but the fawn’s eyes followed us as we went.
When we drew close enough, Yates reached out and took Daisy’s hand. Daisy pulled her away from us, guided her up the stairs. She kept her fingers twined with Yates’.
Jing closed the French doors behind us.
We brought Yates to the bathtub.
Jing had drawn the water steaming hot. She dropped a little asteroid into the water, which bubbled violet and pink, and we all sat on the countertop and watched the water rise. The bath bomb smelled like blackberries and something ambiguously sugary. The mirror clouded. Water droplets beaded on the lilac wall tiles.
“Did someone attack you?” Jing stuffed her hands in her pockets. Her face looked vaguely green.
“Not like that,” said Yates. She raked the fabric of her dress off her back, lifted it over her shoulders. It crumpled on the floor in a yellow heap. “It wasn’t like that.”
Jing crossed her arms, gave her a curt nod. “In you go, then.”
Yates blew out slow, shivered once, and stepped into the tub. Her calves disappeared into red-violet bubbles and she lowered herself into the steaming water, drew her knees to her chest. “I love you guys.”
A bizarre prickling sensation bubbled up in my chest, and I rubbed my thumb across my collarbone, the salty spot where she’d cried on me. Guys, plural. She didn’t know me, so she didn’t mean me, but the phrase stabbed between my fourth and fifth ribs and burrowed deep, took root. My face felt hot. I forced my gaze down, stared at the dress on the floor.
“You’re not into this, are you?” Daisy dropped her voice and poked me in the ribs. A smile flickered on her lips.
“Fuck you,” I snapped.
“She’s not being creepy, Daze.” Yates sank a little lower into the tub. She rested the back of her neck on the rim of the tub and stared up at the ceiling. “Sideways didn’t climb into that pool to try and get with me.” She rolled her head to the side, gave me a little smile. It was weak, and fleeting, but I felt it like sunlight. “Right?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the tiles with my boot.
Jing leaned forward. The drawstrings on her hoodie swung back and forth like the spindle on a metronome, and she cleared her throat, bit her lip. “I need to know what happened, Lila. I need you to tell me everything.” She didn’t sound unkind, but she was Jing. Everything she said sounded like her left hook, but there was a note of raw softness that I hadn’t heard come out of her before.
“Right.” Yates splashed her face with pink water, and some of last night’s eyeliner blurred off. She looked at the faucet like she was trying to make something out, but the faucet was still a faucet. Her expression fell. She rubbed her hands over her knees and cleared her throat. “It feels like a fever dream now. Christ. It was after the glow-stick bit. Look, I’ve seen all your stupid horror movies, and I wasn’t about last night. We’re hot girls. I’m a hot black girl. Hot girls at parties who play with ghosts end up dead in horror movies, particularly girls like me. Chopped into ribbons dead. Inviting the local devil worshiper over to your place felt like a particularly stupid idea, Jing, but I thought it was bullshit, so I didn’t say anything. I guess it was harmless enough when it wasn’t going to work. But then it worked. I was like, no thanks. I just wanted to have a good time and not be axe murdered by the devil, so I slipped off to get tipsy and avoid this nonsense like the plague.