Ninth House

¹⁹ Last Summer

Alex couldn’t trace where the trouble began at Ground Zero that night. It all went too far back. Len had been trying to move up, to get Eitan to let him take on more weight. Weed paid the bills, but the private school kids at Buckley and Oakwood wanted Adderall, Molly, oxy, ketamine, and Eitan just didn’t trust Len with more than dime bags of green, no matter how much he kissed up.

Len loved to bitch about Eitan, called him an oily Jewish prick, and Alex would squirm, thinking of her grandmother lighting the prayer candles on Shabbat. But Eitan Shafir had everything Len wanted: money, cars, a seemingly endless line of aspiring models on his arm. He lived in a mega mansion in Encino with an infinity pool that overlooked the 405 freeway surrounded by a crazy amount of muscle. The problem was that Len didn’t have anything Eitan wanted—until Ariel came to town.

“Ariel,” Hellie had said. “That’s an angel’s name.”

Ariel was Eitan’s cousin or brother or something. Alex was never sure. He had wide-set eyes with heavy lids, a handsome face framed by perfectly groomed stubble. He made Alex nervous from moment one. He was too still, like a creature hunting, and she could sense the violence in him waiting. She saw it in the way even Eitan deferred to him, the way the parties at the house in Encino grew more frantic, desperate to impress him, to keep him entertained, as if boring Ariel might be a very dangerous thing. Alex had the sense that Ariel, or some version of him, had always been there, that the messy clockwork of men like Eitan and Len could not operate without someone like Ariel looming above it all, leaning back in his seat, his slow blink like a countdown.

Ariel got a kick out of Len. Len made him laugh, though somehow Ariel never seemed to smile when he was laughing. He loved to wave Len over to his table. He’d slap him on the back and get him to freestyle.

“This is our in,” Len said the day Ariel invited himself to Ground Zero.

Alex couldn’t understand how Len didn’t see that Ariel was laughing at him, that he was amused by their poverty, excited by their want. The survivor in her understood that there were men who liked to see other people grovel, liked to push to see what humiliations the needs of others would allow. There were rumors floating around Eitan’s place, passed from one girl to the next: Don’t end up alone with Ariel. He doesn’t just like it rough; he likes it ugly.

Alex had tried to make Len see the danger. “Don’t mess around with this guy,” she’d told him. “He’s not like us.”

“But he likes me.”

“He just likes playing with his food.”

“He’s getting Eitan to level me up,” Len said, standing at the chipped yellow counter at Ground Zero. “Why do you have to shit on anything good that happens to me?”

“It’s garbage-can fentanyl, for fuck’s sake. He’s giving it to you because no one wants it.” Eitan didn’t mess with fentanyl unless he knew exactly where it had come from. He liked to stay off law-enforcement radar, and killing your clients tended to draw attention. Someone had paid off a debt to him in what was supposed to be heroin cut with fentanyl, but it had passed through too many hands to be considered clean.

“Don’t screw this up for me, Alex,” Len said. “Make this shithole look nice.”

“Let me get my magic wand.”

He’d slapped her then, but not hard. Just an “I mean business” slap.

“Hey,” Hellie had protested. Alex was never sure what Hellie intended when she said, “Hey,” but she was grateful for it anyway.

“Relax,” Len said. “Ariel wants to party with real people, not those plastic assholes Eitan keeps around. We’re going to go get Damon’s speakers. Get everything cleaned up.” He’d looked at Hellie, then at Alex. “Try to look nice. No attitude tonight.”

“Let’s go,” Alex had said as soon as Len left the apartment, Betcha in the passenger seat, already lighting up. Betcha’s real name was Mitchell, but Alex hadn’t known that until he got picked up on a possession charge and they had to scrape together bail. He’d run with Len since long before Alex and was always just there, tall, stocky, and soft-bellied, his chin perpetually flecked with acne.

Alex and Hellie started walking, heading toward the concrete bed of the L.A. River, then up to the bus stop on Sherman Way, with no destination in mind. They’d done it before, even sworn they were leaving for good, gotten as far as the Santa Monica Pier, Barstow, once all the way to Vegas, where they’d spent the first day wandering hotel lobbies and the second day stealing quarters from old ladies playing the slots until they had enough for bus fare home. Speeding down the 15 in the air-conditioning on the way back to L.A., they’d fallen asleep leaning on each other’s shoulders. Alex had dreamed of the garden at the Bellagio, the water wheels and piped-in perfume, the flowers arranged like a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes it took Alex and Hellie hours, sometimes days, but they always came back. There was too much world. There were too many choices, and those only seemed to lead to more choices. That was the business of living, and neither of them had ever acquired the skill.

“Len says we’re going to lose Ground Zero if Ariel doesn’t come through,” Hellie said as they boarded the RTD. No grand plans today. No Vegas, just a trip to the West Side.

“It’s talk,” said Alex.

“He’s going to be pissed we didn’t clean up.”

Alex looked out the murky window and said, “You notice Eitan sent his girlfriend away?”

“What?”

“When Ariel came to town. He sent Inger away. He hasn’t had any of the usual girls around. Only Valley trash.”

“It’s not that big a deal, Alex.”

They both knew what Ariel was coming to Ground Zero for. He wanted to slum it for a while and Alex and Hellie were supposed to be part of the fun.

“It never feels like a big deal until it is,” Alex said. There had been other favors. The first time was a film guy, or at least someone Len said was a film guy, who was going to get them lots of Hollywood business, but Alex learned later he was just a production assistant, straight out of film school. She’d ended up sitting on his lap all night, hoping that might be all there was to it, until he’d taken her back to the little bathroom and put their filthy bath mat down on the tiles—a weirdly chivalrous gesture—so that she could blow him in greater comfort while he sat on the toilet. I’m fifteen, she’d thought as she’d rinsed out her mouth and cleaned up her eye makeup. What does fifteen look like? Was another Alex going to slumber parties and kissing boys at school dances? Could she climb through the mirror above the sink and slide into that girl’s skin?

But she was fine. Really okay. Until the next morning, when Len kept slamming cabinet doors and smoking in this way he had where it seemed like he wanted to eat the cigarette with every drag, until at last Alex had snapped and said, “What is your problem?”

“My problem? My girlfriend is a whore.”

Alex had heard that word so many times from Len it barely registered anymore. Bitch, slut, occasionally cunt when he was feeling particularly angry or when he was affecting British gangster. But he’d never called her that. That was a word for other girls.

“You said—”

“I didn’t say shit.”

“You told me to make him happy.”

“And that means suck his dick in Whore?”

Alex’s head had done a dizzy spin. How did he know? Had the film guy walked right out of that bathroom and just announced it? And even if he had, why was Len angry? She knew what “make him happy” meant. Alex had felt nothing but rage and it was better than any drug, burning doubt from her mind.

“What the fuck did you think I was going to do?” she demanded, surprised at how loud she sounded, how sure. “Impressions? Make him some balloon animals?”

She’d picked up their blender, the one Len used for protein shakes, and smashed it against the refrigerator, and for a moment she’d seen fear in Len’s eyes and she had wanted very badly to keep making him feel afraid. Len had called her crazy, slammed out of the apartment. He had run from her. But once he was gone, the adrenaline had poured out of Alex in a rush that left her feeling limp and lonely. She didn’t feel angry or righteous, just ashamed and so scared that somehow she’d ruined everything, ruined herself, that Len would never want her again. And then where would she go? All she’d wanted was for him to come back.

In the end she apologized and begged him to forgive her and they got high and turned the air-conditioning up and fucked right next to it, the air coming in cooling gusts that masked their panting. But when Len had said she was a good little slut, she hadn’t felt sexy or wild; she’d felt so small. She was afraid she might cry and she was afraid he might like that too. She’d turned her face to the vent and felt the icy breath of the AC unit blow the fine hairs back from her face. She squeezed her eyes shut, and as Len had jackrabbited away behind her, she’d imagined herself on a glacier, naked and alone, the world clean and empty and full of forgiveness.

But Ariel wasn’t a film student looking for some strange. He had a reputation. There were stories that he was only in the States because he was dodging the Israeli police after roughing up two underage girls in Tel Aviv, that he ran a dog-fighting ring, that he liked to dislocate girls’ shoulders as a kind of foreplay, like a boy pulling the wings off a fly.

Len would be furious when he returned home to find the apartment still a mess. He’d be even madder when they didn’t come back to Ground Zero for the party. But they could survive Len’s anger better than Ariel’s attention.

Alex understood that Len had expected some kind of jealousy when he’d brought Hellie home with them that day from Venice Beach. He hadn’t predicted Hellie’s warm laugh, her easy way of looping her arm around Alex, the way she’d pluck a paperback from Alex’s shelf of thrillers and old sci-fi and say, “Read to me.” Hellie had made this life bearable. Alex wasn’t going down the path that led to Ariel and she wasn’t going to let Hellie go either, because somehow she knew they would not come back from him intact. They didn’t have a great life. It wasn’t the kind of life anyone imagined or asked for, but they managed.

They took the bus over the hill, down the 101 to the 405 to Westwood, and walked all the way to UCLA, up the slope to campus and through the sculpture garden. They sat on the steps beneath the pretty arches of Royce Hall and watched the students playing Frisbee and lying in the sun reading. Leisure. These golden people pursued leisure because they had so many things they had to do. Occupations. Goals. Alex had nothing she needed to do. Ever. It made her feel like she was falling.

When it got bad, she liked talking about the Two Year Gameplan. She and Hellie would start community college in the fall or they’d take online classes. They’d both get jobs at the mall and put their money toward a used car so they wouldn’t have to take the bus everywhere.

Usually Hellie liked to play along, but not that day. She’d been sullen, cranky, poking holes in everything. “No one is going to give us enough shifts at the mall to afford a car and rent.”

“Then we’ll be secretaries or something.”

Hellie had cast a long look over Alex’s arms. “Too many tattoos.” Not on Hellie. Lying there on the steps of Royce in her jean shorts, her golden legs crossed, she looked like she belonged. “I like that you think this is really happening. It’s cute.”

“It could happen.”

“We can’t lose the apartment, Alex. I was homeless for a while after my mom kicked me out. I’m not doing that again.”

“You won’t have to. Len’s just talking. Even if he’s not, we’ll figure it out.”

“If you stay in the sun much longer, you’re gonna look all Mexicana.” Hellie rose and dusted off her shorts. “Let’s smoke and go see a movie.”

“We won’t have enough money for the bus back.”

Hellie winked. “We’ll figure it out.”

They’d found a movie theater, the old Fox, where Alex sometimes saw the staff putting up red ropes for premieres. Alex had nestled against Hellie’s shoulder, smelling the sweet coconut scent of her still sun-warm skin, feeling the silk of her blond hair brushing occasionally against her forehead.

Eventually she’d dozed off, and when the theater lights came up, Hellie was gone. Alex had gone out into the lobby, then the bathroom, then texted Hellie, and it was only after the second text that she finally got a reply: It’s ok. I figured it out.

Hellie had gone back for the party. She’d gone back to Len and Ariel. She’d made sure Alex wouldn’t be there in time to stop her.

Alex had no money left, no way to get to home. She tried hitching, but no one wanted to pick up a girl with tears streaming down her face, dressed in a dirty T-shirt and the nubs of black jean shorts. She’d walked up and down Westwood Boulevard, unsure of what to do, until at last she’d sold the last of her pot to a redhead with dreads and a skinny dog.

When she got back to the apartment, her feet were bloody where blisters had formed and burst inside her Converse low-tops. The party was in full swing at Ground Zero, the music filtering outside in thuds and chirps.

She crept inside but didn’t see Hellie or Ariel in the living room. She waited in line for the bathroom, hoping no one would report her presence to Len or that he’d be too wasted to care, washed her feet in the tub, then went to the back bedroom and lay down on the mattress. She texted Hellie again.

Are you here? I’m in the back.

Hellie please.

Please.

She’d fallen asleep but woke to the sound of Hellie lying down beside her. In the dim shine of the security light from the alley, she looked yellow all over. Her eyes were huge and glassy.

“Are you okay?” Alex had asked. “Was it bad?”

“No,” Hellie said, but Alex didn’t know which question Hellie was answering. “No, no, no, no, no.” Hellie wrapped her arms around Alex and drew her close. Her hair was damp. She had showered. She smelled like Dial soap, devoid of the usual sweet coconut Hellie smell. “No no no no no no,” she kept saying. She was giggling, her body shaking in the way it did when she was trying to keep from laughing too loudly, but her hands clutched Alex’s back, the fingers digging in as if she were being pulled out to sea.

Hours later, Alex had woken again. She felt as if she’d never have a real night’s sleep or a real morning, just these short naps broken by half waking. It was three a.m., and the party had died down or moved elsewhere. The apartment was quiet. Hellie was on her side, looking at her. Her eyes still looked wild. She’d vomited on her shirt at some point in the night.

Alex wrinkled her nose at the stink. “Good morning, Smelly Hellie,” she said. Hellie smiled, and there was such sweetness in her face, such sadness. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Alex said. “For good. We’re done with this place.”

Hellie nodded.

“Take that shirt off. You smell like hot lunch,” Alex said, and reached for the hem. Her hand passed straight through it, straight through the place where the firm skin of Hellie’s abdomen should have been.

Hellie blinked once, those eyes so sad, so sad.

She just lay there, still looking at Alex, studying her, Alex realized, for the last time.

Hellie was gone. But she wasn’t. Her body was lying on the mattress, on her back, a foot away, her tight T-shirt splattered with vomit, still and cold. Her skin was blue. How long had her ghost lain there waiting for Alex to wake? There were two Hellies in the room. There were no Hellies in the room.

“Hellie. Hellie. Helen.” Alex was crying, leaning over her body, feeling for a pulse. Something broke inside her. “Come back,” she sobbed, reaching for Hellie’s ghost, her arms passing through her again and again. With each swipe she glimpsed a bright shard of Hellie’s life. Her parents’ sunny house in Carpinteria. Her callused feet on a surfboard. Ariel with his fingers jammed into her mouth. “You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t have to.”

But Hellie said nothing, just wept silently. The tears looked like silver against her cheeks. Alex started screaming.

Len slammed through the door, his shirt untucked, his hair a messy tangle, already swearing that it was three in the morning and couldn’t he get some rest in his own house, when he saw Hellie’s body.

Then he was saying the same thing over and over again. “Fuck fuck fuck.” Just like Hellie’s no no no. Rat-a-tat-tat. A moment later he had his palm pressed against Alex’s mouth. “Shut up. Shut the fuck up. God, you stupid bitch, be quiet.”

But Alex couldn’t be quiet. She sobbed in loud torrents, her chest heaving as he squeezed her tighter and tighter. She couldn’t breathe. Snot was running from her nose, and his hand was clamped tight against her lips. She scrabbled against him as he squeezed. She was going to black out.

“Jesus fuck.” He shoved her away, wiped his hands on his pants. “Just shut up and let me think.”

“Oh shit.” Betcha was in the doorway, his big belly hanging over his basketball shorts, his T-shirt gapping. “Is she?”

“We’ve got to clean her up,” said Len, “get her out of here.”

For a moment, Alex was nodding, thinking he meant to make her look nice. Hellie shouldn’t have to go to the hospital with vomit on her shirt. She shouldn’t be found that way.

“It’s still early. No one’s out there,” said Len. “We can get her in the car, drop her… I don’t know. That nasty-ass club on Hayvenhurst.”

“Crashers?”

“Yeah, we’ll put her in the alley. She looks used up enough, and there’s got to be plenty of shit still in her system.”

“Yeah,” said Betcha. “Okay.”

Alex watched them, her ears ringing. Hellie was watching them too, from her place beside her own body on the mattress, listening to them talk about throwing her out like trash.

“I’m calling the cops,” Alex said. “Ariel must have given her—”

Len hit her, openhanded but hard. “Don’t be fucking stupid. You want to go to jail? You want Eitan and Ariel coming after us?” He hit her again.

“Shit, man, calm down,” said Betcha. “Don’t be like that.” But he wasn’t going to step in. He wasn’t going to actually do anything to stop Len.

Hellie’s ghost tipped her head back, looked at the ceiling, started drifting toward the wall.

“Come on,” said Len to Betcha. “Grab her ankles.”

“You can’t do this to her,” Alex said. It was what she should have said the previous night. Every night. You can’t do this to her.

Hellie’s ghost was already starting to fade through the wall.

Len and Betcha had her body slung between them like a hammock. Len had his arms under Hellie’s armpits. Her head lolled to the side. “God, she smells like shit.”

Betcha gripped her ankles. One of her pearly pink jelly shoes dangled from her foot. She hadn’t taken them off before she came to bed. She probably hadn’t noticed. Alex watched it slide off her toe and thunk to the ground.

“Shit, put that back on her.”

Betcha fumbled awkwardly with it, setting down her feet, then trying to jam the shoe back on like some kind of a footman in Cinderella.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, just bring it with you. We’ll throw it in with her.”

It was only when Alex followed them into the living room that she saw Ariel was still there, asleep on the couch in his undershorts. “I’m tryina sleep, for shit’s sake,” he said, blinking drowsily at them. “Oh shit, is she… ?”

And then he giggled.

They paused in front of the door. Len tried to reach for the knob, knocked over his stupid gangster bat that he kept there for “protection.” But he couldn’t balance Hellie’s body and get the knob to turn.

“Come on,” he snapped. “Open the door, Alex. Let us out.”

Let me in.

Hellie’s ghost hung halfway through the window and the sky. She was fading to gray. Would she trail them all the way down to that grimy alley? “Don’t go,” Alex begged her.

But Len thought she was talking to him. “Open the door, you useless bitch.”

Alex reached for the knob. Let me in. The metal was cold in her hand. She started to open the door, then shut it. She flipped the lock and turned to face Len and Betcha and Ariel.

“What now?” Len said impatiently.

Alex held her hand out to Hellie. Stay with me. She didn’t know what she was asking. She didn’t know what she was offering. But Hellie understood.

She felt Hellie rush toward her, felt herself splitting, being torn open to make room for another heart, another pair of lungs, for Hellie’s will, for Hellie’s strength.

“What now, Len?” Alex asked. She picked up the bat.

Alex didn’t remember much of what happened next. The sense of Hellie inside her like a deep, held breath. How light and natural the bat felt in her hand.

There was no hesitation. She swung from her left, just as Hellie had when she’d played for the Midway Mustangs. Alex was so strong it made her clumsy. She hit Len first, a hard crack to the skull. He stepped sideways and she stumbled, knocked off-balance by the force of her own swing. She hit him again and his head gave way with a thick crunch, like a piñata breaking open, chips of skull and brain flying, blood spattering everywhere. Betcha still had Hellie’s ankles in his hands when Alex turned the bat on him—she was that fast. She struck him behind the knees first and he screamed as he collapsed, then she brought the bat down like a sledgehammer on his neck and shoulders.

Ariel rose and at first she thought he might reach for a gun, but he was backing away, eyes terrified, and as she passed the sliding glass door, she understood why. She was glowing. She chased him to the door—no, not chased. She flew at him, as if her feet were barely touching the ground. Hellie’s rage was like a drug inside her body, setting her blood on fire. She knocked Ariel to the floor and hit him again and again, until the bat broke against his spine. Then she took the two jagged pieces in her hands and went to find the rest of the vampires, a coven of boys, asleep in their beds, wasted and drooling.

When it was done, when there were no more people left to kill and she felt her own exhaustion creeping into Hellie’s limitless energy, Hellie was the one who guided her, made her put the pink plastic shoes on her own feet and walk the two miles down to where Roscoe crossed the Los Angeles River. She saw no one along the way; Hellie steered her down each empty street, telling her where to turn, when to wait, when it was safe, until they reached the bridge and climbed down in the dawning gray of early morning. They waded in together, the water cold and foul. The city had broken the river when it had flooded one too many times, had sealed it up in concrete to make sure it could never do damage again. Alex let it wash her clean, the shattered remnants of the bat flowing from her hands like seeds. She followed the river’s course most of the way back to Ground Zero.

She and Hellie placed Hellie’s body back where it had been, and then they lay down together in the cold of that room. She didn’t care what happened now, if the police came, if she froze to death on this floor.

“Stay,” she told Hellie, hearing the thunder of their hearts beating together, feeling the weight of Hellie curled into her muscles and bones. “Stay with me.”

But when she woke, a paramedic was shining a light into her eyes and Hellie was gone.