The Wicked We Have Done

4

Casey doesn’t let go.

There is nothing left for me to do but cling to his arm and kick at the thing around my leg—the thing that feels like steel encased in supple flesh. It drags me downward so quickly that the current tickles me. Casey’s fingernails dig into my arm as he refuses to admit that I’m a goner.

If he doesn’t swim to the surface soon, he will be one too.

I dare to open my eyes to darkness. The pressure in my lungs builds. They say it isn’t painful, drowning. You go numb from the cold, your insides fill with water, and you stop existing.

Just like that.

The tentacle unravels. I hear Casey’s muffled voice, urging me to swim upward. I let go and kick my legs as fast as I can, but I won’t be able to hold my breath for much longer, not for the amount of time it’ll take to reach the surface. We’ve been dragged down too far.

But I try. I kick the darkness as my chest threatens to explode. There are no ripples of light. No signs that we are even close.

And then I emerge, coughing and gasping, my arms flailing in the air.

The air, the black air.

My cry of relief echoes, and when I’ve calmed down I realize how dank and heavy this air is.

“Casey.” His name rings through empty space.

He coughs somewhere in front of me. “Here.” Our hands connect, fingers entwining.

“There’s a ledge.” He guides me to the rock. With what feels like all the energy I have left, I lift myself out of the water and collapse. My heart calms as I inhale breath after beautiful deep breath, my body trembling.

Casey flips me over. I can’t see him—can’t see anything. We must be in a cave of some sort. Since we swam up from beneath, the only exit must be the same way. If we want to live, we’ll have to swim. And we have limited oxygen down here.

I curl my hand into a fist and hit him as hard as I can in the chest. “You stupid fucking idiot.”

There’s a long pause before he says, “Excuse me?”

“What the fuck did you think you would gain by holding on to me? Your damn hero complex could have killed you!”

“First of all, I didn’t die. Second, calm your shit. You wanna cause a cave-in with your petty yelling?” I make to punch him again, but he snatches my wrist. “Didn’t they teach you in prison that hitting isn’t nice?” he asks lowly. “And why do you care whether I die or not?”

“I can’t watch you die,” I hiss.

I try to relax and force my anger down. His fingers uncoil, but he doesn’t budge from his position over me. I can feel his body heat.

“I don’t know why I held on to you. Probably shouldn’t have. If they want to kill you, then they will do it, I guess. Doesn’t matter if I try and save you or not.”

I flinch, even though he can’t see it. “Even if you could potentially save me, I don’t see why you would. A few days ago you had me pinned to the wall by my neck—”

“That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

“That’s not what I remember from the train.”

He pauses, but only for a moment before he sputters, “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why? Because back then you didn’t know you’d be stuck with me? Remember, Casey, I know your secret. I know that violence for the sake of violence makes you break. So don’t try to tell me that every fiber of your being doesn’t want to go Captain America on my ass.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Save it. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Fine! Fine. I think—I think we might actually be at the opening of a tunnel here.”

Even after insulting him, he still helps me to my feet. Slowly, I place one foot in front of the other, holding my hand out until my fingers connect with jagged rock. “Found a wall.” Keeping the rock to my left and Casey to my right, I mouth a prayer that there aren’t any fifty-foot pits, or this isn’t the lair of the thing that dragged us to the bottom of the lake.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“This is probably the lair of the thing that dragged us to the bottom of the lake.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist.” He can’t mask the fear in his voice.

A loud click rings through the cavern.

“The hell,” Casey says.

The noise is so familiar. I freeze, waiting to see if it sounds again. A dull greenish glow floods the space we’re in, so faint that I don’t even recognize it as light until I can suddenly see Casey.

I know what that noise is. I heard it the morning of my crime. It’s the noise of the switch being thrown for a set of powerful fluorescents, like those in a gymnasium. The kind of lights that cast an eerie weak glow before they heat up to full power.

We stand in the middle of a long and tall chamber of stone. My gaze falls on the only thing within this place other than us. A school desk with a chunk taken out of the red plastic chair. A plywood tabletop, the wood texture torn on the corner.

The desk Meghan sat in.

Nick holding the chamber to her forehead. Blonde curls plastered in sweat. Tears.

Gunshots spraying the air.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” My heart trembles in tiny hummingbird beats.

“Evalyn?”

I spin toward him. “You have to find a way out. Now. Go back through the water, Casey.” A sob rises and there is no stopping it. I have to power through this. This is your fate, Evalyn. What did you expect?

In the cold mint light, his eyes widen. “What? Why?”

Why do I care what he sees? It isn’t that he doesn’t deserve to be visually tortured. But something inside of me screams that he cannot be put through this.

He steps forward and grips my shoulders. “Evalyn!”

Face the music.

“You’re going to watch me die if you don’t.”

He takes my hand and pulls me around the desk and through the chamber. We race through the never-ending hall, into shadow.

The cavern forks. The right path is almost tangible with darkness. Another click and the left is flooded with a crisp white beam. A spotlight, illuminating a sprawled figure on the ground.

“This way!” Casey cries, yanking me to the right.

Blonde hair matted with blood. Purple hemp bracelet on the left wrist, a bracelet that matches mine.

“No, no, no,” I dig my heels into the ground, ripping my hand away from his. “I can’t. I have to stay here.”

“Are you fucking insane?”

I can’t run from her. Not from Meghan.

I slow when I enter the halo of light. Her eyes are hollow, gaping wounds in both of her temples, one where the bullet entered and the other where it left. The puddle of blood beneath her is curdled with brain matter and yet she still breathes—rattled, wet gasps.

“Evie.” Her trembling lips smile, and I break.

“Jesus.” I place my hands on either side of her head, smearing her blood on my palms. I need to put her back together. My tears splash on her forehead, her cheeks, rolling as if they were her own. “I miss you so much.”

Her eyelashes flutter like insect wings. I’m losing her.

“Meghan, Meghan!”

Rumbling billows behind me. Casey screams my name.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know, baby.” Her skeletal fingers find my wrist.

“I’m coming with you now. I’ll be there soon.” I choke on my sob and wipe my nose with the back of my hand.

Casey grasps beneath my shoulders and hauls me to my feet. “The cavern is flooding!”

The rumbling water crashes into the back of mine and Casey’s legs and rolls over Meghan, the ends of her blonde locks the last thing I see of her as they float atop the tide.

I fight to see her one more time. Casey picks me up like a child and carries me to the dark tunnel, until another wave of arctic black knocks him forward and I fall into the water.

The current, with a cryptic mind of its own, forces me one way and him the other.

A third wave extinguishes the light. The fourth floods my last breath of air.

“Holy shit,” someone says.

I inhale, coughing, sputtering.

Breathing.

Breathing.

“Evalyn? Evalyn!”

It’s Casey.

The world slides into focus. Valerie laughs.

“Damn. Pound on her chest enough times and whaddaya know.”

The sun shines bright behind the canopies above their heads. Grass tickles the back of my ears. And I’m alive.

“What happened?” I roll to my side and spit leftover cave grit onto the grass.

“I don’t know, you tell me. Thought it was strange that I had the urge to make camp next to a dark abyss in the middle of a fucking creek. It was intriguing, though. Good thing I did, because the two of you shot right out of it.”

Casey breathes heavily next to me. Water still drips from his nose.

I sit up even though Casey says I shouldn’t, and Valerie tromps around—her version of pacing, I guess—chewing on her thumbnail. Her eyes flit to the right, toward the noise of water, and I crane my neck to see the roaring current of the stream rushing down off the mountain. By our bank, the current is languid, spiraling into a midnight whirlpool.

Funneling into a chasm.

“That’s where you came from,” Valerie says. “Geysered straight up out of it, you and Casey. You were floating on your belly—thought you were a goner.”

“Is this the outflow?”

“Outflow?” she asks.

“Of the lake.”

“Don’t know about a lake. Been camped out here for the past two days.” She nods a bit upstream to an old shack several yards from the water, where rows of vegetables stem from the doorstep like crooked fingers.

Food.

Between us and the garden is a smoking fire pit and a nylon tent big enough to sleep several people snugly. The flap is unzipped, a liberal pile of blankets peeking out. Even pillows.

“The shack’s a pantry—lots of canned meat, vacuumed cheese, pots, pans, utensils, you name it. Found the tent and blankets in there too.”

“How’d you find it?” Casey asks.

The brightness in her eyes falters. “I was with Jace and Erity when we ran from the lodge. When I lost them in the woods, I wandered.”

Jace. “She’s at the lake all by herself. We didn’t mean to leave her there. She probably thinks we’re dead.”

“What happened? I mean, you two came out of the fucking ground.”

The darkness is coming back—Meghan’s brains on the cave floor. The water, the cold.

My violent shivers won’t stop. Valerie hands me a folded blanket from the tent, and I stare at it until she huffs, shakes it out, and drapes it over my shoulders.

Casey explains it all, from the moment we ran from the house. Erity and the demon, Jace’s stab wound, the dissolving blade, the hunger, the crate. The tentacle, the cave.

The entire time Valerie sits cross-legged, expressionless. As if she’s not surprised by any of this. When Casey’s finished, she says, “Found Blaise’s body.”

My mouth hangs open. If the news is a shock to me, it’s completely unbelievable to Casey.

“No,” he whispers. “That’s impossible.”

“Bullet hole through the temple.” Valerie shakes her head. “Why so impossible?”

Casey sits back in thought. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “I roomed with him back at the lodge. He . . . well, first, he tried to bring me to Jesus.”

“Not all Christians are saints, but okay,” says Valerie.

“It wasn’t just that. He . . . He seemed so sorry for what he’d done. That it was a mistake. I mean, he was blackout drunk when he killed those guys.”

“I don’t know, Casey.” Valerie runs her fingers through her hair. “People lie. And I’m sure they lie here to try and make themselves seem more innocent than they are.”

It’s my turn to speak up. “Tanner seemed to think the same of Blaise. He was pretty sure that Blaise was going to make it out of here.” Another thought comes to me. “How did Blaise kill those people?”

“He was at a house party, got wasted, and found a loaded pistol in the master bedroom, I think,” explains Valerie. “Meaning that he died by the hand of his own crime.”

“Like Erity and Salem.”

“You know what this means, though, don’t you?” Valerie’s eyes flicker to mine. “You’re the only one to survive it.”

She’s right. I should have died in that cave. When I saw the desk I told Casey to leave because I knew that my crime was going to re-create itself in some form, and it was going to kill me.

But it didn’t. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Maybe it was supposed to and somehow I beat it. Somehow I escaped.”

“I can’t see that happening,” says Valerie. “This mode of justice is supposed to be pretty bulletproof. If it weren’t, then it wouldn’t have been approved to be used. They would have let all of us rot in prison.” She holds up two fingers. “I think there are two possible reasons why you’re still alive. One: they didn’t get an accurate enough reading and let you go—for now. Two: you aren’t as evil as everyone says you are, Ibarra.”

I shake my head. It can’t be the latter.

“Welp.” She stands. “You two simmer on that. I’m gonna follow this stream a bit and hopefully rescue Jace.” She pauses and glances over at her spoils, realizing that she’s leaving us alone with everything she needs to survive.

“We’ll be here when you get back. Alliance, remember?”

Valerie narrows her eyes. “Alliances are for idiots.”

“You know what that makes me, then.”

With swagger, she walks backward. “Whatever. They’ll probably kill us all anyway, right? You guys look like shit. Might as well rest and eat. Hey, maybe that’ll earn me some brownie points—being virtuous and all. I might get to live an extra day.” Without another word, she spins around and follows the stream to the lake.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Casey mutters. But Valerie’s too far away to hear.

I blink, my eyes dry and stinging. I’m exhausted, my brain too traumatized to process that there’s food now. And fire, and blankets.

Why am I still so damn cold?

Casey gets up first. He pulls off his soaked T-shirt so he’s only in his boxers, grabs a blanket from the tent, and drapes it over himself. He inspects the garden, the shack. I manage to stand although my knees shake terribly, remove my shirt, and drape it over the tent while I keep my blanket pinned under my armpits.

“There isn’t enough food to feed four people for more than a week,” Casey says. “Not really.”

“We may all be dead before then.” I sit, resting my forehead on my knees. Seeing Meghan was too much. I’d forgotten the sharp, raw edge of grief.

“Hey, you okay?” Casey asks. When I don’t respond, he says, “I’ll make food. Go lie down or something.”

“You don’t have to baby me,” I say into my knees. “Doubt I’m much more traumatized or hungry than you are.”

“Evalyn.”

It might be the first time he’s spoken my name in such a sincere tone. It’s enough to get me to lift my head.

Within his expression lies a mixture of seriousness and confusion. “I don’t really understand what happened in that cave, but from what I know about psychos, they generally don’t have that much remorse over the horrible things they’ve done.”

My eyes water when I think of Meghan. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure it is. I’m not asking that you explain it to me, but don’t sit here and pretend that it didn’t rip a hole straight through you.”

I tear at the chapped skin on my lip with my teeth and examine the black whirlpool sucking down all that water into its center.

He’s right. It is complicated, and I don’t want to explain it to him. The exhaustion that comes with people choosing to believe or not believe my side of the most horrifying moment of my life is something I’d rather leave in the past, in the month of my trial.

Instead of responding to Casey, I study the whirlpool. It must have reversed to spit us out. Nature doesn’t do that. And that’s what is so misleading about this place. Most of what’s around us is natural: the dew dripping from the needles of the evergreens, the way the wood smokes in the pit, the rich, soft soil beneath my feet, and the morning mist that hangs in the air. But that whirlpool—there is something so mechanical about it, so concise. It’s being manipulated.

Casey rips a couple of potatoes and carrots from the earth and washes them upstream. He grabs a can of stew meat and a battered old pan from the shack, then carefully opens the can with a kitchen knife. I feel useless sitting around, even though I’m miserable, so I get up and search for firewood. Valerie’s cleared most of the ground, but I manage to scrounge up an armful of sticks while I keep the blanket pinned to me. Eventually it slips down and my bra is exposed. I huff and throw the blanket over my shoulders, kneeling near the fire and blowing into the coals. Casey watches me. I’m not sure if it’s because of my boobs or my actions.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Girl Scouts.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Kidding. All we did was sell cookies and be cute. I have no idea. TV. Why, is it working?”

He shrugs and holds the frying pan over the fire. It takes a while to warm up, and even when we eat, hovering over the pan together and picking at the concoction with our fingers, the potatoes are still crunchy. But it’s hot, and filling, and perfect.

There isn’t a whole lot of food, but when I finish I’m full, maybe because my stomach has shrunk from not eating.

He nudges the last potato in the pan toward me.

“Eat it,” I say.

He does. After he swallows, he says, “Interesting situation we have here, being stuck together when none of us are trustworthy people.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“But I don’t think any of us want to be alone either.”

“Is that why you didn’t let go of me in the lake? Because you didn’t want to be alone? I thought you said it’s better to be alone so we don’t have to watch each other die.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“You could have stayed with Jace.”

He glares at me but says nothing. I guess a response would be too difficult—I am interrogating him, asking him why he finds my life suddenly valid.

I stand, letting the blanket slip from me. I’m aware my underwear is entirely see-through, but I don’t wait to see Casey’s expression. Instead, I walk toward the creek. He asks me where I’m going, but I don’t respond.

I drink and wash, far enough away from the whirlpool so I can’t see it. I bury my feet in the creek bed, the grainy silt massaging me. I concentrate on the texture as a tightness shrinks my chest. I can’t let it take over—I can’t panic. If I do, I’ll lose my mind.

I lift my feet and the crevices of my toenails are caked with yellow clay. Dropping to my knees, I sink my hands into the bed, fingers closing around a substance soft and malleable. Beautiful yellow. Beautiful daisy yellow.

I take as much clay as I can carry and bring it back to camp, stacking the doughy mounds on top of a stump. Casey doesn’t pay me an ounce of attention, because Valerie’s returned with Jace.

“We Want to Compromise.”

“No, you want my client to plead guilty.”

I sat at an aluminum table. My lawyer was on my right, mom on my left. I picked at my fingernails beneath the table, scraping at my cuticles until blood flooded my nail beds.

The month-long trial was nowhere near ending. I was numb, unprocessing. Unwilling to communicate.

“Our deal is to shift the sentence if you plead.”

“Even lessening the years served wouldn’t change anyone’s—”

“No years would be served. The sentence would be changed to one month in a CR.”

A Compass Room? Now my attention was caught.

The prosecutor continued, but I already knew this was the answer. Even I wasn’t sure how guilty I was, so how could my jury know? “These kinds of trials are Compass Room material anyway. The kind with damning evidence and stellar character witnesses.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Compass Rooms are only in the prototype phase.” My lawyer’s voice was riddled with disbelief.

“But they’ve already been written into the law.” The prosecuting attorney sat back, tugging on the lapels of his jacket. “What would you rather have, Miss Ibarra? A long, drawn-out trial? A death sentence? Or some prison downtime as the CRs come into play—a freedom you don’t deserve—with an opportunity to redeem yourself?”

My mother shook her head violently out of the corner of my eye. I could sense the tenseness of my lawyer. But to end the agony of the trial for good, to be given the opportunity of redemption or death—right now, even death sounded better than the fame of infamy.

The prosecuting lawyer spoke. “You want the Compass Room, don’t you?”

I nodded. The prosecutor smiled, and my mother wept.

The “prison downtime” the prosecutor promised was a joke.

Three weeks later, the national news announced that the CRs were ready to go, and sentences for ongoing trials were being sealed. I was the first to fill a spot in my CR, but I wasn’t alone for long.

When I was taken from my cell for dinner, it was an evening like all the others. The mess hall was the size of a gymnasium, guards watching us like hawks from a ledge around the dome ceiling, their automatics resting snugly in their arms.

I normally ate alone, or at a table of others who liked to eat alone. The sociopaths. I was too easy a target for the other girls, especially with how much media attention my trial had gotten. I wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone in that mess hall knew who I was.

I always got shoved around. The day before, a girl had jumped me and slammed her fist into my kidney, but a guard broke the fight up before she could do any real damage.

Today was a verbal torment type of day.

“Ready to die, bitch?”

I’d been finger painting with my leftover mustard, and when I looked up, I wiped my hand on my pants. She was hideous. Dreadlocks, a twisted mouth. A slanted, shoddy tattoo covered half her face.

But she was nothing to be afraid of.

“Quite ready.” It was the truth. I was aching to leave. When I was dead, I wouldn’t feel my bruises, my cracked ribs. And I’d be with Meghan.

I glanced back down at the plate, at my shitty mustard sun and grass, and felt the warmth of the field, of a place I knew I’d never have the chance to see. Not alone, not with Meghan. I wouldn’t be able to watch her photograph the sunset, wouldn’t be able to see the fire in her eyes that matched the sky.

“That’s cute,” she spat, nodding to my drawing. “Bet that’s not the same as twisting up the photos that chick you slaughtered took.”

I drew my hands into fists. This kind of harassment I knew too well. I knew to tell myself that it was because so many of these sick fucks actually envied my fame and wanted it for themselves. Normally I could handle it, but today all I wanted was to slam my knuckles into her nose.

I didn’t get the chance.

Across the hall, chaos broke out. Women jumped on tables and started screaming, throwing food, kicking trays. All signs of a fight. The guards swarmed in to stop it, but they took much longer than usual. Somewhere, an authority figure blew his whistle. Even the guards above had their weapons aimed toward the mess hall floor.

“Oh shit,” Dreadlocks said.

I swiped my tray to the side and stood on top of the table. Blood streaked the concrete. I saw it as paint—beautiful and vibrant and alive. I wanted to render it into something of my own.

One guard yanked away a girl with short, bleach-blonde hair and torn-off sleeves. They spun her around and I knew her. Even with all that blood pouring from her nose and mouth, I recognized her.

Valerie Crane.

She thrashed against the guards, spitting a glob of red mucus onto the floor. Our eyes met.

I could have sworn she grinned at me.

“Better get familiar with that face,” Dreadlocks said.

“Why’s that?”

“She got sentenced to your CR today. Who knows? Being around her all the time . . . maybe she’ll end up beating the hell out of you.”

I got off the table and sat back down. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s the least a little shithead like you deserves.”

She wanted me riled up, but that never worked. I didn’t like giving people in here that kind of satisfaction.

She left me then, walking back to wherever she’d come from, through the trail of blood like it was nothing more than dirt on the floor.

I never learned her name, or what she had done. She didn’t matter.

But Valerie Crane . . . Valerie would matter.