Chapter forty-two:
“You can’t keep me here,” Carrie says quietly. Her back is still turned to me, and I can hear her wheezing with every breath she takes. I think I broke something inside her, but I don’t feel any remorse.
“I don’t intend to,” I reply.
“Someone will notice I’m not around,” she says as she turns to look at me.
I snort out a laugh. “Like one of your friends?”
“Yes,” she replies, her chin lifted in defiance.
I shake my head. “Oh, Carrie,” I say, but I don’t say anything else, because she knows, and I know, that she’s talking bullshit. A girl like Carrie doesn’t have friends. And I know she hasn’t got any family.
Her dad is dead, and so is her mom.
Alcohol is a deadly poison, Mrs. Brown. You really shouldn’t have drunk so much.
A knife is a deadly weapon, Mr. Brown. You really should be careful who you piss off.
“You only have Adam,” I say. “Mr. Fancy Asshole Adam who won’t even leave his wife and kids for you. And I’m going to talk to him. I’m going to set the record straight with him so he knows exactly what you’re really about, exactly who you really are, Carrie fucking Brown. Besides, he doesn’t really care about you. I saw his texts. I saw your pictures. He’s using you. You’re just his whore. He has a wife and kids and he loves them, not you.”
Carrie laughs. It’s quiet and slow at first, and I can tell by her wheezing that it hurts to laugh almost as much as it hurts to breathe. Her laughter gets louder as she gets used to the pain, and then she’s full-on laughing. And I know she’s laughing at me. And‘Fuck you, Carrie.’
“He won’t go near you again once I’ve told him all about you,” I say, feeling my anger rise.
(One African Elephant Walking Very Nicely. Two Australian Coyotes Prowling Through The Night.)
“He won’t leave his pretty wife and his beautiful kids—not for you. And you’ll have no one. Just like I had no one.”
(Three Jungle Cats Slinking Through The Dark. Four Busy Beavers Building Their Bustling Brushes)
She’s laughing and laughing, and no amount of counting is helping me to get through this. I feel the anger in my fingertips. In my feet and my hands and my arms and my legs. It’s red hot as she laughs and laughs and laughs. It’s a volcano inside me and I see the tears of laughter trailing down her gray-white cheeks.
“Stop it,” I say through gritted teeth.
‘Control it, Ethan. You must learn to control it.’
Shut up, Mr. fucking Jeffrey. No one cares what you think anyway!
I stand up and take a step toward her. I am looming over her skinny body, leering down at her. And I am not hard for her now, even though I can see her breasts moving with every laugh. There is rage in my body, filling my legs and my arms my head and my heart. I can’t stop it. There is no counting to escape this.
“I said shut up!” I scream at her.
And the world is black.
The world is dark and rich and filled with velvety fluid rage. The world welcomes me back to it with open arms. The world has missed me, and I have missed it. I am there now, at the point of no control. No turning back from this, or that. No denying what must happen.
Until, until, until…
“Of course he won’t care!” she laughs and screams all at the same time, her voice sounding panicked and terrified and frozen in fear. “He won’t care, Ethan, because no one ever fucking cares! Not one single person ever fucking cared.”
And then I’m sinking, slowly, dripping back down to earth like rain down a dirty window.
“Why doesn’t your mom ever clean the windows, Carrie?”
“She doesn’t want people looking in.”
“But why?”
