"What could I have done?" she said, sweetly. Then, "I'm glad you're back. I'm ready to confess a little bit more. How about we start with what happened to Craig?"

LACEY.

1991.

HE BROUGHT HIS FATHER'S GUN. It was Halloween, after all. He was a Goodfella, and he wanted to look the part. That's what he said, at least, because that way he didn't have to say he was giving in to Nikki, who'd been whining about getting her hands on the gun ever since Craig let slip that it existed. You can see, can't you, that it couldn't have been entirely my fault? That Craig was the one who set Chekhov's Law in motion? (And this is a guy who only knew Chekov the Star Trek character.) The Bastard would tell me not to speak ill of the dead. But if, hypothetically, someone drifted into the great beyond due to his own ape-headed stupidity, and left the rest of us behind to mop up the blood and wipe away the fingerprints-not to mention zip up his pants-he couldn't exactly resent a little postmortem scorn.

Craig showed me how to shoot. Stood behind me with his arms around mine, closed his hands over my grip, and together, we raised the gun. He showed me how to sight it, line up the mouth of the gun with the beer can we'd propped on a branch, and I could feel him getting hard as we fingered the trigger. What do you think turned him on? The fact of my body against his, the heft of the gun, the anticipation of the shot, or the power of knowing something I didn't, pulling my strings for once, pull back, breathe, relax, steady, go?

The weight of it. The cold metal realness of it. The knowing that I could turn it on him, on either of them, pull the trigger, and, simply as that, wipe them from existence. Who wouldn't get hard?

Nikki refused to touch the gun. She just liked watching us shoot it. She always loved to watch.

Craig was the jealous type. Pawing at us when we got too close to each other, sliding in between, his every pore oozing Look at me. Want me. Craig, with his egoste cologne and his crooked front tooth, textbook dim, meathead sure of himself, but somewhere deep beneath the roided-up muscle meat-somewhere in the blood or marrow-he must have sensed the truth. He was an appendage. He was Nikki's Velveteen Rabbit, all of us waiting for him to turn real. She was done with him, bored with him, didn't love him. If I knew it, he must have known it, too.

Sometimes he ignored her and went at me like an octopus, tentacles grasping with a need neither of us actually felt. And always, when he pawed me, he watched her, hoping it would hurt. You could feel him deflate when she cheered him on. It was supposed to be every guy's dream, two girls, one dick, everyone rooting for a home run. He wasn't allowed to say no. To say, Too weird, too twisted, too freaky for me. To say, I want you to myself in the backseat of a car or the empty locker room or even, on a special occasion, in some honeymoon suite rented by the hour. He wasn't allowed to say, I don't want adventure, I want crabs-infested upholstery and a vibrating bed. So he did as he was told. And maybe he had to drink himself sick or get stoned off his head to deal; maybe he thought there was something wrong with him; maybe we made him think there was something wrong with him, teased and flicked him when he couldn't get it up, devised demented games and awarded ourselves points when we pushed him too far, spiked his drink now and then to give ourselves some time alone, enjoying the spectacle of King Jock brought low by his concubines. Maybe there actually was something wrong with him, ever think of that?

I liked the sound of the gun when it went off. I liked how you could feel the sound in your fingers, and how it hurt.

Later.

Craig passed out beneath a tree, so it was just the two of us again, me and Nikki, evening spreading out against the sky and all that crap. We lay side by side. I cradled the gun against my chest, wondering if Kurt had a gun, if he loved it as much as I could love this one. I could take it home with me, I thought. Slip it under my pillow, hold it as I was falling asleep, let it follow me into my dreams, where we would be one, we would be all-powerful, we would be safe. I rubbed it, long and slow, like it was Craig and I could feel it harden to my touch, and laughed to think it would stay hard forever. Less trouble, in all ways, than flesh.

"We should trade in men for guns," I told Nikki, and it was late enough, we were high enough, that it felt profound.

"We could be men, with guns," she said, and touched it for the first time, took it in her hands like she knew exactly what to do, held it to her crotch, raised its mouth slowly toward sky. "Bang."

Nikki started it. Remember that, even if she never did.

"You ever think about it?" she said. "Having one of these?"

"I dreamed I had a dick once. It was so real I woke up freaked out enough to check."

"When I was a kid, I saw a movie where that happened," Nikki said. "Girl wished she was a boy and woke up with a little something extra in her pants."

"That's fucked-up."

"Scared the crap out of me. Then. But now?"

Craig was slumped against ancient bark, head tipped back, eyes closed. He would have looked deep in thought, but for the drool.

"Now I wonder," Nikki said.

Didn't we all? What it would be like to be one of them. To have power, be seen, be heard, be dudes rather than sluts, be jocks or geeks or bros or nice guys or boys-will-be-boys or whatever we wanted instead of quantum leaping between good girl and whore. To be the default, not the exception. To be in control, to seize control, simply because we happened to have a dick.

"Imagine if it were that easy to get off," Nikki said. "I don't know how they ever get anything done. I'd be jerking off nonstop."

"Not worth it," I said. "You really want something hanging off you that just pops up whenever it feels like?"

"Or doesn't." She giggled. Craig had a tough time getting it up when he was drunk. That October, he was always drunk.

"Or doesn't. Seems very inconvenient."

"Good for peeing, though." She stood up, held the gun tight against her zipper, aimed it at the ground. "I bet I could spell my name. In cursive."

"You'd be a lady-killer."

She grinned, spread her legs wide, threw her shoulders back. Held the gun with one hand and smacked an imaginary ass with the other. It was Craig's favorite pose, though he usually accompanied it with some improvised porn music, bow chicka wow wow. "Yo, dude. Check out my package."

"Big and hard," I said. "Just the way I like it."

"Not as big as your rack," she said. If I'd let myself laugh, maybe it would have ended there. But I was still wearing my Nikki costume, I'd slurped a deadly puddle of tequila-spiked Jell-O, and it was Halloween-I wanted to play.

"Oh, Craig," I simpered. "I love your big, hard cock."

He liked that, dirty talk, always wanting us to assure him, Oh baby you're huge oh baby you feel so good oh baby I'm so wet oh baby-it said he was strong and we were weak, he was supply and we were demand, he was power and we were need.

"Oh, yeah, baby?" she said. "You want it? You want it bad?"

"I want it so bad," I said. "Because you're the most popular guy in all of school and we're going to look super sexy in our Dreamiest Couple yearbook photos."

"I do not sound like that, bitch."

I let my voice go breathy phone sex operator. "Tell me we're going to be homecoming king and queen, big boy. Tell me how all the peons will gaze at us and we'll crush them under our big, royal feet. Tell me how you'll use that rock-hard cock of yours to pee on their parade."

I raised myself onto my knees and padded toward her, till the gun was in my face. Leaned forward, kissed its cool tip. Tongued the edge, tasted its tang.

She jutted her hips. "You want some of this?"

"I want all of it." Then its mouth was in my mouth, and I was licking my way around its rim. Nikki moaned.

"Ohhhh, Nikki," she said, in his voice.

I pulled my lips away, just long enough to gasp, "Mmm, Craig," then swallowed it again, drew higher up the shaft, cupped her ass in my hands.

"I love you," she said, hand on my head, forcing me down, then up, into a rhythm. "God, I love you."

It was no different than sucking at the real thing, hard and slippery and dangerous.

"I love you," she whispered, nails digging at my scalp. "I love you I love you I love you."

And so it went, until the real Craig woke from his stupor and realized we were playing without him. There was a manly grunt, a skunk of a burp, and then he lumbered over to us and sealed his own fate in one puff of beery breath: "Step aside, ladies, and make way for a real man."

DEX.

1992.

YOU WANT TO STOP TALKING now," Lacey said, less like a threat than like a hypnotist's command.

Nikki smiled. It was a storybook grin, one that might have been called insouciant in some British story of magic and portals. "No. I don't think I do. Hannah, would you like to hear about the last time Lacey and I came into these woods? Once upon a time, on a night very much like tonight-"

"You really want to find out what happens if you don't stop talking?" Lacey brandished the knife.

"It's getting old, Lace. You want to use it, use it. I'm tired of secrets. That's what all this is about, right? No more secrets."

I wonder, now, if Lacey knew that once it started, it wouldn't stop. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an unbalanced force. Maybe she wanted to tell me, needed Nikki to make her. More games, more marionettes, all of us pulling one another's strings, turtles all the way down.

Neither of them was looking at me.

"There are worse things than death," Lacey said. "Maybe you need another bath." She seized Nikki's hair, rougher than before, shoved her face into the bucket, held her hard and tight as her limbs spasmed, and it went on and on and then on too long and I shouted at her to stop.

She didn't stop.

I screamed it. "Stop!" and "You're going to kill her!" and "Lacey, please," and only then did she let go. For a long, terrifying second, Nikki didn't move. Then she coughed up a bubble of water and took a shuddery breath. Lacey did look at me then, hurt painted across her face.

"You still don't trust me, Dex?"

"I trust you."

"Then why do you look so scared?"

"Gosh, I wonder why." Nikki's head was hanging limp, her voice hoarse, mouth wide and sucking air, and still she managed to sound smug.

"This is getting boring," Lacey said. "We got what we wanted. Let's get out of here. Untie her and go home."

Just like that. She said it like a punishment, like I'd been too loud and whiny in the backseat and she'd been forced to turn the car around.

"We have her on tape," Lacey reminded me. "She won't tell anyone. Will you, Nikki?"

Nikki shook her head, dog obedient.

"See? It's over. Let's go."

It could have been that easy. We could have gone home, the three of us, safe and sound and only a little bit fucked up for life by what happened in the woods. Lacey set that before me on a platter, and all I needed to do was reach for it. On the other side of yes: the empty highway, our artist's loft in Seattle with its lava lamps and dissipated men, the future we'd promised ourselves. That easy.

Nikki looked hopeful, but not only that. She looked satisfied. That's not why I said no.

We couldn't stop, not yet. Because Lacey was too eager; because there were still secrets. Because if I let it be over, I would never know what was true.

Secrets were a claim, and as long as they shared one, they owned each other. I needed Lacey to be only mine. We would stay in this boxcar until everything was said. For Lacey's own good, whether she knew it or not.

"Not yet," I said. The air hissed out of both of them. "One more confession."

"You need a break," Lacey said. "Let's go sit in the car for a while, listen to some music."

"That's right, Saint Kurt will solve all your problems," Nikki said. "And if that doesn't work, you can always knock her out and leave her in the woods to rot."

"Shut up!" Lacey screamed.

I didn't like her losing control. Nikki shouldn't have been able to make her do that. Nikki could have no power over Lacey. I couldn't allow it.

"We should stay here," I said. "We should listen."

Nikki laughed.

"We promised," Lacey hissed, and the we was them, not us. "You promised."

"And you tied me to a fucking chair and tried to drown me," Nikki said. "Pretty sure that means all promises are void. Let her hear what you did."

"What we did. You always forget that part."

"I'm done with that. This sad story of how we're both to blame. Fuck that."

"Enough," I said.

"I'm sorry, Hannah, I tried to spare you from finding out that your friend here is a sociopath, but you wouldn't let me. So now you get to hear the whole truth."

"I'll kill you," Lacey said, like a growl. "I actually will."

"Right, because you're so scared that Hannah will find out what you're capable of that you'd kill me right in front of her? That'll convince her you're a good person. Foolproof plan."

Then they were shouting at each other, about who was a monster and who was to blame, and they didn't hear me tell them stop; they didn't see me at all. I thought maybe I was the ghost. Maybe I wasn't there, never had been.

"Tell me the story," I said finally, and these were the words that summoned silence. "Tell me everything."

"Smartest thing you've ever said, Hannah. See, Lacey and I used to come out here-"

"No," Lacey was quiet. "I'll tell."

There was no more yelling. I felt it again, what Nikki had once told me, that this was a sacred place, haunted by all the ruined futures of the past.

"So you can lie to her? Again?"