The sensation of metal slices into the moment, separating one second from the next. She holds herself still, measuring the seconds in her heart. Dreamy adrenaline shoots into her bloodstream. It backs up in burning drifts, sizzles deep into her limbs. Her muscles twitch. The sharp increase in her breath sounds delirious, agonized, obscene.
“Want to know what I’m thinking right now, George?”
He sets his grip on the blade, the tendons inside his forearm popping against the side of her neck. He gathers up a big handful of her hair and winds it tight across his knuckles. His breath comes in irregular bursts.
“You want to know?” Emily licks her lips, struggles to control her lungs. “I’ve been telling myself stories.”
He makes a fist. His breath fills her ear, skates across her neck, puffs on the side of her face. She smells Listerine and the thick burn of testosterone.
“Stories that aren’t real. Isn’t that…isn’t that something? They aren’t memories but they act like memories.” Her ribs expand along with his, collapse along with his: rise and fall, back and forth, like a dance. Her voice softens. “That’s weird, isn’t it?” Her neck relaxes. “Don’t you think?” Her head turns. “Why would I do that?”
George yanks on her hair, arching her throat toward the sky. Rain hits her nose, runs into her eyes. She squeezes them shut. Wind hisses through the trees and the rain quickens, rattling the branches and tapping the ground. It drums a fine mist up out of the dirt.
“Now you’re thinking about it, right?” she murmurs. Her fingers spread apart, rest on her thighs. “How it’s like a hot one…like a girl who’s really into it.”
“I wanna kill you.” His voice comes unbolted, scattered across the bottom of his throat. “That’s what I’m thinking about.” The blade twitches. “And that’s all I’m thinking about.”
Her heart knocks against her ribs. “So do it,” she whispers. “You’ve got me. There’s a knife on my neck.” Her mouth dries up. “I can’t stop you. You know I can’t stop you.”
“I mean it,” he growls.
“I know.”
The hand on the knife tightens. The muscles in his arms draw into themselves, coiled like an animal about to leap.
“Th-There once was a girl.” Emily’s breath quickens, gets tangled up in her throat. Tears spill down her cheeks. “O-On N-Nantucket and in h-her m-mi…” She bursts into sobs. “Sh-Sh-She was si-s-sixteen. It was the s-summer o-of the basement and the…the maggots and…and…” She gulps, her body shaking. “The überprep from ‘Sconset, who isn’t real,” she whispers. “He isn’t real.”
George’s arm starts to relax. It tightens up again, trembles. His breath changes.
Emily’s chest heaves. “So it doesn’t matter. I-I just made hih-him up.” Her eyes close and she turns it into a murmured prayer: “He isn’t real. He isn’t real.”
He lowers his voice. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s not…he’s n-not…” She swallows. “Just a guy, I don’t know. Eighteen years old, maybe, t-talking to this girl in cutoff sh-sh-horts and ripped fishnets and those f-fingerless gloves, you nnnn-know, a guy from ‘Sconset.” She catches her breath. “Siasconset,” she whispers. “The…the v-village.”
“I know where Siasconset is.”
“S-So the girl tells him that she doesn’t fuck guys, a-and…she…me, I’m she, she’s me”I’m surprised because he a-asks.” She fights against the urge to hyperventilate. “N-No wuh-one ever asks. N-No one ever did. Not back then.”
Something stretches out inside his voice. “Asked you what?”
She swallows. “H-How girls…fuck.”
George inhales through clenched teeth and presses the knife to the side of her neck. His hand slides on a slow downward angle and the blade sears into her skin. She cries out and her bladder lets go, heat spilling down the insides of her thighs. He pulls on her hair and turns the knife over, using the dull side to scrape up the spill of blood. She whimpers. His lips brush the top of her ear. She shivers.
“So,” he breathes. “How do girls do it?”
Her eyes close. “They lick,” she whispers.
“That doesn’t sound too hard.”
Her throat closes.
“I’ll tell you something else.” He sits back, letting the knife fall away from her neck. “You forgot the black lipstick.”
Fresh tears fill her eyes, their heat mingling with the cold rain on her face. “I didn’t forget.”
“And then…” He sounds thoughtful. “The beach. Surfside. Is that right?”
She crawls forward a little, coughing, and makes a choking sound. Her body hunches and she throws up onto the dirt. She spits out the last strings of bile, wiping her mouth with the back of a dirty hand.
“There was that bottle of Boone’s Farm and a blanket. You lied about your name, though.”
Emily turns, wet hair sticking to her face. The cut on her neck bleeds into the collar of her sweatshirt. “So did you.”
The rain runs in and out of the lines on his face, dripping off his chin. The whites of his eyes gleam. His t-shirt and jeans cling to his body and his limp hands rest at his sides, knife held in loose curled fingers. Emily’s eyes flicker toward it, move up to his face.
He looks at her. “Susie.” He smiles a little. “Something like that. Isn’t that right?”
She nods. “John?”
He smirks. “My father’s name.”
She looks into his eyes and the doors behind them swing open.
Higher she says the J. Crew hair is soft and restless beneath her fingers she’s lying on a beach with her shorts off and the überprep from ‘Sconset is sprawled down there his tongue in her cunt and it’s hesitant blind but with a nudge from her hand and a murmured word it finds its way it’s a clear night and the stars fill the sky like a Technicolor plate of the universe the Milky Way and the smudges of galaxies burn crazy bright against the velvet black of space she’s a little bit drunk the tiniest bit tipsy all the connections in her mind loosened just enough to set her adrift her eyes close stars swimming through the darkness behind her closed lids and she hums her breath singing its approval and she’s not thinking of girls or boys or Francesca or her own fingers she’s thinking about the stars her steady climb up into them with a boost on the tongue of this strange boy who doesn’t want to stick her with his prick doesn’t want a blowjob in return and holds her hand as he licks because he thinks he has to because he thinks she won’t come without it and Emily craves the tightness of his fingers as she brushes up against the threshold bumps it falls over into a deep trench full of throbbing and he moans for her and later on he turns onto his back opens up his jeans takes out his cock and asks her to watch so she holds his other hand when the jizz comes out it’s pearly arcing like fish glossed up by starlight he looks up into the sky and tells her that he thinks about weird things when he comes needles going into the skin a picture of the human anatomy he saw once ripped-up dirty nylons and that’s okay she says thinking of the gash in Francesca’s chest the tiny fish swimming in and out and says me too me too
They kneel in the rain, face to face, sitting on their heels.
She touches the cut on her neck. “So it’s all real.” It stings. She hisses in a tiny breath. “It happened.”
He nods, New England accent creeping in and clipping off his vowels: “Yuh.”
Quick as she can, all in one movement, Emily lunges forward and snatches up the knife and plunges it into his belly. The tightening in his shocked diaphragm, its labor to breathe, vibrates up into the palm of her hand. The inside of him is thick, gristly, resistant to the blade. He grunts. She holds the knife, keeping it steady as he rolls back and unfolds across the ground. His breath runs aground.
Emily reverses her grip on the knife. She leans down, cups the angle of his trembling jaw. The muscles are tight beneath his skin. She moves up over him, her lips close to his straining mouth. She looks for his eyes in the dark. His breath flutters. She strokes the rough grain of his cheek and inhales his breath as she dips her face down and kisses his cool lips. He starts to shake all over. His fingers wrap around her hand and squeeze, trapping them between his bones and the handle of the knife. She sighs and her mouth goes soft, climbs into each corner of his. His breath skips all over the place. Her tongue moves past his quivering lips. It grazes his palate, nuzzles the tip of his tongue. He lifts his face, making an anguished sound. She twists the knife. He screams. Blood wells up, hot all over her hand. Her breath comes faster.
“I’m sorry, George,” she whispers, brushing her forehead against his. She bumps her nose into his cheek. “I’m calling 911.”
His grip tightens.
“Shhhhh. Don’t move.” She yanks her phone out of her pocket and dials with her thumb. She puts it to her ear. “Hello, this Emily Prentiss with the FBI.” She looks toward the back of the house. “I need you to trace my location via GPS signal and send an ambulance immediately. I’ve got a man down with a knife in the abdomen. Also, I need you to contact the BAU team headquartered at the Nantucket Inn and I need you to send a squad car.” She looks down at him. Rain runs off her chin and drips onto his mouth. “The wounded man is George Foyet. Yes, that’s right…F-O-Y-E-T.”
A corner of his mouth twitches into a weak smile. “Y-You’re…always surprising me. I…” He pulls in a pained breath and holds it, eyebrows knotting up. “Always…liked that.” He bares his teeth at the pain. “About…you.”
“It’s a small island. They’ll be here quickly. I don’t want to have to stab you again.”
“But you will,” he whispers. “If you have to.”
“Yes.” She moves a hand over his hair. “I will.”
“Why won’t you…kill me?”
Sirens howl in the distance. Red flashes of light cut into the shadows and stutter through the wet branches. She picks up his other hand, lacing her stained fingers through his. She squeezes. Headlights sweep across the clearing.
“Because I can control myself,” she says.