"I'm telling you, Samantha, you walk out that door, you don't ever come back." Dee can almost hear the whiskey in John's voice, turning his angry words angrier, turning his tongue savage and his body stony, and why oh why did Sam have to choose the day he nearly got ripped to pieces by a particularly savage werewolf to announce she was leaving for Stanford?
Sam sets her lip together. "Fine," she says. "I won't." And she turns out and walks right out the door of the dingy old house they're squatting in, leaving a bang! that echoes in Dee's ears, like the ringing she got when she shot her very first gun, 'cept that was different, that was the start of something new and exciting, and this, this can't be the end, it can't be.
She can feel the shock on her face, not because Sam got a full ride to Stanford, she was always such a smart little bitch, not because she managed to keep it secret for months and months, probably hiding the letter in her bra, sneaky thing, but because her dad's collapsed at the kitchen table with his head in his hands and the bottle only inches away, his constant companion, and he couldn't have meant that, could he? A life without Sammy? Deanna reckons being smothered alive to be the equivalent of that.
The door bangs! for a second time as she runs after her sister, barefoot in the middle of the street, calling "Sammy?" which is silly, really, Sam's right there, backpack on her skinny shoulders, biting her lip under the June full moon, and Dee is filled with fear for her sister, this smart as a whip, brave little whiny creature, who's taller than both Dee and her dad, yet still has a baby-face smile.
"You sure 'bout this , Sammy?" she asks, just to be careful, nothing wrong with being careful, her Dad has told her approximately five hundred times, whenever Dee throws her caution to the wind, sometimes literally. But she doesn't do that with Sam, Sam's the one fucking exception for every fucking thing. With Sam, she doesn't throw her caution to the wind, she throws it right in front of Sam, an attempt at a shield between her and the rest of this fucked-up, bloodstained world.
"Really, Dee? Why wouldn't I be? You know," Sam can make any word sound like an accusation and a goddamn declaration of love at the same time "you know I hate this life, you know I want to get away, you know all that. Don't ask me if I'm sure."
Dee sighs and closes her eyes. "It's the middle of the night, Sam. Where are you even gonna go?"
"There's a bus that leaves at five from the stop in the middle of town. If I walk fast, I'll easily make it." Always does her fuckin' research, Sammy. Always well prepared.
The bills are crumpled, left over from her last waitressing gig two night ago and, aw man, only about fifty bucks all in all, not enough for Sammy, the Crown Jewels wouldn't be enough for Sammy, but she presses them into her sister's hand anyway. "Don't say no, just fucking take it. And let me drive you to the bus stop. You know what Dad says about walking alone at night."
Sam's fingers curl around the money, she's not an idiot, but she says: "Dee, you know I can take care of-"
"Just get in the goddamn Impala, Sammy," and maybe she still has a tiny bit of big-sister authority left, because Sam does as she's told, albeit with a scathing bitchface, which should make Deanna want to laugh and tease, but just makes her want to cry, because what if she never sees that stupid bitchface again, what if the next time she sees her sister, she's all laid out in a pretty pink dress in a box, face done up like a tranny? She used to poke fun at Sammy for spending to much time in the bathroom, fixing her lipgloss and curling her eyelashes. So many things she might never laugh at again. Her fingers itch, wanting to ruffle Sam's stupid long hair, cuff her on the shoulder, flick popcorn kernels at her, jerkbitch, the whole shebang.
The drive is - whaddya expect? - silent and tense, both of them chewing their nails without noticing the other is doing it as well. Music is a possibility, is always a possibility, duh, but Dee doesn't want to listen to Metallica or AC/DC while her baby sister's in the passenger seat with a backpack full of stolen school books, all set to climb aboard some goddamn rusty bus and just leave. She brakes for a shadow running across the street, though there's nothing there, nothing real, and she ponders the strain of this job, the way it makes you able to notice marks and codes and all sorts of freaky little clues pointing to the existence of something not quite natural, cluesthat the rest of society just ignores in their hopeless struggle to be normal, but also causes you to look past the most fucking obvious signs, like the person you love most in the world building up her escape ladder, rung by rung, while you brush your hair and clean your guns, oblivious. And for a few seconds she gets Sam, gets her gotta-be-free motivation completely, but then she remembers her mom's smile while she read Dee a bed time story, Thumbelina, it was, the tiny girl who slept in a flower petal, and the scream that came not ten minutes later, and the feeling of understanding is lost, leaving only dizziness and the faint taste of smoke in her lungs.
They reached the bus stop twenty minutes before the bus is set to leave. Sam makes to swing her backpack up over her shoulders and open the car door, but Dee grabs the front of her too-big red hoodie and yanks her back into sitting position. "You got time. Just wait in the fucking car."
"Go home, Dee. I'll be okay. If you leave now you might even catch Dad before he passes out on the table." Bitter, bitter, bitter, and it's true, but Deanna's not Daddy's Good Soldier for nothing, so she says: "Give it a rest, Sam."
"Lemme go," her sister retorts.
"I'm not keeping you anywhere, Sammy. I'm just not going anywhere myself." She tries to grin but it just comes out an awful spasm, and she's horrified for a moment, what if her muscles have forgotten how? What if Sammy's stolen her smile, what if she's gonna schlep it all the way to motherfucking California? Can you buy a smile? Can you pickpocket it a crowded bar, barter for it in a run-down thrift shop?
"I don't want you to leave me here alone." She sounds small and needy. Fucking awful. She regrets it immediately. She regrets everything.
Sam's face turns from hard to soft, from concrete to peachy cheeks, just like that, only one stupid little sentence from Dee. "You could come with me, you know. You'd like Palo Alto. We could go together, the two of us. you wouldn't have to be alone. I wouldn't-." Now she sounds needy, and that's really all they are, two lonely, greedy, needy little girls, alone in a Chevy Impala at a dilapidated bus shelter in the middle of fucking Nowheresville, Arizona. Two girls who keep desperately clinging to each other as much as they try to wrench themselves free.
And Dee can feel the warm California air and picture the two of them just driving off, just being free together. But she can also picture her dad alone at the kitchen table with the memory her mom hanging above his head and burning on the ceiling over and over, forever and ever, and only a bottle of Jack for company, and she knows she can't leave him.
Sam reads Dee's expression, or maybe just her mind, and she shakes her head and, after rummaging around in her backpack, pulls out a heavy book and begins to read, throwing Dee a little look, hiding under her lashes, turning down the corners of her mouth, a look that says she's upset and a bit hurt, but also that she hadn't expected Dee to say anything different. Dee chews her braid and drums her fingers on the steering wheel, a chip of her red nail polish flying off. "Son of a bitch," she says, for no reason in particular and Sam huffs, a little quiet breath that no one besides Dee would notice or understand. An older, bearded guy in a jean jacket passes their car, sits down on one of the plastic bus stop benches and lights a cigarette. Dee wonders what he thinks of them, two silent girls in a car, with bruises on their faces and scratches on their arms, one dirty-blonde, fidgeting and lounging, the other brunette, ramrod straight, tongue poking out in affected concentration.
And there, headlights shining in the distance, there it comes, rumbling through the empty streets. Dee feels a rush of hatred for it, the stupid hunk of metal, kidnapping her baby sister, snatching her from Dee's grasp, depositing her in land where, for the first time in her life, there will be no one to protect her. She gets the sudden urge to smash its windows, slash its tires, shoot the baseball cap right off the sleepy driver's head.
Quick, quick, much too quick, Sam's opening the door of the Impala, shaking her hair out excitedly fishing her wallet out of the front pocket of her backpack. It's a punch in the stomach for Deanna, that Sammy's so damn eager to get away from her family, to leave her sister behind, as if the last eighteen years have meant nothing. "Wait, Sammy," she says, scrambling out of the car like Sam's going to disappear at any moment. "Wait."
Sam waits, standing in front of the bus, which the bearded dude is now boarding. Dee rushes over to her and, in a moment of uncharacteristic sentimentality, throws her arms around her sister's neck. She has to reach up to do so, and it makes her remember how she used to be able to pick Sammy up when she was still a fat little baby who wailed whenever Dee wasn't holding her, which causes the lump in her throat to grow larger. But she's not gonna cry. She hasn't cried in front of Sam since fifth grade.
"You take care of yourself, Sammy," she says in her sister's ear. "Remember your shit, your protective chants, your salt lines - "
"It's Stanford, Dee, not some voodoo village in Louisiana." Sam gingerly pats Dee's back and then pulls back. Dee takes a long, hard look at her: her too-long pigtails, her tired eyes, the flowery bruise from the hunt just a few hours ago blooming under her ear.
"Call me if you need anything. Anything at all." Her throat is tight.
Sam nods and climbs aboard the bus. "Bye, Dee," she murmurs, her eyes soft, and turns around.
Deanna watches her pay for her ticket and wander to the very back of the bus, throwing her backpack down at a seat next to the window, taking her book out again. "Bye," she says quietly, no more than a whisper, a tiny wish, that maybe, just maybe, her sister will get up and run down the aisle and down the steps and just - just - just stay.
The bus starts up and starts to roll. Dee bites her lip. She stares at Sam's head through the grimy window and prays that she'll look up, look back at Dee.
She doesn't.
Dee's eyes follow the bus until it's long disappeared out of sight, until it's just her, standing barefoot on the dirty asphalt, completely alone.
She sighs and trudges back to the Impala. The sun is coming up.