The Pretty Ones Read online

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Wanted to scream. To pound her fists against the metal walls of that metal box. Because you would have judged her, she wanted to spit. Because you’re all the same. A girl can’t be herself, can’t tell the truth, can’t be anything but fake, fake, fake!

  “You’re all fake.” Nell breathed the words out just as the elevator hit the ground floor and the doors yawned open.

  Linnie’s friends slowly turned to give Nell a pointed stare.

  “Excuse me?” said one.

  “Nothing,” Nell murmured, then shoved her way out of the elevator.

  Spilling out onto the crowded street, she almost ran to the train station. And yet, the longer she waited on the platform, the more Savannah’s invitation scratched at the back of her brain. Maybe Savannah had been making a genuine effort. It was true that she wasn’t the first girl Nell thought of when she considered potential friends, but she’d wanted to be part of Mary Ann Thomas’s group, hadn’t she? Not anymore I don’t. Nell had been daydreaming about hanging out with those pretty girls for as long as she had worked at Rambert & Bertram. Except she’d screwed that opportunity up for herself, what with how she had spoken to Mary Ann earlier in the day. And then she’d gone and shot down Savannah’s invitation as though she had all the friends in the world.

  You’re just upset because Nell Sullivan is a liar.

  Yes, that was true. Nell’s friendship with Linnie was all made up.

  But maybe if she tried again. Just once more, with Savannah. Maybe then everything would change. And Mary Ann? Well, if Mary Ann got in the way, Nell would tell her exactly where she could go.

  . . .

  “How could you?”

  Barrett was in his usual spot, his legs thrown across one of the arms of his old wingback chair. He folded his book across his chest and eyed his sister from across their small living room—a room that, in its disrepair, seemed to lean a touch to the left. Nell dropped her purse onto a chair as she passed through the kitchen, only to pause and give her sibling a good, long look.

  “I know it was you, Barrett,” she said. “The dirt in her mouth?” She snorted, turned away from him, not wanting to see the smirk she knew would eventually settle across his lips. “Nice touch,” she murmured. “You may as well have shoved a cupcake down her throat with my name on it.” That was overdramatic. She knew there was no way anyone could have put together the fact that Nell had anything to do with Linnie’s death. After all, she didn’t, did she? Nell wasn’t her brother’s keeper. “And what if the police had come? What if they had asked me questions?”

  Then you would have lied, Barrett scribbled.

  That word made Nell tense. NELL SULLIVAN IS A LIAR. It was bad enough that someone had typed it onto her transcript, ruining her work, insulting her in the process. But now Barrett was going to join in?

  “Because that’s all I’m good at?” she demanded.

  Barrett looked unconcerned by his sister’s increasing agitation. Well, he wrote, you ARE good at it.

  “Oh, fuck you, Barrett!” she yelled. But rather than shocking him with her outburst, Barrett laughed instead. Nell jerked at the sleeves of her sweater, yanked it off, and threw it to the floor. The shirt she’d worn beneath it throughout the day was soaked at the armpits. She could feel a distinct line of moisture along the length of her spine. “Anyway.” She turned her back to him, trying to play it cool. “I suppose you did me a favor, if you think about it.” Glancing over her shoulder, she took in his new expression—a look of sour dissatisfaction. “That’s right,” she said. “Because when I got to the office this morning, all the girls already knew about Linnie. She was front page news. They’re blaming the Son of Sam.”

  Barrett’s perturbed look shifted into amusement. He liked that. Perhaps he had known the police were going to point the finger at Mr. Monster rather than look for another killer all along. Because really, what were the odds?

  See? he wrote. No big deal.

  “No big deal?” Nell narrowed her eyes at him. “As soon as I heard about Linnie, I lost it.”

  Barrett arched an eyebrow at her in inquiry. Lost it?

  “You could have told me beforehand, don’t you think? You could have at least warned me to prepare myself. But you let me learn about it for myself ! I kept picturing the police taking you away, and then who would I have left?” She was nearly yelling now. “Did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to consider what would happen to me if you end up spending the rest of your life in prison?”

  Barrett looked down, as if mulling that over. No, of course he hadn’t considered it. But now that Nell had brought it to his attention, he looked shameful. Guilty. Nell frowned at the way his shoulders deflated. He looked undignified, and it made her feel like a wretch for disgracing him. All he’d been doing was defending her honor.

  Barrett held up his notepad once more. Keep your voice down. The walls were thin. How ironic would it have been if Nell’s freak-out was what brought the cops calling?

  She sighed, took a seat at the kitchen table. “You had to kill her?” she asked, her tone low.

  Research, he wrote. Wanted to see how it felt.

  “For your book?” she asked.

  Barrett shrugged.

  “I’m not angry, Barrett,” she told him, suddenly tired from all the arguing. “You did it for me. You did it because she had been improper, unappreciative. That type of behavior has its consequences, right? Sometimes, if you’re rude to the wrong person, you get a taste of your own medicine.”

  Barrett raised his eyes to meet his sister’s. She gave him a small smile, assuring him that she really wasn’t mad. “Besides, what started out as a bad day turned into a good one. When I made that scene at the office, the girls turned to see what was wrong. I couldn’t have very well said that I was afraid my brother was going to get himself arrested. I couldn’t have said that. So, I said that Linnie and I were friends. It just tumbled out of me, and the strangest thing happened.” Nell smiled at the memory. “You should have seen them. They were like flies on a corpse. As soon as I said we were close, everyone wanted to say how sorry they were about her death, as though I was the one that deserved their condolences. I guess I pulled off looking pretty sad about the whole thing. Her friends were mumbling about how she had never talked about me, but what do they know anyway? They can’t prove anything. Maybe I should have been an actress.”

  Barrett was frowning again. He wasn’t happy with Nell’s confession.

  “I only said the thing about me and her being friends to protect you, you know. And isn’t that what you were doing when you did what you did? Didn’t you go through with the whole thing to protect me?”

  You should have kept your mouth shut, he wrote, then looked away from her, not sold on her reasoning.

  “Well, I don’t see what you have to be upset about,” she said. “I’m the one that turned down an invitation to the Cabana Club.”

  It was then that Barrett’s eyes blazed.

  He shot up from his chair, his notepad tumbling to the floor.

  She could see it in his expression, the memory of their mother dancing across the deep brown of his eyes. Their sloppy drunk mother who locked them in the closet while she pulled strange men into their dead father’s bed. He wore a mask of disdain, and that’s when his true intentions became clear.

  Yes, Barrett had killed Linnie Carter, because Linnie Carter had made Nell cry.

  Yes, he’d killed her because she was an unappreciative bitch who couldn’t bother with politeness.

  Yes, he had wanted to see how it felt. For his book. For his art.

  But mostly, Barrett had killed her because Linnie’s disregard for Nell’s feelings had reminded him of their mother’s disregard for her own children.

  He had killed her because, at her core, Linnie Carter was a carbon copy of Faye Sullivan. An
d Faye Sullivan was out there somewhere, alive.

  “It had nothing to do with research, did it?” Nell asked. “You did it because of Mom.”

  Barrett reeled around, his stare hard, wild with a rage Nell hadn’t seen before. That’s when the realization hit her. Nell was afraid of losing Barrett, either to a girl or the police, and Barrett was afraid of losing her too. He was afraid of Nell hanging around the girls she worked with because they were just like their matriarch. Ugly and sinful and hateful right down to their bones. But if he wiped them out, Nell didn’t stand a chance of being their friend. If he killed the ones who got too friendly, they wouldn’t ruin his sister, and Nell couldn’t make any friends.

  “You can’t do that, Barrett,” she said, her newfound understanding igniting a flame of resentment deep in her chest—small, but still there. “You can’t just go around killing people who remind you of her, no matter how much you want her gone.”

  Barrett refused to look at her, his lack of eye contact assuring her that he’d do whatever he damn well pleased. Because of course he would. It didn’t matter that his actions affected his sister. That was the whole point, after all. How was she supposed to change her life if Barrett cut down her opportunities?

  “You’re selfish.” Her tone was hard-edged. Most of the time, all she wanted was to please him, but he’d crossed a line. After all she sacrificed for him—letting him live out his dreams of being a writer. Her working full-time, while he sat around reading his books. Having to ride the dirty subway. Enduring the snide comments and judgmental looks. Dealing with that stupid bicycle gang. The least he could do was try to let her find some company beyond their shitty little apartment.

  “What about me?” she demanded. “What about what I want? What about who I look like?” There was a resemblance. Nell had inherited their mother’s mousy brown hair. If she dropped a few pounds, the thinness of her face would reflect Faye Sullivan’s sharp cheekbones and weak chin. “Will you kill me too?”

  Nothing.

  “Barrett.”

  He squared his shoulders at the sound of his name, but rather than glaring at her, he peered down at his feet. Despite his twenty-­four years, at that moment he looked like a little boy. That familiar pang of guilt crawled back into Nell’s guts. She was making him feel bad again, but she couldn’t just shrug and forget what he’d done. There would be other girls in Nell’s life now. She hadn’t thought it possible at the beginning of the day, but after Savannah’s invitation, she was quite sure of it. Soon, Nell would have another chance, which meant there would be other girls. If she didn’t put a stop to Barrett’s compulsion now, she wouldn’t stand a chance of doing it later.

  “Barrett, you have to promise me,” she said. “If you get caught, I’ll have no one.” She knew it was strange—insane, really—that she was more concerned about the police apprehending Barrett than him killing people. But maybe that was the whole problem. Maybe she was crazy, spending her days imagining doing terrible things to the girls who wronged her, who made her feel less than human. At least Barrett had the courage to do what Nell could only fantasize about. At least he had the strength to take action rather than spend his life as little more than a shadow. But that kind of courage was dangerous. He feared that she would become someone other than herself, and she worried that his valor would erase him from her life completely.

  “If you do something bad and the police find out, if they take you away, what will I do?” she asked, her anger diluted by the worry that gnawed at every nerve.

  Barrett took a seat on the edge of his wingback chair, Robert Louis Stevenson lying between his feet, his small notepad overturned upon the floor.

  “Have you stopped to think that maybe they’ll come after me too? And even if they don’t, I can’t live alone. You know I can’t. What choice will I have but to try to find Mother? What choice will I have, Barrett, other than to go live with her again?”

  A muted moan escaped his lips. It was a cross between agony and anger, as though the mere thought of Nell living with that woman was tearing him up inside. Severing ventricles and veins. Twisting organs like tightropes.

  Nell abandoned her kitchen chair. A thin film of pink frosting still clung to the floorboard seams. She padded barefoot across the small expanse of their two-bit apartment. The boards, rough and crooked, impossible to clean completely, creaked beneath her feet. She sank to her knees at the foot of Barrett’s chair and laid her head next to his knee. “You see how bad it could become?” she whispered. “If I’m left alone, I may as well die.” She smiled to herself, feeling his fingers drift across the top of her head like a breeze. “And acting out of anger, out of jealousy . . .” He tensed at the word. “I know you’re jealous, Barrett. Don’t deny it.” He removed his hand from her head. “You’re worried,” Nell continued. “Worried that I’ll find someone else.”

  Barrett rocketed from the chair, pushing her away.

  No, he wasn’t jealous. Jealousy would have meant that he wanted to go out with Nell to restaurants and discos and God knew wherever else. But he didn’t want anything to do with that. He didn’t want her to have anything to do with that. That was the whole point, his whole reasoning behind his actions. He was doing his brotherly duty. Saving her from herself.

  She watched him stomp across the living room for no reason other than to put distance between them. “Well, I’m worried that you’ll find someone else!” she yelled at his back. “You’re going to abandon me! You’re going to leave me, and what’ll happen to me then?”

  He shot her a glance over his shoulder, one she’d seen a hundred times before.

  I would never. I couldn’t, it said. How many times do I have to tell you? How many times before you get it through your head?

  But she couldn’t bring herself to believe him. How could he not leave? She was a pathetic mess. A loser. The apartment was a dump. Kings Highway was like a war zone. Barrett was smart and witty and charming and talented—he couldn’t speak, but he could write, and that’s what was important. It was how he’d leave his mark on the world, how the universe would remember he existed. She should have been pushing him out of that apartment with both hands out of love, not trying to keep him locked away out of fear. If she found a friend or two, maybe she’d have the courage to let him go. If she managed to do that, maybe she could be the sister Barrett deserved.

  It was decided, then. She’d do everything she could to slough off her current image.

  She’d become someone else. For him.

  Anything for him.

  “Barrett.” Her fingers drifted across the threadbare pad of his chair. “You have to promise me, okay? Promise me you won’t do it again, no matter what.”

  He turned away again.

  “Barrett, please!” She raised her voice again, not caring who heard them through the walls. “I’m trying to make things better for us. I’m trying to make our life different. Don’t you want that, for things to be different?”

  His body language shifted ever so slightly. His stick-straight stance relaxed just a little, as if bending beneath his own secret yearning for change.

  “You just have to trust me,” she told him. “Things are going to get better, you’ll see. Everything will be all right. I promise. We just need to believe in each other, trust each other. And I still trust you, Barrett . . . even after today. I still trust you, but you need to trust me too.”

  That was a tall order for either one of them. They had spent their entire lives being overprotective. To ask for a little leeway was as good as asking to be altogether let go. But there was no way around it. If they continued to clutch at each other so fiercely, they’d choke each other to death. Barrett had already killed Linnie. It was only a matter of time before he wrapped his hands around Nell’s throat and squeezed.

  “I love you, Barrett,” she said softly. “And I’ll never leave you. Never, for anyone.”

&n
bsp; That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Leaving was one thing, but there was something more important to him, something bigger.

  “And I’ll never become like her,” she said. “I’ll never turn into Mom.”

  . . .

  When the sun rose on Brooklyn, Nell tied a yellow ribbon into her hair to match the daybreak. The B train squealed down the tracks. Her own image reflected back at her in the scratched-up plexiglass. That bit of graffiti—WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE YOU’LL BE—shot across her line of sight. The train blasted into an underground tunnel, sending the overhead lights into a hyperactive horror-movie flicker before they resumed their cold fluorescent buzz. A black man walked up and down the train car, shaking a metal camping cup in each rider’s face. He ignored a businessman’s offhanded threat of calling the cops. See? Barrett would have scribbled at her. Everyone’s breaking the law. No one’s afraid. The man smelled like trash-can sludge. And while Nell would have been quick to ignore his begging, she reminded herself that today was the first day of the rest of her life. Today, things were going to change, and that change would be a direct result of the effort she put in.

  Drawing a small crocheted coin purse from her bag, she shook a few loose dimes into the palm of her hand, readying herself for the homeless man’s cup. As Nell waited for the man to make his second and final pass of the car, she noticed the woman sitting next to her staring at the coins, as if contemplating stealing them for herself. When their eyes met, the woman—a babushka if there ever was one, a floral-print scarf tied around her white hair—shook her head in disapproval.

  “You should not,” she said in a heavy Baltic accent. “You give to him and he remember you. He come back again.”

  Nell frowned at the dimes, not sure what harm it would do to give the guy a break. She’d read a newspaper article about how many homeless men were Vietnam vets, too unskilled or traumatized by what they’d seen overseas to keep a job. That man, no matter how bad he smelled, may have been someone’s brother, someone’s Barrett. Her gaze drifted back to the man with the cup. She pictured him in army fatigues rather than the tattered clothes he was wearing now. He may have been handsome once, may have clutched a rifle to his chest while sloshing his way through the rice paddies. And before that? He may have lounged in a wingback just like Barrett’s, poring over books, dreaming of his first novel hitting the stands. Fame. Fanfare. Now? Poverty. Desperation. The New York City subway a moving, screaming home.