Deep Betrayal

something.”
    I ran back to the car and frantically checked every storage place I could find. Single socks, hair binders, and gum wrappers … those I had plenty of. Sharp, sharp, something sharp . I came up with a paper clip and some nail clippers.
    I raced back and started puncturing and cutting the tape. At one point I bit at it. Picking and tearing, I made slow progress. When I got it down to a thin-enough layer, I perforated the tape with the end of the paper clip and ripped up the middle, ankles to thighs, liberating his legs.
    “Get my hands,” Jack said. “I can do the rest.”
    I tore at the tape around his wrists and cold gray fingers. “Jack, you’ve got to let up on this obsession. Things are only going to get worse for you if you keep trying to convince everyone there are mermaids in the lake.”
    “There are mermaids in the lake. I know it. You know it. Why aren’t you siding with me on this? Forget about Calder White.” He made the last name sound like a curse. “His sisters are dangerous. He’ll turn on you, too. Just like Pavati turned on me.”
    I closed my eyes and shook my head. I’d heard all this before.
    When the last bit of tape gave way, Jack yanked his hands free and the iron ring creaked on its rusty hinge. He rubbed the circulation back into his hands, then started peeling the layers of tape off his belly gingerly, pulling off hair and skin.He cringed and made strangled cries high in his throat, grimacing and sucking at his teeth. Watching the agony on his face, it reminded me of an actual merman transformation.
    Jack paused to gather himself before he started to pull off the tape on his thighs.
    “Maybe if you rip it off fast it won’t hurt as much,” I said.
    His face glistened with sweat and he eyed me cruelly. “Don’t watch,” he said. “Go find my clothes. I think they threw them behind that old gas tank.”
    I got up and searched, grateful for something else to do. When I came back, a T-shirt and swim trunks in my hand, there was another angry ripping sound, fast and loud. He screamed; then his back hunched before he rolled over and puked in the grass.
    When there was nothing more but dry heaves, Jack sat in the dust, covering his nakedness. Filthy and bleeding, he spit and wiped his mouth. I stayed back and tossed his clothes to him. He pulled on his shorts and then curled into a fetal position, his head on his knees.
    “She said she loved me,” he said, his voice low. “We had plans. I put everything on hold for her. She said she wanted a baby. We were going to be a family.”
    Jack’s confidences made me feel young and naive. But he must have misunderstood her. Pavati wasn’t the mothering type. And Jack was only nineteen.
    “Then it got cold. And she left,” he said.
    “But she must have told you she’d come back with the spring migration.”
    “That’s what got me through the winter. But all spring I watched for her. She never came back. Or, I should say, she never came back for me .
    “I don’t know what I was thinking—trying to have a future with her. She betrayed me. She’s not normal .” His face clouded over, and I could almost taste the bitterness on the air. “If I can’t have her …” But he never finished the thought.
    We both sat in silence for several minutes. I rocked back and forth, trying to think of something reassuring to say, but I could come up with nothing.
    Jack spoke first. “Whatever. I did what I could to warn everyone. I’m done trying. The next dead body is going to be on their heads. Not mine.”
    I shuddered at his complete lack of hyperbole. “That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
    “It’s a little too late to worry about what’s extreme. This whole town can go to hell for all I care.” He pushed himself to his feet and staggered into the woods.
    “Don’t you want a ride?” I called out to him.
    “Just stay away from me,” he said, leaving me alone on the bloodstained ground.

23
WITNESS
    B ig Mo’s Pizzeria was short on tables. Fifteen people hovered around the hostess station waiting for diners to clear out. Twice in the last five minutes our waitress had stopped to ask if there was anything more she could get us, and although there was nothing, we didn’t give any sign that we were ready to leave. The bill still lay turned over on the table and half the pizza remained on the round, aluminum disc. The cheese had solidified minutes ago, and pools of grease lay like millponds on the