Empire Falls

now. What saddened her was the cost of this new knowledge. Could it be that getting the taste of affection, so sweet and new, from somebody who wasn’t your father or mother, meant that she’d have to forgo other companionship entirely?
    “I mean, he totally does not care about Heather,” Candace is saying. “You should, like, see the way he treats her.”
    “I know how he treats her,” Tick says, studying her snake critically. What it needs, she decides, is a tongue. “It’s how he used to treat me.”
    “He’s changed,” Candace says, looking at her now. She’s stopped carving entirely and is gathering up her things in anticipation of the bell. Her sudden interest in Tick’s romantic life confirms what Tick has been fearing: that Candace is befriending her because she was specifically commissioned by Zack to sound her out on the subject of a possible reconciliation. Tick has seen blessedly little of him since school began, but that’s because of football practice, which he has to attend every day after classes. If it weren’t for that, he would have been tormenting her nonstop. The other thing saving her is that Zack screwed up so badly last year that he was booted out of the high-track courses. Otherwise he’d be sitting right behind her in chemistry and American lit, and she’d be feeling the weight of his wounded, angry eyes all day long.
    Now that Tick is sure about Candace’s motives it angers her, and before she can consider the wisdom of doing so, she says, “I’ve changed, too. The biggest change is that I don’t like him anymore.”
    Candace’s response to this is to let loose the loudest scream Tick has ever heard. John Voss, at the other end of the table, actually looks up from his egg. Something metallic rattles onto the floor next to Tick’s clog, and Candace, howling oh-my-God-oh-my-God, holds up her hand, which is gushing blood from a deep gash that extends from her thumbnail almost to her palm. The blood is everywhere—down her arm, in the elaborate grooves she’s been carving in the back of her chair, even a small pink drop on Tick’s snake. Looking at all the blood, Tick feels her own left arm begin to throb the way it always does in anticipation of hypodermic needles at the doctor’s office, and at horror movies when somebody gets slashed.
    Candace, still screaming, wraps her thumb in the palm of her other hand and bends rapidly back and forth at the waist like one of those mechanical birds sipping water at an imaginary pool. There’s blood down the front of her unicorn shirt now, and the cowards at the Green table have all gotten up and moved away to the back wall.
    Tick’s left arm now hurts so bad that she’s beginning to feel light-headed, and the whole room takes on an odd sheen, blurred at the edges like a television dream sequence. She leans forward, resting her forehead on the cool metal table and listening to Candace shriek until another voice, sounding far off, joins in and a new pair of feet appear next to Candace’s. Tick identifies them as Mrs. Roderigue’s, and way off she hears the woman shouting, “Take your hand away so I can see, child.” And then, “Who did this to you?”
    Now Candace is screaming, “I’m-sorry-oh-my-God-I’m-so-sorry.” Tick, confused, concludes that Candace must be talking to her, apologizing for acting as Zack Minty’s go-between. “It’s okay,” Tick says, or imagines saying, probably, since she’s unable to lift her head from the table to speak. In any case, it’s what she would like to say, because she’s the kind of person who forgives easily, who in fact cannot bear to think of a person wanting to be forgiven and having that forgiveness withheld, and so the words “it’s okay,” spoken or unspoken, ring in her ears along with the rush of her own blood. When it seems the pain in her left arm can’t get any worse without the arm itself exploding, the pain peaks and then everything gradually becomes vague. Tick, now sweating and shivering, fears that for things to right themselves again, she’ll have to cross back through that territory of pain, and the truth is she’d rather not. She’d rather pass out.
    Only when she opens her eyes does she realize she’s been clenching them tightly shut for some time. With her forehead still on the cool edge of the table, she has a view of the floor at her feet. There, between her right foot and her backpack, is the bloody Exacto knife. Candace’s screaming has