Speaking in Tongues

her parents. And those bad feelings had been bottled up in her forever, it seemed. But now they were out. They weren’t gone, no, but they were buzzing around her head, getting smaller, like a blown-up balloon you let go of. And she had a thought: The anger goes away; the love doesn’t. Not if it’s real. And she thought maybe, just maybe—with Tate and Bett—the love might be real. Orat least she might unearth a patch of real love. And once she understood that she could recall other memories.
    Thinking of the time she and her father went to Pentagon City on a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree and he’d let her drive the Lexus back home, saying only, “The speedometer stops at one forty and you pay any tickets yourself.” They’d opened the sunroof and laughed all the way home.
    Or the time she and her mother went to some boring New Age lecture. After fifteen minutes Bett had whispered, “Let’s blow this joint.” They’d snuck out the back door of the school, found a snow saucer in the playground and huddled together on it, whooping and screaming all the way to the bottom of the hill. Then they’d raced each other to Starbucks for hot chocolate and brownies.
    And she even thought of her sweet sixteen party, the only time in—how long?—five, six years she’d seen her parents together. For a moment they’d stood close to each other, near the buffet table, while her father gave this awesome speech about her. She’d cried like crazy, hearing his words. For a few minutes they seemed like a perfectly normal family.
    If I get home, she now thought . . . No, when I get home, I’ll talk to them. I’ll sit down with them. Oh, I’ll give ’em fucking hell but then I’ll talk. I’ll do what I should’ve done a long time ago.
    The anger goes away; the love doesn’t . . .
    A blister burst. Oh, that hurt. Oh, Jesus. She closed her eyes and slipped her hand under her arm and pressed hard. The sting subsided and she continued to cut.
    After a half hour Megan had cut a six-by-three-foot hole in the Sheetrock. She worked the piece out and rested it against the floor then leaned against the wall for a few minutes, catching her breath. She was sweating furiously.
    The hole was ragged and there was plaster dust all over the floor. She was worried that Peter would see it and guess she’d set a trap for him. But the window at this end of the corridor was small and covered with grease and dirt; very little light made it through. She doubted that the boy would ever see the trap until it was too late.
    She snuck back to where his father—or someone—had bricked up the entrance to the administration area of the hospital and, quietly, started carting cinder blocks back to the trap, struggling under their weight. When she’d lugged eight bricks back to the corridor she began stacking them in the hole she’d cut, balancing them on top of one another, slightly off center.
    Megan then used her glass knife and sliced strips off the tail of her shirt. She knotted them into a ten-foot length of rope and tied one end to one of the blocks in the stack. Finally she placed the piece of Sheetrock back in the opening and examined her work. She’d lead Peter back here and when he walked past the trap she’d pull the rope. A hundred pounds of concrete would crash down on top of him. She’d leap on him with the knife and stab him—she decided she couldn’t kill him but would slash his hands and feet—to make sure he couldn’t attack or chase her. Then she’d demand the keys and run like hell.
    Megan walked softly down to the main corridorand looked back. Couldn’t see anything except the tail of rope.
    Now, she just needed some bait.
    “Guess that’s gonna be us, right?” she asked, speaking out loud, though in a whisper.
    Who else? Crazy Megan answers.
    •   •   •
    Bett McCall poured herself a glass of chardonnay and kicked her shoes off.
    She was so accustomed to the dull thud of the bass and drums leaching through the floor from Megan’s room upstairs that the absence of the sound of Stone Temple Pilots or Santana brought her to tears.
    It’s so frustrating, she thought. People can deal with almost anything if they can talk about it. You argue. You make up and live more or less comfortably for the rest of your lives. Or you discover irreconcilable differences and you slowly separate into different worlds. Or you find that you’re soul mates. But if the person you love is physically gone—if