Somebody Else's Music(136)

“No,” the nurse said. “You didn’t come close to nearly dying. The razor or whatever it was didn’t penetrate to anything really serious. You’ve got a fair amount of damage to your abdominal muscles, and you’ve lost a lot of blood, but that’s about it. The doctor said it was the luckiest thing in your life that you were this heavy. If you hadn’t been, she’d have sliced your intestines in half. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. I know what she was trying to do. She told me what she was trying to do. I guess I’m going to have to tell Kyle about it, one of these days.”

“It would probably be a good idea.”

“Maybe we should have told everybody what happened at the time. Did you know about that? That we all knew?

“We were just trying to protect Peggy. That wasn’t wrong. We couldn’t know she’d turn into a homicidal maniac. Or whatever she is. Do you know who Betsy Toliver is? Have you seen her since she came back to town?”

“A couple of times, yes,” the nurse said. “She’s brought her mother here once or twice.”

“She calls herself Liz now. Maris told me. Belinda said she wouldn’t change what she called her, no matter what. We called her Betsy Wetsy. I remember this day at Center School when we were all out on that playground, it was completely asphalted over except for the sand area and the sand area had that concrete ridge around it and in the middle there were swings and a slide. And this one day, she—Betsy—she was sitting in a swing by herself and Maris wanted to ride on it. And Maris took a stick, a big long tree branch that had fallen down in the wind or somehow, and started poking at her with it and calling her Betsy Wetsy, and then the rest of us got sticks, too, not big ones, there weren’t a lot of big ones around. But we got them. And we all started … advancing on her … I guess that’s what you’d call it. And Maris pushed her off the swing and then—and then I don’t know what. I don’t remember. I don’t know if she cried or told the teachers or if we got away with it or got in trouble or what. I can only remember pushing at her and sort of chanting that name. Betsy Wetsy. Betsy Wetsy.”

“I think you really are going to run out of air. Listen to yourself. You’re gasping.”

“I know.” Emma closed her eyes. She did a lot of gasping. She gasped when she walked more than half a block without stopping. She gasped when she climbed stairs. It had been years since she had been able to take a full, deep breath without feeling as if she were being suffocated. All she had to do was wait, and the air came back to her. “The thing is,” she said when she could talk again, “I was wondering. About her. About Betsy or Liz or whatever you want to call it. About what she was like. Did you know I met her son?”

“No,” the nurse said.

“It’s like they’re all from a different planet. All those people. They don’t think like normal people. They don’t … I don’t know. I don’t get it. Why would anybody want to be that way? Why would anybody want to read books all the time and get into arguments and be … different … be … I don’t know. It’s like they like it. Being different. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What would make sense is for you to get some more sleep,” the nurse said. “I’m going to ask the doctor if he can’t give you a little more of that painkiller.”

“I was just thinking how odd it was,” Emma said. She said it slowly. If she spoke slowly, it was easier to control her breathing. “There’s this person who went to school with me, and now she’s famous, and all I can remember about all the time we grew up together is us doing stuff to her. Me and Belinda and Maris and Chris and Peggy and Nancy and we all did things to her. Poked at her with sticks. Told her we wanted to meet her at the White Horse and then went somewhere else. Locked her in the supply cabinet in the gym. Nailed her into the outhouse. And I keep thinking that can’t be right. That can’t be all that happened. But I can’t remember anything else. And Peggy said—Peggy said that she hated us. Do you think that’s true?”

“No,” the nurse said. “People don’t keep grudges like that, for thirty years. You need to go to sleep now. It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s all that matters,” Emma said, but the words barely came out. She was beyond gasping. She was beyond thinking. She snapped her head from side to side, sucking in air, sucking in air. There wasn’t air enough in the universe to fill her lungs. It was, she thought, really and truly all that mattered. It was all that had ever mattered. Her life was bound up in that small capsule of time, in brick buildings that had by now begun to crumble into dust, on playgrounds where nobody ever played anymore. For all the rest of eternity, she would be just fifteen years old and dressed in the frilled pastel blue chiffon ballerina-length dress she’d had for her first formal date with George. Her sleeves would be a pastel blue net and come halfway down her upper arm. Her shoes would have only one-and-a-half-inch heels, but the heels would be made in the same shape as the ones for three-inch-tall “classic pumps.” Her purse would be dyed to match her dress. Her wrist-length gloves would be whiter than white. Her neckline would have an eyelet trim.