42.

Audrey’s public thrashing was the first strike in a long, ugly war.

Grandma Pencil probably didn’t anticipate any retaliation from Audrey, but McKenna did. She knew her sister. After Bronson Park, everything changed.

A feeling of dread moved into McKenna’s gut, bringing all of its clothing, trinkets, bedding, and toiletries. Dread had settled in to stay.

On that fading day in 1988, the family wandered the downtown as three separate groups: Misty and Murray; McKenna and Grandma Pencil; Toby and Audrey. The arrangement fell into place without discussion or planning. It felt natural.

Grandma Pencil linked arms with McKenna. She pointed at the Walgreen’s pharmacy that had been on the mall since 1942. “Momma worked there for a few months, believe it or not, after the war.” She ooh-ed and ahh-ed at the State Theater’s “exciting new marquee” but expressed disappointment that Sinbad was a comedian and not a stage production about a swashbuckler. Grandma grabbed McKenna’s arm as they crossed the street. She let out a gasp. “You need to take vitamins,” she said. “A teenager needs meat on her bones. How can you even drag that suitcase?”

It was an old story. It was the eight-hundredth time she’d commented on McKenna’s weight. But on this day, her voice sounded sweet rather than scolding. She seemed concerned. She touched McKenna’s cheek, brushed off a piece of dirt.

“Muscles are overrated,” McKenna answered quietly. “There are other ways to get things done.”

Grandma Pencil considered this, her eyes flashing with admiration. She appraised McKenna with a long, significant stare, as if daring her to look away. “You’re more right than you know.” Her body was warm and alive against McKenna’s shoulder.

At that moment, McKenna knew that Grandma would never let her go.

The war didn’t start right away. Back in Grand Rapids, the routines returned. On the surface, life went back to normal. Murray sank into the basement like a donkey into quicksand. Misty reaf-fixed her sad smile and boned up on her solitaire skills at the dining room table. Because it was summer vacation, Grandma Pencil was unable to put the “hel” into “helping” at St. Monica’s and had taken to assisting the nuns at the convent: plucking weeds; mowing grass; sipping tea; chatting. Domestic duties. She invited Sister P.V. and Sister Maximilian for beef tongue and scalloped potatoes on Sunday afternoons. Toby had been hired for part-time bagging work at nearby Vogel’s Grocery, while McKenna continued the paper route she’d started when she was eleven. She was sixteen now.

“You’re the oldest paperboy in Michigan,” Audrey laughed. “What do you win for that?”

Her tone was an uncanny echo of Toby’s, but Audrey’s were far more cerebral jabs.

She lay lengthwise on the couch with a throw pillow beneath her head, sipping WD-40 through a straw and watching TV. Her leg stumps were crossed at the calves atop the sofa arm. Ringlets of yellow hair spilled over the edge of the couch, almost touching the carpet. Her teeth and gums were black—a bottomless pit in the center of a glacier-white face. Her rabbit eyes appraised a Pee-We e’s Playhouse episode without emotion. Above her right eyebrow, a painful-looking pimple marred an otherwise spotless face. Poor girl.

McKenna kicked her sneakers into the corner. She was sweaty, and her legs ached from walking. The Kalamazoo vacation had forced her to take three days off, and her substitute had done a lousy job. She’d had to listen to eight different customer complaints this afternoon. She ducked out of the press carrier bag and shed it like a pile of skin. “Grandma will kill you if she sees you with that,” she said, nodding at the can of motor oil.

“Yep,” Audrey answered. “And while she kills me, you’ll stand there with your finger up your butt.”

Her jabs weren’t always cerebral.

The Kalamazoo beating was still a fresh wound. Since they’d returned home, McKenna had been mulling over and practicing the phrases she intended to say in her defense. Now, she could remember none of them. She blurted, “What was I supposed to do? Knock Grandma down?”

“Of course not. You weren’t supposed to do anything. No one in this family is ever supposed to do anything.”

“I’m the one who mows the lawn, takes out the trash, does the dishes. I don’t see you helping. Except when Toby’s dirt bike needs to be washed. Wow. Tough job.”

“You’re retarded. You don’t understand anything anybody tells you.”

McKenna lost control. Her hands tremored. Muscle spasms danced across her arms. She’d never fought with Audrey, never wanted to fight, but biology took over. The loudest part of McK-enna’s brain told her to stop, to rush to Audrey, hug her, and say, “I’m an idiot, let’s be friends again, please let me feed you and be your friend.”

But rage had seized her.

She won’t even look over here? Won’t take her perfect eyes off the TV to look at her own sister? This was Audrey’s way, her small, petty way.

She needed to exert power over McKenna because she had no power. She was a gimp and a cripple and everyone hated her, Everyone except me. Oh, you don’t remember how I protected you? How I was the only one who thought your disgusting appetite was okay?

Audrey lay on the couch, sipping oil. Black-lipped and smug. McKenna dumped the contents of her carrier sack onto the floor and picked up a Grand Rapids Press. She walked to Audrey, mounted Audrey, and pinned her.

“Eat it,” she growled. She forced the end of the rolled newspaper against Audrey’s lips.

Audrey’s mouth tightened. The newspaper bent. Ink blackened Audrey’s upper lip and chin.

“Open it! Eat it!” I pinched her face. I wanted to make her scream and bleed.

She whimpered. She struggled and squirmed. Her knees thumped my back and kicked out my air. The oil can fell on the carpet. She slapped my head. She stared at me, horrified, as the newspaper shaft slid inside.

“Play nice, girls,” a voice said.

Misty was there, like an angel. So pretty in her nightgown, fill-ing the entryway. Her face sagging like a loose mask. Hair flat-tened on one side. Barefoot.

She padded into the dining room.

McKenna and Audrey had stopped struggling at the sound of their mother’s voice. Once Misty was gone, they looked at each other, panting heavily.

Audrey’s eyes in the sunlight are a fairy tale, the color of our daily umbrella. McKenna is overcome by dizziness. Audrey, on the cusp of womanhood, tries to smile with the rolled newspaper jammed in her mouth. (Is it really a smile?) A thin line of motor oil escapes her lips. Black blood.

She begins to eat the newspaper . . . gulp . . . gulp . . . down it goes.

McKenna feels the suction. A vacuum, a machine, a paper shredder drawing her in.

Audrey’s doesn’t blink, blue lights fixed upon McKenna. Telling her.

Lips working.

The paper is gone.

The mouth is closed around McKenna’s hand. Wet, warm.

“Audrey, don’t.”

She feels herself being pulled inside.

She screams for mommy.