“Faster!” Linda is screaming, and the pack of wild girls renew their purpose at the sound of their leader’s voice. They are gaining on Norma.
She takes the stone steps in one flying bound and grasps the door latch. It is locked. The Institute closed only a few months earlier.
“Psst! C’mon! This way! Quickly!” It is Dirty Norma. She’s standing off to the left, at the corner of the Institute. She is looking down behind the building, into the backyard, as if she were standing at the entrance to some secret tunnel. She is pointing Norma toward the pool. Norma takes off running in that direction. She flies down the stone staircase and down the side of the building, rounding the corner where Dirty Norma is standing; she can feel the hot breath of the bullies behind her. Norma heads straight for the swimming pool, circling her legs so fast they resemble the propeller of a small airplane. At the very edge of the pool Norma launches herself across the gaping concrete hole. She is suspended in time for just a moment. Norma stretches even farther, growing taller as she does. With one arm she catches the far edge of the pool. She pulls herself up to solid ground and turns to watch the pack of cruel girls approach. They will surely all break their necks. They will tumble into the empty concrete pool. They will puncture holes in their lungs or jugulars and die. They will scream for dear life, falling like buffaloes off the cliff edge, down into the abyss below.
Norma dusts herself off. She turns around quickly. She can’t let that happen.
“Stop! Wait! Linda! Stop! Linda! Look out! There’s a pool! STOP!”
There is a way to stop this.
But Linda Kanakas, blind with anger, rushes at the hole and throws herself across it, screaming, a war cry. The mob of lawyers/girls stops quickly behind her, halting their run just before the pool. They watch Linda fly across the abyss. They watch as Linda, with one arm, grabs the edge. Norma hears Linda’s body crash into the side below. She can see Linda’s hand grabbing at the side, holding on, trying to dig her fingers into the concrete and dirt. The hand writhes with all the life it holds. Norma’s knife dangles by her side. With one deft hack, Norma could easily cut the hand from off its person and Linda Kanakas’s body would crash down into the bottomless pit of Grady’s old swimming pool.
Norma drops the knife. There’s a way to stop this. Norma grabs hold of the hand and pulls Linda Kanakas to safety.
Both girls lie back, panting for breath.
The mob of girls, disappointed by the lack of violence and bloodshed, disperses.
“Why didn’t you kill her?” It’s Dirty Norma. She’s standing above Norma, looking down. “She was going to kill you,” Dirty Norma says.
“I know. It’s just, I’m tired. This has gone on too long. I’m really, really tired,” Norma says.
“Maybe you’re pregnant.”
Norma doesn’t even bother to answer this time. Linda lies still. Norma thinks she can hear her silently sobbing. Norma has a seat beside Norma.
“Let’s finish up, then. There’s only a few pages left and I really want to know whether or not you kill Linda, because there’s always the chance that at the last minute she might just spring to action. She might grab your knife and plunge it into your heart, or maybe she’ll just strangle you. Maybe she’ll just sleep with your husband, give you chlamydia, and ruin your chances for ever having your own babies.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think so,” Norma says. “If I kill Linda Kanakas once, I’ll just have to keep on killing Linda Kanakas over and over and over again into infinity. I don’t want to do that. I’m too tired.”
Dirty Norma says nothing. She looks annoyed by such a simple answer. She looks like she’s got something else in mind. She draws the stenographer’s pad from her back pocket.
The Normas lean against each other. Dangling their legs over the edge of the pool, the pool that could have been filled with dead girls but, because of Norma, isn’t. They are both about to start reading from the stenographer’s pad when Norma grabs the notebook from Dirty Norma’s hand and dangles it over the hole. “Let’s not do this,” she says. “I don’t want to know how it ends.”
“You don’t? But we’ve come so far. It seems like we have to go through with it.”
“Can’t you already kind of guess what’s going to happen?”
“No.”
“Well, I can.”
“Then go ahead, guess.”
“Well. Either good will win—”
“Or else bad will.”
“Yeah, but which one is it?”
“Good or bad?”
“I can’t quite tell yet.”
“Well, guess,” Norma says. “Guess.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the MacDowell Colony, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, Pratt Institute, and Bard College. Thank you, Jeannette Haien Ballard. Thank you, PJ Mark, Jenna Johnson, and Joe Hagan. I also gratefully acknowledge the magazines and anthologies where these stories were originally published:
Tin House: “All Hands” and “Beast”
The New Yorker: “The Yellow” and “Cortés the Killer” (as “Three Days”)
FiveChapters: “The House Began to Pitch”
This Is Not Chick Lit: “Love Machine”
H.O.W. and The Sunday Times: “Wampum”