Queens of the Saints

The gas pedal can't go down any farther. Sunny struggles to keep it floored while still seeing over the steering wheel enough to be able to dodge the trees framing the treacherous dirt road like a solid concrete wall or the wayward stumps threatening to derail the old Ford station wagon like a train on uneven tracks. Even with her coarse blond hair tied back, loose pieces still belt her in the eyes and the salt sting of the sweat from her forehead isn't making it any better.

In the very back of the station wagon is Spider, just screaming her lungs out and shooting rounds from her Desert Eagle out of the busted rear window. Sunny already knows that Spider is bleeding, and bad. It was a bullet to the gut for Spider that made the getaway vehicle necessary. If one woman--an ugly, old woman with no teeth and scabs covering the whole of her--hadn't woken up, the one man Sunny had killed would've been enough.

She could've just slit his throat with her brand new butterfly after sneaking up behind him in his sleep, as she had done, collected Spider and her beloved gun, and slipped quietly into the woods like ghosts. Except for the corpse, it would've been like neither of them had ever been there. But that damned old hag had to have been taking a piss outside her tent and started screaming. She woke up the entire settlement, and they gave chase.

They found the first car that would start, and Sunny curled herself underneath the steering column, trying to find the wires to snap to get it to start. Finally, Spider shoved her out of the way and her nimble fingers got the car to sputter into life. Spider turned to let Sunny out of the floorboards, and that was when she was shot. She screamed, hysterical, looking at the blood and the hole, and it was Sunny's turn to grab and shove, pushing Spider in the back of the car over the driver's seat and stomping the pedal.

Sunny hears the engines of the other gaining, and she prays ever crazed syllable that comes into her pea brain that something will happen. That they will give up and go home, or that a tree will fall, or one of their motorcycles or trucks will derail. Anything that will give her a chance to get back to the safety of the compound.

Long after Spider's shots stop making Sunny's ears ring and after her cries strangle down to whimpers and occasional sobs, Sunny feels like they have been going for years. The light for the gas pops on and she's not sure how much longer the car will last. When Spider gets too quiet, she shouts behind her, "MOM?"

Spider answers the call with a gurgling sob. Partly reassured, Sunny turns around in time to dodge a waist-height stump and see the compound and the sunrise in sight. She lays on the horn, slamming it with the heel of her hand so many times at such strength it ends up sticking; making a long screech of a sound that seems like it will never end.

Relief comes in the form of bullets firing from the turrets of the compound, aimed behind the station wagon. The boys had been waiting for hours, and Sunny could've cried she was so grateful they hadn't fallen asleep.

The cars and trucks and bikes behind them died down, slowing and disappearing, and Sunny actually does begin to cry, bouncing up and down in her seat and sticking her head out the window to shout swears with her hoarse voice, but she doesn't slow down even for a second.

The compound doors open barely enough room to get the car in, though the mirrors are completely torn off and the sides are scraped something awful. She releases the gas and goes for both the foot brake and the hand brake. The card skids to a sudden, painful stop, and Sunny hears Spider's body slid forward and hit the back of the seats.

Outside, the family rejoices and shouts. They believed they'd get neither of their girls back. After all, Spider had enough ass to her she could usual weasel herself out of any situation, and if she couldn't that spelled out a dark deal. Plus, Sunny was only fourteen, without even her Fake.

But she got Spider back, she'd completed her Proving. Her Fake was on the way.

Her father, Baron, pushed his way to the back of the car, his face red and swollen from crying. He threw open the hatchback and gingerly pulled Spider, his wife of twenty years, closer by her ankles.

Sunny tried to wriggle her way out of the embrace of an older boy--Headhunter was his Fake--who had been congratulating her all the while his eyes shiny with tears. He was tall and had thick brown hair with a shock of extremely premature gray at the front, and always had a way of knowing the inevitable before anyone else did.

Harper was hot on Sunny's heels, probably on orders from her parents and under her own common sense. Harper was smart--too damn smart for her own good, maybe--and she, herself, had a knack for knowing when people couldn't handle a situation. Her hands tried to find purchase on Sunny's sweat-soaked wife beater singlet, trying to catch Sunny's blue eyes with her gray-green ones to no avail. Sunny escaped Harper and stopped short at the back of the Ford.

Kaplan and Milan, the parents of Harper and best friends of Spider and Baron, stood a few feet back watching Surgeon, a former doctor and handsome man built like a lumberjack, assess Spider with Baron hovering over his shoulder. Sunny could see Baron holding onto one of Spider's bare and bloody ankles with one gnarled hand, tears coming down his face.

Slowly Surgeon backed away from Spider. He gave a pointed look to Baron and shook his head with sad eyes. He gave the same look to Kaplan and Milan. Milan's face twitched and twisted into a look of agony. Kaplan wrapped his arms tight around her, looking like the life had drained out of him.

Baron's knees buckled and he pushed his face into Spider's thighs, his hand grasping her ass and digging in tight. His body was racked with unaired sobs.

Quiet ate the Saints alive as Surgeon went to his own wife; a tiny woman called Bastille, and put his head in the crook of her neck, practically kneeling to do so. Bastille wrapped her arms around Surgeon's thick neck and she began to cry.

Everyone loves Spider. Everyone loved Spider. Now she was leaving.

Sunny couldn't move, but Harper appeared beside her, tangling her sweaty hand with Sunny's own. They gripped each other so tight that their bones hurt.

From the car, everyone hears Spider's weak laugh, her breathing watery. Sunny can kind of see Spider's shaking hand running through Baron's thick, black hair through the window. "Man alive, that girl of ours," she says with a watery voice. It almost sounds dreamy, as though she's on the brink of sleep. "She did so good. So damn good."

Baron doesn't say anything, removing himself from Spider's long legs to pull himself into the bloody back of the car with her. Her pale, calloused feet hang out the back with his booted ones.

"What's that fish? The real mean fish. It fights for no reason. Goes after bigger shit," Spider says, her voice getting shakier.

Harper is closer now, her arm wrapped around Sunny's waist and her face buried in Sunny's chest at the collar bone, their hands still clasped tight, tight, tight. Sunny can feel Headhunter behind her, his hand rested on her shoulder. She wants to say she wants to shake them off to run to Spider, but that's a lie. She wants everything and everyone to chain her down so she can't move, because she doesn't want to see Spider like this.

"Snakehead," Baron finally answers.

That watery laugh comes from Spider again. "Yeah, Snakehea--..." her voice trails off. Where there was once quiet, there was no silence. Every gravel crunching move of a foot is painfully audible, every breath decibels too loud. There is soft crying coming from many directions.

Baron slides out of the back of the car, his faded blue jeans and oil-stained white t-shirt and tanned-red skin darkened by Spider's blood. He's quaking in his boots and Sunny is scared he is going to fall to the ground, but she should know better. He takes a long, deep breath, narrows his eyes, and pulls Spider's body out of the car.

Sunny watches him carry her mother to their house. Her mother, with the same coarse, dirty blond hair and sloped nose. Her mother, dressed in a flowing shirt and camisole that were obviously never hers, with her mink dark eyes staring blindly at the sky. Her mother, with her snow white feet and leather-brown arms, shoulders, chest, neck, and face. Her mother, her dead mother.

For a while, everyone looks to each other, unsure of what to do.

"I want to go," Sunny says in such a low voice it's nearly a breath.

Harper looks up at her, her face swollen and sticky. "What?"

"I want to go," Sunny says again in the same barely hearable voice. She drags Harper away from the crowd, towards the back of the compound. For a moment, Headhunter tries to give chase, but Surgeon stops him.

Sunny lets go of Harper's hand as they get into a small wooded area behind the cabins. She trips on the underbrush and spirals into the dirt, scraping up her bare knees and elbows. Instantly, she begins to sob so hard her face goes ugly, dropping onto the ground. Snot and tears and sweat run down her face and blood trickles down her elbows and legs.

Harper stands for a moment, unsure of what to do, but she eventually settles next to Sunny, holding her hands tight and crying with her.

There is a hole in Sunny that feels impossibly, unendurably vast, like old cartoons shot through with canon balls. She realizes that the Saints all have matching holes, but she tells herself that hers is the biggest, and it is bleeding the most. It is a bastard-sized lie, but it is a lie that makes her feel better, even though she can practically see Harper's canon ball cut-out bleeding a river right across from her.

Hours later, they are woken in the dark by Kaplan and Milan, both wearing their cinder-and-ash Ghost Faces. Identifying markers for the Saints, worn only during a raid, or after a successful Proving to deliver a Fake and a Ghost Face to the Proven.

Milan's hard hands, gentle as the kiss of sunshine, help Sunny to her feet, while Kaplan is the one to put Harper on her feet. They don't say a single word, as is custom, as they walk the girls back to the gates of the compound. Sunny studies Milan's face, pale white with ash and the hollows of her cheeks and the bags under her eyes darkened with coal, giving her the look of starvation. A fashion model.

All of the Saints are gathered around two raging bonfires, the Proven wearing their Ghost Faces, and the un-Proven wearing their bare faces. They leave Harper with the crowd, and she stands next to Bastille and Surgeon, who puts a hand on her shoulder.

Baron stands in his Ghost Face to the side of the fires, his face looking like it would be dark and ragged even without his ash. Usually, there were four, two for each bonfire. The three of them make the chasm in Sunny ache just as intensely as it had earlier.

Sunny stands between the two fires, feeling smaller than small with the eyes of her entire family, all the Saints, on her. Milan produces a pot of coal, and Baron fumbles stupidly with his pot of ash. The ash was Spider's job.

They approach Sunny and Baron coats her face enough to make it sickly pale. Milan dips her long fingers in the ash, still hot from its burning a few hours ago, and goes to work. Sunny closes her eyes and braces herself against the burn of the coal. Milan's fingers run under her chin and around her eyes, coating the entire socket, and stopping with three lines on each cheek.

"Snakehead," Kaplan says in his rich voice. Her heart hammers in her chest. Her Fake.

Sunny opens her eyes and sees Kaplan in front of her, his face white on the top and black on the bottom to represent the Polish flag, holding a dirty mirror out to her. She takes it and looks at her reflection. She was a snakehead, complete with gills and pointed teeth running from her black bottom lip to the point of her chin.

Kaplan turns to the rest of the Saints, motioning to Snakehead with an arm, and shouts, "SNAKEHEAD! Remember her face, because she is one of you. She will protect and fight for you, and you will protect and fight for her."

He looks to Snakehead, who would never be known by her former name again, a sign to call. She sucks in enough air into her lungs to make her ribs hurt, and screams, "FOR OUR BLOOD, WE WILL KILL!"

"FOR OUR BLOOD, WE WILL KILL," the Saints answer back, even the un-Proven.

Cheers follow, and she is mobbed. The night, sticky and humid, will never be forgotten. It is as mournful as it is joyful. People drink and laugh and cry, and more than once Snakehead was called Spider. It was a common mistake before, they looked exactly alike, but because the fact of the matter was that Spider was dead, Snakehead's wound hurt. So she does like any Saint who was injured does--she drinks until numbness. She drinks until the fire blurs and dances out of its boundaries without permission. Until Ghost Faces turn to real faces and back.

Now Proven and the daughter of the leaders, she goes and finds Headhunter, who is drinking with some boys behind a cabin. She sits in his lap, drinks out of his bottle, and kisses him. His friends leave and things progress until she straddles him in the dirt. Constantly, he asks if she's sure. She tells him to shut his fucking mouth and unzips his pants.

"I'm going to get what I want," she says, pulling her panties to the side with a drunken smirk on her face.