“Jean!” The voice comes from behind me, followed by the slam of a door. “Jean!”

“Fuck off,” I say. “Or I’ll keep talking.” Suddenly, I don’t care anymore about the shock or the pain. If I can keep screaming through it, keep up my anger, drown the sensation with booze and words, would the electricity continue to flow? Would it lay me out?

Probably not. They won’t kill us for the same reason they won’t sanction abortions. We’ve turned into necessary evils, objects to be fucked and not heard.

Patrick is yelling now. “Jean! Babe, stop. Please stop.”

Another light goes on in the Kings’ house. A door squeaks open. Footsteps. “What the hell’s going on out there, McClellan? People are trying to sleep.” It’s the husband, of course. Evan. Olivia is still peeking through the blinds at my midnight show.

“Fuck you, Evan,” I say.

Evan announces he’s calling the cops, although not quite so politely as all that. Then the light in Olivia’s window goes dark.

I hear screaming—some my own—then Patrick is on me, wrestling me down to the moist grass, pleading and cajoling, and I can taste tears on his lips when he kisses me quiet. My first thought is whether they teach men these techniques, whether there were pamphlets handed over to husbands and sons and fathers and brothers on the days we became shackled by these shiny steel bracelets. Then I decide they couldn’t possibly care that much.

“Let me go.” I’m in the grass, nightgown stuck to me like a snakeskin. It’s then I realize I’m hissing.

It’s also then I realize the pulses are closer together.

Patrick grasps my left wrist, checks the number. “You’re out, Jean.”

I try to wriggle away from him, an act as empty of hope as my heart. The grass is bitter in my mouth, until I realize I’m chewing on a mouthful of dirt. I know what Patrick’s doing; I know he’s set on absorbing the shock with me.

So I stay silent and let him lead me back inside as the wail of sirens grows louder.

Patrick can talk to them. I don’t have any words left.

Chapter Eight

EIGHT

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Sonia’s blank stare as I walk her through the rain to the bus stop is the worst reproach, my punishment for last night’s grappa-soaked tirade in the backyard. Certainly worse than Officers So-and-So lecturing me on my disturbance of the neighborhood peace.

This is the first time I haven’t told her I love her before sending her off to school. I blow a kiss, and immediately regret it when she raises a tiny hand to her lips and starts to blow one back.

The black eye of a camera stares at me from the bus door.