My Absolute Darling: The Sunday Times bestseller

Rilke says, “I really like your coat.”

Turtle looks away.

Rilke says quickly, “No, like—I really do. I have nothing like that, you know? Like—cool and old?”

“Thanks,” Turtle says, pulling the coat up around her shoulders, drawing her hands back into its sleeves.

“It’s this whole, like, army surplus, Kurt Cobain chic you have.”

Turtle says, “Thanks.”

Rilke says, “So, Anna is, like—killing you on those vocab tests.”

“Fucking Anna, fucking whore,” Turtle says. The coat sits huge about her shoulders. Her hands, white-knuckled, wet with rain, are clenched between her thighs. Rilke barks out a startled laugh, looking forward down the aisle and then in the other direction, to the back of the bus, her neck very long, her hair falling about her in straight, black, glossy strands. Turtle does not know how it is so glossy, so straight, how it has that sheen, and then Rilke looks back to Turtle, eyes alight, putting a hand over her mouth.

“Oh my god,” Rilke says, “oh my god.”

Turtle watches her.

“Oh my god,” Rilke says again, leaning in conspiratorially. “Don’t say that!”

“Why?” Turtle says.

“Anna’s really very nice, you know,” Rilke says, still leaning in.

“She’s a cunt,” Turtle says.

Rilke says, “So you want to hang out sometime?”

“No,” Turtle says.

“Well,” Rilke says, after a pause, “good talk,” and returns to her book.

Turtle looks away from Rilke, at the seat ahead of her, and then out at the window, sheeted with water. A pair of girls tamp a bowl into a blown-glass pipe. The bus shudders and jars. I would just as soon, Turtle thinks, slit you from your asshole to your little slut throat as be your friend. She has a Kershaw Zero Tolerance knife with the pocket clip removed that she carries deep in her pocket. She thinks, you bitch, sitting there with your nail polish, running your hands through your hair. She does not even know why Rilke does this; why does she examine the ends of her hair; what is there to see? I hate everything about you, Turtle thinks. I hate the way you talk. I hate your little bitch voice. I can barely hear you, that high-pitched squeak. I hate you, and I hate that slick little clam lodged up between your legs. Turtle, watching Rilke, thinks, goddamn, but she is really looking at her hair as if there is something for her to see about the ends.

When the bell rings for lunch, Turtle walks down the hill to the field, her boots squelching. She wades out toward the soccer goal, hands in her pockets, and the rain sweeps across the flooded field in drifts. The field is enclosed by a forest black with rain, the trees withered and gnarled with their poor soil, thin as poles. A garter snake skates across the water, gloriously side to side, head up and forward, black with long green and copper runners, a thin yellow jaw, a black face, bright black eyes. It crosses the flooded ditch and is gone. She wants to go, to bolt. She wants to cover ground. To leave, to take to the woods, is to throw open the cylinder of her life and spin it and close it. She has promised Martin, promised, and promised, and promised. He cannot risk losing her, but, Turtle thinks, he will not. She doesn’t know everything about these woods, but she knows enough. She stands enclosed in the open field, looking out into the forest, and she thinks, the hell, the hell.

The bell rings. Turtle turns and looks back to the school above her on the hill. Low buildings, covered walkways, throng of raincoated middle schoolers, clogged downspouts sheeting water.

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