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In Lima, it’s part of the local folklore.
Remember what happened to her family? Someone will say, when the Gazette runs another article on her successful career in New York. Remember?
Everyone does, of course. Things like that don’t happen in Lima.
At least it all ends well; who would’ve thought that that little girl would turn out okay? And to think that she found happiness within the family that fostered her after the tragedy.
It’s almost like a fairy tale, people in Lima say.
...
The crunch of bone. A spray of blood that lands right on the hem of her dress. It’s her Sunday best, her Mary Janes are polished and sleek. There is so much yelling, so much yelling, and so much blood. She knows she’s screaming, but inside of her head, it’s strangely calm.
...
Men in blue jackets carry her out of the house; she stares at it getting smaller in the distance, like Barbie’s house, but real. They carry her to a squad car, and she turns onto her knees until someone says, “Turn around, honey, and put this on.”
Seatbelts are important. Alison is always very firm about seatbelts. (Mommy doesn’t always remember. Mommy doesn’t remember most things.)
She sits on a plastic chair for a long time, after that. Alison is in a different room. Someone has given her a lollipop. Everyone looks at her. Her dress is red and sticky.
After even more time, a tall man kneels in front of her. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she says. It’s another one of Alison’s rules.
“Well, if I introduce myself, can you talk to me then?”
She considers it for a moment. The man sticks out a hand and she takes it, pressing the finished lollipop into his hand.
“I’m Leroy,” he says. “I’m going to be looking after you for a while.”
“Why?” she asks.
“We can talk about that later.”
…
You stupid fucking whore! You stupid cunt, you burned dinner again, but of course you did, you can’t do a single fucking thing except finish off another forty, can you? What the fuck are you good for, other than--
…
Leroy and Hiram have a daughter. She’s short and quiet and has big eyes, like Bambi.
(Bambi’s mother got shot right between the eyes. Right between the eyes. Right between--)
Her name is Rachel.
They become friends, because Leroy and Hiram expect it, and because Quinn knows that friends are a normal part of life.
Rachel is nice to her most of the time, though she’s not very good about sharing, and one day that results in sort of a situation. (A ‘situation’ is code. Alison would have known what it means.)
“They spent much more time with me before you came,” Rachel says, when they’re alone on the sofa watching a cartoon.
“Sorry,” Quinn says. Lately, so many words are leaving her mouth like they mean to, but she never really means them. This is one of those times, and when she locks eyes with Rachel, she’s pretty sure Rachel knows. She adds, “I didn’t want to come here.”
“You had to,” Rachel says, with a sigh.
(Quinn will learn in years to come that Rachel embraced her, albeit unwillingly, from that very first day onwards. The dress that finally replaced hers (all that blood all that blood) was one of Rachel’s. She’d given it up willingly.)
“What if I leave?” Quinn asks.
Rachel looks at her uncertainly, and Quinn decides to test her theory out. She gets as far as the corner of the street on her training bicycle, before someone stops her and calls Leroy.
He’s not even mad.
“This is your home now,” he says. “Don’t run again, okay?”
“Okay,” she says.
There is nowhere for her to run to, anyway, and she wasn’t really running.
…
Don’t touch that knife, Quinnie.
…
She sees therapists. Dozens of them.
They all think she’s adjusting remarkably well. Adjusting to what, nobody can tell her.
Two years pass. Leroy and Hiram become Dad and Daddy, and Rachel becomes her sister and never tells her to leave again. Instead, they start doing everything together, like they’re twins. People start referring to them as the Berry girls, even though she’s still a Fabray.
It doesn’t matter so much, because Rachel’s hand is usually holding hers and Rachel reminds her of all the little things that she needs to remember but doesn’t, like to watch the road, and to not reach for knives unless she can see the handle, and to not break everything in sight.
“Don’t, Quinn,” she normally says. It normally works.
Their beds are in the same room. Rachel’s is pink, and Quinn’s is yellow. (Rachel picked the color when Quinn didn’t care.) Her favorite part of their room is the bookcase full of fairy tales. Dad or Daddy read to them each night, even though they can both read. They leave the night light on, because they seem to think Quinn is afraid of the dark, but it’s okay.
She spends most nights staring across the expanse between their beds, looking at Rachel’s face. Right between the eyes, Bambi, she thinks, until Rachel smiles in the way that only Rachel ever does, at her, and then it settles again.
(It will be some years yet until she thinks of ‘it’ as anything. It rumbles, but it sleeps.)
The best thing about Dad and Daddy is that they’re honest about Disney movies. Rachel loves them, and Quinn likes them just fine, but Dad and Daddy never pretend that they’re like the real world.
This is the real world: one day, when they’re eight, she thinks about stabbing someone at the dinner table with her plastic knife. Just because she can.
She knows it should feel wrong, but it doesn’t.
…
Get Quinn out of the room, Ali, just take her upstairs, please, you know what he gets like, you know, we can’t let her stay--
…
They ask if she wants to change her name.
“Why?”
They look at each other.
“It might be easier.”
“Easier than what?”
They’re twelve. They’re going to middle school. Quinn is good at sports and mathematics. Quinn excels at science. Rachel is good at English and arts. The Berry girls are academically outstanding. Super-achievers. Half the town calls Quinn a miracle, and nobody will explain to her why.
On the day that they offer to change her name--Quinn is so distinct; so distinct, Daddy says--they also hold her hands and tell her. Or remind her, she guesses, but this is not a story that is hers. This is a story that belongs to a four year old girl, ushered into a closet, and stuck there for almost five hours.
“Oh,” she says, when they’re done, because she can’t think of any other words.
(They’ll send her to therapy and chalk it up to shock. It’s fine. She likes therapy just fine.)
She doesn’t tell them how much it explains. She can’t put into words what it explains. Just that the words lock inside of her mind, and that thing that burns there--that makes her lash out at Rachel sometimes, even though she doesn’t mean to; that has given her popularity and status--flares up sharply.
Do you get it now? it asks.
She does, because once upon a time, there was a girl named Quinn Fabray, who watched from a closet as her father beat her mother to death, and her sister stabbed her father with a steak knife.
…
The nose breaks like paper cards. Swoosh, they say. The fist disappears into the cavity just for a snap. Then it pulls back, and where her mother’s nose used to be, there is nothing.
…
The car crash has everyone terrified.
Quinn’s out of the car first, running towards the deer they railroaded on the way back from Fort Shawnee. There aren’t even supposed to be deer in Ohio, Rachel cries out behind her, caught in the moment. The bigger part of Quinn wants to turn around and cover Rachel’s eyes, because that seems like the thing to do, but then the deer twitches. It twitches. It’s almost dead.
It’s almost dead, oh God, and her head explodes with feeling for the first time in maybe fourteen years.
She kneels next to it, and it wheezes.
Right between the eyes, Quinn thinks, and scoots in until she can put her hands on its ribcage. The heart is slowing already, and Leroy’s hand is on her shoulder, trying to pull her away, because there’s nothing she can do.
He’s right, but not in the way he thinks she is, because she’s frustrated, and Jesus, if only the rush wasn’t so big she might be able to stop being so crazy.
She’s being crazy. She’s completely out of control. She wants this deer to die. She wants it to die at her hands. She wants to reach inside of its chest and squeeze until there is nothing left, because that’s what it’s telling her, and it has never really spoken to her this clearly before.
The voice inside her head wants her to kill a fucking deer right now.
Oh, my God, Quinn thinks, and laughter bubbles up in her chest, because the Fabrays were deeply religious and this is their legacy. This is what they have left behind.
Rachel runs by her and violently throws up further down the road.
The deer breathes horribly one more time, blood bubbling out of its nose, and all Quinn wants to do is press down just that little bit more.
Let me, she thinks, or maybe she whispers it out loud.
When she looks up, Rachel is staring at her with abject horror, wiping a hand past her mouth. (Her hands are covered in blood. Right between the eyes.)
“I was saying goodbye,” Quinn murmurs, running sticky fingers through her hair, and oh God, the smell--
Something hot and warm settles in her gut and throbs there for at least fifteen minutes.
Rachel won’t stop staring at her like they’ve never seen each other before.
I’m so sorry, Quinn thinks at her, really hard, and this time the words are meant.
…
Stupid (crunch) bitch (crunch) and you (point) sit down, you little slut (point).
...
Rachel is her biology partner. (Rachel is her everything partner; nobody comes between the Berry girls, because they’re incredibly close and who could blame them, with their pasts?
Like this is something Rachel shares with her. Like this is something anyone could share with her.)
They’re dissecting a frog today, and some part of Quinn has been nervously excited about it for days now. This feels like a freebie, after all.
She lets it burst to the surface, lets it dictate her every action, and God it feels good to just give in. To not pretend that this isn’t what she wants to always be doing: cutting, carving, destroying.
Quinn takes hold of the scalpel without asking, and Rachel watches mutely--watches as the scalpel fits into Quinn’s hand like it belongs there.
It slides in so easily. (Too easily, she knows. Her entire body aches at the idea that there could be resistance, sinews and tissue and nerves and bone, that she needs to push through.)
For one moment, she lets herself imagine: what if it was still alive?
The rush is out of this world; it’s nothing like the deer. It comes with so much control and so much responsibility and oh, oh. (The scalpel clatters to the ground.)
When she snaps out of it, and it can’t have been more than seconds, Rachel is giving her an inscrutable look. “You should go see the nurse,” she says, quietly.
Rachel can see right through her.
(Rachel isn’t afraid of her, though--and that worries Quinn more than she can explain.)
…
Butter. It slides in like butter. Her daddy is like butter.
…
“You need help,” Rachel whispers, late at night, when they’re fifteen. She sounds like she’s been crying. She probably has been, because those three words--
Game over, Quinn thinks, and wonders what it’s like to pray to something. To think that prayer might help, or whatever. Yet another thing she can thank her parents for not knowing about.
(They never stop sleeping in the same room. Quinn has nightmares, is what everyone thinks. That isn’t even close to what is going on in her head, but she knows better than to tell anyone.)
“I’ve had help,” Quinn responds quietly, rolling over onto her side, looking at Rachel.
The concern on her face is disgusting in contrast to what comes out of her mouth next, in a muted and terrified whisper.
“Where is Brittany’s cat?”
For one moment, she loses control of it; she’s across the room in less than a second, and Rachel doesn’t stand a chance (Quinn is the athlete, the cheerleader, the one who managed to snap Charity’s neck with just the barest bit of pressure of her palms, squeezing together like a heartbeat) against her, not like this.
It’s the calm in her eyes that does it, at the end of the day. The only reason Rachel is still breathing after 12:15am on Thursday the 26th is because her eyes are calm.
“Don’t ask me things like that,” Quinn says, the words torturing themselves out of her throat.
“Quinn,” Rachel breathes, past the hands that are closing around her neck.
It relaxes. It lets go, slithers away to wherever it goes when it’s not telling her exactly what she needs to feel (better, or anything), and her hands loosen. Rachel doesn’t cough, doesn’t do anything but sit up halfway on her elbows, and reach out to tuck a strand of hair behind Quinn’s hair.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” Quinn snaps, slapping Rachel’s hand away.
“Where is Charity?” Rachel asks again, more forcefully. “I’m not going to tell anyone, Quinn, I just...”
The words bubble out without permission, because it’s dark and in the dark she always feels more like herself, somehow.
(Her last therapist called it an unfortunate side effect of the tragedy. A side effect.)
“In a dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant three blocks over.”
The words spill out, and that is when the saddest understanding of all settles in Rachel’s eyes.
“Oh, Quinn.”
“I don’t--” she starts to say, and then something other than it finally settles in her chest. The oddest sensation rises through her, until finally something burns behind her eyes. She’s confused by it, for a moment, until Rachel reaches out and her fingers come away wet.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” Quinn asks, in the dark, where she is most like herself. “Why am I like this?”
Rachel says nothing, but just looks at her with those big fucking Bambi eyes, and for one really horrible moment Quinn wishes she could reach for that steak knife she keeps under her bed and just drive it home, right between her fucking eyes. It would feel so, so good. It would make everything so simple.
“I don’t know,” Rachel finally says, and gives her a hug.
She’ll never actually do it. Not to Rachel. She doesn’t feel what she should for her family, but they are her family.
“Help me,” she mumbles in Rachel’s neck.
“Always,” Rachel says, and even though Quinn knows it’s a lie, she believes it that night.
…
The light in the closet goes off eventually. The light coming from the key hole does not.
…
Rachel has a plan for everything: college, making it on Broadway, losing her virginity.
(There are so many months where this is what their lives are like: they talk about their life plans and look at the sky on sunny days and drive to the local Taco Bell and do their homework and everything is fine. They’re best friends, they’re invincible, and nothing bad will ever happen to either of them again.
Then, Quinn loses it, and their entire lives become:)
Rachel comes up with a plan for this, too.
“We need rules,” she says. They’re on the roof, whispering. Quinn is holding a glass of iced tea and Rachel is outlining rules. Things she can do. Things she can’t do.
Rachel asks questions, like, “Can you control it?”
She envisions shoving Rachel off the roof; the sickening crush her bones will make onto the Honda parked downstairs. The look on Leroy’s face when he discovers her. She knows that this is what masturbation is like for normal people, but Rachel stays sitting next to her and her hands don’t even move towards shoving her, so the answer must be, “Yes.”
“For how long?” Rachel asks, next.
She doesn’t know. Months pass between what Rachel calls incidents, and she’s spoken about all of them now, as plainly as she can, ignoring the ever-increasing flinch on Rachel’s face.
According to Rachel, animal cruelty laws aside, nothing she has done has been illegal. Not in the serious sense, anyway.
“Rule number one is: let’s keep it that way.”
Blood thrums in Quinn’s fingertips.
There is a gold star on the notepad that contains the list of things they are going to try.
“Do you think woodworking will--”
Quinn almost laughs. A genuine laugh. But she’s not laughing at Rachel. “No. Jesus, Rach, if it was that simple, don’t you think--”
Rachel is silent for a long time.
“Do you remember?”
“No,” Quinn says, because the answer is yes, but it’s not her that remembers. It’s it. The thing that lives in the place where her mind literally snapped when she was four.
“Do you wish you did?”
Quinn has no answer for that, and sits on a roof holding Rachel’s hand as she finalizes a list of improbable goals.
…
The Ronettes play in the background, endlessly on repeat.
…
They drive all over Ohio, from one animal shelter to the next over the next two years.
Not all the time, but often enough to need a different shelter every time.
Rachel cares. (Quinn knows it’s the normal thing to do.)
She turns around when it happens; always faces it with her back, closing her eyes and closing her ears to the sound. (Silly, Quinn wants to say, because the sound is the best part. Other than the feeling.)
They bury the cats together. And one time, a rabbit, but Rachel violently threw up in the middle of that and said, “I can’t, I just can’t.”
It’s weird. Some part of Quinn should care more about ending the goddamned rabbit than about upsetting Rachel, but she and Rachel are a team, and part of teamwork is learning to compromise. (It compromises easily: just end something, it says. There’s no more rabbits after that.)
Rachel sometimes catches the look on her face right when the knife sinks in, and always looks equal parts disgusted and fascinated.
They don’t talk about that, though. It would end the precarious balance they’re striking together. Rachel watches with that mixed look on her face, and Quinn cleans up as quickly as she can. Then, they bury the cat.
“I’m calling this one Charlie,” Rachel says, softly. There’s always tears running down her face, and Quinn reaches for that cheek, brushes them away.
Charlie marks the time she uses the wrong hand, and accidentally leaves a smear of blood the size of a small fingerprint on Rachel’s cheek.
“Shit,” she says, and digs tissue out of her pocket, patting it against Rachel’s cheek. “Hold still, you’ve got--”
“Cat blood on my cheek,” Rachel says, incredibly wan and sounding as shocked as she did the first time. (The first time is another thing they don’t talk about.) “I’ve--Quinn, please--get it--”
She doesn’t do hysteria. She can’t hug someone who is already hysterical with blood all over her shirt. (They’re running out of plain black t-shirts. Rachel will order more. Rachel always does.)
She washes her hand in the creek nearby and dries them carefully before heading back to the car and sitting down next to Rachel, on the hood.
“Is this going to be enough forever?” Rachel asks.
“Yes,” Quinn says, because the answer is no, but it’s her time to compromise. Somehow, Rachel thinks this is something that can be fixed, and the most human part of Quinn doesn’t want to be the one to tell her that that’s just a lot of make-belief.
…
She can’t see Mom anymore, and she can’t see Dad anymore. Alison is rocking, rock rock around the clock, and the knife is right there. (Don’t touch that knife, Quinnie.)
…
After Lima, they stay together.
“What else are we going to do?”
“You should have boyfriends,” Quinn points out. “I’m not your responsibility.”
Rachel looks at her disbelievingly. “That’s your reasoning? I should have boyfriends?”
“Rachel--”
“What the fuck would happen to you if I wasn’t there?” Rachel explodes.
“I’d probably do something stupid and go to prison,” Quinn says, with a small smile.
It’s not funny, but one reason she and Rachel are best friends is that they share a really morbid sense of humor. (The cats are going through the NATO alphabet; not her idea.)
“Quinn... I can’t. Not if I can’t be there to at least try,” Rachel says, or begs.
Try to stop her. Try to help. It’s all the same damn thing, anyway.
Quinn sighs and kisses Rachel on the cheek. “You’re a good sister.”
“We’re not sisters,” Rachel spits out. “You’re Quinn, and I’m Rachel, and--this is bigger than blood. This has nothing to do with blood.”
She’s right, is the thing.
They go to New York. It’s so large they’ll disappear in it completely.
(Rachel spends months preparing. Quinn spends months trying to keep it together for just a little bit--just that much longer.)
…
He punches her right in that place where the last baby was. That one died. She doesn’t know what death means. Just that it’s a really serious thing and there’s no coming back from it.
…
Rachel joins the police academy.
(It’s tactical. Everyone expects her to go to Broadway, but she’s also spent her entire life volunteering for good causes, and Dad and Daddy are just proud of her for having such a large heart.
Quinn’s mind goes unexpected places at those words; Rachel sighs and says, “It’s not about me. It’s about giving back.”)
Quinn goes to art school.
“Does painting help?” Rachel asks, from over on her bed.
“With what, it?” Quinn asks, brush clenched between her teeth; she’s painting a woman’s stomach, and she can’t even really say why, but it feels like the only moment of calm she’s had in the two months since moving here.
(Rachel needs more time. Quinn burns with a lack of it. This is going to be a problem soon.)
“Yeah,” Rachel asks.
“A little,” Quinn says, dropping the brush to the ground and taking a step back. The curve on the stomach is just right. She’s got her angles right this time, and the thrust would place the knife right there. Some paint splatters at the path she’s imagining. It’s fine. She’s not that much of a perfectionist.
Rachel’s just smiling when she turns around. “You look good when you paint. More relaxed.”
“It’s one of a few things that helps, when it’s bad,” Quinn admits, shrugging out of the blouse she’s painting in and letting it fall to the floor.
“What else helps?”
“Sex,” Quinn says.
“I thought you didn’t enjoy--” Rachel looks at her in confusion, and then shakes her head. “Nevermind, it’s none of my business.”
“Of course it is,” Quinn says with a sigh, settling down next to her. There’s a bottle of wine on the floor, courtesy of their dads, and she takes a slow sip before leaning her head back against Rachel’s shoulder. “With the right fantasy, I guess it works like it does for other people.”
She thinks it’s the end of the conversation for a long time, and then Rachel unwraps her fingers from the neck of the wine glass, and says, “Tell me.”
Quinn does. She doesn’t even know how to keep things from Rachel anymore, because Rachel is the one who plans things, and Rachel is the one that’s keeping both of them together at this point.
…
A single, well-placed thrust. And then a clatter. Oh no, oh no, Alison says, shaking her head and falling to her knees.
…
Rachel’s uniform hides the fingerprints.
“I don’t want to do this to you,” Quinn whispers, almost every night.
“I need you to,” Rachel says, every single night, before dragging Quinn’s fingers back up to her neck, and pressing them down for her. “We need you to.”
It’s not about love. It’s about anything but that.
…
Her sister screams. Loudly. She closes her eyes but hears everything. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
…
For a long time, everything in New York is totally fine.
They buy a ferret. (Its name is Mars. She does it quickly, because Rachel grows attached to things too easily.)
They call their Dads and explain what’s happened between them, and even though it’s probably a little weird, Quinn was never formally adopted so there’s nothing legally or morally stopping them. They cry, a little. Quinn figures it’s probably the appropriate reaction; God knows how they’d react if they knew the truth.
Art school goes well. When everything is just muddling along, she knows she’s going to do well at the degree; she’s talented, and passionate. Very passionate, her professors all tell her. Rachel laughs at the feedback and they screw up against the refrigerator in celebration of her first A+.
It’s a better life than any other one she’s had for a long time.
Quinn’s talented; Rachel is the perfectionist, though, and storms through her training.
One day, she comes home with an innocuous looking yellow file and says, “It’s time.”
(They get the idea from Dexter. The thing about that show, though, is that it requires way too many things they don’t have, like syringes full of narcotics and entire rooms in which to tear people apart. Oh, and a man’s strength.
Quinn doesn’t have or need any of that.
“You’re so beautiful,” Rachel tell hers. “All you’ll have to do is offer, and they’ll follow you anywhere.”
Rachel always has had all the answers to things that Quinn can’t process on her own.)
…
Quinn, hide. Hide, NOW. Don’t argue with me.
…
Rachel comes up with the entire plan, and Quinn executes it with only minor technical errors.
She comes home at around four in the morning, exhausted and euphoric, and Rachel is sitting on the couch staring emptily into a glass of wine.
“Hey,” Quinn says. She’s showered, and she’s changed, and this is just like any other night. It has to be. It has to.
Rachel gives her a faint smile. “Hey.”
“Are we okay?” Quinn asks, sitting down on the arm rest. It’s not clear if Rachel wants to be touched.
“I just wish I could take it all away from you,” Rachel says, wiping at her face with her sleeve, and then sighing. “But if that’s not an option--”
“I love you for trying,” Quinn says.
That kind of love, she’s capable of.
…
Oh Jesus, call the station, call the station. There’s--oh Jesus. There’s three--hang on, this one’s live... sweetie, what happened? Are you? Oh, goddammit, George, there’s another one in the closet...
…
It can’t last forever. Quinn knows that, both abstractly and concretely, but with every passing day, it becomes possible to hope that maybe, this is how the universe is rewarding her for her really, really fucked up start at life.
They’re happy together. Of course they are. Rachel tells her repeatedly that she’ll never love anyone the way that she loves Quinn, and it's enough for both of them.
So many of their days are nice and easy and normal. But in the end, she knows that the days that are darker than (the average closet) the night that determine their fate.
She tries to stop it--every single time.
In the end, Rachel understands her better than she does herself, and right before she reaches what is likely to be an actual breaking point, will hold her hands and look her in the eyes and say, “It’s okay.”
Rachel has distanced herself from the process in the last year. It makes sense; they live a completely normal life a good near always of the time, and diminishing Rachel’s part in this to just the occasional name on a Post-It Note means that they won’t both crack.
Besides, there isn’t anything else that she can learn from Rach anyway. She’s learned everything she could from her: patience, precision, some regard for the sanctity of human life.
“Don’t let me read about you in the papers unless it is to celebrate your art,” Rachel demands, one night, after they’ve watched a movie and talked about the vacation they’re planning on taking to Vancouver, now that Quinn’s graduated and Rachel has saved up enough time.
“You won’t,” Quinn promises.
It’s the only thing she’s ever promised Rachel that she actually genuinely intends to make good on.
…
What’s your name, sweetheart? Can you talk? Can you tell us your name?
…
It’s almost like a fairy tale, people in Lima say.
(Sometimes, fairy tales are not the same thing as love stories.)