Five Survive

by Holly Jackson

You look so much alike, she used to hear, more than she cared to. Now she didn’t care to hear it at all, even think

Not worrying wasn’t a choice, not one Red had anyway.

Shame was a red feeling, a hot one, just like guilt and anger. Why couldn’t the Kennys heat their home on guilt and shame alone? But things would get better soon, right? Real soon, that was the plan, what it was all for.

How freeing it would be to just do or think, and not have to double-think or triple-think, or say No thank you, maybe next time. To not beg for extra shifts at work and lose sleep either way. To take another handful of chips just because she wanted to.

“No worries,” Maddy said. There, see, she didn’t have any. Maddy had no need for worries. She was one of those people who was good at everything, first try.

He showed interest when Red wasn’t interesting at all.

And there was that time he dropped her home after that New Year’s Eve party and let her sit in his car, warming up in the dry air of the heater before she had to go inside the cold house and find whatever mess her dad had left for her. Arthur didn’t know that was happening, he thought they were just talking, talking the night away at two in the morning outside her house. A small kindness he never knew he’d given her. She should give him one back.

Red looked at her hand. And it felt stupid to admit it to herself, but the sight of that little check mark did change something in her. Small, minuscule, a tiny firework bursting in her head, but it felt good. It always felt good, checking off those boxes. She held out her hand proudly for Maddy to examine and got the nod of approval she was looking for.

There was a map on the screen, a blue dot moving along a highlighted road. The blue dot was them, the six of them and all thirty-one feet of RV. Thank god it wasn’t a red dot. Blue was safer.

Maddy shushed her silently, nodding her head ever so slightly in Arthur’s direction. “Checks all the boxes,” she whispered. “Stop it,” Red warned her.

Mom. Like Maddy thought Red would split open and bleed just to see the word.

Except, the thing was, Maddy wasn’t wrong. Red did bleed just to see the word, to hear it, to think it, to remember, the guilt leaving a crater in her chest. Blood, red as her name and red as her shame.

“You had so much potential.” And there it was. The line that ripped her open. She’d lost count of the number of times it had been said to her, but there was only one that truly mattered. Red was thirteen and Mom was alive, screaming at each other across the kitchen, back when it used to be warm.

“It will be all my fault somehow,” Reyna said to her, a secret flash from her deep brown eyes. “Just you watch.” Was she talking about Oliver? Red knew that feeling, but she didn’t know Reyna had felt it too. The two of them, Lavoy-adjacent but not Lavoys and didn’t they know it.

The darkness held its breath, listening as they made their plans. Then the wind let go, dancing through Red’s hair, and the grass chattered and the trees whispered, and Red wondered what it was they were saying to each other.

Maybe that was why they didn’t hear the first one, but Red did. A crack that split the night again, and the RV sank behind her, scraping on the gravel.

All four tires. Gone.

His face rearranged, cold fear taking over his eyes. It made it all worse somehow, watching the sudden change in Simon.

The RV was going nowhere. And here they were, the six of them, trapped inside it, the wide-open nothing and the red dot waiting for them out there.

“Yeah, that sniper won’t know what’s hit him when I slowly charge at him with my Gillette razor.”

“Maybe those six bulletproof vests I packed will come in handy.” Maddy snorted, wiping her nose. “Maybe so will the functioning cell tower I brought in mine.”

a pair of scissors, a lighter, a headlamp, a flashlight, spare batteries, a hammer, a screwdriver, duct tape, Scotch tape, vodka and a kitchen knife. Each item disappearing from her head as soon as she moved onto the next, like one of those memory games she always lost.

Red knew exactly what it was, the sound passing through her, gathering snapshots of memory. Ones she normally pushed away, the good and the bad. Running around her house, back when it had been warm, a walkie-talkie in her hand as she played Cops and Cops with her mom. They’d invented it, you see, because neither wanted to be a robber.

“What if I said you were the right people, in the right place at exactly the right time.”

“What do you mean?” Oliver asked of the man out there in the wide-open nothing. Static. “I’ll tell you what I mean.” Static. “Oliver Charles Lavoy. “Madeline Joy Lavoy. “Reyna Flores-Serrano. “Arthur Grant Moore. “Simon Jinsun Yoo. “Redford Kenny.”

Chaos. When had Maddy started screaming? Red couldn’t remember now. Like the sound had always been there in her head, along with the static.

Not random, no. Not wrong place, wrong time. Planned. It was all planned.

“One of you knows something. A secret. You know who you are and you know what it is.”

No one was looking at Red, but she looked at them all.

Red looked straight ahead, blinked slowly, clearing her eyes like someone who had no secrets. Someone who wasn’t thinking of them right now. Everyone had secrets, though, didn’t they?

Were hers any worse, any bigger? Most likely, at least the one she was keeping now. The plan. But no one could ever know about that, that was the point.

“If it’s a choice between me and Maddy and the witness, Mom will give them the name,” he said. “Life or death. She’ll have to.” Red nodded. Something tightened in her chest, uncomfortable and warm, as Oliver’s words became real. Fuck. Either way it went, someone was going to die here.

Between saving a life and his mom’s career, it was clear which was most important to Oliver.

Red glowed, despite herself, nodding as she accepted the order from Oliver. Was she useful? What a plot twist that was. A smile from Maddy too, full house. Red bet Arthur was secretly impressed as well; look at her, knowing stuff.

Red snorted, though none of this was really funny, was it? They might die tonight, all of them, some of them, her. A bullet could come anytime, anywhere. Was that what made these smaller moments funnier, because they might not get any more?

Brilliant. Not a word people often used about Red or her ideas. She felt heat rise to her cheeks, but it wasn’t a bad feeling like it normally was.

Red didn’t mind, though, or maybe she did. What was that too-full feeling at the back of her throat, then? Or that hollow one in her gut? It was fine. Maddy could have that plan, if it would make her mom proud. Red had her own.

“The Lavoys are very smart,” Red said. “Want to know a secret?” Arthur said, his voice dipping into whispers, eyes flashing from behind his glasses. “I think you’re smarter.”

Why was he so kind to her? And why did that make her want to be un-kinder back? Because she didn’t deserve it, that was why. She was just Red. Just Red and Just Arthur, and they should probably just stay that way, because she didn’t know how to be somebody’s someone.

“If it was a rescue helicopter for us.” That was when Red knew for certain that she and Oliver Lavoy did not live in the same world. She could never hear a helicopter and think it was sent for her. No one loved her enough for that.

Red coughed, looked away. You know who you are. She had a secret too, didn’t she? Bigger than most. But this wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be. No one knew, that was the whole point of it. No one could ever know, not even tonight. That was the plan.

that Don and Joyce were dead outside. She could have done more. She should have done more. She knew that would happen and she let it. The second time she’d listened to Oliver, chose him, and when would she learn? No time soon, apparently, because she was doing what he told her to right now.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Arthur said. But didn’t he know? Everything was. All of this.

It was strange, hearing her name like that, forgetting that it belonged to her, that it wasn’t just a misplaced splash of color. A second later, Simon’s words punched her in the gut, winding her, gnawing at her chest. Keep everything as cheap as possible so that Red could come. Her fault again.

And why did it hurt so much that they all knew? Little Red Kenny, poor as dirt and a dead mom, but she had potential, hadn’t you heard? Everyone was looking at her now, everyone but Arthur. Red’s eyes glazed but she blinked the tears back, forcing her eyes open and closed. Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare. She didn’t need their pity, she had her plan.

But she didn’t look at Maddy. That betrayal was worse, somehow. No, that wasn’t fair. Maddy cared, that was all. Maddy looked after her, looked out for her. Maddy cared.

“One of us is working with them.”

“Red didn’t do anything,” Arthur said, and that was how it felt—was it?—to have someone on your side, on your team. To stand up for you whether it was right or wrong.

The knot in Red’s gut loosened a little. She hadn’t lost Maddy to the other side. Because they were best friends, almost sisters. Knew each other inside and out. It was in the blood, even, because their moms were best friends before them. College roommates to working side by side as prosecutor and police captain. Would Red and Maddy ever have jobs that went side by side? Probably not; Maddy was going to UPenn and Red was going nowhere. Red couldn’t stay Lavoy-adjacent forever, she wasn’t sure Maddy would even want her to. But, for now, it counted.

“No, Oliver, I won’t fucking stop!” Reyna snapped, coming alive, dark hairs sticking to the sweat on her forehead. “If this is about what we did, we have to say! We’re the oldest here, we’re supposed to be looking after them. They’re just kids. He said he’d let them go if we give it up. We have to!”