| OCR Text |
Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 113 But when I join him, he's not rescuing anything. He stands directly over the girl, his hands on his knees, studying her face, which has gone gray. She is not making one sound. I listen and there isn't even a whimper. "Now watch," Butch says to me. "Watch this." Her eyes swell and wander in her gray face. Her mouth is working a little, open, close, open, close, like a fish. Her lips are slightly blue. I realize that we are watching her die. Butch hasn't moved. Then there is a raw little moaning, so low that at first I turn, thinking it is coming from the other side of the school, but with a wet pop, it roars open, into a wicked wheeze drawn backward in the girl's throat. It lasts half a minute, and toward the end, her eyes close, and the sound becomes just wind. Her chest has ballooned crazily like some ten cent doll. And, after a moment of silence, she exhales. It starts with a flat explosion of saliva that drives even Butch back from his observation point. On her second breath, the girl moves. She rolls to her side and curls up, and Butch steps over her so he can still have a full view of the face. I'm standing behind him. It is now that she starts crying. Her eyes shudder erratically in fits of recovery, and her body shakes as she cries. She's rubbing her eyes and crying, tossing in a little scream once in a while, but no real words we can make out. She cries and cries. After a few seconds, I've |
