“Hey,” I murmur softly and rush back over to her. “What is it? Why are you sad?”
“You’re going to leave me soon, for him, aren’t you?”
I stare into her eyes, so full of longing, love, and sadness. “What?”
“You’re falling for him. I can tell. I can feel it.”
I roll my eyes and laugh a little bit, until her scowl forces me to stop. “I’m not falling for him. I hardly know him.”
“But you want to stay,” she points out, pouting petulantly.
Growling, I move back to the window and stare out across the street. “I’m fucking tired, tired of moving, tired of life, tired of school, tired of helping you do what you do.”
“I need it. You know I do.”
“You don’t need it,” I snarl, gripping the window frame. “We need friends. We need our lives back. You need to get out of this fucking house again and experience it all.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You never are,” I reply softly. “Not until you do what you do and I just… I don’t know how you find the strength.”
“It’s the only thing that keeps me going.” My heart sinks at her admission until she adds, “Apart from you of course. You’re the number one thing that keeps me going. But I need it.”
“You don’t need it. You’re just angry. Understandably so.”
She picks at the little lint balls on her quilt. “Fine… I’ll try, for you. But you have to spend more time with me.”
“Okay.”
“You will?”
I smile. “I will. Maybe you want to meet Nok? We could all hang out together?”
“No,” she snarls, sounding more animal than human. “No. No boys. I’m not ready for that.”
“Okay. One step at a time.”
“I don’t know how you can be. After what happened.”
I shrug my shoulders and scan the street below. It’s empty. Everybody has either gone to work or school. “I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t feel real to me anymore.”
“Feels real to me.”
“Because it happened to you.”
“It happened to you too,” she whispers, so quiet I hardly heard her.
I daren’t tell her I don’t remember, that I think what Nokosi did with his truck caused damage to my head that scattered all my memories. I checked it out online, and apparently, it’s common with a concussion which I had.
It’ll right itself. My brain will unscramble, and I’ll be better.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” I whisper more to myself than to anyone else.
We stay like this for a while until my phone starts ringing, I expect it to be school, but instead it’s a private number. I ignore it and climb back into bed with my coughing sister.
“We’ll be okay,” she assures me. “I promise. I’ll get better and we’ll be okay.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“We just have to keep moving. We can’t stop. Not for anyone. Especially not for a guy.”
Willow
I look at Lilith sleeping beside me, having taken one of my pills to help her fall under, and then brush her pastel pink hair from her face. Even though we’re twins I always considered Lilith to be the prettier of the two of us and I still think that today. Especially while I’m so fucking weak.
I pad to the window she was staring out of earlier. The sky is black and the street dark and deserted. I stare at the space where her boyfriend’s truck pulled up after school to try and convince her to go out with him. She refused. He returned an hour later with food and they ate it in the bed of his truck as the sun set.
He’s going to take her from me. She’s going to stay here and leave me to die alone with our vacant mother and the ghost of our dad looming over my head.
I’ve been patient, I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, but the urge is there. The thirst. The anger that consumes me.
What happened to me and Lilith was unimaginable, incomprehensible. Sick, twisted, vile…
I’ll protect her until I can’t anymore. I’ll protect her until my last breath leaves my body. I’ll protect her like I couldn’t that night. The night I let them into our house. The night we were no longer sixteen-year-old girls, singing crappy duets and dreaming of a happy future.
The night they defiled us, forced themselves upon us, took their turns on our screaming virginal bodies, passed us around like a bag of chips and then left us for dead.
Men, boys… arrogant, preppy, jockey, fucking popular schoolboys. They’re dangerous. All of them.
I can’t let her get lured into his charm. He’s not a good guy, he’s not.
How can she be so blind?
How can she ask me to stay knowing it’s because she wants to be with him?
“I’ll protect you,” I whisper, kissing her temple. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
I climb from my bed and cover her with the blanket. I get dressed and move to the mirror to adjust and brush my brown hair. It’s a mess so I braid it and add a bit of gloss to my lips. I don’t bother with other makeup, not anymore. I don’t have the time or energy.
Lilith
“I am fucking exhausted,” I say, dragging my ass into Nok’s truck. He wanted to pick me up this morning. “I took one of my sister’s sleeping pills last night and it has made me so fucking groggy.”
He drags me closer. “Did you have fun?”
I nod and yawn. “Yeah, we just watched movies and ate junk.”
“So…” He wets his lips and narrows his eyes. “You didn’t come by my house last night?”
I give him a look. “Are you kidding? I swear I didn’t even leave home last night. Why?”
“Dad said he saw somebody who looked like you just standing outside our house last night.”
My heart stops. “For real?”
“Would your sister… no… stupid question. He was probably seeing things.” He pulls me in for a kiss so deep it leaves me breathless. “How is she?”
“She’s a lot better, thanks.” I place my hand on his thigh and snuggle into his side. “So your dad saw someone outside your house? That’s weird.”
“He said she was just standing there, staring, this dark shape in the night.”
“Y’all should invest in some floodlights.”
“They scare the animals.”
I quirk a brow. “You don’t want to scare away bears and mountain lions?”
“It’s their home too,” he replies, smiling as he maneuvers the car with ease. “We leave them alone; they leave us alone for the most part.”
“Coming from the guy who littered on our first date.”
He pinches my thigh. “I was gonna clean it up. And… that wasn’t our first date.”
“It wasn’t?”
“That night was a disaster.”
“Yep.”
“Maybe we can redo it?” I’m surprised he’s even asking. “Don’t look at me like that. I said I was sorry.”