“We’re here,” says Jenny. Not sweet like Summer or steady like Mads. Too fast, but lit up from inside. “You need us.”
My hands grip tight onto my skin. “You need me, too.”
“Exactly,” she says. “It’s a rule.”
“There are no rules.”
She rests one heel against my father’s car. My car now, I think. Now that I’m sweet sixteen. “It’s going to be harder than you think,” she says.
“I’m ready.”
Jenny stands up. Cups her hands under my jaw so her pinkies rest cloud-light over the bruises. Rises up onto her tiptoes and kisses my cheek in the same place where I slapped hers.
She says, “Don’t lie.”
Water
When Jenny flies off into the night the warm breeze dies all at once, so the whole street is a cold dead void.
My cheek burns where she kissed me. My hand burns where I slapped her.
She said, Don’t trust him, Jade. I said, I don’t.
The breeze comes back again, breathing close around my neck and teasing at my too-short hair.
I won’t trust him. I won’t.
I spin and the breeze scatters away. Then I’m inside with the door locked iron-sure against the night, and skimming up the stairs in the dark, and standing straight and still in front of the same mirror that watched me slash hard with my knife.
When I blink my hair flashes long and platinum.
Jenny said, Don’t trust him.
I go to the tub and turn on the water. It runs hot and hotter until steam fills the whole room and clings cloying to my skin. The water rises, clear and hot, until it sulks away into the little drains along the top of the porcelain. Until it seeps over the edge and pools shallow around my feet.
I stand in a lie-white towel with my eyes burning green. My hands grasp at the dead ends of my hair. I want it back—
the dark unrepentant black—
the long shining cape that matched me better than my best dress—
—the way it was before I told Mads to turn it St Andrew’s blond.
The water boils and bubbles and I kneel beside it and let my fingers drag deep.
Then my mother’s hands are in my hair, as gentle and unasking as when I was her little laughing daughter with the too-big eyes. Brushing the dull painted-black a hundred times and a hundred more. Weaving in oil that soaks into every strand from the roots to the knife-sliced ends.
She gathers all my short hair together and sweeps it smooth over my shoulder. Her fingers find the bruises on my neck.
The room is white and hot and choking. My eyes close tight—
shutting out Don’t trust him—
shutting out I’ll never lie to you, Jade, never—
shutting out God damn, she’s feisty—
—and my hands come up out of the water so fired-red I can feel it all the way to the bone.
My fingers find hers over the dark blue spots that mark my skin.
We stay that way, together, until the water runs cold.
Chapel
Wednesday morning, Lilia is back.
Except she isn’t. Not really.
She slouches in front of the statue, cheekbones jabbing close under her skin, eyes sinking into bruise-blue shadows. Pupils blown too big. No trace of the dying-desperate nerve that made her paint Connor’s guilt where everyone could see it.
“Whatever the fuck you’re on, it better keep you quiet,” says Piper.
Lilia leaves her empty stare exactly where it is. I can almost see through her throat.
Piper’s starling-call laugh sings across the commons. “You’re over,” she says. “Dunc knows you wrote on the banner. And almost got that cop on the damn case, too.”
Nothing.
“He’s tired of you anyway. Give up.”
Nothing.
“Fine,” says Piper. “Stay with him. Let him do what he’ll do.”
Less than nothing.
Piper shakes her head and locks in on me. “New girl,” she says. “You and Mack—”
“Me and Mack,” I say, as alive as Lilia is dead.
“I never thought there was anything interesting about him until you showed up,” she says. Her eyes are beady-bright. “He never even cut class. And now he’s the kind of boy who makes out with sluts he barely knows the morning after somebody—” She catches herself just in time. She’ll never say it out loud, not as long as Duncan’s still king and she and Duffy are still groveling at his feet. “Falls,” she says, after a broken little pause. “The kind of boy who doesn’t answer when Dunc texts him.”
“He doesn’t have to listen to Duncan,” I say.
Piper glances at Lilia. Her eyes gape huge and vacant. When Piper looks back at me, her whole face says, She’s over, and when I’m in her place—
“You’re going to fall so fast, new girl,” says Piper. There’s something strange and slipping in her smile. “Mack’s going to get sick of you. Dunc’s going to get sick of Mack. You’re going to end up where every other girl like you ends up.”
She thinks she can scare me. She doesn’t know anything at all.
“A girl like you,” she says, and her voice goes feather-soft so none of the flock-girls can hear. “Who thinks she can come in and take whatever she wants—”
Friday night shimmers between us, a static-white scrap coming back: Piper pushing past Porter right on Duffy’s heels, tripping into the room, grabbing for her second-place boy, shrieking, You can’t just take whatever you want like I’m not even anything—
And Duffy said, You’re not.
“None of this is yours. You’re just the entertainment of the week,” says Piper. “They’ll throw you out when they’re done with you, unless you learn how to follow the rules. You don’t even know what they’ll do to a girl like you—”
Fine, said Piper on Friday night. Following the rules, seething and powerless and still shrieking at Duffy, and Duffy’s hand came down hard against my face and crushed my skull down. And Piper said, Go fuck some roofied slut—
“Piper,” says Duncan’s purring charming voice right beside us. “Stop.”
We both step back.
“Jade,” says Duncan. “Let’s talk.”
He takes a step closer, and behind him the wolves close rank. I steal a glance at Mack. He’s soldier-faced like the rest of them but I can read his eyes. He’s watching Duncan as much as Duffy does now, but instead of scrambling ready-to-serve he’s measuring out what Duncan has to lose.
I smile at Duncan. Perfectly, shiningly innocent. “Let’s,” I say.
He puts one arm behind me, not quite touching my back but doing everything he can to own me anyway. Walks away from the rest of them without even one look at Lilia.
I want to spin around and grab the arm he’s caging me with and break it. Hear the bone crack and see the splintered white rip through his skin. Watch his face fold in pain and his body crumple. Listen to him beg for mercy.
Instead I bite my cheek until blood coats my tongue, and I keep my heels clicking even.
Duncan takes us to the chapel. He pushes one door open and lets the wood and iron swing back heavy after us. Dull light seeps through the stained glass. At the far end of the room, a huge gold crucifix hangs behind the altar. Christ looks up instead of down at us. Crowned with thorns. Hands dripping gold blood.