I think of Brynn, crying in the kitchen, empty water bottles and beer cans littering the counter. “Brynn might be the only friend you have right now.”
“I’ll take it,” Ribbit says. “Listen, I gotta go.”
Downstairs I hear shuffling, the crowd moving back into their places.
“People are coming back for round two of Ribbit. Oh, and something, like, ate Gretchen’s dog,” Ribbit says, followed by a hiccup.
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’m upstairs sitting across from a loose panther.”
“Cool,” Ribbit says, and I know he isn’t listening. “Maddie got her calmed down, took her outside.” There’s a pause, some muttering. “Look, my man Hugh needs his phone.”
Hugh’s voice comes on, loose and shaky, but not as blurred with drink as Ribbit’s. “Don’t hate me.”
“Give me a reason not to,” I say.
“Look . . .” His voice drops, low and whispering. “The guys are just waiting to kick his ass, and I mean, like, in a brutal way. He said something about David’s mom earlier—I mean, what’s with him and moms, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “And I don’t hate you because . . . ?”
“Because as long as the show is going, there are cameras on him,” Hugh says.
“And he’s safe,” I finish for him. I think of thousands of people on a livestream, friend requests, new followers, hundreds of unread messages pouring in from around the world. David and the other guys won’t attack him with that many eyeballs on them. An assault conviction would certainly put a dent in their high school football careers, and an assault conviction against an Usher would land their asses in jail, minors or not. You don’t get to spill old blood in Amontillado.
“Okay,” I say reluctantly.
“Hey, do you know where Felicity is?” Hugh asks, his voice back to normal. “I haven’t seen her since . . . I don’t know. I just haven’t seen her.”
“Yeah, I know where she is,” I say.
“Okay, cool. Just checking on her. I look out for her, you know.”
He does. The same way I look out for Ribbit. “Yeah, I get it,” I tell him.
I think of the basement, the naked bulb above my chair, the mortar pail, the pile of bricks, and Felicity, a trail of blood leaking from behind her ear. Tonight, we switched responsibilities, and it is not turning out so well.
I hang up. In the corner of my phone the livestream continues. My messages app is nothing like Hugh’s. I have only one notification. One I sent to myself from Brynn’s phone. I exhale, my breath foul from a long night, still far from over.
Despite the cat, only inches from me, I hang my head, and I cry.
Chapter 47
Cat
There is pain in the girl,
but no injury.
I lean forwad, sniffing
for the scent of
blood and hurt and skin split and hair torn and teeth broken
and bones splintered and tendons severed and muscles snapping
all the things that can happen.
And the girl lifts her head,
the salt smell of pain in her eyes,
and reaches for me
—like a cousin—
to touch.
But her hand is not a paw
her blood, not like mine.
And I
am not tame.
I smack, to remind.
A touch that would roll a cousin, expose their belly, tell them,
I am alpha.
But the girl is not a cousin
only a human.
And easily opened.
Chapter 48
Felicity
Annabelle, that’s the first thing, easy to remember.
Tress looks like her, so it’s not hard to conjure my friend’s face, then smooth out some of the sharper edges—the permanent worry line above her nose, the way she holds her body like she’s always ready to fight. It didn’t use to be that way. Her face used to be open, ready to laugh, her body more likely to erupt into dance than a defensive posture.
Taking away Tress’s harder touches gives me Annabelle, tall and dark, graceful. There’s a smile, I know that face. She’s offering me a Popsicle, pressing the cool wrapper against the scrape on my knee before unwrapping it.
“There you go,” she says. “Edible Band-Aid.”
I laugh in the memory, and I realize Tress isn’t the only one who’s changed. It comes out light and airy. I’m not checking to make sure I’m supposed to be laughing. Not doing a quick assessment of Gretchen’s or David’s or Hugh’s faces to make sure it’s okay.
But then Annabelle’s face does change, becomes more like the Tress I know today, that line of worry between her eyebrows, the edges of her mouth down-turned. There’s a light touch on my forehead, and I lean into it, the fingers cool and deft. At my side, Goldie-Dog whines, her cold nose going into my palm. Something is wrong. She knows. She knows something is not right with me, and soon I’ll pee my pants and Annabelle and Tress will know and everyone will know that Felicity Turnado pees her pants sometimes and froths at the mouth and rolls on the floor and no one will ever want to marry me.
“You don’t have a fever,” Annabelle says. “Could it be something you ate?”
I shake my head in the memory, but also here in the basement of the Allan house.
“I don’t feel good,” I say, and my eyes flick to Tress, standing at the top of the stairs, a teddy bear clutched against her side, looking down at us with a frown to match her mother’s.
“Okay.” Annabelle runs her hands down my arms, and I shiver, goose bumps popping under my nightgown.
“I want to go home.” My voice cracks as I say it, a pathetic whimper that Annabelle Montor can’t ignore. It was the one place I didn’t want to be, earlier. The place I ran from after I heard the sound—louder than a smack—while my parents were fighting. I ran from home and came to the Montors’, and Annabelle had called my mom, said I was staying here tonight. Said it in a way that my mom couldn’t argue with, and wouldn’t anyway because
Montor > Turnado.
But that tone is gone from Annabelle’s voice now, and I wish she hadn’t used it then. Wish she hadn’t agreed that I could stay. Wish that I hadn’t run in the first place.
“I need to go home,” I say again, insistent.
“Honey, it’s . . .” She glances at her phone. “It’s past midnight.”
I shake my head, real tears coming now. Tears of frustration. I don’t only want to go home, but I need to. It started up in Tress’s room, a halo of light around her lamp, a pressure in the back of my head. Her voice got loud and her teeth terribly bright, and I know, without a doubt, that I’m going to seize, and soon. And that means I’ll fall down and roll around, go stiff like a board and maybe even pee myself right in front of Tress.
Girls with monogrammed towels don’t pee themselves.
I gulp a deep breath, bunch my nightgown into my fists, and focus hard on Annabelle. “I want to go home.”
In the basement, my cracked lips barely moving, I say it again. “I want to go home.”
Chapter 49