I spot her on the stairs, collapsed against the banister, red-faced and crying, nursing a beer in one hand, still holding William Wilson’s tail in the other. Her friends are around her, but not as many as before. Maddie Anho has slowly been threading her way back toward the top of the stairs—more than likely trying to get into the livestream shot. Brynn is still running Ribbit’s beers, but also moving through the crowd, feeling foreheads, propping people up, and handing out more water than alcohol.
Brynn is a good person.
Ribbit stands in front of the grandfather clock, fully naked, swinging his junk in time with the pendulum at the suggestion of a freshman, who finds it so thrilling that he blows beer out his nose. Hugh leads the crowd in a chant, counting off the seconds that Ribbit can keep himself synchronized with the clock. On the livestream, laughing emojis, balloons, thumbs-ups, and fireworks explode across the screen. Viewers are happy.
Hugh locks eyes with me from across the room, and shoots me a thumbs-up, unconsciously echoing his online audience. I scroll through comments, then shoot a text to Hugh.
Just don’t let anyone teabag him.
Or shit in his mouth
I know! People are the worst, right?
I minimize my messages app, and pull up the photo from Brynn’s phone.
“Yes,” I agree. “They are.”
Back in the kitchen I kick beer cans and water bottles out of the way. There’s a puddle of blood where I collapsed at the foot of the servants’ stairs, drying already. My bare feet stick in it as I pad through the mess, making my way to the basement door. It’s open about an inch, the pale glow from the single bulb downstairs outlining the edges.
I flip the hook behind me and take each step as an individual challenge. My legs are shaky, and my left hand is going numb. I can’t feel the wall underneath my hand, even though I’m leaning against it for support. The dirt floor is cool under my feet when I get to the bottom. It sticks to the coagulated blood and pushes up between my toes, a gritty red-brown mess.
I flop into the chair, exhausted by the walk, my arm cradled against me. I’m hit with the mixed scents of vomit and urine, and glance up to see a chalk-white Felicity hanging in her chains, eyes vacant.
Until they meet mine.
Chapter 55
Tress and Felicity
“What the hell happened to you?”
Chapter 56
Felicity
“I was attacked by a wild animal,” Tress says, and holds up her arm. It’s entirely silver from elbow to wrist, layer after layer of duct tape not quite managing to stop a trickle of blood that drips from her fingers.
“Me too,” I tell her, and rattle my chains.
She laughs. It’s a weak sound, which is nothing I would ever associate with Tress Montor, but I’m glad to even get that out of her. She looks bad. Pale as death, and her eyes are sunken deep into her skull. Her lips are drawn against the pain, and she’s so weak she can hardly keep it together, her arms and legs splayed out to either side of the chair at odd angles. As I’m watching, her eyes go dim and her head slips to the side.
“Hey!” I shout—or at least, raise my voice as much as I can. “Don’t you fucking pass out on me!”
A jolt of panic rushes up my spine. Tress is the only person who knows I’m down here. If she goes out like a light my one connection to the outside world is extinguished, too. I wish that was the only reason I’m freaked out. I wish that I hated her and could relish the idea of watching her drip-dry to death in that chair, knowing that at least she’s going down with me. But that’s not it. That’s not it at all.
The first thing I felt when I saw Tress’s sunken eyes and waxy skin wasn’t joy or satisfaction or victory. All I felt was worry, a deep yank in my gut at the sight of my friend’s blood.
Yeah. My friend.
I still care about Tress Montor.
Chapter 57
Tress
“If you fucking pass out on me, I swear to God, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
Felicity Turnado has nothing to threaten me with, and that’s hilarious. I laugh, or at least I try to. My body isn’t responding the way it’s supposed to, and everything is fuzzy: the demarcations between where my body stops and other physical objects start. The passage of time. Morality.
That’s kind of funny, too.
A giggle escapes, high and tinny, not quite right.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Felicity says, and when I look up she’s crying.
“Smells like you mean that literally,” I answer, and her mouth goes tight, like she wants to get mad at me, but half a second later the edges are twitching, and she’s laughing.
“Things have not been going so well down here,” she says, then seems to consider things for a second. “But they’ve definitely been going.”
I splutter, a mix of spit and giggles slipping past my lips. I’d forgotten that Felicity can be funny. Really funny. Maybe she’d forgotten that, too, because she looks half shocked at her own words, even though she’s laughing along.
Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s laughing with me that’s so shocking. It shouldn’t be. We used to laugh a lot, get slaphappy like this at three in the morning and completely lose it over the dumbest things. But a lot has changed . . . and I can’t let myself forget that.
The cat really did a number on me.
I don’t know how much of my blood is upstairs in that bedroom, how much is puddled in the kitchen, how much is mixed with dirt and jammed between my toes, and how much is still in my veins. But I think the last answer is the smallest number.
I’m losing my edge, letting our laughter rekindle something that’s dead. I need to remember why I’m here, and the best way to remind myself of that is to lay some damn bricks. I stumble to the rubble pile, find one I like. Felicity is still smiling when I begin working on the new row, like she thought everything was going to be okay now. Like it was fixed. Like nothing ever happened.
Something did happen—it happened to my parents. And I don’t know what.
I lay one row and look up to see that Felicity has a half smile on her face, like maybe those last four bricks were supposed to be ironic, a final jab before I let her go. I start another row, my blood mixing with the mortar, the light in her eyes falling away as the wall rises. Good. Felicity Turnado needs to know what it’s like to lose hope.
I sit back in the chair, a burst of black circles in my vision. The layer of bricks I just added is sloppy as hell, the mortar uneven and pitted with air holes. I did a shit job, and it’s something that would earn me a clap upside the head from Cecil if I were at home.
But I’m not at home. I’m in the basement of the Allan house. And if anyone were to hit me on the side of the head right now, I’d probably just go on over and lay in the dirt until . . . until what? Until I die? Until someone finds us down here and I go to jail for the rest of my life? It’s that thought—jail—not death, that gets me talking again. I don’t want to live like Cecil’s animals do, and I’ve seen the look in Rue’s eyes. She’d rather be dead.
But if I’m asking Felicity to be honest, I guess I probably should be, too. What I’m doing here tonight isn’t the only thing in my life that could land me in jail, not by a long shot.