Page 65

It’s thirty minutes I don’t have a good grasp on. What specifics I can put together would be stupid to trust. Only the basics are salvageable: Dad inviting the girl into the penthouse, then bashing her head into the wall. Dad dragging her into the bedroom while she screamed and bit and scratched. Dad yelling at her as he chained her to the wall, that he’d make it so much worse if she didn’t shut the fuck up.

The crack as she broke her ankle.

And then me, grabbing the knife to stop her before she reached the door.

Me, opening the back of her leg.

Me, falling onto the floor as Dad hoisted her up with the rope around her neck, pulling tighter and tighter until it sawed into the soft meat under her jaw.

She watched me the entire time she died.

It can’t be that hard to do the same thing to Mom. No gun to muffle, no knife to hide from the police. Just go to the basement, dig out a coil of nylon rope, wait until she’s drunk and snoring half dressed on the bed, and pull.

My brain plays it on repeat. Like the sound of a lock latching, or the click of the SmarTrip card hitting laminate.

Pull.

I’m walking in the general direction of Eastern Market station and I’m not fully aware of why. The distant dome of the Capitol towers above the orange and red trees lining Pennsylvania Avenue; a bus to L’Enfant Plaza grumbles past. There’s nothing in my pockets except my phone and a Metro card because Mom didn’t let me grab anything else before slamming the door in my face. I’m still wearing sweatpants and an old hoodie.

Phantom rope burns sting my hands.

At one point I pause on the sidewalk, peering in the dark window of some unmarked building to inspect my face, to find only a faint red mark on the right cheek. I double-check in the selfie camera of my phone, only to be confronted with the same.

That’s it? This can’t be all I have to show for it. I press my knuckles into the edges of the mark in hopes that’ll make it darker—so it’ll show up on camera as an actual handprint, so I can catalog it as “photo,” “evidence,” “look what she did to me.”

Pull.

“Fuck,” I say out loud, jerking my head like that will clear it somehow. A man walking by adjusts his course to give me a wider berth.

I don’t have my earbuds, which means no music to match my heartbeat to. I can’t go to school. I’m in public, so I can’t beat my chest like I’m trying to knock my organs back into working order, I can’t run, I can’t scream.

Pull.

Usually, when it got this bad, I’d go to Alyssa. I’d show up on her doorstep, wretched and hunched over, and she’d bring me inside; she’d put me in her bed, or the guest room, depending on how well we were getting along that day. But I can’t let her see me like this. I can’t let her know she was right.

I can’t do this.

I open a different text thread.

Morgan

hey where do you live, I’m coming over

Felicity

uhhhh XXXXX st nw?

u street is the stop I use

on the green

wait WHY what’s going on???

I dig out my Metro card and start for the station, thinking about the seconds we spent on the floor of the office, Felicity pinning my hands to my chest, holding me tight.

I think I need that. Someone to hold me down.

PULL.