And me? I’m sitting on the cracked leather of her artist’s chair, heart thudding with the rhythm of a drum line beneath my ribs.
“You sure about this?” Frankie asks, voice soft but steady. “Last chance to chicken out.”
I look around. At Sloane perched on the counter, legs swinging, grinning like she already knows the answer. Ruby sprawled across a loveseat with a half-eaten cookie in one hand and a middle finger poised in the other. At Darla sitting cross-legged on the floor, resting her head against the wall the way someone does when they finally let themselves exhale. These women have seen me raw. Bleeding. Vicious. Soft. And they’re still here.
The back of my throat tightens. I nod. “Let’s do it.”
The machine buzzes to life, and the world narrows down to the sting of the needle and the breath I don’t know I’m holding. I don’t flinch. Don’t cry. I watch Frankie’s brow furrow in focus as she carves something permanent into my skin. Not a brand. Not a scar. A choice. A beginning.
The sound is sharp and steady, threading through me the way a needle pulls through cloth. Each burn of the needle against my skin becomes a verse rewritten; painful, deliberate, mine.
“You’re a freak,” Ruby says from the couch, eyeing me. “First tattoo and you’re not even sweating.”
“I’ve been through worse,” I say simply.
That shuts everyone up for a second. Then Sloane, always the gentle one, murmurs, “Yeah. But now you’re writing over it. That’s badass.”
That’s the thing. This isn’t about forgetting. It’s about remembering on my terms. I’ve let too many people carve their names into me the way a thief claims stolen pieces. My father. Donovan. The nightmares that come dressed in skin.
But this? This is mine.
When Frankie finishes, she cleans the skin, her touch surprisingly gentle, and pulls the mirror over. I don’t need it. I look anyway.
A feathered dagger, fine-lined and intricate, lies against my ribs. One wing broken. One sharp edge gleaming. Beneath it, in ink small enough only I’ll ever read if I don’t tell them—she survived the fire.
Not escaped. Not ran. Not was saved.
Survived.
Ruby whistles. “Okay, damn. That’s poetry.”
Frankie pulls off her gloves and grins. “You want a lollipop or a whiskey?”
“Both,” I say.
Darla snorts, then actually laughs. It’s something deeper than I’ve ever heard from her. It breaks whatever weird emotional spell lingers, and suddenly we’re all talking at once. Sloane pulls out her phone to take a picture. Ruby starts a fight about who has the best tattoo; spoiler, she thinks it’s her. Frankie shows us the stick-and-poke she gave herself when she’s sixteen and stupid. Darla admits she almost got her ex’s name once, and we all boo with horror saved for confessions of murder.
I laugh so hard I cry. Or maybe I cry so hard I laugh. Either way, no one calls me out on it. No one flinches when I wipe my eyes and lean into Sloane’s side for just a second longer than I mean to. This night isn’t about pretending we’re okay. It’s about knowing we’re not alone.
When Ruby starts twerking to some old Lizzo song and nearly falls into Frankie’s work table, I know I’ll remember this moment for the rest of my life.
Not because it erases the pain. But because it reminds me joy is still allowed to live here. Even for girls who’ve survived what we have. Especially for girls who’ve survived what we have.
We’re still riding the high of the tattoo reveal. High on sugar, laughter, and the kind of emotional vulnerability that makes you think you could arm-wrestle your trauma, then ugly cry over a Disney movie in the same breath.
Ruby dares Darla to chug the rest of the melted Slurpee she finds in Frankie’s mini fridge. Darla does it with the valor of a war hero. Then gags the same way.
“I feel alive and mildly poisoned,” she announces.
“You look like you licked a Smurf,” Frankie says, eyeing her neon-blue tongue.
I’m half-draped over the loveseat, tattoo stinging, cheeks sore from laughing, when Ruby suddenly sits up way too straight. She has that look in her eyes. The feral one. The I-just-had-an-idea-and-no-one’s-safe look.
A tension prickles up the back of my neck, familiar and almost comforting. Her chaos is its own brand of medicine.
“No, absolutely not,” Sloane says immediately.
Ruby blinks innocently. “I didn’t even say it.”
