Someone will soon find me, and the aching in my belly will stop, and the quiet of Mommy will, too.
I let my eyes close but it’s the stench that makes me sick.
My tummy rolls and I open my mouth wide to gag and I think I’m going to vomit, but there’s a sound…
A dull thud.
It’s weak.
There is something tickling at my brain.
A boy.
Little.
But maybe he is my age? I’ve never really feltlittle,though.
It wasn’t Lele. I know my own brother.
Where did this other one go?
Everything was loud, and there were tears and screams, and Mommy dropped, butwhere did the little boy go?
The thud pounds again.
A cry, as if from someone smaller than me.
I push away from the mess Mommy has made, and I see a wave of red.
When I get to my feet, I’m unsteady.
The dark room spins around me.
My breath catches in my lungs and the scent hangs in the back of my throat and?—
I wake up.
BEFORE
CASSIA
We meet under the cover of night, between two clubs, brick walls blanketing us on either side beneath the stars.
His gray eyes find mine and the whites of them are red.
He’s jittery in his motions, wiping the back of his hand along the underside of his nose. I know what he’s done, he knows I know, but he’ll pretend for one more night he’s gotten it under control.
I delivered the news over the phone, before he requested to meet, and blow can be that way. Calling out to you in your grief. It’s the friend who lifts you up, gives you back a smile.
He isn’t smiling now, though.
I tilt my head and do it for him, curving my lips high, hands pushed into the deep pockets of my black wool trench. There is a gun between my fingers, but he’s unaware. He should suspect me, though. But I guess after we’ve carried a secret as big as ours for as long as we have, he thinks there’s some sort of parameter around what I will and won’t do to him.
He messed up that line years ago.
When I think of it now, my finger grazes the trigger and I wonder if it would be worth the wreckage to get rid of him tonight.
My heart would ease.
