One firing at a time.
Until I was the only one left—which is how you know you’re not the favorite, you’re the final girl.
Fourteen
Twilight spreadsacross the sky in bruised purples tonight, darker than usual. Ominous.
Maybe it’s how the days are shorter and the light is sadder.
Maybe it’s the murder investigation we’re running out of our living room like we’re cosplaying FBI agents on a true crime podcast.
Alex color-coded our murder board. Because apparently when you’re hunting a killer, you need the yarn to match the pushpins or the feng shui gets fucked.
On the pinboard side, she has a collection of pins in red with—yes—red yarn connecting them. Green pins with green yarn. Yellow pins with yellow yarn.
She’s made it a traffic light of murder investigation.
On the board itself: photos printed and laminated like we’re building a vision board for crime solving. Dom. The Dahlia club. The alley behind it and nearby.
And our mystery woman—the one we’ve been calling Dahlia, though we have no idea if that’s her name—represented by a stock photo of Elizabeth Short because Alex said we “needed a face to anchor the investigation to.”
A morbid choice. A woman murdered decades ago. Still unsolved. Still haunting.
But it’s not like we have an actual photo of our victim.
We don’t even know for sure there is a victim, and that’s the paradox.
“I found a stash of red and white!” Alex emerges from the hallway, hair in a messy top bun, wearing her cozy Halloween pajama set—the one with tarot cards printed all over it.
Mine is less flashy. Dandelion tufts scattered across navy blue. The ones she got me for my birthday because “you’re my dandelion wish, Dylan.”
I’m never getting rid of these pajamas.
“Red.” I hold out my hand, wiggling my fingers.
“Oh!” She squeals, shoving both bottles into my chest before skipping off to grab a package by the door. She rips it open with her teeth, pulling out two extremely long straws. “Wine straws!”
“Is that their actual purpose?” I tease, heading into the kitchen for an opener.
“Of course.” She says it with such conviction I genuinely cannot tell if she’s being serious.
With a satisfying pop, I get the first cork out. White first. I hand it over.
Alex plops a straw into the wine bottle, takes a sip, then immediately gets it caught in her hair when she turns too fast.
“Professional investigators,” I mutter, helping untangle her while trying not to spill my own wine.
“We’re very sophisticated.” She frees herself and strikes a pose before her murder board. “Okay so I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
I open the red while she contemplates her masterpiece.
“This side—” She taps the corkboard with the photos and yarn. “—is what we know. And THIS side—” She flips it around to reveal a whiteboard. “—is magnetic for theories and questionswe need to answer.” She grabs one of the dozen magnets sitting in a bowl and chucks it at the board where it sticks with a satisfying thwap. “I’m obsessed with this board.”
“You gonna marry that board?”
“I might.”
Wine open, I use my absurdly long straw and sip. Not too sweet, not too bitter. Honestly just right. “The magnet feature is genuinely impressive.”
