I punch him in the nose.
The sting of it slams into my fists. Noah staggers back, clutching his face. Blood spurts down his t-shirt. Anger flashes in his eyes, and for a moment I’m paralyzed with fear. If Noah comes for me, he’ll flatten me.
Instead, he lowers his hand, staring me down from those coal-black depths. “Just think about it, Eli.”
He stalks away, holding his nose, leaving me alone with the paper and my cold, dark wishes.
I stare down at the paper. I unfold it. It’s a page from a notebook – a ragged edge on one side where it had been torn out. Wobbly, childish handwriting crowds on the lines, sometimes spilling over the ends and curling around. Many of the i’s and j’s had hearts drawn on them instead of dots.
An ache spreads across my chest.
I’d know that handwriting anywhere.
It’s a diary entry. It isn’t dated, but I remember the day well. It was a few months after our parents declared we weren’t allowed to see each other. Dad was at a casket roadshow over the weekend and Mom didn’t care what I got up to, so I took Mackenzie out for dinner. We sat at a corner table of this fancy Italian place all the food critics were raving about, the kind of place I thought Mackenzie would enjoy because it’s hip and exclusive.
I’m scribbling this in the bathroom. I’m so angry. Eli brought me to a restaurant for dinner. He’s excited and keeps asking me how I like the food. I’m going to stab him with my fork.
Everyone around us is at least twenty years older and ugly as sin. The couple behind us hold hands over the table, and a pair of guys at the bar feed each other sick-looking cocktails. I hate them all. They make me sick. Don’t they know all this is a lie? No one lives happily-ever-after. The only royals who get to keep their crowns are those who enclose their hearts in ice.
I don’t know why we’re here, pretending to be adults. Eli folds my napkin on my lap. If he wants me to be one of these air-brushed bimbos making polite conversation, then I’ll slit his throat while he sleeps.
Just kidding. But thisisweird, and he’s been doing lots of other weird things lately. It doesn’t matter though – at least Eli-weird is calm and safe. At least Eli lets me yell and break things and do whatever I want. I’ll sit through anything if it will keep him by my side.
No matter what I do, Eli will always protect me.
Tears stab at the corners of my eyes. From my pocket, I pull out the strip of photographs of me and Mackenzie at Disneyland. I try to recall the elation of that day, the giddy excitement I felt holding her hand and feeling her body lean against mine as we rode the teacups. This time, what comes back to me are the memories that slipped through the cracks – Mackenzie screaming at a terrified cotton-candy seller until he gave her a free cone. Mackenzie elbowing small children and pulling a girl’s hair so we could push past them in the Space Mountain line. Mackenzie guilt-tripping me into doing her homework for her that evening, since I made her skip school.
I think of other things, too. I think of kids scattering whenever Mackenzie walked into a room. I remember finding George hiding in a supply closet, holding a razor blade to the skin of her ankle because Mackenzie told her she’d be better off dead.
I crush the paper in my fingers, screwing it into a tight ball. I throw it at the bleachers, watching it bounce on the wood and fall through a crack.
Claudia lied about who she was. But I’ve been lying to myself, too.
I needed… I needed to set things straight.
21
Claudia
“I’m so nervous.” George paces the length of our room, her dress swishing around her ankles.
It’s the night of the homecoming dance, and we’re holed up in a room that’s a mirror-image of Gabriel’s pad, except decorated in garish burgundy and gold. Gabriel’s neighbor is some big shot tech mogul who’s hardly ever in the country. He rents his apartment out for events, and Gabriel scored us the place for our dance preparations while he and Noah and Isaac get ready next door.
“You don’t look nervous. You’re a total bombshell.” It’s true. George found a vintage ’50s dress at her thrift store with a plunging sweetheart neckline that’s perfect for her tiny frame. With her shoulders bare and her short pixie cut dyed a brilliant midnight blue, her tattoos are on full display. George has great ink – you’d think she’d be all skulls and bats and roses, but she says she wants to look at her skin and smile, so on one arm are kittens shaped like donuts chasing tiny balls of yarn that twirl around her wrist, and on the other arm is a bunch of different monsters from horror films all having a party and eating giant pieces of cake.
“I don’t know how to do this.” She flings one of her scuffed New Rock boots into the wall and flops down on the bed.
“Do what?”
“Go to a dance with a boy. What do I even say to Isaac? I can barely talk to anyone, actually. But boys are the worst. I don’t even have to be into them and I turn into a hamster. I sat next to Eli the whole game last night and we barely said a word to each other.”
“You seemed to be doing fine to me.” I shrug, pretending I hadn’t noticed or cared she sat with Eli last night at the game (which Stonehurst lost, as predicted. Our cheerleading routine, however, went off perfectly despite Daphne trying to trip me during the opening number). I can still feel the burn of his eyes on me as I spun through my kicks and tumbles, and the stab of jealousy in my chest as Eli and George bent their heads together to whisper to each other.
They looked like they had plenty to talk about.
Even when he hates me, Eli is still the Golden Boy, shunning his many other friends to sit with George – who has no one else and only came in the first place out of loyalty to me. And then, on Wednesday, George didn’t show up at our table for lunch. I went looking for her in case Cleo had done something to her, and found her and Eli bent over a desk in the computer lab, laughing at a video of Gizmo on his phone. I snuck away before they could see me.
I’m dying to ask George if Eli said anything about me, but I can’t put her in the middle like that, not when I know she carries a candle for Eli and that she’s already wound up about the dance.
