He pauses before handing over the keys. “What are you going to do?”
“Just trust me for a minute. Don’t make any loud noises, anddon’ttry to stop me.”
An uneasiness crawls into his stomach. “Nelle, if you’re going to hurt yourself—”
“Give me the damn keys,” she snaps.
James drops them into her outstretched hand. Her palm shocks his fingertips, like touching an electrical outlet. The warmth lingers. Nelle doesn’t seem to notice. She pinches the house key, levels it over her palm, and digs it into her flesh.
“Stop!” He lurches toward the window. But she keeps digging the key in until—
Blood flows. She flips her hand on top of James’s. Her blood falls steadily, filling the grooves of his hand like little rivers. Hot and black as drip coffee.
“Smell it,” she says.
Horrified, he lifts his hand to his nose, and his nostrils burn at the smell. Ink.Ink.
“Good one.” He shakes off his hand and wipes the ink residue on the grass, though his skin is stained a purplish color now. He laughs. “You got me.”
“I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.” Nelle’s jaw tightens like a windup toy. She shows him the spot on her palm where she supposedly cut herself. Her skin is unblemished, no incision. “This isn’t a joke.”
“You can let up now, it’s funny.”
“James, I bleed ink.”
“No, you don’t.” He laughs again. “That’s impossible.”
“Go into the woods.” She points to the tree line, branches and leaves lost to the shadows. “There’s an old glass beer bottle over there. Break it and bring me back a piece.”
James runs a hand through his hair. “You’ve got to be kidding—”
Nelle’s expression is dead serious.
James decides to go along with whatever this is, this prank, this diversion from her real problem with Quill. When she’s ready to talk about her issues, he will be here to listen. To help. Until then ...
Pine straw crunches underfoot as he crosses into the trees. He swings his phone flashlight side to side until it illuminates a green glass bottle half hidden beneath a thornbush. He grabs it by the neck and swings it hard against a tree trunk. It doesn’t break on the first blow, but on the second it hits a hard knot and shatters across the foliage.
Sorry for littering,James thinks absently as he carries a shard back to Nelle’s window.
“Got it.” He sets the emerald fragment on her windowsill.
Nelle picks it up.
“Look at my hand,” she says. “And don’t stop looking at my hand.”
Exiled to the world outside Nelle’s bedroom, James stares at her hand. But she doesn’t do some drastic trick with the shard, doesn’t move at all as she clamps her fist around the glass. She just whimpers, and her other hand lifts to her mouth, biting down to stop the noise.
“Nelle,” he whispers. “Nelle, stop, what are you—”
“No,look,” she exhales, opening her hand.
The glass drops onto James’s shoe, but he is too captivated to notice the ink splattered across his white sneaker. His vision tunnels as the jagged gash across her palm leaks a pungent black liquid. She holds out her hand, and James takes it to study, the blood warm. When he pulls away, his fingers are smudged with fresh ink.
Ink. Not blood.
His brain spins. Theworldspins. He stumbles against the side of the house, painting the clapboard siding with her blood. Presses a hand to his heart—a black print on his white tee—to soothe the confused hummingbird in his chest. He remembers how the ink glistened inside her cut, and his nausea tidal waves.
“Okay,” he manages to say, his mouth full of saliva. “I’m going to ask you one more time, and please be serious. How are you doing that?”
