I’m not worried that they’ll reject him. Iris isn’t particular. She’ll say that he’s passable. Moody will say that he looks strong but that she’s confident I can take him down on my own. They’re so desperate for me to follow through with a kill that they’ll all but put the knife in my hands.
A sharp pain jars me from my thoughts. I look down to see a jagged splinter boring into my index finger, and I curse before I can stop myself.
“Did the table get you?” Edison says, and I look up to see sympathy in his eyes. He holds out his hand. “Let me see.”
Careful, Sissy, I tell myself, because I am all too eager to comply. I offer my wounded finger to him tentatively, as though I’m cautious rather than intrigued. “Hold still,” he says, and without questioning it, I do. I watch as he carefully works the splinter from my skin with such precision that I don’t feel a thing.
Blood wells up at the wound, dark and contained to its tiny sphere. Edison brings my finger to his lips, and my mind goes hazy with shock when I feel the warm softness of his mouth.
He does this like it’s natural, like he hasn’t just caused the whole world to stop just for us. I’m inside him. My blood on his tongue.
“There,” he says. “All better.” He licks his lip, and I know that he can still taste me there.
He looks at me, and I think I see a challenge in that face of his. A question. A dare.
Who are you really?his eyes say. I want to answer. I want to tell him the truth, even though it would ruin everything if he knew.
5
In the morning, unfamiliar voices outside wake me. I open my eyes to a bedroom with peach walls, a bed, and a dresser left behind by the previous occupants.
Having sisters like Iris and Moody means that I’m always home. We grew up like bits of debris drifting, helpless, on the surface of some deep sea. I’m told we were quiet babies. Not the sort to fuss or throw fits. Iris nearly starved to death that first month. She had malabsorption, and nobody knew she was suffering because she didn’t even cry. She just took it like a stoic on a hunger strike. She was nearly lifeless by the time someone thought to call an ambulance. There’s a photo of her from then, the world’s tiniest queen on a throne of tubes and wires, staring icily up at her subjects.
It’s because of our peculiar quiet that our early foster families kept all three of us. Give us some formula, change the diapers, cash thechecks from the state. Leave us in our playpen to rot all day. Who’s to know? We won’t tell.
But as we got older, this was no longer the case. The state has a hard enough time keeping two orphaned siblings in the same home, much less triplets. Between the ages of five and eighteen, my sisters and I drifted between group homes and foster homes, hardened anew at each reunion by the things we’d experienced while we were apart. Fate brought us together arbitrarily and then separated us just as easily. My sharpest memories are of their fingers being pried from mine, either by the force with which we were torn away, or by the impatient heavy hand of whoever was tasked with transporting us.
All our conversations were whispers as we crept into the same bed at night for protection, or screams through car windows and across parking lots.
Now where one goes, we all go. Always.
Because Jade Johnson is supposed to be living alone, we rented a one-bedroom condo. It’s three levels: a bedroom and modest bathroom on the top floor, a living room and dining room and even tinier bathroom on the main, and a laundry room at the bottom, with a door through which we can slip away without being seen, because no neighboring windows overlook it.
We share the queen-size bed, and I spent last night wedged between Moody and the wall. I was up late, lying on my back, holding my phone over my head and smiling in the glow of the screen as Edison and I talked about movies and the perfect music to listen to when you’ve had a bad day.
Moody is still asleep, limbs sprawled, her dark hair tangled across her face. Iris is missing, ever the early riser, and I can hear the soft murmur of the TV downstairs. That isn’t what woke me, though. Someone is chattering outside. I move to the window and peel backthe blinds. My neighbor—the woman with the cigarette—is standing on her balcony and talking to a man with fair skin and neatly combed blond hair. He’s so groomed it’s almost unreal, like a billboard ad for custom suits.
He talks in a soft hum that I can’t hear, but whatever he says makes her smile at him. Before he turns for the stairs, she grabs his collar in both hands and reels him in for a kiss.
They’re a beautiful couple. Two little cake toppers standing upon layers of buttercream frosting. Life in this shitty complex is an adventure for them. He’s dressed for the job he wants—a pressed tailored suit, silk tie—and one day he’s going to buy them a house.
I wonder what it’s like to have a forever with someone. I’ve never looked at anyone and seen the future, not even my own face in the mirror.
I’ll have to befriend the woman next door. There’s always a little bit of social networking involved when my sisters have targeted their marks, but it’s a delicate balance. I’ll keep an eye on her. If she works during the day, it will make things much easier. But if she’s home, that means she’ll pop up as unexpectedly as she did yesterday, and my sisters and I will have to stay vigilant.
Once her husband is gone, she emerges from the house with a trash bag. It’s large and unwieldly, but she carries it over her shoulder like it weighs nothing. She paces across the parking lot and tosses it into the blue dumpster meant for recycling. The loud slap of each step in her bright yellow flip-flops echoes in the empty space. She lights a cigarette as she sashays up the stairs and falls into a patio chair. Black tank top, no bra, short hair still rumpled in the back. Her husband took the car. She’s got nowhere to be.
Her eyes flit up to my window and I back away, though I’m sure she wouldn’t be able to see me.
As I make my way downstairs, I hear the whir of the blender. Iris sets two glasses down on the counter, having anticipated my arrival.
“You were up late texting him,” she says as I slide onto a barstool.
I set the phone on the counter and check my messages again. Nothing new in the past eight hours.
I force myself to drink the smoothie Iris pours out, even though I secretly hate them. In Texas, when we were playing the role of twins, two of us could leave the motel at the same time. There were breakfast options. Scrambled eggs, gigantic slabs of buttered toast, and bacon for days. But here we’re sharing the role of Jade Johnson, and that means the blinds are always drawn and we’ll have to be careful about how we come and go. It also means buying a modest amount of groceries.
“How is it?” Iris asks, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s talking about Edison, not the smoothie.
