Blinking off the parasitic burn, I return to painting my nails. “How special I feel.”
The tears springing to my eyes are why.
I’m too emotional, too weak.
I’m prey.
“Baby bunny, no,” she whines, her long, black hair puddling on my vanity as she bends sideways to look into my eyes. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel secluded. You’re our sweet girl with big feelings… and he weaponizes that.”
“Sweets rot, Ora.” Indicating I’m done talking about it, I make the last swipe on my pinky and start blowing on my nails.
She sits up, staring thinly at me while taking another crackling hit off her vape. The smoke rolls out through her nose, jetting down her deep cuttank top and billowing inside her open oversized jacket. “You wanna go watch Aries yell at the guys?”
“Can’t. I need to fix myself.”
Leaping off the vanity, she says, “Bring your polish and rollers. I’ll grab your makeup.” Swirling around and helping herself to my things, she ignores my stare through the mirror and adds, “We’ll sit on the bleachers and get ready together.”
“I don’t even have pants on,” I huff, angling my head and wafting my drying nails.
Her brows crinkle tight, her gaze snapping up to me in the mirror. “You walk around in your panties at home. No one’s here yet. It’s just us.”
“Yeah… When I forget my pants and have to run from the bathroom,” I mumble.
She rolls her eyes, clattering through my makeup and tossing brushes into a carrying case. “Why would you want to wear clothes? You have… Oh, what is it? …” Stopping her assault on my makeup, she flattens her hands on the vanity, turning her look of concentration to me. “Ballerina bod? You know, when you’re thin but toned and have that curved gap between your thighs… Perfect for a head—What?!” She whips her theatrical horror over her shoulder toward the curtains. “Who’s there?!”
My cheeks flush, my lips curling to shun a smile. “My fingers work fine. I don’t have a need for a head to be down there.”
She gasps, her hair whisking over her shoulder with the velocity of her shock. “You dirty girl! You do that next to me?”
The tension in my cheeks becomes too much. My smile breaks and lets out the laugh fizzing my chest. “In the shower,” I giggle out.
She looms closer, the corner of her mouth curving into a smirk. “That’s why you take so long in there. No fucking wonder your polish dissolves so fast. You’re fucking it right off your fingers.”
“Oh, my God, Ora!” Embarrassment blooms up my neck, causing my hands to cover the heat rushing to my face. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”
“No, please do,” she whines, latching around my wrists and forcing my hands away from my eyes. “This is, like, getting to the center of cinnamon roll. You bite and swallow the crispy sweetness, knowing the orgasmic soft goo is sooo close. And then when you finally feel it melt in your mouth-”
“Oraaa,” I cry, bowing my head to hide the fact that I’m morphing into a tomato.
“Is that why Razor presses his ear to the door while you’re in there?”
The drum of my heart twists my stomach, my eyes pinning open and my head raising to look her dead in the eyes. “What?”
She lets my wrists go. “He’s totally listening in on you… Oh, fuck, that’s great!” Smiling cheerfully, she twists around for my bag of makeup and starts walking away with it.
“Wait! Ora, no! I don’t wanna!”
“Come and get me, Bunny,” she taunts, shaking my makeup around while passing through the curtains.
“Oh, son of a…” Quickly closing my nail polish, I lunge up from the stool and step into the low-rise jeans I left on the floor, then grab my case of rollers and the polish and run after her.
My hands are too full to zip and button my jeans, so I leave them parted open while catching up to her slipping out into the bright sun and the poppy music that conjures up a visceral frustration.
I’ve been in my tent since six this morning. The flash-bang of burning white has me slowly blinking and stumbling into my sneakers I kicked off before going in.
I don’t like making the janitors work even harder than they do before opening night. We’re expected to make good impressions that extend beyond summer. Everyone has their throats lunged at by Carl. So, I try to be as quiet as a mouse and as clean as a cat.
Speaking of the sinister snake…
