My stomach churns with an uneasy sensation. My heartbeat pounds against the inside of my rib cage. I know this feeling. This is the same skeevy internal warning system that always made me cautious around creepy foster parents whose eyes lingered a bit too long on a preteen girl’s cleavage. I don’t speak or stop, not even to glance back and see if the guy is following us. My heart is pounding, and something is telling me to keep going until we get to the apartment.
Why run when you could turn around and face the pervert?Gritting my teeth at my inner psycho’s suggestion, I shake my head. I won’t feel safe until there’s a series of doors and a good lock between us and him.
Michelle isn’t down with that silent plan, however. She yanks me to a stop as soon as we reach the street. Dull sunlight casts my old neighborhood in a bad light. My throat closes as I notice all of the frayed edges of the street for the first time. Sure, I’ve seen them before, but after spending a week in Giulio’s penthouse, now Ireallynotice them. What was once just a neighborhood has become a run-down, dilapidated street corner withshadows that stretch far past where they should even in the daytime.
The chipped sidewalk, the broken glass littering the ground next to trashcans, and the old, faded posters hanging by a thread from their tacked-up places on light poles practically glow with an invisible neon “look at me” sign. The thought of abandoning Michelle to live here alone, and the fact that I’ve let her do so for the last week, leaves me feeling sick to my stomach and a bit weak at the knees.
A hand waves in front of my face, fingers snapping as Michelle steps into view. “Hello? What’s your damage, Daisy?” she demands.
My damage? Ah, hell, if she only knew. I glance over my shoulder and though I see several people pouring out from the subway station, I don’t see Mr. Ball Cap. A sigh of relief releases from my chest, deflating my lungs in a whoosh. “Sorry,” I say, turning back to my friend. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Michelle looks at me like she doesn’t believe me, and I can’t blame her. Fear is easier to react to than anger. Anger causes other issues. A snort sounds in my head, and I have to close my eyes as Mean Daisy clucks her tongue at me in annoyance.Anger isn’t easier, she argues.You just want to be normal so badly that you ignore all that you’re angry about.
Wow, I so don’t need my own inner psycho to therapize me today.Iamnormal, I mentally snap back. Another snort is my only response.
Yes, I tell myself.I’m normal.
Normal people usually scream when they see a dead body, she replies coolly.But you didn’t, did you? Not then… and not now.
Mother. Fucker.Now is not the time to consider all of my fucked-up past and present actions. Here I thought I handled that dead body and the whole Giulio/mafia husband thing without any problems. Stress will always find its way out.
“Okaaay.” Michelle draws out the word as she takes a step off the curb between a tattoo shop named Inked and Broken and Riviere’s Pizzeria. “Well, why don’t we head back to the apartment, and you can just chill until you have to go back.”
“Yeah,” I agree with a nod, following her.
“Do you think you might be able to stay the night?” Michelle’s question filters into my head and rebounds around the blank walls of my skull, making the place feel way emptier than it usually is—what with Mean Daisy’s presence and all—as we head down the familiar cracked sidewalks of our old neighborhood. I find myself staring at the weeds creeping up in every crevice. Then to the broken beaters left to the side of the street with their wheelless rims propped on cinder blocks.
I’m used to these kinds of neighborhoods. I grew up in these kinds of neighborhoods—albeit a bit more rural and Midwestern style versus my current urban existence. So, why does it feel so foreign now?
I shake my head at Michelle’s request and admit the truth. “Actually, Giulio doesn’t know I went out,” I tell her. “I snuck out this morning and didn’t tell him. He’s probably pissed.” The very reason my purse feels so heavy on my arm. No doubt he’s already seen my message and is ready to skin me alive when I get back. If he’s anything like the old foster parents I lived with, it’s always better to get the punishment over with sooner rather than later.
Michelle groans. “I know you probably don’t want to stayin our hovel of an apartment anymore now that you’re living freaking walking distance to Central Park, but I can’t help but miss you. I never thought the apartment was big when you were there, but now it feels like a giant, empty hole.”
My chest throbs at her admission, and just as the two of us reach the corner and stop in front of an intersection that leads down a dead-end street, according to the sign above our heads. I throw my arms around her and squeeze her tight. “I miss you, too, Chelle.”
“How sweet.” My body goes rigid as a deep, masculine vibrato slides over my ears. Then, Michelle is yanked out of my grip. Shocked by the abrupt loss, I stumble and nearly slam into the side of a brick building as my head snaps up. Michelle isn’t screaming, and it takes me no time to figure out why. Her face is as white as a ghost’s, her skin leached of all color just like Ginny’s. The only difference is that Michelle is still alive.
The man from the subway stands with Michelle’s back pressed to his front and a gun drawn up to her head. He drags her backward, away from the street. Without thinking, I follow, my steps halting and fear making my movements far more jerky than they should be. “D-don’t—”
“Daisy, what are you fucking doing?” Michelle snaps as she gapes at me. “Run!”
Now it’s my turn to gape at her. “I’m not fuckingleavingyou.” I should slap the stupid right out of her for even considering it.
“Like I said, so sweet,” the man comments snidely.
My gaze flicks back to him. “What do you want?” I demand. “Money?” I reach into my purse. “Fine, you can have—”
“Don’t fucking move unless I tell you to, bitch,” the mansnaps right before he drives the barrel of his gun further into Michelle’s temple. She squeaks out a protest as the edge of the barrel thumps into her skin and a thin line opens up. Blood trickles slowly—so damn slowly—from that small wound. Yet, I see it as if it’s in high definition.
Old memories crop up—ugly memories that I thought I’d buried. Though I’ve never been in this situation exactly, the sense of danger is a familiar ache. So, too, is the rage.
I’m not an angry person by nature. At least, that’s what I learned when I left the foster system behind and got a small scholarship that afforded me the luxury of going to college. I’m not full of hate or resentment the way others from my background might be—disregarded kids with no family and no one to call their own. If I’m anything, thanks to Mean Daisy, I’m a survivor.
Ginny was my first episode. Finding her body flipped a switch that ended up with me committed to a psych ward for seventy-two hours and then, ultimately, being taken to a new foster home. Since then, I’ve spent the last eight years being very careful about that switch. I keep all of my negative emotions in a heavily constructed box in my mind. I only ever let those negative emotions out, letMean Daisyout, just enough to keep her from shattering the box she sleeps in. Now, though, that box fractures at the sight of blood on Michelle’s face. It teeters and groans as the living, breathing fury inside threatens to unleash itself. A distant scream echoes in the back of my head.
“Don’t hurt her.” I hear the words spoken in my own voice, but I hardly recognize that I’m the one who said them. The man smiles and presses his gun into her cut, causing more blood to well and slip down the side of her face, over her jaw.
I watch the thin line of red collect and then drip down, the single spot of liquid suddenly in free fall before landing on her collarbone. The box stops creaking. The chains disappear, and the lid opens. All of my hard work and effort to keep what it holds contained goes up in flames and honestly, I don’t even care. He’s about to get what he deserves.
