I’ve fantasized long and hard about my revenge as I’ve laid awake at night, and I know exactly how I’d do it. Leaning close to his ear, I whisper, “Strangling isn’t noisy. No one will hear you choking for breath. It hurts, though, and it takes a long, long time to die. Your dorm mates will find your cold body hanging from the top bunk when they wake in the morning. Your face and lips blue. Your tongue sticking out.He did it to himself, they’ll tell each other.So sad.”
“Please,” the boy begs, his voice breaking. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t mean it.”
Bullies will say anything to wriggle out of the consequences of their actions. It’s pathetic. “I saw the bruises on Lucy’s body. Unless you want to feel me wrapping a sheet around your scrawny neck in the dead of night, you’ll find Lucy and apologize to her.”
Mason nods frantically and tries to get away, but I seize his arm and offer one last piece of advice. My fingers dig in hard enough to bruise.
“If you breathe one word of this to anyone, remember that you’re locked in here with me, and I will use every minute of every hour to make you regret your pathetic existence.”
I watch him run away, stumbling in haste to escape. Satisfaction washes over me, dark and intoxicating.
I can protect Lucy. No one will dare hurt her ever again.
And if they do? I’ll make them wish they’d never been born.
4
Lucy
Two years later
“Lucy, posture.”
I straighten my spine at the dinner table, my fork hovering over the chicken I can barely taste. Even though I’ve been living in this house for two years, dinner is a formal affair, and it makes me nervous. I’ve never felt at ease in this majestic house of stern gray stone, with columns and tall, gleaming windows. It’s nestled in a neighborhood of large, expensive houses just like it, set back from the streets behind wrought iron fences and landscaped gardens. This is a far cry from the Malus I was born into, which was a world of peeling wallpaper and roaches, where the apartment reeked of cigarettes and desperation, and dinner was whatever Mom remembered to buy before she disappeared again.
Across from me, Ariana sits with her napkin folded just so in her lap, dressed perfectly with her hair smooth and shining. She catches my eye and smirks.
Mom dabs at her lips with her napkin. “We’re attending a charity gala next week. Ariana will be coming with us. Lucy, you’ll stay home with Mrs. Monti.”
“What about Damiano?” I ask.
“Damiano will be attending with us, of course. He needs to be seen.”
Needs to be seen.Like he’s a show dog being paraded around. But at least he gets to go. I have to stay home with the housekeeper.
“Lucy should come too,” Damiano says, and I flash him a grateful smile.
Dad doesn’t even look up from his plate. “Lucy isn’t ready for that kind of event.”
“When will I be ready?” The words slip out before I can stop them. The silence that follows is deafening.
Mom’s lips thin. “When you learn not to speak out of turn.”
Damiano reaches under the table and finds my hand, giving it a quick squeeze. It’s the only comfort I get.
Later, when everyone else is asleep, I hear my door creak open. Damiano slips inside, closing it quietly behind him.
“You okay?” he whispers.
I nod, but we both know it’s a lie.
He climbs into bed with me like we’ve been doing since the group home, wrapping his arms around me. “They’ll warm up to you. Give it time.”
“It’s been two years, Damiano. They haven’t warmed up to me. They don’t want me here. They tolerate me because you wouldn’t come without me.”
Damiano doesn’t argue because we both know it’s true. If only I knew how to make myself so useful to them that they can’t imagine life without me.
I’m sitting in the library one afternoon, reading a book about gemstones, when I hear voices from Dad’s study down the hall.
