I don’t bother with a reply, just walk to the back. I lean against the cool brick, digging a cigarette from my pocket. I jam it between my lips but the first flick of the lighter fails. The second sputters and dies. “Fuck me,” I grit, striking it a third, harder this time, the flame finally catching. I take a slow drag, letting the burn settle.
My thoughts don’t settle with it. They ricochet between the way Sisk looked in her window last night and the sinking knowledge that Rourke is about to stir up the town again. The anniversary always gets him. Always gets all of us.
Four
THEN | SISK
Ibarely come to this side of town. If it weren’t for Mom’s doctors, I probably never would. Tar City isn’t a small place, but it still manages a clean split: the people with money who profit from the mess, and the people who get buried in it.
They put the only high school right between both halves of town, like that somehow makes it fair. It doesn’t.St. Clair High.Because of course the only high school in this broken town is named after the family that owns half of it.
Millie got out—well, not out out, but she at least got to attend Everbridge High in the next town over. I thought I would follow her, but the year she graduated was the year Mom got worse, and we moved. Wrong street. Wrong district. Wrong life. Now Dad works double shifts at the restaurant and Millie stays home to take care of Mom because hiring a nurse costs more than our rent.
I told them I could do it. I told them I didn’t need a diploma to dance, but they wouldn’t hear it.Finish school. Be responsible. Be grateful.As if grateful is a currency that can buy a future.
The train car smells like a public toilet after a stabbing, the sour stench forcing me to breathe through my mouth. I holdthe walnut honey bar Millie made me for late practice a little too tightly, hoping she didn’t hear the lie wrapped around those words. I don’t lie often, but when I do, it’s usually about practice.
A man near the door spits on the floor, adjusting his jacket pocket just enough for me to catch the glint of a knife handle.
Tar City collects the worst of people. I’m not even talking about the disappearances near The Pit. I’m talking about everything decent getting swallowed too.
Another man shifts beside a woman, brushing against her in a way that clearly isn’t an accident. She goes still—too scared to move, too scared to speak.
I get off one stop early. I’d rather walk than become the next story no one tells out loud. My heart keeps pace with my steps, beating faster the closer I get, because I'm not going home—I'm going to Jax St. Clair's house.
Yesterday happened—he asked us to watch the tape, and I said yes.But why me?Jax is popular, he doesn’t invite people like me over for fun. Part of me is already bracing for this to be some kind of sick joke. I’m ready to walk out the second it feels wrong. I hate that I care enough to even be thinking about it.
The iron gate stops me cold. The house is huge—bigger than it looked the million times I’ve passed it on the train, pretending I wasn’t staring.
I run through my excuses, just in case.“Oh, I thought you said Friday?”if he forgot.“Sorry, I must have misunderstood,”if this is all a mistake. A quick out, so I don’t look like an idiot.
I take a breath so deep it hurts and push the gate open. For a house like this, I’m surprised an alarm doesn’t scream the second I step onto the porch.
I know enough about the St. Clairs: old money built on a foundation of other people’s suffering. Generations of profit from workers who coughed black dust into their pillows at night. Some say the tar pit itself is their legacy, the mining drills goingtoo deep and cracking something that should’ve been left alone. If I needed someone to blame for everything wrong with my family, with this city, hating them would be easy. Convenient.
The bell hasn’t even finished echoing when the door swings open.
“I was starting to think you bailed,” Jax says, leaning against the heavy wooden frame.
His eyes move over me quickly, but not quick enough for me to miss.
“I’m shocked you opened your own door,” I say. “I was expecting a butler.”
“Tony has the day off.”
I stare.
“Kidding,” he says with a grin. “Though Nana’s probably spinning in her grave over how few servants we keep now.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything at all. I step inside instead, brushing past him. The house is enormous—too much space and too much wood. Dark paneled walls absorb the light, and a chandelier hangs overhead like a crystal guillotine. It’s not a home; it’s a museum dedicated to people who’ve never worried about anything real. My footsteps echo on the marble floor, the sound too loud in the polished stillness.I feel like a ballerina in a jewelry box, surrounded by beauty but trapped.
Jax leads me through an archway into the kitchen, where Ivan is already at the island, working through a sandwich stacked way too high. Without a glance at me, Jax moves to the fridge and pulls it open. “Help yourself. It's stocked.”
I lift my plastic bag. “I’m good, thanks.”
Ivan barely looks up, already wrapping the other half of his sandwich in foil like he’s saving it for later.
Jax pulls out a bag of popcorn, tears it open, and dumps it into a bowl. “Okay,” he says, like we’ve been here longer than we have. “Let’s watch this thing.”
