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with chairs
Felicity / FELICITY
a smear, by that door.
A beckoning, below.
Felicity / FELICITY
Chapter 83
Tress
Piles of people. Hands and arms and legs. Slick skin, pale faces. Hot breaths, warm and vacant, fill the air. There is no more laughter. All are silent.
Hugh, in his throne, suddenly small, bleary, barely there, a question not asked yet on his lips. Ribbit, naked, collapsed on the floor, the zigzag scar on the back of his calf bright and angry, fresh like only yesterday. The clock ticks, backward, the only thing moving in the room.
I’m down again, more blood out than in, crawling over people, but they are wrong, too small, hands and faces and feet, and the boy in the concert T-shirt is too young to be here, is only a child, who thought I was his mother in the stairwell; why are we all children again?
On the stairs, the clock stops.
Chapter 84
Felicity
Shadow. Shadow and light. Something in the dark. Something on my chest. Something is near me. Something is here.
Chapter 85
Cat
Another girl
different now
almost gone
her blood has spilled
mixed with my girl’s
together they are
Fel—Tress—icity / FEL—TRESS—ICITY
Chapter 86
Felicity
My hair it floats tangles with Annabelle’s we float bubbles from her mouth bubbles from Lee’s nose eyes flat and dead and fish take a nibble there is a weight on my chest, half of a heart. I am pulled angry words (no don’t can’t shouldn’t won’t LISTEN TO ME!). Hair dangles swinging with my hair and the heart it tangles I am carried out of the water I am carried onto the bank I am carried I am dripping I am wet I am
carry me take care of me
not the raven flashing tattoo black it is an angry Z red slash of skin not healed stitches like small mouths held tightly shut hands on my face hands wanting me to be okay this boy always wanting to help always wanting to make it better always wanting to make up for the thing that was so wrong Oh Tress oh Tress oh Tress they are dead and I knew but I didn’t know that I knew and he KNOWS he KNOWS—not me. Oh Tress you are in danger and you will not stop I know you and you will know and I cannot help you I am going I am going I am going
Chapter 87
Felicity
