Page 2

The high is already gone. It didn't even last the length of a song.

A raw, exposed feeling starts to settle over me, making the simple act of standing in this room feel like a sensory assault.

Every person who walks past me is a potential witness.

Every security guard is foaming at the mouth, waiting to pounce.

I imagine my parents sitting in a small, windowless room, the police officer explaining that their Very Good Daughter is a shoplifter.

I imagine the devastating confusion. Why would she do this? Is everything we’ve given her not enough?

That’s the part that makes me want to scream. I don’t need any of it. I have a drawer at home full of things I’ll never use. A tube of lipstick in a color I hate. A pair of earrings that have never left the little plastic pouch they came in. A keychain from the gas station that I shoved under a stack of old birthday cards and forgot existed until now. I have an expensive mini backpack I took from a boutique three weeks ago that sits in the back corner of my closet because looking at it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.

Sometimes I think about throwing all of it away. I never do. Getting rid of it feels too much like admitting I took it in the first place.

"Let's go," I say, and my voice is sharp, almost mean.

"Geez, okay," Casey says, putting the scrunchie back. "What’s the rush?"

The rush is that I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.

I tell myself this was the last time, just like I always do. And I almost believe it, until the next time, when that small, quiet voice inside me whispers, just one more.

I look at my hands and wonder when they’re going to take something I won’t be able to hide.

1

SKELETAL INVENTORY

SERENA

The object beside the man’s pelvis presents an interesting classification problem.

It is roughly femur-shaped, approximately femur-length, but entirely devoid of the biological qualifications necessary to be a femur.

The problem is less osteological than it is furniture-related.

Reason being: it’s a table leg.

I’ve spent the last eleven minutes staring at the partially articulated remains of a nineteenth-century clergyman recovered from a bricked-over dumbwaiter in a rectory basement, trying to determine why someone went through the trouble of dismembering him after death, reassembling most of him, and replacing one missing femur with approximately sixteen inches of carved mahogany.

This is, objectively, an excellent Friday morning.

The human body is an involuntary record-keeper. It is fully incapable of keeping a secret, a fact I spend my days exploiting.

The man in front of me is no exception.

The table leg is admittedly new, but the rest of him is considerably more forthcoming.

My phone rings. I choose not to reward the behavior.

I adjust the light over his remains and lean closer. Several bones bear narrow kerf marks, some shallow enough that they disappear when I shift my angle. A few run parallel to deeper cuts near the joints, suggesting whoever wielded the saw had to reposition it more than once.

Dismemberment, almost certainly.

Postmortem, probably.

Competently executed, absolutely not.