Page 40 of Forbidden Girl

She inhales, exhales, agrees with a headshake, then grabs her car keys and her clutch from the nightstand.

This wig, compounded by the thickness of my own hair and the fact that I run hot, has me boiling. I’m sweating despite the BMW’s icy AC. Poor, Lilliputian Jules is suffering the reverse: She’s cold even though she has the passenger side vents closed. A shiver runs through her, and I envision us arguing over the ambient air temperature of an apartment we don’t have yet. It’s a dispute I’m stoked to get into someday. She’ll win because I’ll allow her to. I’ll sweat my ass off in rooms that are ninety degrees in the height of summer while she’s happy as a pig in shit, and I’ll be happy because she is. Once in a while, if I’m noticeably uncomfortable, she’ll blast the central air at sixty because, stubborn as she is, she’s caring and considerate. Small compromises like those are what happy relationships—platonic, romantic, and familial—are built on. Give and take. What a wild concept, made wilder that I had little experience with or comprehension of it until her.

“You’re thinking hard over there. Are you okay?” She tries to keep her teeth from chattering as she asks.

“Yeah. You aren’t, though.” Luckily, I had the insight to throw my leather jacket in the backseat. One-handed, I reach behind her, grab it, and drape it over her shoulders like a blanket. She cozies into it. I read her eyes as easily as I could a library book—she is completely in love with me. Good. Same.

Boston’s city limit is fast approaching. My chest gets tighter with every passing mile. It’s like I’m Giles Corey demanding more weight. If only being crushed to death by slabs of stone were a viable trade for a sick conscience in this day and age. Could shoot yourself in the head or jump off a bridge or drown yourself in the sea… No. That’s a coward’s move. I’m owning my shit until my natural end. I’m strong enough to carry the onus.

The Roxbury neighborhood where the cemetery is located is a place I’m very familiar with. Once a month I meet up with a man called Dante who purchases copious amounts of drugs from my dad and pays for them with a dollar-store backpack stuffed with twenty-dollar bills. Nice guy. He gave me a Christmas card last year, which was hella weird but thoughtful. I’d rather be here for an exchange with him.

I pull the car over in a public lot—the maps app tells me it’s three blocks from the cemetery. “This is my stop. I’ll walk the rest of the way and meet you back here when it’s done?”

“Sounds good.”

I move to hop out and Jules catches my bicep. “This is going to suck for both of us in different ways, and I hate that I can’t be standing next to you.”

“I hate it, too. But we’ll get through it. And then we’ll go back to Maine and take the rest of our weekend together, maybe have some more depressing sex?”

She lets out a sharp laugh. “We’re such lesbians.”

“Uh huh. Processing trauma as foreplay. Typical lesbo behavior.” I give her a peck on the cheek. “Alright, let’s get this shitshow on the road.”

She takes my place in the driver’s seat, then continues the journey to Forest Hills alone. I watch the Beamer as it zooms down the street past brownstones and high rises until it’s nothing but a white speck on the horizon.

The cemetery is sprawling. It would be out of place in Boston proper. The burial grounds sprinkled throughout the city are small plots of land that existed before the population exploded and men built paved roads and bridges and towering buildings. Those gardens of remains are historic, headstones dating all the way back to the 1600s. Forest Hills is full of the newly dead—twentieth century corpses or later.

The black iron gates show no signs of rust. The grounds are well-maintained, green grass manicured to perfection, rose bushes trimmed and tame. There are fresh bouquets of flowers laid at the foot of gravestones I walk past. This is a place people visit, not a relic. Unforgotten.

It’s a trek to get to Gino. There’s a line of Porsches, Mercedes—all the impressive German car brands rich people own—parked along the service road, which is how I know where to find him. Follow the gangsters.

The gathering around the newly dug grave is considerable. I guess because Gino was so young, and death came for him too soon. So many black suits and black dresses. An ocean of black. In China, white is the traditional color of mourning. I remember reading that somewhere. It doesn’t feel appropriate. White is hopeful, a blank slate full of promise. Black is emptiness, and what’s a lifeless body but an empty shell?

I stand at the very edge of the group, the last wolf in the pack. Nobody seems to take any notice of me, the tall fake blonde in the back and off to the side, strategically positioned to take in the full weight of everyone’s mourning. I’m just another funeral-goer dressed like the Void.

Up at the front facing the throngs are a middle-aged man and woman with dark hair and sad eyes. Their haunted expressions let me know they’re Gino’s parents. Next to them is a young woman, a teenager, who shares their coloring and their sorrow. Gino was a big brother. Discovering that hits me hard. The bond I stole from that girl is irreplaceable.

I notice there are many standing sprays surrounding the dark-stained mahogany casket. The flowers I sent are the prettiest, but that doesn’t make me feel better. Catching sight of Jules and her mom, Maria, standing beside Patrick Calloway makes me feel worse. Not sad, pissed. I put Gino in the ground, but Jules is right that it didn’t have to go down like that. And she’s probably right that Gino and I would’ve been friends in another life—she knows us both well enough to call it. I bite back the urge to give Patrick the very public fuck you he deserves. That’s the Monaghan training rearing its ugly head. I have to unlearn everything I was taught.

An elderly priest in a black and gold chasuble moves to the head of the casket and clears his throat. It’s very Irish Catholic, as I suspected it would be. “We’re here today to pay tribute to and remember the life of Eugene ‘Gino’ Murphy—son, brother, friend, and a man of God. He was called home to heaven much earlier than any of us would have liked, but we are grateful for the time we had with him. He had such a profound effect on his family, his community, and his church throughout his short life?—”

I tune him out; most of what he’s saying feels like utter bullshit. A man of God doesn’t live a life of crime. Gino may have had a good heart, but that is the life he lived. He robbed, sold drugs, he would have done violence were he commanded to, and I’m sure he followed orders of that nature once or twice. Why do we try to put a positive spin on people after they die, when we know what kind of shit they got up to while they were here? I’m not going to heaven. The metric ton of shit I got up to punched my ticket straight to hell. My dad’s gonna be driving the fucking bus that takes me there, and Patrick Calloway will meet us in the seventh circle. Juliet won’t be there. She’s unpolluted. I’m gonna make damn sure she stays that way.

Gino’s mother is sobbing and that’s more worthy of my attention than some clueless, pious old man’s words, anyhow. I should go up to her and offer my shoulder to cry on or some pathetic measure of comfort. Got some nerve even entertaining that idea. His father is not crying, but only just holding it together. He keeps bowing his head, concentrating on the lawn rather than the coffin in an effort to stave off tears. The sister has her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, trying her best to appear composed for her parents’ sake, as though her pain is somehow less significant than theirs.

Juliet’s brimming but refusing to let herself break down. Her mother’s severe and somber. Patrick has his hands folded, forearms resting on his thighs, as if in silent prayer. It’s a show of genuine contrition but fuck him all the same.

There’s a strange disquiet rising within me, a hot air balloon gradually inflating. I didn’t think this through. Being unable to control my emotions is so new to me—letting myself go beyond acknowledging that I have feelings and legit feeling them.

I have to stop watching these people, taking in their suffering. I allow my attention to flutter away from the funeral. From my peripheral vision I see movement on the winding service road beyond the sea of headstones: An enormous black SUV approaching, unhurried. It joins the line of vehicles parked for Gino’s service. Latecomers? That’s tactless. They must not have a modicum of decorum.

The SUV empties, three men the wrong side of forty wearing dark suits and darker sunglasses. As they approach, I see that the man in pinstripes is smiling. No, beaming. Wide-mouthed. Deranged. Insane.

Dad.

My pulse quickens as I watch him and his cronies reach beneath their suit coats and reveal their weapons of choice: A SIG Sauer, a Beretta and a Walther PPK.

It’s a subconscious decision to shout, “Everybody get down!” milliseconds before my dad and his men start shooting. It’s not my warning that sends everyone into a whirlwind, but the sound and the shockwave of those initial bullets. Someone is hit. I’m not sure who or where, but there’s an explosion of blood, misty in the air like red rain.

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