Page 36 of Riot's Thorn
When she grabs for the water, I’m quick to unscrew the top for her before handing it over. “Here.”
I watch as she tips her head back, elongating her delicate throat still wearing my mark, which makes me frown. It reminds me of my slip-up, something else I need to be honest about.
“What do you mean you killed her?” Parker says through a lingering cough.
“I strangled her and set the trailer on fire.” I pull out my pocket knife and dig into the wooden table with the sharp tip. If my hands are busy, it’s easier for me to stay present, especially when talking abouther.
“Why?” Her voice cracks. For the first time, she looks at me the same way everyone else does, and it makes my belly burn hot. I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking I’m a freak, a sociopath, an unhinged killer.
“She wasn’t a good person.”
She pushes her food away. “But she was your mother.”
“There are no external qualifications to become a mother. A biological male and a biological female have sex at a time when the female is fertile. That’s it. No guarantee the person who births you is maternal in any way.”
“How old were you when you. . . you know?”
I guess it’s a good sign she’s not running over to Navy and begging for help. Not that it would matter; I’d just steal her back. She’s mine now.
“Eighteen.”
“What did she do to you?”
I gouge out a chunk of the wood, digging a large hole into the top. Sugar won’t be pleased with me, and without me saying a word, she’ll know it was me. That woman knows everything and has eyes everywhere. As I push into the soft pine, I think about how to explain the way Mom made me feel. She beat on me, of course, but that wasn’t what made me snap. It was the psychological warfare that did it for me.
“When I was four, Mom lost her job. She was always losing her job, but this is the first time I remember. Whenever this would happen, she’d get so sad, she wouldn’t get out of bed for days. At some point, I got so hungry”—I dig the knife deeper—“that I dragged a chair to the kitchen counter to look for food in the cupboard. The only thing in there was a box of rice cereal.” I stop digging to glance up at Parker. “Do you know what a weevil is?”
“A weevil? No, what is it?” Parker rests her arms on the picnic table, leaning toward me. Around us, people are drinking, eating, smoking, and dancing, but I can’t hear any of it because I have her attention, and the look I hate so much is gone. I like her like this.
“It’s a small beetle that likes to infest food.” I twist my knife, widening the hole. “They can also lay eggs, which then hatch into larvae that look like a grain of rice.”
Parker’s hand covers her mouth. “Or like rice cereal.”
“Yeah. I was four and starving, so I didn’t know to pay attention to my cereal moving until I had already stuck a fistful into my mouth. I felt something crawling on my hand and looked down to see a little white worm.”
“Oh my god.”
“That’s not the bad part. The bad part is that Mom was so sad, she stayed in bed for four more days. The only food in the house was that cereal and a bottle of ketchup.” I squint into the setting sun. “It’s crazy the things you’ll do when you’re hungry.”
“Riot.” She covers my hand with hers, and I swallow hard. If it were anyone else, their touch would feel like a butter knife dragging over and over, not exactly painful but unpleasant all the same. “What about your dad?”
“He only came around when he needed something. Instead of blaming him, she blamed me each time he left. I was too loud or too needy. When he was gone, she’d treat me like her best friend. Then he’d come back, and she’d beat me and tell me I was a piece of shit. I never knew who I’d wake up to.”
She pulls her hand away, and my body turns cold. “So you killed her?”
“Yes. I wasn’t strong enough to turn my back on her and knew if she was alive, I’d never leave. She made me drop out of high school, and I couldn’t have friends because she thought that meant I was abandoning her. She wanted me to have nothing and no one but her.”
“But you can’t go around killing someone just because they’re toxic.”
“Anyone can kill anyone if they try hard enough.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“I didn’t say it was right.” Her eyes meet mine, and I quickly look down at the gaping hole I’ve dug into the wood. She’s probably disgusted. She probably thinks I’m psychotic. I won’t let her leave me even if she does, but still, I have to know. “What are you thinking?”
“When I made you mad, you put your hands on me. And now, after finding out about this, it makes me wonder if I upset you again, will you kill me too?” I hear the fear in her voice, and all it does is excite me. Yes, I want her sweetness. I want to hold her hand each day and feel her weight across my chest every night. But I also want other things, things that’d make a good girl like her cry.
“It wasn’t you I was putting hands on. It was my mother. When you slapped me. . .” I pause to think about how to best explain. “Sometimes something will happen, and I’ll forget I’m not still there. What you said, followed by the slap, fooled my mind and?—”
