Page 98 of Make Them Bleed
33
Juno
The kettle clicks off like a polite throat clear and I jump hard enough to slosh coffee onto the counter. That’s where I am, these days—nerves tuned to dog-whistle frequencies, jumping at appliances and my own reflection in the microwave door. It’s been three days since Merritt Voss found out what gravity does to men who think a house will always be a safe place, and the city is still sleeping like it expects a different ending.
I wipe the coffee with the heel of my hand and stare at the paper towels until they blur. I’m not crying. I am, however, negotiating with a quiet, ugly relief that keeps padding into the room like a cat I didn’t invite.
I don’t tell Arrow this. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to tell the man I love that, for one reckless, blazing second in Merritt’s living room, I wanted to be the one to do it. To end it. To put an ending on the page with my hands, not just my marker. I didn’t push him. I didn’t plan that corner or that slick edge or that dull, terrible sound. But when it happened—when the air snapped and the house went very bright and very wrong—something inme stood up and whisperedthere.And now I am walking around withtherein my chest and it feels like a dirty coin under my tongue.
The crime wall watches me from the far side of the room:COLEMAN / ROOK / BEAU / DEVINin thick black marker,NICOandGRAYcircled like twin suns that refuse to share light.MERRITTis there, too, a line through his name that isn’t how I wanted to keep score and yet here we are. The red twine connecting corners looks like veins. The photos look like witnesses who are not enjoying their day.
Gage’s updates pinged all night:
Remaining Four radio silent.
Coleman’s calendar ghosted—private flag on two entries.
Rook’s gym at 5 a.m., same as always; he switched cars on the way out.
Beau canceled a haircut (sign of the apocalypse).
Devin posted about “grind mode” and then deleted it.
Someone, somewhere, hiredthem.
“Who hired you,” I say to the wall, the way you talk to TVs during playoff games. “Why Arby?”
No one answers. Of course they don’t. Arby’s looking out at me from a dozen angles—pink hair in some, blonde in others, eachsmile a slightly different lie about how fine she was. She hated symphonies and loved horror movies and once stopped speaking to me for two days because I watchedThe Shiningwithout her. She would have had a field day with Club Greed. She would have rolled her eyes at tassel loafers. She would have stuck her fingers in my bagel cream cheese and made a noise that Arrow would later try to describe and get flustered and give up.
Bagels. God. I am supposed to eat. My stomach informs me of this by doing a little dance I could charitably callhungerand less charitably calla raccoon in a dryer.
I make myself a cinnamon-raisin and stand at the counter chewing in the reflective way people in sad indie movies do. The first bite tastes like nothing. The second tastes liketonight.I don’t know what that means yet. My brain keeps circling the same options: Go back to Club Greed. Poke Stonehouse. Sit in a car outsideUnit 14and try to listen through the walls. Call my mother and ask her to tell me I’m not a terrible person. And listen to her tell me to go to the police and stop trying tobethe police.
I do none of those things. Instead I pull the mandala book toward me and color three petals purple and two black and set the pencil down when the lines start to look like a target. The Ring camera sits like a dead eye on the entry table. I turn it back on. We’re in the thick of it now, and better safe than sorry.
Three knocks makes me breathe again. Arrow fills the doorway like he knows how to stand there. He’s in jeans and a black jacket and the careful, unflappable face he wears when he’s about to say something ordinary that is also a plan. His eyes slide over me like a check-in and land on my hands. I tuck the purple pencil behind my ear and pretend I look like someone who slept.
“Coffee,” he says, offering peace in a paper cup.
“Bribery,” I say, taking it.
He steps in, and the door clicks shut. He sets the bag on the table and doesn’t touch me until I lean and then he does—the softest press of lips to my temple, which is sometimes better than a kiss and sometimes worse. My body can’t decide which today.
“How are you?” he asks, the way people askwhat time is itwhen they’re scared of clocks.
“I’m fine,” I lie, then amend, “I’m not fine. I’m… upright.”
He nods. “Upright is an achievement.”
We do the ritual of normal for five minutes—he complains about Ozzy’s new obsession with inventing the perfect martini algorithm. I tell him my neighbor appears to be fostering a small herd of feral scooters, and we act like the timer will go off if we don’t talk about Merritt by minute six. The timer goes off anyway.
“What now?” I ask, catching his eyes.
“The remaining Four are spooked,” he says. “And I’m going to tell you something you already know. Spooked men leak.”
“You think we should go to Club Greed?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says. “Or Stonehouse. Or the marina. Gage’s got three flags on Gray’s calendar—two ‘private’ lunch holds and a donor dinner at the South Conservatory. None screamFive,but Coleman never calendar-screams. He calendar-whispers.”
