Page 109 of Worse Than Wicked
I shake my head no. “How’d she look?”
“Okay,” Harper says, knowing who I mean. She drags on her cigarette. “How do you know her?”
“I don’t.”
“Doesn’t seem like the kind of girl you’d be friends with.”
“I’m not friends with any kind of girl,” I say. “No one likes me enough to call me a friend.”
I wait for her to say that’s not true, or that she’s my friend. Not because I want her to, but because everyone always does when I say things like that. I’m glad when she doesn’t, when I don’t have to deal with the discomfort of pretending I don’t know she’s lying, and her discomfort at knowing I’m pretending.
“Yeah, you’re pretty tough to figure out,” she says.
“Do you have to figure someone out to be their friend?”
“I guess not,” she says. “But it helps to be able to know someone, so you know if you like them. That’s kinda the whole basis of friendship.”
“I don’t think I’m a very likeable person,” I point out. “Whether or not someone knows me.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
She finishes off her cigarette and sets the butt between her feet on the steps with the other one. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I mean, I believe it, but I can’t believe it at the same time. I want to ask if you’re sure. If there’s zero chance that he’ll just come walking around the side of the house right now, or call and say he got us good.”
My throat tightens, and I can’t speak. I may be unlikeable, but he found a way. The twins are the only friends I’ve had inover ten years. And now the one who loved me is gone, and the one who can’t will never let me go.
“Are you sure we got the right twin?” Harper asks, apparently having similar thoughts to mine.
I nod, but I’m thinking about how Baron insisted on going in alone to get Duke, how he told me to wait outside. How long it took. Could they have switched? Is this his way of testing me one more time, to see if I want it to be him? To make me prove myself one final time?
But no. I can’t think like that. I can’t play the game anymore. We played too long, and we all lost. It doesn’t matter who’s left. It only matters that only one of them remains. I will love him, no matter who he is.
“You know, I always hoped… I hoped you’d pick him,” she says. “I was rooting for him. For you.”
“Me too,” I whisper, and a tear spills down my cheek. I look over at the row of lilacs where we sat that night, when we burned the house. How he held me trapped when the fire trucks came, how I freaked out because I still couldn’t stand to be touched. How Baron caught us there, demanded a sacrifice for my betrayal.
“Do you believe in god?” Harper asks after a minute.
“No.” I shake my head, wiping away the tears that won’t stop coming.
She pauses, like she’s waiting for me to elaborate. When I don’t, she nods. “I don’t either. I always hate when people die, and everyone says, they’re in a better place. Like, no, they’re just dead. And most people wouldn’t go to the ‘better place’ anyway. When people say, ‘they’re at peace now,’ I always thought it meant they were floating around on a cloud singing kumbaya or whatever. But maybe it just means nothingness. Maybe, for some people, nothingness is better than what they had to endure.”
I can’t speak. All I can think about is how miserable Duke was, and how we didn’t fix it in time, and now it’s too late. I should have just let Baron kill Jane. I should never have interfered, should never have gotten involved. I thought I was helping, but all I did was bring the suffering back on us. And it landed on the one who deserved it least of all. I double over, pressing my eye sockets to my knees.
“Royal always says life is suffering,” Harper says, absently drawing another cigarette from her pack. “So if peace is the end of suffering, then death is peace.”
It’s a nice thought, so I don’t argue. There’s no peace for those left to suffer.
I stand, not wanting to fall to pieces in front of a perfect stranger. As I walk away, Harper calls after me. “You know, if you stick around long enough, we might end up being friends despite our best efforts. I may be a bitch, but I have a habit of seeing the best in people. Even when they don’t see it themselves.”
That night, after Royal comes back with Baron when they don’t find Blue, after they talk to the police, after everything is quiet except for a light, steady rain falling on the roof, Baron crawls into bed with me in my childhood bedroom where Duke once slept. He curls into me, sliding down the bed, hiding his head in my middle, as if he’s searching for the softest place to land. He grips my hips, burrowing, seeking, as if he can find his way inside, climb through my navel and into the warmth of a different womb, the one he shared with his brother, and never come out.
“It’s my fault,” Baron says, his voice raw, shattered. “He was wearing glasses. She meant it for me. He never did anything to her.”
“I know,” I whisper, threading my fingers through his hair.
“I love you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
I don’t know if he’s apologizing for loving me, or that it’s now my burden to bear, his monstrous love. I know he’s never said those words to me before—only his brother. My shirt is wet, sticking to my stomach where his face is hidden.
