Page 76 of Worse Than Wicked
He asked what it was again, and I finally told him. I whispered the words, sure they’d come back to haunt me, that the Dolces would kill me for being a rat. Part of me didn’t care. I was tired of enduring in silence. I was tired of enduring at all. I felt ashamed when I was done, with Mr. Harris watching me. But I also felt relieved. Like it was finally over. The secret was out.
He was a teacher. A mandatory reporter. He had to tell the authorities if I was being hurt.
And then he said, “When did this last happen?”
I said, “At lunch.”
“That’s what’s on your skirt?”
I nodded.
He said, “Show me.”
My heart sank. I knew then that it would never be over. That no matter how nice a man acted, he wasn’t nice. That no matter who he was, what position he held, he would never be on my side. Some men hid it well, some repressed it, some had the self-control to resist the urges society told them were wrong, but in their nature, they were all predators. They could no more help that than a wolf could help killing a rabbit.
But a rabbit wasn’t forced to keep company with a pack of wolves every day.
I thought of them out there, prowling the halls, looking for me between classes.
Baron. Duke. Royal.
I thought about their brother, who was gone now. Their dad. My grandfather.
So many men, all wanting the same thing. All so simple. They looked at me, and they saw a girl who allowed things to happen to her. If she never told, then she couldn’t tell on them. By telling Mr. Harris, I hadn’t protected myself from the Dolces. I’d let him know I was easy prey.
“Go on,” Mr. Harris said, licking his lips nervously and glancing at the door. “No one will see you but me. And you’re safe with me.”
I would have laughed, but I was still crying. I would have laughed, but nothing about it was funny except his own self-delusion and my complete and utter stupidity to think that he would help me. To think that any man would help me. But there was only one man here, and there were many out there, in the hall, in the classrooms, in the office. They prowled like hunters, ready to devour, and destroy, and deny. Ready to pretend they believed each other’s lies, ready to defend each other because they are all liars.
So, when he told me again, I lifted my skirt and showed him.
That day, he only looked.
Later, he would touch.
Later, he would take.
This time, I will take.
This time, he’s the prey.
nineteen
Baron Dolce
“Are you sure you don’t want me out here with you?” I ask.
“He’ll be scared off the second he sees you,” Mabel says. “Besides, I’m not going to fuck him. I just want to talk. I’ll keep him long enough so the killer thinks we did, and then I’ll leave him to his fate.”
It makes sense. The killer probably sees her messages online, although I was watching and couldn’t find even a trace of someone else spying on her connection. Then they follow her for the meeting, and after that, they have the victim in their sights. Sometimes they take a while to strike, a week or even a month. What she’s doing is putting a target on his back. This time, though, I’ll be watching too, waiting for her stalker to show themself.
If there is a stalker. I’m still not convinced it’s not Mabel herself.
Maybe all those alter-identity games went to her head, and she does it in some kind of fugue state. She might not even be aware of it, so she’s not exactly lying. Mabel Darling may not be the killer. Dahlia Suskind might be.
That explanation might be far-fetched, but it seems likely at this point. After what we put her through, it isn’t inconceivable that she compartmentalized her trauma by creating a second identity that wasn’t just on paper, but also in her mind. That explains why the killing stopped when we moved in, why they made an exception for us. Because try as she might,Mabel can’t deny that she wants to be with us. She needs us the way we need her, maybe more.
Without us, she doesn’t know who she is. She has no purpose. We broke her, and we made sure to take some of her pieces with us, so she could never be complete on her own. She could never fully heal, never put herself back together until we were there to help her. Now she needs us to survive, to stay sane, to be whole.
