Page 26 of The Monster of Hotel No. 7
“No,” he finally answers me when we’re near the heavy black doors that lead to the stairs.
“Would you ever swim with me?” I press, feeling brave for no reason at all. I love the water. Lakes, oceans, tubs, pools. I’m most alive with little clothing as is. I like to dress up and do my hair and makeup, but I like to slip on a bikini more.
He doesn’t look at me and he’s silent for a long stretch of time, until we’re standing in front of the fire escape stairs and I’m reaching out my hand to yank one of the doors open. I think he won’t answer me, and I remember how he ignored me a lot growing up too, or said something shitty when I spoke to him, but after we slip into the dim stairwell and the door thuds closed behind us with some strange sort of finality, he answers me.
“I would…consider it.”
And I want to laugh, because he said it a little funny, or maybe because I’m giddy over the answer, but I’m worried he’ll think I’m laughing at him, so I bite my tongue as we hurry down the steps.
Chapter14
Sullen
She is no longer holding my hand and I try not to fixate on it. But I see her slim fingers curled around the handrail as she descends the steps below me and I do desperately want to touch her there. Blue veins, bones flexed beneath skin, pastel green nails that clash with her red shirt… She said once in a letter the color green reminds her of me.
I suck in a breath, biting the inside of my cheek as I wonder how often she wears that color.For me?
Our soft footfalls echo in the corridor of stairs, from her white Vans and my black, high-top sneakers. My heart is pounding louder than our steps, it seems. I clench the gloves stuffed into the pocket of my hoodie and stay behind her, watching as her hair bounces around her low back, skimming the tanned white skin there, and her black, ripped denim skirt shifts with every step she takes. Muscles along her glutes flex and a string from the destroyed nature of her clothes grazes the spot behind her knee. I want to reach for the thread and twist it around my fingers. Break it and keep it in my pocket.
I don’t touch her.
As we reach another landing and she turns to descend the next steps, she glances up at me with her lips pushed together and her eyes intent, focused on my own.
What are you thinking?I want to ask it as we come to a standstill, her already on the lower staircase and me on the one above. I retract my hand from the railing, pushing into the hoodie pocket with my other. I am not ready for her to see anymore of me than she already has.
Are you scared of where we’re going?
Her lips part marginally, like she might answer my unspoken question. But I’m worried ifIdon’t say something, this moment will be gone too soon. It will break apart into cobwebs and maybe when we reach the lower level, she’ll only lead me directly into the arms of Stein’s formerDuo,the name for Writhe’s second-in-command.
“Is something wrong?” I ask carefully, hating the way the words seem to grind up from my throat in a coarse, offensive way.
She tilts her head and I think I see a smile start to form on her face, one corner of her pink lips pulling upward. “Weareon the run from one of the most dangerous societies in the country.” She speaks it calmly and nowIwant to smile.
“Maybe,” I agree. “But I am worse.” I take one step down, my body wanting to be near her. Overriding my brain in the matter.
“Are you?” she whispers, barely a sound from her soft mouth.
I tip my head, staring down at her, both of us at an angle to one another. “Do you remember it all?”How I touched you, in those brief stolen moments? Why are you still with me now? I gave you a chance to run then.
She glances at my mouth, and I press my lips together, not wanting her to see the dryness of them. I’ve always had this problem; sometimes Stein liked to dehydrate me to see how dark he could make my urine. It’s as if those experiments forever left their mark.
“I remember enough,” she begins, but before she can say more, we hear the creak of a door, thunderous and scratchy in the stairwell, and she drops the flashlight as she flinches. The plastic thuds all the way down the steps, loud and clanging, my body like a live wire in the way I am poised to run from the noise as it echoes.
Her spine straightens and she turns away from me, staring down at the next landing and swearing under her breath,“Shit.”
From my spot above her, I cannot see anything.
I don’t move, breathe, speak. I focus on her. Like her image can keep me here: The slight wave to her long, blonde strands. The way they glide over her shoulders, a few splaying along her arm. I see the dip of her triceps there, then the plane of her belly, and I know there may be a mark, where I pushed the needle into her skin.
I want to see it.
I want to bite over it.
I don’t want this night to end just yet.
“Karia.” A voice reverberates in the stairwell.
I inhale silently, holding the air in my lungs as I keep staring at her. I don’t let my eyes roam over the gray brick walls, the dark flooring, what or who could be one floor below us.
