Page 31 of We Are All Villains Here

Suddenly choked, like an aching ball lodged in her throat, Billie only manages a nod. Her jaw clenches, tight.

Kate thins her mouth. “What happened to waiting until the end of summer?”

“Didn’t think you would do it at all,” Carmine mutters.

Billie’s smile is small and dry. She ignores the offended frown on Kate’s face, offended that Carmine apparently already knew what Billie only just told Kate yesterday—that she was gonna dump Preston.

Billie jests, her tone bitter, “What’d you think would happen?”

Carmine drops her head and scuffs her sneaker over the splintered wood. “You’d grow old together, but with you still here in Dosser, and him in the city, some hotshot judge. And you’d be fighting over the phone and in love every summer until you died.”

“Romantic.” Kate’s snark doesn’t come without a barb. “And probably best we don’t talk about death too much, given the current climate…”

The implications aren’t lost on the others.

Kate will be hardest on the others within the group. She’ll sew mouths shut if she has to, Billie has no doubt about that. Where Billie kicks shins, Kate will slice out tongues.

Can’t blame her, either, since Kate’s got the most to lose out of all of them. Got big plans, that one.

Once she’s done with her second degree at community college, she’ll get out, out of this town, out of Southside. She’ll be free.

But Billie knows that to put plans in her own life, into her own future, is pointless. Her fears keep her trapped here. All she’s ever known is Dosserport.

She’ll stay here. In this trailer park.

Beauty Queen and Prom Queen, Carmine, with her natural beauty and soft presence, will probably snag a husband with some cash, move outta here.

The twins will stay. At least Billie will have them.

The fivesome will wither to a threesome. Gigi, Tonya and Billie—but Billie will lose the ones she cares about most. Preston, the toxic love of her life, a poison not unlike the crap she drinks into her body daily. Kate, her closest friend and the one most like her when shit hits the fan. And Carmine, her oldest friend, naïve but so utterly sweet that Billie can’t help but adore her.

Tonya and Gigi…

With them, Billie will be a little of an outsider.

Thinking of Tonya, a sudden jolt of urgency spears through her heart—

“Oh, fuck,” Billie grunts and shoves away from the wall. “Got work.”

That’s all she says before she bursts through the screen door and stumbles into the trailer. She grabs the three things she needs: Car keys, her bottle, and her mini-handbag.

When she rushes back out to the porch, Kate is down by her BMW and Carmine at the bottom of the stairs. Kate only wiggles her fingers in farewell, keys jangling with the movements.

“You on with Tonya today?” Carmine asks as Billie skitters around her to the parked beat-up truck, so badly scraped up that the blue paint is almost gone completely.

“Yeah, opening the bar with her.” She jumps into the driver’s seat. “We’ll get off shift around two.”

Carmine only nods in answer.

Billie jams the key into the ignition—

And after a few dying chokes, the trunk rumbles to waning life.

She speeds out of the park.

It takes longer than it should do to get out of the trailer park, what with the parked cop cars littered around and the tethered gatherings of gossiping locals. But Billie honks and revs her way through the onlookers until she’s clear of the park, and out on the barren road that divides Southside in two: trailer park and the shacks.

Shacks is where the twins live. Kate, too.

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