Page 29 of We Are All Liars Here

It’s how numb it makes her.

If Billie had reasons to drink before all this, she doesn’t remember them much. Maxwell. Killing him. Chopping him up and dumping him in the swamp. Sure, that’s a reason to drink.

Her mom, beating the shit out of her, drinking all the time, drugs in the trailer, too many ‘call-me-dads’ in and out, but never the real one. Too obvious to be a reason, a fucking cliché.

Could just be one simple reason: it’s in her blood. Drinking, needing the numbness, the glaze over her eyesight, the muffled sense to her hearing.

Maybe, for this moment, it’s that Blood Hood is running around Dosserport’s shadows looking for them.

Or… in this exact moment, Preston is downstairs in the kitchen with the other wasps, drinking—and existing near her. Like it isn’t hard enough to be apart from him with all this happening, she needs to be apart from him in the same fucking house.

Well… whatever it is, Billie just has more reason to drink now, and no one bothers to stop her.

She parks herself on the window seat, the closed shades rumpling under her weight. “No answer?”

Just as she asks it (or predicts it, more like), the familiarbeep, beep, beepdisconnect tone blares from Kate’s cell. The same damn incessant noise she’s heard countless times since the cops arrived at Tonya’s place and separated them. The sound of Toyna dodging the girls, their calls, and anything to do with them.

“Can’t leave a voicemail,” Kate says and chucks her cell onto the bed. It lands with the smallest bounce—then disappears behind the bottle as Billie takes a swig, obscuring her vision.

“Mailbox full?” she asks with anahh,resting the bottle between her thighs, one leg dangling off the side of the window bench, her blue-socked foot grazing the floorboards.

“No.” Kate throws her a withering look. “But I can’t exactly leave a message along the lines of ‘you’re next’, can I?”

Billie shrugs. “Why not?”

Kate’s eyes turn white for a beat as she rolls them back into her head, as if praying to God for a scrap of patience. “Because,” she says with a long exhale, “the police could be listening to any message we leave—or reading the texts. We need to warn Tonya without warning her, otherwise they’ll know that we figured out a pattern. And if the police suspect that we know why this is happening…”

“Presto prison,” Billie says and lifts her bottle in acheersas false as her drunken smile. “Shake and bake cell. No, wait—that one doesn’t work.”

Kate simply stands there by the dresser for a heartbeat or two, just… staring blankly at her. She blinks. Once, twice. Then, shaking her head, turns her back. She dives her hands into her duffel bag.

Billie smirks at the back of her caramel-toned blonde wig. So pretty, so beautiful, glossy and nourished. One time, when they were only Freshmen, she tried to touch Kate’s hair. Got a smack for it, too.

Learned a lesson, fast.

Learned Kate soon after.

Billie wonders that if it weren’t for their next-door-neighbor lockers, they would even be friends at all? So similar in a lot of ways, but so fucking different that they should be worlds apart.

But it happened the other way.

Smacks and annoyances, insults and loyalty. Like sisters. No one else could say anything to either of them, except themselves. Kate and Billie could scrap in the classroom. Didn’t matter. Because if anyone took a side, the fight stopped—and they’d team up together against anyone at all.

Well…

Maybe not Carmine.

She was special. Not one of the duo. But a sister, nonetheless.

Twins and a sibling?

“Can’t understand what has you smiling right now,” Kate mutters, and it brings Billie back to life… or back to now. She felt for a moment, a fleeting thought of Carmine and Kate and herself, thatthatwas life. Whatever they’re doing now… that’s surviving.

Different.

Very, fucking different.

“Thinkin’ about Care-Bear.” Billie doesn’t hide it, doesn’t lie about it. She won’t ever censor herself, not with Carmine and her memory and her name. “Remember Mildred? That big sonovabitch?”

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