I gasp. “What?”
He grabs a few strands of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. “You think you’re innocent? Prove it.”
I can’t believe he’s even suggesting this. “She was my fucking sister,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Who says you didn’t push her to jump?”
He stares directly into my eyes, and it terrifies the living shit out of me. Not because I’m afraid of him but of the words he just said … and how much they resonate in my blackened soul.
It feels as though tar creeps up my body, pulling my feet through the ground while consuming me from the inside out.
Because who says I’m not guilty?
Guilty of all the things I accused these boys of?
Felix leans in to whisper, “Remember what you told her? What you promised you would do together?”
I can’t breathe.
How does he know?
I can’t even think straight until the tear that formed in the corner of my eye finally rolls down.
“Die.”
Last year
“You’re going off to that university without me,” I say to my sister, who sits on her bed with her books all in front of her like she’s admiring what’s to come. “Then I’ll be all alone.”
“I’m not dead,” she says with a grin, and she opens her arms. “C’mere.”
I jump on the bed and hug her so tight we both fall down onto her pillow.
“God, I’m gonna fucking miss you,” I say.
“I’ll miss you too, lil Peepee,” she says.
My jaw drops, and I snatch her pillow from underneath her and smother her with it. “You did not just call me that.” She keeps laughing, so I press harder. “You haven’t called me that in ages!”
“You deserve it for being a pouty little bitch,” she says.
I take the pillow off and say, “What, you want me to be happy you’re leaving?”
“Yes!” she exclaims. “You’ll have this whole place to yourself!”
I snort. “Dad’s got the whole place wired up, and there are cameras everywhere. I can’t ever do anything without him finding out.”
“I’m talking figuratively.” She rolls her eyes. “You can have my room if you want.”
I put the pillow away. “What? Really?”
She holds out her pinky. “Swear on my life.”
“So you’re really not planning on coming back?”
“Nope. I wanna get my own house after I’m done with university. So I promise, it’s all yours.”
I take her pinky, and we swear on it. “I’ll still fucking miss you, of course.”
“We can always talk over the phone,” she replies.
“Yeah, but it’s not the same.” I lie down beside her and sigh as we both stare up at her glow-in-the-dark star-studded ceiling.
“You know, it’s hard on me too,” she says. “I’ll be going there all by myself. Without you there … it’ll probably feel empty. Like there’s no one there that I truly know.” She takes a deep breath. “And that scares me sometimes.”
I lean up on my elbow. “You told me that before. Like you feel trapped and alone.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“But this is supposed to be something exciting. You’ve always wanted to go to Spine Ridge university. Now you can finally go live your dream.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself too. I’m lucky. I’m just kind of worried something might happen.”
I put a hand on her arm. “What do you mean ‘something’?”
“Nothing. It’s just some kind of intuition thing. I can’t pinpoint it.”
“Are you feeling depressed?”
“What?” She snorts. “No, not at all, I—”
She’s been there before because of all the bullying at our high school. That’s why I had to redo my senior year at high school, and she barely made it through. It could happen again at her university.
“No, I won’t allow it,” I say, shaking my head.
“You’re not there,” she responds. “And what if something does happen? I feel like I might spiral again …”
“Eve. Look at me. You are not going to do anything weird, okay?” I tell her. “If you’re feeling like that again, you gotta tell me.”
“No, I didn’t say that. I just—”
“I know. But I want you to know, if you ever get these thoughts again, you call me, okay?”
She nods.
“And if you ever feel so bad about yourself that you want to end it—”
“Pen,” she interjects.
“No, let me finish,” I say. “I need you to know, I will be there, right by your side.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
I grab her pinky again. “Swear to me you will tell me if you get to that point, and I will be there. I will jump in front of that train with you. Okay?”
Her eyes well up with tears. “No, you can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can,” I say. “Because I fucking will, okay? I won’t have you leave this world without me.”
Tears roll down her cheeks.
“Swear on it. If we die, we go together,” I say, and I mean it.
I don’t want her to do something she’ll never get a chance to undo.
And I know her.
I know how volatile her mind is.
Because she and I have the same mind.
We are one and the same. Two parts of one whole.
My twin.
“I swear I’ll tell you, and we’ll die together,” she says. “And you’ll be there for me, right?”
I nod. “Always.”
Felix
Present
The cue almost breaks in her hand. “How? How the fuck do you know that?”
So I grab the cue too. “I told you … we were friends. She told me.”
But she refuses to let go. “I don’t believe you.”
I snort. “How else would I know?”
I know it’s hard to believe Eve would tell me that she had a suicide pact with her sister, but it’s a cold hard truth she needs to know.
I lean in, grinding my teeth. “Who says you’re not responsible for her death? I think you intended to finish it together that night, but you left her to jump on her own.”
Her eyes flicker with rage.
In an instant, she raises her hand and slaps me across the face.
The sting is instant, harsh, just like the look on her face.
“Fuck you. How fucking dare you …” she seethes. “That’s why you hung those posters? Why you bullied me? Used me? Degraded me?” Her voice becomes unhinged. “Out of revenge?”
My hand rises, but I can’t bring myself to even touch her, let alone punish her for slapping me.
And that doubt oozes through to my bones, making me feel something I’ve never felt before.
A kind of weakness.
The same weakness my victims show when I slice them up.
A weakness I can’t fucking afford.
Her face contorts. “I love my sister to death. I wanted nothing more than to save her. And I would’ve gladly died to save her.”
“So you admit there was a pact,” I reply.
She releases the cue and marches off. “I’m done with this conversation.”
“Don’t you fucking leave, Penelope,” I growl, but she ignores me. “Tell me the truth.”
But when she turns around, all she gives me is a big middle finger.
“The deal still stands, Penelope. You can’t walk away from it,” I say, following in her footsteps.
“Watch me!” she yells back. “If you think it’s me, then we’re done here.”
Right before she opens the door, I block the way and stare at her. “You still belong to me. Do not take out that fucking plug.”
She glares at me without fear, then pushes past me to head straight for the exit, and it infuriates me to the point of slamming my fist into the fucking wall and roaring out loud.
