Speaking up, fighting back, will only make things worse for me. For the longest time, I fought back tooth and nail, refusing to accept what was right in front of me. I thought if I knew the rules, I could play their game, maybe even win.
I understand how it works now, and I accept the truth.
Winning was never a possibility.
It doesn’t matter what cards I play. I could play the perfect hand, but I’d still lose it all. It was rigged from the moment I sat down at the table.
But I sat down, and now I’m caught in a nightmare that never ends. I will lose over and over and over again, but I can never leave the game.
Again, it’s like Colt said.
I thought I was free, but now I know. Royal will keep showing up. There’s no way out. Once they claim you, it’s forever.
I’m trapped, a fly in their poison amber. I can see their secrets, but I’m frozen inside them, and I can’t do anything about it. I can fight, but I can’t win. I will always belong to them. Duke branded me, just like ranchers brand cattle so they can prove it’s theirs if anyone fucks with it and so if one happens to find a way out and escape, anyone who finds it will return it to captivity. I am the same to the Dolces—a piece of property, branded with a scar on my hip that tells the world I will never be free.
The thought fills my body with dread. My blood is sluggish and heavy, like mercury on a cold day, pulling me down until I think I’ll sink into the ground and disappear. Suddenly, all I want to do is get in the truck and shift into gear, close my eyes, and press the pedal to the floor. Royal threw a guy over the edge once, into the quarry, because he was fucking with me. If he really wanted to protect me, he should have pushed me over instead.
But I can’t take Blue and Olive with me, and I couldn’t make them watch it, either. They don’t need that trauma, and I don’t need an audience or attention. That’s a spectacular death, a blaze of glory. I’d end up onLocal New with Jackie, like a rich girl.
I’d rather go quietly, without fanfare, a single line buried on a random page in the back of the paper.
Body Found Near Tracks.
Local Teen Dead of Overdose.
There would be no candlelight vigil, no fake tears. That’s the last thing I’d want.
When I pull into the driveway later, Blue climbs down and then turns to me. “You could always come back to Faulkner,” she offers.
“I might,” I say. I can’t remember where I got the fight to go up against the headmaster at Willow Heights, but I think I used it all up. If he’s going to keep fighting, he’ll win. I don’t care enough to keep going, knowing defeat is inevitable. If the Dolces want me gone, no amount of threats from a girl like me will sway the headmaster. I don’t pay his salary.
Blue hesitates. “I know if I could change schools and not have to see the guys who did that to me… I wouldn’t have to think about it.”
I go inside and lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling, replaying her words. Then I replay the conversation I had with Royal. Suddenly, my skin goes cold even though the window units can’t begin to cool the house in August.
He asked if I tried to end my life.
He followed me to Preston’s, but I closed the garage. He couldn’t have seen me. He couldn’t have seen me on the roof, either. So how the fuck does he know that?
Is he checking up on me?
And why would Preston tell him that? Why would he tell him anything? I remember last spring, the day it all went to shit when Preston bombed Royal’s car. One of the Dolce boys mentioned that Preston’s family was off limits, that their dad was in with them. Has Preston been feeding Royal information all along? Did Royal actually ask for those videos?
My stomach lurches, and I stumble to the bathroom and fall to my knees, my head spinning. I try to puke, but nothing comes. I tear through the cabinets, searching for something to take, some pills, anything to get me back to the numb state I spent the summer in. But that’s the thing about living with a junkie. There are never drugs around when you need them.
All I can find is a packet of razors, and they only slice the skin. It’s nowhere near deep enough, but after a minute, the frustration turns to relief. Somehow, watching the blood well up in little lines numbs me, brings me a moment of singular focus. In the back of my mind, I’m aware that I’m too old for this shit, that all the other girls went through their cutting phase in middle school and junior high. I remember thinking how silly it was for girls to hurt themselves voluntarily when there were so many other things in the world determined to hurt us already.
But now I understand. It’s like walking on coals. It’s not about the pain, not exactly. It needs to hurt to work, but that’s not the end goal. The end goal is living completely in this exact moment, the willpower it takes to override instinct not just once, at the edge of the roof, but over and over again, with each step forward over the coals, each red line on my smooth skin.
My focus is sharper than the razor blade. Nothing else matters. I make my way up my arm, each stroke one of pure, potent life. For one moment and then a hundred, I can barely breathe with the rawness of this edge I’ve found, a barely perceptible line between reality and illusion, between life and death, pain and bliss. I hold onto it, feeling my way along, tiptoeing along the tightrope toward some ending I can’t see and that doesn’t matter.
This matters.
For the first time in months, something matters. For these sacred minutes, as I kneel on the faded linoleum of a stuffy, windowless bathroom on the wrong side of Faulkner, I have unwavering control of my mind in this world where nothing is under my control, and I live again.
twenty
Harper Apple