Prisoned - Marni Mann Page 0,6
in a roomful of torn jeans and wrinkled shirts. There was a thick breeze of stale cigarette smoke and heads full of greasy hair. My brother had at least put on a clean shirt.
Had I not been on autopilot before I left Tampa, I would have packed less black, shorter heels, and a jacket that wasn’t so starched. I should have known better. I should have paid attention. This wasn’t the kind of crowd who wore black suits and shiny shoes. This was the crowd who looked into the open casket and thought, Fuck, will I be next?
The only other suit in here was worn by the man who stood next to the casket. His was blue—blueberry blue—with a stain in the middle of his tie. I just stared at it while he spoke about Billy and tried to decide if it was salad dressing or pizza grease.
It was either that or stare at the casket, and there was no way I could look at the latter any longer than I already had. Billy was in that box. A shiny dark brown box that glistened from the corner of my eye with a puffy white fabric that lined it.
This wasn’t the Billy I remembered. He was too clean. Too ironed. Too tucked in.
Too at peace.
Billy was the only person in this room who was at peace. The rest of us were from The Heart, and The Heart didn’t allow it. And, for those of us who were close to Paulie and were around after he died, we definitely weren’t at peace. The aftermath of his murder, the mourning. There was enough pain to last the rest of our lives.
But those weren’t the only things I remembered, the only things that made me hurt.
There were the things that had happened just moments before Paulie’s death and the second after, like the sound of the car’s engine, Paulie’s footsteps, the gun, the gasp, the feeling of the car door, the tires squealing on the pavement.
The words that echoed in my ears.
His words.
The ones that had haunted me since the moment they’d been screamed at me.
I sucked in a deep breath and turned my head away from the stained tie and the shiny casket. I’d had enough of both. Obviously, Anthony hadn’t. He was looking straight at them. He was so calm, as if he were listening to a friend speak about plans for the weekend. How could he not be shaken by this? How could he not look at that casket and think there was something we could have done to stop Billy from overdosing? I assumed Anthony was here because he thought it was the right thing to do.
But it wasn’t right. Not even close.
“We should go,” I whispered.
When he faced me, there was so much anger in his eyes. “Stop it, Kyle.”
“This is wrong.”
“Go outside if you can’t handle it, and I’ll drive you back when the service is over.”
I should go outside. I couldn’t handle it.
My thoughts, my panic, my fear—it all came to a halt when I felt another set of eyes on me. Eyes that caused a whole new set of emotions. My heart was hammering so hard inside my chest, it felt like my lips were vibrating. My face filled with heat. My lungs felt too heavy to take a breath.
I slowly looked away from Anthony and searched for those unforgettable dangerous eyes. They weren’t always emerald; they lightened and darkened, depending on what he was wearing. I’d seen every shade on him. But it had been years—twelve—since I’d heard his voice and seen him in person.
He was the reason I survived The Heart. He was my happiness. He was my best friend, my family. He kept the three of us together.
And then he was nothing.
He sat in the last seat of the second row from the front, looking at me from over his shoulder. My dark brown eyes connected to his sea-green ones—lighter than emerald, thanks to his blue shirt. My lips tugged into the smallest of smiles…another autopilot moment. I had lost complete control of my body.
He had the power to do that to me.
Garin Woods.
His name echoed in my head. Over and over.
I’d expected him to be there, but I hadn’t considered what it would feel like when I saw him, that I’d be reacting this strongly, or that he would have changed so much. Before this moment, I could have drawn his face from memory or from the few faint pictures I’d