no matter how distant or dim it might seem.
I sit down at Penelope’s desk. She’s left her phone plugged in, and when I touch it, I find that it’s unlocked. Definitely unusual for her. She craves privacy, wherever she can get it. There’s a note there, open and written with a discarded stylus.
“I’m so sorry, Bernadette. Out of everyone, you and Heather are the ones I owe the world to. But I can’t take it anymore. When I try to run, he chases. When I tell the truth, she calls me a liar. I can only take so many dark showers, stay awake so many nights. No matter what they say to you, always remember that I loved you both.”
I lift my head up from the phone screen to stare at the blanket mound on the bed.
Slowly, carefully, I set Pen’s phone aside and stand up.
This isn’t what you think it is, Bernie, I tell myself, my hands shaking as I stand there in a pink plaid skirt and a white cardigan, twisting my fingers together and doing my best to keep breathing. My head feels disconnected, and my heart thunders like a mad thing.
“Penelope?” I ask, but there’s no answer.
Closing my eyes, I try to listen for the sound of her breathing, but the fucking kids outside are too loud. Storming over to the window, I lean out and shout down at them to shut the hell up before I slam it closed. Spinning around, I close my eyes and perch my ass on the windowsill.
For several more minutes, I just sit there. Because the longer I do, the longer I can pretend that everything is okay. Like, if I don’t check her, then I can’t find anything wrong, and if I can’t find anything wrong, then she’ll be alright.
Finally, I open my eyes and look down to see her face, still and waxy and perfect. Trapped forever in a single state, draped in youthful skin and silken hair.
I choke on my own saliva as I fall to my knees in front of her.
I don’t have to touch my sister to know that she’s dead.
“Hey, Penny?” I whisper, calling her by a name that I haven’t used since Dad died. “Where did you go?” Reaching out, I pull the blankets back and find her clutching one of her stuffed animals, dressed in her favorite pj’s. There’s a bottle of Pamela’s pills on the nightstand, but I hardly register that. I just remember sitting there and watching her chest, waiting for that rhythmic rise and fall, that predictable constant.
It never comes.
After a while, I climb into bed beside her, looking into her face, committing it to memory.
I don’t remember crying, but when I finally get up the courage to grab Pen’s phone and dial 911, I look back to see the sheets soaked where I rested my head.
“My big sister was murdered,” is what I tell the operator on the end of the line.
Despite their findings to the contrary, I know better.
Penelope might’ve taken those pills, but she didn’t want to die.
Someone drove her to it, and I know exactly who that person was.
I still do.
And I’m willing to sell my soul to the devil to watch him suffer. That’s how important his pain is to me; I need to see him bleed.
Two and a half years later, I find my chance in Havoc.
The next morning, I wake up on Aaron’s bed, wrapped in his scent, decimated by memories. My eyes find this spot on the door where we accidentally dented it with my head. Yep, my fucking head. Aaron and I tumbled against the door in a frenzy, hands tearing at each other's clothes, adrenaline pumping through our bodies.
Youthful rage and desire, all mixed into one. I stand up and put my fingers against the dent before opening the door, fully expecting to find Vic looming over me, staring down at me with those crow-black eyes of his. Instead, I find an empty hall, the distant giggles of the girls drifting to me from a cracked door at the other end.
Relief surges through me and I slump against the wall with my right shoulder, closing my eyes and listening to the sounds of play, sounds that I left behind a long, long time ago. It feels like it's been centuries since I was a child.
The Thing stole that from me, my innocence and my childhood.
My sister.
Gritting my teeth, I open my eyes and then push up off the wall,