The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,84
in the light from her bedside table.
“This used to be Mom’s,” she says. “I guess they were a thing once. Kinda cool, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, reaching out. They’re cheap, mostly brass, the chains corroded with age. My mom would die if she saw me wearing this. I’m okay with that. I close my hand around one, then pull back, questioning.
“Are you just showing me these, or . . . ?”
“Yeah, I’m totally just letting you know I have it. Obviously one is for Gretchen,” she says.
“Oh my God,” I say, giving her a shove. She falls backward, laughing.
“Girls!” Annabelle’s voice again, sharper this time.
I take one of the necklaces and put mine on. “So . . . if this was your mom’s, why does she have both pieces?” I ask.
“Huh?” Tress’s hands are behind her neck, struggling with the cheap clasp. I motion for her to turn around, and she does. I move her hair, latch the necklace for her.
“Who had the other part of your mom’s necklace? And”—it feels super rude, but I’m curious—“why did they give it back?”
“I don’t know,” Tress says, shrugging, holding the charm and reading it upside down. “I didn’t ask.”
Chapter 75
Tress
Fifth Grade / The Night Of
“We’re going to wear these forever, right?”
Chapter 76
Felicity
Senior Year
“Felicity? Hon? Do you have your box ready for the PTA rummage sale?”
Shit. No, I don’t. But I need to clean out my closet like nobody’s business. I grab the box Mom left in my room a week ago, open it, and jerk random things off hangers, grabbing shoes from the back of the closet, anything out of season. This rummage sale is going to be a gold mine for somebody.
Gold . . . I probably have some jewelry that can go, too. I crack open the box, laughing when I spot the pair of earrings that Brynn got me last year for Christmas—volleyballs, one that reads Book, the other one Keeper.
“A keeper, all right,” I say, tucking them into a drawer to hold on to.
The smile fades when I spot a ring Patrick got me, an apology for something he did . . . again. It goes into the PTA box, falling among the piles of clothes without a sound. Something’s jammed in the back, the charm pinched in the hinges, a cheap chain curled, greenish, lying on the bottom of my jewelry box like a snake.
I yank it free, my stomach dropping.
Rummage sale, here I come.
“Can she even afford to shop here?” Gretchen asks, glancing up from her phone.
“What?” I ask, shading my eyes. The sun is beating down on the school parking lot, the tables of clothes, toys, shoes, dishes—all the unwanted objects of Amontillado up for sale, the made-up moms of the PTA playing salesgirls.
“Tress Montor,” Gretchen says, pointing. “She’s like . . . here.”
I follow Gretchen’s finger to see Tress hovering over the jewelry table.
Shit.
Chapter 77
Tress
Senior Year
It hangs, dangling in the sun, too dirty to shine. The engraved word caked in neglect.
Around my neck, its mate, the answer. Under that, a patch of skin, always green now—because I’ve never taken it off.
The other half of my heart is on sale for a quarter.
Chapter 78
Felicity
Senior Year
“Seriously?” Gretchen’s gum snaps in my ear.
“What?” I ask again, my back to her as I sort through children’s clothes.
“Tress just took something off the jewelry table and walked away.”
“Okay,” I say. I fold clothes, adoring the symmetry in the squares I can make, the order under my hands.
“Do you remember when she stole your tampons? Klepto.”
Chapter 79
Tress
She’s got the heart in her hands, pulling down, pulling on my neck, pulling me over the wall.
“Felicity, you need to let me go. I can’t lift you by myself. I’ve got to get Hugh.”
“Where’s mine?” she asks, her eyes on the necklace. “Where is my heart?”
“Here,” I tell her, digging into my hoodie pocket. “It’s here. I brought it for you. I thought . . .”
I don’t know what I thought. That I would show it to her and she’d be overwhelmed by the grief of what we lost, pushed by her emotions to tell me what happened that night?
I don’t know.
But I definitely didn’t think I’d be putting it around her neck, clasping the back through a bloodied knot of hair, lifting her chin because she can’t raise her own head.
I didn’t think I would kill her.
I reach past her legs, past a wet mess of all kinds of things, for my phone, turning the light away, out of my eyes.
“You’ve got it