schools around the world—not country, world. And at least her skin doesn’t resemble mineral pyrite. If you don’t know what that is, try the encyclopedia. You know, those wonderful things called books. They have words in them.”
Penny screwed up her nose and then crossed her arms over her chest when she realized the digs were aimed at her.
I took Violet’s hand and squeezed.
“School is really, really working for me this year,” she whispered from the side of her mouth.
“We’ll pass on the fire,” Brando said.
Oh, we’ll pass, now will we?
“You sure?” Jane fluttered her long eyelashes.
Who does that? Tonya Harding, that’s who! Just before she orders the hit.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice taking on a new tone—he seemed cautious, but somewhat irritated. “We’re sure.”
Penny grabbed Jane’s hand before she gave me a narrow look, and then the three amigos walked off in a huff. Violet waited a moment before she went after them.
The door closed for the final time and we were alone. I snatched the dirty dishes off the table, throwing them in the sink. One of them split in two. Brando said nothing, but his eyes weighed on me, a burden that I suddenly wanted to hurl a dish at.
“I must’ve missed something.” The same irritation in his tone spilled over onto me.
“Ha!” I threw another dish in. A big chunk broke off. “What did I miss? I am stupid. So, so stupid.”
“Repeat that, but in fucking English.”
I looked right at him. “That was English! And you heard me. I didn’t stutter.” My hands balled into fists. “I get it. I’m a kid in your eyes. My brother was your best friend. You have some sense of duty to protect me. To see that I do the right thing, or whatever this obsession you have for me stands for.” I clenched my jaw to keep that awful tremble out of my voice. “But I can’t keep playing this game. I might be young, but I’m not a fool. Age is nothing but a number, Brando.”
“After ha! the rest was foreign to me. If I had to guess. Slovenian.” He waved a hand, dismissing the matter. “Give me a hint. Anything. I can’t defend what I don’t know, and I can’t give you the truth if I don’t know where it belongs.”
Violet’s words—more like warnings—about how many women he had slept with supported the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach and the ache in my heart. “Where were you last night?”
His eyebrows narrowed and then lifted. His eyes widened and then narrowed. “You think I fucked Jane.”
The words made me flinch, but I rallied. I threw a hand at him. “Obviously. She gives suckers as souvenirs.”
He barked out a laugh—the sound was taunting, nothing pleasant about it. He took quick paces to reach me. He leaned down so that our eyes were level. “Tell me,” he said, his tone sharp but quiet, “what did you give that kid for him to reciprocate with a souvenir.”
I walked straight into that trap all on my own. “What did you do last night, Brando?”
“You first, Scarlett.”
I had never felt rage so absolute before. I had a tendency to be jealous—when my brother started to hang out with friends and left me behind, when my mother restricted my life and Violet was able to do her own thing—but I had never been so overcome, so possessed by it.
It shocked every sense that belonged to me, this ugly thing that reared up out of someplace hidden inside of me. The thought of him being with her, anyone else, cut me deep. Much deeper than anything I had ever known. It had no true basis, it made no sense, but there it was. Wild and brutal, like a magical badger on the hunt.
The kiss we shared earlier made me tremble to the bone; this feeling was almost as fierce.
Passion and rage; how easily the lines are crossed, I thought.
He continued to stare at me, not releasing me, and I had to fight the powers that made me want to squirm from his gaze. Until the moment he saw right through me. The untamed jealousy made me thinner, and those damn eyes of his pierced straight through to the heart.
The moment it happened, the moment he saw the absolute truth, a resounding click sounded and echoed inside of my mind. The finding and turning of a skeleton key, a hidden case that had never been opened by anyone but me. At the same time