RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,35
him know you called? I could try and persuade him to reach out and explain his actions for himself?”
I’m at my door. I twist the handle, pushing it open. “God, no! No, that really won’t be necessary. I already know the details, what good would talking to him—” I grind to a halt, halfway through the door, my ears suddenly filled with a high-pitched ringing. “—do?”
The room…holy fuck, my room has been destroyed.
My clothes are everywhere. My books, the few I brought with me from Tel Aviv, are scattered all over the floor, pages torn out of them in clumps, strewn all over the hardwood floorboards. Every single drawer has been ripped out of every single piece of furniture, the contents upended and thrown around in disarray. My photographs are in shreds. My laptop lays on its side beneath the window, its screen shattered and flickering, a spasm of color interrupting the static every few seconds. And there are feathers. Feathers everywhere. They’ve settled in a thick layer over everything like powdery, delicate snow, covering the Persian rug, and my shoes, and the comforter that’s been ripped from the bed.
Both of my pillows are in shreds. With my mouth hanging open, I walk toward the bed, too many thoughts bumping into one another for any of this to make sense. The sheets have been ripped back from the mattress, and the mattress itself…a giant bowie knife protrudes from the center of the pillowtop mattress, it’s rugged, carved handle glinting threateningly as I duck down to get a better look at it.
Whoever did this didn’t just stab the bed once. Numerous three-inch long rents in the material, as well as longer, jagged tears where the foam and the springs inside the mattress have been exposed.
“…perhaps handled in a more…empathetic way. I can’t really say any more than that, of course, but…”
Shit. Carl’s still talking on the other end of the phone.
“Uh, sorry, Carl. Something…I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta go into class now. Thanks for explaining things to me. I’d be really grateful if you didn’t tell my dad I called.”
“Of course. Anything for you, Miss. E.”
“Thanks.” I kill the call, dropping the cell phone to the ground. What…the fuck…happened in here? Who…who would do this? And why?
“Holy shit!”
Carina’s standing in the doorway. She gapes at the chaos in horror, her eyes roving over my broken and ruined possessions. I see the china bird my mother gave me on my tenth birthday, smashed into tiny fragments and ground into the low pile of the rug, and a pained cry slips out of my mouth.
“What the fuck happened in here?” Carina whispers, stepping over an empty drawer. She comes and wraps her arms around me. It’s here, stiff as a block of wood and unable to breathe properly, that I realize there are fierce, hot tears streaking down my cheeks.
“I don’t know.” It comes out as a moan. A cry. A desolate and mournful sound that shocks the hell out of me. It’s not my clothes, or my books, or the bed that’s done it. It’s the bird. My mother’s bird. She’s dead, and she’s gone, and there will never be another gift from her. The bird was all I had and now it’s gone, too.
“Fuck. Come on. Come with me.” Carina guides me out of my room and down the hall, past Presley and some of the other girls who came to watch the movie with us on Friday; I make an effort to avoid making eye contact with any of them. I can’t face their open pity. I don’t want to even acknowledge that this is happening right now.
Carina leaves me in her room and tells me to keep the door closed. She disappears for a long time, and I do nothing but stare into space, thinking about the bird…
The pink nail polish on Mom’s fingernails when she gave it to me.
The little chip on its tiny orange beak that I used to rub my fingertip over whenever I cradled it to my chest.
The white of his chest, that faded to the blue of his back, that deepened to the dark, midnight blue at the tips of his wings.
The song Mom used to sing when she would hold it high in the air, pretending he was in flight and swooping around my head.
An eternity passes. Principal Harcourt comes to see me. Tells me they’ve already gotten another mattress out of storage for me—“Very lucky, actually. It’s brand new, still in the