Wink Poppy Midnight - April Genevieve Tucholke Page 0,34

second. Wink’s performance was flawless. I wanted to keep watching. I couldn’t help but keep watching.

Wink shrunk back, away from Poppy, pulling at the rope and scuttling along the floor like she’d been kicked. She curled herself into a ball, her knees under her chin, arms above her head, tangled red hair. Her green eyes glowed in the flashlight’s beam, and they were wild. Wild, wild. Her lips drew tight, sucked in between her teeth.

“You’ll regret it, you’ll regret it.” Her voice was high and clear, and I could barely recognize Wink in it at all. “They’ll come for you. They’ll find you. They’ll slice you open and lap up all your blood, lap lap it up like a cat with milk . . .”

Poppy wasn’t laughing anymore.

Wink coughed and coughed, and her whole body shook, legs and head and hands.

Then she went still again.

“The unforgivables are so hungry, so hungry . . .” Her eyes darted to the corner of the room, then shot back, and something in them was . . . wrong . . . so wrong . . .

Goose bumps up my spine, into my scalp.

“They . . . they want to open your head, pop it open, pop pop Poppy, dig out all its little secrets, wriggling, wriggling like maggots, dig them out and crush them, squish, squish, pop . . .”

Wink’s voice got softer and softer.

“They told me things about you, Poppy. Come closer . . . come closer and I’ll tell you what they said. You want to know, you need to know . . .”

Poppy went to Wink. She went right to her, step, step, step, creak, creak, creak. She leaned down . . .

And Wink shot forward.

She grabbed Poppy’s arm, squeezing until her knuckles went white.

“Take her other arm,” she said, calm, calm.

I took it. I wrapped my fingers around the elbow I’d been kissing earlier, upstairs. I did it even though it made me feel sick. Weak and sick, deep inside.

Wink was stronger than she looked. She bent Poppy’s arm behind her and shoved it up hard against her spine. I wound the rope around one wrist, then the other, quick, before Poppy could fight back. I pulled . . .

But it was Wink who pushed Poppy to her knees. Wink who tied the knots, three deep and so hard Poppy’s hands were smashed up against the piano leg.

Poppy looked up at me. One long, comprehending look.

And then she screamed.

I’d counted on this too.

“There’s no one to hear you,” I said. “You can holler your heart out and no one will hear you.”

And I kind of felt like crying, after I said that. Just a little bit.

Poppy stopped screaming and started sobbing instead. It was messy and loud, full of tears and chokes and sobs.

“How can you? How can you leave me here?” Her big gray eyes were staring and pleading, lashes wet and shadow-black. “You know how afraid I am. Midnight, please.”

I looked from Poppy, to Wink, to Poppy, to Wink.

I couldn’t do this.

Wink would say I wasn’t the hero.

And Poppy would say I was a coward. If I let her free she would call me a coward for it later. I knew she would.

But . . .

I reached in my pocket and got out my jackknife. I flipped it open and grabbed the rope—

Wink stepped in front of me, both hands up, like I held a gun.

“She’s not Poppy. She’s The Thing in the Deep. And you just struck her with your sword. She’s the monster and you’re the hero. This part of the story is over, Midnight. It’s time to go.”

She reached her small freckled fingers out to me.

And I took them.

We stood there facing the monster, side by side and hand in hand.

“I love you,” Poppy whispered. She choked, sucked back a sob, and then said it again. “I love you, Midnight.”

Tears slipped off the tiny crook in her nose, down her perfect chin, down her slender neck. Strands of blond hair stuck to her cheeks. She looked helpless, her arms in the air, her face wet, her eyes wide and scared. She looked young. Young as Bee Lee. Younger.

She said it again. “I love you, Midnight.”

I shook my head. And I did it with my chin held high and my knife in my hand. “No, Poppy. You never did. You never, ever did.”

And we left.

THE DARK. It was thick as drying blood, so thick I could have held it in my hands, if they were