Kai stumbles closer to me, collapsing beside his sister. His sobs have slowed, but he’s trembling so badly it’s a miracle he’s still holding himself up at all.
“Apply pressure here,” I tell him as I guide his hands toward where I’ve pressed a wad of the paper towels to the edge of the blade. Kiki whimpers when Kai’s hands take over for mine, applying a heavier pressure.
Instantly, he drops his hands, looking down at the blood staining them in horror.
“I-I can’t,” he chokes out, looking from his stained hands to Kiki as she beings to writhe.
I do my best to stabilize her with a hand against her shoulder, worried the knife will go in deeper or fall out if she moves. One small mercy is she’s too delirious from the pain to realize I’m the one helping her. I pick up the towels Kai dropped, holding them back in place and applying an even, steady pressure with one hand while holding down her shoulder with the other.
“I-is she gonna be okay?” Kai asks between sobs, hands trembling as he reaches out to take Kiki’s in his.
In the few seconds since I pressed the paper towels against her wound, she’s gone limp. Her eyes are glossy and unfocused, her breath coming out in short, sporadic bursts. It grows shallower and shallower, until the only sign I have that she’s still alive is the faint rise and fall of her chest against my palms. She’s still with us, but I’m not sure she will be for long.
My mind reels with a thousand questions and not a single solution, panic threatening to take over. But one of us has to stay calm if we want to make it out of here alive. If we want any chance of saving Kiki. And as much as I want to lie to Kai and tell him that everything will be fine, I can’t look at him—broken and sobbing as he looks down at his dying sister—and not tell him the truth.
“I don’t—”
I’m cut off by another round of pounding at the door. We both jump back, Kai toppling over onto his butt while I drop the wad of tissues. Kiki’s the only one who doesn’t react, her eyes finally slipping closed. Before I can panic about what that might mean, a voice calls out to us from the other side of the door.
“Dina!”
“What’s going on?” Kai asks, looking frantically between me and the door as the knob begins to jiggle, followed by more pounding. It’s steadier now, heavier, not from a fist or an arm or even a shoulder.
From an axe.
“Who is that?” Kai continues, grabbing my arm with an unexpected amount of force, his fingertips smeared with Kiki’s blood. “Dina, who is that?!”
Fear finally takes over. Clogs my throat and steals my breath. The nagging feeling that’s clung to me ever since I got here consumes me whole like the darkness.
Coming here was foolish—I’ve always known that. Thinking that Kai’s friends would accept me even more so. But I was so desperate to take control of my life that I didn’t care. It didn’t matter that I was making a foolish choice so long as it was my choice to make—something I haven’t done in years. Maybe ever, really. But there was a deeper fear that I’d ignored the minute I agreed to Kai’s invitation. Something I told myself wouldn’t happen because we’d already hit rock bottom. Things were already as horrible as they could possibly be. We were the town villains. Enemies of people who’d never met us. No chance of us ever making friends, at least not ones who knew what our family had done. Finally, we were as closed off from the world as Mami wanted us to be. There wasn’t anything else to lose.
But I was wrong. It’s happening—again. The same thing that ruined our lives. That put Papi away.
Mikey tried to warn me, to tell me that I was in trouble. And I was the fool who let myself believe that he was just talking about a harmless prank. When I knew just how awful things could be.
Legs shaking, I stumble up to my feet just as the axe breaks through the wood of the door. So similar to the one we buried in the backyard deep underground where we were sure the cops would never find it, hoping that they couldn’t pin the murders on Papi. But you don’t need a murder weapon to find someone guilty.
Through the splintered door I catch glimpses of the person on the other side. Blood-soaked hands gripping the axe’s worn wooden handle, stained with mud and wet leaves and dried blood from two boys long buried. Wild brown eyes and a wolflike snarl. A glistening gold ring on her left hand—the one she refuses to take off, even though her husband is never coming back.
Somewhere behind me Kai shouts in protest as I march toward the door, but I don’t hear anything he says. Don’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart and my feet against the wood floor. My lungs burn from the effort of holding in a vicious scream as I throw the door open, the axe tumbling out of the wood and falling to the ground. And, finally, I’m face-to-face with the person responsible for all of it. For ruining my life. Joel’s. For taking someone else’s—those boys’. Carla’s. Papi’s. Whose smile I inherited. Vicious and full of sharp teeth. I tried running away from her, but I should’ve known she’d find a way to track me down.
Mami was never going to let me leave.
26
“How did you find me?” I spit at Mami through gritted teeth, my nails digging into my blood-tacky palms.
Looking at her—braid matted by rain and blood splattered across her hands, arms, face—it’s impossible not to remember that night. How wild she looked when she came storming into the house, ordering for Papi to grab a shovel from the backyard shed to help her dig. The way she ignored all of my and Mikey’s questions and told us to stay in our rooms. The unease in my stomach as we watched from my bedroom window as Papi and Mami dug a hole so deep it came nearly to their shoulders, tossing an axe that had been collecting dust in the shed into it. The same one Papi had warned us a dozen times never to touch.
It’s not the same axe in her hands now, though it’s so covered in mud you might think it was. It took her and Papi hours to dig a hole deep enough to hide the proof of what she’d done—she wouldn’t have wasted that kind of time tonight. Instead, the perfect weapon was sitting in the driveway, as if it was waiting for her to take it.
“They hurt you,” Mami spits back, ignoring my question, her voice rough and gravelly as stone. She’s heaving for breath from the effort of driving the axe through the door. From what she did to Carla and Timothy.
She killed them. Just like she killed those boys. Even after she said it was an accident. Even after she promised she wouldn’t do it again. Even after Papi gave up everything to save her.
“They didn’t—”
“I saw them!” Mami shouts before I can finish. “That girl and her boyfriend. Laughing like hyenas at the Costco. Calling their friends and telling them they were going to pull aCarrieon some girl. When I realized you were missing, that’s when I knew it was meant for you.”
