Page 87 of Bad Intentions

“I should’ve done that years before,” she says with smug satisfaction.

“Done what?”

“The condom trick. Should’ve done it when Al was fifteen.”

“Fifteen?”

She chuckles again in that nasty way that makes me shiver. “Yep. Your mom started spreading her legs early.”

I want to call her names, but I can’t make her angry. “That was a horrible thing to do,” I say instead.

She laughs as she leans over and picks up her gun. “You hear yourself, dum-dum?” She snorts in exaggerated amusement. “Use your brain.” She taps her temple with the barrel of the gun. “If I didn’t do that, you probably wouldn’t exist.” She leans back in her chair, legs wide, the gun resting on one thigh. “That was probably how that slut got knocked up by Derek.”

The thoughts in my head start spinning like a roller coaster. I wasn’t my mom’s choice. I wasn’t even a mistake. I was the result of a nasty joke, a trick, revenge. I can’t quite process how I feel about it right now. Because of this psycho, my mom probably ended the way she did. Also because of her, I exist. This is messed up.

Mallory Blain starts moving her lips, swishing saliva in her mouth, then spits loudly to the side, her angry eyes on me.

She has mood swings, that’s obvious. The realization makes me strain my tied hands behind me. Whatever she injected me with wasn’t meant to incapacitate me for long. No way I can undo the zip tie holding my wrists, but my fingers find the ropes she used to secure me to the chair. I need to get out of here. I need to get her talking, distract her, so I can figure out whether I can somehow loosen the ties. One’s brain concentrates on one thing at a time. While she’s talking, her other senses weaken. She’s so full of herself, enjoying her own messed-up confession, that her distorted ego is taking up all her attention.

But here’s the irony—she’s telling me things about my mom’s past I never knew. I need to buy time. And I need to know the truth. This psycho has a version of it that no one has ever heard before.

“What about the bar fire?” I ask.

She frowns, as if not understanding, then her expression softens and turns cheerful. “Hold up.” She lifts her half-open hand with the gun in it in front of her. “Hold up. We are not there yet. I can’t tell you a little without telling you all. You, Bootsie three-point-oh”—she points the gun at me—“will be the only person who knows it all. Ironic, innit?”

She really needs to stop brandishing the gun in front of me. I wince every time she does, but don’t say a word. I can’t have her snap.

She smacks her lips as if tasting the sick satisfaction from telling me nasty things about my mom. “Before the fire, a whole bunch of things went down. Everyone seemed to know Derek. He was the best thing that happened in this town. The worst too,” she adds, a little too bitterly. “But then, many deserved what happened to them. Including Dougie. So, yes, Dougie met Derek.”

Mallory Blain chuckles again, but her expression right away turns spiteful. “So that day at the fair. Right.”

47

MALLORY

There was Derek, walking through the crowd toward us. As if on cue, every girl started fixing her hair. Al started obnoxiously chirping away.

“How is it going?” Derek asked, scanning everyone, his eyes stopping on me for a long second.

“Wanna join us on the rides?” Vic asked.

“For a minute. I have tickets to the concert tonight.”

“Who are you going with?”

Derek smiled mysteriously. “That’s a secret.”

I didn’t like secrets, and I definitely didn’t want to hang out with him in the company of Al and Vic. No way I’d survive their stupid jokes about me in front of him. He couldn’t know that I was the maid for these two.

I picked up my phone and feigned concern. “Oh, man. I have to run. My shift starts early tonight.”

Before Al and Vic could say something mean, something about me mopping floors or cleaning toilets, I sent air kisses and took off, diving into the fair crowd.

I wasn’t going to let them peacefully enjoy the fair. No way. I was watching them from afar. Clueless, Al didn’t even know how pathetic she looked, hanging on Derek, joking, laughing like a hysterical toddler.

I could call Dougie and tell him Al was fooling around, even though they technically weren’t together. Dougie was a jealous type. But he’d tell Al I told on her.

Then I spotted our neighbors’ kid by the Yo-Yo booth. “Hey, Johnny, come here. Need a favor.”