Page 69 of Pretty Savage: Defy

The Order can have its rituals. Its witnesses.

It can have every rotten tradition it mistakes for power.

It does not get the sound of Carrson’s heart under my cheek or the places his hands left heat on my skin. It does not get the way he looks at me now, tender and undone, like I’m the only sacred thing he’s ever believed in.

They don’t get this.

It belongs to us.

Laurel and Carrson. Art by: Momo Mitsuko

Chapter eighteen

Two Days Until Bonding

Carrson

“You’re sure it was the cellar?” Thomson asks the next afternoon. “That’s where Laurel saw someone?”

“That’s what she said.” I yank the joystick to the left, sending Sub-Zero under one of Raiden’s lightning bolts. My fingers move over the buttons, and an uppercut launches Thomson’s character across the screen. “Ha! Got you.”

“You attacked while I was talking.”

“I can do two things at once. Sorry you can’t.”

Raiden pushes himself off the stone floor while Thomson adjusts his glasses with one hand, the other still resting on the controls. “You’ve been using that excuse since we were eleven.”

“And I’ve been beating you since we were eleven.”

“I don’t lose every time.”

“True. Sometimes I let you win.” I grin to show him I’m kidding. Mostly.

The Mortal Kombat II cabinet stands against the far wall of the game room, its black casing nicked near the base from the countless times we moved it around trying to find the perfect spot. We bought it ourselves, which makes it my favorite thing in this house.

Our fathers had been drinking on the back terrace when Thomson and I found the machine for sale in Ashport. An empty bottle sat between them, and another made its way back and forth across the table while we begged. Father finally offered us a deal. If we could earn the money ourselves, without touching our accounts or asking anyone in The Order for a handout, we could buy it.

They agreed because neither of them believed we could do it, and because they were far enough into the second bottle to find our determination amusing. Our fathers assumed we would lose interest as soon as we realized wanting something and working for it were two different things.

They underestimated how badly we wanted to tear each other’s spines out on a glowing screen.

Thomson came up with the idea after watching groundskeepers collect golf balls from the pond behind the Ashport Country Club. Hundreds sank into the water every week, especially near the sixth hole, where rich men drank too much and blamed the wind for their terrible swings.

Using aluminum poles, wire mesh, and pieces from an old pool-cleaning system, Thomson built a rake wide enough to drag along the bottom.

I did the dragging.

Three mornings a week, before the first golfers arrived, I waded into water that smelled like fertilizer and dead fish while Thomson directed me from the bank. We hauled out buckets of balls, cleaned them in the stable washroom, sorted them by brand, and sold the best ones back to club members for half of what the pro shop charged.

By the end of the summer, we had enough money for the console and delivery, with enough left over to replace the joystick after I broke it during our first week.

Our fathers tried to argue that pulling lost property out of a pond didn’t count as legitimate employment. Thomson produced the contract, complete with both their names scrawled across the bottom. He’d insisted they put the deal in writing the night they made it, and however much they’d had to drink, they couldn’t deny what they’d promised us.

Now the electronic music repeats while neither of us starts another round.

“What exactly did she see?” he asks.

“A hand gripping the edge of the door and reddish-blond hair before whoever it was pulled the cellar shut.” I lean against the cabinet, replaying Laurel’s description. She’d tried to dismiss it at first, convinced the shadows or the glass had distorted what she saw, but Laurel doesn’t imagine details like that. She notices things everyone else overlooks and worries at them until she pulls the truth loose.