Page 1 of The Knucklebone Brothers

The gasoline smelled like holy water, and I was the damn preacher. Sloshed it right against the peeling paint of that old abandoned church, the plastic jug slick in my hands. The moon up there was just a sliver of a thumbnail, barely enough light to see the shitty graffiti me and that boy tagged on the wall a few summers back.

LET US IN.

Fuckin’ irony of it. God didn't let my momma in. He slammed the goddamn door in her face and let the cancer eat her up from the inside out. I sat there and watched it. Watched her turn into a stranger made of yellow skin and bones, smelled the stink of sickness that clung to every damn thing in our trailer. Held her hand while she shook apart, listened to her last breath rattle outta her like a broken-down engine.

"Shoulda done somethin'," I slurred at the empty building, the cheap whiskey making my tongue thick. "Shoulda saved her, you son of a bitch."

I flicked my Bic, and the whole world went up in a beautiful orange roar. That fire was alive, it was hungry. It ate the shadows and the silence and all the goddamn praying I'd done that went nowhere. It was the only thing that made sense anymore. The heat blistered my face, and I just stood there and took it. Let it burn me clean.

The sirens coming were just the drums in my song.

Then Deputy Miller showed up. Same man who bought me a Coke once when my truck died on the side of the road. He came at me with his hands out like I was some scared-ass puppy. "Rory, honey, step away from there now."

Honey. That word was like a lit match dropped right in the pool of gasoline in my gut. I didn't step. I launched. Screamed something that didn't even sound human and went for his face with my nails. "Don't you fuckin' touch me! Don't you 'honey' me, you son of a bitch!"

They took me down hard. My cheek scraped on the asphalt; it tasted like blood and dirt. When the cold steel of their cuffs clicked around my wrists, I just laid there and laughed. A real, gut-deep, unhinged laugh that bounced off the trees and mixed with the crackle of the church burning to the ground. I'd finally done something. Finally made a goddamn mark.

ONE YEAR LATER

County lockup spat me out like a watermelon seed. One minute I was in that concrete box, the next I was standin' on the steps with a paper bag full of my shit: a faded Black Flag tee, ripped jeans, and a pack of menthols. The air hit me like a wet blanket, thick and heavy with the smell of rot and damp earth. Smelled like freedom, alright, but felt like a cage I couldn't see.

I caught my reflection in the bus station window. A ghost of a girl stared back, all pale skin and hollowed-out eyes. My hair was a mess, the dark strawberry blonde curls a tangled, frizzy halo around my face, flattened on one side from sleepin' on the institution pillows that smelled like bleach. I looked like a tired, mean stranger with a pretty face, the kind folks 'round here trusted until I opened my mouth and ruined the illusion.

The bus ride back was quiet. Every last soul on that damn bus gave me a wide berth, eyes dartin' away the second they caught my own pale blue-green ones. They knew who I was. Or they thought they did. Fire-startin' Rory. Crazy Rory. The girl who lost her damn mind when her momma died and tried to burn the good Lord's house to the ground.

Got off at the stop near the edge of town, the one where the sign for "Mercy Ridge" was missin' half its letters. Place hadn't changed a bit. Same busted-up storefronts, same rusty pickups, same suffocating feel of a town where everybody knew your goddamn business and hated you for it.

And the whispers started up right away, soft as snakes in the grass.

I didn't give them the satisfaction of looking. Just kept walking, shoulders squared, eyes straight ahead. To them, I was a ghost. A tragic little story they told their kids at night to scare 'em straight. Don't you go and end up like Rory Vale.

They saw me as unstable. Dangerous. A goddamn problem to be managed.

And they weren't wrong.

They'd only planned on keepin' me for six months. That's what the court-ordered shrink, Dr. fuckin' Joey, told me. "Six months, Rory. Once the medication stabilizes you, you'll be a new person." He smiled like he was selling me a used car.

I smiled right back. "Sure thing, doc."

Every morning, they'd line us up, little paper cups of water in our hands. Nurse Gale with her dead eyes would come by with her little tray of pills, making sure we swallowed. I learned real quick how to tuck that little white pill under my tongue. She'd check my mouth, see nothing, and move on. The second she turned her back, I'd spit it into my palm and hide it under my mattress. By the end of the first month, I had a whole damn collection under there, a little graveyard of their attempts to fix me.

They caught on, of course. They always do. They switched me to liquids. I learned to hold it in my cheek and spit it into the toilet later. They put me on shots. I learned to tense my muscle so the damn thing just sat in a bubble under my skin until I could squeeze it out. They tried everything, and I fought them every step of the way.

'Cause I knew the truth. They weren't trying to stabilize me. They were tryin to hollow me out. To file down all the sharp edges, to drown the rage in a sea of numbness. They wanted to turn me into one of them other zombies in there, the ones who just stared at the TV all day with their mouths hanging open. I'd rather be crazy than dead on the inside.

So I fought 'em. For six extra, long months. Solitary. Lost privileges. More therapy sessions where I just stared at the clock and refused to say a goddamn word. Finally, they couldn't legally keep me anymore. I wasn't "stabilized," but I wasn't a danger to myself or others—not anymore, not on the outside. So they had to let me go. Signed the papers, gave me my shit, and pushed me out the door.

But they didn't see the whole picture. Didn't see the cold, hard knot of rage living in my chest like a tumor. Didn't see how my hands itched for a fight, for a bottle, for a match. Didn't see the feral, unhinged thing that got born in them sterile white rooms of the nuthouse, a creature that learned to survive by being sharper, meaner, and crazier than before.

Folks around here think I belong in sunlight, with my soft gold hair and my pretty face. They don't understand that's what makes me so dangerous in the dark.

Now I'm home.

Chapter 1

The air in my cousin Lacey’s trailer was suffocating, smelling of strawberry air freshener and cheap weed. I was sprawled on her floral couch, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked like two goats fucking, when she bounced in, all sparkly eyeshadow and frantic energy.

“Get up, bitch. We’re goin’.”