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I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. It felt like I’d been holding it since I lied to Keane. “I’m sorry.”
“That I almost got killed or that I did some killing? ’Cause I’m not sorry about any of it. Not sorry, not sorry, not sorry at all. Is the hall spinning for anyone else? Just me? Okay, I’m gonna go get blood on Annie’s couch. Don’t worry, James—she can’t see it. She’ll never know.”
I hear her shoulder dragging along the wall as she stomps—lurches—stomps to my room.
“Did you give her something?” I ask. I assume she isn’t bleeding to death or James wouldn’t have let her come up here at all. Maybe he gave her something for the pain already? I didn’t smell any alcohol on her breath. She hasn’t been this bad in a long time.
“No.” James has the audacity to sound sad. He has no right to be sad about what this is doing to my sister. I take another step toward my apartment, and he brings his hand down on my arm. I shrug away from it.
“She’s not allowed to be here right now.”
“James. She got shot. She killed someone. I think you can afford to bend the rules.”
He’s quiet and I hold my breath: please, please be a person, just this once. “Fine. I’ll send Grant up to take care of her in your rooms. But then she’s got to go.” I hate him. I hate that Fia can only visit me when they say so, that we can’t ever leave this floor of the school together. That Fia can live somewhere else while I am kept locked up.
“You’re a saint.” I bite off the words, wishing I could be the poison to him that Fia is to Eden.
“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry. About everything. And I promise I won’t leave her alone tonight. I’ll take care of her.”
“She’s not yours to take care of.” I walk to my room without tracing the wall and slam the door shut. “Fia? Where are you?”
A muffled sob comes from the couch. I trip on the corner of it and swear. I haven’t tripped on my furniture in years. Then I nearly sit on her legs as I try to sit next to her. “Shh, it’ll be okay.”
“It won’t be okay. Annie, what I did…what I did…I’m so sorry. I’ll fix it, I promise.”
I find her hair and stroke it; it’s soft but at the end it’s hard and crusted with something. Blood. I want to throw up. My baby sister is on my couch and she has blood in her hair and I don’t know if it’s hers or his.
“Did you see anything?” she whispers. “Are they going to kill us? Are we still okay?”
“We’re fine, we’re fine, I promise, we’re fine.” I wish I could see her arm, see how bad it is. Look in her face to see how much pain she is in. Maybe I don’t wish it, actually. I’d rather see her dancing.
Which reminds me. “Don’t go dancing.”
She laughs. “Why?”
“Someone watches you.”
She laughs again. It’s harsh and low and nothing like the way she laughed when we were little. “When I dance, everyone watches me.”
I sigh, lean my head against hers. “And don’t let James stay at your place tonight.”
“Did you see something? Is something bad going to happen?” She sounds terrified.
“I’m your big sister. I don’t have to see anything to know James is always something bad.”
Fia snorts. “You wouldn’t think so if you could look at him.” Then her voice is muffled as she moves the pillow back, brushing my face with it. She screams into it, then sobs, then throws it with a thud across the room. “My arm really hurts,” she whimpers. I hear her finger tapping on the couch cushion, the three-then-pause-then-three in an unending loop. Oh, Fia.
“I know. But it’s okay. You’re done. I won’t let them make you do that ever again.”
“Annie,” she says, hooking one hand behind my neck and pulling my head down to her lips. “I didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t do what?”
“I’ll fix it, I promise. You’ll be proud of me, I’ll make you proud, and I’ll get you out. I didn’t do it. I couldn’t. I didn’t kill Adam.”
My heart freezes, and I grab her by the shoulders. She yelps with pain. “You didn’t?”
“No, I couldn’t! I’m sorry. I know I screwed up. But I thought…I hoped…you wouldn’t have wanted me to kill him. He’s nice, Annie. I made the right choice. I listened to myself for the first time in years. I was so scared I’d come back and you’d be—that they’d know, and they’d hurt you. But they don’t know. I got away with it. And I’m going to keep listening to myself. I can do this.” She waits for me to answer, but I don’t, I can’t. Her voice is even more pained when she talks again. “I thought you’d be proud that I saved someone Keane wanted dead.”
