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Poor Tonya was still alive. Stabbed in the chest, she was only trying to escape when she started to cut her way through Preston.
Billie hates her for that.
Preston didn’t know it was Tonya, didn’t know she was hurt and needed help, that she was scared. So he did what he had to do, to protect Billie and himself.
He had to kill her.
But if Tonya had just taken off that fucking hood, told them she wasn’t Blood Hood, told them she needed help…
Maybe they would’ve believed her.
Maybe, she might still be alive.
They all failed her. Tonya’s parents, too. They thought she’d just run off after Gigi, that she would come back and the whole two days she was missing, she was tied to a chair.
That eats Billie up inside.
But the bulk of her pity is for Kate.
Sure, what Trevor did to Tonya was brutal, and what he did to Billie means she’ll never walk right again, but his betrayal against Kate?
Just as Trevor said to Billie, ‘That’s fucking grim.’
But as always, Kate’s talent for compartmentalization is flawless.
“How is it in here?” she asks Billie as she shifts her weight in plush armchair, some creamy leather thing that’s button tufted and creaks when you lean back.
Billie prefers it on the window ledge at the back of the visitor room, away from the throngs of visitors dotted around the tables and sofas.
So this is where she stays planted, her clear blue eyes fixed on the man-made lake beyond the paneled glass.
“Tacky,” she decides after a beat. “Like everyone needs reminding they’re from money, you know?”
That’s what this place is. An artificial sandbox for wealthy brats and the kids of celebrities. To Billie, home is muddy, stony shores and swamps with gators, rundown bars and people who spit chewing tobacco and wear too small tops with faded jean-shorts.
Here, at Eden Park, it’s faux white sands lining a blue-water lake, thick waxy rosebushes, the greenest grass that’s watered all night long by skittering sprinklers, and folk who smoke French cigs, wear linen slacks and a lot of beige.
To Billie, “It ain’t home.”
But both girls know, they can’t ever really go home again.
18
ANOTHER MONTH LATER
AUGUST 1998
Eden Park gave Billie her red chip. Thirty days sober. On her way to gold; sixty days.
An eternity to her.
19
AUGUST 1998
“It needs done.”
Kate’s answer is a quiet thinning of the lips. She tucks them inwards, but her gaze traces Billie’s to the window opposite. With the subway spearing through underground tunnels, the window in the carriage has transformed into something of a mirror. And their reflections look back at them.
