Bottles fell against the ground from behind the closed bathroom door.
Bain Riche? Cica Chroma? Was Amity trying to take a shower in there? There wasn’t any water running. Light spilled through the cracks, and her shadow lobbed back and forth. I turned away to peek out the window again.
Still empty. Not a single car, just reflective paint and road signs. Watch for Pedestrians. I scanned the alleyways. That dark sedan had to be hidden out there somewhere. It had followed us right until we entered the development before disappearing again. Were they still keeping tabs on me?
Hinges creaked open.
Light filled Verona’s bedroom, and I dropped the open blind. Amity stood, framed in the bathroom doorway, like a person-shaped black hole. “Kurt?” she asked.
“What?” I whispered as if the whole neighborhood could hear. She leaned sideways against the frame, and her head wouldn’t stop wobbling. I walked toward her like an animal sniffing out a trap.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. Something lay bunched up against the shower door behind her. Fur? My stomach twisted as she grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry.”
She was naked. Almost. A white sports bra clung to her body and a triangle of pubes pointed down at her legs. One Way. No U-Turns.
“Why are you naked?” I asked.
She ran her thumb across the scar on my lip with a long and pointed nail. “I did this to you,” she said. Her four other nails tickled my jaw. A spring-loaded bear trap.
My heart pounded. “Maybe you should lay down.”
She took a step closer, but tripped over her bare feet. Her long, sharp nails dug into my bare arm, and we stumbled backwards into Verona’s desk. Something smashed against the floor.
Strawberry. Alcohol. It’s all I could taste. Her lips swelled soft against mine, and her saliva was mostly vodka at this point. The kind that comes in plastic jugs. Did this count as relapsing? She gripped my arm tighter, kissed deeper, and I let my hand fall to her bare ass. Making the Naughty List.
The skin on my arm ripped.
“Shit.” I pushed Amity off of me. Blood dribbled from the scratches she left in my bicep. Caught in the trap. As Amity stumbled to the side, she stepped into a glass mess scattered on the floor.
The vase. That’s what had fallen from the desk.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, pushing Amity away. She fell completely into the wall as I combed through the shards. The single lily beneath.
I picked the flower up by its stem, and glass rained off the petals. I rushed past Amity into the kitchen. Cabinets howled around their hinges as I opened one after the other. How were there no clean cups?
“What the fuck, Kurt?” Amity cried from the other room.
I grabbed a dirty cereal bowl from the counter and dumped out the milk that had clumped together along the bottom. After I turned on the sink to fill it up with water, I held the lily in the light.
“Am I not pretty enough for you?” she yelled.
Most of the petals were still there, on the flower. Nothing had snapped or bent. I let out a long breath, pulling the cereal bowl from the sink. Water sloshed over the sides and against the counter as I placed the lily in its makeshift vase. Balancing it perfectly. The muted street light from outside reflected off the settling water. A painting.
“I think I love you.” The words fell out of me.
Amity stomped out from Verona’s room, dragging some blanket behind her like a fur cape. “What are you? Gay?” She collapsed into the living room couch, not even bothering to wrap herself up.
The floor creaked as I walked slowly towards her. “Do you want a pillow, or…”
“Shut up, Kurt! Okay?” The couch cushion muffled the rage in her voice. “You ruin everything. Just shut up and leave me alone.”
She sobbed louder into the fake leather. I needed a Xanax. My footsteps echoed through the apartment—over Amity’s tears and against the bare walls—as I picked up my cereal bowl vase and brought the flower back to Verona’s room.
In the bathroom, my reflection watched me. Blood had stopped rolling down my arm, and I was still wearing my shirt from the bar. Coyote.
The fur Amity had left piled against the shower were actually her clothes. I sighed, sitting completely down on the tile floor. The scar on my lip stung between my teeth as I started picking through the items on the ground.
A cardigan. Ripped jeans. I tried folding each one like they did at the mall, but they wouldn’t stay square. Socks with strawberries stitched into them. A damp white shirt that smelled like vomit. I held this one up to the light. Across the front, covered by a yellow stain, was the word Deer.
Another wounded animal.
Amity snored from the living room.
Nathan’s newspaper picture stared up at the both of us from the table. Me and Amity. Grease speckled the page as she bit into a microwaved sausage.
Who Killed Me?
“How’re Spit and Clair?” I asked. Amity stared at the clean-cut image of Nathan, taking another bite of food. Police aren’t talking, but everyone else is. “And Jimmy?” I finished.
Her jaw tightened as she chewed. “Do you think it’s my fault?” Her eyes stayed glued to the newspaper article. It’s easy to place blame, but what are we going to do to prevent this from happening again?
She walked the prongs of her fork across her plate before stabbing them into another piece of meat. Grease foamed from the punctures and ran down the sides of the sausage. “Like…am I a horrible person?”
So what if it’s a drug deal gone wrong? Do you know how hard it is for our generation just to get by these days? I work two jobs and go to school.
She brought the sausage to her mouth and bit down hard enough that specks of juice shot over the table to stain my shirt.
I dunk a napkin in my glass of water, and dabbed at my shirt. “Well, wasn’t it the new suppliers that…uhh, that did it?” I asked. The stain was only getting worse.
She shrugged. “Jimmy thinks he was just being reckless.” She finally glanced up from the paper to look at my lip. “You know how Nathan can get.”
I bit the scar. The giant, puffed up fissure that Nathan gave me when he found out I had slept with her. Amity. My guess? He probably started a fight he couldn’t win. That was so long ago. Before Verona. Before I even dropped out of school.
Amity’s phone vibrated, and she squinted her hungover eyes at it. “Speaking of Jimmy,” she said. “I guess I have to go.”
A truck sputtered from somewhere outside, but Amity didn’t move. She rolled her last link of sausage around on its plate. The police need to act. It’s only a matter of time until the next one.
“You know…you’re a lot nicer than you used to be,” she said to her food.
Her chair scratched against the hardwood floor as she stood up. Eyes puffed. She pulled on her cardigan, and didn’t even wait for me to get up before walking down the hall to let herself out.
The walls shook as Amity slammed the front door shut behind her. But there was nothing on them to shake. No pictures. No decorations. When was Verona supposed to be back? I still hadn’t put anything up.
Shit. Was I a horrible person?
Jimmy’s truck continued to sputter and choke from outside. I got up and slowly walked towards the living room window. Maybe if the dark sedan were still there it would follow Jimmy and leave me alone. I pulled open the blind, but there was no sedan. Just Jimmy and Amity.
He had gotten out of his car to hug her. And even from up here, I could still see the mark on his face from when he was mugged. No longer a purple bruise. Just a giant, puffed up fissure.
My tongue brushed against my own scar.
Who Killed Me? Nathan’s voice whispered.
It was as if he were right behind me, like he had crawled out of the newspaper article sitting on Verona’s table to haunt me. I turned around. Nothing. The apartment was still empty. Nathan was still dead.
What had Jimmy done?