The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(15)

Mom’s car rumbles into the driveway, and the engine cuts. In the quiet that follows, I swear I hear my heart beating against my chest. I don’t think. I lean in close to the mirror, so close I could count the number of lashes on my eyelid. I hold the tiny golden hoop steady with two fingers and twist the bead off. Then I rock the hoop back and forth, ignoring the blistering pain as I ease it out of my skin. Blood bubbles beneath my fingers.

Grandmother watches me from her bedroom. The front door opens and slams closed. Footsteps thud in the foyer.

“Sofia?”

I let the golden hoop fall from my fingers, and it clinks against the sink, landing a half an inch from the drain. I switch on the faucet and it swirls down the drain in a whirlpool of pink, bloodstained water. Only once it’s gone do I allow myself to breathe again.

“I’m in the bathroom, Mom,” I call. I rinse my hands and look back up at the mirror. The blood is still leaking from the hole in my eyebrow. It’s smudged across my forehead and cheek, crusted into my eyelashes. I unwind a length of toilet paper from the roll and bunch it up into a ball, holding it to my face.

Beneath my fingers, the blood blossoms like a flower. Within seconds, the entire tissue is stained red.





CHAPTER SIX


“I still don’t understand why it would bleed so much.” Mom wraps up the chicken we just had for dinner in tinfoil while I fill the sink with soapy water and start the dishes. I shrug, staring at a folded dishtowel next to the sink. It’s red and white with a picture of a rooster on it.

“It was a really big zit,” I say. I cleaned the blood from my face and covered the piercing with a Band-Aid before my mom saw it, but I’ve had to change the Band-Aid twice since she’s been home. Already the new one is red with blood.

Mom puts the chicken in the fridge, frowning as she closes the door. Our phone rings, and Mom leans over the counter and picks it up. “Flores residence,” she answers. A tinny-sounding voice echoes from the other end of the receiver, and Mom smiles. “One moment. It’s your friend Riley,” she says, handing me the phone. “She says she has a homework question. Just don’t take too long.”

I slip out the back door with the phone and curl up in the wooden chair on our patio. Our backyard stretches forever, without any streetlights or nearby houses to break it up. It’s unnerving, like being walled in on all sides with empty space. Insects buzz restlessly, like white noise. I tuck my legs beneath me.

“Riley?” I say into the phone.

“Sof? I saw you with Brooklyn!” My stomach twists, but Riley continues talking before I can worry about whether she changed her mind about the spying. “Why didn’t you tell me? What did you find out?”

“Nothing, really. She took me with her to get a tattoo.” I run a finger along the edge of the bandage on my forehead but decide to keep the details of my piercing to myself.

“That’s it?” Riley sounds disappointed. I lower my hand, quiet for a second as I try to work out what I want to say.

“What did you expect me to find?” My voice comes out sharper than I intend, but I don’t apologize for it. Riley said she was trying to help Brooklyn, but it sounds like she just wanted her to screw up.

“She skinned a cat and left it outside our school.” Riley’s voice has an edge to it. “Or did you forget?”

I press my lips together to keep myself from arguing. Riley thinks Brooklyn skinned that cat. Tattoos and cigarettes aren’t in the same league as animal mutilation.

Riley clears her throat.

“Are you okay, Sof? She didn’t hurt you, did she? Or manipulate you in some way?” The concern in Riley’s voice is real, and suddenly I feel terrible. Riley’s been a real friend to me since I got here, not Brooklyn. I exhale and shake my head, pulling at a piece of loose skin near my fingernail.

“No, it was nothing like that. She was . . .” Cool. The word pops into my head uninvited. “She was weird,” I finish instead.

As the word leaves my mouth I realize it’s just as true. Brooklyn was cool, but I get what Riley means—something about her did feel off. I think of her slender fingers on Santos’s needles, her wolfish grin, and how she persuaded me so effortlessly to get a piercing. She made it too easy to be bad.

“Maybe I’ll find something better tomorrow,” I mumble. There’s a beat of silence. I clear my throat. “How are things between you and Josh?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear? We’re all better now,” Riley says. “He sent flowers to my class third period. Roses.”

“Wow. That’s great.”

“Listen,” Riley says before I can continue. “I just want to say I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable when I asked you to hang out with Brooklyn.”

“Riley, you didn’t,” I insist. “Really.”

“It’s just that I think she really needs help. I have this feeling like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff and she’s about to go over. Like she’ll fall if we don’t help her.”

I run my thumb over a cuticle in slow circles. I try to picture Brooklyn at the edge of a cliff, her combat boots sending rocks off the edge, but it just doesn’t fit with the girl I hung out with this afternoon. Brooklyn was having fun, not crying out for help. “You really think it’s that bad?”