Page 78 of The Initial Insult

“Hurts, right?” I ask, digging into what Felicity just told me, doing the same thing she was, trying to find the scraps of what we still share.

Like being shocked by an electric fence.

Like knowing how something dies.

“I loved that dog,” I say, and it’s another dumb thing to say, but it’s true, and like a lot of true things it’s also incredibly sad.

I’m crying when I lay the next row.

Chapter 69

Felicity

Tress’s hands shake a little as she lays the ninth row of bricks, drops of her blood mixing with the mortar. She doesn’t speak as she does it, and I don’t argue. There’s nothing to say. I might have ranted and raved at her about the junior-class secretary thing, but I deserve the bricks she’s laying right now.

I try to calculate, measure the distance that’s left. But there’s an echo in my head still, Tress’s words not letting go of me.

Cheaters gonna cheat. . . .

Cheaters gonna cheat and I know how it feels to drown. These thoughts hold hands in my head, forming a chain leading back into the dark parts of my mind, the ones I threw shadows over, in order to forget.

But that’s inside of me, and I need to concentrate on what’s outside right now. The wall in front of me is past my thighs; the layer Tress is adding will bring it halfway up my body. There’s still space between it and the ceiling, but the gap is closing. We’re over halfway there. I exhale, the sharp smell of my own breath filtering up to my nose. What the fuck am I going to do?

My mom is an eternal optimist, always looking for the bright side of things, even if they do tend to verge on being incredibly shallow. When life hands you lemons, put them in your hair for highlights is one of her favorite sayings. Global warming means better tans. The flu that laid her low at the beginning of the week was doing her a favor by trimming off at least five pounds. Her immediate reaction to the doctor diagnosing my seizures had been to proclaim, “Well, at least it’s not something with your face.”

What would she have to say about this? I wonder.

You’re going to die, but Tress Montor will still be a brunette.

I laugh a little, but it quickly descends into a sob, thinking of my mom. She’s not going to be okay, if this ends the way I think it’s going to.

“Something funny?” Tress asks. She puts the pail down, and rests on the chair, her skin sallow and sagging after the effort that went into adding the layer of bricks.

The truth is that nothing is funny, not a damn thing. I’ve been slipping in and out of consciousness, my mind hopping from the night her parents disappeared to this musty, dank hole I’m going to die in. I don’t want to be in either place, and what I’ve remembered is not going to make Tress any happier. I’m chained to a wall, facing down a girl who wants to entomb me. And I have to tell her something that’s going to kill her.

Then she’ll kill me.

I guess that’s fair.

“No,” I say. “Nothing’s funny.” Upstairs, a roar of laughter contradicts me.

“Tress . . . ,” I say, my words dry in my throat. “I need to tell you something.”

She hears the weight in my words, looks up. “Yeah?”

“Your dad was cheating on your mom.”

Her eyes, still blank, stare at me, and I think maybe I didn’t say it. Maybe I’ve spent so much time not saying the important things that when I finally tried, the words didn’t actually come out. Then she’s up, one bare foot sliding in the pool of her own blood as she comes at me, pointing the trowel in my face.

“That’s a fucking lie! You’re a fucking liar!” she screams, voice cracking.

I shake my head. “No. No, Tress, I’m not.”

I don’t have the energy to be scared, or upset, or angry in return. I don’t have anything left, and it must show, because she backs off, the outrage in her eyes dying a little as she considers the possibility.

Tress might not have had her parents her whole life, but she also didn’t have what I do—the experience of watching a marriage fall apart. She didn’t get to see the big fights, the small digs, the knowing glances, the laden words said in conversational tones. Maybe the Montors were careful not to let her see, or maybe she never knew, and she’s held on tight to just the good things, canonizing them in her memory.

Well . . . the Montors weren’t saints. I can say that, for sure.