Page 10 of Darling Venom
bsp; It’d released last month and already entered its third printing. Think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Trainspotting in a very dark alley.
The New York Times had named The Imperfections the biggest book of the decade before it even came out.
Three different adaptations in the works—film, television, and stage. Translated into fifty-two languages. Record for fastest-selling paperback in America.
Word around town was, it’d win the National Book Award this year.
I continued, trying to keep a monotone, “Mom was model Christie Bowman. You may remember she died of an overdose with her face smashed into a broken mirror from which she snorted cocaine in her family home.”
I didn’t mention I’d found her dead.
I didn’t mention all the blood.
I just didn’t.
Now it was Charlotte’s turn to look at me as if I’d fallen from the sky.
I soldiered through. “I have an older half-brother. Tate. From Dad’s eighties fling. He ripped me away from Dad on some bullshit excuse, and Dad is too frail to fight for custody.”
“For real?”
Her eyes were very big and very green, and I wanted to jump into them and run like they were a rural field.
Looking down, I nodded and pushed my ass up, suspended by my palms. “At least your sister took responsibility for you because you don’t have parents.”
This was not the victim Olympics, but it kinda was, seeing as, if one of us would be granted the right to die tonight, it needed to be me.
“I do have a parent,” I continued, “but my brother is keeping him away. I think it’s because Dad wasn’t there for Tate when he grew up. He got all fucked-up about it, and now he is punishing him through me.”
“He sounds like a real piece of work.”
I sat back down, wiped the roof grime on my hoodie, and nodded, realizing I probably looked too eager.
But no one, except maybe Dad, ever had anything negative to say about Tate, and this was Charlotte Richards, and she’d just called my brother a real piece of work.
“Tate’s a demon. I could’ve lived with Dad, transitioned to homeschool, gone on book tours around the world. I want to be a writer like him. But no, I have to go to this nightmare of a school and come home to nothing because Tate works eighty-hour weeks.”
“You said want.” She bit her lower lip. “Not wanted. Present tense.”
“So?”
“Bet your dad will be super bummed when he realizes you offed yourself.”
“Don’t try to convince me not to do it,” I warned.
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to.”
There was a pause, then she said, “I bet when you’re midair, you’ll regret it.”
I whipped my head her way. “What?”
Charlotte Richards, my eighth-grade crush, was telling me not to kill myself.
I didn’t even want to process that.
“When your body is no longer on this roof, you’re going to realize what a stupid mistake you’ve made. Not to mention, I don’t think we’ve thought this through all the way. It’s not that high. You can break your spine and spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, drooling into your chest. You have too much to lose.”
