“We're not supposed to be there alone,” Queenie says, perking up at the news and lifting her chin like she's the matriarch of this family. I suppose that she is. After all, Mom is usually sleeping or drinking or hanging out at the clubhouse. With her long, dark curls and her rust colored eyes, Queenie looks almost as regal as her name sounds. Sometimes, I wish she was my mom instead.
“I'll hang around a while,” Sin says, leaning against the side of the partition with a strange look on his face, like maybe he's the only person in the room that's bothered by us being there. I've noticed that whenever we show up at the clubhouse, Sin stops drinking, puts down his cigarette. If he's got a girl on his lap, he pushes her aside, and he watches us with eyes the color of stars, a light silver-gray that seems to twinkle if he looks at you too long. “Just for a while,” he repeats, but what he really means is all night because my parents won't be coming home.
They never do on Saturdays.
“Get your things, Gidget,” Queenie tells me, putting her iPad back in her bag and standing up. Her short skirt swishes against her thighs, and I notice one hand clench into a fist in the fabric. It's squeezed so hard that when she notices me looking and releases her fingers, I can see moon-shaped crescents on her palm.
That's the first time I understand that maybe, just maybe, our life isn't exactly normal.
“I've got your bag,” Sin tells me, grabbing my white and purple backpack with one hand and watching me carefully. He looks at the three of us like he'd die to protect us. At first, I thought that was just because he was a part of the club; it was his job to make sure the vice president's kids were okay.
Later, I realized it was because he had a sister once upon a time … and that he didn't anymore.Now …The next morning, I stay barricaded in my room until I hear the roar of an engine, that violent bestial growl that lights up the night like the sound of a wild animal, one made of steel and leather and rubber. I grit my teeth as I listen to Beast pulling out of the driveway, tearing down the street like a shotgun blast.
It's only then that I risk slipping into a pair of sweats and a tank top and heading downstairs.
“Cat isn't here, is he?” I ask Sin when I find him sitting on the couch with his arms thrown across the back, spread wide like the pair of wings he has tattooed on his hips, nice and low and tempting. Too tempting. I've been tempted by Sin since I was fourteen years old.
“Looks like it's your lucky morning,” he tells me, his voice as smooth and practiced as a rockstar's, like he must use those beautiful vocal chords to entertain an audience. Since all he ever does is use them to lull women into his bed, it's a real shame to hear him speak, like I can see all that wasted potential leaking from his tattooed throat.
I grab a sweater from the coat tree near the front door and sling it over my shoulders, wrapping it tightly around me. When I'm with Sin, I feel like I need more clothes, more insulation between us. Which, you know, is ridiculous considering he looks at me like a sister, like a girl instead of a woman.
Except for that one time …
I lick my lips and I don't think about that. I think about Sin driving my mom's SUV with the lucky pink rabbit foot hanging from the rearview mirror, and I think about him watching as Queenie tucked me into bed, of his face at my window, gazing into the yard with his jaw tight and teeth clenched.
“What's he gonna do? Besides sic my brother on me, I mean,” I say as I set foot in the kitchen with its white marble floors—heated floors, too, like a real crime family with money and all that. I don't use it though, the money. Not any of it. Those hundred and twenty dollar pants? I earned those by working at the raptor center (that's birds, not dinosaur fossils) as well as the ice cream shop downtown.
If I had the choice, I wouldn't live in this house either, use its electricity, its water, its internet. It's all dressed in blood, every single square foot, each acre, all of these shiny silver appliances. It's red and dripping and stinking of copper, even if nobody but me can see it.
The couch creaks and I cringe, closing my eyes for a quick moment and opening them to see Sin standing in the entrance to the kitchen. He moves too fast, almost inhuman. If I believed this world was anything but ugly and gray and desolate, I'd think he was something special, a demi-God or a prophet or some hero sent like Hercules to save us all.
