Page 10 of Violent Skies

“Ready?” she asks, tugging her hair up under her hat before she climbs from the car. She stares at the house like it’s haunted, and maybe she's right.

He was there that night… you saw him clear as day…

The storm was playing tricks on my mind.

“Cress?” Birdie’s voice is gentle, like she’s coaxing me out of the cage I’ve put myself in.

“Yeah, sorry.” I nod. “Hey, do you have any gum?”

“Middle, “she points.” You still do that?”

“Keeps me from vomiting everywhere,” I confirm, grabbing the blue package from the center and unwrapping a piece to put between my teeth. “Let’s do this.”

Both of us climb out of the car and the only thing holding my nerves together is the hot, tingling sensation of the peppermint gum on my tongue as I panic chew it and we walk up to the back of the house. The back door is still open and I scowl at the state of the storm door’s dented metal frame.

Birdie inhales tightly.

“It wasn’t me that made that dent,” I say.

“And that?” She points quietly to the pool of drying blood on the kitchen floor on the other side of the frame.

“Not mine.” I swallow.

“You’re a badass.” Birdie says as she lifts the gun and wanders into the house. It’s a strange thing to watch her move so technically, like she’s been taught to guard her back while keeping her feet moving and her head on a swivel. When, though? By who? I eat the upset I feel as if it doesn’t taste like motor oil and watch her work. She clears each destroyed room with a holler before returning to me, still frozen in the back door. “It’s empty.”

My body relaxes a touch as she shoves the gun in the back of her pants before surveying the mess of the kitchen.

“I stabbed him,” I confess. I blurt it out and Birdie’s eyes grow.

“You what?” She clears her throat and steps around the blood.

“One of them, not fatally… unless they were stupid enough to ignore my advice.” I explain to her and start to kick around at the contents of my kitchen that they dumped on the floor.

“You did that nurse thing, didn’t you?” she asks, and I look at her a little confused. “You know, when you start rambling technical terms at a person in pain.”

“I don’t do that,” I swallow tightly. “He might have bled out… but they would’ve been stupid not to take him to the hospital.”

“That’s good, I’ll text Murphy.” She pulls out her phone.

“What’s he going to do?” I shrug.

Murphy, the quiet, goofy and ill-timed youngest brother of the Monroe gang. He came out of his mother, Yuna, with a dorky smile on his face and it’s never faded. But the last time I saw him he was still trying to figure out how to get through most of his classes without falling asleep. My confusion must be palpable because Birdie looks up from her phone with a soft chuckle.

“He’s sort of a super-genius when it comes to computers,” she says. “Where did you stab the guy?”

“The shoulder,” I tell her, knowing that much for sure.

“He can use that,” she types away, “to check hospitals, drug stores… basically anywhere with a camera and an internet connection. Murphy will find them.”

“That’s kind of scary.”

“It’s terrifying,” she’s quick to confirm. “He knows everyone’s secrets.”

“Right.” I clench my jaw. I’d allowed myself to push them all away after Koa’s death, even before that, and I’d missed them growing up into these careful and intentional, very dangerous people.

“It’s okay,” Birdie says, shoving her phone away. “We’ve been okay.”

“Have you?” I ask in disbelief, my eyes trailing downward as I remember the knife in my hand. I shake my head and hand it to her, watching as she expertly snaps it closed and shoves it back in her pocket.