Page 171 of The Initial Insult
I follow Gretchen’s finger to see Tress hovering over the jewelry table.
Shit.
Chapter 77
Tress
Senior Year
It hangs, dangling in the sun, too dirty to shine. The engraved word caked in neglect.
Around my neck, its mate, the answer. Under that, a patch of skin, always green now—because I’ve never taken it off.
The other half of my heart is on sale for a quarter.
Chapter 78
Felicity
Senior Year
“Seriously?” Gretchen’s gum snaps in my ear.
“What?” I ask again, my back to her as I sort through children’s clothes.
“Tress just took something off the jewelry table and walked away.”
“Okay,” I say. I fold clothes, adoring the symmetry in the squares I can make, the order under my hands.
“Do you remember when she stole your tampons? Klepto.”
Chapter 79
Tress
She’s got the heart in her hands, pulling down, pulling on my neck, pulling me over the wall.
“Felicity, you need to let me go. I can’t lift you by myself. I’ve got to get Hugh.”
“Where’s mine?” she asks, her eyes on the necklace. “Where is my heart?”
“Here,” I tell her, digging into my hoodie pocket. “It’s here. I brought it for you. I thought . . .”
I don’t know what I thought. That I would show it to her and she’d be overwhelmed by the grief of what we lost, pushed by her emotions to tell me what happened that night?
I don’t know.
But I definitely didn’t think I’d be putting it around her neck, clasping the back through a bloodied knot of hair, lifting her chin because she can’t raise her own head.
I didn’t think I would kill her.
I reach past her legs, past a wet mess of all kinds of things, for my phone, turning the light away, out of my eyes.
“You’ve got it back now,” I tell her. “You’ve got your half of the necklace.”
It rests, lackluster, against her gray skin, next to a runnel of her blood.
Her half, the half that reads Best. Because that’s the half she wanted. Of course she did. And maybe that’s right. Maybe Felicity Turnado is better than Tress Montor, not because of her house or her car or her parents or her clothes. Maybe Felicity Turnado is better than Tress Montor because she never killed anyone.
