Page 45 of What Rough Beast

Growing like cancer

Living beside

Normal

As if it belonged there.

My heart leaps in my chest, answering the cadence of burnedoutgirl’s poetry. It’s stark, it’s real, it’s beautiful, and it’s closer to me than anything else ever has been. To see it here, staring me down outside the tech office, makes me feel like I’m naked in public, but worse than that. Because between football and fucking, a few dozen people in this building have seen me in my skin, but only one person has ever seen inside of me.

And she’s right here.

“Okay,” I say, suddenly nervous. I have to get up, I have to cross the hall and look at the little white placard naming the artist. I stand shakily, legs trembling.

Her words are peeking out from the mosaic, which looks like a textbook diagram of a torso, until you get closer. Then it becomes clear that every turn of intestine is inked with words, the lungs full of screaming mouths, the heart pumping black oil instead of blood. An edge of the paper is burned and pulled away to reveal her words, hitting me like a wrecking ball, even now, even when I know them. Just like I know the name written underneath it.

Ava Germaine.

Twenty-Seven

Hailey

Micah Harding is a piece of shit and a massive asshole. He’s a sellout and a coward and the only good thing about him is his jawline. I tell myself all of these things as I stomp back to class, trying hard to ignore the fact that most of these things are true about me as well. When I see Mrs. Sternall, the guidance counselor, standing at the head of my English class holding a bunch of college pamphlets, I turn around and walk the other way. Last year she’d sat me down in her office to talk about how my GPA, combined with scholarships and grants, could make college affordable.

I’d laughed, told her if affordable meant free, then maybe. But also, she’d need to find a car costing the same amount, and a gas station that’s willing to go pro bono as well. Some people think poor means that I have to bum rides and don’t have name-brand clothes, not realizing that I’m the type of poor that has to share bathwater with her mom and charges her phone at school because at home electricity is touch and go. I don’t want to hear about college or see the smug look on Murphy Ricks’s face as he scrolls through his phone, not listening because he’s got a full ride for baseball, when my brother’s shot vanished at a four-way stop one mile from home.

But that’s life, right? One big asshole barreling down a hill, knocking everybody over into a shit pit. Well, not everybody. Some people get to do the fucking, while the rest of us get fucked. I know exactly where I want to land on that diagram, and it’s not the place I started from. If that means I have to be cold, I’ll be fucking freezing. If I have to be hard, I’ll be a damn boulder. And if I have to be calculating, I’ll be a TI-84 with tits.

What I can’t be is someone who gives a shit about other people, which becomes a problem when I come around the corner and see Ava Germaine sitting on the floor in front of her locker. She looks up and spots me, so I can’t just turn around.

“Hey,” she says, voice flat and drained, barely reaching me though we’re only five feet apart. “I never got to tell you, I’m sorry about your grandpa.”

Of course she is. Ava Germaine feels terrible about the fact that she acted in self-defense and someone else got hurt. This is why she’s one of the fucked ones.

“Is he okay?” she asks, and I sigh, glancing around to make sure nobody spots me talking to her. But the halls are empty, so I slump down onto the floor, our shoulders almost touching.

“He’ll be fine,” I tell her. “What are you doing?”

“Somebody pissed in my locker,” she says tonelessly, as if this was to be expected.

“Fuck,” I say, glancing inside.

I’m sure Ava just leaves her combination lock set to open, like the rest of us. Somebody—likely Blake Peery—took advantage of that, playing the game that I set into motion, the one with no rules and winner takes all. I open my mouth to tell her I’m sorry, but I’m not. I can’t be. Being sorry means you wish you could take it back, and I don’t. Because taking it back would mean that I stay where I started—a fucked loser.

“How’s your hand?” I ask instead.

She lifts it, inspects the bandage. “It’s not so much the stitches that bother me,” Ava says, completely devoid of tone. “It’s that I lost my fingerprints.”

“Oh yeah?” I say casually, ignoring the jolt in my stomach. “When do you remember having them last?”

“You live across the road, right?” Ava asks, ignoring my question. Her eyes find mine, clearing a little.

“From Widow’s, yeah,” I say, cautiously. “What about it?”

“Anything strange ever happen out there?”

I snort, glance both ways again. “You’re asking the girl whose yard is lined with broken appliances?”

Ava shakes her head. “That’s your financial situation. It might not be normal, but it’s not unnatural.”