Page 60 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
Two more hours until the meeting. You can do this, Em.
Two more hours to go without food. Maybe there’d be a breakfast spread at the meeting.
My plan had been to eat the crackers I’d stolen from the party, but Nash had taken them all, along with my wallet. Ironic, considering Nash used to be the person to feed me when Mother refused to.
“And so the savior becomes the villain,” I whispered to the dark room.
The Polaroid of stars in my wallet was the one thing that reminded me of Dad that didn’t immediately make me hate him.
The golden tiger on the back was supposed to be me.
A warrior.
A survivor.
A fighter who never backed down.
But after a slew of death threats post-Winthrop Scandal, I’d written, “ride me” in angry bold letters on the bottom, a reminder that the tiger wasn’t a warrior.
The tiger was ridden.
By Di
onysus.
By Durga.
Dionysus and Durga were the god and goddess.
They were warriors.
And the tiger? Nothing but a glorified pet.
The pictures of Reed and Teddy Grieger’s card served as untainted memories of my childhood. Snapped in Polaroid, a series of smudged ink and blurry pixels. Moments I didn’t know were valuable until they’d already become faded memories.
On the days I felt small, I looked at those pictures and reminded myself that I might be one person, but I was also a thousand memories, a million feelings, and infinite love.
I was immeasurable.
Now someone owned the Winthrop Estate, which meant someone owned all my memories.
And Nash had stolen the only ones I had left.
I didn’t know who was worse.
The faceless monster or the monster I knew.
On top of the fucked-up wet dream starring some warped hybrid of Nash and Ben, I woke up a second time to a piercing hangover and an email from Mother. One I actually replied to—the second sign of the apocalypse.
I idled around, flicking lint off the blanket, looking up unique words on my dictionary app, refolding some shirts in my worn cardboard box, replaying memories of Nash in the elevator, and sewing up the hole that had formed on the curve of my Converse.
Anything to put off reading it.
I caved after twenty minutes and pulled up my email app, already knowing I’d hate whatever she had to say. I always did.
