Rage moves through me like an animal. Elyse didn’t just torture me. She enjoyed herself. She liked causing another person pain. She’s sick.
Suddenly my hands are claws, my fingernails digging into whatever I’m able to grasp. I feel Elyse’s closed fist slam into the side of my face and hear something crack. The taste of copper fills my mouth. I hit back, and pain explodes through my fist as my fingers connect with the sharp bones in Elyse’s cheek.
“Vaffanculo!” she shouts.
I find her shoulders and throw my weight into her, using the momentum to roll her onto her back. She’s kicking beneath me, hands grasping, but I have the better angle and I’m able to keep her on the ground by sliding one leg over her chest. I dig my hands in her hair. Anger pumps through my veins, hot and seductive.
She grabs for my wrists, scratching the backs of my hands. I barely feel it.
“Diavolina!” she shouts. She spits, the saliva hitting me in the face, sliding down my cheeks. The anger inside burns brighter. I curl my fingers around her scalp, digging my fingernails into flesh.
The flashlight turns on and off from its spot a few feet away, like a strobe light. It illuminates the wall of skulls. The packed-dirt floor. Elyse’s terrified, blood-streaked face.
I pick her head up off the ground, fingers still curved around her skull, and slam it down again.
Elyse grunts. “Don’t—”
I pick her head up. Slam it into the ground.
A flash of white light illuminates blood pooling in the dirt before suddenly switching off again. I slam her head into the ground again, and this time I feel something burst beneath my hands. Hot liquid coats my palms. Something warm and soft sticks to the pads of my fingers. It feels like peeled grapes.
The flashlight flickers on.
Elyse stares up at me, unblinking. Her eyes don’t move. Her mouth is open, tongue sticking to her lower lip in a slick of blood. There’s something on the ground beneath her, and at first I think we knocked one of the skulls off the wall while we were fighting. The sharp, white fragments on the ground look just like bone.
It is bone, I realize—new bone that’s coated in blood and something pink and glistening that looks like . . .
My stomach churns. It’s brain matter. I bashed Elyse’s head in.
* * *
• • •
I have no memory of crawling off Elyse or stumbling away from her lifeless body. It’s like my brain glitches, and then I’m wandering through the pitch-black tunnels—alone. My calves ache. I feel like I’ve been walking for a very long time.
I make myself stop and lean against a wall to catch my breath. The wall is made up of smooth dirt—no skulls. Thank God. I look down at my hands, but they’re practically invisible in the darkness. Just the outline of fingers.
Part of me doesn’t want to believe that what happened with Elyse actually happened. It’s been a long night. Maybe I imagined it. I clench and unclench my fingers, feeling for something sticky coating my skin. They feel dirty and grimy—but dry. I fold them together. They’re trembling.
* * *
• • •
My brain skips again, and now the entrance to the catacombs yawns before me, the spiky black gate swinging in a light wind. The hinges creak as the gate blows open and then closed. The moon hangs in the sky beyond. Bright silver and peaceful.
I frown and look from side to side. I have no memory of finding the gate. No memory of moving away from the wall a few minutes ago.
This is what going crazy feels like, I think. The catacombs are messing with my mind, making me lose my grip on reality.
I close my eyes and flash on the cold, concrete walls of my room in solitary. All at once my lungs feel tight and hot. I can’t breathe. I have to get out of here.
I lurch for the gate, certain Giovanni has already found his way out. He’ll have the truck by now. I just want to leave this crazy village and never come back.
“Bella!”
The voice is desperate. A gasp in the darkness. I freeze, cold fear wrapping around my arms. I turn.
A narrow tunnel twists off to my left, and I never would have noticed it if Giovanni hadn’t called out to me. He’s lying across the ground, his face caved in and covered in a thick spray of blood. Francesca stands over him, a rock clasped in one hand.
She turns her head, slowly, to face me. Her lips split into a grin.
Giovanni gasps, blood spurting from between his teeth, “Run.”
CHAPTER 25
Before
Therapy. Again.
It’s my first day off meds, and everything feels fuzzy. The air around me has texture and weight. It presses against my eyelids and pushes my arms and legs down into the sofa. I feel like I’m sinking.
My nose twitches, but the idea of lifting my hand to scratch the itch seems exhausting.
I’m nestled into the corner of the couch, feet tucked beneath me, body curled around a fluffy pillow. I never get this comfortable at therapy, usually opting to perch right on the edge of the couch so that I can leap to my feet as soon as I’m dismissed. But the thought of holding my body upright seems impossible today.
I stare at a crack in the opposite wall instead, wondering what’s beyond the broken space.
“Berkley.”
I blink and drag my attention back to Dr. Andrews. Her face looks annoyed. Annoyed like I’ve said your name at least a dozen times and you keep ignoring me. Mara used to get like that, when she was studying, and it used to annoy me how I could say her name over and over again and she’d never hear me.
I swallow, and the saliva immediately disappears into the roof of my mouth and the backs of my teeth. Everything inside of me is tacky and dry.
“I’m sorry.” I run my tongue along the insides of my cheeks, trying to draw moisture back into my mouth. “What did you say?”
Dr. Andrews presses her lips together. She says, “I asked you several times now if there was anything you wanted to discuss with me today.”
Her expression is benignly interested, like always. She has her head tilted to the side, her eyes wide and eager, her mouth not quite smiling but pleasant. I wonder if they teach that look in shrink school. Or maybe Dr. Andrews practiced it herself, standing in front of her bathroom mirror, trying all the different smiles she could manage.
The thought makes me grin. Poor Dr. Andrews. Playing at being a therapist.
“You’re smiling.” Dr. Andrews leans forward in her seat, the pillows shifting behind her. “What are you thinking about right now?”
I consider telling her that I’m thinking about strangling her with my bare hands. But that would probably get me put back on the big-girl drugs. I move my eyes from the crack in the plaster to the clock above the door.
Time ticks past. Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Shall we talk about your friend? Tayla?”
I shrug with one arm.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Dr. Andrews asks something else, but this time I don’t even register her voice as words. I pull at a loose thread in the pillow, watching the two pieces of fabric slowly separate from one another and thinking that’s exactly how I feel. Like I’m two pieces of fabric stitched together and every second I spend in this place is another second that my threads are being pulled away. My pillow is becoming unraveled.
“That’s fine,” Dr. Andrews says after a few more ticks. She closes her notebook with sudden finality. I lift my eyes without raising my head.
Have I worn her down? Have I won?
“Fine what?” My voice is muffled by the fabric of the pillow.
Dr. Andrews narrows her eyes, the skin at the corners creasing. “If you don’t want to talk, we’ll have to find another way of treating you.” She drums her fingers against the top of the notebook. “Perhaps more medication. You seemed to respond well to that.”
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I think of the last few days. Days spent in a drug-fueled fog, drooling on myself, barely strong enough to lift my head or brush my own hair.
“I’ll get the prescription.” Dr. Andrews half rises from her chair.
She’s bluffing. Isn’t she?
“Wait,” I say.
Dr. Andrews pauses, and I can tell from her curled lips that I played right into her hand.
I swallow. My mouth is so dry that my tongue feels like it might split right down the middle. “What do you want me to say?”
Dr. Andrews lowers herself back to her chair. My eyes are closed, so I don’t see her do it, but I hear the shuffling sound of fabric and pillows. “I just want the truth, Berkley. That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”
“The truth,” I croak. My voice has no inflection. It sounds like something computer-generated and soulless. “Fine.”
Dr. Andrews isn’t smiling anymore. “Tell me why you feel responsible for Tayla’s suicide.”
I glance down at my lap, thinking about the party. Lights strung up in Mara’s living room. Punch bowl spiked with vodka. Me, Mara, and Harper getting ready in the bathroom, pregaming with a bottle of champagne. We didn’t even invite Tayla to get ready with us. I don’t think any of us expected her to come to the party at all.
Suddenly my hands are clenched, and they’re trembling so badly that my knuckles are crunching against each other, pinching my skin. I unweave my fingers, press them flat against the tops of my thighs, but they don’t stop shaking.
It’s weird. Like my body is experiencing all the emotion I won’t let myself feel.
“Right before she did it, she hooked up with this random guy at a party at our friend Mara’s house,” I say, still staring at my hands. My fingers are tapping now. Erratically jerking against my leg like they contain so much energy that they can’t stay still. “She’d been dating the same guy forever, and it really seemed like they were in love. But we were about to leave for college, and I guess she just . . . freaked out or something. Anyway, she cheated on him.”
I say all of this in a rush, without pausing to breathe or search for a word. The story just . . . slips out, like it’s been there all along, waiting behind my teeth for me to set it free.
I press my hand flat against my leg. “Her boyfriend found out and dumped her. Our other friends stopped talking to her, too.” I think of Mara and Harper turning their backs on Tayla in the cafeteria at school. Dropping their bags in the seat that used to be hers. Pretending they couldn’t hear her when she tried to talk to us. “It was supposed to be, like, a punishment, sort of. It wasn’t my idea to do that or anything, but I played along. We’d been friends since kindergarten, and I just stopped answering her texts. I’d walk past her in the hallway like she wasn’t even there. I think . . . I think that’s the reason she did it. Killed herself, I mean.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Tell me about the night of your panic episode.”
A tear slips down my cheek, and I brush it away with an angry flick of my hand. “I did some drugs with Harper and Mara, like I told you. Stupid stuff. Molly or whatever. I remember going into the bathroom to fix my lipstick, and when I looked in the mirror it was like . . .”
My voice dies in my throat. I close my eyes. Swallow.
“It was like I was looking at Tayla. Like she was looking out at me, through the mirror. She was mad at me because of what I did. I just sort of . . . snapped after that. Everything kind of . . . went black.”
Dr. Andrews clears her throat. I look up in time to see her press her lips into a thin smile, blinking hard. She seems to struggle to keep the shock and horror from her face.
“That’s good work, Berkley,” she says, and I guess I’ve been underestimating how good of a doctor she is, because her voice is serene, without a hint of the disgust she surely feels. She actually sounds like she believes what’s she’s saying. “You can go back to your room now.”
CHAPTER 26
After
The streets are practically empty, but I imagine I hear footsteps thudding behind me. Chasing me. I push myself faster, dragging my injured leg down narrow lanes and dark alleyways, over cool cobblestones.
The sun has only just begun to peek over the tops of crumbling buildings, casting everything around me in gold and shadow. A few stray partygoers stagger home from the festival. Some laugh and sway on too-high heels, voices sharp as broken glass. The rest gaze vaguely ahead, too wrecked to notice anyone outside of themselves.
Their presence calms me. I slow to a fast walk and check over my shoulder, looking for Francesca’s green-tinged hair in the shadows. But she hasn’t caught up to me. Yet.
I keep expecting someone to stop me, ask me what happened. But I blend in. Just another wasted party girl coming back from the festival, covered in corn-syrup blood. No one gives me a second glance.
I release a dry sob when I finally reach the door to Mara and Harper’s apartment. My entire body sags, collapsing against it. I’ve never been so relieved to see anything in my life.
I manage to gather enough energy to lift my arm and bang my fist against the wood. “Harper!” My voice is scratchy. Raw. “Harper, are you there? Please!”
There’s a creak of floorboards behind me. I whirl around, heart pounding in my ears. But the stairwell stays empty.
I bang harder, using both fists now, fingers twitching. What if they aren’t here? They freaked the last time I disappeared. What if they’re out looking for me now?
My heart skips—
And then the door creaks open and Harper is standing in front of me, still wearing her devil’s horns and teddy. Blinking.
“Berkley?” She pulls the door open wider, and I stumble inside, anxiously checking over my shoulder one last time. No Francesca.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Harper’s head jerk up and down, taking in my ripped underwear, the mud, the blood. A shocked giggle bursts from her mouth.
“Looks like you had quite a night.” Scandalized shake of her head and then, as though it’s just occurring to her, “Bad girl. We were so worried. We looked everywhere for you.”
Her voice is lilting, singsong. She’s drunk. She spins in place, falling backward over the arm of the couch and landing on the cushions with another snort of giggles.
For a moment, I just stare at her. She stayed at the party. She and Mara took shots and grinded on strangers while I was stabbed and drowned and burned. They held hands and danced to Italian techno while I ran for my life, Giovanni’s screams still echoing in my ears.
I should be angry. Furious. But the feeling that rises inside of me is something else:
Jealousy.
All I wanted was a normal summer. Not even a whole summer—a normal two weeks. Some girls get everything. Why couldn’t I have this?
A tear hits my cheek, and I wipe it away, angry. There’s no time to feel sorry for myself.
“Harper.” I grab for her shoulder, but she squirms beneath my fingers, making a face.
“Fucking ow, Berk, that hurts!”
“You have to listen to me—”
A bleary Mara walks into the room, rubbing her eyes with a fist. She’s already changed into an oversized NYU T-shirt, and the ragged hem hangs past her knees.
She’s moaning, “Harper, I thought I told you—” And then her eyes land on me and widen. “Jesus! Where the hell have you been? We looked, like, everywhere on earth for you! You could have told us that you were going to run off with—”
She bites back the rest of that sentence, eyes flicking over the deep gash on my leg, the cuts hatched across my cheeks. Her expression twists. “Is that real blood?”
Harper blinks at us from the couch, her mouth going slack. She slurs, “How could that be real?”
“I don’t have time to explain,” I say in a rush. “We have t
o pack and . . . and someone should check flight times and . . .” I know I’m not making sense, but my breath is running wild, my heart vibrating in my ears. Everything inside of me is screaming hurry.
Run. Move. Get out.
I feel another jolt of disappointment for my lost summer in Italy, but there’s no time for that now. I start moving toward the hall that leads to my room. “I need five minutes. You guys call a taxi.”
Harper and Mara share a look they think I’m too stupid or too panicked to see.
“Are you guys even listening?” Cool anger surges through me, making my fingers twitch. They had all summer here. What do they have to be pissed about? “We have to go.”
“We don’t understand, sweetie.” Mara doesn’t seem to know what to do with her face. She juts her chin out at a stubborn angle, mouth twitching in a strange half smile. “Why do we need to go? Who hurt you?”
She speaks in a little-kid voice that makes me want to slap her.
I force myself to breathe. “Something happened at the party last night.”
Harper sits up too suddenly, knocking a pillow to the floor with her knee. I can see her mind working against the booze still dulling her edges. “Wait, did that Giovanni guy do this to you?”
“I’m calling the police,” Mara says, ever practical. She already has her cell out, fingers tapping at the screen.
“No!” I grab it from her, but my hands are shaking and it slams to the floor, a crack spiderwebbing across its screen.
Mara scowls. “Damn it, Berk!”
“Giovanni didn’t do anything.” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. That jealous feeling is coiling tighter, wrapping itself around my lungs. All I wanted was to be normal.
“Look,” I try again, “there isn’t time to explain right now. We have to get out of here, okay? Can you please just trust me on this?”
Last Rites Page 17
