A Shameless Little BET

by Meli Raine

  Devotion.

  How am I going to spend the rest of the day without him?

  Mercifully, the short drive to Lily’s store is one I can spend staring outside, taking in the sights. What happened with Monica last night is almost an afterthought, her anger disjointed. Coming to my apartment to warn me away from Lindsay was ludicrous. That wasn’t why she was there.

  Does she know about the reports Alice saved? Lindsay uploaded all these photos... could Monica have seen them? Never before has Monica Bosworth come to me. Harry tried to summon me to The Grove, but I told him to –

  Wait.

  That strange text message from my father. Lindsay thought it didn’t sound like Harry.

  What if it wasn’t Harry? What if it was Monica pretending to be him?

  I shake my head like a dog with a bug on my nose. Nonsense.

  “We’re here,” Duff announces in a funny voice. Startled, I look at the rearview mirror to find him watching me, frowning. How long have I been sitting here, lost in my thoughts?

  “Great,” I mumble, unclicking the seatbelt, forcing my body to move as expected without thinking about Silas’s touch. The warm breeze outside helps, whipping my hair around my face, making me miss my long hair. I reach up and brush my bangs off my forehead, the short wisps tickling my eyebrows.

  Inside the flower shop, I see Lily at the counter, wrapping a candy basket with a flourish. She looks up, sees me, and bursts into laughter.

  “Twinsies!” Lily exclaims, looking at my clothes.

  I laugh, too. We’re wearing pink polo shirts, white capri pants, and white sandals. We look like eighth graders who planned our outfits.

  “You could be my stunt double,” I say, the truth of it hitting me more and more as I really look at her. When my hair was longer, no way, but now – we really look alike.

  Huh. I wonder if she is Harry Bosworth’s love child, too?

  She studies me, tilting her head. “Your bangs are still shorter, and your eyes slant just enough to be slightly different from mine, but –”

  “Oh, my goodness!” an older woman from behind me gushes. “Just look at the two of you!”

  I turn around to find Lily’s mother standing there, holding a large basket filled with rolls of green florist’s tape.

  “Lily! You never told me you had a twin!”

  We’re not imagining it then, are we?

  “Mom! This is Jane,” Lily says with an easy smile. “Remember?”

  “Jane Borokov,” she says, going guarded. She’s still pleasant, but a dimmer switch has definitely been turned down inside her. “Yes, I remember. You came in here once before Lily mentioned you.”

  “I did. You were doing a wedding and closing early.”

  “Yes! That’s right.” She brightens slightly. “I don’t think I ever introduced myself – I’m Bee. It’s actually Beatrice, but Bee for short. What brings you here?”

  “Flowers.”

  Lily snorts.

  Bee’s eye roll is epic. “You’d think I would learn after three children and thousands of customers,” she says with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I assume you’re here to buy flowers and chat with my daughter?”

  “I am.”

  She hands me the handle of her basket. “Good. Then let’s put you to work, Jane. You look like someone who needs to be distracted.”

  My face heats up. How does she know?

  “I need to go to the supply store and get a few hundred yards of salmon ribbon. It turns out my peach ribbon was the wrong color for tomorrow’s wedding. Salmon. Salmon, the bride says,” she adds with an over-enunciating tone that makes it clear she’s accustomed to this, but not exactly a fan.

  “Have fun getting that salmon ribbon, Mom. Any chance you’re walking past the cupcake shop on your way to get that salmon ribbon?” Lily blinks rapidly, a cute gesture designed to influence.

  It works.

  “Salted caramel?” her mom asks, then looks at me. “You have a favorite? If not, I recommend the carrot cake.”

  “What?”

  “If you’re going to help tape two hundred boutonnieres, you deserve your favorite cupcake as pay, Jane,” Lily says, nudging me. “Get the carrot cake. It’s not as good as the salted caramel, but –”

  “Bite your tongue, young lady!” Bee interjects.

  I feel my throat tightening as I watch them, an outsider as a mother and daughter banter with each other.

  I really miss my mom.

  “Whatever you suggest,” I tell Bee, which makes Lily stick her tongue out at me.

  Her mom beams.

  “See? Sometimes mothers do know best,” she says as she sashays out.

  “Traitor,” Lily hisses at me, pointing to the green tape. “Get your hands ready. We have carnations and rose buds to tie up.”

  “You make it sound like BDSM.”

  “You have a dirty mind, Jane.”

  Today I do, I almost say, but don’t.

  For the next five minutes, Lily teaches me how to take a carnation, a rose bud, some baby’s breath, and tape, and turn it into a saleable prom and dance product. The work goes fast, and she turns on some 90s music, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden filling the store.

  No one comes in or out.

  “Slow time?” I ask, poking my finger with a pin by accident. I suck on the fingertip as she finishes her boutonniere and says,

  “Not yet. Just a quiet pause. Hopefully Mom gets back with the cupcakes before the rush.”

  “Are these all for people to pick up today?”

  “No. Tomorrow and Saturday.” She stands, goes into the back, and returns with two cups of coffee. “Here. Let’s charge up. We only did twenty-two of these buggers. A hundred and seventy-eight to go.”

  “I thought you were kidding when you said two hundred!”

  “I never kid about flowers, Jane.”

  “Good thing The Thorn Poke pays in cupcakes. Your mom better bring me two.”

  “Are you worth two? You need to prove yourself.”

  I pretend to rush through the next one. We laugh. A new song comes on. Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  I’m having fun.

  Fun. I remember this. The kind of fun you have when people accept your very presence as being enough. The kind of fun that comes from being included. The kind of fun that makes a lot of work seem easy, breezy, light.

  The kind of fun that comes from living a normal life.

  I drain my coffee in between taping the ends of flowers, Lily fixing my small mistakes and turning the wrapped end product into a work of art.

  And then nature calls.

  “Bathroom?” I ask her, standing up from the small chair at the counter.

  She points behind the curtain. “Door on the left.”

  As I push the thick fabric aside, I breathe in the same scent I smelled that day I came here a few weeks ago to buy flowers for Kelly’s Princess Tea. That feels like a lifetime ago. The clock says it’s exactly two o’clock, which means I only have a few more hours before I see Silas. At least, I hope so. I don’t know how long his day will be.

  The ache inside me that took over has subsided, replaced by a pleasant anticipation. My time until I see him is full of friendship and meaning. I’m wanted here. I’m helpful.

  Time feels different with a friend.

  I inhale until my ribs ache, letting my shoulders drop as I find the bathroom door, close and lock it, and do my business.

  The music changes to a dance song I don’t know.

  Something scurries outside. Lily must be getting more supplies. Or maybe her mother’s here? I stand and flush, then pause. No more sound. I turn on the faucet, soap up my hands, and hum to myself.

  Life is getting better.

  Monica Bosworth can go to hell.

  There isn’t a hand towel and the paper towel roll is empty, so I shake my hands dry, grab the doorknob, and step out. Whatever sound I heard isn’t there now, but the pop music has a beat that makes my bones want to bounce, a smile stret
ching my face as I gingerly touch the curtain.

  My foot hits something, the long fabric obscuring the other side. I yank hard, and push with my toe. As the curtain pulls to the right, I look down.

  To find Lily on her stomach, her pink shirt rucked up, her face to the left, with a growing pool of blood under her head. One foot is turned inward, the ankle twisted. I’m kicking her hip.

  I freeze. This isn’t real. It can’t be real. Some part of my brain is misfiring, broken, cracked in half and oozing insanity into the same pool of growing blood on the cracked concrete floor, because Lily, Lily, oh, God, not Lily!

  “Duff!” I scream, but the word comes out hoarse, like I’ve lost my voice, lost my mind, lost my body, lost lost lost and as I drop to the floor to touch Lily and shake her out of this nightmare, I finally scream, a high wail that sounds like the universe in its death throes.

  The store’s door jingles as Duff gives me a quizzical look and I’m clawing my throat because I can’t breathe, because Lily is bleeding and shot and I can’t I can’t I can’t...

  He looks down.

  “Holy shit!” he shouts. His hand flies to his gun. His other hand grabs his earpiece, body becoming a shield for me and he says words like GSW, 911, extreme blood loss, and shouts at me.

  “DIRECT PRESSURE!” he barks, my hands like ice chunks attached to my body, unable to move. Duff drops to the ground and, like a gentle bear, elevates her legs, then moves to her head, grabbing a towel from under the counter and pressing it right over where the blood comes out. “It’s a gunshot wound to the head.”

  The rest turns into dust as Bee walks in, holding a big baker’s box, her smile turning to pure horror when she looks down at Lily. She drops the box, cupcakes smashing top-down into the concrete floor, icing smearing, some of it orange from carrot cake flavored treats. The details shouldn’t matter but they do, stuck in my mind in a perverse way as the reality of my friend, bleeding from the head, is harder to process than smeared frosting.

  Bee looks at me, then at Lily, and screams into my upturned face,

  “What did you do to her?”

  Chapter 17

  Jane

  Having your hands cuffed behind your back hurts.

  The shoulders scream, unaccustomed to the position. The long chain of muscle flanking either side of the spine objects strenuously, like a defense attorney objecting to every point in a trial. Muscles that expect to be free don’t like being caged in, twisted, oppressed.

  You’re bound in place like this for a reason.

  You’re a danger to society.

  You do not deserve freedom.

  You stand accused.

  And they’re right.

  I am a danger.

  Look at my friend.

  Cop cars smell, too. Like burning tires and urine and desperation. The backseat is vinyl, clean but cold. I’m shaking so hard, my stomach a big knot that pulls up. My diaphragm might as well be attached to a winch being yanked by an angry God. I don’t know if my throat can handle more.

  I’ve been in here for at least an hour. Maybe three? This is no man’s land, an in-between where I have no power and all the blame. My rights have been read to me but that’s a joke. I didn’t shoot Lily.

  I didn’t.

  The ambulance ran off long ago, wailing down the streets like a professional mourner.

  Is Lily dead? No one will tell me. I heard someone say she was shot in the head. I remember the blood, Duff’s hands, the towel. I look at my feet. They’re so cold. So distant. So not part of my body.

  You can survive that, right? Being shot in the head? Some people can. Some people do.

  Lily will.

  The spot between my shoulder blades feels like someone is plunging a knife into it. Nerve pain radiates up from my shoulder into my jaw on my right side, the muscle in my upper arm seizing up. I can’t get comfortable. I need to pee. I’m dehydrated. My mouth feels like cotton grows there.

  And here I sit, ignored.

  Reviled.

  Trapped.

  Tap tap tap.

  The sound of someone knocking on the window makes me tune out. I don’t want to look. If I look, I have to think. If I have to think, I need to talk. And if I open my mouth to say a word right now, I will throw up.

  So I don’t move.

  I don’t blink. I don’t breathe. I don’t exist.

  I just don’t.

  “Jane.” My name is muffled from behind the glass. It’s a man. I don’t look.

  “Jane!” The urgency cuts through my fog. It’s Silas. He reaches for the door handle. A uniformed cop stops him. Angry words fly through the muffled air like they’re talking around mouthfuls of marshmallows. Silas puffs up, like a cobra on the attack. He shouts. Then he bellows. He’s loud and furious, protective and full of unadulterated rage.

  All to take care of me.

  My door flies open. A very nasty face gets in mine, the brim of his hat hitting my forehead. “Show me your hands,” the uniformed cop demands, shoving me forward, my head in my lap, my lower back screaming in pain as he wrenches me.

  And then – he’s gone. I sit up, my body doing whatever it takes not to be in pain. I look over to see Silas being held, arms behind his back, by four uniformed officers, Drew suddenly on one side, Duff on the other, the men all screaming, hands on guns.

  I’m the reason for this.

  Me.

  “CHECK HER HANDS!” Silas shouts to Duff, to Drew, to anyone who will listen. “It may be her gun, but she didn’t pull the trigger!”

  Her gun?

  Her gun?

  “I don’t have a gun!” I rasp, my words ineffective, their power gone as my brain scrambles itself, pulling every second of memory from my trip to the bathroom. How did I miss a gunshot? How did I not hear that? How did someone creep into the flower shop and shoot Lily in the head?

  How?

  Why?

  What?

  “I didn’t hear anything,” I whisper to myself, speaking aloud only to make sure I’m still real. I was in the bathroom and I heard the little scuffling sounds and that’s it. No gunshot. No scream. No sound that would have made me clench and move, come out and help Lily.

  Save Lily.

  Or... be Lily?

  My pink shirt is a mess, covered in dirt and sweat, a few drops of blood from when I bent down and touched her. Just after Duff discovered us, Romeo came charging in, telling Duff he was there for a shift change but clicking into crisis mode, shutting up, shutting down. The cops and an ambulance appeared so quickly, but then again, maybe centuries flew by, because I just disappeared.

  Duff said I fainted, but I’m pretty sure I stopped existing for a while there.

  When I came to, a cop was hovering over me, hand on his gun, another one holding cuffs. Duff was busy talking to anyone and everyone through his earpiece, Romeo glowered in the background, and all I could think was that I am a murderer.

  Not the murderer.

  But a murderer.

  I don’t actually kill people.

  My very presence seems to make them die anyhow.

  Now Silas is outside my window, fighting with people whose side he’s working on, and the saddest part is this:

  I’m not worth it.

  Because if he stays around me, he’s going to die, too.

  That’s how this works, right?

  “How the hell are you claiming that’s the suspect’s gun?” I hear Drew bellow.

  Low, angry voices, impossible to understand, reply. I look out the window to see Silas’s back, the cloth of his suit jacket bunched as his elbows are pinned back. He’s stopped struggling, but his shoulders rise and fall with each heavy breath.

  “CHECK HER FUCKING HANDS, YOU IDIOTS,” Silas shouts. Drew snaps at some uniformed cops. One peels off, goes to a police van, and comes back.

  Drew hands her his phone. The uniformed cop, a woman about my size but at least ten years older, glares at him, one hand up as if to reject it. Drew says a f
ew words and her eyes get big.

  Really, really big.

  I go blind.

  I go blind because photographers break through the police line and start shooting photos like we’re in free fall and they need the shot before they die.

  I close my eyes and dip my head down, the spot below my neck, between my shoulder blades, pulling with an ache that makes my heart hurt. The air in the back of the police car is starting to become more humid, my own breath recirculating, the windows steaming up at the edges. My belly tightens and I’m aware of my breath, the inhale and exhale a chore. In yoga and meditation they say awareness of breath is a source of peace, but in the back of a police car all it does is choke me with panic.

  I’m finally done, aren’t I? Someone’s set me up for good. Suspect’s gun? I don’t have a gun.

  I freeze.

  Marshall.

  The gun he gave me. The one I used in the parking garage in the showdown with Drew and Silas. The one I left there on the ground, that Drew picked up.

  The one I never got back.

  Stretching, I feel my muscles grind against bone, a strange crunch in my neck making me feel alive and dead at the same time. Monica gave Marshall that gun to give to me. He totally snowed me. I thought he was working for Harry.

  He’s not.

  He’s Monica’s minion.

  Dear God.

  The door rips open and I smell Silas, feel him before he says a word.

  “Test her hands,” Drew says.

  “And don’t you dare hurt her,” Silas adds, on his heels, glaring at the female cop. “It’s a simple swab. You don’t need to be brutal.”

  “Go fuck yourself and your special connections,” she spits out to Silas. To Drew.

  To me.

  Something brushes against my hands, a quick, strange feeling. I can’t see what she does because my hands are still cuffed behind me. I watch as the officer shoves what looks like a little fiberglass swab into a cube. When she realizes I’m watching, she scowls and turns away.

  I shake. I shake and I start to cry again.

  “It’s okay,” Silas soothes, but his words don’t help.