Foul Is Fair

by Hannah Capin

the gold-red drinks in my hands—

  the shattered windows and the dead-dark house—

  —and I breathe out again and it turns the night so cold the green grass frosts and the palm trees turn black and withering.

  I go to Malcolm and Duffy. “Golden boys,” I say. It’s all melodrama but I love it. “He killed Duncan. He killed Piper. He killed his own best friend. He almost killed me—”

  Mack says No but it didn’t matter to them and it doesn’t matter to me.

  I say, “Tonight he’ll pay.”

  Their eyes are horror-huge. They knew it already, what Mack did, but they didn’t believe it.

  I say, “He was going to kill me. I knew too much. Like Piper.”

  Duffy trembles with hurt and hate.

  “I saw him come in that night with Duncan’s blood on his hands—”

  Malcolm’s fists clench.

  “I swore I wouldn’t tell. He held Porter’s knife to my neck and he made me swear. And then when it all fell apart he came for Piper and he came for me.” And I tell the truth: “He left me alone. He left me for dead.”

  They’re staring at me like I’m freedom. They’re drunk off my words.

  Duffy says, “You’re braver than anyone, Jade.”

  I don’t bow my head this time. I say, “I know.”

  Malcolm turns almost into Duncan again. Taller and broader-shouldered with his gray eyes glinting. “We won’t let him hurt you,” he says. “It’s over.”

  I laugh the brightest bird-wing laugh I’ve ever laughed and it soars over the iced-black palm trees and the dark house and the hills. “You’re king now,” I say to Malcolm. “Like Duncan wanted. You’ll keep us safe. Both of you.”

  Duffy reaches for his phone. “I’ll call the cops,” he says. “Before Mack tries anything.”

  Mack says Jade but we leave him bleeding on the ground.

  Let him suffer the way he should.

  I say, “Wait. Let’s drink to him first. To the end of him.”

  Duffy breathes out shaky and leveled. “I’ll fucking drink to that.”

  He takes a glass.

  Malcolm says, “To Mack’s fall.” He takes the second glass and swirls it over his head. The light dances through the cut crystal. “Amaretto?”

  I nod. “My very favorite.”

  From the ground Mack says, “No—”

  I say, “And to the golden boys.”

  Duffy and Malcolm say, “To the golden boys!”

  They raise their glasses and I raise mine. The crystal clinks together with so much singing shrieking power I can’t believe they don’t see the death’s-heads floating in the amber.

  Mack struggles and says, “No, don’t, don’t—”

  I laugh.

  I bring my glass to my lips. The poison crawls close.

  Malcolm and Duffy drink deep. Duffy shouts, “It’s over.”

  Malcolm says, “We won.”

  Mack says, “No—”

  I spin again and tower over him. “What? Do you want to drink with us?”

  His traitor-green eyes shine and he says, “No—”

  I say, “Why not? It’s just a drink.”

  He says, “Jade, no, I didn’t—”

  I hold out the glass. There is death in Mack’s eyes.

  He reaches a shaking buried hand out to take it. He knows exactly what I’m giving him. He’s ready to die.

  But that would be too easy.

  I let the glass fall and shatter on the ground. The poison splashes between us. Burning into the concrete and spitting onto my gown.

  Mack’s head drops. Malcolm and Duffy laugh giddy and guiltless. I tip my head back and stare up into the sky. The stars blaze bright.

  This is the end.

  The Queen

  Duffy falls first. Duffy the follower, leading at last.

  He hits the ground and his whole body wracks and shakes and shudders—

  —and next to him Malcolm panics and falls to his knees and says, “Duff—what is it—what’s wrong—”

  Duffy is contorted and strange and his jaw cracks against itself. He can’t speak. He can’t fight.

  Then Malcolm realizes. He jumps up and shouts at Mack: “What did you do?”

  Mack stares hollow.

  Malcolm says, “Jade! He did something—where did you get the liquor—”

  I take his hands in mine. The black silk glides smooth over his skin. I whisper to him, “Give it a minute. You’ll be gone.”

  “Fuck!” he shouts. “Fucking bitch! It was you all along—”

  He yanks free and grabs his phone and I knock it out of his hands. It flips across the concrete. He ducks for it but then—

  —then it’s his turn. Little-boy Malcolm, who stood at the counter and mixed the drink for the brother he wanted to be.

  I watch them both for a drawn-long moment. Writhing. Dying.

  I don’t feel anything at all.

  I turn away from them and face Mack. He stares ruined and guilty.

  I can’t remember how it felt before. I don’t know why my pulse fluttered feathery under my skin when he said I’ve never loved anyone more, or why it meant anything when we fell together into his bed the night I made him kill Duncan.

  He is the dazzle-smiled boy.

  He is the one who will end it. He knows it as well as I do. He sees his death on my face. He wants it.

  But it won’t be his until he’s had his heart ripped out and frozen.

  It hurts more when someone you love is holding the knife, I said to Jenny and Summer and Mads when we sat in my room on Saturday morning with the lacrosse boys in our hands.

  I was right.

  I was a prophetess even then.

  I tell Mack, “I’ll be waiting.”

  I walk away from him. Through the broken glass. Past the broken boys still dying slow and horrible. Through the broken window and into the dark.

  I don’t need light.

  I walk back through the kitchen and pick up the poisoned amaretto. Cradle it close and carry it with me into the low broad room with the dead-king masks guarding the walls. In the cold shadowed silence one ghost spins alone. Her hair is long and platinum-blond. Her dress is short and shining.

  Deep in the dark, a clock chimes. Twelve bright gold clangs.

  It’s Friday again.

  I walk the path Connor dragged me down that night. I can’t feel his hands clamped onto my arms anymore. I can’t feel the haze. I can’t feel the thudding heavy bass that followed us all the way to the end of the hall even when the music bled dull into the melting walls.

  The door is open. The air is charged and sparking.

  I turn on the light.

  The room is empty. Everything is perfect and undisturbed and no one would ever know anything happened here. No one would know how they sneered and shouted and crushed me down.

  No one would ever know what happened to that little whore with the jade-green eyes.

  I could say, It never happened.

  But I don’t lie when it matters.

  I walk one foot in front of the other to the edge of the white-sheets bed. I sit down. I set the poison on the clear-glass nightstand. I fold Mads’s sunglasses next to the bottle. I close the silver crucifix in my hand and yank hard. The chain breaks against my neck and I drop it on the glass.

  Silver was never my color. My color is gold, like the crown on my head. Black, like the gloves that bury the stitches I don’t need.

  Red like my dress. Red like my lips. Red like the blood of the boys I killed.

  Footsteps echo on the marble. Staggering but steady.

  I asked Duncan, after he kissed me hard and hungry, Do you believe in fate?

  He said, No.

  I said, You should.

  And I told Mack all along, It had to be you. It had to be us.

  It was a lie to drag him closer and bind him to me. I didn’t believe it. I knew I was fate, my coven and me.

  His footsteps scrape closer.

&nbs
p; That night, when Duncan saw me across the room and whispered to Duffy—

  when Malcolm mixed the drink and Mack brought it to me—

  when Connor dragged me biting and clawing into this room—

  when Banks said, fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—

  when Piper slammed the door shut with Porter guarding it and they left me to the wolves—

  when I fought and fought and fought and lost—

  —it was fate.

  It was spelled into our stars when Mads dyed my hair and Jenny bought the contacts and Summer gave me the dress and we swallowed vodka and cruelty and went winging out to crash the St Andrew’s Prep party on my sweet sixteen.

  I said, I spat, I swore: You picked the wrong girl.

  They did.

  They had to.

  It could only be me.

  Not the first—

  —but the last, the last, the last.

  They picked the right girl.

  White

  Mack says, Jade.

  I don’t turn to him. I sit with my back straight and my crown shining and my dress painting me proud and unruined.

  Mack says, I love you.

  I say, “I know what you did.”

  He says, “I didn’t.”

  I say, “You know you’ll die tonight. You know I’ve made this all your fault. You might as well tell the truth if you’re going to waste your time saying you love me.”

  His shadow casts over the white. His breath comes ragged.

  He says, “I didn’t know.”

  He says, “Jade, I’m begging you. Look at me. You know me.”

  I say, “We’re nothing to each other. I’m just a girl you wanted to fuck. You’re just a boy I let fuck me because I wanted to see how many of your friends I could make you kill.”

  He says, “That’s not true.”

  I say, “Then we’re both liars.”

  The bed sinks lower with his weight. He is here with me, where they were.

  He says, “Banks told me what he put in her drink—”

  And I laugh so mirthless and merciless my crown slips. I reach up and straighten it. I still won’t look at him.

  “No,” he says. “Not that night. He told me the morning Piper told you. When you found me in the hall—when we swore we’d kill them—”

  It’s a lie. It’s a slithering stupid lie and I’ll never believe it. I won’t let him live. I won’t let him take his neck out of the noose or his name off my list.

  He keeps his guilt.

  He says, wrenching with pain I don’t understand at all anymore—

  that I never understood—

  —he says, “Jade. I promise you I’m not like them. They made me guilty.”

  “You knew who they were,” I say. “You knew what they did.”

  “I wanted to stop them. I always did, Jade—I told you how much I hated them—”

  “You knew,” I say again, and it burns in my throat like liquor and poison. “And you went to their party and took their drink and went up to the girl they told you to talk to, and then you left her there alone—”

  “No.” His hand finds mine. I pull hard away. “It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I was with her on my own. And then somebody ran into us and spilled her drink, and I went to go get something else and Banks was on his way by, and he said—he said, take this. And he gave me his drink.”

  Every word he says makes the walls warp uneven the way they did that night. Every word sits in my stomach, heavy and hollow. “They planned it,” I tell him.

  “I know,” he says. “I should’ve known. If I could go back to that night—”

  “You can’t,” I say, and the walls settle smooth. “What’s done is done.”

  He takes my hand again.

  I pull away again.

  He says, “I’m guilty. I know I am, and it’s killing me—”

  “You.” The sound curls on my lips.

  “I’m guilty,” he says again. Slower this time; deliberate. “I was going to turn myself in tonight. Tell the police what they did and what I did. Not for me. For—”

  His voice catches and bleeds raw.

  He says, “For her.”

  Something flutters low in my lungs.

  He means it. The guilt is real and rooted in, and he killed for me and for her. He hates those boys and he’s glad they’re dead.

  He said, I wanted to stop them.

  But he didn’t.

  I lift my chin and turn to him.

  He looks into my eyes—

  —jade-green instead of brown. The eyes he looked into that night when he said, I’ve never seen you before. I’ve never seen anyone like you. When he stood with me, a dazzle-smiled boy with a dazzling girl, hiding away from the boys who saw us and knew only their golden boy could do the cruel thing they wanted.

  He knows.

  He says it, stricken: “You—”

  And his hands take mine and I don’t pull away. His warmth and his weakness burn through the silk—

  —and I am still ice. I am still savage and wicked. I am the little girl who pushed the boy off the playground castle. I am all the things I was before he knew me. I am the girl who lost and the girl who won.

  He says, “You’re her.”

  I say, “Yes.”

  He says, “Jade—”

  He says, “Elle—”

  And the furious feathered wings fill up my lungs and they beat fast and faster—

  He says, Elle—

  —and I am her again, here in this room where they thought they ruined me.

  Here in this room without them.

  And he says Elle and I love you and I’m sorry but I say get out and leave and go until he isn’t there at all.

  Until it’s only the girl in the shining white dress, so close I can smell the bleach in her hair. So close I can feel the hands pressing down on her mouth.

  She was alone here in this room but now—

  —now I’m here with her.

  Now I’ve killed for her.

  Tonight she will walk out and never come back.

  And I cry for her.

  I cry.

  I am the girl I saved.

  Red

  The sirens find me.

  I hear them when they’re still far away, climbing the hill to dead Duncan’s house. They come close and closer.

  I stand up steady in the white-sheets room. The girl with the jade-green eyes.

  And I leave.

  I turn on every light as I walk out. The light in the hall that shivered and dripped when Connor pulled me away from the crowd. The light in the kitchen, over the bar, shining down on the poison and the ghosts of the boys who mix drinks for girls they think they can ruin. The light in the looming broad room where I spun and shone. The lights far up in the dizzy-high entryway where we shrieked laughter sharp as daggers and cast our curse on the night. The lights on the porch, setting it bright and empty against the shadows in the yard.

  I don’t have to hide anymore.

  Let the light blaze down.

  I find Mack at the door. We hold hands with blood dripping through our fingers. Listening to the sirens howling louder. Watching St Andrew’s blue spin across the wide winding street and the trees and the grass.

  It was fate. They had to come for us.

  Mack takes me in his arms and says, “I’m sorry. I love you.”

  I don’t say it back, but I kiss him. Kiss his bloody bruised lips and taste the faintest clinging trace of bitter almonds.

  The first police car pulls into the driveway. Men shout. The sirens wail so loud I know dead Duffy and dead Malcolm can hear them from hell.

  Mack says, “Jade—Elle—”

  And he squares his shoulders so strong no one would ever know he’s broken. He says, “I killed Duncan. I left Banks. I brought Duffy and Malcolm here. Let me pay my debt.”

  I kiss him again. I whisper into his ear, a serpent hiss that blossoms soft—

  “It was m
e. All of it. Connor. Duncan. Porter. Banks. Piper. Duffy. Malcolm.”

  I say it cruel and proud.

  I say, “I killed them. That debt is mine.”

  He says, like he said the night Duncan died—the night he was mine and I was his—

  “Are you sure?”

  I decide.

  I say, “Yes.”

  I kiss him.

  And then I say it—

  a whisper into his ear—

  You knew enough.

  He pulls back. “Jade—” he says, and his eyes wash out with doubt and guilt and fear. “If I could go back—I’d do anything in the world if I could change it for you—”

  And I say, “For her.”

  “I love you,” he says.

  “Not for the girl you love,” I say. “For the girl you left.”

  Outside footsteps pound up the steps and a man shouts, LAPD—

  I kiss the boy who killed for me. Kiss him good-bye, one hand in his hair and the other clinging to his with the neck of the amaretto wound between our fingers.

  The cop slams hard on the door.

  My lips part from Mack’s. I breathe it into him: four words, beautiful and deadly.

  This debt is yours.

  I open the door. I walk out onto the stage-lit porch. The cops shout, Don’t move. They shout, Hands up. They shout, On your knees.

  I don’t listen.

  I walk down the steps and onto the green lawn. They throw a blinding spotlight across the grass and circle me in. They shout. Their guns come up.

  High above me the sky is made of birds.

  I raise my hands.

  The lights spin. My crown shines brighter than the sun. My wings stretch out so wide they cover the whole valley.

  I am ruinous and unruined.

  Shadows fly. They circle me, four of them, shouting and shouting with their guns up.

  I say, “What’s done is done.”

  They grab me all at once. They try to knock me down. They yank at my hands and I feel my gloves slipping and my stitches bursting open and my blood soaking into the silk.

  They say, Elizabeth Jade Khanjara—

  They say, You’re under arrest—

  They say, You have the right to remain silent—

  From far back behind the house one of them shouts for medics, but it’s too late to save Duffy and Malcolm. It was always too late.