“You’ve gotten me in enough trouble already,” I say, putting my hand over my belly. Sara can make of that what she will, but I honestly feel sick to my stomach. When I started out, I told myself I was on a journey of revenge. Then it was about power. It was about belonging. It was about family and connection and sex and love and dark fantasy. What is it now?

Acceptance.

Because if I hate myself as much as the world wants me to, then everyone else has won and I’ve lost.

“I showed my mom that video, you know?” I say to Sara with a breathy laugh. Turning my head, I see her American flag billowing in the wind. It snaps like a rubber band as the winter air throws it around like a kite. My breathing comes slower, more shallow. I feel like I’m falling.

“I’m so sorry, Bernadette,” she says, but I’m not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for. I keep staring at the flag, wondering if I should feel something like patriotism when I look at it. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t even know how I feel about myself right now.

I glance back at Sara Young, hand still on my belly, still trying to breathe.

“Don’t apologize to me,” I tell her, looking her straight in the face and seeing how much she really wants to be the good guy, how much she truly cares. And she does. It’s written into every line of her face, but she has no idea how to go about actually becoming the good guy because she’s too disconnected from the world. She warns me about the dangers of caffeine while I’m riding the high of violence and mad love. What does she know? “Unless you’re apologizing for the way our world handles cases like Penelope’s. Unless you’re apologizing for every girl that gets fucked over by a system that doesn’t care. Unless you’re saying you want to make change, don’t apologize.”

“Why don’t you come in?” Sara asks, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to stand right here, clutching my nauseous belly, and wondering when it’s all finally going to come together, when it’s going to click in. I keep stumbling; I keep messing up. My narrative isn’t the perfect, straight line that I want it to be.

“I showed Pamela that video,” I say, which, in a way, is true. It’s true because Penelope told our mother what was happening. She left a journal with her pain scrawled in looping letters, and then I told our mother what was happening. Nobody cared. In this version of the story, in this fantasy, somebody does.

“And what happened after that?” Sara asks, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb and frowning at me.

“She just kept saying …” I start, but then I choke on the lie. Fuck. This is one of the ugliest lies I’ve ever told. It gums up my mouth and makes my tongue feel like it’s coated in motor oil. It’s so ugly because it gives Pamela credit that she doesn’t deserve. “She kept saying what did he do to my baby?” I close my eyes and imagine how someone else’s mother might’ve reacted. Once, I saw a true crime show about a mother that found video footage of her husband raping his stepdaughter. This mother, she went and got her shotgun, and she blew the man’s head off while he was sleeping. That’s the mother I imagine when I close my eyes. “When Neil came home, she hit him. And she kept hitting him.” I open my eyes again and exhale. “I don’t think she’d have stopped if he hadn’t hit her back.”

Sara looks at me for a while, listening to the wind whip the flag around. I’ve got on a cashmere sweater that’s as pink as the dress underneath. Pen would’ve loved this outfit. She would’ve worn it with pride and listened to GRRRLS by AViVA, and then maybe she would’ve gone out and kissed one of them. That’s how I imagine her now, vibrant and full of color.

“So silly, considering she died broken and alone,” Kali hisses, but I ignore her. She’s just a plot, a storytelling device to throw back my pain in my own damn face. She is nothing. She never really was.

As soon as I accept that truth, as soon as I let it settle into my heart, I blink and she’s gone.

“Would you be able to testify on what you saw?” Sara asks me, but I shake my head.

“No.” I look right at her when I say it. “I’m not a dog for the police.”

“That’s not why you’re here, Bernadette,” she tells me, like she’s a fucking psychologist or some shit. “You’re here because you want to make things right.”

I laugh then, and the sound is as ugly as the sneering face of Kali’s disappearing ghost, the one I summoned up with my own pain and frustration.

“Penelope is dead, so nothing will ever be right again. But keep chasing your bad guys, Sara Young.” I step back and turn around, heading down the steps and waiting to see if she’ll call out to me. She doesn’t. And that’s a good thing because it means that for now, I’ve given her everything she needs.

“I know how we’re going to handle Brittany,” Vic says, slapping a folder down on the table in Aaron’s dining room. I’m sitting there with my phone open to Oak River Elementary’s website. It’s shiny and modern and riddled with accolades … and I hate everything about it.

Even though I know that I’m being stubborn and selfish. Sending Heather to that school would change everything for her. And Aaron was right: based on the way things are rolling in Prescott, she’d be much safer.

I swallow and turn my phone off, but not before Aaron sees what I’m looking at. We exchange a quick glance before I turn back to Victor.

“Alright boss,” Hael starts, sliding his hand down his face. “Lay it out for us.”

“I think you’re going to be pleased by the idea,” Oscar deadpans, leaning back in the armchair and toying with a stress ball in the shape of a giant sperm. I know, it’s weird, but we were all given one during sex ed in sophomore year. I found Aaron’s between the couch cushions the other day. It’s probably been there for years. “This ties our responsibilities together nicely. And really, it’s a much better deal than the little witch deserves.”

“Are you sure we can even touch Brittany right now?” I ask, furrowing my brow slightly. Cal bites into an apple with a crisp snap, drawing my attention to him. “I mean, considering that her father is the captain of the VGTF?”

“Actually,” Vic begins, leaning against the peninsula with his big arms crossed over his broad chest. When I glance back at the folder and peek inside it, I see that it’s full of maps, activity logs, and lists of names relating to the Grand Murder Party. Intel, from Havoc’s crew. “We’re going to use that to our advantage against the GMP.”

Cal takes another bite of apple, studying the fruit for a moment before lifting his eyes to mine and smiling. “What do I get to do?” he asks absently, like he’s damn near certain that violence is going to be involved in this particular plan.

He’s probably right.

“We’re going to borrow Brittany for half a day,” Victor says mildly, rubbing at his chin in that way of his. His hair looks violet in the light of the living room lamps. “Cal will give her his special treatment—arms and upper back only. We don’t need any of her injuries showing up during an ultrasound.”

His special treatment.

I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it’s clearly something to do with physical torture. What had Callum said before? Something to the effect of, cut her up where nobody can see.

“And then?” Hael asks, cracking his knuckles. He lights up a cigarette near the back door, his shirt stained with grease. Ever since we fucked on the hood of the Eldorado, he’s doubled up on the amount of time he works on it.

“We let her off with a dose of pain as a warning, and then we send her with information about the GMP. She delivers it to daddy, the VGTF moves in on the target they’ve been after all along,” Oscar says, standing up from the armchair and moving closer to the dining table where Aaron and I are sitting.

Last night, I found Aaron on the couch looking through his mother’s old phone. She left it when she took off, and he keeps it charged, so he can look at childhood pictures of himself, his sister, and his cousin. He notices me looking at him now and tousles that wavy chestnut hair of his. It’s been a month since I got him back, but every time we see each other in the hallway at school, or the bathroom upstairs, I get a rush of adrenaline and relief all over again.

He saved my life.

He came for me.

We can never be parted again.

“How do we do this without being caught?” Aaron asks, his eyes straying over to the darkness of my phone screen. We’re both thinking about Oak River right now, no doubt about that. We’re both thinking about the inevitability of sending our sisters away.

“Hael will meet with Brittany out front of Fuller High. The more people that see him there, the better.” Vic stands up straight and tucks his hands in his pockets. “Callum will find his way into the backseat of her car while she’s talking with Hael. When she leaves, Hael will stay. In fact, he will place a call to Bernadette’s phone, so we can get a nice healthy ping on the cell tower nearby, just in case Brittany is dumb enough to tell anyone what happens to her.”

“You’re taking her to the cabin?” Aaron clarifies, referring to the remote cabin where the boys dropped Danny’s body off on Halloween, so they could rush back here in time to meet the Thing. I haven’t seen it yet, that cabin. Shit, I don’t even know where it is. Probably better that I don’t.

“Half a day,” Vic says with another nod, looking over at Callum. “That’s all we need. Then we drop her back off at the school and wait.”

“You’re not worried about retaliation from the GMP?” Aaron asks, tapping the fingers of his broken hand on the tabletop. He has about two weeks left in the damn cast. I’m already looking forward to feeling both of his hands skimming over my naked body.

“They don’t have to know where the VGTF got their information from. Brittany’s going to tell her father she got her gossip at a party. Whatever Ophelia is doing with Trinity, it involves Maxwell and James Barrasso. I don’t know how, but it does. And as soon as they all realize that I’m not really going to marry that bitch, they’re going to retaliate anyway.” Victor turns his attention over to Hael. I remember what he said, about not wanting to hurt Brittany, but this is best case scenario for her, to be honest. “If she doesn’t comply, we’ll take her baby and give it away to a worthy couple. Then we’ll put her in the ground.” Vic glances back at Callum. “Make sure she understands that.”