Chapter Thirty-Two

One night, I’m taking the subway home from Wolfwood, and as I wait for the train, my hunger is like the rats on the tracks, big and sharp-toothed and gnawing, gnawing, gnawing. I pace up and down the narrow, filthy platform, feeling like there are eyes on me. Monsters everywhere. Not only them, but the Others, too. Everyone is always watching. I avoid the edge of the platform.

I think about what happened today, while I was there, in Wolfwood. I’m anxious about it—anxious in a way I’m usually not. Scarlet recovered, finally. She told us that right before she was attacked, she came across the wreckage of the old shelter. She thought maybe there’d be materials we could use in our hut. But she found something else, something she wanted to show Azul, and was running to find her when she was attacked. “A bracelet,” Scarlet said, touching her wrist. “I found a silver bracelet. None of you saw it when you were helping me?”

My breath caught. I turned my eyes to the fronds I was weaving for our shelter’s roof so they wouldn’t see my surprise. Until then, I’d been telling myself I’d imagined the bracelet, that I must have. And for some reason, I didn’t want the sisters to know that I’d seen it.

“You’re probably just remembering something from home,” I said. “There’s nothing like that in Wolfwood.”

“Maybe,” Scarlet said. “But I can picture it so clearly. Simple, with a dark yellow stone and some geometric decorations. And . . . it had an inscription, I think.”

I didn’t know anything about an inscription. Still, her words tugged at something inside me.

“Zoe’s right,” Lila said. “No way there’s something like that here.”

Later, when the sisters were sleeping, I snuck past the groups of Others that were guarding us. I started digging near where Scarlet had been attacked, expecting my hand to hit something cold and hard and small. Metallic. When it touched something else—spherical and smooth, the size of a small melon—I hesitated.

Somehow, I knew what it was. Even though I didn’t want to see it, I finished digging it out.

A skull, caught up amid a tangle of the thin netting.

A vision flashed: his head, pouring blood. Eyes staring at me. Blood everywhere.

As quickly as possible, I wrapped the skull in the hem of my dress and took it to bury it somewhere else, far away, in case the sisters came back to look for the bracelet. No monsters attacked me. I saw no one. But I felt eyes on me the whole time. And when I got back to where the sisters still slept, the Others guarding them watched me like they knew what I’d just done.

Now, sitting on the subway, my gaze darts from the elderly woman across from me, to the hipster couple next to her, to the man in a Con Ed uniform, to the woman with a child. Why do I feel so guilty? Why do I feel like they’re watching and judging me? And whose bracelet is it? I try not to think about the skull. Try not to remember those scenes of his head floating in a sea of blood. Or the way I feel about him when I’m with him. Try not to think about what any of it means or why I hide so much from the sisters.

My desperate hunger and my Wolfwood worries keep gnawing at my gut. On the walk home from the station, I pass McDonald’s and can’t stop myself: I go inside. Waiting in line, I count out the change in my pockets and scrounge for anything extra in my bag—all I come up with is $4.06. I read the menu over and over, wanting everything and nothing sounding quite right, nothing sounding like enough.

“Gonna order or what?” the guy behind me says.

“Yeah.” I move forward. “Um, Big Mac.”

“Four thirty-six.”

“I thought it was $3.99?”

“Tax.”

“Um, then wait . . . Just a Quarter Pounder.”

“Jesus Harry Christ,” the guy in line mutters. I want to scream at him. I have no rope left. I just need to eat. I need strength to fight.

The cashier hands me my burger. I turn around, scan the restaurant for a table.

That’s when I see her.

Eating by the windows. Crew cut, pug nose, pale skin. Chunky rings on her fingers. I swing back around, hands shaking. Drop my tray on the counter. It’s the woman from the homeless shelter, the one who beat me up. Did she see me? Run! my brain screams. But she’s sitting too close to the exit. “Bathroom?” I ask the cashier, even though it’s the last place I want to be. He points, and I hurry on rubber legs and slam the door shut behind me, lock it, and lean against it, shaking. Did she see me?

Monsters everywhere.

I let down my guard.

What if she saw me?

I glance around for a plunger or soap holder, a weapon of any kind. There’s nothing. Nothing in my bag, either. Only my phone. I curl my fingers around it. I want my mother. Would she come if I call? Would she help me? Rattle, rattle. The door handle jiggles, someone’s trying to get in. I back away, sit on the toilet, curl up as small as possible, arms wrapped around myself.

Rattle, rattle. I close my eyes. Hold my phone tight, don’t bother dialing; the Mom I need isn’t there. Eyes shut, I whisper: Go away, go away, go away . . .

One more rattle, then . . . nothing.

Silence.

Slowly, my breath starts to even out. My body stops trembling. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting when a knock comes at the door. “Someone in there?” A young person’s voice. Not hers. “Hello? Anyone in there?” Another knock. The handle rattles.

“One second,” I call back. I straighten up, splash water on my face, and try to walk on normal human legs when I come out. “Sorry,” I say to the kid as I pass him.

The restaurant isn’t big—from the hallway, I can see the table the woman was sitting at. Empty. No one wearing the bright orange tee she had on. She’s gone. I wait for a moment, just to be sure. Tension drains out of me, making me weak. Finally, I emerge from the hall and head toward the front.

“Don’t you want your food?” It’s the cashier, indicating my abandoned tray, shoved to the end of the counter. I grab the burger, leave the tray. I need to get home.

Outside the door, I look left and right, and . . . wait . . . there’s a woman in a bright orange tee, untying a shaggy dog tied to a lamppost. It’s the woman from the restaurant. Definitely. But . . . she’s not the woman from the shelter. She’s similar. Same type of face. Crew cut. This woman is younger, though. Much younger. I stare at her to be sure. Blink, as if clearing my vision. I was so positive it was her! But no, it’s not. She looks my direction. Her eyes pass right over me. No recognition.

Not a monster.

I take a deep, slow breath.

Not a monster.

As I navigate my way through the East Village nighttime bustle, I eat my Quarter Pounder, not really tasting it, despite my hunger. I’m losing my mind, aren’t I? Thinking I saw her, out of nowhere. In the four years since the shelter, I’ve never had that happen before. My brain is breaking. I turn onto my block, so tired that even making it from here to my building seems like too much effort.

“Indigo!” I startle at the voice. Ravi is standing in front of me. “I’ve been calling you from across the street. Didn’t you hear me?”

I swallow my bite. “Hey,” I say, forcing a smile. Of course I run into him now of all times. “What’s up?”

He works his jaw, as if there’s something he wants to say but doesn’t know how to say it. I can already tell it’s something I’m not going to want to hear.

“You sold the dress?”

The dress . . . Shit. It takes me a moment to manage a response. “How’d you find out?”

He makes a face like it’s a silly question. “Dude, it was hanging in the fucking window.”

Right. I should be mortified. I am mortified. But I also feel kind of flat. I’m spent, emotionally, after all the adrenaline. Too drained to truly care about anything.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to. I just . . . needed money.”

“You needed money and that’s what you did? Why didn’t you ask your mom? Or borrow?”

“Wasn’t sure I’d be able to pay it back. Did you . . . tell Kai?”

“No. I’m not a total asshole. I wanted to talk to you first. It was a real bitch move, Indigo.”

I bite the inside of my lip. I am sorry, but I’m also annoyed I have to stand here and listen to him when he knows nothing of what my life’s like.

“And what’s up with your arms?” he asks.

I’m wearing the button-down I was painting in, sleeves rolled above the elbows. Scattered bruises and scrapes—old and new—decorate my skin.

None of your business. “Went camping with a friend. Poison ivy, hiking . . .” I start unrolling one of the sleeves.

“You look really strung out.” His eyes narrow. “What’s going on with you?”

From the way he says it, and the way he was looking at my arms, I wonder if he thinks I’m using. “Nothing,” I say. “Just working too hard. That’s all.”

“Kai doesn’t need someone else lying to him.”

“I’m not!”

Ravi raises his eyebrows.

Fuck this. “Don’t know what to tell you,” I say. “We can’t all be millionaires. Maybe you’re just not used to knowing someone with a normal life. I must have something going on ’cause I need money? ’Cause I’m eating at McDonald’s instead of Bareburger? Is that it?” I hold up the remains of my Quarter Pounder.

“No!” he says. “God, no.” I can tell I’ve hit a nerve. Good. “I’m not a total asshole,” he says again. “I just don’t want you hurting Kai.”

I feel my spine lengthening, my skin thickening. I fight monsters, I remind myself. I imagine Lila, Scarlet, and Azul standing behind me, having my back.

“I really am sorry about the dress,” I say. “But I gotta go.” I brush past him, not waiting for a response.