Half of me expected to be taken to the lounge, made an example of right there and then. I was ready for it—ready for the belt to choke up my arm. Ready for the syringe to slip into my vein and introduce me to an entirely different universe. I was ready for other things, too—the hard nose of a pistol against my head or the dead-thin edge of a knife across my throat. I was ready for it to end.
The only thing I wasn’t prepared for was Sing’s room.
Keys shake in Mama-san’s bird-boned hand as she twists the lock, shoves the door open with her hip. Even with all the powder and paint, her face is clear; every horrible emotion she’s ever felt is strung across it like prayer beads. I’ve never seen her like this, not even when Sing was bloodied and broken on the floor.
I think of that night. Of the snap and the scream when we left her alone with Longwai. Of the bruises she tried so hard to bury with powder and sharp-tongued words. It doesn’t matter that she’s holding those keys. None of them lets her outside. She’s just as trapped as any of us.
With the open door comes a smell not even incense can mask. Urine and waste and sick. The air is thick with it, clawing into my nose, down my throat. I smell all the days Sing has been here, rotting beneath a single flickering lightbulb.
The room is bare, stripped of all furniture and decor. The only thing that isn’t walls or floor is a pile of filthy pillows in the corner. Sing’s body—wasted from a fortnight of heroin and little food—melds almost invisible into the poor light and stained fabric. She’s stretched across the floor with a stillness like death.
Mama-san seems not to notice, her nose long used to the stench. She looks at me and her face hardens. “You stupid girl!”
I expect questions. Or maybe a slap. But not this. Mama-san is glaring at me, lips pursed and coated with her fiercest shade of paint.
“You could have gotten out of here. If you’d played it right. You had the ambassador wrapped around your pinkie finger.” She holds up her smallest nail. It’s the same color red as her lips. “You had the chance and you wasted it. Threw it away like it was nothing!”
“I didn’t do anything.” I flip the switch inside me. The one I use when the ambassador crawls into my bed. The one that makes me feel dead inside and out. “Yin Yu is jealous of me. She’s spreading rumors.”
There’s no guilt shifting through my veins when I say Yin Yu’s name. Not this time.
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Where there are rumors, there’s hope. And when there’s hope…” Her finely filed scarlet nail points to the heap on the floor. Where skin and bone and pillow stew in what’s left of Sing. “It’s not allowed in a place like this.
“Stupid,” Mama-san mutters, and shakes her head. She doesn’t even look at me again before she pulls the door shut.
There’s even less light now. I feel as if I’ve been sealed up inside a tomb.
Stupid. Mama-san’s word echoes in the new dark. Claws at me with its hints of truth. I never should have told the girls. Never should have expected them to have the same trust in a boy they’d never met…
A rattling breath rises from the corner, like a wind chime threaded with bones. Now that it’s darker, the pile of pillows has transformed into a crowd of hulking spirits, calling me over. Wanting to devour me the way they’ve swallowed my friend.
The breathing grows louder, like hundreds of dried leaves tumbling and crunching against one another. One of the pillows lurches, falls on its side as something moves behind it. Then there’s a loud, awful noise.
Heeeeeeesh…
“Sing?” I whisper on purpose, because I don’t know if I really want her to hear me. I think of the last time I stood by this door, on the other side. How she threw herself at it like a wild creature.
But I don’t think she’ll be doing that now. The pillow-demons stay still. There’s only the rasping struggle of Sing’s lungs to let me know she’s there at all. I take a few steps forward, wait for my eyes to adjust.
She’s whiter than a set of bleached sheets. So much lesser and faded from the girl I knew: a husk. There’s almost nothing left to her. I don’t know if she could stand if she tried.
But she does move. Her arm reaches out and, even though the movement is slow, I jump back. It’s a weak motion, taking everything she has to grasp out for my foot.
And the labored breaths turn into words. I have to strain to hear them. “M-m-more…”
“Sing.” I crouch down, keep my distance. “It’s me. Mei Yee.”
Her eyes are open, but dull, as if they’re not really seeing anything at all. She stares and stares. Her arm stays still, wrenched and twisted like a spare piece of string. She looks dead. Only her horrible, rattling breath tells me otherwise.
A shiver takes me, starting first in my neck and dripping down my back like rainwater. I go back to the door and sit, clutching my knees to my chest. My eyes shut. I wish my nose and ears could do the same.
The shell is gone. The boy is gone. And I’m like a star falling, falling, falling into darkness worse than death.