The motel curtains are the color of dried blood, and someone’s scratched a crucifix into the wall between the twin beds. I can’t stop looking at it. The longer I stare, the more it looks like a child did it—uneven arms, the nail marks gouged too deep, like someone didn’t know when to stop, or maybe didn’t want to. Like they thought something holy might crawl out of the drywall if they just cut hard enough.
The air inside the room feels stale and too warm, thick with yesterday’s sweat and something sour underneath. Bleach, maybe. Or rot. I wrinkle my nose.
Del is still asleep; or pretending. One leg is thrown over the covers, the other coiled underneath as though she wrestled something in her sleep and won. Her arm is slung across her eyes, shielding them from the sun bleeding in through the curtains. Her breathing sounds lazy, satisfied.
There’s a smear of something dark on her knee. Blood, maybe. Or mascara. I think of last night, and my stomach curdles.
I pour the motel coffee into a paper cup and drink it black. It tastes metallic, reminiscent of boiled nickels and ash, and the heat scrapes the inside of my throat, sharp and necessary. My hand isn’t shaking, but that might just be from the grip I maintain on the cup. I don’t trust myself to speak yet. Not until I’ve decided who I was last night.
“You’re up early.”
Del’s voice is croaky, amused. Like she just got home from a party. Like we didn’t do what we did. She shifts under the covers, pulling them tighter around her bare shoulder. I can see the curve of her tattoo, just the edge. A girl with wings, maybe knives; it’s hard to tell from here.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I reply.
She yawns like a cat, slow and smug. “That’s guilt,” she says, without opening her eyes. “Give it time. It fades.”
I don’t answer.
She opens one eye first, then the other. Her gaze skims over me. “You’re not gonna go weird on me, are you?”
“What do you mean, weird?”
She picks up the switchblade from the nightstand with a small smile. Twirls it between her fingers. “Like…say you didn’t mean it. Or that I made you do it.” Her grin is all teeth now. “People always get squeamish after the fact.” She flicks open the blade and points it at me—not threatening exactly; but not friendly, either.
I swallow. Before I can respond, she drops the knife onto the bedspread and stretches, her tank top riding up her ribs. Her stomach is pale, marked with a purpling bruise. I wonder if I did that, or if he did. I hope not.
She walks barefoot to the sink, sniffs the motel soap, and makes a face. There’s a small streak of red on her neck, and I can’t tell if it’s lipstick or not. She catches my eyes in the mirror. The glass is cracked in the corners, so her reflection comes in disorienting fragments. She grins again, and the room feels claustrophobic.
“You really are gonna go weird on me,” she says. “I can feel it.”
The faucet squeals on. She cups her hands under the opaque water, rinses her mouth, and spits. It sounds loud in the silence. I imagine teeth in the sink. Blood circling the drain.
“I’m hungry,” she says, dragging a hand through tangled hair. “You wanna drive, or should we take his car?”
I set my coffee down a little too hard. It sloshes over the paper rim, pooling on the table. My fingers burn.
“Del.”
She turns to me, eyes wide. Playful; dangerous.
“You can’t just—say it. Like that.”
“Say what?”
“You know what.”
“Relax. It’s a motel, Ivy. Not a church.” She steps past me, yanking on her jeans. Dried mud crusts the hems. A red motel pen falls out of one pocket and rolls under the bed. She doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she does, and she doesn’t care. “Besides,” she continues, “you said we did the right thing. He deserved it. You said so.”
“I didn’t know it would go that far,” I snap. The words escape before I can soften them.
She snorts. “Of course you did. Honestly, Ivy, what did you think we were doing? A TED talk?” She laughs. It’s not cruel, though; it’s worse. Fond. Like we pranked the principal. Like she’s proud of me.
I start packing. Toothbrush, charger, socks still damp from last night’s rain, the burner phone—cold, silent, coiled like a secret in the towel. All of it gets thrown into the duffel bag without care.
“You’re leaving?” she asks, but her voice is curiously calm.
“Just getting ready.”
“You always pack like that when you’re just getting ready?”
I glance up. Her gaze is flat, speculative. She’s trying to see where the cracks are, like she’s waiting to see if I shatter.
I won’t.
I zip the bag halfway and sit on the edge of the chair, thighs sticking to the vinyl. It makes a peeling sound every time I shift, like skin tearing off. Outside, a diesel truck rattles past, dragging the air with it. The world feels like it’s been slowed down and stretched wrong. I’m starting to feel antsy now. I don’t want to be in this room anymore. I don’t want to be here with her.
“Do you think he saw it coming?” I ask.
She tilts her head. “What, like—on some level?”
“Yeah.”
Del nods, tying her hair into a messy knot. “Yeah. He knew. That’s what made it better.” She grins.
My throat tightens and I frown. “Better.”
“Don’t do that,” she says. “Don’t twist it into something it wasn’t.”
“He was still a person—a human being.”
“He was a virus,” she snaps. “Don’t start moralizing now. That man did things, Ivy. Real things. To both of us. You found me, don’t forget. You came to me, like you were looking for permission. He deserved what he got. I hope he rots.”
I don’t know who’s right. I don’t know what the rules are anymore. I just remember the way Del’s smile stretched while he bled. The way she whispered, This is what real power feels like.
It didn’t feel like power to me. It felt like a hole opening inside my chest. And something ancient crawling out of it.
“You’re looking at me like I’m a monster.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
She crosses the room in two strides and kneels before me. Her hands are warm on my knees; they feel too soft for what they’ve done. “We did this together,” she says, tightening her grip. I shift uncomfortably. “You don’t get to crawl back into your old skin now. You’re not that girl anymore.”
I look at her and think: You don’t know who I am at all. But I don’t say it. Her pupils are blown wide, and her lower lip is split. Her face glows. I notice another smear of something dark on her collarbone that might be mine. Or his.
She thinks she made me. But she doesn’t know what she pulled loose. I pull away slowly, stand up, and step into the bathroom to wash my face. I need distance. Light. Sound. A door between us.
I scrub my skin with motel soap that smells like lemon and bleach. When I look up, my eyes are red. I tell myself it’s from the soap. But the memory creeps in anyway.
Del was already there. She leaned against the brick wall outside the bar, arms crossed, a burning cigarette tucked between her fingers. Her shirt was blue, just like she’d said in the text. Royal blue—bright and unnatural under the amber glow of the streetlight.
The wind was sharp that night. I remember thinking I should’ve worn sleeves. I remember thinking: She doesn’t look like I imagined.
She didn’t smile when I approached. Just looked at me the way some animals do when they’re not sure whether to run or bite.
“Ivy?” she asked.
I nodded.
She flicked her cigarette away and didn’t say anything for a while. The bar music leaked through the walls behind us, loud and angry. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm.
“You sure about this?” she finally asked.
“Yes.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “I think so.”
“Which is it?”
“I’m sure.”
She studied me with narrowed, dark eyes. “You don’t look like someone who does this sort of thing.”
“You don’t know what I look like.”
That made her laugh—short, sharp. She reached into her pocket and handed me something folded. A piece of paper. I didn’t open it until later.
“I’ve been thinking about him a long time,” she said. “You just gave me the right reason.”
Her voice was calm, almost gentle. It wasn’t what she said that scared me—it was the fact that she didn’t sound angry.
She turned to go inside, but before she did, she looked over her shoulder. “Don’t come crying to me afterward. Once we start, we finish.”
“Finish what, exactly?”
She ignored me, disappearing into the noise and smoke. I didn’t follow right away, just stood there for a long time with the paper clutched in my hand. I told myself I could still back out. That I was just gathering information. Proof.
But I already knew I was lying, even then. I just didn’t know to whom.
I think about running now. I think about confessing. I think about what it would take to look her in the eye and lie. For the first time in twenty-four hours, the weight of what I’ve done hits me. And with a stranger, no less.
On the counter is her toiletry bag—black, zippered, faded with age. I don’t mean to open it. My hand moves on its own, like the rest of me has gone on ahead. Inside I find cigarettes, lipstick (Shade: Orgasmic), mascara, birth control pills; a taser. And something else.
A familiar leather keychain, soft and worn, with embossed initials. Not hers.
The air feels thinner. I stare at it too long. My brain tries to argue, to rewrite. Maybe he dropped it. Maybe she grabbed it by mistake, in the dark.
But I know that’s not true. I know what kind of girl keeps souvenirs.
I slip the keychain back into the bag and zip it shut, fingers trembling. They feel foreign, like I’m borrowing someone else’s hands.
When I step out of the bathroom, the room feels smaller. The walls look closer, the ceiling lower. Del is perched on the edge of her bed with one sock on, the other dangling from her hand. The TV is off, but she’s staring at it like she’s watching a favorite show, something only she can see. I eye her warily.
“Thought you got sucked into the mirror,” she says, pulling on the other sock. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Just tired.”
She stands and stretches, bones cracking like gunshots. “We need food. You wanna come or—”
“No,” I interrupt. “I can’t go out there.”
“Why not?” She shrugs on a sweatshirt. The same sweatshirt from last night.
“I just can’t.”
She watches me for a moment too long, her smile dimming. “You think they’re looking for us already?”
“What? No.”
I’m not afraid of being found. I’m afraid of being seen—of someone looking at me in the eye and knowing what I am now, what I’ve done.
“No one’s gonna find out, Ivy,” Del says, as if reading my thoughts. “No one’s ever gonna know. We were too careful.”
I eye the dark streak on her neck again. Yeah. Too careful.
We’re going to get caught. Not because we made a mistake, but because something about us isn’t built to stay hidden. The thought makes my skin itch.
“It’s not like we killed the president,” she continues. “We didn’t even kill a good man. We killed a man who—”
“Don’t,” I snap.
Del exhales, like I’ve bored her. She grabs her bag—the heavy one. The one I’m not supposed to touch. Damn. “Okay, fine. I’ll go. You want anything?”
“No.”
She slings the bag over her shoulder and lingers at the door, her hand on the knob. Her keys jingle—a soft, metallic rattle that sounds too much like a leash. “You’re not gonna run, are you?”
“No,” I say truthfully. I’m not ready to move yet—not until I understand exactly what I’m up against. Not until I know for sure whether the danger is outside this room, or still in it.
She smiles like she knows something I don’t, and it makes my stomach twist. Then she leaves. The door clicks shut behind her, sharp and final. Silence presses in around me.
I wait until her footsteps fade down the walkway.
I count to thirty.
Then I move.
