Razorblade Kisses(95)

Emery shook her head, refusing to enter the room that would break any concrete columns she’d built in the past four years to hold herself up.

The asphalt of the parking lot had black stains and cracks. The cracks mesmerized her. All these cracks and it hadn’t fallen apart yet. She wondered if that’s what she looked like on the inside, like a broken down street. Rachel wrapped her arms around her and laid her forehead on the back of Emery’s neck. They stood like that for what seemed like hours, but was only one full minute.

Rachel pulled her in the room. “Sit down, Emery.”

“I…” All of a sudden it was as if Emery had too much gum in her mouth to talk.

“I have to tell you something, okay?”

“Okay.”

She silently pleaded for numbness to come into her brain before she heard whatever words were going to spill from Rachel’s mouth.

“Emery,” Rachel sat down next to Emery on the bed, “Ashley’s dead.”

Everything around her disappeared. The dingy curtains, the scratchy coverlet on the bed, the brown carpet. They all faded into nothing.



“Emery!” Ashley’s voice rang through the backyard. Emery was hiding at the top of the slide Ashley had just gotten for her sixth birthday. “I’m going to find you.”

Emery giggled. Then she heard her sister climb up the stairs. Her cherubic face popped into the opening of the slide.

“Told you!!” Ashley straddled Emery and forced them both to slide down, both laughing and struggling to stay upright.

Emery fell off of the slide backward and Ashley landed on her. Then they both lay in the grass and looked up at the sky. Emery was babysitting for her mother because she and her new stepfather were on a date. Ashley and Emery’s dad had died of pancreatic cancer two years earlier. It had been a quick death; he found out he was sick and was gone within three months.

“Do you think Daddy is up there watching us?” Ashley asked.

“Ash, I sure hope so.” She smiled and reached to grab her sister’s hand. At four, Ashley had been sad, but didn’t mourn like Emery had. Her dad had been the fun one; he wrestled with them and took them to IHOP every Saturday morning, just them. She missed him every day.

“I mean, he’s in heaven, right?”

“Right.”

“Someone at school told me there was no such thing as heaven.”

Emery propped herself on one elbow and looked at Ashley. “Of course there’s a heaven. Why would they say that?”

“He said if there was a God, why would he take good people, like Daddy?”

Baffled, Emery didn’t say anything, but just wrapped her arms around her younger sister. “I know you miss him. Just know it’ll always be you and me. I’ll always be here for you, Ashley.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.” They joined their pinkies around in a swear solidifying their vow.



When she opened her eyes, she was in the back of Derrick’s SUV and they were already north of Macon, headed back to Atlanta. She sat up quickly.

“I promised her,” she said to no one in particular.

Rachel startled at Emery’s voice and turned in her seat. “Promised who?”

“Ashley. I promised her that I’d always be there and I wasn’t. I left her there and I knew what he was capable of.”

“Em.” Rachel reached to take her hand, but Emery shrank into the back seat away from her touch.

“Tell me what happened,” she demanded. “Tell me everything.”

“It was all over Facebook and TV. I don’t know all the details, but it looks like Ashley got into your mother’s prescription pills and…”

“Why?” The word slipped out of Emery’s mouth unintentionally.

“I…”

“Why Rachel? Why would my baby sister kill herself?”

“After I heard, I checked in with her best friend, Madison. It seems like she’d been withdrawing from everyone this week. Madison hadn’t seen her in a few days, and she’d stopped eating lunch with them and sat in the library instead. Madison didn’t know what happened to make her stop hanging out with them.”

“I know.”

“What?” Rachel asked.

“I know what happened.” Emery was certain that she knew exactly why Ashley would do this, because she’d wanted to do it so many times during those three horrible years. Ashley just actually did it.

“Derrick, I need you to help me.” Emery leaned back into the seat and felt her mindset change from mourning to revenge. “I’m going to kill him.”





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Slaying Old Dragons



She sat at Derrick’s kitchen table, staring at the dirty knees of her jeans. The Georgia red dirt had soaked through her pants and stained them. Her life was stained. She was stained. Forty-eight hours after she’d watched her sister be lowered into the ground, they finally had a plan. Rachel talked Madison’s mother into calling and asking Celeste to meet her for a spa day to help with the stress and Phil would be there by himself. Emery would go then. She’d been ignoring messages from Tim all day. She’d told him she had the flu and was going to be bedridden for a few days. A tear fell down her cheek and she clumsily wiped it off. Her reality was she was in Atlanta to say goodbye to her thirteen-year-old sister.