The Dirty Ones

What did I read them? What was that book?

And then, after Camille was tired, and Bennett’s hands were wandering, and Kiera and Sofia had droopy eyes from listening to me read, and Hayes was good and stoned and spouting ridiculous theories about why this was happening—which always started and ended with Kiera for some reason—we’d… we’d turn into who we were that year. We’d turn into the Dirty Ones. It called us together like a siren song and we responded like sailors drunk and lost at sea.

But I don’t want to think about it. Not that part. Not now, when I have her to myself. “None of you are that important,” I say, echoing her words from the past.

“Nope,” she agrees. Still eating.

“It was you who was important,” I say. Because I always had this nagging thought that the things that happened to us that year were about her. “It was you.”

“Get out.” She laughs. “I was nobody then and I’m nobody now.”

“You were the writer, Kiera. We were your… subjects.”

“Those weren’t my words.”

I nod my head slowly. “Yeah, they were.”

I don’t even know how to explain that game we played senior year. It wasn’t a game, not really, because there were no winners. There was no prize on the line. If there was, it might make sense. Sure, we could lose. We all lost something, some several times over. Well, maybe not Hayes. Hayes just never got the memo that he was a victim. He’s a fighter and he fought his way through senior year like it was the last round of a championship boxing match.

But it wasn’t a game. It certainly wasn’t fun.

Liar, the little truth-telling voice in my head whispers. You’re a liar.

Because some of it was.

After the shock wore off and we—meaning everyone but Hayes—accepted what was happening, it did get fun. In the winter time it was fun. We’d had enough time to settle in. Understand how to play, so to speak. And some of us were OK with it.

Me, for sure. Sofia, at times. Kiera, always. Because she was just the observer.

I think that’s why Hayes hated her. Probably still does.

She was our judge.

Her words on the page made us into fictional characters. We lived a different life in her book. So weird.

“Do you ever see Emily?”

“Emily?” I ask. Like she’s some forgotten ghost that makes no sense.

“Yeah. I mean, I know she left school—”

“Left?” I ask, cutting her off. “She didn’t leave, Kiera.”

“I know that,” she snaps, all attitude. “I was there, remember? I’m just trying to be delicate.”

“Don’t bother.” I huff. “We all know what happened to Emily.”

“I don’t. Which is why I asked.”

“She never got out, you know that.”

“I haven’t seen or heard from her in—”

“You know that, Kiera. Don’t lie to me or yourself. We all know what happened to her.”

“So she’s still there? In the hospital?”

I nod, looking down at my plate of food on the coffee table, suddenly feeling sick. Because hospital isn’t quite the right word. Hospital implies she had a broken arm or a bad case of the flu. And that’s not the kind of place she was sent to.

“Maybe she wrote the book?”

“How the fuck could she? She didn’t even make it through one round.”

Kiera shrugs. “Well, someone took that book. I went back the next day after the last page was filled up thinking I’d hold on to it if it was still there, but it wasn’t. So someone took it. Maybe they gave it to her? I dunno. I’m as in the dark about this as you are.”

I search for the book, find it with my eyes, sitting on the kitchen counter, and then go get it and return to the couch. “We should read it.”

“No,” Kiera says. “We should wait until we’re all together.”

“Fuck.” I laugh. “I’m sure Bennett has read it three times through by now and is making little notes in the margins. There’s no point in waiting.”

“I don’t want to read it.”

I just stare at her for a few seconds, trying to figure out if this is just typical Kiera defiance or if it’s something else.

Fear, I decide. She’s afraid.

And she has good reason to be. We all do.

“We should go see Emily.”

“Why?”

“Because we owe her that much.”

“I don’t owe her shit.” And I don’t know what gets into me, but I reach over, pull her t-shirt down to expose the bullet-hole scar, and say, “And neither do you.”

Kiera shrugs me off and scoots away from me, pressing herself up against the arm of the couch.

“She shot you,” I say. “And if that was all it was, I’d still be fine with never talking to her again. Letting her rot out her sentence in that fucking nuthouse. But that’s not all. Because she was aiming for me and you got in her way.”