The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle by Jennifer McMahon Page A

circles like a gasping fish, but my rings were sad blobs, amorphous shapes. Nicky practiced throwing the little plastic-handled knife into a dart board nailed to the wall. He never got near the center.

    A FTER A WHILE , Nicky said he had chores to finish and left us alone.
    “What happened to your arm?” I asked Del, eyeing the ring of purple bruises.
    “Nothing,” she said, pulling the sleeve of her yellow shirt back down and picking up the knife.
    “I got an idea,” Del said as she threw the knife into the dart-board, hitting it dead center, right in the bull’s-eye.
    I felt a little thrill of peril. It was being in the leaning cabin that did it. It was in the way the springs popped dangerously out of that mattress, the thunk of the knife’s blade each time it entered the wall, the way the rings of smoke from Del’s mouth drifted up, then disappeared, leaving behind only the stale ghost of a smell.
    “Gimme your hand,” Del instructed.
    I did. She held my hand, studied it like it was some strange wounded animal. In her other hand, she gripped the knife.
    “Close your eyes,” she said.
    “Are you going to cut me?”
    “Trust me,” she said. “C’mon, close your eyes,” she dared, and I did, not wanting to seem afraid.
    She cut quickly, without hesitation. My eyes flew open and I tried to jerk my hand away, but she held tight.
    “Ow! What the hell?”
    She let go of my hand. The cut on my pointer finger was short, but deep. Blood dripped onto the mattress.
    I watched as Del used the knife to cut her own finger with the same swiftness and confidence. Then she took my hand and pressed our two fingers together.
    “We’re blood sisters now,” she explained. “You got my blood. I got yours. Forever.”
    My finger burned against hers. Del was a part of me then, and I knew that whatever path our friendship might take, there would be no going back. Not ever. Try as I might later to separate myself, Del and I were bound.

4
November 8, 2002
    K ATYDID !”
    My mother’s voice brought me struggling out of a deep, unsettled, drug-induced sleep. My mouth tasted metallic. I fumbled for my watch on the milk crate next to my bed—it was seven in the morning, but it felt like the middle of the night. I had been dreaming that Del and I were in her root cellar and she was giving me a tattoo, using the rusty point of her sheriff’s star to write Desert Rose across my chest. There was someone else down there with us, too—a man—watching. He stood in the corner and I couldn’t see his face. Suddenly, as I lay there on the cot, I had this absurd feeling that if I turned around fast enough, I’d see him. That he’d been there, in the room with me, all night. But that was only a dream, right? So why was I so scared to turn around?
    Magpie was curled up on my stomach, nose tucked under her white-tipped tail, and I was reluctant to disturb her soft, warm weight. I counted to three and made myself look at the back corner. Nothing. Just specks of dust dancing in the sunlight.
    “No more sleeping pills for you,” I whispered to myself.
    My mother called me again, using the nickname I hadn’t heard from her since I’d moved away. I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen barefoot, Magpie right behind me.
    Every cabinet door and drawer in my mother’s kitchen hung open. The fridge door was ajar. The counter was cluttered with mixing bowls, bags of flour and sugar, jars of honey and molasses.
    Hurricane Jean had made landfall.
    A bottle of olive oil lay open and draining onto the floor. Magpie dashed over to it and began to daintily lap it up, walking in circles, leaving a ring of oily paw prints on the burnished wood floor.
    I remembered how impressed I had been with the neat efficiency of my mother’s compact kitchen when I’d first seen it two years ago. If the woman who had painstakingly designed that space could see this mess now, she would weep.
    “What are you doing, Ma?” I was stunned, both by the