Sarah Harian - The Wicked We Have Done

He kissed my jaw and said, “Even when I snore all night?”

I grinned. “I’m getting used to it.”

A crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by the ting of a metal bowl rolling across the linoleum.

“Okay, since you now know that I’m awake, you should come out. If you aren’t screwing, that is,” Meghan hollered. “I made you two breakfast.”

“Thought I smelled bacon.” Liam rolled off of me, sitting up.

“Why is she cooking breakfast? She never cooks me breakfast.” I’d given her the keys to my car last night. Liam and I ended up drinking too much and had to take a cab home. She probably crashed into something and was now trying to make up for it, I thought.

I was the crazy junior who had not only clung to my high school boyfriend, but my childhood best friend as well. So many students I met since I started college thought I was insane. College was a time to break free from childhood—a time for students to experiment and sleep with people they didn’t even like and join sororities where the members, for a few fleeting years, would be as close to them as sisters until they graduated and never saw them again.

The three of us could have gone somewhere other than Phoenix for school. But Phoenix was only an hour away from home, and in Phoenix, we’d have each other.

And had them I did. I’d been living with Meghan for three years. Liam had his own apartment with a roommate, but he was practically living with us as well. Our third wheel , Meghan liked to call him.

Liam leaned over me and kissed my neck, his languid tongue rolling over my collarbone. I gasped as his fingers traced the inside of my thigh. “I love you,” he whispered. “Meghan’s probably just excited. She knows what’s waiting for you.”

“A quickie before class?”

“Funny.” His voice rumbled in my ear. “I meant out on the patio.”

He had piqued my curiosity. But his eyes that were lighter than the sun-washed sky outside weren’t giving me a clue as to what he was getting at.

“That was your cue to get your ass out of bed.”

“Thanks for that.” I smacked him playfully and sat, locating my pajamas scattered across the floor. I dressed and tied my hair up. As I walked out to the living room, I hoped Meghan had made an excessive amount of bacon.

I looked toward the sliding glass door. On the balcony sat a full-sized wooden easel. I squealed and ran outside. Liam followed.

“Why?” I asked.

“What do you mean, why?”

I spun to him. “What’s the occasion?”

“I’m tired of seeing you ‘working’ with colored pencils and printer paper.”

I didn’t have any decent art supplies. It wasn’t like I’d been an artist all my life. I never took any art classes prior to college, but I knew I could draw. I knew I could conceptualize images and create them.

Then one day, during my freshman year, I decided to change my major to art. Because being a business major was unfulfilling.

Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter what you get your degree in. People just want to think it does.

I didn’t tell Mom until the summer before my sophomore year. Safe to say she was still bitter.

“You didn’t have to,” I said, even though I was so ecstatic that I couldn’t stop shaking.

Meghan sauntered outside. She wore an apron from the coffee shop she used to work at. “You know what this means?” She waved a dirty spatula in the air.

“We can get our blog up and running.” I bounced on my toes.

“We can get our effing blog up and running.”

Meghan and I liked the concept of teamwork, and an organic fan base. We had this brilliant idea not long before. Meghan was a photography major and damn good photographer. We’d been best friends ever since high school, and even then, she was obsessed with her work. We wanted to play around with perception—how a photograph could transform into a painting. It could be the same image and yet entirely different.

But this was only theory.

“Art-supply shop this afternoon?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Damn, eggs are burning.” Meghan ran inside.

Liam pushed his sandy hair back. “I gotta take a shower and get to the library. Even on Saturdays I can’t relax. College blows.”

“I love you.”

He shot me that perfect, lopsided grin of his. “Because I buy you easels?”

“Because you know me. You know that a wooden easel means more than the world to me.”

He took my hand and dragged me to him, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I love you too. More than you know.”

I have the worst hangover imaginable. I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth and swallow away the bile in my throat. Water. I need water, now.

I open my eyes to clean, bright light and groan, covering my head with a flat, itchy pillow.

Some party last night.

I stiffen. There was no party last night. There hasn’t been a party for ten months. I’ve been in jail .

Yanking my head from beneath the pillow, I blink until my vision focuses.

Pine panels cover the walls and floor. Shelves scattered with knickknacks sit above a whitewashed vanity. Light trickles in from a French-paned window on the wall farthest from the door.

Someone snores beneath me.

As I sit, I bite back the urge to groan. I’m still wearing a hoodie and cargo pants. My boots are by the door.

The Compass Room.

I try to remember when I was last awake, rubbing my wrists where they should be cuffed. Did I enter the simulation? Did I escape alive?

All I can remember is the train, and the other criminals. The needle that went into my neck.

My gaze locks on a navy backpack at the end of my bed. EVALYN is stamped on the front.

I don’t remember ever owning this pack. I take a moment to contemplate what could possibly be inside, then zip it open.

A T-shirt, cotton underwear, a canteen, a lighter, socks, a toothbrush, and at the very bottom, a blanket. Survival gear.

I don’t know why this belongs to me now. I don’t even know where I am. The one thing engrained into me since entering the prison system is that I should follow orders: when to leave my cell, when to change my clothes, when to see my visitors, when to eat.

Where is the guard who’s supposed to tell me what to do?

I shake out my ponytail and run my fingers through my tangled waves, secure it up, and swing my feet off the bed. Taking my bag with me, I step down the ladder to learn the identity of my bunkmate.

The bag propped up at the bottom of the bed reads JACINDA, and the girl with dimples lies on her back, an arm flung over her face.

She’s the suicide girl—took out a family in the process and lived to reap the punishment. She had been crying before we left prison. I wonder if it was because she still wants to die, or because she might not get out of here alive.

I tear myself away from her and walk to the window. Before me, a hill covered in pine rolls downward. The sun sits at a slant in the sky—it will be dark soon. I’ve been out for either a day or a handful of hours.

Nothing but forest. No buildings, no roads. Just a thick blanket of green all the way to the jagged mountains in the distance.

“Where the hell are we?” I mutter to myself.

“Is this the Compass Room?”

I spin to Jacinda, who has propped herself up on her elbows. Her expression shifts as she registers who I am, unfocused eyes darting around the room, like she’s trying to figure out if we’re alone.

She’s afraid of me. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

“I don’t know,” I say.

When she spots the backpack at the foot of her bed, she crawls to it, her fingers tracing the letters. “Jacinda,” she murmurs, retracting her hand like the fabric bit her. “No one calls me that.”