Sarah Harian - The Wicked We Have Done

The skeletal girl struts down the stairs. “Come on, sweetheart, why such the long face?”

Don’t tell him I’m here. I want it to be a surprise.

“Here to apologize, you stupid bitch?” Salem seethes. I wince at his tone.

“Knock it off, asswipe,” Valerie snarls. “Don’t pretend you didn’t rape her.”

Salem locks onto Valerie, cracking a wicked grin. “Never denied anything, did I?”

“I’m going to kill him,” she mutters.

She isn’t above it, Salem should know. But his expression is fearless.

“I do want to apologize, Salem.” The girl steps onto the stone of the living room floor and slinks around the couch, making her way toward him. “I know what you’ve been thinking. That this place is paradise. I’m here to prove that to you.” She bats her eyelashes. “So sit back and let me.”

The lights dim. Valerie’s all jumpy next to me, so I extend my hand in front of her and say, “Let it play out.”

“Let him touch her ? After what he did?”

Yes, because she’s letting him. Yes, because this situation is too insane to address. The little blonde crawls onto his lap, and Salem smirks, feasting his eyes on her scrawny, deprived body. Casey waits with clenched fists. Hurried whispers stir from Erity and Stella behind me, and Gordon, well, Gordon starts to cackle, low and gravelly at first, spiraling into mania.

“Think I’d leave you all alone, baby, in a place where the girls don’t service the boys like they should?”

“You’re finally making sense to me.” His hands travel up the back of her thighs, cupping her ass.

She chuckles darkly. “Good.”

Clasping her hands on either side of his head, she twists, elbows swinging as she snaps his neck in half.

I Don’t Remember Most of the Trial.

A funny thing happened with my mind—a trick—during all of those testimonies. I couldn’t even remember my testimony. Just blocked out. A shade drawn over a window.

But I remember one particular witness.

It had never been officially over between Liam and me. I was in federal prison, and he was getting over the fact that the world knew me in a different way from how he did. Those two Evalyns weren’t allowed to exist on the same plane together.

The prosecuting lawyer was relentless. But I should have expected that.

“Mr. Calaway, how close were you to the defendant?”

Liam’s eyes flickered to mine. “We’ve been dating for five years.”

“So you’re still dating, correct?”

“I . . . we haven’t really talked about it.”

My eyes stung. I blinked furiously, sucking in air through my lips.

“Was it a sexual relationship?”

“Objection, Your Honor.”

The judge waved her hand in a dismissive fashion. “Overruled.”

“Yes,” Liam said.

“And in the months before the event, did Evalyn start to act any differently than normal?”

Liam thought about this. He thought about this until my fingernails were embedded deep into my palms.

“No.”

“How about her relationship with Meghan Luciani?”

“She started spending more time with her.”

The whole courtroom buzzed with hushed whispers, and I felt the dead cold seep into my stomach.

“Therefore, she started spending more time with Nick.”

I knew what everyone was thinking. That thought was the most humid thing in the room, clinging to the air until I couldn’t breathe.

“I guess,” Liam said.

“So it would be possible that Evalyn was having an affair with Nick?”

My lawyer stood so fast she almost knocked her chair over. “Objection, Your Honor! Total speculation!”

But Liam didn’t need to answer that question; it had already been implanted into the minds of the jury. Evalyn Ibarra spent time with the girl she murdered in order to fuck her boyfriend.

“Sustained.”

So the prosecuting lawyer tried a different route. “How close was the defendant to Meghan Luciani?”

“Very close. Sisters close.”

That’s when Liam lied. We weren’t sisters close. Liam used to always tease that he would have thought we were lovers if he didn’t know better.

“That’s why it came as such a shock to me when Evalyn was charged.”

That wasn’t what the lawyer wanted to hear, so he changed the subject. “Did Evalyn ever talk about chaos theory in front of you, Mr. Calaway?”

Liam shook his head. “No. Well, only once. Meghan had told her that Nick was obsessed with it.”

The purr of the court grew to a rumble.

This was the one bit of evidence given that didn’t damn me. Nick’s obsession led the police to find a hoard of philosophical books about chaos theory in his apartment—the theory that validated his delusional desire to kill. As for me—nothing in my possessions proved that I even knew what chaos theory was .

The lawyer held up a baggie with a tube inside for Liam to see. “Can you make out this shade of lipstick, Mr. Calaway?”

Liam nodded.

“Is this a shade that Miss Ibarra owned?”

I saw the crime-scene photo as if it was in front of me. The mirror, the note in pink.

Whoever finds this—

I’ve crumbled along with the world.

This cookie-cutter girl you want me to be

Makes me sick.

There is no turning back. Not for

Any of us.

We will see you in

The next life.

—Evalyn Rochelle Ibarra

“I—maybe. I don’t know? I mean, I’m a guy.”

The gallery, and even some of the jury, laughed. I don’t think Liam was trying to be funny.

“Do you plan on breaking up with Miss Ibarra, Mr. Calaway?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

As the prosecuting lawyer made his way back to his seat, Liam’s head remained bowed, his shoulders shaking.

I prayed that he wouldn’t look up at me. I told God that if he did, I’d break, right here in this courtroom, in this chair.

That was the last prayer God answered for me.

Jace screams.

The bubbling laughter spurts more rapidly from Gordon’s mouth as the girl slides off Salem’s limp body. Warmth has left every inch of me.

A gleam has risen in the girl, sharp and vibrant like a blade slicing open her irises. “Get ready to run.”

Fire mysteriously ignites in the hearth, bursting forth and catching on the couch, the carpet—on the nightie of Salem’s victim. Her face is illuminated as the flames eat her alive, charring her skin, broiling her insides.

In a matter of seconds, the fire has spread to all of the furniture, licking up the walls, igniting the curtains.

“We need to get out of here!” Valerie screams.

But I can’t. Not yet. My own body awakens, no longer paralyzed by invisible chains of terror. I run toward her, toward the girl now only walking muscle and bone—and drop to my knees, skidding across the stone until my legs collide with Salem’s body. I feel around his collarbone, moving my hands up toward his neck, where his head rolls at an impossible angle. It wasn’t an act. He’s gone.

Heat threatens to sear the skin straight off of me.

Someone grasps my arm and yanks me to my feet. “What are you doing?” Casey shouts. “We need to get out—”

A plume of flame erupts from the fireplace. Casey throws me in front of him, guiding me out the door. He runs so fast I can’t even keep both feet on the ground as he carries me blindly down the hill. There is nothing but darkness, the only light from the hell we’ve left behind.

“Where are the others? We can’t leave them!” I jerk backward and we both stumble. He gets up first, takes my hand, drags me to my feet, and doesn’t let go. The ground flies by faster than my legs will carry me, and I’m sure I’m going to trip until the land levels out and brush pelts my arms.