‘Somehow I doubt that, Soph. If they were the least bit scared, they’d stop having sex, but they’re just floating around here, copulating in my face.’
Another thump. Another curse.
I tutted. ‘The nerve.’
‘I don’t think my heart rate has ever been this high,’ Millie panted. ‘I can feel it in my throat. Does that make sense? I can actually feel my pulse choking me.’
‘Why don’t you just learn to coexist peacefully with them?’
‘Oh, shut up, you’re not here,’ she hissed. ‘You don’t know the trauma I’m enduring right now.’
I opened my eyes – the stark white walls seemed to loom inwards, boxing me in. I could hear the distant sound of Elena arguing with someone downstairs. Two rooms over, CJ was playing obnoxiously loud rock music. Little Sal had woken up screaming every night this week. My gaze flicked to the side table, where the photograph of Libero Marino was staring up at me, daring me to look at him. ‘Yeah,’ I said, dispassionately. ‘I can’t possibly imagine it.’
‘You know, I think this is probably the most scared I’ve ever been,’ Millie panted.
‘Really?’
‘Not counting Eden,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘But it’s close.’
Millie was the queen of compartmentalization. Once a thing was over, it was over, in a neat little box in a filing cabinet in the back of her head, never to be disturbed again. I envied that in her. I would need that skill soon.
‘Should I just start vacuuming the air until they get sucked in?’
‘Sure.’ I was looking into Libero’s dark eyes, and wondering what Sara would say to me now. But Sara was dead. The blood war made corpses of good people.
Was Libero a good person?
Did it matter?
Another loud thump, and this time, the accompanying sound of triumph. ‘Yes!’ she whooped. ‘Yes! I got him and his lover! Oh, my God! It’s over. I finally did it!’ Millie was an entirely different version of herself now, all the good cheer returning to her voice. ‘I feel so accomplished.’
What would I feel like when it was done? Would it change me for ever, or would it invigorate me, the way it seemed to invigorate Nic?
‘Soph?’
I was still staring at Libero, tracing that silver scar, studying the quirk of his mouth underneath his facial hair. ‘Huh?’
‘I just want to thank you for your support. It can’t have been easy for you, hearing me in such peril.’
‘No,’ I said, pulling my attention from the photograph. ‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘Well, I’m fine now, so I’m going to hang up and watch Grey’s Anatomy.’
‘Sure, Mil, just use me and then discard me.’
She made kissy noises down the phone. ‘Much love, Soph. I’ll see you at school tomorrow!’
When she hung up, I tried to return to my assignment, but my brain had been wiped blank. I was so not in the mood for this. A yawn bubbled up in my chest, and I contemplated forcing myself to sleep. It wasn’t like there was anything else to do, unless I wanted to stay up and further humanize Libero Marino. Maybe he liked chocolate. Maybe he had a dog. Maybe he used to buy his sister a Christmas present every year. Maybe he had cried the hardest at her funeral.
Maybe he murdered innocent people, like his mother did. Maybe he distributed drugs that ended up killing people. Maybe he was coming for me too.
The less I thought about it the better. I could drive myself crazy with all these what-ifs.
There was a knock at my bedroom door. I snapped my head up, then checked my phone. No messages. No missed calls. Usually they called me if they wanted me.
‘Who is it?’
‘Nic.’
I was in teddy bear pyjama pants and an oversized hoodie. A part of me wished I looked better. The other part of me told me to shut up and stop being so superficial. I smoothed my hair back from my face and tugged my hoodie down.
‘Come in,’ I said, brushing the homework aside until it fell on to the floor in a heap.
Nic shut the door behind him. He swept his gaze across the floor, an eyebrow arching at the little bundle of notes, at the big fat poetry book squishing half of them. ‘Yeah, I don’t envy you right now, Soph.’ He stepped over them like they were toxic and plonked himself on the end of my bed. ‘I never was one for poetry.’
I gestured at the discarded poem. ‘So, I guess you can’t help me pick a deeply emotional poem to identity with for this stupid assignment?’
He pulled a face, his features growing almost cartoon-like with faux horror. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘Oh well. At least I tried.’
‘I’ll ask Luca for you when he gets home. He’s a real nerd for shit like this.’
I tried not to react to the mention of Luca’s name. The truth was, I hadn’t seen him since he had almost come to blows with my father at my mother’s ceremony. He had just disappeared, and had been gone all day. I guessed he needed some time to cool off, but that didn’t do much to soothe the squirmy guilty feeling in my stomach.
Nic arranged himself model-like on the end of my bed, like I was about to draw him à la Rose in Titanic. He was dressed casually in a black T-shirt and dark blue jeans, his hair swept away from his face in finely gelled waves, a gold cross around his neck. Strictly speaking, Nic probably should not have been in my room, but I had bigger things to worry about right now. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked him. ‘Are you looking for a bedtime story?’