Chapter 12
TWELVE
GEMMA
Hours later we found ourselves in Kennedy’s bathroom as a party raged below. With the door shut, the sounds of the party were muffled as if beneath a pillow. The constant thumping of EDM was muted, like a heartbeat hidden in the floorboards.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Kennedy’s home—or rather her parents’ home—was like every other mansion in upstate New York.
Gothic brick architecture, sprawling gardens, and bosky beaches.
Kennedy lived about an hour from Crowne Point, and much less when you took my family’s helicopter, but for my wants, it felt like I was an entire continent away.
No Underworld.
No shifting family dynamics.
Just…this.
“I’m telling you,” Kennedy said to Blaire, lifting herself onto the white marble sink. “Bumping makes a huge difference.”
“I’m telling you,” Blaire countered. “Your nose is gonna fall off. Ya gonna look like a moldy-ass jack-o’-lantern.”
Kennedy’s foot was in the sink, her shimmering and sheer lilac dress trailing to the floor. Blaire sat on the toilet, scrolling on her phone as she took a hit off her vape, rolling her eyes at Kennedy.
What would America think if they knew their favorite sweethearts didn’t trade gossip in the bathroom, but drugs?
Kennedy and Blaire went back to arguing their points on the bumping versus ingesting debate.
I stared at my face in her antique, feminine mirror.
The longer I looked, the more distorted I became.
I took a hit off Blaire’s vape, obscuring my reflection in smoke, and the beehive inside my chest, the thing that urged me to end it all, quieted a little.
I’d been friends with Kennedy and Blaire for over a decade, but they didn’t know me. They sold my secrets to tabloids. They talked shit behind my back. They would drop me in a heartbeat if I wasn’t Gemma Crowne.
I know that, and I was okay with it, because real friendship was a Hollywood lie.
I was using them too.
My mom had done some focus group shit, and people really loved it when I supported other women. They didn’t give a shit if I actually meant it, or if the women I promoted were good people. They just liked the buzzwords.
You see, I wasn’t really a person. I was just…an entity. So Gemma Crowne had to have a squad, because Gemma Crowne was girl power—rah!
Kennedy put some of the powder on her finger, lifting it to Blaire. “Just try it—”
“I can’t fucking listen to this anymore!” Blaire lifted her head from her phone. “You realize bumping benzos does nothing, right? Like, they’re supposed to be digested. All you’re doing is fucking up your nose. Chew them if you want to get higher.”
Kennedy’s brow furrowed. “But—”
“Do you get any special perks?” Blaire asked, turning her attention to me and cutting off Kennedy.
Blaire was one of those girls who was friends with everyone. You had to be wary of the bitches who were friends with everyone. You couldn’t be friends with everyone. That chick who has everyone’s back? Yeah, she was watching no one’s.
But most girls really thought she was their friend, and that was a huge fucking network.
I sank into Kennedy’s claw-foot tub, one leg dangling over the edge. “Perks?” I blew musky, hazy smoke through the glittering cut-crystal chandelier, until the glimmer died in the smoke.
“Like, when you become god queen,” Kennedy said.
“Godmother,” Blaire corrected.
Kennedy used me because being friends with Gemma Crowne helped promote her makeup line.
She sold more of my secrets than anyone, but she had a demographic I’d never reach on my own: the poor.
Kennedy hadn’t been poor since she was a baby and her mother married the heir to a supermarket chain, but she sold herself as a rags-to-riches girl, and the world bought it.
She made me appear relatable—said my mother.
Kennedy made a face. “Whatever. My godmother always sent me these weird preachy books on my birthday. Like, thanks, but who asked you, bitch?”
“That’s what she’s supposed to do,” Blaire said. “She’s a godmother. She guides you in your faith.”
Everyone paused, then laughed.
Me guiding my niece? What would I guide her in? Her first trip? Be sure to check your shrooms for mold, little Sonnet. You’re not supposed to get nauseated when you trip. If you do, you’re eatin’ mold, kid.
Or maybe I could teach her how to self-harm without anyone knowing. Safety pins—a stab from a safety pin looked just like a freckle.
“I’m pretty sure if they die you have to raise it,” Blaire said.
I jerked back. “What?”
“The kid. If the parents die, you have to raise it.”
I made a face. What the fuck was my brother thinking?
Kennedy started telling a story about her godmother and how she was pretty sure she was one of her father’s affair partners.
I eyed the benzos Kennedy was still trying to get Blaire to try.
How many would I need to take to die? I opened my phone to ask, and in response, Google gave me the fucking suicide hotline.
Hey, bitch, have you considered therapy?
Thanks, Google, but I was clearly trying to spend some quality time with my demons.
“What would you do if you knew it was your last night on earth?” I asked, focusing on the chandelier’s sparkle. “Like, if you were going to die today?”
Kennedy swiped at her nose. “I don’t know, like, do I have cancer or something?
Oh my God, Gemma—” Her smile dropped, mouth open.
“Do you have that thing, that—that—I don’t—know—how—to—pronounce—” She pressed a hand to the diamond pendant at her chest, hyperventilating.
“Is that why you made us all do that stupid ice challenge?”
“That was, like, twenty years ago.” I slid farther down into the tub, one leg out, heel dangling. “I don’t have ALS, Kennedy.”
“The fuck, Ken?” Blaire stared at her, mouth open.
“You know benzos make me emotional!”
Sometimes it felt like I had a friend inside my head who was constantly giving me the worst advice. When I woke up and the world was gray and I just wanted to know how to fix it, that friend has their hand raised so high, just waiting for me to call on them.
Have you considered killing yourself? the friend suggested.
And I was like, Does anyone else want to offer a suggestion? Like anything. Seriously.
And everyone shrugged.
I stood up. “Let’s go back.”
“Okay, but first, break the tie. Powder or bar?” Kennedy pointed at the crushed-up xanny on her left, and the bars on her right.
“Neither,” I said.
“Neither?” they said in unison, eyes popping out of their heads.
“I want both.”
It burned my nostrils, and I knew it wouldn’t enhance the high, but fuck it, was I supposed to waste it?
I swiped the powder on my philtrum with my middle finger, adjusting my foundation. Good as new.
“This is why you’re the fucking queen!”
We linked arms and returned to the party. Inside Kennedy’s house was nothing like the stately facade. Lilac lights strobed in time with the thumping of a beat. On the table a crystal bowl glowing with a rainbow LED light from the base held a plethora of mystery pills.
When your parents spent the majority of their time in another continent, you could do whatever you wanted.
“Oh my God, why is she here?” Blaire asked.
Kennedy and Blaire turned their attention to some girl I recognized from boarding school.
“I thought she was in rehab,” Kennedy said, tilting her head in confusion.
“She’s literally flirting with Sebastian right in front of my fucking face,” Blaire said.
“Why do you care?” Kennedy asked. “You said you ended the situationship because Seb was, like, the not-hot version of Patrick Bateman.”
These were my closest friends.
My best friends.
I’d laughed and cried with them. I’d held their hair back while they vomited the night’s alcohol and pills. I’d put my finger down their throats to make sure they vomited.
And when I looked at them, I saw markets and quid pro quo. All three of us were in a twisted parasitic relationship, surviving and thriving off each other.
That’s just the way friendship is.
My eyes wandered from people dancing, to those taking selfies, to the group skinny-dipping, landing on another group gambling for pink slips and whatever the hell else they had.
The memories we looked back on, the photos we enjoyed the most, were the blurry ones, the ugly ones, the ones we accidentally took. Those filled with laughter, or sorrow and mistakes.
My life was populated with perfection.
Nothing to look back on but ivory and cold pictures.
I wanted to run out into the ocean. Ruin it. Ruin the pretty hand-sewn crystal beading on my dress. Ruin the makeup someone spent over an hour on. Crush the diamonds on my neck. Everything.
“It’s the principle of the thing, Kennedy—”
“I’m gonna go for a smoke,” I said, not waiting for them to respond.
Outside, a gush of salty winter air whispered across my cheek, followed by the sound of the waves shattering like sugar candy on the sand. The cold felt good on my overheated skin.
Marshmallows replaced the thorny blood inside my body. Minutes expanded into forever. It was like I was underwater, staring at my world reflected back at me. Slow. Peaceful.
That lovely, fuzzy haze filled my veins like the cottontails that grew in our home in Italy. The look, not the feel. They were always so scratchy…
The benzos hit.
It was okay. Everything was okay.
Finally.
I lit my cigarette and kicked off my shoes, dipping my toes in the icy sea. The red cigarette tip burned bright in the night.
I knew he was behind me before I heard the soft crunch of sand. Maybe it was the musky smell of cannabis drifting on the night breeze that seemed to follow him wherever he went. More likely, it was that inexplicable thing that tied us together.
“You’re not supposed to be here, Reaper.” I tapped my cigarette, ash falling like stardust to the sand.
Horror movies would have you believe monsters can’t wait to eat little girls. They lay in wait to deflower virgins, rip apart our insides, and drag us to their hell.
As an adult, I’d learned monsters weren’t tempted by such banalities.
Hell was a privilege.
Real monsters wanted your soul.
I went to take another puff, when Grim stepped into view and gripped my hand. The cigarette was suspended, a sliver from my lips.
His voice came low and smoky in the dark. “You taste better when you don’t smoke.”