CHAPTER 7

DARIO

On the floor with my cheek to the cool concrete, I am surrounded by the soft whoosh of breath leaving my body and the higher-pitched whish of me taking it back.

Pushing through the stabbing pain in my side, I turn over like a steak. The floor is hard under my bare shoulder blades. They took my shirt. The ceiling is a harder gray than the clinic, and the camera has a blinking red light behind the smoke-colored dome.

They want me dead, so why am I here?

They wanted Nico dead, but they found a use for him first. My brother, who built cities with me out of stray bricks and stones. In that pocket of space behind our building in StuyTown, we assembled Junktown with the leftovers of someone else’s imagination. I didn’t know I was happy. I didn’t know I’d lose him in a trade that would never be honored. Before her—my prima—he was the only person who meant anything to me. With him gone, she’s all that’s left.

My hope is that Sarah left the house, either with Benny or alone. That she heard my voice on the phone and ran away.

My God, I hope she was obedient this one last time. If she ends up like Nico…

No.

Maybe Oria won’t be too grief-stricken to get her. Or she’ll contact Willa, and Willa will take her to St. Easy. Someone else will teach her to snorkel and swim with sharks. She’ll get stronger. She and Willa will talk about the ex-husband they have in common and the loveless reasons they married me. Sarah will smile and laugh and forget me.

Without choosing to lie to myself, I make this story feel like truth, but in the end, it’s just hope… and the hope is not some excruciating torture. It calms my mind and fills my heart. It keeps me from thinking about her for a few minutes. I’m strong enough to fight the pain in my side and get up on my knees. I put my hands on the floor to push myself up, but I touch the edge of the drain and feel a brush on a fingertip like a memory of something pleasant, but indistinct.

I look for the thing. Feel for it. It’s barely visible, but I can pinch it and pull against the resistance. When I have it, I hold it against the light until the filament glows. It’s a row of lowercase e’s in the script of a dying man. Like a scream, e-e-e-e.

It’s a hair. Light brown against the back of my hand.

The Fosters get you some thirty-dollar goop for that mop on your head?

Nico was here, in this cell, breathing this stale air, shedding hair and skin, panicking, surviving, staying strong.

I used to cut his hair with fabric scissors.

Stay still before you have ears like mine.

The first time, I had such a hard time getting it even, I cut it to the length of a bitten fingernail.