At some point during the night Cory’s pillow slipped to the floor, and he slept with his head thrown back and his chin in the air. I lay on my side for hours, staring at the white mound of his throat and the taut tendons of his neck, and thinking of the paintings in the attic. At one point I got up to fetch the craft knife and brought it back to bed with me. It cut so beautifully, now that I’d changed the blade. You didn’t have to lean on it at all; you just touched the paper—or whatever you happened to be cutting—and an incision appeared as if by magic.

I raised myself on my elbows and tested the blade on the mattress. It slid right in without a sound, and came out with a tiny feather attached to its tip. I picked the feather off and blew it across the bed, toward Cory. This revenge business would be a lot easier if his neck were stuffed with little brown goose feathers.

It was difficult to know how much the blood itself would bother me; perhaps it was impossible to know until I saw and smelled it. There were other aspects that definitely did bother me, though. I would mind being cast as a killer forevermore, and I would mind the expressions on the policemen’s faces when they came to arrest me, and I would mind what Dad and Tom thought of me. I worried about how my conscience would cope in the long run.

Cory moaned as he rolled onto his front, and I couldn’t see his throat anymore. His face was so pale that it seemed to shine in the half-light before dawn; he was like a marble sculpture gleaming in a deserted museum.

I twisted onto my side, so as to watch from a more comfortable angle. He had the right features for a sculpture—a Greek Apollo, perhaps, or a Roman general. Occasionally his lips twitched, as if at a private joke, and it prompted me to try out a smile on my own face. Even without a mirror I could tell I was getting it wrong. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the knack. I could do a wan turn-up of the mouth, and I could do a sarcastic grimace, but an actual smile—all glitter and light, like his—was beyond me.

I relaxed my grip on the knife—God, my knuckles were aching!—and pushed it underneath the mattress for safekeeping. I knew now what I wanted for Cory, and it wasn’t death. I could see the look he’d give me as the blood splashed up my arms, and we’d both know the joke was on me.

“What are you doing?”