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Back Undone Save as PDF
Chapters (34)
  1. Cover
  2. undone
  3. Dedication
  4. one
  5. two
  6. three
  7. four
  8. five
  9. six
  10. seven
  11. eight
  12. nine
  13. ten
  14. eleven
  15. twelve
  16. thirteen
  17. fourteen
  18. fifteen
  19. sixteen
  20. seventeen
  21. eighteen
  22. nineteen
  23. twenty
  24. twenty-one
  25. twenty-two
  26. twenty-three
  27. twenty-four
  28. twenty-five
  29. twenty-six
  30. twenty-seven
  31. twenty-eight
  32. twenty-nine
  33. thirty
  34. Acknowledgments

The person in the coffin was dressed and coiffed in a way I’d never seen her. Laid out was the girl that her parents had always dreamed she would be. She was not anyone I’d ever met. Not the true Kori.

Two carats of cubic zirconia winked from her ears. No doubt they’d removed the real diamond from her belly, thinking it was a fake. I slid my palm over my stomach, feeling the hard bump of the real diamond’s lonely partner. I feared that if they knew, they might come and rip it from my flesh and replace the fake ones in her ears before it was too late. Before she was deep in the earth and they couldn’t fuck with her anymore.

I looked back down at her. They fucked with her plenty already.

The black fingernails that had once raked through my hair were the color of ballet slippers. Not even a hint of black remained, not even the little crescents along the cuticles that polish remover never seemed to get. Her eyebrow ring—gone. They’d plugged the hole with some sort of fleshy paste and spackled over it with makeup. The ink tattoo never happened. This girl would’ve never even thought of it, much less have the creativity to pull it off.

Of course, this girl didn’t look like she’d been in a car crash either. Which only served to strengthen my doubts.

“You look like shit,” I said through burgeoning tears as I kneeled at the casket, setting Baby Maru next to me. I pulled the tears in with pure spite. I wasn’t about to cry over this girl. I didn’t even know this girl. “I bet you hate them for doing this to you.

“I had a feeling they would, though,” I whispered before making a paranoid glance around to make sure her parents weren’t watching me. When I was certain their attention was elsewhere, occupied with other people giving condolences and stock tips, I leaned over and secured a garnet necklace of mine she’d always borrowed around her neck. I tucked it beneath the crisp white Peter Pan collar of her dress, ignoring the starched feeling that both the fabric and her skin shared. “Now you’re beautiful, bitch.”

I picked up Baby Maru, cradled him against my chest like a pillow as I stood up. “You weren’t supposed to leave me. I still love you, though. I always will, my dark angel.”

When I looked down at her, I heard the words she spoke at the dam, so certain and so sure. “It’s too soon.”