“Connie…,” Mira murmured.
Connie touched Mira’s forehead with one polish-chipped fingernail. “Have courage, sister.”
Have courage, sister! Mira blew out a breath that shook her lips. Connie was prone to repeating anything. They’d made a cruel game of it when they were younger, one sister dropping a preposterous fact to see how long it would take Connie to repeat it to the other sister. Did you hear Louis Gentry’s mother was a former underwear model? That gypsy moth caterpillars were a plague from God that meant the world was ending? That Coach Freck was falsely accused? Who knew? Connie did! But this wasn’t simply Connie parroting Francesca. She had bought into her plan utterly. Mira had been (conveniently, now that she thought about it) doing odd jobs at Daddy’s office when Francesca had convinced Connie to allow her to test her powers by risking her life. She wondered how that conversation had gone down, and almost laughed thinking about it, it was so preposterous. She knew Francesca only had to say she needed it, and that they were blood, and that was enough.
“I want everything to turn out right,” Mira said weakly.
Connie grabbed her hand. She smelled fruity from what she’d washed her hair with, slicked on her lips, or chewed. She squeezed Mira’s hand.
“Mio sangue,” Connie said, pulling away.
Mira listened to Connie’s feet hammer, the slam of the back door followed by complete stillness, and Mira suddenly couldn’t remember if she had ever been alone in that room. She closed her eyes and inhaled Connie’s lingering scent, which now smelled of decay.
Mira snatched her coat off the bed and flew down the stairs.
*
It was the first week in April and the ground was hard under Mira’s bald bicycle tires. Connie, who wasn’t allowed to own a bike, clung hard to Francesca’s back, knees squeezing her waist. Though in her mind, Mira was there to protect Connie, it was Francesca she stayed close to, riding to the left of her shadow, forcing cars to pull around her first. She jumped as a pickup truck barreled past and honked. Mira had started noticing the looks when they rode their bikes, and they weren’t the looks she was used to. Only girls under the age of ten rode bikes, never mind to actually get somewhere. Mira saw them through the eyes of the drivers who passed: Francesca in her bag-lady jacket, with Connie on her back. Mira on the rickety, oldest, hand-me-down bike, the gearshift forever stuck on one. She suspected that the rules their father set—not riding in hardly anybody’s car, for one—were starting to peg the Cillo sisters as plain weird. Now with Francesca determined to prove herself a modern-day saint, Mira wondered if it wasn’t true.
Francesca braked at the blinking light where the two-lane highway spun into a rotary that contained the exit to Johnny’s Foodmaster. It was nearly rush hour, and a badly timed merge could take out all three at once. The wind was punishing, and the day’s warmth sank fast as the sun fell. They waited. Mira squeezed her arms close to her sides to keep warm as she rested her foot on the ground. Francesca tore out in a flash, and Mira hitched back up on her bike and flew into the rotary, pedaling fast to catch up. They coasted off the exit and rode around to the back lot of Johnny’s Foodmaster, chaining their bikes to the metal stand. A boy in stained white pants nodded to them as he hauled a bag to the nearby Dumpster, bringing a waft of ocean and rot. When Mira had trouble keeping her bike upright in the slats, Francesca didn’t seem to notice, staring out toward the quarry, wind whipping her hair. After she was done, Mira stepped into Francesca’s view, but found that her eyes were closed, and she was murmuring a prayer.
Francesca’s eyes flashed open. “I’m ready.”
Connie rose and fell on her toes, hands jammed into her parka. Mira looked toward the boy, and considered calling to him as the supermarket door slammed shut.
Francesca held out her palm. “The pen, please.”
Connie’s eyes flashed fear, though she made a sloppy half smile.
“We won’t need it. Mio sangue,” Connie said, swallowing hard. She dug into the small bag strapped across her body and handed the plastic bullet-shaped case filled with adrenaline to Francesca.
Francesca threw her arms around Connie’s neck. “Blood.”
Francesca let her arms fall. She pointed the EpiPen in the air, then at Mira. It glowed orange against the slate sky like a flare.
Mira frowned at the pen. “You want me to hold it?”
“You should be in charge of it, since you’re the only one who thinks we’ll need it.”
Mira turned away, her face flushed dark red, as she shoved the EpiPen into the back pocket of her jeans. She had never felt so separate from Francesca, and it hurt her, somewhere vague in her chest, an ache that she realized had been there for weeks. When she turned, they were already small, running up the steep hill that led to the scabby woods encircling the quarry. Francesca led, then Connie, her dark head bobbing as she tried to keep pace with Francesca, her scarf flapping behind like a misaligned rudder.
PART 7
Heart
NOVEMBER 2016
Below Ben, a mechanical lounger wheezed, followed by drunken fumbling noises.
“Hello?” Mr. Cillo growled, his voice thick with mucus and sleep. He cleared his throat with a hack.
From the hall, Ben couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but he could measure out the beats of his father’s greeting, laced with apologies for having woken Mr. Cillo, and Ben cringed, for he imagined they sounded wimpy. Ben’s mind flashed on every reason for his father to call his hated former boss, and none of them made any sense … unless. Unless they had somehow discovered his intention to lie about lacrosse practice and enter their neighbor’s home.
Why would his father—or mother—call Mr. Cillo?
“Well, this is a surprise.” Mr. Cillo’s voice was smoother now, alert.
Ben’s gut flinched.