Chapter 3: I: IT'S NERF OR NOTHING!

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CAIN

I'M NOT SAYING I'M INTO BONDAGE, but I'm into bondage. And I'm sitting in the middle of Joey Whitman's wine cellar, bound and gagged. Talk about yum.

Yes, you heard me right! Joey Whitman. The Joey Whitman. The same Joey Whitman that plays nickelback or whatever the fuck it's called on our football team and is Literally The Same Man as every straight white guy. He's the most vanilla fucking person, I swear to God.

But let's get real for a second. Just because he's so vanilla doesn't mean he's totally off-limits. I wouldn't pass on an ice cream cone just because I'm lactose intolerant. Anywho. That's not the point.

You must be wondering am I'm doing hanging out with his kind. Well. This wasn't exactly my choice. If you haven't figured figured out by the fact that I'm bound and gagged and locked inside his parents' wine cellar, Joey Whitman kidnapped me—well, us. He got my friend Meredith too.

Meredith's sitting cross-legged opposite me, her hands tied to a pole behind her back. She's working on loosening her gag, pushing at it with her tongue. It kind of hurts me to see her like this. She's the last person you'd ever want to be in this kind of situation; she looks like a fucking Disney princess. She's this overweight white girl, and even though she's probably the least innocent person I know, with her long, wavy blonde hair, creamy skin, and wide doe-hazel eyes, she's got this whole angelic vibe about her. She seriously looks like motherfucking Rapunzel. You wouldn't want to watch Rapunzel get kidnapped, now, would you?

Who am I kidding? Of course you would, you sick bastard.

After a second, she finally succeeds in loosening the gag. She spits it out of her mouth, and it falls down her chin, hanging around her neck like a noose. The first thing she says is: "That little fucker!"

She might look like a Disney princess, and her last name might mean "virgin," but don't let that fool you. She's as deflowered as they come.

She looks at me for a moment. Realizes that my gag's still around my mouth, right where I want it. "Oh, my God, Cain, you're so useless. Use your tongue," she orders.

Here's the thing: they'd tied a bandana around Meredith's mouth. They'd duck-taped my mouth shut. I can't exactly French kiss my way out of duck tape. I shake my head and shrug at her, trying to convey the grim realities I'm facing.

She sighs. "Fine. Get your ass over here and help me."

Here's the other thing: I've kind of been kidnapped before. Multiple times, actually. This is one of the less pleasant experiences. Joey Whitman lacks all the pizzazz, man. It's all just duct tape and bandanas. Been there, done that. Where's that little je ne sais quoi that makes other kidnappings so unique? Anywho. Ignore my bitter rants. I've been here before, and I know how to get out of these crude handcuffs.

It's just . . . it's kind of embarrassing, okay? And I have a reputation to uphold. The last thing I need right now is to give Meredith anymore ammunition against me. She was there for my weeb phase. She knows too much already.

"Dude," she groans, "I'm stuck here. You have to come to me."

Even though Joey Whitman tied Meredith to a pole, he just left me out there in the open. Probably because he underestimated my power. People do that a lot, actually. I'm built like a noodle and kind of have a baby face. I'm not exactly intimidating. And you know how Asian stereotypes go. They see me, a skinny Chinese kid, and think that the most I'm capable of is getting a 4.0 GPA. Jokes on them! I'm dumb as shit. I'm barely scraping by with, like, a 1. something. Oh, also I'm capable of murder. For realsies.

Meredith's having none of my bullshit today. "Stop being such a dumbass and move your ass."

Which do I care about more: my reputation or not dying in some rich white guy's wine cellar? Obviously my reputation. But Meredith doesn't deserve to die like this. I've gotta get us out of here. For her.

In any normal situation, Meredith would be the one saving our asses. She's badass and intelligent, a lethal combination. But she's kind of an innocent civilian, and my dad kind of runs a hitman empire under the guise of a little authentic Italian pizza shop. I know how to handle myself in these kinds of situations. She doesn't.

Basically it's up to me to save the day. So—awkwardly, since my feet are taped together and I can't use my arms to steady myself—I push myself to my feet. And then I raise my hands up behind my back, as far as I can take them. Which isn't that far. I'm not exactly flexible. Next, because of who I am as a person, I slam them repeatedly into my ass.

The duck tape breaks and my hands go free.

"Damn, son!" Meredith actually starts laughing. "Booty so fine it can break duck tape."

See? It's embarrassing.

My hands free, I rip the tape off my mouth and ankles. Then I move on to Meredith, and I'm ripping the tape from her wrists when I hear movement upstairs: floorboards creaking, angry voices. The slamming of doors. Daddy's home.

Meredith's eyes widen. "Hurry up!"

I get the tape off her wrists, and she rips it off her ankles, jumping to her feet like a jackrabbit.

"We need to find weapons," she mumbles. "Do they have anything down here . . . ?"

I gesture around us. "Wine?"

"No, you idiot." Meredith rolls her eyes. "I mean Nerf guns."

We were literally kidnapped and all she's thinking about is the fucking Nerf war. Leave it to Meredith. But I guess that's fair; the Nerf war's the entire reason why we're in this situation in the first place. Meredith and I are Russian. Joey's French, and you know what that means.

You actually probably don't. Last year, this group of seniors started a Nerf war at our school. Everyone was divided up into countries like in an actual war, and those countries made allies and agreements and stabbed each other in the back. It was badass. Last year, the French were victorious because their fucking general Brandon McDermott took advantage of the whole nakedness-grants-you-immunity rule and went on a nude killing spree. Which was awful, because it meant that the last thing you saw after you died was his pasty ass walking away from you.

(We were Russian last year, too. Everyone that was a part of it last year's a part of the same country. We even have Russian names to make ourselves seem more legit. I'm Yaroslav Chaykovsky. Meredith's Sasha Alekseev.)

If you thought Brandon McDermott was bad last year, Joey Whitman, their new general, is the fucking Napoleon Bonaparte to their Louis XIV. Literally, 'cause they're French. He came up with the bright idea to start taking POWs. I don't know why. This isn't an actual war. It's not like having them—having us—will actually do anything. Except that we were already on thin ice after the whole Brandon McDermott incident. And after the school board catches word of this, we'll definitely get shut down.

White people ruin everything.

"Mer, he kidnapped us—"

"Who's Mer? I'm Sasha. But it's Colonel Alekseev to you, Private."

I know how it sounds. Meredith's a colonel and so's our other friend Silas and my boyfriend Atlas is the general of the Russian army. I'm a fucking private. But other than the generals it's not like the titles actually mean anything. It's just about immersion and it's bullshit. I'm pretty sure the kids that picked everybody's ranks are homophobic. So there's that.

"Jesus Christ. You're impossible. Look, Colonel All-Lick-Sheep, we were kidnapped. This isn't about the Nerf war anymore. This is about our lives and my dignity."

"What about my dignity?"

"I didn't know you had any." Focus, Cain, babe. You're getting off-topic. "Look, we can use the wine bottles as weapons."

"You're suggesting that we physically attack Joey Whitman because of the Nerf war?"

"No. I'm suggesting that we physically attack Joey Whitman because he kidnapped us."

Meredith's eyes shine. "I don't even care about that part. I'm in!"

Really, all it takes is the prospect of violence to get this girl's head screwed back on.

Upstairs, a voice filters through the shut door. Closer this time, close enough that I can make out the words: "For the last time, Nana, I'm not hiding Russians in my basement." Fucking Joey Whitman.

I put my finger to my lips, hissing at Meredith to shut up. "Follow my lead."

"Why do I have to follow your lead?" she angrily whispers. "Your IQ is lower than Trump's."

"Because you go into a fight with your gun blazing, and we need to handle this more cautiously."

"Fine. Whatever you say." She gestures for me to go ahead, her eyes cold but fiery. "But if we get killed, I'm blaming you."

So I crack open a wine cabinet and grab a bottle of genuine champagne, handing Meredith some Chardonnay. What a waste of perfectly good alcohol. I sneak up the stairs, and Meredith follows behind me. We stand on opposite sides of the door.

"By the way, I'm a colonel," Meredith's whispering, as if I could have forgotten. "You should be following my lead."

"Those titles are bullshit and you know that."

Just then, the door bursts open. And screw what I said about Meredith going into a fight with her gun blazing. I go into a fight with my gun blazing. Instinct takes over; I do before I think. I swing the wine bottle over my head.

Glass shatters; the bottle breaks. Bubbly champagne pours over my feet. A gray-haired woman tumbles down the stairs, blood staining the back of her perm. She lays unmoving at the bottom of the stairwell.

Meredith's staring at me, mouth agape. "Oh, my God—you just—you fucking—hit her—you absolute imbecile!"

Joey Whitman's lovely voice hits the back of my head. "Man, what the fuck?"

I turn on him. "You kidnapped us!"

"That's my fucking grandma! She has Alzheimer's, man! That shit's not cool!" He shoves past us, racing down the stairs. "Nana?! Nana, oh, my God, are you okay?"

"Meredith." I grab her arm. "We need to get out of here."

Meredith slowly backs out of the stairwell. "You just hit his fucking grandma, and you said that I go into a fight with my gun blazing."

"Fuck, okay, she's still breathing. Nana, you're gonna be all right, all right?" Joey Whitman's kneeling beside her body. He turns his head to face us. "I'm calling the cops!"

"He kidnapped us and he's calling the cops!" I seriously can't believe this. He's so fucking ridiculous.

We start hauling ass outta there, but Meredith spots spots Joey's abandoned Nerf gun lying on a coffee table. She grabs hold of it, runs back to the stairwell, taking aim. When she fires, she hits him straight in the chest. Then she drops the gun and holds both her middle fingers up, grinning, her voice thickening into a heavy Russian accent. "Victory for Mother Russia!"

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LET THE RECORDS SHOW that it was all Joey Whitman's fault that our school's banning the Nerf War. According to everything anyone is saying, it's all because of me and Meredith and the fact that I put his grandmother into a coma and broke both her hips, but whatever. That's total bull. I wouldn't have had to break open a wine bottle on the back of his grandmother's head if he didn't kidnap us first.

So I think it's awful bold of our principal, Mrs. Fucking Carpenter, to put the blame entirely on my shoulders and Meredith's. Right now, the two of us are in her office, as we so often are, waiting for her to decide on our punishment. She taps a stack of papers together, peering at us through her black-rimmed glasses.

"I've never been more disappointed in a pair of students in my entire life."

I really don't see how she's all that surprised. Me and Meredith pull shit like this all the time, and so does Joey. But of course he's getting off easy, like he always does, just 'cause he's white and rich and his daddy's a lawyer. He could kill a man and get away with a three-hour.

"We're sorry, Mrs. Carpenter," me and Meredith chorus.

"Sorry isn't cutting it." She jams a finger into her desk. "I want answers."

I shrug. "It's Nerf or nothing."

Meredith lets loose an embarrassing giggle and slams her foot into the side of my leg. I yelp.

Mrs. Carpenter sighs and folds her hands together, resting her elbows on top of her desk and pressing her fingertips into her thin lips. "Cain, they're suing the school."

"Live fast, die young, bad girls do it well," Meredith whispers to me, grinning.

It's my turn to kick her.

"It's Nerf or nothing," I offer, weaker this time.

"We picked Nerf," Meredith explains, all hope gone from her voice.

"You're lucky you didn't get arrested," Mrs. Carpenter replies. "And you should thank whatever God you believe in that that cop was there—what was her name? Nobody else would have just let you walk away with a warning like that."

Ah, my good old Nicole Frye. We go way back.

And by "we go way back" I mean that we hate each other's guts, but she's completely and utterly loyal to a certain Bianca Mendoza. The same Bianca Mendoza that lives in my house and watches Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with me and makes herself a green smoothie in my kitchen every morning.

(Because apparently she and my dad are dating. Like seriously dating. Like the we're-going-to-get-married kind of dating and apparently everyone knew it except for me. I didn't even realize it until last Saturday when my dad took me shopping with him to pick out a ring for her. Actually, I didn't even realize it until the way home from the mall when he asked me how I thought he should propose to her.)

(What? Don't look at me like that. I forget that heterosexual people exist sometimes. I'd just thought that they were, like, really, really good friends. I'd thought it was a friendship ring.)

But me and my dad and Bianca didn't exactly start off on the right foot, if you know what I mean. Because this past fall my life turned so dramatic it was almost like an episode of Sixteen and Pregnant, minus the heterosexuality. Because of this stupid brain-parasite I contracted—a Mara. Sure, it allowed me to travel through basically the entire universe in my dreams and gave me the power to set shit on fire, but it's not all interdimensional travel and showy powers. They kill every host they have, and they stirred up a rift roughly the size of Rhode Island that was basically slowly devouring the entire world. And sweet, smart little Bianca Mendoza ran an institute studying these little buggers.

And, well . . . the Mendoza Institute had done some seriously fucked up shit to fix it and us, the dying hosts. Like, for example, turning me and the other hosts into non-consensual human experiments. Like using Bianca's own daughter and my tightest homie ever, Thea, as the biggest, most important, and most fucked up experiment of all of them. So I burned her institution down in a spur-of-the-moment three-in-the-morning act of revenge, which nearly caused the end of the world. The rift was collapsing, big time, and I destroyed the one piece of technology holding it together.

But don't worry, we got the whole rift situation figured out—for now. All thanks to my homie Thea, who used her power of manipulating reality to basically sew the rift shut. She died in the process. She died to save the world. Thea's the most badass motherfucker I've ever known.

She's dead because of my mistakes and I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing that her blood is on my hands.

(How do I sleep at night, you ask? Oh, fabulously. Fabulously. An eye mask and a shot of whiskey before bed can really help you get the best sleep possible! And, oh, my goodness, you don't even know how important a good night's rest is for your pores.)

There were, unfortunately, other casualties. Thousands of them, including my baby sister, Rachel, and Avani Nagarkar, this sweet little girl that my friend Silas had been babysitting the night everything went to shit—but neither of them are dead. Not really. They can't be. They're just missing, that's all; missing in the rift.

Neither of them are dead. Neither of them are dead. It's impossible. They're missing. Just missing.

But lately I'm the only one that seems to believe that.

"Yes, ma'am," Meredith is saying.

"You won't be walking out of this room so lucky," Mrs. Carpenter decides. "You're both suspended for the next week. When you come back, I expect you to both come in for detention every day after school for the rest of the year, and Saturday school every other week. I'm shutting this Nerf war down for good, and any attempts to revive it will result in proper punishment of all students invovled. If either of the two of you have any more incidents like this one, it will result in immediate expulsion. You will not be tarnishing the reputation of this school."

"Yes, ma'am," I say. "Is that all?"

"Mhm. You can go home now or finish out the day. It's up to you."

For once, I actually want to stay for the rest of the day. I've got French last period, and since we just finished standardized testing, my teacher's showing us Les Mis to let our brains chill out for a couple days. I'm not gonna die before I see the end of it.

(French wasn't my first choice as a language. It wasn't even my second. But I was kicked out of Italian I my freshman year because my teacher was all "Italian's your first language, Cain, you can't take it as your foreign language requirement" and "That's cheating, Cain" and "This kind of thinking will only end up with you behind bars" and "You presented a PowerPoint about how to properly masturbate and this kind of behavior is completely unacceptable." But whatever, that bitch was censoring me. And then the Spanish teachers didn't want me, and all of the German teachers scared me, and the only Latin class for my grade was full, so I was stuck with French.)

"I think I'll stay," I decide.

Meredith's shooting daggers in my direction. "If he's staying, I am too."

Mrs. Carpenter shoos us out of her office without another word. In the hallway, Meredith sulks.

"What's with the long face?" I ask her. "We get a free week off school and everyone's going to be talking about us."

"Detention everyday! And Saturday school every other week!" Meredith exclaims, visibly distraught. "Do you know what I do after school?"

"No," I say, because really, I don't. Meredith and I are one in the same—neither of us are in any clubs or sports, and for all I know, she hasn't done a single page of homework since freshman year.

"I go home. I relax. I try to do some fucking yoga or some other hippy bullshit. Do you know what they don't let you do in detention? Yoga! Trust me, I've tried. They make you sit there and work on your homework for the whole three hours! It's torture, Cain, absolute torture! Why do you have to ruin everything?"

"I don't ruin everything," I say, a little hurt.

She crosses her arms over her chest. "Name one thing you haven't ruined."

I struggle to think of one. "You know what? That's a really good point."

"Of course it is. I made it. And that's not even the end of it. Why the fuck do you want to stay in this hellhole for longer than absolutely necessary?" She flicks her head to get her hair out of her eyes, leaning against the old brick wall. "Why'd you even wanna stay, Mr. I've-Never-Even-Been-To-A-Full-Day-Of-School?"

"Les Mis," I explain. "We're watching it in French. I want to see what happens to my gay icon Jean Valjean."

"Oh, honey." Meredith's eyes narrow in sympathy, and she grabs my hands to pull me against the wall beside her. "I think Atlas's weird-ass kinks are getting to you. Don't be so submissive! Be a fucking man. Don't buy into his musicals-based-on-historical-events foreplay. You can find yourself someone so much better."

"Stop kinkshaming us!" I huff, flicking her shoulder. "Sometimes he'll put on one of those white powdered wigs for me."

"Ewwww." Meredith makes a face. "Shut the fuck up, you freak of nature. What's your next class?"

"History. Gag me with a spoon. We're learning about Chris Fucking Columbus."

"Gross! Fuck his ass. But not in that way, though I wouldn't expect any better from you." Meredith spins away from the wall. "All right, that settles it. Come on. We're gonna hide out in the cafeteria 'til whatever period you've got French so we don't have to deal with that imperialist bullshit, yeah?"

"Sounds good to me." The cafeteria has Pop-Tarts. They're ice cold and whole wheat and have like half the amount of sugar should be defined as the legal amount, but they're still Pop-Tarts.

(There's also freedom from my racist, homophobic, and/or anti-Semitic classmates. Oh, and low-fat chocolate milk.)

Meredith and I link arms, theatrically marching through the hallway. As usual, Meredith starts rambling on about the latest gossip.

"Anywho, Kim Stiver told me she saw the cops pulling up when she got here yesterday. Which teacher do you think got caught fucking a freshman in the staffroom this time?"

I blink. Tilt my head. I can tell that she's saying something, that she's making some sort of noise and moving her lips—but her words don't match what she's saying, like she's a YouTube video and the audio is thirty seconds ahead of her. And her words don't even sound like English. "What?"

My voice comes out tinny and bubbled, like I'm trying to talk to her underwater.

"Yeah, I mean, come on. What else would it be? Seems like a different teacher gets fired every week for pulling that shit."

I stop walking to stare at her. Now the audio is cut completely off—she's still talking, but no sound is coming out. "What?"

Meredith's eyebrows furrow in concern.  "Oh, my God, are you even paying attention to the tea being spilled in these very halls? This is life saving information, Cain. Absolutely life saving—"

PHWOOM.

All of a sudden, the world dives headfirst underneath a heavy blanket of darkness.

PHWOOM.

All that's left is the beating of a butterfly's wings, magnified ten thousand times.

PHWOOM.

Quick as it started, it's over. The world suddenly shines through the layer of darkness, bursting to life like sunlight streaming through a just-opened window.

"And Hailey Killigan was like yeah, she totally sucked his dick for an A on her exam, and anyways, are you even listening?" Meredith's staring at me, impatiently tapping her foot, as if I didn't just have something reminiscent to a stroke. "Holy balls, Cain, are you all right?"

"Yeah. Totally fine. Don't mind me, I just blacked out for a second there, but isn't there an entire meme community about that?" I force myself to laugh. "Oooh, did she really? I hope my girl knows proper position. The goal is to really—"

Beads of sweat trickle down my spine, and my head pounds like the PHWOOMPHWOOMPHWOOM is permanently engraved inside of me. My back's against the wall, my fingertips digging into the cold crevices between the bricks. I'm totally not fine, and Meredith seems totally unconvinced.

"Right." She locks her elbow back into mine, tugging me away from the security of the wall. "So, anyways, it's technically legal since Hailey's eighteen, but it's, like, really, really frowned upon, and—"

PHWOOM.

Suddenly, a memory forces its way into my head, as bitter as it is pleasant, as unpleasant as it is sweet: Thea laughing in her hospital room, her hair wild and matted, her eyes darting and afraid.

My vision sways. I feel the floor jump beneath me.

"Cain?" Meredith asks. "Oh, Jesus Christ, are you drunk?"

PHWOOM.

The Mendoza Institute burning, fire crackling in the night sky like roses blooming.

I need to get out of here.

"I'm not drunk, I'm Cain," I insist, shoving past her. "Don't worry, I'm fine. I'm just—I'm gonna run to the bathroom real quick, all right?"

"Oh, hell no, mister." She fiercely shakes her head, her lips thinning into a tight pink line as she hurries after me. "Oh, my God, slow down! God decided to grace some of us with little legs and big hearts!"

Which isn't true, by the way. Meredith doesn't have little legs. At 5'10, she's all legs and only an inch or so shorter than me. She just likes to be dramatic.

PHWOOM.

Thea, in a forest in the wake of the end of the world, her eyes closing for the last time.

I stare at my feet as I walk. They seem to bleed and blend into the carpet. I rush inside the first bathroom I come to, practically throwing myself into the sink, and turn the faucet on. I shove my head in the sink, drinking the water up as it runs over my face and through my hair.

PHWOOM.

She'd still be here if it hadn't been for me.

My hands grip the side of the sink so hard I swear I feel it start to chip, but that's probably just me being melodramatic.

"What the fuck's wrong with you?" Meredith, who's suddenly appeared beside me and has never been one for sympathy, demands.

"There are urinals in here," I tell her, because that's really the only thing on my mind right now.

She bursts out laughing so hard she tears up. "You're, like, actively dying, and that's what you're worried about? Who gives a shit, anyways? Bathrooms should be gender neutral."

"I was just stating a fact."

PHWOOM.

I rocket to the floor, my eyes squeezed shut. Pain and disgust shoot through me like heroin as my bare knees slam into the gross-ass high school bathroom floor, all crusted over with soap and dried urine and probably cum, too.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I whimper into my hands.

"Oh, fuck!" Meredith yelps, helping me to my feet. "Fuck, man, are you all right? Should I go get someone?"

"Just peachy." I make my way back to the sink, splashing a handful of cool water on my face, trying to calm myself down.

A hissing sound rips through the air, the sizzle of flames on raw meat. It doesn't hurt, but I still instinctively yelp out. Or maybe I just like to scream.

Meredith's slowly backing towards the door, her eyes wide. "I knew our school water was sketchy AF, but I didn't know it could burn you . . . "

Not out of my own will, my hand creeps towards my face. I feel my fingers crawl through a gaping hole where my cheek should be.

"Yo, what the fuck?" I ask. "Not this shit again."

"Oh, my God, Cain. Look at yourself."

Like a soldier obediently following his general's command, I somehow manage to make my way over to the mirror. Staring back at me is a skeleton of a boy, all flesh dripping like candle-wax and vacant eye sockets and a burning red lickable organ.

(Pardon me. I like to call my skin the lickable organ. But, you know, any organ is lickable if you've got enough nerve.)

Fire, I realize after a moment. I've spontaneously combusted.

It happens more often than you'd think.

"What the fuck?" Meredith demands, her voice shriller than her usual Sharpay Evans, her skin paler than her usual Kroger-brand mashed potatoes. "Are you having an allergic reaction?"

Such a fake fan. I'm not allergic to anything other than denim on denim. Yikes, talk about a fashion catastrophe.

Speaking of fashion catastrophes, I gesture for Meredith to join me at the sink. "No. Come here."

She takes a tentative step forwards. "I don't think I should . . . "

"Honey, it's fine. Just stick your head in the goddamn sink so we can see if you catch on fire, too, or if the school's just being homophobic."

"I really don't think . . . " Meredith's eyes flick towards the gaping hole in my cheek, her lips pulled so taut I can see the outline of her jaw. "Actually, fuck it. If the water burns me, I can sue the school."

And on that heroic note, she plunges her head underneath the spray, her face lifted towards the sky, eyes wide open as she gasps and sputters.

Nothing happens.

There's no hiss, no poof, no sizzle of a burn. It's just Meredith gagging as the nasty-ass school water washes down her throat. A couple seconds later, she pulls her head out, rubbing her eyes to get the water out of them.

She looks at me with this oddly amused expression, her head tilted and her eyebrows arched together, her wet hair dripping down the back of her t-shirt. "Did anything happen?"

"No." I reply, because I'm an expert on these sorts of things.

PHWOOM.

I can feel the fire spreading down to my throat, but it doesn't hurt. It's just a soft little tickle, the touch of a warm feather dragging down your skin.

"A couple weeks ago, I burned myself on a lighter. Like, I actually burned myself on it. I even got a scar from it." To further my point, I proudly brandish my middle finger at her, which has a thin white burn scar running up the side of it. "It hurt so bad."

Meredith wrings her hair out with a handful of crumpled brown paper towels. "And?"

"Do you remember when all this Mara shit went down? I could literally set myself on fire and I wouldn't feel a thing. Like at the Mendoza Institute—I was inside it when it burned, and I walked out without a scratch." I pause for dramatic effect. "This? I don't feel a thing."

"Well, shiver me timbers." Meredith hesitates, takes a step back. I can see the gears turning in her head as she tries to work out what I'm saying. It doesn't seem to sit very well with her. She shifts, uncomfortable, crossing her arms over her chest like she suddenly feels too exposed. "What do you mean, Cain?"

"I mean that you need to pull the fire alarm and get the fuck out of here, 'cause I'm not in control of this."

Before running from the men's room like any rational human being would, Meredith takes the time to utter a set of famous last words: "That's one big-ass mood."

And then she's gone.

Me, I take a step back towards the mirror, so close I can reach out and touch the glass. I dig my nails into the wall to ground myself, feeling the bricks begin to crumble and burn beneath my touch.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" I sing to the piss-stained mirror.

PHWOOM.

My reflection, all of a sudden, flickers. There go my superhuman good looks. For a second, standing in my place is a grotesque middle-aged white guy sporting an American flag polo shirt, a salt-and-pepper mullet, and a handlebar moustache. Then, thank God, everything snaps back to normal.

I scramble away from the mirror, panicked. Not because of the man, but because of my actual reflection. My entire face has melted off, leaving nothing but waxy skin hanging off of bone, and all I can think about is how there goes my promising modeling career, because I'm kind of in shock.

A pain so severe it knocks me to my knees explodes in my gut, tearing my attention away from the fire. My body convulses. I keel over, retching. Retching until everything in my stomach is on the floor in front of me, retching until hot blood gurgles into the back of my mouth, retching until my throat is raw and my lungs devoid of air. My vision spots with big fuzzy yellow blotches like rain on glasses—not that I would know. My vision is 20/20, but Atlas is always complaining about it. He carries this nerdy-ass monogramed glasses cloth everywhere with him, just in case.

My entire body bursts into flames just as the fire alarms begin to scream.

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WHEN THEY FOUND ME, I was alone in a pile of ashes, covered in burns so terrible they couldn't even recognize my body. And I have a very recognizable body. The school had burned around me. I burned my school down.

They thought I was as good as dead.

But little did they know! I drink my milk cartons from the side that says DO NOT OPEN HERE. I cheat death on the daily. So, naturally, over the course of the next three hours, I completely healed myself, not leaving so much as a scar or an excuse for an expensive nose job behind.

The doctors didn't know what to make of me. One of them claimed that I hadn't actually been burned, that it was just some weird allergic reaction.

They sent me home that night, and I slept until dinner the next day. When I finally join my family for cacciatore, everything seems completely normal.

Bianca and my dad, sitting there beside each other at the kitchen table, look like they're already married. Some part of me feels some hint of satisfaction looking at them, like I can pretend they're my normal parents and we're a normal family sitting down to have a normal dinner.

My cousins Nick and Lili are sitting beside me. We look like a trio of siblings, Lili the outspoken older sister, me the beautiful shining jewel of a middle child, Nick the quiet younger brother. And if you just looked in at us, you'd think everything was normal.

I'm stuffing my face. My dad's drinking orange juice. Below us, his demon dog Yorkshire terrier, Cerberus, whimpers and growls up at us, using his effective persuasion skills to convince us to give him all of our food. Somewhere outside the house, I can hear a street fight going on. Normal, normal, normal.

Only thing is that Bianca doesn't really look like a mom, and she certainly doesn't look like she could be my, Nick, and Lili's mom—she's this tiny, intense Latina that's actually really sweet, once you get to know her. Her hair's straight and the color of mahogany, kept cut in a neat line just at the tips of her shoulders, and her eyes are the color of coffee beans, as dark and focused as a bird of prey. Her skin's this rich gold color, and she has this thing where she only ever wears Lily Pulitzer, although I don't know where on earth she gets the money for it.

(It's not like I'm bitter or anything, but I really, really want a Lily Pulitzer dress. But there's the whole issue of me being poor. And the fact that Lily Pulitzer doesn't exactly specialize in making dresses to fit tall, scrawny teenage boys. Oh! Unless I hold her at gunpoint and force her to make a dress for me.)

My dad, though—he's so close to me in age and appearance, since he had me when he was only sixteen, people always think we're brothers. I always joke that we're made out of noodles—long and pale, both Italian and Chinese, and very easy to boil. His curly, jet-black hair sticks up from his head in a way that almost looks like a pompadour. His dark eyes mirror Bianca's intense focus. It's creepy. If you just showed me a picture of their eyes, I don't think I could tell them apart.

My dad's a mess of contradictions, really. He listens to Fergie and Adele and he's covered from collarbone-to-toe in tattoos and claims to be allergic to any color other than black. He talks to Cerberus in baby-talk and he kills people for a living and he still plays ClubPenguin. He calls himself an anarchist, but he tried to run for president in 2012.

(Emphasis on tried. Because, at the time, he was only 26, had only lived in the US for a little over five years, and, of course, he'd been born on foreign soil. Also there was the fact that he doesn't have a legal birth certificate or a green card, and he was supposedly convicted of murder in the Czech Republic in '99 but evaded arrest by claiming to be Clark Kent and fleeing the country.)

And really, everything would be normal here if it weren't for a minor little life-altering detail: my little sister Rachel is gone.

Oh, also, I kind of maybe just burned my school down just a little and came out of it without a single scar or excuse for an expensive nose job, but that's NBD, amirite?

Oh, also, Nick and Lili are here. I didn't even know that they existed six months ago.

About two months ago, I started getting these weird phone-calls from a number I didn't recognize, area-code 906. Caller ID told me it was coming from Havensworth, Michigan. Because I'm petty, I declined the call every time it rang. But one night Meredith and I got kind of drunk, and she stayed over to avoid the Wrath of her Grandparents, and I got another call. She grabbed the phone from me before I got a chance to decline.

"Meredith's whorehouse, you got the dough, we got the hoe."

"MEREDITH!" I shrieked, making a frantic grab for my phone. "Stop it!"

She simply held her finger to my lips, quieting me, and listened for a moment. Then she handed the phone over. "They're asking for you."

"Hello," I said. "This is the hoe."

"Yeah, great." The voice was female. "I'm looking for Cain."

"Cocaine? I have that."

"No, you idiot . . . " I could hear this girl balling up her fists through the phone. "Cain, uh, Terranova, I think."

My first thought was that she'd found out about the murders. My second was that I had myself my first fan.

"That's my name."

"Great! This is gonna sound weird, but okay! Uh, so my name's Lili Zhou."

Zhou. My mother's last name.

There was a beat of silence, then a male voice asked: "Are you really a prostitute?"

"Sorry," Lili said quickly. "You're on speaker."

So I had at least two midwesterners thinking they'd called themselves a prostitute.

"Who are you, the police?" I was avoiding asking The Big Question. I also very much wanted to ask it. So I did. Because fuck it. "Also, what the fuck, you're a Zhou."

"Yeah." Lili. "That's why I called you. I just found out about your mom a couple weeks ago. She's been sending my dad letters from . . . from . . . from . . . "

"From prison?"

Because my mom's in prison, currently. Has been since I was six months old. She shot and killed six Italian policemen trying to arrest her for a drug bust.

So, yeah. I guess I don't really like talking about my mom. But apparently I have cousins on her side of the family, cousins I didn't know about. I know my dad has parents and a brother and a sister and probably nieces and nephews, but he's not in contact with any of them. I've never met any of them. He talks about them sometimes. But he's never brought up my mom's side of the family with me. I know that she was born in China and she wasn't supposed to stay in Italy but she met him and the rest of her family left for America without her and that's when all the trouble began. I guess I kind of assumed they all died sometime between their pit-stop in Italy and the United States.

Surprise! They didn't. My mom's brother, my uncle Lou, ended up in Havensworth, Michigan, and he got straight to business and had three kids: Lili, Nick, and Will, the baby of the family.

I have cousins! Cousins that are my age! (Well, except for Will. He's a fetus.) And the first time I ever spoke to them, Meredith got them convinced that I'm a prostitute. Nick still thinks I'm a prostitute. I can't say that I blame him.

But, anyways. The Michigan school year ended a couple weeks before the New Hampshire one, and my dad had a brilliant idea. He convinced Nick and Lili's parents to let them come stay with us for the summer, to help out at the Villa Pizzeria—the cover-up for my dad's hitman business. Obviously he's not having them kill anyone. They don't even know what the Villa actually is. They just bus tables and try to learn the ways of the Italians.

It's actually nice to have them around. Even with Bianca here, everything felt so lonely without Thea and Rachel. I like having other kids in the house again.

"So." I drop an unsatisfactory piece of meat to the floor for Cerberus. He gobbles it up like the dirty goblin he is.

"So," Dad says. He tries to one-up me by giving Cerberus an entire slice of meat. "Weather was nice today."

"Mmm, it was," Bianca agrees. "This is delicious, Luca. Stop feeding the dog table scraps."

"But he loves it," Dad croons, slipping into baby-talk, making his L's sound like W's, and giving Cerberus some more. "And I love him."

"When do you get out of school, Cain?" Bianca asks, trying to make friendly conversation.

"I've got, like, two more weeks."

"Hah!" says Lili, who's kind of a college dropout. My dad thinks she's a bad influence on me. Personally, I think she's an amazing influence. She got into college, didn't she? "I remember those days like it was yesterday."

Nick's kind of a quiet kid. It's easy to lose him in a conversation, especially ones like this. But he seems like he's being even quieter than usual, pushing his cacciatore around his plate. Probably because my school burned down and I nearly died and the rest of us are Deliberately Not Talking About It. Even Lili seems a little quiet. You usually can't get her to shut up.

"Speaking of school." I've gotta bring this up eventually, don't I? "Meredith and I got suspended 'cause of what I did to Joey Whitman's grandma. Oh! And I spontaneously combusted today and burned down my entire school. Bianca, could you pass the salt?"

My dad keeps on eating his cacciatore like this is just another day, like he was expecting me to admit this all along. Bianca chokes on her water.

"You what, now?" she demands.

Lili drops her fork. "Um, how are you not dead?"

"Gave his grandma a coma and broke her hips," I reiterate. "See, Joey—"

"I meant about the fire!"

"Ohhhhhh." That is arguably the more shocking proclamation.

"Cain." Bianca's voice is strained. She presses her knuckles to her lips, narrowing her eyes. Her irises close in on her pupils like dark amber hardening around darker ice. "Seven people died."

"What's going on?" Lili asks.

Dad shrugs. "No biggie."

Bianca glares at him.

"But it wasn't directly my fault," I try to explain.

"You burned your school down?" Nick asks. It's the first thing he's said all dinner.

Bianca's having none of it. She slams her face into her hands.

"Bee?" Dad asks. "What's wrong?"

"I think"—Bianca says, just as Cerberus lifts his leg to piss on my shoe and I yelp out in terror and jolt from the table—"that the rift may have opened itself back up again."

[ ━━ ❝ ✧˚⋆｡☾✩˚⋆｡࿐❞ ━━ ]

ps nick, lili, baby will, and uncle lou are all a part of my amazingly talented friend practicallypluto 's story Letters to the Slaughterhouse. a while back we had this headcanon that cain and nick were cousins so ofc i had to give them a cameo. you should all go read LTTSH bc its a hecking masterpiece

also YES this chapter is significantly longer than the rest of them. a lot of things needed to happen to Set the Scene so like. suck my ass