CHAPTER 1Planning the Perfect Crime
Trissa tucked her breasts back into her fuchsia sports bra and pulled up her hot-pink sweater with rhinestones along the neckline. She flicked a red curl out of her face, popped the tip of her middle finger into her mouth, and sat there beside me, chewing on the stubby fuchsia nail and flipping the bird at the world. Trissa was the queen of not giving a shit.
“Juicyyyy,” said Red. “My mouth is watering. Gimme a bite.”
“So gross,” I snapped.
“Shut up, Michie.” Red’s real name was Rocky, but nobody called him that. His orange armpit hair had earned him the nickname when it first grew in. Since he was the one who dared Trissa to flash everyone, he was obligated to act excited, even though he probably hadn’t seen much of anything. He was sitting on the far side of our circle of friends.
The only light in the abandoned apartment came from a handful of candle stubs in the middle of the circle that I’d picked out of the nearby Greek Orthodox church’s garbage. They were nicer than phone lights, but at this point, they were burning dangerously low. Wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.
“Doink, doink!” screeched Red’s little brother, Timbit, and his auburn curls bounced all over the place. “Laser beams shooting from her nipples. Doiiink. Hypnotized.”
“C’mere, Trissa Baby,” said Red. “I’m hungry. Mmm. Top sirloin.”
Trissa’s heel shot across the circle and connected with his shin. He yelped and rubbed the spot, even though it probably hadn’t hurt much. Trissa’s only response was to remove her middle finger from her mouth with a soft popping noise and hold it closer to the light so there was no mistaking her message.
“You gonna take that disrespect?” jeered Anton, who was sitting on Trissa’s other side. He raised two beefy hands to encircle her neck like he wanted to strangle her. “You’ve gotta show a bitch who’s boss.”
Red snickered.
I shook my head in disgust. “Nice. Joking about a serial killer.”
The West End Strangler had been targeting girls our age for over a year. Police knew very little about him except that he was good looking enough to pick up victims on dating sites. He drugged his victims, choked them to death, cut their bodies into pieces, packed them in cheap cargo bags, and tossed them into the lake. Body parts kept washing up, and girls were scared to walk alone at night. Or at least more scared than they’d been before.
Trissa chewed her bottom lip. “I heard the Strangler snatched someone a few blocks from Club Jelly last weekend.”
The air left my lungs, and for an instant, I couldn’t inhale. She was talking about the exclusive nightclub downtown where she worked as a cage dancer on Friday and Saturday nights. “That’s eight girls now.”
“That we know about,” she said.
“Gotta admit, he’s effective,” said Anton, cracking his knuckles.
I couldn’t figure out what Trissa saw in Anton. He treated her like gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe, but she always messaged him when we were meeting up. It felt like he’d always been around and always would be, bringing my life down a couple notches. He acted like the leader of our group just because he was a couple years older, and he always needed someone to pick on. He usually focused on Timbit, because he wouldn’t fight back, or Trissa, because she was bright, shiny, and mouthy. Plus it was easy to press her buttons.
Anyway, in my opinion, Red deserved to be kicked for comparing Trissa’s breasts to steak. On my left, Timbit was still shaking his head, as if he was having trouble clearing his brain from the mesmerizing effect of nipples. He was a year and a half younger than most of us, only fifteen, but we let him hang because he’d found the master key card
that let us enter this unit. It was probably owned by a real estate investor waiting for the right time to sell. Also, Timbit and Red’s parents owned a condo right across the alley, and if we froze him out, he’d just rat to his scary dad. Not like we did much in here—there was no electricity, running water, or furniture—but we didn’t want to lose the only private space we had. I felt kind of sorry for Timbit too—most of us did, except Anton, who didn’t experience human emotions—because he didn’t have his own friends.
To be honest, it was so dark that me and Anton were the only ones who could see anything more than Trissa’s general shape. The candles barely illuminated our faces, and Trissa was sitting back a ways. The shadows pressed inward, thick enough to touch. Anton didn’t seem particularly interested. And it wasn’t like her body was anything new to me. We’d grown up in the same house and started playing doctor at the age of five.
I squinted across the candles at the other two people in the room: my childhood friend Anwar and his perfect girlfriend, Kelli D. Anwar’s dimly lit face didn’t give anything away, but he wasn’t laughing. I could sort of make out the outline of Kelli D’s body melded into his side. I didn’t need light to know how perfect she looked. Her skin was smooth, her straight brown hair silky, and her green eyes flawlessly lined. Her skin and face and all the other parts of her body were perfect too.
My hair was a rat’s nest of over-bleached frizz. My skin was pale, even after a summer spent outside, and my breasts overflowed from a double-D BuyMart special. The underwire jabbed painfully into my armpits, and if I didn’t keep my back straight, my fingertips tingled. I should have gone up a cup size but was terrified to find out what the size above double D was called. E for Epic? Enormous? Elephantine?
Anton’s bulbous nose and heavy black brows flashed into sight when he used the screen of his phone to roll a joint with some sativa I’d stolen from my mom. She smoked cannabis to keep her lupus symptoms under control. Though she was legally allowed to have four plants in the basement, she actually had more than thirty and sold the extra weed for cash.
I stared at the sputtering candles, forcing myself not to fixate on Anton’s dead-fish eyes. He was clearly bored of Truth or Dare. The rest of us were too, but used the game as an excuse to pass the time together. If you hung out with the same people every day and nobody had much money, sometimes you had to get creative.
Anton sparked up his vintage Clockwork Orange lighter. He lit the joint and inhaled a few times before passing it across the circle to Red with a grunt. Red puffed hard on it, then handed it to his brother. Timbit inhaled quickly about five times, then tried to hold all that smoke in his lungs for maximum effect. He started to hack and almost dropped the lit joint. Getting Timbit high was a disaster. He was annoying enough when he was sober.
“Guess it’s my turn to dare,” said Trissa, tilting her head to peer sideways
in my direction and grinning in an evil way.
Timbit cleared his throat to let me know the roach was coming to me. I waved my hand to pass, then changed my mind. If Trissa was planning something evil, I might need help surviving the next few minutes. I took it, smooshed the soggy end to my lips, inhaled long and hard a couple times, then passed it along to Trissa.
She took her time smoking, savouring the tension she’d created. “Truth or dare, Michie?”
“Dare.”
“You sure about that?” she asked, passing the joint to Kelli D, who was on the far side of Anton.
I shrugged.
Trissa cupped her hands around her mouth and leaned closer. A wave of jasmine oil washed over me, and a stray curl tickled my nostril, making me feel like I was going to sneeze. Her lips brushed my ear. She was wearing sticky lip gloss. I wondered if she was going to suck on my earlobe—she’d done that earlier—although she was just as likely to bite it.
“Make out with Anwar,” she stage-whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
I jerked away but didn’t get far. Timbit was too close. His breath smelled like skunk and sour cream and onion chips. Yuck. I scooched back a bit, out of the circle. Why were we all squeezed in so close? There was plenty of space here.
“With tongue,” Trissa added.
Kelli D swore at her.
“Jealous much?” asked Trissa.
“No way,” I said, before Kelli D could answer. “Not happening.”
Trissa laughed, a sharp barking sound, then full on cracked up and toppled backward, kicking her feet up into the air with glee. “You know you want to, Michie.”
My face lit up, red as a tomato. I cursed my skin for flushing so easily. Hopefully nobody could see my cheeks in the dark.
Anwar used to be my best friend. Just a couple days ago, Trissa had complained that he’d dropped us like a couple of over-microwaved Pizza Pops after surgically attaching himself to Kelli D this past summer. She didn’t live in our neighbourhood, but she was always here. We’d barely seen him alone for months. Before that, it’d been the three of us against the world. Well, more like me and Trissa, and me and Anwar. I was the pivot between their opposing personalities. Trissa was a bouncing rubber ball. Anwar was a sensitive artist with a chip on his shoulder.
“Do you forfeit?” demanded Red.
“Bawk bawk bawk,” squawked Timbit, right in my ear.
“Why are we packed in like sardines?” I grumbled. If I refused to go through with Trissa’s dare, everyone would put their minds together and come up with something much worse. Those were the rules we played by.
“Go do it outside, where nobody’s watching,” said Trissa.
“Anwar’s not objecting,” drawled Anton. “Notice that? Only you, baby girl.”
Red rubbed his hands gleefully. “Time to figure out something even worse.”
Anton was right. Anwar wasn’t making a peep, but that wasn’t out of character. Anwar could be chatty one-on-one, but he hardly ever spoke up in the group unless he had something important to share. I switched my phone to flashlight mode and pointed it at his face, giving him the chance to object. He only held up a hand to shield his eyes from the light.
Trissa leaned toward me again and whispered, a little more quietly, “C’mon. I’m giving you a free pass.”
I shoved her hard. She fell back again, and her knee banged into Anton, causing him to drop the roach. He swore, then fished around for it between his legs with one hand, holding Trissa away from him with the other one.
She was now giggling compulsively like this was all a big joke.
Anton found the joint, jammed it between his lips, and inhaled a lungful, shaking his head as if to say she was a lost cause.
I turned off my phone light. Trissa had a vindictive streak—she’d shaved the heads of all my dolls when we were seven because I wanted to read instead of playing Barbies—but this was so much worse. I wasn’t quite as bad as Timbit, but I didn’t have very many friends, mostly because I was sick a lot and there weren’t that many people I could stand. I didn’t want to permanently lose one of them to a dare. “Why are we even playing this game?” I asked. “We’re not kids.”
“Michie’s a pussy,” Timbit squealed.
I pinched his thigh.
He squeaked.
“Don’t be sexist,” I mumbled. “You’re better than that.”
“Michie only likes girls,” said Red, referring to my last turn, when Timbit dared me to put my hand down Trissa’s pants. That was no problem. Trissa had taught me everything I knew about sex.
“I hate you,” I hissed at her.
That made her giggle again.
“Frigid?” taunted Anton.
I didn’t respond, knowing that would bother him more than if I got pissed off.
“We know she’s not,” said Anwar, finally breaking his silence. “She’s had three boyfriends and a girlfriend in the past year.”
My jaw dropped. Now he decided to weigh in? Why wasn’t he refusing the dare? To my surprise, he stood up and started walking toward the sliding balcony door. Kelli D made an angry choking noise.
Trissa clapped excitedly. “Yeah! They’re gonna do this.”
The dark room went fuzzy white for a moment like it was filled with a dense fog. I blinked to clear my vision and took a slow, calming breath. Trissa elbowed me. I sighed and grabbed my teal vinyl jacket and began to crawl after Anwar, making sure my knee landed on Trissa’s fingers as I passed. She yelped and whacked my ass. It was worth it.
Outside, the city lights were dazzlingly bright, even though we were overlooking an alleyway. The autumn night was cool and humid, like it might rain. I pulled on my jacket just in case. Anwar was already climbing down the fire escape ladder—apparently, he was serious about getting privacy. A floor above street level, he dangled down and dropped to the pavement. I followed, even though I only had socks on, lowered myself off the bottom of the fire escape, let go, and landed right in a puddle. Yuck.
“You could stand on that,” suggested Anwar, pointing at a concrete traffic barrier that had been colonized by weeds.
I scurried over to it, ignoring my cold feet, and took several deep breaths of polluted air. As I willed my heart to stop racing, I searched the sky for any stars that dared to shine through the smog. If I could find just one, it would help. No luck, but I did find an airplane headed somewhere away from Toronto and wished I was on it.
Whenever I got too stressed, my heart murmur acted up, and if I didn’t chill out, I might actually faint. It had happened before. Cardiac arrhythmia and asthma were two of the four million health issues I’d been born with. My chest was already tightening, my head beginning to pound. I cursed myself for forgetting my pills at home. Actually, I should have just stayed home along with them.
Trissa could handle this sort of thing. She fell in love when the wind blew. Her heart was broken all the time, and she was always ready to give it away again. Mine had remained relatively intact. What Anwar said about me having relationships was the truth, but none of them had lasted more than a few weeks. I had enough problems. Didn’t need more drama in my life. Plus, I couldn’t be bothered with anyone who wasn’t 100 percent worth my time. So far, nobody had been. Except Anwar. And sometimes Trissa. But mostly Anwar.
He was less than a step away from me, and his expression was oddly calm.
I hid my terror behind directness. “Are we really going to do this?”
His eyes shifted downward to my lips, and he nodded, a minuscule movement. I shuddered. This was Anwar: the boy I’d pushed down the slide at the playground when we were five years old and who had to get stitches above his right eye as a result. The scar was still visible now—a faint silvery line on his forehead. I had an urge to touch it.
“We’ve hardly talked in months,” I whispered.
Anwar’s Adam’s apple bounced. He licked his lips.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this, An. What about Kelli D?”
His eyes flicked upward to the balcony, then settled back on my mouth. A little fire started to burn in my abdomen.
“You guys better actually go through with this,” yelled Trissa from inside the apartment. “I’ll be able to tell if you don’t.”
One of my hands reached for Anwar’s purple shirt with graffiti-style Arabic writing
screened down the left side—he told me once that it was a special prayer for the dead, for his little sister Nadia, who had left us almost four years ago. I pulled him forward, a bit too hard. His chest smashed into my breasts and made my breath catch. My other hand snaked through his short black hair. I tugged his head downward.
His nose bumped my cheek. The smell of deodorant and the hair oil he’d been using since he was twelve—spices and baby powder—wafted over me and made me nostalgic, even though he was standing right in front of me. I’d missed him.
My lips brushed against his. He opened them to let me inside.
Even with my eyes closed, I could see every detail of his face: brown skin, hazel eyes with long black lashes, wide mouth slightly too big for his narrow chin. His expressions usually echoed whatever was in my head. We knew each other so well that we could practically read each other’s minds. At least, we used to. I wondered if we still could.
Forget all the weirdness this year. Forget Kelli D. Trissa was right. I wanted him. Bad. I flattened against him and deepened the kiss.
CHAPTER 2Identifying Your Target
The balcony door slid open above us, causing Anwar and I to spring apart like the wrong sides of two magnets.
Kelli D and Trissa were staring down. Trissa’s face shone with pure delight. She screeched and clapped a hand over her mouth. Kelli D, on the other hand, looked ready to murder someone. Probably me. I couldn’t blame her. My mouth still tasted like Anwar. A pang of excitement mixed with guilt shot through me, immediately followed by an intense wave of jealousy. All I had was that kiss. Kelli D had him.
She ducked back inside for a moment, and I wondered if she was going to huddle in a corner and sulk, but then she reappeared, wound up her arm, and threw a high-heeled wedge. It sailed through the air, smacked Anwar in the shoulder, and bounced on the cracked pavement. Her other shoe followed a second later. I ducked, but it was also aimed at Anwar, who smartened up and leapt aside just in time.
Kelli D started climbing down the fire escape. “You were enjoying it.”
It was time to get out of there. “My shoes!” I yelled at Trissa.
She dove inside and came back a second later to hurl them down at me. ...
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