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09 redemption lies plainly in truth
Mercy King lives with a hand in the past, the other in the present. She's teetering on the edge of a cliff. It's crumbling beneath the soles of her shoes, rocks falling and the splash resounding up the cliff wall, digging into eardrums and making them their home. She's awake but Kavinsky's hands are still tight around the ring of her neck, the skin matching the shape of her bruises. Crumpled in the bathroom of Monmouth, she presses her forehead to her scarred knees. Her lungs heave, vision clouding and heart choking Mercy's throat from within, carving it's own brand new space into her being. Bones melting into the suit of her skin, Mercy is exhausted. There is no more consciousness or unconsciousness; both are so inextricably connected that she no longer knows the difference.
The past holds her at gunpoint: fireworks painting a bright kaleidoscope against the canvas of the black sky, white pills and matching powers on tables as they're sorted by black credit cards and nimble fingers, her feet on the dashboard of a white Mitsubishi, and her hands living in a tangled mess of blonde hair as she pressed open-mouth kisses to an arched neck. Last summer is a pixelated picture like an old VHS, the tape fading and the machine slowly breaking down. Mercy spent the first days of June sticking in the passenger seat, a different driver every time she looked away, nipping at the heels of exhilaration. The euphoria was never-ending, and Kavinsky hand-fed, grinning as she licked up every last drop. He'd swayed her with his hedonistic tendencies. The world was at their feet: a girl playing King and a boy playing Devil on her shoulder. Mercy fell in love with the thrill, the static feeling that lit her blood like a raging fire and sent her feet running. She was blind to everything but the horizon in front of her.
Until the rug was pulled from beneath her feet.
Mallory Weaver was an enigma. Maybe, that was what drew Mercy to her in the first place. She was a girl who'd fought for her place amongst the boys, making her presence known and feared. It was her passenger seat that Mercy found herself within the most—skin sticking to leather seats and their breath mingling in the summer air. She didn't know her last name then, nor would she bother to learn it until the aftermath.
