THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

7_makeamericahateagain_

Flint's friend's place is uptown, and we ride the subway from Mendhel Street. It's raining out, and I'm almost glad to be underground, glad to be moving. The train's fast, but it rocks from side to side like somebody's got hold of it, like they're trying to pull it back. Twice I head-butt my own reflection in the window, once hard enough to make me cuss. I sit back, wincing, watching Flint as she hammers out a message on her cell, watching her until she looks up and smiles.

"Better?" she asks, sending the message then sliding the phone into her jeans. "You got some color back."

"Better," I say. I haven't told her about the dream, because there's nothing to say. The whole thing's fading now like breath on a window. Even the meat in the sink, it's just something leftover from mum's dinner prep, a lump of gristle. It's not the worst thing I've seen in there.

"Sure you don't want some candy to take the edge off?" she asks, patting her jacket. There's a bag of pills in there, mainly downers, but I shake my head like I do every time she offers them. I'm too scared that if I swallow one I'm just opening up the doors of my dreams to something far worse than a hollow-faced girl.

Flint wraps her arm around me, holding me tight. There's a guy across the aisle wearing a bright red God Bless 45 hat and eyeballing us hard. He probably thinks we're lesbians. He's only half wrong, I guess, and Flint's toying with him, putting her hand on my leg and eyeballing him right back until he looks away, shaking his head and pretending to stare out the window. The carriage is near empty, just us and the man and a bunch of high school kids near the back who're quiet enough to let the world know they're not used to being here without their parents. Everybody dances in time with the movement of the train, heads jerking left and right like somebody's got us all on a string.

Flint squeezes my knee then reaches into her bag, pulling out a plastic bottle with the label torn off. She unscrews the cap and takes a swig, the smell of sweet rum hitting me before she passes the bottle.

"Just Bacardi," she says when I wave it away. "Poured it myself, nothing in here but a little bit of relaxed and happy Tommi Bright. Go on."

I surrender, swallowing more than I meant to and inhaling it instead. I cough so hard I think I'm turning inside out, all the while Flint's laughing and pounding me on the back.

"Jesus, you absolute rookie," she says. I watch through tears as she slides the bottle back. The train's slowing and Flint bounces up, holding the seat with one hand and offering the other one to me. "This is us. Try not to choke to death before we get there."

"Okay," I say. We hop down from the doors, then Flint's back through them, running up the train. I watch as she snatches the guy's MAGA cap and legs it back this way, screeching. The man's so shocked he's only just getting up, his face as red as his hat, but Flint sidesteps through the closing doors and by the time he's reached them the train's moving. Flint holds it under her ass and pretends to take a crap, gurning.

"Trump sucks asshole, asshole!" she shouts, and despite the fact my throat's still burning I'm laughing hard. She tosses the cap onto the tracks and we weave our way through a cluster of people—half of them whooping, half scowling—to the exit.

"You're insane, you know that?" I say. "He could've had a gun or something."

"Guy had bad cholesterol and one of these," she says, wiggling her little finger. "And that's it. Had it coming, wearing that thing in my city."

"Insane," I say again, following Flint into the rain. It's been a while since I've been out in the night and despite a weighted vest of nerves I'm drawn to it, the bustle of folk near Edgedown Market, the way the streetlights and the storefronts and the glowing cigarette tips stare at themselves in the puddles. The clouds are low, and dark, and smothering, but in a good way, in a hide-beneath-the-duvet way. I feel safe as we trip from street to street. I'm almost having fun until we find ourselves in the middle of a pack of neglected apartment buildings and I hear the thump of music.

"Flint," I say. "You utter douche."

"Don't say it," she replies, taking my hand and leading me toward a three-storey walk-up that's seen better days. The second floor is glowing, and I can see a swell of people through the glass, an ocean of bodies.

"You said it wasn't a party."

"It's not, it's a thing, come on."

"Seriously," I say, and I stop because there's a cannonball lodged beneath my ribs. The air's electric with my anxiety, I can feel it radiating from me like a beacon. "No."

"It's a party," Flint says. "I'm sorry, he told me it was a thing, honest to god. But we're here, and I want you to come, Tommi, I need you to be there for me."

She doesn't need me. She never needs me, not any more, not since she stopped being Allie and started being Flint. But the pouting look on her face helps dislodge some of the weight on my chest. If I convince myself I'm here for her, then it makes it easier. She beams, squeezing my hand and pulling me through the door into a trash-and-people-strewn corridor. A couple of them look at me but most have their eyes on Flint, she's good at getting attention.

"Just have a couple of drinks," she says. "Enjoy the music, the company. Live a little bit of life outside your head, for once."

"Scary outside my head," I say as we head up the stairs.

"Scarier inside it," she replies, and whatever else she says is lost in the bone-shaking thump of the music when she opens the stairwell door. Ahead's a short corridor, four apartments leading off from it. Two doors are open and Flint goes for the nearest. There's too many people to move in here, a hundred of them, maybe, most of them jumping up and down. I'm amazed the building's still standing, and suddenly I've got another thing to add to my list of worries—being buried alive. I'm so convinced it's going to happen I don't want to leave the safety of the stairwell, but Flint's pulling me along like I'm a stubborn dog and I don't have any choice but to follow her. There's no way I'm ending up on my own here.

Not that I have much of a choice in the matter.

"Marcel!" I hear her call, and her hand lets go of mine. The crowd swallows her whole, gulps her down, the dancers as hard as teeth as I try to push past them. Somebody else grabs my hand, a guy with a silver-toothed grin, reeling me in. I tug free, turning my back on him. The music is a hammer and I'm a nail, vanishing into the bare wooden floor one beat at a time. I turn again, looking for the stairs but utterly lost. It's too dark, too loud, and I'm—

"Come on," Flint says, reaching for me through the throng. She leads me deeper into the madness, then we go through a door and I'm suddenly free of it. It's a bedroom, just a handful of people here sitting on the floor in a haze of sweet-smelling smoke. One of them's a guy I half recognize from something else Flint once dragged me to. He nods at me, taking a drag on his joint.

"So yeah," Flint shouts over the music. "Like I was saying, I ended up stranded there all night. Anyway, you've met Tommi, right?"

"Right," Marcel's word is long and forged of smoke. "Got plenty, sister, pull up a pew."

I shake my head but Flint speaks for me.

"She won't touch it, but I will. Here."

She hands me the rum and I stand there with it in my hand like I've never seen a plastic bottle before. Flint takes it back, unscrews the cap, holds it to my lips.

"50cc's of fun, stat," she says, and I take a small sip, keeping the bottle. "It's a start, but it's something. Just stay for a while, yeah? If you feel a panic attack coming on just say, we can go any time, I promise."

I've felt a panic attack coming on since I left my goddamned house, but I do my best to smile at her. She slides down the wall next to Marcel and snatches his joint, taking a hit. I don't know what to do with my eyes, or my arms, or anything else, so I just take another tiny sip of rum, feeling it in my nose, behind my eyes. I pull out my cell, a message from mom saying not to be too late. No notifications on Facebook, or Insta, but I check them all anyway because it uses up some time.

Like, ten seconds of time.

I have no idea what to do next because a guy across the room is trying to talk to me and I'm doing everything I can not to make eye contact. I angle myself away from him, staring back out the door, into the crowd.

And that's when I see her. That's when I see the dead girl, Cara Pierce.