Piper Gourley | Petra
lies ask me if I want water or food or a shower or to call my mom or dad, but their voices are hollow. When I don’t respond to their questions, I am stuck in my room to await our sentencing. I stare at Petra’s empty bed, her tousled sheets, her hospital-issued slippers and grip-socks by the doorway. She did not care about getting Diamond out, or setting the twins free. I know she will not be back. She will not let herself be recaptured, if they even bother looking for her. I doubt they will. No one will miss Petra. She has started a fire that she is not present to put out. We handed her the matches. The lights go out. The numbers circle me but do not latch onto my brain. I do not count. I listen for sounds of life, for Diamond, for the noise of her speaking to the ceiling or ripping away her flesh, centimeter by centimeter. Everything is silent. I close my eyes and recall Diamond’s face, once, two times, three times, down to the last freckle. She mutates. Petra’s figure invades my thoughts all night long: her smug expression through the shadow of the fencing, her body breaking free from the metal, my last hope—my greatest resentment—set to sea. I am drowning in my life, I whisper. Petra is not there to call me a poor kid. But it rattles through me, still, that blistering comet: bednyy rebenok, bednyy rebenok, bednyy rebenok.
glassworks 65