Dead Girl Walking ― Aaron Minyard

02. divide

looking back around, glamorize the chaos
don't let summer nights destroy everything before us
― bastille

♦

NEIL JOSTEN WAS DUE TO ARRIVE IN PALMETTO the day after his high school graduation. The morning of his incoming flight, the Minyard twins dressed up the exact same, right down to their goddamn socks, which wasn't helping Mara's already piss-poor ability to tell them apart.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Nicky asked, looking between his cousins warily as they ate breakfast in the living room. "Coach'll be pissed."

"That's only if he finds out," Maybe-Andrew said, face uncomfortably blank. Mara had only gotten glimpses of Andrew's unmedicated self in the two weeks she'd been in South Carolina, in the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning. Medicated or not, Mara didn't trust him as far as she could throw him, but at least when he was sober he didn't have that creepy fucking smile.

"What's the point of this?" Mara whispered to Kevin in French, looking between the twins with a raised eyebrow.

Kevin shrugged, stealing a cube of honeydew from her fruit salad as if he didn't have his own food right in front of him. "Andrew wants to make sure the recruit's not a threat."

"Not sure how well he'll figure that out during a twenty minute car ride," she muttered.

"He figured out you weren't a threat in five minutes," Kevin reminded her.

"And he's wrong about it," she muttered.

"He figured out you weren't a threat to us," Kevin clarified.

Mara made a noise that was neither denial nor agreement.

"New kid asks, Aaron's the one who picked him up," Andrew told Mara. "Coach asks, it was Nicky. Think you can handle that?"

"Don't treat me like I'm an idiot you fucking gremlin," she seethed in French.

"She can handle it," Kevin said.

"One day I'm going to learn French, and it's gonna be over for you two. No more secret flirting," Nicky said, lounging on Abby's couch. The woman in question had left for the grocery store on a mission to procure enough food for a "family dinner" (as Nicky had dubbed it—much to Aaron's denial). Mara still wasn't sure why the Foxes—Nicky and Abby, at least—were so big on the idea of family. It was as foreign to her as the German the cousins spit at each other.

"We're not flirting," Kevin said shortly, the annoyance bleached out of his tone after a dozen times insisting the same goddamn thing. Nicky was convinced he and Mara were in a secret relationship. Every insistence made Mara more and more nauseous, seeing as Kevin had been her pseudo-brother since she was ten and the thought of dating him made her want to throw up.

"Suuuuure you're not," Nicky said, winking dramatically.

Andrew let out a long-suffering sigh. "I'm going to the airport. Nicky, try not to push West to homicide before I get back."

Nicky waved him off, and Andrew rolled his eyes before heading for the door, slamming it behind him just because. Aaron dropped down onto the couch, prompting Nicky to try to throw his legs up into his lap before Aaron shoved them off.

Mara walked back to Kevin's bedroom as Nicky and Aaron started arguing about some movie she'd never heard of, unsurprised at the sound of footsteps trailing after her.

Kevin shut the door behind them as Mara crossed the room to the dresser, grabbing one of Kevin's t-shirts and a pair of shorts Abby had picked up for her from the mall this past weekend, seeing as Mara had arrived at Palmetto with only the (bloody and sweat-soaked) clothes on her back.