The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

XII

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     It took some convincing to get Dani and Haerin on the bus. Haerin wanted to storm back into the house, overpower Hyein, and steal my locket, But if Hyein didn't keep it in the house, we'd never see her, let alone my heirloom, again.

     She needed a few days to cool off. Haerin and Dani didn't trust her, but I knew Hyein. Buried under the thick eyeliner and black clothes was the same girl who collected bells, loved cold-case mysteries, and thought you could never be too old to catch fireflies. No amount of dressing up and playing mistress of the dark to a feeding ground of clueless worshippers would change that.

     "That girl has serious issues." Haerin pulled a brain out of the refrigerator and plopped it down on some newspaper she'd spread out on the dining-room table. "There's something not right in her head to make her act that way." She took out a steak knife and began carving into the brain, setting aside the sections she'd cut away.
"Are you sure something didn't break in her when you did the transformation?"

     "It's not like she's the only one with issues." I eyed the pale and squirmy brain on the table. Even when I was furious with Hyein, I still felt the need to defend her.

     "To whom are you referring?" Haerin plunged her knife into a section of brain, held it up, and grinned as fluid ran down the blade and curled around her wrist.

     "Never mind." We all had our own ways of coping with death.

     "The more important thing here is that Hyein either has my locket or knows where it is."

     "How do you know?" Dani had her dishrag out again, and she attacked the beveled glass cabinets with fervor. "Forgive me for being skeptical, if she does that's wonderful news, but I don't want to get my hopes up again."

     "I just know, okay?" When Hyein and I were fifteen, we stole some of her mom's vodka because we wanted to see what the big deal was about being drunk. Her mom wouldn't have noticed. Still, as soon as she got home, Hyein acted weird and twitchy until she finally blurted out, unprompted, that someone had broken into the house to steal drinks from the liquor cabinet. Hyein absolutely sucked at lying.

     "I still say it was a bad idea to leave so soon." Haerin peeled apart the brain, tilting her head as she studied the places she'd carved away, then carefully cut a circle around the top. "There are three of us. We could've taken the heirloom and been done with this."

     "And if it's not in the house? Or she somehow got away? We'd never see that locket again." I opened a window over the kitchen sink to let out the foul scent of rotting brain. "This way I still have a chance of talking her into giving it to me."

     "I'm going to trust that you know her best." Dani grimaced. "I'll feel better when we have the locket in hand, but if you think this is the way we need to go, I'm willing to wait."

     What she didn't say, but heavily implied, was that Hyein was on a deadline. If she didn't give us the locket soon, there wasn't anything I could do to stop Dani and Haerin from going after it. I didn't even want to think about those consequences.

     "Fine." Haerin went back to her brain carving, dismissing us both entirely as she focused in on whatever she was trying to do with that thing. "I can wait too, but not forever. If we don't have it in three days, we'll retrieve it ourselves by any means necessary."

     "Should we move forward with next steps?" I really didn't want to say, Let's go dig up your dead sister. Tiptoeing around it was horrific enough. "Or should we wait until Hyein shows up with the locket?" Haerin set her knife aside, and by the look she gave me, I had a moment where I was pretty certain she debated whether or not to use it on me next. "I'd rather we have a guarantee."