Serpent Heart [PUBLISHED]

iii. seventeen

She is seventeen the first time she kills.

They stand in an alley stained by neon lights and midnight shadows; her eyes are red-rimmed and her throat ravaged from rage-induced screaming. Isaak Peak is one more shot of stolen whiskey away from hurling his guts when he starts bragging about how he did it, how he killed Kayla Hoffman, how he got away with murder.

It was Kayla who Catherine first met when they bumped into one another in the lunch line and exchanged gap-tooth smiles.

Kayla, who spent more nights at Catherine's house than her own, two girls wrapped in sleeping bags as they stared at that plaster ceiling and traced faces in the cracks.

Kayla, who draped a gold necklace around Catherine's neck in seventh grade and said, "Well, you are my best friend, right?" while her dark cheeks burned with color.

Kayla, who told Catherine exactly forty-two nights before she died that she might be in love with Isaak Peak and begged her best friend not to give her that look because "He's not a bad guy."

Forty-two nights later, they call Catherine in to identify the body because Kayla's mother has passed on, and her father disappeared so many years before. They leave Catherine as the final mooring to Kayla's sinking ship, and she feels herself suck in the same drowning waters as her dead friend when she looks upon her bruised, ruined countenance ringed by a halo of wet curls on a sterile metal table.

"She didn't drown, man, not really," Isaak Peak brags to his leering buddy. They're in the seediest bar downtown Dedwich has to offer, and Catherine is only there because it's the only place—the best place—for a minor to get drinks. The bartender doesn't challenge his boss, a criminal in all but name who takes capitalism a little too far. Catherine is there because she doesn't want to feel or to think. She wants to cripple her mind for one more night, just one more night.

Three hundred and sixty-two nights have passed since Kayla's end, and Catherine sees Isaak Peak drinking cheap, scummy liqueur with a smile on his deceptive face and a girl at his hip, slurring his words as he tells them about poor little Kayla Hoffman. She was so eager to grow up, to please, to part her thighs—and Isaak says, "She didn't drown, man, not really. I held her under. I did what you do with all whining bitches."

It has been four hundred and forty-four nights since Kayla whispered, "I think I love Isaak Peak." Three hundred and sixty-two nights ago, Catherine sobbed over the ruined form of a girl who could have been her sister, and thirty-one nights have dribbled by since Isaak Peak was cleared of all charges based on lack of evidence.

His sits in a bar smelling of spilled beer and pot smoke, and he laughs about an innocent, naive girl's death. He doesn't see Catherine because no one ever does. She is thin and small-boned, bespectacled and sallow, kept together by live wires of grief and rage: a marionette setting fire to her own strings.

The line for the restroom is too long. Peak goes into the alley to take a piss, foul creep that he is, and Catherine follows. She screams at him—up at him—and he grins, two moles under his right eye dappled like spilled ink, and he asks, "Who are you?" Catherine wants him to know. She wants him to know so badly she pushes Isaak, the thud of flesh solid under her quivering palms, and he careens into the brick wall at his back, too inebriated to stand.

Catherine shoves him again, again. She grabs him by the shoulders, her fingers twisting and clawing at his leather jacket, and she slams him bodily against the stone and mortar. She doesn't know where the strength comes from, only that it is a byproduct of something, of two volatile emotions meeting inside her head, thrusting adrenaline into her veins, into her hands, and all she sees is that cocky grin and Kayla's blank, dead eyes.