Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 37: I'm in Danger

Kristina Kelly locks eyes with me, immediately and my stomach falls to my knees. How could she know it's me?

Shiv bonks her head on the underside of the table as she scrambles to sit up again, cursing. "What the fuck did you say, Vapor?"
Kristina Kelly's eyes slide to Shiv's and both girls mutter curse words under their breaths. Under Garda Girdle's disapproving glare, Kristina Kelly stomps across the room and sits at our table.

"Grifta!" she yells. Her henchmen join, standing behind her in horseshoe formation, staring down at me like I'm in an interrogation.

"You're Josephina." Kristina Kelly says, narrowing her green eyes and scanning me like she's a robot with lazer vision. "My sources tell me you've got my old room. And my man."

Not her old man. Her man. Present tense.

"I want them back."
Her voice sounds exactly like Megan Fox's: the same lazy, too-confident-to-care cadence. Same drop of the lower lip, the sloe-eyed stare. But Shiv's right, she's not half as attractive. Her hair is dyed unnaturally orange – brown, where it's grown out at the roots – and her skin's spotty, her nose is off center, her teeth are uneven – though no where near as wonky as Grifta's.

I remember what Shiv said about her being a quick study, suddenly. About how she realized after a few months in jail she did deserve to be here...

I wonder what she did to get back in. And I wonder if she's here for me. If she's going to study everything I do, every facet of my connection to Steak, and figure out a way to replicate it and steal him back for herself...

"I can see you thinking," she says, frowning. "You have a very expressive face. I don't, which means you'll never see me coming. I might absolutely fucking hate you and you'll never even know it, Ho."

"She is so going to shank you in the back. Or up the butt or in through your ear and out a nostril!"

"Thanks, Shiv."

"I'm just looking out! You have to see it coming! I wonder what she did to get back in..."

We're in the rec yard, under the basketball hoop again. I still have my makeshift carrot-and-peaches puke in my pocket, but now I don't think I'll need it. My stomach is doing more exercise than anyone else in the yard, flipping over and swirling and somersaulting at the thought of Kristina Kelly trying to steal me away from Steak.

No, she was never in for thievery in the first place. She was in as an accessory to assault. And then she choked out Grifta... Whatever else she's learned since, I don't want to imagine it. She won't try and steal me away from Steak, she'll cut me into a million little pieces so he can't even recognize me, anymore...

"She'll cut off your middle finger and send it to him, up the drain," says Shiv.

"Thanks, Shiv." I say again.

I sink to my butt and hug my knees, trying to think of a way to dump him before Kristina Kelly dumps my body somewhere... I don't think a quick six month jail relationship is worth losing my head over. Literally.

"I heard it really was murder, this time," Needler says, appearing at our side with a deflated kickball and her tongue stained by a commissary-blue Powerade.

"She met up with the old boyfriend's friends. Grilled them about what his plan had been, if he'd really been successful at it. Killed someone else to get back in."
"Doesn't make sense," says Vapor. "Since Steak's got a short sentence. She doesn't want to be in here forever, just long enough to be with him while he's here."
"Never said she was smart," Needler shrugs, grinning through her blue teeth. "But she's learning. Got back somehow and even if it wasn't murder, something's changed about her hasn't it?"

"Yeah," says Shiv. "That she's hot now? But I noticed before she left. Just barely. She's a woman with a plan, suddenly. I'm just glad it's Jos in her path and not me."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, but." Shiv clamps her hand on my shoulder, shaking me. "I've got more to live for than just a cute boyfriend, baby. Better you than me."