Unfinished Business

CHAPTER 1: DING, DONG, THE BITCH IS DEAD

"I promise, it's not a silly story," Naomi insisted. "It's scary! It's a scary story this time!"

I rolled my eyes, even though I knew she wasn't talking to me. I was sitting on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my younger sister, supervising some sleepover activities. I didn't know why I had to be here, just that I was supposed to be. Mom didn't like to explain the rules that she and our father came up with, especially if the explanation was something like, "I don't want my kids to ever have sex." In this case, the reason was probably that good old Cher Hardy was afraid her precious baby would look up some porn online, because that was definitely something that a group of five girls would do with the door open. (The door had to be open. It was another stupid family rule.)

Naomi was twelve. She was hardly a baby. She was pernicious, and dedicated to following the rules of any authority figure around her. She was also way more than capable of taking care of herself. Either way, Naomi didn't need her big sister to supervise this stupid sleepover.

My mother was a real stickler about shutting down any sort of sex-talk. That was why I wasn't allowed to attend that unit of my ninth-grade health class, and why I had to chaperone my stupid younger brother's dates with his stupid girlfriend on top of stupid Naomi's sleepovers and every other goddamn situation. I was the oldest. I was supposed to be the most responsible. I was supposed to be like a second mother. That didn't mean that I wanted to be.

Cher didn't tolerate the opposite of sexual attraction, either; there was a reason I hadn't come out to her yet. There was no point in coming out to a woman who said time and time again that asexuality was a total myth made up by foolish teenagers and delusional adult virgins so they could feel better about themselves. At least I wasn't gay. That would have been worse. That would have been unthinkable. There was a reason Cash, my brother, hadn't come out to Mom as bisexual yet, and that he probably never would. There was a reason that Willa, his girlfriend, took her own pride pins off of her backpack before even looking at our house. Willa, who was one of those cheerleaders who was full of light and goodness and butterflies that flew out of her ass whenever she walked and was arguably a perfect person, wasn't good enough for Cher Hardy. Nothing ever was.

It weighed on my mind all the time. I couldn't complain about any of these things, not out loud, so I satiated the need to do so by rolling my eyes over and over again at every minor inconvenience.

I had my fingers deep in a twelve-year-old's hair. Braiding wasn't exactly one of my talents. I was trying, though. That had to count for something.

I knew Nadia, whose hair I was braiding. Nadia was the one kid I actually liked-- other than my little sister. I'm not a complete monster. Nadia was quiet. She was sweet. She didn't jump on the couch or spout Bible verses at the drop of a hat. It helped that she was my brother's girlfriend's younger sister. Of course I knew her name.

I couldn't say the same for the other two girls in the room. Truth be told, I didn't care all that much. Did that make me a bitch? Maybe. Did I give half a shit? Absolutely not.

Naomi was practically bouncing up and down on her princess-themed bunk of our bed, grasping at her folded legs like they were a life preserver. "Okay, okay. So, the story goes like this--"

I instinctively tuned her out. I knew every story Naomi had to tell; everybody knew the story of the Eye For An Eye. It was a shitty B-rate movie type of monster, inspired by some local urban legends and an incident back in the eighties where a girl committed suicide and her brother killed a bunch of teenagers. I already knew everything I needed to know about it, considering that I didn't care.

I didn't care about a lot of things. It's not that deep.

Anyway, I had more than enough to concentrate on with all that hair between my knuckles. I ran my fingers through Nadia's hair to undo it, hoping that she wouldn't notice.