Watching My Fake Sister Dig Her Own Grave novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Lake Street

Back on her old corner with Dez, Annabelle shows him how the ring works, until a girl with a paper cup on the L stairs mouths one word at her: run.

The doctor said a week.

I lasted three days.

On Tuesday morning I told Mom I had a follow-up with the police, which was true if you squinted.

Dez picked me up at the end of the driveway in an unmarked gray Ford that smelled like coffee and sunflower seeds.

He watched me lower myself into the passenger seat.

"How bad?"

"I've had worse."

"That's not a number, Devlin."

"Six," I said. "Seven on the stairs."

He pulled out onto Sheridan Road without another word.

Then he reached into the back seat and dropped a folded fleece blanket in my lap.

"For the stumps. The heater in this thing is a liar."

I put it over my knees.

It was warm from the back window, where the sun had been on it.

Nobody had ever warmed a blanket for me before.

I looked out at the lake so he wouldn't see my face do anything.

"So," Dez said, somewhere around Evanston. "Flowers."

"Two dozen white roses."

"That's a lot of roses for a girl who wants you dead."

"She doesn't want me dead. Dead gets a funeral and a lot of crying on TV."

"So what does she want?"

"Me back where I was," I said. "Out of the house. Out of the pictures."

He cracked a seed in his teeth and spat the shell into a cup in the holder.

"You know you're doing it again."

"What?"

"Talking about her like the weather."

"She is the weather," I said. "You just dress for it."

He laughed, a short surprised bark.

It was a good sound.

I hadn't made anybody laugh on purpose in a long time.

The Lake Street stairs looked exactly like the photograph.

Green steel, gray salt crust, the train shaking the whole frame every eight minutes.

My step was the third from the bottom.

Somebody had left a flattened cup on it.

Dez parked across the street, half on the curb.

"You're not getting out," he said.

"I'm getting out."

"Annabelle."

"If somebody stood on that step on Saturday and took a picture, somebody on this block saw them," I said. "And nobody on this block talks to cops."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he came around and opened my door.

The old man who sold lighters was still under the bridge, on his milk crate.

He'd been there since I was nine.

Three lighters for two dollars, five for three, and he always shorted the tourists one.

He squinted at me, at my good coat and my new legs.

Then his whole face changed.

"Little one-eye," he said. "Look at you. Shoes and everything."

"Hi."

"They said you got took by the cops."

"I got found."

He chewed on that.

Then his eyes flicked to Dez, who was pretending to read a bus schedule six feet away.

"He with you?"

"He's with me."

"He looks like a cop."

"He can't help that."

Dez made a wounded noise behind me.

The old man leaned in close.

His breath was menthol and wet wool.

"A lady was here Saturday," he said. "White coat. Big sunglasses. Took a picture of your step and asked me if the little kids still come by."

"What did you tell her?"

"Told her I sell lighters."

He held out his palm.

I put a twenty in it, the first money I'd ever given anybody instead of the other way around.

He folded it into his sock.

"They come Tuesdays now," he said. "Not your step. The top of the stairs. And they don't stay long."

Dez walked me back to the car with his hand hovering near my elbow, not touching.

When I was in, he leaned on the roof.

"Okay. Show me."

"Show you what?"

"How you did it. The counting. You said every corner, every drop."

So I showed him.

I pointed out the window.

"Top of the stairs. Two kids, morning rush, seven to nine. A good morning's forty dollars, a bad one's twelve."

I pointed down the block.

"The bus shelter by the pharmacy. One kid, one sign, a cup. Twenty a day. More if she cries, and Uncle taught us how."

I pointed at the bridge.

"Pickup's on the hour. A man in a van takes the cups and gives you an empty one. If your cup's light, you don't eat."

"And all of it came to you."

"Every cup, every night. I sat on the floor and counted it into piles of a hundred, and I said the totals out loud, and Uncle wrote nothing down."

"How much in a week?"

"From this block? Eleven hundred, give or take. From all of them, about nine thousand."

Dez didn't say anything for a while.

Then he said, "That's a lot of kids."

"Twenty-two," I said. "When I was twelve."

The train came overhead and shook the car.

I watched the stairs.

A man with a briefcase went up.

Two nurses went down.

Then a small girl in a red hoodie came up from the street side, holding a paper cup.

She was thin as a broom.

She had marker all over her fingers.

She stopped halfway and looked straight across the street.

At the car.

At me.

I knew her.

I'd taught her to count to a hundred with bottle caps.

Her face didn't change at all.

She just moved her mouth, slow and clear, so I could read it.

Run.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend