“I don’t care.” He said the words dully, without emotion, but I saw the darkening of green, the way his hand tightened on the thigh of his jeans. Something was going on.

“You look like you care.”

“It’d be nice for you to meet my family. For us to be normal.”

When the anger came it burned, hot and red through my chest, a hundred emotions pushing out in veins that were too skinny to handle them all. It’d be nice for you to meet my family. It’d be nice for him to meet my family too. Would be nice to have a family to introduce. How dare he shove that in my face? How could I sit there, with his family, and not think of my own? Not compare every hug, every I love you, every child, mother, and father, with my own? For us to be normal. Yeah, J. I’d like to be normal too. I’d like to sit across from my boyfriend and get angry and not think about cutting open his stomach. I’d like to walk outside and not try to kill someone. I’d like to pick a boyfriend because of choices, not because he’s the only fuckin’ person in three years who hadn’t run screaming or died beneath my hands. I closed my eyes and tilted my chair back, felt the lift of the feet, the hover, and gripped the table’s edge for balance. Counted to ten like Dr. Derek taught me. Envisioned a white expanse before me, all distractions, all thoughts fading, muting, in the white. I wondered, with the tilt of my world back, if I needed to do a curl. Roll my body into a ball and let my fantasies run wild. Distract myself from the stabbing pain of memories that his flippant statement just brought on. I’d never curled in front of Jeremy before. Dr. Derek said it would freak him out. Suggested the white method instead. The white method sucks. It gives me no release, no break, is the equivalent of unpopped ears when coming off a flight, my desire to hold my nose and blow out my world an intense itch. I gripped the table’s edge and heard, across the span of white, him speak.

“Is that too much to ask?”

I pushed against the table’s edge and let myself fall.

CHAPTER 8

Present

I’M EXAMINING MY face in the bathroom mirror. Today started out late, a killer headache keeping me in bed until almost noon, two Vicodin barely taking the sting off. When I finally crawled out of bed, I showered, then pulled on a baby-blue camisole and matching thong, blow-drying my hair on the floor by my bed, checking e-mails as the hot air did its thing. When I flipped on the bright lights and climbed onto the cam bed, hooking my laptop in and stretching out on the comforter, my face was off camera, my waist and hips on full display, my fingers busy as they logged into different sites and sent my live feed into every corner of cyberspace. When I propped up on one elbow, panning out, and smiled for my viewers, I didn’t understand the image on the screen. I leaned closer to the cam and flinched in surprise, jerking out a hand and ending the stream, my body rolling off of the bed, my feet quick as they hurried to the bathroom. And now, my hand clenched on the edge of the medicine cabinet mirror, I stare into my reflection and at the broken, bloody mess that is my nose. Did I do this? Knock myself out again with another dramatic fall to the floor? Lose control trying to get out of my locked door and headbutt the steel? I’ve never done that before, never caused any more damage than a few broken nails and occasional bruises.

I need to go out, buy makeup. I can’t cam like this, not without enticing a thousand fans to storm to their feet in chivalrous support. One will probably call the cops, report the jealous boyfriend that they will assume is responsible. I don’t normally wear makeup, nothing more than mascara and gloss, which gives me the innocent look all the men love. But mascara and lip gloss will do nothing with this. This is concealer-and foundation-worthy. Concealer, foundation, and whatever other magical items girls who wear makeup covet. I’ll go to the drugstore. Just a quick trip, nothing will happen. I have to go. I can’t work without it, and can’t expect Jeremy to pick out makeup for me. I’ll hop in FtypeBaby and go, be back within the hour. I grab my keys and stop, looking down at my outfit or, rather, lack of one. I am lacing up my tennis shoes when the knock comes. I finish lacing and try to invent a reason for being dressed, something to tell Jeremy when he asks. I pull open the door and stare into a woman’s face.

“Deanna Madden?” The woman’s mouth is too big for her face, her lips chewed, a big chunk of lip skin missing from the right side of her smile. She wears eyeliner but no other makeup, the result of which is slightly trashy. She doesn’t smile. Neither do I. Behind her, a black man in a suit shifts on the cheap carpet.

“Yes.” I curl my toes inside my socks and dig my nails into the door frame. Wonder idly if her eyeliner is waterproof. If I strangle her, will her eyes water? Will the liner run? I need more of her voice in order to properly imagine it gasping for help.

“I’m Detective Boles; this is Detective Reuber. We are with the Tulsa Police Department. May we come in?”

Detectives. Police. Words I’ve waited years to hear yet today is the moment. How odd. I blink to buy time, and it is too short. May we come in? “I’d rather you not.” No, you may not come in. I will not let you set foot into this place. I lost my virginity here. Touched for the first time here. Seduced here. Contained crazy here. Killed here.

“We just have a few questions. They’d be easier to handle inside.” Oh, so TheOtherOne can speak. I flick my eyes to him. Notice the calm chew of his jaw as he works a piece of gum. The steady stare of his gaze as he meets mine. The lift of his chin that speaks of more authority than his cheap suit.

“No.” I lift my own damn chin.

The woman glances down the empty hall. “Ms. Madden, these questions are of a personal nature.”

“I don’t really let people in.”

“We can take this down to the station if you’d prefer that.”

I hesitate for a long moment, my eyes darting from the woman to the man. The woman to the man. They have guns, both of them, the precious weapons hanging casually from their belts. Bulletproof vests also, the bulk of it most obvious on the woman. Then, against my better judgment, I open the door and step back. “Come on in.”

CHAPTER 9

Present

SHE HAS SOCIALanxiety. That’s what they’d been told. Detective Brenda Boles looks into Deanna Madden’s eyes and calls bullshit on that right then and there.

The girl stands, one hand on the knob, the other on the frame, and stares at them, her eyes darting from her, to David, to her. Her back hunches a little forward, her hands are braced on the door as if to hold herself back. Her eyes show no sign of fear, or stress. Instead they are wary. Confident. Smart.

Brenda has locked eyes with a thousand suspects before. And she can tell you, in that moment, right there in the hall, without a word between them, without a question asked, that this girl is guilty.