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Chapter Ninety-Six

LUNA

In the same penthouse, in the same room, on the same couch where I went inside Serafina, I sit with my eyes closed and my arms draped limply at my sides. The sambuca makes them four hundred pounds each, but it cannot stop the pounding in my chest or the quick, shallow breaths.

“Take it easy.” Mom sounds like a surgeon talking to her patient before she’s under full anesthesia. “Breathe.”

“Duh.”

“You trust me.” Her hand rests on mine.

“I do. I’m afraid it’ll hurt.”

“It doesn’t,” Serafina says from the couch across the coffee table. A magazine page snaps. “It’s weird having someone in there, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“Great.”

I hear a magazine slap and slide on the coffee table. “Sing me a song.”

“Taste of my own medicine. Nice. I hate you.”

“I’ll start.” Serafina clears her throat then sings. “ Happy birthday to yoooo ?—”

Have I ever had a friend who remembered what I told them and used it to help me? I can’t think of a time.

“ Happy birthday to meeee —” I catch up to her and we sing it together, over and over.

There’s a pressure on my chest. It stays very consistent for too long.

“Are you in?” I ask. “Are you doing it?”

“Something’s wrong,” Mom says.

“You’re killing my confidence.”

The pressure disappears. “I’m sorry. I think with the eyes gone…”

“Try again. But this time, come in through here.” I take her hand and put her fingertips to the place where my collarbones meet. “And go, um, like sideways? I’m not sure how else to explain it.”

“Nothing you’re saying makes any sense,” Serafina says with a head shake.

“Just keep humming like it’s your birthday,” Mom says. “Give me a minute.”

Serafina and I exchange a glance, then the pressure I felt before pushes at the base of my throat and through, to the place where my spine meets my skull.

Then—between these places—it feels as if a thread is running between two fingers.

I can’t see what Mom’s doing in my mind’s eye.

I only have the sensation that something’s happening.

“I got it.”

There’s a tap-tapping from the window.

Serafina stops singing to whisper, “Shit.”

“What?” I’m afraid to move.

“ Happy birthday …” she sings, but I don’t have a chance to join in.

The string Carmine tied from the top of my spine to the bottom of my heart is cut, and I am free.