Page 53 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

A week later, I sit in the back of a courtroom with Arrow and watch Bob shuffle in wearing a suit that looks too big. He pleads not guilty. His lawyer asks for bail. The judge sets it high. As he’s led back, he looks over his shoulder. My mother doesn’t come. I don’t wave. I don’t leave. I breathe.

Chloe testifies at a hearing about the yacht. Devereaux’s footage plays on a screen. It isn’t the murder; it’s faces at doors, hands on rails, the clock of a night where men believed no one could follow the math. The judge signs more paper. Coleman’s lawyer looks like he swallowed a lemon.

When the news crews try to spin me into B-roll, I put on a cap and keep walking. When a reporter shouts, “Do you feel vindicated,” I say, “I feel tired,” and keep going. Arrow takes my hand like it’s an ordinary thing to do.

We dismantle the crime wall on a Sunday.

I take down the red lines first, then the photos, then the cards.

I keep two: ARBY and LAUREL NINE . I put them in a box with the mandala book and the old microphone that squeaked on consonants.

I leave a clean square of wall because I want to see what life looks like without lists.

That night, the boys come over. Ozzy brings a plant he swears is low-drama. Gage leans a shoulder into my kitchen doorway and says, “We should have a rule against yachts.” Knight installs a new deadbolt with a look that says argue and I will remove the hinges, then feeds me pasta.

We sit on the floor with takeout and bad TV and the doorbell rings once. For a heartbeat all of us reach for nothing in particular like we’ve learned and unlearned the same lesson. Arrow checks the camera. It’s my mother. He lets her in.

She stands in my doorway with a cardboard box. “I found these,” she says. “Arby’s old Polaroids. Pink hair years. Maybe you want them.”

I do. I so do. We sit on the rug and go through stacks of crooked photos: me and Arby at a drive-in; Arby with sunglasses on inside at night; Arby flipping off a cake because the frosting had raisins. I laugh for real. It sounds new and old at the same time.

My mother leaves. The boys leave. Arrow stays. He picks up the Ghostface mask from the chair where I threw it days ago and holds it, then puts it in the box with the Polaroids without asking, and I let him.

In bed, I say, “I thought he was going to shoot us on that boat.”

“I did too,” he says. “I tried my hardest to think of a way out when there wasn’t one.”

“You always do.”

He turns on his side. “We’ll have to be patient,” he says. “Trials are slow. Gray will pretend the sun has nothing to do with shadows. Etta will say she just wrote checks. Coleman will try to be charming on a stand. Bob will… I don’t know what Bob will do.”

“I know what I’ll do,” I say. “Eat. Sleep. Record. Hold your hand. Teach my mother a new recipe. Visit Arby without inventing fights in my head.” I pause. “Maybe forgive the parts of me I don’t like.”

“That’s the hard one,” he says.

“I know.” I reach for him under the blanket and he meets me halfway. We breathe the same way we did in the van and on the boat and on the sidewalk. It feels different now.

In the morning, he heads out to bring back bagels and the good cream cheese and two coffees and no masks. We eat at the counter like it’s a ritual that belonged to us the whole time, not a lifeline we grabbed when the floor dropped out.

My phone buzzes with a calendar reminder I don’t remember setting: record: light, part two.

I smile. I open a new document. I don’t write about murder or yachts or rings.

I write about the day Arby and I watched The Thing and she paused at the blood test scene and said, “They always think they can tell who’s safe.

That’s funny.” I write about how she changed the country in her head every time she changed her hair.

I write about how grief isn’t a straight line; it’s a loop you learn to live inside.

When I finish, I look at Arrow. “We did it,” I say. It isn’t triumph. It’s a report.

“We’re doing it,” he corrects. “Present tense.”

I nod. I hit upload. Outside, Saint Pierce hums like a city that knows about shadows and suns and all the rooms in between. Inside, I clean up breakfast and make a list for the grocery store and text my mother dinner tonight? and sit in front of the mic and say my sister’s name without flinching.

Light, without masks. It’s not a happy ending. It’s an honest one. And for now, that’s enough.

Thank you for reading Arrow and Juno’s story. Soon, the whole gang will have their stories released.