It’s so fucked-up, so wrong, so broken and so dark.

But I can’t help it.

I’m filled with a jealous rage at having to share her. When I kiss her, thrusting my tongue between her sweet lips, I can taste that same envy. We’re both being torn apart by it, by wanting each other so fiercely that we can’t breathe.

And that’s how I like it.

I mount her the way I did that first day, rough and wild and unapologetic, until I’m coming so hard that I see stars.

Bernadette’s breathing is heavy in the dark as she clings to me, nails digging into my upper arms, face pressed into the hollow crook between my neck and shoulder. Carefully, almost reverently, I adjust my grip on her ass, holding her instead of crushing her, and then I carry her out of that stupid fucking closet and over to my bed.

I lay her body carefully down on it as she looks up at me, black pleated skirt wrinkled, an old metalcore band t-shirt twisted around her waist. Slowly, and with great care, I undress her, our gazes locked on one another, our breathing matched.

There’s no need to speak. Shit, there isn’t anything we could say to each other with words that we can’t say with our bodies.

Once she’s naked, I strip myself down to nothing, matching our vulnerability, making sure we’re as evenly matched in this moment as we’ve ever been before.

“You’re my wife, Bernadette,” I tell her as I start with her inner thighs, finding the spots that Callum or Hael might’ve left behind during their time with her. I kiss each mark, lick it, suck it, bite it, whatever it takes to reclaim her skin as my own. “You’re my queen, my family. And that’s what family does: we take turns cleaning up each other’s messes.”

She grabs for my hair, tangling her fingers in it and pulling me up toward her, so that our bodies align and my cock slides neatly into her heat. Her legs wrap around me and our mouths find each other, just two lost souls circling in the dark.

By the time I remember that I ordered food and head downstairs to get it, it’s ice-cold and nearly frozen from the chill of the winter night. We eat it anyway, curled up together on a bed that’s far too small for us both, and then we fuck until the sun manages to warm the diffused gray of an icy sky.

Bernadette Blackbird

On Sunday, I head over to Sara Young’s house, wearing a dress that’s as pink as the one I should’ve killed Kali in. I bite my lip, standing there with almost no makeup on and feeling naked as fuck. Who am I if I’m not wearing dark lipstick and black eyeliner, falsies and bullshit? Who the actual motherfucking fuck am I?

The door opens and there she is, Miss VGTF herself.

I stare at her and then I start to move away. It’s not on purpose, actually, but it’s a really good tactic. Sara reaches out for me, taking my hand in one of her cool, dry ones.

“Bernadette, please stay,” she tells me, and I pause. Now that I’m standing here, on this boring street in this boring neighborhood in front of this boring house, I have to wonder if this is even Sara’s home at all. Is she—was she—undercover so deep that she needed an Airbnb rental or something?

“You’ve gotten me in enough trouble already,” I say, putting my hand over my belly. Sara can make of that what she will, but I honestly feel sick to my stomach. When I started out, I told myself I was on a journey of revenge. Then it was about power. It was about belonging. It was about family and connection and sex and love and dark fantasy. What is it now?

Acceptance.

Because if I hate myself as much as the world wants me to, then everyone else has won and I’ve lost.

“I showed my mom that video, you know?” I say to Sara with a breathy laugh. Turning my head, I see her American flag billowing in the wind. It snaps like a rubber band as the winter air throws it around like a kite. My breathing comes slower, more shallow. I feel like I’m falling.

“I’m so sorry, Bernadette,” she says, but I’m not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for. I keep staring at the flag, wondering if I should feel something like patriotism when I look at it. I don’t know what I feel. I don’t even know how I feel about myself right now.

I glance back at Sara Young, hand still on my belly, still trying to breathe.

“Don’t apologize to me,” I tell her, looking her straight in the face and seeing how much she really wants to be the good guy, how much she truly cares. And she does. It’s written into every line of her face, but she has no idea how to go about actually becoming the good guy because she’s too disconnected from the world. She warns me about the dangers of caffeine while I’m riding the high of violence and mad love. What does she know? “Unless you’re apologizing for the way our world handles cases like Penelope’s. Unless you’re apologizing for every girl that gets fucked over by a system that doesn’t care. Unless you’re saying you want to make change, don’t apologize.”

“Why don’t you come in?” Sara asks, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to stand right here, clutching my nauseous belly, and wondering when it’s all finally going to come together, when it’s going to click in. I keep stumbling; I keep messing up. My narrative isn’t the perfect, straight line that I want it to be.

“I showed Pamela that video,” I say, which, in a way, is true. It’s true because Penelope told our mother what was happening. She left a journal with her pain scrawled in looping letters, and then I told our mother what was happening. Nobody cared. In this version of the story, in this fantasy, somebody does.

“And what happened after that?” Sara asks, leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb and frowning at me.

“She just kept saying …” I start, but then I choke on the lie. Fuck. This is one of the ugliest lies I’ve ever told. It gums up my mouth and makes my tongue feel like it’s coated in motor oil. It’s so ugly because it gives Pamela credit that she doesn’t deserve. “She kept saying what did he do to my baby?” I close my eyes and imagine how someone else’s mother might’ve reacted. Once, I saw a true crime show about a mother that found video footage of her husband raping his stepdaughter. This mother, she went and got her shotgun, and she blew the man’s head off while he was sleeping. That’s the mother I imagine when I close my eyes. “When Neil came home, she hit him. And she kept hitting him.” I open my eyes again and exhale. “I don’t think she’d have stopped if he hadn’t hit her back.”

Sara looks at me for a while, listening to the wind whip the flag around. I’ve got on a cashmere sweater that’s as pink as the dress underneath. Pen would’ve loved this outfit. She would’ve worn it with pride and listened to GRRRLS by AViVA, and then maybe she would’ve gone out and kissed one of them. That’s how I imagine her now, vibrant and full of color.

“So silly, considering she died broken and alone,” Kali hisses, but I ignore her. She’s just a plot, a storytelling device to throw back my pain in my own damn face. She is nothing. She never really was.

As soon as I accept that truth, as soon as I let it settle into my heart, I blink and she’s gone.

“Would you be able to testify on what you saw?” Sara asks me, but I shake my head.