Page 4 of Borrowed
“Yes, please.I don’t like cats.”
They took me to the art room, but I still wanted to go home.
They gave me red.
I asked if it was blood.
They said it was ‘Acrylic,’ but it smelled too sweet to be innocent.
The art room was quiet, except for the girl in the corner chewing on her sleeve and the boy across from me trying to swallow his crayons.
I bet it tasted like ashes.
He made a gagging sound every few seconds, and I liked the rhythm.It reminded me of my Father’s cat.
“Paint something happy, Tabitha,” Dolly said.
Happy?
Like…warm sheets after he held me down with his teeth?
Like skin that still pulsed after I wore it to feel their love?
Like the way Toby told me I was his twin sister while licking the salt off my neck?
I nodded and smiled.
Dipping my brush into red, I waited until it bled across the canvas.
“What‘cha painting, Tabby?”Dolly said, tilting my head.
“A memory.”My voice came out in a purr.
She didn’t like that, but Toby did.I swirled the brush down, curve after curve—hips, a neck, a jawline sharp like Toby’s when he was still breathing before Mother and Father put him in a box and said he was sleeping.Or maybe when he wasn’t.
It was hard to remember.
He wore the bandages.
“I can’t let you see,” he told me.
He was behind me now, his breath on my shoulder, his hands slipping under the smock I stole from the chewing girl’s table.
The other people didn’t notice.
That was the best part: taking something and making it mine.
Forever.
“Use your fingers,” he whispered.“Paint the love you have for me, Zusje.”
So I did.
I dipped my hands into crimson and smeared it into the outline of his smile.My fingers slid down the canvas, then between my thighs.
The paint was still wet.
But now, so was I…
