Page 8 of Pretty Pink Poison
I wish my future husband wouldn’t get the right of taking my virginity but that a stranger would steal it. In the dark of the night like an unapologetic thief willing to risk it all for me. Just me. Just once.
I read it over again. And again. And then I placed it back exactly how it was.
Her entries didn’t always contradict her actions. And some days, her thoughts were written about absolutely nothing. The girl really and truly had no filter.
One day, she was mad she’d lost her lip gloss.
So I’d gone out and bought ten of them and threw them in her locker sporadically because she lost everything all the time.
She literally had no understanding of making mental notes about her surroundings either. And she never fucking planned anything.
She barely ate and was on the verge of low blood sugar all the time which was actually concerning considering she had fainted a time or two before.
Let’s not forget the number of times I’d watched her paint her nails or do makeuptoo instead of getting work done… I fucking swear to God. She’d stayed up one night painting her nails four different colors instead of studying for a test that she then wrote about in the diary that she was sure she would fail.
I staged a fire that hour so she could study the next day.
I could actually count on her being completely spontaneous and not planning a single thing most of the time. I could count on her hate for me too.
What fucked with my head was her need for a stranger. The way she wrote explicitly about a man she didn’t even know. Her writing had gotten dirtier and dirtier over the years but not for men she didn’t know. And still, after reading it, I wanted to stand over her and jack off, wanted my come to mark her.
I had self-control, I reminded myself. So, instead, I covered her back up, pulling the white sheet up to her shoulders, and stared at how innocent she still looked.
Although I’d always known her to be worse than she acted, Bianca gave a good show of being sweet, but the girl was my soulmate when it came to wanting more from our little worlds. From the age of six, I remember how she’d sit and read. First, in pretty little white dresses, holding children’s books, but then they became chapter books as she grew. Or she’d write in that journal that she claimed no one could look at.
By thirteen, the dresses were skimpier, and her bright eyes were hypnotizing. And by that time, I’d figured out a way to read those stupid diary entries she thought were so coveted.
In them, she didn’t even write about her feelings much. It was mostly about how our parents talked business, about how she wasn’t reading books when she was here but instead listening to them. It was fucking obvious she did that too, because those azure eyes of hers never stayed pinned to the book by then. Instead, they ping-ponged around my parents’ livingroom while the adults talked. It was the first time I saw her as something different than what I’d categorized her as.
Everyone thought Bianca was a sensitive, fragile, soft little bird; a tender soul we never wanted to experience the world. She saved bunnies in the damn fields and picked dandelions to put in vases for her mother. She seemed pristine but she wasn’t.
Her mother had told her to sit quietly and that day the sun hit her brown curls at just the right angle that it looked like God was shining an angelic hue down on her.
Yet, she was taking in their conversation rather than reading and doing what she was told. It didn’t fit and I walked over to her to tell her so, “You should read the book, not listen to our parents.”
“I’ve read it already. It’s boring if you know the ending.” She waited, watching my face as she pointed to the title. Then she blurted out, “The dog dies.”
No look of guilt for ruining the ending and no look of sadness about the dog’s death could be seen on her features. Bianca instead studied me as I studied her. We assessed one another in silence long enough that I considered looking away.
I never looked away. Even at the age of thirteen, I liked to catalog when someone got uncomfortable enough that they broke eye contact. Bianca Zarelli was the first person to make me squirm enough that I glanced behind her and pointed outside at the meadow between our homes.
“Let’s go outside.” She was someone I couldn’t fit into a box, and I needed to figure out why.
We ran through the fields while our parents talked business. Ezra and Rafe joined us. They’d always liked her much more than I did. But neither of them watched her. They walked off to look at their phones while I stared at her weaving through the flowers like she was looking for something. When she froze andwaved me toward her, I peered over her shoulder to see a black snake in the grass. “Found him again.”
She put her tiny hands on her hips and glanced at me to ask, “You think I could have a snake as a pet?”
“They’re dangerous,” I told her in a condescending voice.
Instead of arguing with me though, she hummed and reached her hand out quickly as if to prove me wrong.
The snake proved her wrong instead. The little reptile snapped at her as if teaching her if she went looking for trouble, she was bound to find it. Yet, Bianca didn’t cry or screech while my stomach bottomed out.
I figured it was because I was going to get into trouble, but some other instinct, one I couldn’t understand then was there too. We both watched the blood on her finger bead up where the fangs had pricked her skin before I grabbed her wrist quickly and sucked the blood from the cut.
She stood there in a daze, watching me. “It doesn’t hurt,” she told me, but she stumbled a little like she was unsteady on her feet suddenly.
I pulled her finger from my mouth and said, “Can you walk?”
