Sister Cities

Part 8: Jinx

Don't call me "kid"

Don't call me "baby"

Look at this godforsaken mess that you made me

You showed me colors

You know I can't see with anyone else

And you know damn well

For you, I would ruin myself

A million little times

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 I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored I'm bored I'm bored I'm bored.

It's Vi's turn to babysit me after Caitlyn. Caitlyn whispers something as they pass each other that makes Vi furrow her eyebrows. She brought me food, and she puts it next to me and removes one of my handcuffs, and she looks like she's gonna say something, so I say, "I'm bored."

"Tough," she says, dropping onto her bed. "Eat your dinner."

I eat my dinner, but I'm still bored afterward, so I tell her again.

"Look, I'm sorry, but you're under house arrest. What do you think you're gonna be able to do for entertainment?"

"I like drawing," I say.

"What would you draw on?"

"The floor."

"What would you draw with?"

"You could see if anybody has any crayons."

"Nobody here has crayons, Jinx."

"You didn't ask yet."

She looks at me for a long time, bouncing one of her legs.

"She's gonna keep you here forever," Mylo says. (Forever forever.) "You'll never draw anything again." I tell him to shut up inside my mind so Vi doesn't know I'm seeing him. Nobody's supposed to know, but they always do. Silco told me it's okay and it doesn't make me any less special— it makes me more special. Sometimes he thought it made me weak, but I always proved him wrong.

"Then you killed him," Mylo says.

"And then you killed my family," Caitlyn says. Caitlyn isn't real. If she was, Vi would be all over her; besides, I just watched her walk out. And it isn't her family I killed, anyway. She said her mom was alive.

"It was someone's family," she says. ("Family, family, family family family family—")

"Shut up," I say. I had a family. I killed them. I don't care.

Vi opens her mouth, then follows my eyes to where Fake Caitlyn sits on the floor, swirling her shiny ribbon between her fingers. I don't know why she gave the ribbon to me. She thinks I'm evil.

"I know you're evil," she says.

"Shut up," I say.

"Nobody has crayons," Vi says again. "But I'll see if anyone has anything else that would work. Chalk or paint or something."

She leaves and calls for someone named Quartz, who comes in to grimace at me without blinking. I put my empty cup on the floor between my cot and the wall.

Vi comes back after a long time, kicks Quartz out, and drops a dirty stick of white chalk in the middle of the floor. Then she grabs the cuff she took off my right hand, puts it on one leg of the bed frame, tells me to get up, locks my ankle, and frees my left hand. I'm left kneeling with my foot pinned, but able to reach all the way across the floor.