I did not know how her mind worked. I do not want to know still.

She was pinching her cheeks, demanding her blood to give them a rosy hue. Using the mirror on the back of the passenger’s seat, she pulled out a strand of hair from her braid, then stuck the tip of her forefinger in her mouth. I scrunched my face when she wrapped it around the strand of hair, but admitted to myself that the curl which rested against her forehead did look adorable.

And that was what she was going for, wasn’t it? Adorable. Innocent. Not at all the eleven-year-old girl who ordered the seamstress to make her an outfit of a “Starving scholar. Diamond in the rough. Make it girly, but hold the pink.” Her voice never wavered like a child’s should, confident in what she needed to wear for the event. She waved the disgruntled seamstress and disturbed assistant away with a face of annoyance. She knew she could not pull off ‘Intimidating Mastermind’ for at least a few years.

I chuckled, I recall, standing near the door waiting for my turn to be measured and poked. I thought it was merely the attitude of a tomboy rebelling against society’s backwards standards. I was partly true, but mostly wrong. She wasn’t rebelling. She was hungry. Starving. But without the reach to grasp what she craved. But she was a little girl, the symbol of purity and innocence.

The girl absolutely did not have late night talks with a financial planner, a cup of strong coffee in their grips, discussions fanatic with their whisper-shouts and excited hands. I shivered, my breath fogging the limo’s window, remembering the first night the man visited.

He looked bored. Reasonable since he was going to talk money to an eleven-year-old who probably just wanted to get as many stuffies as possible. An hour later, that same man stumbled out of the room, dazed, like he had seen the sun for the first time in his life. It was hard to forget, as in I will never forget it. I won’t forget it for as long as I live, and I had many years to spare at the time.

I was only two years older than the girl next to me, a ripe thirteen-year-old boy who starred in his first movie. A movie about the book she wrote, where she watched child actor after child actor stride in, shuffle in, and strut in, until her uninterested stare landed on me. A blessing or a curse, I cannot tell you.

They can’t be serious, I had spat in my head at the sight of her when I entered the room for the audition. An eleven-year-old girl in charge of who was going to be in a multi-million dollar production? She was probably going to pick the bluest-eyed pretty face and leave the more inconsequential roles to the adults. The ones who were supposed to be in charge, thank you.

Oh, if it was possible to hit one’s past self, one’s destructive and stupid past self. I would go to that foolish child right now and smack him good and proper. “That’s your future, you’re insulting,” is what I would probably say, or something of the same vein, because she was. I simply could not see it yet.

There was quite a storm of gossip when she first entered the set. Actors, cameramen, and the director all leaned their heads closer to get a good look at her and her pretty, sparkling dress. Whispers circulated like blood, clotting and flowing at will, about how a girl so young, so bubbly, so cute, could write such a heartbreaking series of short stories of abuse, loss, and death.

The blood flowed faster and bubbled over when they speculated how that girl also contacted a publisher all by herself, sent a whole manuscript of the first story through the mail with her phone number attached, and became a millionaire while people thrice her age were rotting in the streets. The answer was easy if a brain was present—advertising.

She picked the most renowned publisher because she knew agents could see the goldmine that she was. A little girl with the ability to write that well, tell such mature tales that could bring full-grown men to their knees? The money printed itself, hopping right into their wallets. The movie deals also walked themselves, banging on her door and begging on their knees to give their studio the rights to her beating heart.

And that’s what her book was, her still-beating heart. The blood drained from her wrist, turned to ink, and written with a sharp quill sculpted from frozen tears.

“You’re thinking. It’s not good to think before you walk a red carpet.”

“And what would you know about that?”

“Being full of nerves and chitters is never a good state to be in, let alone in front of thousands of people.” She talked like an old woman, bitter and full of spite, but equally full of knowledge. A seemingly never-ending well of comebacks and tricks.

She should have been talking about crushes, glitter and unicorns, and cooties from the aforementioned crushes. Is eleven young enough to still be talking about the taste of glue? Because that would be more natural than whatever mature gospel left this small child on my right side. It was enough to drive anyone insane. It sure as hell drives me up a wall.

“Just nervous, is all. Aren’t you?” My voice was too tight. Relax it, I berated myself. There has never been a day where I was not anxious around this girl, stepping around her like she was a lioness about to come for my throat.

I correct the previous description of myself. Ripe implies being ready, and I was not at all ready. She showed me that.

“Of course, but I’m going to save all that silly energy for when the driver opens our door. Rather nice limo.” Talk like a normal child for the love of God. No child acts like that, talks like that, even her. In theory.

I read her short stories, every horrific word to get into character. While it was never confirmed that she used herself as inspiration for the bloody and bruised protagonists of each sad tale, the care she put into them read more like empathy than sympathy.

I remember shuddering and dropping the thick book at the… I believe it was the fourth story. A young girl hanging from a tree, the words “Told ya” carved into both her bloody arms. A savage accusation to her guilty father and morbid encouragement for her hysterical mother. The detail that she put into describing the body, the blue and purple face, the crows gouging her eyes out overnight, the bloated weight of her straining the creaking rope. It was too much for a boy who just came to terms that he would one day die.

None of the protagonists were much older or younger than her. “Write what you know,” after all.

There were three more stories after that, and I read all of them. And then I read them again, turning pages with wet fingers and quivering lips. Then again. And again. Again. At first, it was to understand the main characters’ pain. Get inside their heads so I could be them, if in a more ‘masculine way.’ All the protagonists in the stories were young girls, and I was a boy. All the auditioning actors were young boys, because, well, Hollywood. But then I wanted to know more about the name on the cover.

It felt invasive, like I was reading the diary of a dozen dead girls. Like they were people of this world. Flipping through the grotesque book with the plain cover as each child told me how they died in the most gut-wrenching ways, not a detail missed.

I was not, and am not, a big reader, but I must have read that book twenty times before the audition, bruises under my eyes with how deep my obsession became. And I did eventually realize that the little girl in the pink, fluffy dress, the one who would decide the fate of fifty-three boys, was the same girl who wrote my fixation.

It conflicted me, studying her from afar while pretending to read my lines, because I still did not know if she was one of my heroes or the monster under my bed. This was the being who transplanted images of young children hanging from trees in my head, and beaten by her guardians, siblings, and peers. All wanting to tear the skin from her bones like ravenous wolves. Or crows.

“Hmm, yes, very nice. I…” I coughed into my hand to hide its tremble. “I’ve never been in one before.” Do not twiddle your thumbs, you idiot!

She caught my flinch and adrenaline-shot hands and smirked. “Neither have I.” It was the same face she held when she saw me perform, trying to mimic the cocky smirk of a child who faced death in the comfort of their own home. A child who sold her still-beating heart.

I slowly raised my hand towards her, mouth agape. Then I thought better and pulled back, away, and wrapped my white tuxedo jacket tighter around myself.

That’s what I was wearing, a white tux with a baby boy blue bowtie. Revolting. She wore something a bit more tasteful, a purple shirt and a torn denim jacket, with leggings and a deep green skirt. Her hair was in a braid. Fake but high-quality white flowers decorated whatever spaces they could fit but not fall out of. She even had a flower crown on, with flecks of gold and silver on the flowers, instead of being beautiful on their own. The stylist must have been good at her job, because she finished the outfit with the black army boots the girl was currently amusing herself with.

It was the only normal thing I saw her do up until the point we went into the limo for the red carpet, something that was not a show. She stomped in puddles and jumped onto tree stumps as soon as she put them on with an evil giggle and a shimmy. The child put the boots through their paces, joking that she was “just breaking them in!” before going right back to testing how much they could take before they gave up and split at the seams. With luck and what must have been lots of elbow grease, they now looked to be in perfect condition, leather gleaming.

More “bratty princess” than “diamond in the rough,” but I guess it was a challenge making a child look like anything other than a child. My shoulders loosened a fraction of an inch before jerking back up at her voice.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“You have a question.” It wasn’t a question. I hated that.

“No.” My voice cracked.

“Yes, you do. Spit it out.” Hers did not.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“We will probably never see each other again, so might as well.” She had a point. If this movie had not been my big break, I would have probably spent my childhood on kids’ vitamin commercials.

Taking a deep breath, praying to whatever deity would hear me out for strength, I turned to her with my entire body, working around the seatbelt. That got her attention, because she did likewise, either unaware or uncaring that I towered over her. Bored, always bored unless in front of crowds. Then she was an angel.

“Why me?” I shook my head with a breathy chuckle, still unbelieving of my position. One of the most anticipated movies that year, and I was the star. “Why did you choose me for the role?” There were a handful of named child actors there, causing some auditionees to throw their scripts to the floor and storm out in a huff of curses and choked-back sobs. I did not, though, and I held the tear-stained papers to my chest, discreetly rocking back and forth.

Her eyes. The most demented part of her. How they hardened and softened like chocolate, but never with any of its gooey warmth. The few adults who met her more than once cowed at her expression. Floundered away from her, avoiding the unnatural sight being pulsed into them.

The only other time I saw the same stare was the handful of times my grandfather talked about the time he served. Cold, unforgiving, and calculating a thousand things at once, a thousand memories. Not even my father had that look, and he also served—albeit for not as long—and killed a man when he broke into our house. Shot him dead right in front of me, then yelled and cursed at me to go back to my room.

“You were the best for the job,” she answered, easy as rain falls.

“But why?” I begged now, placing my hand on the middle seat, trying to lean in further like she had all the answers. She acted as if she did, conducted herself with the stiff grace of a ‘starving scholar.’

She tilted her head, studying me from head to toe. The cold part of her stare melted away, slagging off the bitter taste of dark chocolate and leaving more of the milk and sugar. “We’re kin.”

What fucking eleven-year-old uses the word kin!

“No, we’re not.” My eyebrows furrowed, and I leaned back. Our annual family reunions were big, too big, with every first cousin, second cousin, and fifth cousin twice removed. Godparents, family friends, etc., etc. She would be to at least one of those, and I would have had no choice but to be dragged over and introduced.

“You misunderstand.” She shook her head like I was a toddler who didn’t get that the cylinder goes in the circle hole. “We aren’t blood-related, but…” She reached her hand out, meeting me halfway in the middle seat.

“You’re like me.” She smiled and laughed a little when I tilted my head.

My eyes widened when her meaning clicked, and I ripped my hand away. I closed the damaged appendage with the good one, rocking a bit. Forward-back-forward-back, trying to mimic a mother’s gentle waves. It had no effect, though, because I was never conditioned to associate soft rocks with comfort. I twisted away, staring at nothing through the tinted window, the flashes of cameras looking like shooting stars. The air conditioning seemed to blow stronger, flittering through my jacket and right into my skin, into my bones.

On Christmas day, cousins challenged one another to see who had the muscle to crack open the most walnuts, and I always lost. At first, it was because I was too young, muscles loose and flimsy like noodles, inside chubby arms. But then it was because I never had the energy. Then it was because my fingers were more bruised and bloodied than not. My pained squeals annoyed the Aunts, and so they tossed me with the smallest of us, a toy for their entertainment. It was how I got into acting, because small children are never evil, and their laughs rang like bells when my voices and faces made them shriek.

She took the rejection well, brushing my unsaid insults to the side, and looked out her own window. She studied her reflection, flicked her hair just so, and pinched her cheeks more.

“They don’t want us.” She paused and, when she saw she had my attention, went on. “They don’t want abused, but resilient. They don’t want the talented, but at what cost? They don’t even want the broken, but repaired.” She took a shuddering breath, the first sign of unease I had seen in her, and drove her point home.

“They want to see abused children walk it off like nothing happened, because ‘that’s what children do.’ They endure horrific things and walk it off because ‘they’re children.’ So strong, yet so weak. So smart, yet so stupid. They don’t want to think about what we remember. What we remember them doing to us, and what they ignored. They want liars.” She spat the last sentence out.

The girl sighed with the weight of a thousand stories. “And we’re going to give them what they want. We’re going to give them liars. We’re going to watch this mockery of a movie we made, and we’re going to steal the reward and do what people like us do. Survive. Then,” her grin was full of crooked teeth, a black hole in the smile where one fell out. “We’re going to do a lot more than that.”

A mockery was right. The movie I starred in, the movie from the book she wrote, had a happy ending for all the girls. They all escaped their situations because of luck or the kindness of strangers. None of her stories had something as mundane as a happily ever after. The most one could get was the hope that the father, brother, sister, or bully got their just desserts after the last page. It’s what made them so popular. Each ending felt like an accusation and an apology.

But she knew what the director and co-directors and their lawyers were going to do with it when she placed her signature on the endless contract, to the delight of their beady eyes and wet, stretched mouths. She had to’ve, and I still cannot answer why. She never tells me anything.

She showed me the palm of her hand, straining for me. Stretching close, closer, too close.

“Lie with me.”

Thrilled screams bursted through the window, too loud to not be allowed entrance. She jolted while I almost hit my head on the roof, and she chortled behind her hand. It sounded like a bell’s.

“Showtime.” She grinned and drew her hand away, dusting off invisible lint before undoing the seatbelt with practiced ease. She was excited. I was about to hyperventilate.

The driver opened her door first, and she leaped out with a squeak—a blasted squeak! She landed in front of dozens of cameras and hundreds of flabby, gaping mouths.

It was a wonder why she did not just play her own characters, because she was a fabulous little actress. The girl giggled, rubbing her arm up and down with a nervous smile. She gave small, little waves to the crowd, and then skipped ahead across the red carpet, velvet ropes the only thing between her and the horde. That, and the muscular, properly dressed guards. All to the world a happy, perfectly sane child.

A sane, happy child, who did not have a broken soul stitched together with old glue sticks and stained ribbons. Who did not have the intelligence to save herself and her mother, getting her maternal grandmother to open an account to put all the money from her book into, where her father could never hope to touch it. Buying a house in the same grandmother’s name and spending a ridiculous amount of money to make sure that only she would stay with her mother and not her two other siblings. He could keep those two. Just like he could rot in hell.

So I listened in on the discussions with her financial planner. Whatever, she hasn’t sued me yet.

A pause in her step, then she looked back and, with another squeak, ran to me with her arms in front of her, grasping my hand. She tugged at it, and her eyes…

Lie with me.

Time slowed down, lights going at a snail’s pace, little orbs of yellow and white all around. It gave me time to watch all the flabby mouths stretch and spit, cameras click-click-clicking with the force of their owners’ thumbs or pointer fingers.

Anger is quick to boil, bubbling into the lungs and heart in an instant, as fast as it takes to snap your fingers. It leaves just as fast, steam coming off in puffs of clouds until all that is left is a cool head.

Hate is different. Hate seeds into the heart, roots making home in the thin tissue, and robs the body of nutrients. Grows until its vines and branches spread throughout the body. It stabs into the lungs, and spleen, and stomach, spilling their contents. Wraps around vocal chords, blood vessels, the brain stem, and each bump in the spinal cord. Then it squeezes, and it spurts from the mouth and eyes like a water fountain, thousands of red droplets required to foster the wiggling, squealing parasite. I wished I could wrap my vines around everyone and… squeeze. Infect them all.

They were buying her act. Not because she was just so good, but because they wanted to. They wanted to eat up the lie that she was a normal girl, promising to one day marry the lead singer of a boy band. Paint her nails with glittery nail polish, and add cheap, one-dollar stickers to them.

We were going to a movie, a movie I starred in, about the book she wrote. A book where children hang from trees. A book where fathers beat their children, who then beat each other. She wrote one of her characters hiding a kitchen knife under their pillow, sure that the evil big brother would choke her to death in her sleep. Her life was right there, black ink contrasted with white paper, impossible to miss, and they still bought into her lies. Her smiles and giggles, behind her a red flag so big it covered the pale moon.

They ignored her jumps and shaking hands when someone shouted. Her twitchy eyelids. Her cool looks and sharp temper. The bruises under her eyes from no sleep, but plenty of screams. The wicked intelligence that came from broken minds. Minds like knives, only growing sharper the rougher the surface.

I hated them. I hated them all. I hated their cameras and their stretched mouths and aunts and uncles and fathers and mothers. Damn them all to hell, but please be so courteous as to save me a seat. I felt revulsion and fury so strong, my hands shook. My breath came out in pants. Blood flowed from my brain and fed the parasite squirming and shrieking in my heart. My eyelid twitched and red creeped into my vision. Loathing like venom, and it pooled into my mouth with a bitter sting to the tongue. Awakening.

She tugged again.

The shake of her head was subtle. The only indicator it happened was the tremble of her faux flowers. Not here. In the privacy of my room, where I could scream to my heart’s content and punch a pillow until the rough fabric of it scratched my knuckles raw. Or with her, crying about how unfair and messed up it all was, a song she knew by heart. Until then, smile, laugh.

Lie with me.

I beamed at her and laughed, shaking my head at her childish behavior. In a moment of pure brilliance, if I might be so bold, I pulled out a sparkly flower in her crown and threaded it in the buttonhole of my jacket.

The crowd choked on it. They awed and flashed their cameras with double the urgency. She played right along, giving me a squeeze around my middle, and then wrapped her arm around mine. They did not notice my lapse into murder. We walked like young love and waltzed right into the theater.

The theater was freezing and, when we took our seats, I lifted the arm of mine up and let her cuddle up to me. The lights went off after ten minutes of boring ads and a reminder to not say anything until the official theater release. Or we’d be sorry. Ooo.

Lie with me.

The cold was not why I secured the girl under my arm further, leaning my weight onto her like she did me. I whispered into her hair, avoiding the silver and gold crown, “You are either going to be this world’s savior or its destruction.”

“Why not both?”