Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

The voices are tangling inside her head, until she doesn’t know which ones to listen to. But she knows one thing for sure, and that’s that Lottie lied. Perhaps that’s why Alice doesn’t stop Lottie when she reaches for the glass of blood, the one that’s still sitting on the coffee table.

Why she simply sits and watches as Lottie brings the poison to her lips, and tips it back, and drinks, her throat bobbing as she swallows. Watches as she tastes the wrongness in the dregs and tries to spit them out. Of course, by then, it’s far too late.

“Everything will be okay,” she says, parroting the words. “The worst is over now.” She wedges the silver handle of the brush between her bottom ribs, and in that moment, Lottie changes. All her pretenses—of confusion, of kindness, of compassion—die away, and so does the image of the beautiful girl perched on the bed in the dark, curls stained violet. In its place, Alice sees the one who danced with Sabine through stolen halls. Who butchered families in their homes. Who let girls die because she couldn’t bear to sleep alone.

“Bury my bones,” Alice whispers to herself, a horrible sound like a laugh rising in her throat. She presses her palms against her eyes until her vision goes black, then white.

Hey, Bones. You ever think about how mad it is, that we only get one life? (It is a lie, Sabine told Lottie and Lottie told her, that you only get one story.)

She tells him that she’s made it safe, and he tells her loves her, always has and always will, and she says it back, and then he’s gone.

A road with no end. (How frightening. How freeing.)

Alice will be okay. She’ll find her way through the dark. She tips her head back as she strolls, forcing air she doesn’t need into her lungs, again, and again, until it feels like breathing. Until the sound of her steps beats like a drum inside her chest, reminding her she is alive. Alive. Alive.

And she is hungry.