Malory stuffed the card in her pocket and looked at the goods. Inside, countless bottles of top-of-the-line liquors and synth-ciders twinkled in every imaginable flavor. It was worth an absolute fortune, and selling it all would set one or two of them up with a wildly different future; it would all be in their bellies before the end of the night. She wondered where he’d stolen it from, what kind of heat he got from doing so, or if it had been a gift from his gang mentor. She bent down, tried to lift the thing, and couldn’t. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of strawberry spirits and headed for the door. In the foyer, she flagged down a group of younger orphans.

  “Find Martin. Tell him there’s something heavy for him to carry from outside. And to reward you with one of these,” she said. She flashed the alcohol, saw their eyes alight with greed, and smiled. When they took off at a sprint, she headed for the living room to see what ridiculous thing the others had planned.

  The party started with a game. The living room had been transformed: where previously the floor was covered in dust and trash, the windows blotted out by moldy blinds, and there had been a tattered red sofa only Martin and Spencer dared to sit on, it now had a brand new beige sectional, gaudy floral curtains that evoked decades past, and a small TV with a few dead pixels playing horror noir films on repeat. On the table, there was an assortment of little red cups, an actual bag of weed, and someone had found a beer bong. When Malory entered, she was handed a laminated card with the role she was supposed to play in their ragtag murder mystery themed after a high school homecoming rager. She read the text, and frowned:

  You are playing an aloof neo-vanguard painter. You have come to a younger sibling’s high school party to find inspiration for your newest work at the urging of your patron. You are hiding the fact that all your work was plagiarized from a lesser-known artist out of Old London. Guard this secret with your life. Be as suspicious as possible in hiding it.

  And remember, secrets always meet consequences. You will be the second victim.

  Have fun, stay in character!

  Malory wasn’t much of an actor, but the idea seemed novel enough for a little fun before everyone was too drunk to play along. She looked around the room for Nadia, and couldn’t find her. The others talked in jovial tones, some with horrible affected accents—they were already following their scripts. She plopped herself down on the couch and studied the movie about a detective investigating a school suicide while something spectral haunted them. She took a swig of strawberry. It was the perfect kind of low effort production horror her sister loved. She sighed and zoned out until Khalidah sat next to her. The girl had always been shy, and Malory felt bad about it, but gave her a look of better-than contempt she thought a famous artist might have.

  “You go to school with us?” Khalidah asked. She seemed nervous, and her eyes kept darting around the room like she expected to be yelled at. Or something dangerous.

  “No,” Malory said. She waved her arm out wide. “School is what I like to call a prison for all the ugliness of the world. I have moved on to beauty.”

  “Then why are you here? Are you celebrating the game?” she asked. There was a seed of suspicion taking root. Good.

  “Inspiration,” Mal said. She raised her drink, examined the bottle dramatically. “Looking for the right language in colors. My own are so very drab.”

  “Are you a poet, or something?”

  “A painter. The most original one you’ll ever meet,” Malory said. “I find my muse in the most unusual ways.”

  “Right,” she said. She scooted closer. “I was going to ask you about the cheerleader drama. Something big happened after the game. I wonder if you knew one of the girls was missing?”

  “That sounds particularly beautiful,” Malory said. Whoever created the character cards had binged too many memory chip dramas.

  “What?” she asked. She had a strange look on her face. “Who did you say invited you?”

  “I didn’t,” Mal said.

  A scream, loud and painfully fake, interrupted them. It came from upstairs. Everyone in the living room stopped, looked at each other, then filed out to see the next plot development. Malory followed. In the hall, in front of the bathroom door, Nadia played dead. Discarded beside her was a rubber knife with the handle painted in small lilac flowers. The plot clicked into place as everyone started to whisper: Malory was a red herring, the misdirection for the real killer to get around unnoticed. How fun. She backed away from the crowd slowly, and headed down the stairs. She sat on the couch again and waited for the conversation upstairs to finish—waited for someone to suss her out from the clue she dropped. She sat there fifteen minutes until Spencer skidded to a stop in front of her, the shy Khalidah in tow. She took another sip, and wondered how to play it. Haughty, maybe.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “There’s been a murder,” Spencer said. He tried for a southern drawl and failed. The accent made the statement sound absurd. “You aren’t one of us. Who invited you?”

  “My brother,” Mal answered. The ghost stalked the detective through an abandoned cafeteria in the movie behind them.

  “Who’s your brother?”

  “Don’t know,” Malory said. The card forgot to mention. “I painted a portrait of him once to remind me, but I forgot it at home.”

  “You don’t know who your own brother is?” Khalidah asked. She tilted her head to the side, as if a different angle would make more sense. Another wave of people entered the room.

  “Nope. Probably looks like me, though.”

  The lights in the room went out all at once, as if someone cut the breaker. Malory heard a loud thud, then felt a hand clasp around her mouth.

  “Good job,” a deep voice said. The hand smelled of soap and cherry cider. “Wait a few seconds when I let go, scream, then play dead.”

  She did as she was told. She counted to ten, then let out an ear-piercing shriek that carried all the weight of her dead mother, her sister’s abrupt adoption, the years spent in squalor. When the lights came back on, she sat dead on the couch, the same rubber knife next to her, fake blood on the blade. There was a collective gasp, and when she peeked, she could see the confusion and consternation on Spencer and Khalidah’s faces. They’d been so certain they had solved the puzzle before anyone else. Murderer’s steps misdirected successfully. Part played. The voices around erupted in terrible acting, each doing their best not to break character. There were some wild theories thrown out, but no truths. No sadness for her death. The focus seemed to be on finding someone from the losing team that wasn’t meant to be at the party. Obvious motives. Malory almost laughed when one of the kids pretending to be a football player confused the rules for ice hockey and no one noticed. No one paid attention to the corpse.

  When the group unceremoniously moved out of the living room, Malory went upstairs. Her role in the game had ended, so she ignored the others when she moved past. She had no real interest in the outcome of it all. She slipped into their shared bedroom, and found Nadia sitting on the bed, her face hidden between her knees.

  “Hey,” Malory called. She sat next to her and handed the half-full bottle of liquor over. “Brought you something.”

  “Thanks,” she said. She took it, but didn’t drink.

  “Strange night,” Mal said. She rubbed her cheek and remembered the pain of the sucker punch that wrenched her jaw. It still clicked when she chewed. “What was your role?”

  “Missing cheerleader,” she said. Her voice was low, stifled. Something was wrong.

  “Huh,” Mal said. She reached out to touch her leg, but she pulled away.

  “We need to talk,” she said. She raised her head, and her eyes were puffy, swollen. She’d been crying.

  “Okay,” Mal said. Her stomach dropped. “Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

  “I’m not going with you,” she said. She pulled a folded envelope from her pocket.

  “What do you mean?” Mal asked. It didn’t make sense. They’d planned for months to get a low floor megabuilding apartment on credit while they tried to find jobs. Simple, easy.

  “Here,” she said. She handed the envelope over. Inside was an acceptance letter to the technology and engineering department of ZenTech University, full-ride.

  “Oh,” Malory said. She read the paper twice, three times, willed it to change to anything else. It didn’t really register. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” she asked. She scrunched her eyebrows together. “That’s all you have to say?”

  “What?” Malory asked. She handed the letter back. “It’s not like we have to break up or anything, right? We just won’t see each other for a while. We can handle that.”

  “How are you so calm?” she asked.

  “I’m not,” Malory said. She reached out and pulled Nadia over to her. “But it’s not like I’m gonna say you shouldn’t go. You’re the only one of us I’ve ever heard of getting into university. Not going would be insane. Seriously. I’ll just have to come up with a different plan.”

  “Any ideas?” she asked. She sniffled, and buried her face into Mal’s neck.

  “A pretty dumb one, yeah,” she answered. The gangs were forever in need of meat to grind against the corporate machine. “I’ll figure it out later. If this is the last night I get to spend with you for years, I’m sure as fuck gonna make it count for something.”

  They made love while the murder mystery spiraled to conclusion downstairs. The quarterback had gone around the party killing women. One of the cheerleaders had rejected him, and he decided to make it everyone else’s problem. Afterwards, the alcohol disappeared at an alarming rate—each of them knew it was their last night together, that some of them would be dead before long, and it showed. They all went a little extra in everything; they talked louder, drank more, brought up obscure moments from their past none of the others remembered. Something they each came back to was the time they etched their names in steel and chalk high above the city. As the night dragged on, consensus became that would make for a pretty good gravestone, all things considered. That they should return, cross out the names whenever one of them died. Spencer demanded his ashes shot from a cannon at the top of ZenTech tower so that the people below would see him, if only for a moment, and no one laughed. When the party ended, Malory and Nadia separated, short of breath and bearing fresh promises written in the marks on their necks. Malory shouldered her backpack and followed Martin and Spencer to join the Black Hands.