I think of my Goth friends showing their fake IDs to the bouncer at Club Trash, or my last boyfriend—if you could even call him that—who was more interested in his bong than in me. Last night, with Riley, Grace, and Alexis, I finally felt like I belonged.
Still, sitting here with Brooklyn fits, too. The duct-tape-covered vinyl and indie rock blasting from the iPod in the corner remind me of dozens of nights in smoky basements. I lift my eyes to meet Brooklyn’s, and a rush of adrenaline spreads through me, like warmth uncurling beneath my skin. I can’t help imagining her threading that needle through my eyebrow, the bright pain as it tears through my skin.
“Come on,” she urges, touching the needle to my eyebrow. “I dare you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I really can’t.”
“It wouldn’t be forever,” Brooklyn says. “You can take the ring out whenever you want, and your mom wouldn’t even know you had it.”
I stare down at the rings, imagining how cool it’d be to have a secret piercing, to get away with this right under my mom’s nose. I could even hide it from Riley and the others, if I wanted. I begin to smile.
“Jesus.” Brooklyn hops on her stool, then curls a hand beneath the seat, like she’s forcing herself to stay put. “You have to.”
I laugh, and her voice echoes in my head. I dare you. I lean forward, and the soaring, whooping feeling of adrenaline rises in my chest. I don’t want it to go away.
“Fine. Do it,” I say.
Brooklyn grins, the same wolfish grin that shows all her teeth. She sets the needle back down on the tray and picks up a cotton swab and a bottle without a label.
“Eyebrow, right?” she asks, squirting clear liquid onto the swab. I nod, and she leans forward and dabs at my face. “This is just antiseptic. It’ll keep you from getting an infection.”
“Okay,” I say. Brooklyn tosses the cotton aside and picks up the needle again.
“Keep still or it’ll be crooked.”
I take a deep breath and hold it, digging my teeth into my lower lip. Brooklyn moves in close to me, and I stare at her eyes to keep from looking at the needle. They’re dark brown, almost black. I can barely see the outline of her pupil.
I swear I feel the needle a second before Brooklyn slides it through my skin. It’s nothing like the sharp, sudden prick I’d been imagining. This pain is slow. Nausea floods my stomach, and I have to close my eyes to keep from feeling dizzy.
“Shit,” I hiss, letting out my breath in a rush. There’s a pop, and I feel the needle slide through the other side of my eyebrow.
I wrap my hand around the chair’s armrest and force myself to breathe as the room around me spins. I feel strangely hot. It’s so hot that I’m sweating, and now the floor is rising and falling beneath me. I blink, and it’s as if I’m looking through a camera’s fish-eye lens. Brooklyn is close, but everything around her is distorted and far away.
“Are you okay?” Brooklyn’s forehead creases in concern. I stare at my knees, trying to focus on breathing.
When I look up again, Brooklyn straddles her stool and we’re sitting so close that our knees touch. She holds the needle in front of her, and my blood winds down the side. The overhead light flickers—it’s reflected in Brooklyn’s black eyes and in the red droplet of my blood.
“Sofia,” Brooklyn says. She slides the needle into her mouth, smearing her lips with red blood. “Now you’re reborn,” she says, her voice distorted, like I’m hearing it underwater. The light flickers again, and everything goes black.
• • •
The next thing I’m aware of is a weight pressing against my eyelids. My throat is dry and scratchy, and I try to speak, but the sound that escapes my mouth is strangled, like a gasp. I force my eyes open, and light fractures and breaks in front of me, making me squint.
“Hey, Sleeping Beauty. How you feeling?”
“Brooklyn?” I blink and, slowly, my vision clears. I’m not in the tattoo parlor chair anymore. I’m lying in some sort of office area, and Brooklyn is perched on the edge of a desk in front of me. Her shirtsleeve is rolled up, exposing a freshly bandaged shoulder. She removes a cigarette from her mouth and blows out a plume of smoke that curls around her.
“You passed out,” she explains. “My cousin’s like that—he’d pass out from a paper cut. Charlie and Ollie moved you so you wouldn’t freak out the other customers.”
“Charlie moved me?” I ask, feeling an immediate pang of embarrassment. Brooklyn nods. There’s no blood on her mouth. No strange glinting light in her black eyes or manic smile. It was a dream. Or a hallucination, maybe.
“What time is it?”
Brooklyn pulls a cell phone out of her pocket and squints down at it. “Quarter after six.”
“Crap.” I sit up, trying to ignore the headache beating at my temples. The office door opens, and Charlie appears, holding a bottle of water. I grab my backpack and stand. The room spins, and I hold on to the desk to steady myself.
“Feeling better?” he asks. He smiles, and the spinning immediately gets worse.
“Where’s the fire?” Brooklyn asks, lifting the cigarette back to her mouth.
“I just need to get home. Thanks for the—” I motion to my eyebrow, then duck past Charlie and out of the office, cheeks burning in embarrassment.
As soon as I’m outside, I start to run. My backpack digs painfully into my shoulder and slaps against my hip as I move. If my mom gets home before I do and finds out I left Grandmother alone, I’m screwed. I try to do the math in my head—it takes me about five minutes to walk home from school, and Brooklyn and I walked for maybe ten minutes to get to the tattoo parlor. Tonight my mom’s class ends at six thirty, and she’ll be home by six forty-five. As long as I don’t get lost, I should be fine.
My chest burns, and my breath escapes in ragged gasps. I barely notice the buildings and houses as I race past them, working and reworking the math in my head. I’m almost home. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.
I tear up the driveway to our house and fit my key into the lock, glancing at the clock in the hallway once I’m inside: 6:40. I close my eyes, lean against the front door, and breathe. I made it.
Kicking off my shoes, I head down the hall and duck into the bathroom across from Grandmother’s bedroom. Her door is open, and the red-tinted lamplight spills into the hall. I hear her wheezing breaths and the rosary beads clicking against her table as I walk past.
“You okay, Abuela?” I call to her as I shrug off my backpack and set it on the toilet seat. Then I catch sight of myself in the mirror over the sink.
The tiny gold hoop circles the narrowest part of my eyebrow, looking foreign and wrong against my dark skin. I lean in to touch it, cringing when my finger brushes against the purple bruise spreading across my skin.
I glance over my shoulder into Grandmother’s room. She’s sitting up in bed, her dark eyes staring out at me from the shadows of her red-tinted room. Her lips mouth wordless prayers as she counts the beads on her rosary.
My breath is shallow, fast. I turn back around, wrapping my fingers around the cold porcelain sink to try to calm myself down. My reflection stares back at me, the tiny golden hoop twinkling above my right eye.
Mom’s car rumbles into the driveway, and the engine cuts. In the quiet that follows, I swear I hear my heart beating against my chest. I don’t think. I lean in close to the mirror, so close I could count the number of lashes on my eyelid. I hold the tiny golden hoop steady with two fingers and twist the bead off. Then I rock the hoop back and forth, ignoring the blistering pain as I ease it out of my skin. Blood bubbles beneath my fingers.
Grandmother watches me from her bedroom. The front door opens and slams closed. Footsteps thud in the foyer.
“Sofia?”
I let the golden hoop fall from my fingers, and it clinks against the sink, landing a half an inch from the drain. I switch on the faucet and it swirls down the drain in a whirlpool of pink, bloodstained water. Only once it’s gone do I allow myself to breathe again.