Piranhas in Pink: Piranhas in Pink Book One

by Nova Knightley

  She held the weapon close to her face. “I, Daniella Torres, on this day shall appoint as a penalty eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” She raised the knife high above her head and closed her eyes.

  “No,” Eden said. “Open your eyes. The best part is watching his face when it happens.”

  I tore my gaze away from the camera and looked at the other girls. They watched me, waiting for my reaction, but I gave them none.

  On the video, the man squirmed, making muffled sounds. Dani opened her eyes and plunged the knife deep into the man’s gut. His body jerked. It took a few seconds, but a pool of blood rose from the wound.

  Dani stood up, and Kyla took her place. She also wore a hoodie with her hair pulled back underneath. After reciting the same verse as Dani, she took her time picking a spot but eventually settled on his heart.

  Next was a girl with nut-brown skin and short dark curls that framed her face. She removed her hood and repeated the same as Dani and Kyla, then she hesitated for a while, too long for Eden’s liking.

  “We don’t have all night, Carrington.”

  Carrington held the knife over the man. He locked eyes with her, pleading. She dropped the knife and stood. Carrington disappeared from the frame, and I heard what sounded like running. Dani and Kyla took off after her. Carrington screamed, her voice echoing in the darkness. Seconds later, she was thrown on the ground.

  Eden bent over and forced the knife into her hand. “Do it! I told you once we started there was no turning back.”

  Carrington wiped the tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands. “It’s not too late. We can take him to a hospital and get him help. Tell them we found him like this.”

  Seiko struck her across the face. “Look at him! He’s not going to make it to a hospital. He’s already dead. Just do it.”

  Carrington closed her eyes, but Eden said nothing about it. Taking a deep breath, Carrington brought the blade down into the man’s chest. She whipped it out quickly and let it fall to the ground. Then she ran away again, but that time, they let her.

  There was so much blood. The camera shifted as Seiko took her position. The man was writhing in pain, probably just wanting to be put out of his misery.

  “I, Seiko Tanaka, shall appoint on this day…”

  Shivers raced up and down my spine as Seiko plunged the knife into the man’s throat. Blood flowed from the wound like a river. Her head cocked to the side as she admired her handiwork. Slowly, she rose, holding the bloody knife out to Eden. “Your turn.”

  Right after that, the video stopped. I dropped the camera, cringing as it hit the floor. “The fuck? You killed that man. Why? And why would you show me that?”

  Kyla moved over to Seiko’s bed. “He deserved it. Coach Dewitt was the worst kind of person.”

  Eden nodded. “He was a soccer coach. Everyone in town loved him, especially children. They trusted him. Looked up to him. One day, a little girl came forward and said that Coach Dewitt had been putting his hands where they didn’t belong. Right after that, many others came forward. One day, my dad came home from work pissed. I had never seen him so angry. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me that Dewitt had gotten off. There was so much evidence proving his guilt, but they just let him off. His lawyer argued that the evidence and his confession had been illegally obtained, so they let it go, just like that.”

  I gulped. I didn’t feel sorry for the man, but still. “So you decided to take justice into your own hands?”

  Eden picked up the camera and rested it in her lap. “We have the same gene you have. That’s the reason we knew you’d make a perfect PIP.”

  “What does that mean? What gene?”

  Dani was reading a novel as if we hadn’t just watched them commit an actual murder. “My dad told me about you. He told me why you got to skip everyone on the waiting list. Because of your sister. That night, we asked you about your family to see if you would mention her, but you didn’t. We looked up what happened to her. Those girls got away with what they did. You must be so angry.”

  I scooted away from them until my back hit the frame of Seiko’s bed. “Of course I was, but—” Do they know? Of course not. No one did.

  Eden sat beside me. “We needed a girl who understood what it was like to be wronged and how important it is to get revenge.”

  “You can’t just kill people.” I was one to talk, but that was what I was supposed to say. It would have been weird if I didn’t.

  Eden took my hand. Hers was ice cold. “Lennox, you should know better than anyone that life is one big ball of shit. Look what it’s done to us already, and we’re not even old enough to vote. How is that fair?”

  No, life hadn’t been kind to me, but I didn’t know what it had it done to them. “What do you mean?”

  Eden nodded at Kyla, who went over to the photo board that hung over Seiko’s desk and removed a photo. It was a junior league soccer team. My eyes immediately went to the coach. He had a little more hair then, but he was definitely the same man in the video. It didn’t take me long to pick out ten-year-old versions of Eden, Kyla, Seiko, Danielle, and Carrington—smiling innocently like they weren’t murderers waiting to happen. I dropped the photo. “Wait, the coach—”

  Dani snapped her book shut. “Yes! But we were too afraid to speak out. We didn’t say anything. Coach Dewitt had been getting away with his sick acts for years until one little girl was finally brave enough to say something. And what did she get for that? They let that asshole off the hook.”

  Eden went over to Dani and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. “After Dewitt got off, I asked my dad if there was anything they could do. He said their hands were tied. So that’s when I got the idea to form the PIPs. We would get our own revenge and make sure that pedo never touched another kid. But if you’re going to do something like that, you have to make a sacred covenant that binds you for life. I know no one in this room will ever tell what happened because we all played a part in it.”

  Seiko laid her head in Kyla’s lap. “That’s why we set the whole thing up with Mei. The rest of us have killed before. You had to have blood on your hands too.”

  A lump rose in my throat. I didn’t need their help since I had already killed on my own. “That’s not even the same thing. Your old soccer coach deserved what he got, but Mei, what the hell did she do?”

  Seiko chuckled. “That stupid bitch. She was threatening us.”

  I wasn’t surprised at all by the callous way Seiko spoke of her cousin, even after death. “Threatening you how?”

  Seiko closed her eyes. “It was all my fault, okay? I wrote about that night with Dewitt in my journal. Mei, the stupid little sneak, read it, and she was threatening to tell.” Seiko threw Eden a sidelong glance. “It was the stupidest thing I could have done.” She tapped her forehead with her finger. “This is the only safe place to keep a secret.”

  It all suddenly made sense—why Seiko seemed to do so much more than the others and why she said she owed them. It was her fault that their secret had gotten out, and she had used me to bury it.

  Eden squeezed Seiko’s knee. “It’s okay now. Everything happens for a reason. Now we are all bonded as sisters forever.” She looked at me and grinned. “Right, Lennox?”

  I breathed deeply to keep the anger that was simmering in me at bay. What I had done to Farrah had been my choice—life for a life. She owed me. Mei hadn’t done a thing to me, but I had her blood on my hands for the rest of my life thanks to them.

  “Right, Lennox?” Eden asked again. That time, her words were as cold as ice.

  The girls stared at me, waiting for an answer.

  Even though every bone in my body was screaming just the opposite, I told her what she wanted to hear. “Yeah. Right.”

  34

  Divide and Conquer

  I couldn’t get the video out of my head. Late Sunday afternoon, when I knew she’d be home from church
, I gave Kyla a call.

  “Hi, Lennox. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I was just sitting here thinking about things.”

  She was silent for a moment. “About the video.”

  “Yeah.” I stared at the ceiling, choosing my words very carefully. “I noticed that everyone took a part in the—you know, except for Eden.”

  Something made a clanging sound on Kyla’s end like she had dropped something. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Kyla sighed. “Ask her.”

  “Like she’s going to tell me the truth. I’m asking you.” It wasn’t going to be easy to turn the girls against their fearless leader, but I was determined to do it.

  I pictured the tug-of-war going on in Kyla’s mind. She wanted to be loyal to Eden, but at the same time, she wanted to get it off her chest. She might have discussed it with the other PIPs, or I might have been the very first person she was telling.

  What sounded like a door closed, then Kyla lowered her voice. “Um… well, we had the order all worked out. The whole thing was Eden’s idea, so she said she wanted to go last. She wanted to be the one to finish him off.”

  A creaking sound came over the line then another door closing and the sound of water running. She was probably in her bathroom, running either the sink or the bathtub. “She took the knife, and I had the camera. She stood over him, just watching him bleed. I asked her what she was waiting for. She said nothing. We waited and waited for what seemed like forever until he stopped breathing, then she dropped the knife.

  “We were all pissed, but Carrington was probably angrier than anyone else. Eden told us it was her plan, so she’d carry it out the way she saw fit. Bullshit. Anyway, we were angry, but what was done was done. Carrington didn’t feel safe because Eden could snitch on us, but Dani assured her that Eden just being there, watching and helping us cover it up, was enough for her to keep her mouth shut. Still, we all knew we were in much deeper than Eden. Plus, her dad’s the chief of police.”

  I was quiet at first. “Wow. So that’s how she gets to call the shots. I have to give it to her. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  I thought about the evening Eden told me about her lupus and why she wanted to keep it a secret from the others. I’m afraid of them. Eden knew she had screwed the girls over and they could turn on her at any moment, ending her perfect existence. She made them her loyal subjects through threat, not by their choice, and they had to harbor some animosity about that, no matter how well they hid it. After I hung up with Kyla, I felt a lot more confident about my plan. It was going to be a lot easier than I’d thought.

  ***

  It felt like all the world’s secrets had been strapped to my back, and I couldn’t take another one. I’d gone from sleeping two to three hours a night to not sleeping at all. Piper and Mei were still keeping me awake, but Coach Dewitt had joined them. I didn’t feel sorry for him. Nothing was worse than a person who preyed on children, but he was another secret I had to keep.

  I couldn’t talk to anyone. Abby was my only friend, and I couldn’t tell her. People needed friends. Even if I couldn’t tell them all my secrets, I needed someone to talk to who didn’t scare the daylights out of me. I sent Owen a text.

  Can you give me Angie’s address?

  Owen: Why? Are you going to stalk her or something?

  Lennox: No. Lol. I just want to talk.

  Owen: OK, but if she’s pissed to see you, don’t tell her you got it from me.

  Lennox: I won’t.

  Sunday afternoon, I took Mom’s car and drove to the Kaufmans’. They lived in a humongous house in a gated community right outside of Roosevelt Park. I pulled into the driveway behind a Mercedes SUV and took a few minutes to gather myself. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to say to Angie or if she would even want to see me. Before I could talk myself out of it, I made my way to the door.

  The doorbell sent loud chimes throughout the house. Moments later, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair opened the door. He leaned against the doorframe, rubbing a wooden toy soldier with a small rag. The soldier looked old and valuable. “Hello.”

  “Hi. I’m Lennox. I was wondering if I could see Angie.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lennox. I’m Angela’s dad.” He held the soldier out in the light to inspect it. “She lives out back. Come on in. I’ll show you the way.”

  Out back? A picture of Angie living in a tent popped into my mind.

  The Kaufmans’ house was just as magnificent on the inside as it was on the outside. We walked through the living room, where a baby grand piano served as the focal point, then through the dining room, where a table was set for ten, and through the kitchen, which smelled like roasted chicken. We stood at the sliding glass door that led to a patio and a pool. Just beyond the pool was a fire pit and another seating area. Beyond the fire pit was a guest house. So that was what he’d meant by “she lives out back.”

  He opened the sliding glass door. “Just knock on the door.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. My knees wobbled as I made my way over to the guest house. Angie wasn’t going to be happy to see me, but she was really going to be pissed at me dropping over unannounced. I knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” she called.

  I stepped into what I considered to be a teen’s paradise, a huge space that you could have all to yourself unattached from the rest of your family.

  A small kitchen was to the left, and the bedroom was to the right. Off to the side was a bathroom. Between the bedroom and the kitchen was an area set up for her YouTube videos. It looked professional, like she really knew what she was doing.

  Angie was lying on her bed, looking at something on her laptop. She shot up and placed the laptop beside her. “What the hell?”

  “Hey. I know you probably don’t want to see me, but I need to talk to you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? About what?”

  I had to think carefully about my words. “I just don’t want things to be weird between us just because I’m a PIP now. I know after everything you told me, it must seem really weird that I joined them.”

  Angie watched me for a second. “Lennox, you don’t owe me anything. Especially not an explanation. We hung out for a couple hours one afternoon. It’s not like we’re friends or anything.”

  Stepping into her bedroom area, I said, “I know we’re not friends, but I’d like to be.”

  She laughed. “Are you punking me? Are the other girls outside, and after I say, ‘Sure, let’s be friends,’ they’re going to burst in, laughing their asses off?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Angie got off her bed and stood in front of me. “They’re not going to allow you to be friends with me. They hate me. Especially Eden.”

  “Why do they hate you?”

  She ran her fingers through her purple hair. “Because I’m one of the few people not mesmerized by their wondrous beauty and sense of fashion. I see them for the evil piranhas they are.” She tilted her head to the side. “You, too, now, I guess. You are the company you keep. Who let you in our house, anyway?”

  “Your dad.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I swear that dude lets everyone in, no questions asked. One day, he’s going to let a serial killer in to hack us all to pieces. I know it.”

  I ignored that last comment. “I’m not like them, Angie. They’re not going to tell me who I can and can’t be friends with.”

  She pursed her lips, looking me up and down. “So you’re not going to ignore me at school or join in when they talk shit about me? I know they do, so don’t bother denying that.”

  Should I tell her about them wanting Claire to key her car? I didn’t think so. It would just cause more problems than it was worth, but if they tried to make someone else do it, I would definitely squash it.

  “I won’t ignore you in school, and I won’t talk about you behind your back.”

  She sighed. “You like scary movi
es? I was just getting ready to make some popcorn and watch one.”

  “I love them.”

  Angie grinned. “White cheddar?”

  “Sounds good.”

  She gestured to the large-screen TV hanging on the wall with a sofa in front of it. “Make yourself comfy.”

  I settled down on the couch while she made the popcorn.

  Angie placed a bowl of popcorn and two bottles of organic strawberry sodas on the coffee table. She pointed the remote at the television. “Hope you like vampires.”

  “Love them.”

  I twisted the top off my bottle of soda as we watched the opening scene of Let the Right One In. Taking a sip of strawberry soda, somehow, I missed my mouth. The red liquid dribbled onto my white sweater, looking like drops of blood.

  Angie eyed the red spots. “Would you like a bib?”

  “No, thanks.” I took another sip. That time, I didn’t miss. “You and Owen were wrong… about how the PIPs were chosen.”

  Angie paused the movie. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s not based on money or what their parents do.”

  She scratched her eyebrow with the end of the remote. “Well, do tell.”

  They’d come together because they were victims of the same predator, and they had made him pay the ultimate price for his actions. Of course, I couldn’t tell Angie any of that. “They’re bad people. Worse than bad.”

  Her gaze traveled back to the screen. She let the movie play again. “I know. They’re fucking savages.”

  ***

  Monday morning, I didn’t want to go to school. Mom wouldn’t let me stay home even though I told her my kidneys were killing me.

  “Why can’t you just warm a thermometer under a light bulb like a normal kid?” she asked as she practically pushed me out the door.

  I wore one of my new outfits from the mall. My hair was pulled up into a perfect ponytail, and I had posted my morning selfie. Even though I didn’t want to, for the time being, I had to play the part. They knew my biggest secret, and I knew theirs. They would never let go of me easily.