i'm inside out, you're underneath {annabelle series}

Olive and I have never celebrated a birthday without Hyacinth before. It will be our seventeenth, but that seems impossible. It shouldn't be our birthday tomorrow already — Hyacinth hasn't been gone that long, has she?

A lump forms in my throat. Yes, she has.

I sleep in the morning before my birthday with the covers pulled over my head to hide from the light. I didn't want to wake up; I want to stay in the dark with Hyacinth. Olive and I used to play in the sun when we were young, but now here I lie hiding from it. But the sun means that I have to face the day and I'm tired of looking at death.

It's all over this house, painted on the walls in black, occupying the space that Hyacinth should fill. It's been — weeks? A month? I don't know, I don't want to count. I ripped down my calendar a few days after she died; life is easier when time is just white noise in the background.

By the time I get out of bed and ready myself, the sun has risen high in the sky. It glares at me from the window as I walk down the stairs to the kitchen and sit down at the table. Only Eirlys is there, leaving the other chairs vacant. My gaze immediately drifts to Hyacinth's spot, untouched since she left for the Capitol. A surge of sadness pulses through my chest and weighs down the corner of my lips into a frown.

Eirlys sets down her glass on the table. Her stature is tense today, and I furrow my brows at her in curiosity. She seems to nice, because she says, as if replying to my question, "We have important business today." Eirlys is stone cold and steely, but her voice is more hollow than usual today. There's something in her eyes, the ghost of regret or pain or reluctance . . . or perhaps all of the three.

"Business?" I inquire.

Her dark eyes fall from my face to the table. "The Peacekeepers are coming over today to choose a replacement for Hyacinth."

I shake my head — no. "What . . . what does that have to do with me?"

My sister's eyes flicker up to my face — they hollow and iced over and send an ominous chill down my spine. "You're one of —" her voice breaks off, like she can't bear to tell me "— one of the . . . options." My throat tightens. One of the options.

Eyes widening, I get up from my seat abruptly, sending the chair screeching like nails on a chalkboard against the floor. "You mean — I might have to do . . . what Hyacinth did," I say, but I already know the answer.

Eirlys just nods, avoiding looking at me once more. She doesn't want to do this, I realize. My stomach turns over at the thought of taking Hyacinth's job; I could never — no. (Would I rather my sisters suffer, then?)

"Who . . . who are the other choices?" I choke out; my haywire nerves have sucked away all the moisture in my mouth, leaving it bone-dry.

"Crimson, Raisa, and Ridley."

My eyes sting; an ocean begins to pool in their ducts and their brims, but I blink back the flood and swallow down the pain. Keeping the agony within only tears me apart from the inside, but I'm not ready to show the world the ugly void — I don't know if I ever will be. So I persist, drink it all down. Poison.

"When?" I croak.

"One hour. Be ready."

- ✥ -

Eirlys lines us up single-file. Mom did our hair, makeup, and dressed us a certain way — to look appealing, I suppose. The thought makes want to toss my lunch. She had this look in her eyes as she braided pieces of my hair into a crown over my head like a headband, letting the rest of it flow down my back in dark waves. They said, "I'm sorry." I think she tried to say it aloud to me as she handed me my dress, but she choked on her words.

The clothes she dressed me in once belonged to Hyacinth. It is elegant and delicate and beautiful like her, all white and lace and revealing. I'd rip them off if I could, leave them a mess on the floor because they make my skin crawl. I don't belong in Hyacinth's dress.

My mother put red on my lips and lilies in my hair, tucked into the braid crown across the front of my head. She plucked my brows and curled my lashes — "You should look especially polished today." But I don't want to be polished, I don't want to be pretty for them.

Crimson, Ridley, Raisa, and I, each wait for the Peacekeepers to walk into entry hall of our living quarters. Gradually, they file in from up the stairs and into the room.

("Who are they? The ones choosing?"

"Hyacinth's most regular uh . . . clients.")

One of them looks at me. His gaze is predatory, wolfish, and it turns my body cold. Every muscle within me tenses

They walk by, surveying each of us four Mortuus girls, probably picking out our perfections and our flaws. I don't like where their eyes are going; I feel their gaze cling to me, like thick black ink on my skin. If I had less self-control, if I was the same girl I was a year ago, I would be trembling right now, helpless against the tremors of fear surging relentlessly through my body. But I am not her anymore.

"Not that one," says one of the Peacekeepers, eyeing Crimson. "She's freaky as hell."

"She's a bit too young," another chimes in. I pray that the comment is meant for me, but it is directed at Ridley. The others nod in agreement; my heart sinks. Only Raisa and I are left.

"And this one," one of them takes a step towards Raisa, whose expression is slack and doesn't even flinch. "She's pretty, but she's got a baby face and looks . . . dead or something." His fellow Peacekeepers seem to concur.

Holding my breath as their gazes find me again, I train my eyes on the floor rather than the Peacekeepers — I think if I look at them any longer, my legs will give way beneath me. In my mind, I am screaming into the void that opened up within me. But on the outside, my expression is steel, betraying nothing. I wish I could say the same for my eyes. They wander around the room, revealing unease, but it's a chink in my armor that I can't seem to patch up.

My heart keeps the time — one, two, three — and a strong hand closes around my chin, forcing my head upward to face one of the Peacekeepers. He is one of the younger men, but that does not make him any less repulsive to me. His touch makes me want to vomit, but the sheer terror pulsing through me overtakes my disgust. Upon meeting his eyes, which are icy and gray like an overcast sky, a knife plunges into my stomach. Everything about him is cold, his gaze, his touch, his expression.

"It's just you left, then," he says. His eyes pierce right through me as he studies my appearance, and then releases my jaw from his grip. The Peacekeeper then turns to my mother. "How old is she?"

"Seventeen tomorrow," Mom replies hesitantly.

"And her name?" another Peacekeeper inquires.

"Annabelle."

"Pretty name for a pretty girl," he muses, and I shiver. My eyes shift from my sisters to my mother in a silent plea. Help me, they beg, but there are already iron chains wrapped around my ankles and my wrists, and I know that my family can do nothing. Someone has to take Hyacinth's place.

"Without Hyacinth, we'd probably be whipped and avoxed by now," Mom once told me. I shudder at the thought; Olive with bloody lips and without a tongue, Avery crying in a desolate cell, Eirlys with septic gashes wrapping around her wrists from constricting cuffs, Ridley with a back raw and ripped open by whips and glistening with blood in the harsh glare of the sunlight. Deep breath in — I can do this I can't do this. But I have to; someone has to keep us from being shipped off and avoxed. Hyacinth is gone and she is not coming back. (Something I seem to continue to forget.) I gulp.

"So it's decided, then?"

"Yes," a Peacekeeper responds, speaking for himself and all of his comrades.

Click, goes the lock, and I know that there is no escape.

- ✥ -

I am draped in shadow the day of my seventeenth birthday. Everyone else tries to be full of smiles, but my features remained slackened and my eyes are empty. All of the light was drained out of them yesterday.

My reflection stares back at my in the bedroom mirror, and I have never seen this girl before. She has bruise-like circles that are stark against her pale and sallow skin underneath her eyes, which are tinged red from crying all night. Her pillow sits deflated and drenched against the headboard of the bed in the background.

The eyes are the worst. There truly is no light in them any longer — their flames have been extinguished and now all that remains is ash. It hardly registers in my mind that this girl is me, that I am her; I do not recall looking like a dead girl walking.

Is this how Hyacinth felt all those years ago when she walked my path? Terrified and empty and broken? Perhaps that is why she nothing could break her — because she was already broken.

When I walk into the hallway and down the stairs on my way to celebrate, I see my family and their friends all gathered below me. I stop dead in my tracks when I see them, all grinning and laughing, happy to be here and to be free — something I can no longer indulge in. Something about their smiling faces makes me want to punch them, and I nearly flinch at the violent thought. Why should they be happy when I have to suffer?

"Annabelle? Aren't you going to come out with us for you and Olive's birthday?" my mother asks. I blink at her, but otherwise I am motionless. My mind flickers back and forth between the present and yesterday, when she allowed me to be sold off as property rather than a person. I grit my teeth and draw in a breath, trying to calm myself, but control over my chaotic emotions are lost on me. There's a flare in my chest, a swell of white heat; it hardly registers in my mind that it is anger that has broken from beneath the dark fathoms of despair. It punched through the surface with its fist and begins to leak onto my face.

I turn to them, my insides burning but my expression dead and cold. "No." My voice strikes against the air like steel, and I turn away from my family. Without another word, I walk up the stairs to my room for another lonely night. I spend it just like the last: crying into my pillow until dawn, trying to wash away the emptiness inside.