The next morning, Jodie handed me a toothbrush and a warning.
"Don't eat the eggs. They taste like dish soap and trauma."
I didn't ask questions anymore. I just took it and made my way to the bathroom, or should I say... I followed Jodie to the bathroom.
I didn't know girls could be this lousy. It was a weird and honestly, gross discovery.
One left hair clogging the sink. Another didn't even bother to flush. I heard Jodie scolding her for it; seems like she's the one in charge around here.
And then someone left a used sanitary pad on the floor.
Yeah. That happened.
Thankfully, I was already done brushing and showering by the time I noticed all this. I got out of there fast.
By the third day, I stopped jumping at every door slam. I stopped waiting for my aunt to show up and change her mind. And I started paying attention to Jodie.
She knew everything. Who snuck out at night. Who sold cheap weed under the stairs. Which kids had gotten arrested, which ones were in gangs, and which ones were still pretending they weren't broken.
"You keep staring," she said one night.
"I'm just trying to figure you out."
She grinned like it was the best compliment she'd ever gotten.
"You won't. But I'll give you a peek."
She reached under her mattress and pulled out a notebook. The cover was duct-taped and covered in messy black sharpie.
She flipped it open and pointed to a symbol: a crown with a dagger through it.
"What's that?" I asked.
"The COUPS."
I blinked. "Cups?"
"No, idiot. C-O-U-P-S. It stands for Children Of Unfinished Pain & Sin."
She said it like it was gospel.
I stared at the page. "That's a joke, right?"
"Nope." She leaned closer. "It's real. It's underground. It's everywhere. The COUPS don't take just anyone. You gotta be cut from the right kind of fucked-up."
I laughed nervously. "Sounds like a cult."
"More like a family."
Her face shifted , just for a second and I saw something haunted beneath the smirk.
"You're not in it, are you?"
She didn't answer that. Just flipped to a different page: a list of names.
Some were crossed out. Some were underlined in red.
"Those are the ones who made it," she said. "The underlined ones. The crossed-out ones... didn't."
I didn't ask what that meant.
I didn't want to know.
That night, I lay awake again — this time, not because I was scared.
But because for the first time since the murders... I felt something shift.
Maybe it was curiosity.
Or maybe it was that terrible, hollow ache in my chest whispering:
"You don't belong anywhere. But maybe you could belong there."
We didn't talk much after that.
Jodie shoved the notebook back under her mattress like it burned her fingers.
I didn't ask again.
But I kept thinking about it . Children Of Unfinished Pain & Sin , and wondering who comes up with shit like that.
I thought that was it.
Until the next day.
We'd just finished breakfast at the dining table when disaster struck.
The woman with the wiry grey hair had dumped an absurd amount of cinnamon into the soup. Why, I'll never know.
A few spoonful's in, my stomach turned on me.
Moments later, I was sprinting to the bathroom like my life depended on it.
I was coming back from the bathroom when I saw Jodie in the hallway, leaning against the wall near the payphone , the one that almost never worked.
She was whispering. Too low for me to catch anything.
But her hand? It was shaking.
When I stepped into view, she flinched and hung up. Fast.
"Who was that?" I asked.
She shook her head. "No one."
She tried to walk past me.
"Jodie."
Her eyes met mine. Cold. Nervous. Not like her.
Then she muttered it , low enough to make it feel like a secret, high enough that I'd hear.
"They know about you."
My stomach dropped. "What?"
She didn't explain.
Just walked back to our room.
And when I followed her inside… the notebook was gone.