Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

himself. Army drives off, Liv next to him, but her eyes remain on me until
she passes.
“Are we going for the flag or what?” Milo snaps. “They’re going to beat
us.”
I slowly back away, eyeing my friends. “I have another idea.”
Spinning around, I bolt down the road, past shacks and rundown lawns,
houses barely held together with spit and glue and chipping blue paint.
“Where are we going?” Krisjen calls as we leave the lights of the main
village.
“There’s another flag,” I tell her.
“Where?”
I twist around, running backward with a smirk pulling at my lips. “Their
house.”
Her mouth falls open, and Callum laughs, everyone picking up their feet
and running faster, excited. Their house isn’t on the way to Mariette’s—the
only reason anyone from across the tracks comes over here—but I’ve driven
past a time or two.
We race up to the house, an old Spanish-style pigsty that must’ve been
great in its heyday, but lack of funds and the deterioration of the property
values around it makes it look abandoned. The porch light glows bright, but
no windows are lit up and no cars line the dirt road in front. I tip my head
back, taking in the broken clay shingles and dead ivy scaling up the pink
stucco walls to the second floor.
It was probably a very beautiful place once. The Seminole flag hangs
above the detached garage, the bottom blowing in the light breeze.
“What a dump,” Amy grumbles. “If I lived here, I’d want to kill myself,
too.”
Liv’s mother comes to mind, all of us knowing she died in this house.
The story was she hung herself in the shower. Was Liv in the house at the
time?
“I’m sure it’s tolerable when you don’t know anything else,” I reply.
Callum jumps up and rips the flag off the garage, and I step up to the
door, touching my fingertips to the heavy, dark wood. Hundreds of years of
rain weigh on it, and I run my hand up the surface, my body humming.
It feels like her. Cracks and splinters and sun and thunder, but she’s still
here. I inhale a deep breath, gripping the door handle.
“Want a beer from their fridge?” I ask my friends.