Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102355 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 512(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
It’s so painful, tears spring up in the corners of my eyes. Is it supposed to sting this bad?
“What’s going on over there?” my mom asks with a light laugh. “Is Lita with you?”
Annika is miming something at me, her hands laid on top of each other and her fingers wiggling around. She bares her teeth and chomps down like she’s biting something. Oh! Oh. She’s trying to give me an excuse for why I’m acting weird. She’s pretending to be—
“A bug!” I guess wildly.
Annika shakes her head and slashes her hand through the air like she’s my partner in charades and I haven’t quite landed on the mark. She fans her fingers out for emphasis. Her fingers look like ten little legs.
“A spider—”
Her face lights up, and she nods enthusiastically.
“A huge spider just leapt down from the ceiling onto me. I need to go. Mom, I’ll call you back in a bit, okay?”
Then I hang up and toss my phone down beside me.
“ERRR.” Annika makes a loud blaring noise like a game show buzzer. “Technically we were looking for tarantula.”
I ignore her and throw my free arm over my eyes, trying to calm down and breathe through the pain. It’s only a few more seconds before the tattooist speaks up.
“Ya está.”
I jerk my arm away from my face and look at him in surprise. “Done? Already?”
“Of course he’s done, Elle. I mean it’s the tiniest thing ever. Not like it was going to take him all day.” Simone laughs. “Now shove aside so I can get mine done.”
My tattoo turns out so dainty and cute; I immediately love it. I don’t even have to wonder what Winnie would think about it. She’d adore the idea of having her initial forever etched on my skin. She’d gloat about it nonstop, I’m sure.
For my shift the next day at Aura, I add a new bandage over the tattoo just to be on the safe side. Simone’s jealous about where I got mine done. The tiny strawberry she had inked on her hip sits right at the seam of her Aura one-piece, and she winces with every step.
“Bloody hell! What was I thinking getting it here? I should have had him do it on my forehead.”
Annika doesn’t have this problem because she never got her tattoo. Well, technically she did.
“It’s there, see it?” She leans over the bar, toward Thalia. We’re gathered near her station before our shift to show off our ink.
Annika is referring to the two tiny dots the tattoo artist managed just beneath her clavicle before Annika promptly passed out in a cold sweat on his table. We spent the rest of her appointment fanning her face and helping her eat some crackers until we were sure we could get her home.
Thalia squints, trying to discern what Annika’s talking about. “Those freckles?”
Simone and I barely restrain our laughs.
Annika scowls. “They’re not freckles. It’s my tattoo.”
Thalia nods and smiles, throwing her a bone. Among us, she’s still sporting the most ink. In her uniform, you can barely see the tattoo that loops up her neck, but when she wore her bikini at the beach the other day, I noticed that it continues down her side as well—a big floral piece with intricate details and a lot of shading. I can’t imagine how long it took.
“Any pain so far?” she asks me.
I smile. “None now that it’s done. I kept it covered for the first twenty-four hours as instructed. I only covered it again just before my shift to be on the safe side.”
She nods as Hugo calls out for us to gather for a pre-shift meeting, and from that moment until the following Saturday afternoon, my life is a blur. For almost a week, I work and sleep and hang out with Annika and Simone. We study Winnie’s list, strategizing how to go about checking off certain items.
We’re in our pajamas at Simone’s and my apartment, having a lazy Saturday morning, poring over the list, deciding if we’re expected to “go to a crazy dance party”—maybe we should make sure we don’t have work the next day—and when we can get out to “Hippy Market Punta Arabí” since it’s only open for shopping on Wednesdays.
When we get to “fall in love” and “wild sex,” the energy in the room changes. I try to gloss over those items, but my friends aren’t having it. Finally Annika crosses her arms like a menace.
“We want details about Cristiano and we won’t rest until we get them,” Annika demands.
Simone copies her. “Yeah. Spill.”
I try to close Winnie’s journal, symbolizing a closure of the topic in general, but Simone yanks it out of my hands. “Tell us or the journal gets it.”
She gestures like she’s going to toss it over our apartment balcony.
I arch a brow, challenging her. “You’re going to throw Winnie’s journal down seven stories? Throw the very last thing I have that belonged to my sister?”