Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce Page B

against the door frame, the door swings open and crashes into the wall behind.
    "Well then," Scarlett says. When neither Silas nor I move, she forges ahead into the apartment. Silas and I make brief eye contact before following her.
    The apartment is open, no walls separating one space from another. The patterned tin ceiling is high above our heads and causes our footsteps to echo as if we are in a museum; truth is, that's sort of what it feels like. The walls are covered with tacks, to which fragments of posters still cling, and one corner is filled with magazine clippings of women in various stages of undress. The windows are huge, but several are cracked and a few panes are missing entirely. The place smells musty and damp, like a basement. Outside on a heavily rusted fire escape are a few potted plants, long dead and keeled over the sides of their containers.
    There's furniture--sort of. A bed that looks to be straight out of the sixties lurks in an offshoot of the main room. There's a round dining room table that actually looks fairly decent, save the neon pink graffiti that covers the oak top. And the couch... well, the battered brown couch looks
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    comfortable, but there's no way I'll sit on it unless it is covered with a blanket or twelve. I feel a wave of pity for Silas, having to sleep on it.
    Silas looks casual, if a little disgusted by the place, and Scarlett is... well, Scarlett. Once freed from his basket, Screwtape finally stops growling and begins to stalk cockroaches and sniff around for mice as I unpack the bag of kitchen things, afraid to put anything in a drawer. Scarlett and Silas angle the mattress against the wall and take turns beating it with a broom. They hang a flowered sheet up over the entrance to the little bed area where Scarlett and I will sleep.
    Three hours later, the apartment still looks terrible. But at least it's terrible without random beer bottles and cigarette ashes covering the counters. Outside, a dog barks wildly.
    "I have to go pay our rent," Silas says with a halfhearted look around the room.
    "I have to get you money to pay our share," Scarlett adds, rummaging through a bag. I look away; I'd rather not know which of our grandmother's items she's decided to pawn.
    "You coming with us, Rosie?" Silas asks, leaning against one of the many iron pillars that break up the apartment.
    I know I should go, because I know Scarlett hopes to go hunting afterward--I see her securing her hatchet to her belt. But the truth is, I don't want to hunt. I want to be at home. How long have I wondered what life would be like outside of Ellison, only to yearn for the small town now that I'm in Atlanta?
    "No, I was thinking I'd stay here and finish unpacking,"
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    I answer, lifting myself up onto the countertop. Scarlett gives me a long stare, and I know she can see the frustration in my eyes. She nods.
    "Okay. Keep your knives on you, even in here," she says and tosses me the belt that has both bone-handled knives stored securely on it.
    Silas smiles gently at me, and then he and Scarlett leave, pulling the door tight until the lock pops shut behind them. Their footsteps echo loudly as they descend the stairs, and I hear the junkie's door fly open as they pass him again. I sigh and lower myself into one of the chairs. I set my feet on Silas's toolbox--I think it belonged to Pa Reynolds.
    "Don't be silly, Leoni," Pa Reynolds said as he unloaded tools from the back of his ancient pickup truck. There was sawdust in his hair, and his overalls were permanently grass-stained. "A man's--or woman's--home is his castle."
    "That doesn't mean I should get free labor," Oma March said, arms crossed.
    "But I am your humble servant, my queen," Pa Reynolds said through a grin.
    They were close in age, and there'd always been a sort of friendly flirtation between our grandmother and Silas's father. Looking back, I suppose it was normal for them to find comfort in each other. Silas's mother, Celia, had died when