Novels by Margie Shii

By midnight, the apartment smelt like pizza, fresh paint and the particular silence of a house with a secret in it.Anthony had fallen asleep on the new green couch halfway through a movie, an arm flung over his face, a slice of pepperoni in his hand. I took it, put a blanket over his shoulders and stood there feeling like a thief in a very kind house. Lucas had left an hour ago, after fixing a bookshelf that did not need fixing. He had said a flat, polite good luck to me, and I had spent the hour after pretending not to listen for his footsteps."Fourth floor," the system said, in my skull. "Door on the left.""I know," I whispered, "stop nagging.""I have not said anything for forty minutes.""You were thinking it loudly."I put on my sneakers and took the brass key out of my drawer for no reason I could explain, and slipped out the front door in the dark. The stairwell smelt of old carpet and somebody's burned toast. On the way down I tripped on my own shoelace and hung from the ra

Moving Day began with a lie, for most honest thing for anything in my life to start at this point."It's only four boxes , "I told Anthony, standing on the curbing in front of my dorm at nine a. m.. "I really don't need the van.""You have a desk lamp and a cactus ," Anthony said, brushing a hand over my cheek. "You need the van."He had rented one, indeed, a battered white one with a sunken door, and brought donuts and a hand truck as well as a playlist called Moving In With My Boyfriend (Happy Energy); he looked like a golden retriever at a pageant. I took up my cactus, felt the old trapdoor in my stomach give its familiar twitch."Help is on the way, by the way," he said, already checking his phone. "I asked Lucas, he said yes."I dropped the cactus.It landed, fortuitously, upright in its pot, which I took as an ill omen. "You asked your friend Lucas to help us move?""He's my oldest friend. He's got the biceps." Anthony frowned. "Is that a problem? You two seemed fine at dinner."

When I returned to the table, Odette had claimed the largest piece of tiramisu and Lucas had gone quiet in a way that made Marianne glance at him anxiously. He hadn't looked in my direction since I sat down. His mouth was set in a tight line, his jaw clenched, and his eyes were fixed to his glass. He radiated disinterest in the conversation with an almost physical force. I ate my dessert with all the deliberation of a woman about to die, which Anthony appreciated by pressing his knee against mine. I let him."Okay," Anthony stood up suddenly, "then I think we ought to get a round of speeches."Marianne's fork hovered. "Oh no. He's doing the face.""I don't have a face.""You do when you tell the story about your first goldfish.""That was a very serious ceremony," Anthony said, and cleared his throat and raised his glass, beaming so brightly around the table that a shard of something in my chest broke out and landed with a soft thud. "I'm not the best with words, but Mari, I thank you

Marianne Vale had the same smile as her brother and none of his patience. She opened the door on Saturday evening and looked me up and down like a customs officer and said "so you're the one who ruined my brother's sleep schedule.""Mari" Anthony groaned behind me."I'm complimenting him. Come in. Dinner's in twenty minutes and I've already put three people on dish duty."I walked in clutching the bottle of wine I had bought from the wrong aisle. The key was in my pocket. I hadn't been able to leave it in my dorm which told me everything I needed to know of the state of my mind. It clinked every time I moved so I spent ten minutes walking like a man trying not to wake a baby.The apartment smelled like garlic. Anthony squeezed my hand and gave me a tiny hopeful smile and the guilt opened in my stomach like a trap door."Relax" the system said cheerfully. "Target arrives in four minutes.""I hate you" I thought."Noted."The doorbell rang at 7:02. I stood in the middle of the living ro

I wore the good jacket. I want that to be on the record, because it is the single most embarrassing fact in this situation. A man threatened me via text message and all i could think about in my closet was the navy one, probablyThe stairwell to the roof had been accessed from the men's maintenance door on the library, which was supposedly always locked, but wasn't that day, and at the top of the stairs, the wind knocked me back, because it had taken the sky, which had turned bruised-purple, for its own. Lucas Hale stood at the far end of the roof with his back to me, hands in his pockets."You came," he said, without turning around."You said to come alone.""I said lots of things." He turned then, and the wind had done wonderful things to his hair, and made him look even more dangerous than usual. "I didn't think you would.""Then why did you?""To see if you would." He took a step closer, and i leaned back, until my shoulders hit a cold pipe. He put one hand on the metal next to my

"You may not dump Anthony Vale," the system said in the voice of a man reading the fine print of a terms and condition out loud. "Doing so lowers target affection."I was in Anthony's kitchen with a mug marked World's Okayest Boyfriend and nearly dropped it in the toilet. "Excuse me?""Lucas Hale values Anthony vale. Hurting him will raise hostility towards you by approximately forty percent."He already hates me!"There is a ceiling on hatred, you are not yet at the ceiling."I stared into my coffee with a growing sense of unease, behind me Anthony was humming as he flipped pancakes in a dress shirt with a hole in the shoulder, his hair a wreck from last night and his hickey proudly displayed on his neck like a badge. Lucas's presence had barely come up before, he had said "Weird right?" and I had said "So weird" before moving onto syrup.I couldn't dump him. I couldn't date him. I couldn't even sit here and eat his pancakes with a clear conscience. That left only one option, and I vow