Yes, please, before my wrist breaks off.” The woman twisted her hand out. The woman juggled a stack of huge pizza boxes and a plastic grocery bag of canned sodas. She was the Goth yin to Becca’s Plain Jane yang. Despite wearing all black, she was a riot of color, from the dark red highlights in her shoulder-length black hair, held back in sloppy-but-cute pigtails, to the dramatic eye makeup, to the colorful ink running the length of both arms. Strange as the past few days had been, anything seemed possible right now. Like nails on a chalkboard, the buzzer sounded again and the door banged shut behind her. With her dad gone now, she supposed there was nothing stopping her besides not knowing what image she’d want permanently drawn on her skin. Her father would’ve flipped out, and she’d always valued his opinion too much to rock the boat. She’d never really considered getting one for herself, though. Playful, gory, beautiful, haunting, many of the images were objectively artistic and oddly compelling.īecca found tattoos intriguing, and she saw a lot of them on patients that came through the emergency department. Tribal birds, winged hearts, dagger-eyed skulls, full-faced roses, crosses, and cartoon characters were some of the designs she noticed at first glance. Gripping her purse more tightly under her arm, Becca’s gaze scanned the colorful images covering every inch of wall space. The driving bass beat of a hard-edged rock song echoed from the same direction. “Be with you in a minute,” a gruff voice called from the back. Compared to the late April warmth, the indoor air was like a meat locker, thick and intensely cold-or maybe that was just the draining weight of her anxiety these past days. A buzzer screeched above her head, sending her heart into quick palpitations somewhere in the neighborhood of her throat. Becca Merritt stepped through the heavy industrial door and into another world.

Hard as It Gets by Laura Kaye