step, started walking away, but the moment her back was turned Dan was right behind her, on her heels.
She spun, her vision blurring for a moment. “Stop following me.”
“You can’t tell me where to go and where not to go,” Dan said, suddenly angry. “This is America. Land of the free. Don’t you know that?”
She could taste copper in the back of her mouth. “Leave me alone,” she said dully.
“We’re not doing anything!” Dan yelled, right in her face. She flinched away from him.
“Admit what you did, little piggy,” said Brandon, circling her. “Admit that you spilled that milkshake on me on purpose.”
“I swear, it was an accident.”
“If you admit that you did it on purpose,” said Dan, the reasonable one once again, “then we’ll go away.”
He was right in front of her as he spoke, but he sounded a hundred miles away. She had to end this now, at once, before the blackness at the edge of her vision overpowered her and she collapsed.
“Okay,” Amber said, “okay, I did it on purpose.”
They nodded, like they had known all along. But they didn’t leave.
“You made me look like a liar,” said Brandon.
Amber tried focusing on Dan. “You said you’d go away.”
“Jesus,” he said, making a face. “Don’t be so frikkin’ rude.”
“Okay,” she said, “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry. It was stupid. I’m very sorry. Please let me go home.”
“For the last time,” said Dan, “we’re not stopping you. We’re not stopping you from doing anything. Why is that so hard for you to understand? Are you really that dumb? Are you really that stupid? Stop treating us like we’re the bad guys here, okay? You’re the one who threw that milkshake on my friend. You’re the one who got us kicked out. You’re the one who ran. You’re the one who made me fall over. My knee is bleeding, did you know that? But am I complaining about it? Am I making a fuss? No, I am not. But you? You won’t stop turning this whole thing into some big frikkin’ drama.”
“I don’t …”
“What? What was that?”
“I don’t feel well.”
Her knees started to buckle and she reached out to steady herself, grabbing the front of Dan’s shirt. He grimaced and pushed her hand away and she stumbled, and then Brandon was there, grabbing her, straightening her up—
—and then he hit her.
The pain was nothing compared to the violent storm in her head, but his fist rocked her, sharpened her, and she saw him look at his own knuckles, like he was surprised that he had done it, and then everything was moving very quickly and when she felt a hand on her face she bit down hard and heard a howl.
Her vision cleared. Brandon’s horrified face swam into view. She hit him back, as hard as she could, and his jaw came apart around her fist.
A moment stretched to eternity.
She watched her fist.
It was weird – in this gloom, her skin almost looked red.
A deeper red than the blood, though, the blood that exploded in glorious slow motion from the wreckage that had been Brandon’s face. Was she doing this? Was this happening? In that moment, that luxurious moment, Amber found the time to wonder if she was imagining this part. Surely this was some sort of bizarre hallucination, brought about by adrenaline and those increasingly painful headaches.
There was no headache now, though. There was no pain of any sort. Instead, she felt … wonderful. She felt free. She felt …
Powerful.
Time started to speed up again. Blood splattered her T-shirt and Brandon hit the ground and, now that she could perceive normal sound once more, Amber registered his gargled screaming. Both hands were at his face and he was crawling frantically away, leaving a trail of blood as he went. Dan backed off, staring at her, his face white and his eyes wide and utterly, utterly terrified.
She had done that. The blood and the screaming and the shattered bones. It had been no hallucination. She had done that.
She raised her blood-speckled hand. Normal skin again. That was good. Normal was good.
Something in her mouth. Something that tasted of copper. She spat. Brandon’s finger hit the ground.
Amber turned and ran.
THERE WAS BLOOD ON HER HANDS.
Not in a metaphorical, figurative sense, although of course there was that, too, but in an actual, physical sense, there was actual blood on her actual hands, and it was proving surprisingly difficult to wash off. Amber scrubbed furiously, looked at the result, and then scrubbed again. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that her hands were quite small. If the rest of her body could have been in proportion with her hands, then maybe she wouldn’t have been such a target. These were the thoughts that occurred to her as she was scrubbing the blood away.
“Amber?” came her mother’s voice from beyond the bathroom door.
Amber looked up at herself in the mirror above the sink – wild-eyed and panicked. “Yes?” she called, keeping her voice as steady as possible.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Amber said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Amber listened to her mother hesitate, then walk away down the hall.
She turned off the faucet and examined her hands. For one ridiculous moment, she thought they were still bloodstained, but then she closed her eyes and shook her head. The frantic scrubbing had turned them both red-raw, that’s all it was. No need for her imagination to be going into overdrive on this one. There was enough to freak out about as it was.
She put the toilet seat down and sat, taking deep breaths, and examined the facts. Yes, she had seriously injured that guy, but she had been acting in self-defence and she had been outnumbered. She really couldn’t see how the cops wouldn’t be on her side about this – if only she hadn’t injured him quite so dramatically.
Amber frowned. What was his name? The name of the guy whose face she’d destroyed?
Brandon, that was it. She was glad she remembered it. For some reason, it felt important that she remember his name after what she’d done to him.
She hadn’t meant to do it, and she hadn’t a clue
