LITMIR.BIZ

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pissed off – but when they saw Amber they went quiet. Amber stood there, her legs stiff and suddenly uncooperative, and another headache started somewhere behind her eyes.

      Brandon grinned. There was nothing friendly in it.

      Amber forced her legs to work again, and she took the lane to her left. They walked after her. She quickened her pace through the growing gloom.

      “Oink, oink, little piggy,” Brandon said from behind her.

      Amber broke into a run.

      They laughed, and gave chase.

      She plunged out of the lane and cut across the road, slipping between the back of a laundromat and an attorney’s office. Immediately, Amber realised this was a mistake. She should have headed towards the pizzeria where there would have been people, and light, and noise. Instead, she was running across an empty lot and finding herself out of breath. A hand closed around her jacket and she cried out, twisted, got tangled in Dan’s legs, and they both went down.

      She landed heavily, painfully, with Dan sprawling over her.

      “Oww,” he laughed, rolling over. “Owww, that hurt.”

      Amber got up and backed off, rubbing her hands where she had skinned them as she fell. The headache was a thunder cloud inside her skull. Goosebumps rippled. Her stomach churned.

      Dan stood, panting, and Brandon jogged up to them, taking his time.

      “This isn’t funny,” Amber said.

      “It’s not meant to be,” said Brandon.

      “Why’d you run?” Dan chuckled. “We wouldn’t have run if you hadn’t run. Why’d you run?”

      “Let me go,” said Amber.

      Dan swept his arm wide. “We’re not stopping you from going anywhere. Go right ahead.”

      Amber hesitated, then stepped between them. They loomed over her on either side. She took another 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

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