The Almost Girl – ebook edition (8 page)

“Hey, you OK?” I ask her.

“She’s fine,” the boy says, pulling her away from me in the opposite direction.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I say to him, and grab Charisma’s shoulders so that she’s facing me. Her eyes are dilated, and she’s looking at me as if she’s trying to focus but can’t. “Charisma, are you OK?”

“I told you she was fine!” the boy snaps, pushing me backward with one hand. My brain registers two things in immediate succession. One, Charisma is drugged, and two, this boy is lucid enough to shove me backward. My body kicks into battle mode, and everything slows to the point where I can sense the movements of his friends behind me.

“She’s not fine, and I am going to take her home. Back off; I don’t want to hurt you,” I say quietly. I figure I should prepare him for what’s about to happen.

“You and what army?” he jeers in a loud voice. Instantly, he has the attention of everyone within ten feet of us. “Look, guys, we have a late addition to the party. Get her a drink before she hurts herself.”

He laughs, and his friends join in. Someone thrusts a cup in my face, and even without tasting it, I know that there’s something wrong with it. I can smell it. My eyes narrow and I bat the cup away with the back of one hand.

“You guys don’t go here, do you?” More slurred laughter. They must have come for the meet and then decided to take advantage of girls while they were at their drink fest. “Don’t you know it’s a crime to drug people’s drinks?”

“Lookit, we got ourselves a deputy,” one of the boys giggles. “You gonna arrest us?”

“Arrest me, arrest me, Ociffer. I’m underage!” another says.

I glare him into silence. Where I come from, there’s no drinking age. Consuming spirits is a rite of passage, and considering it’s cheaper and more accessible than water, people don’t make that much of a big deal over it. It’s mostly consumed in toasts and celebrations. And frankly, people are too busy to risk the effects on their day-to-day responsibilities.

“I don’t want any trouble. I just want Charisma. Just pass her over, and you can go back to getting yourselves drunk.”

“Charisma wants to stay,” the dark-haired boy says and turns to her. “Don’t you, baby?”

“Mm hmm…” Charisma murmurs incoherently. A line of drool has made its way down her chin, and she’s starting to teeter on her feet. The boy glares at me with a vile expression in his eyes and then kisses her while I am watching, his tongue slithering over her mouth. I don’t flinch, not even when he grabs the front of her chest. “You’re my girl, aren’t you baby?”

“Touch her again, and it will be the last thing you do.”

“You mean like this–”

I break his fingers with a single flex of my own before he can even touch the front of her dress, and then I’m on the move, spinning backward and knocking two of the guys behind me off their feet. The fourth boy takes one look at me and flees in the opposite direction.

I turn back to where Charisma is still standing near the dark-haired boy, who is screaming on his knees and clutching his mauled fingers. With his uninjured hand, he removes a switchblade from his pocket and brandishes it, weaving unsteadily to his feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Charisma has teetered her way to a tree and has slumped down against its trunk. At least she’s out of harm’s way, but I know that I don’t have a lot of time. She can’t fall asleep before I can get her some help.

“You’re going to be sorry,” the boy snarls, pointing the knife at me.

This time, I can’t stop from laughing. “Someone once told me that if you point a knife, you’d better be prepared to use it,” I inform him. His answer is to swipe at my face, an attack that I dodge easily. “You should know that where I come from, I graduated the top of my class in hand-to-hand combat.”

“What are you? Some kind of army grunt?”

“Something like that. Bet you’re wishing that you’d just let her go when I’d asked you, right?” I know my lack of fear must be aggravating him, but honestly, it’s like fighting an uncoordinated toddler. Given the odds, I could quite conceivably fight him blindfolded.

“Shut up. Who has the knife, anyway?” he taunts lunging blindly at me.

I spin again and clip the knife out of his hand with the heel of my boot so that it flies upward and lands in my own fist. “This knife?”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it,” he says with forced bravado. His eyes dart to the motionless forms of his friends. I can see the fear in his eyes and a dawning understanding of what he has gotten himself into, underscored by sheer disbelief that a
girl
is somehow getting the best of all of them. It is the same fear that makes him charge toward me in a football-type tackle.

I dance out of the way and laugh again. I’m exhilarated. It’s the first real combat exercise I’ve had in weeks, this coming from someone who typically trains three hours a day in a rigorous simulation mode and then another hour in actual combat. I should be sluggish, but I’m wired. Ever since the clinic, it’s as if I can feel the neurons firing inside of me, getting stronger. And now, my body feels wired, like it’s plugged in to a giant electrical outlet, every move charged with lethal fire. I am invincible.

My last move has brought me near to where Charisma is sitting, and I notice that her head is slumping forward onto her knees. She’s nearly unconscious. A surge of anger rips through me and I advance on the boy. His eyes widen because now I am no longer laughing. My face is dead, emotionless. It is a look that has been partially responsible for the rank I hold in my own world.

“You like to take advantage of defenseless girls?” His head snaps back as my fist makes contact with his right cheek. It’s barely a touch, but he stumbles backward. “You put something in their drinks, and then what do you do? Pretend to care about them? Then you hurt them?”

Each word is a staccato of fury. Fury at what girls here had to put up with over and over again. I’ve seen it at almost every school I’ve been to, and until now, I’d always walked away, telling myself that there was nothing I could do.

Where I come from, girls –
women
– know how to defend themselves from everything and everyone: human, animal, or machine. Drugged or not, any girl from my world would have had this guy, or one three times his size, on his backside before he could even lay a finger on her.

In this world, in neighborhood high schools, others like this boy prey on innocent girls, and more often than not get away with it because the girls are too ashamed or humiliated or aren’t able to remember to do anything about it. It sickens me. Drugging another person in my world for something as revolting as sexual gratification is an offense punishable by exile – a fate more feared than death. Let’s just say it doesn’t happen too often. Exile is
not
a gentle end.

Someone needs to teach this boy a lesson. For Charisma, I’d be that person.

I grab the boy by the front of his shirt and pull him close to me. He’s a fair head taller than I am, but I am practically holding him off the ground. I press the butt of his knife against his crotch so deeply that I can see the water spring into his eyes. My voice is a low snarl. “I ever see you near her, I will end you. Got it?”

Without waiting for any acknowledgement, I spear my knee into his groin, feeling the immediate grunt radiating up through his entire body as he collapses against me, crying. I shove him away, a whimper from Charisma drawing my attention. The boy is curled into a fetal ball on the ground, but I still send his knife spinning behind me without a backward glance. I know without looking that it thumps right into the sliver of space on the ground between his stomach and his thighs. The sudden sour odor of urine permeates the night air.

I lift Charisma easily. “It’s OK; you’re safe now,” I tell her. “But you need to stay awake for just a few more minutes, OK?”

“Mmm… OK.”

After I file a report with school security with a condensed version of the events and accompany Charisma in the ambulance to the local hospital, where she will stay overnight – apparently, the boy had used some kind of hypnotic sedative in an excessive amount – I catch a cab back to Horrow. But the parking lot is empty, and it looks like I’ve missed the whole meet, and Caden, too.

A sense of exhaustion overcomes me, and I rest my head against the handlebars of my bike. I want to leave this place as fast as I can. Everything about it unnerves me. I want to go back to where I belong, where I feel whole. Here, I am starting to feel broken, the natural result of living in a broken world. Although they have more landmass, water, and people than we do, I have no doubt that this world is far more lost than mine.

Gritting my teeth, I rev the bike with one thing on my mind. Come hell or high water, we are leaving tomorrow. With a sense of rejuvenated intent, I ride to Caden’s house. I don’t let the fact that his car isn’t in the driveway or that there aren’t lights on in the house deter my new sense of purpose. I’ll wait. Throwing a jacket across my shoulders, I make my way to the front porch, but there’s already someone there.

My heart plummets to my stomach in a free fall that is magnified by the fact that time has slowed to abnormal proportions. My blood thunders in my ears like a solid force.

“Shae,” I breathe.

My sister. My family. My enemy.

CONFLICT ARISING

 

“I knew they’d send you sooner or later.”

The breath that leaves my lips in response to the husky familiarity of her voice is deflating and harsh, taking with it every bone in my body.

“No one… sent me. I came alone,” I manage in a shaky voice.

Shae looks more or less the same as when I saw her last, right before she caught me off-guard, armed with a double electro-rod, except that there’s an oozing red gash across her face. Hair in blond dreadlocks, tanned face, if thinner, and eyes the color of a glacial sky. Those cold eyes were the last thing I’d seen before she’d everted.

Seeing her now is like being dunked in a bucket of ice until my entire body feels like it’s going to peel out of my skin. I want to run to her so badly it hurts, but underneath it all her betrayal is as fresh as it was thirteen years before, and the pain just as sharp. She left me with no regrets and no explanations. The monarchy had branded her a traitor, and I had to live with her shame until I built myself into something large and powerful enough to eclipse it.

I hate her. That isn’t going to change. Not now, not ever.

“So you’re the one helping Caden,” I say. “I should have guessed. I learned everything I know about covering up the marks of eversion from you.”

“And yet you found me.”

I laugh, a hollow sound made harsh with a coil of emotions I can’t begin to unravel. “It wasn’t easy to track you, trust me. You were careful, I’ll give you that… everting and then traveling by their transportation. Smart. But my coming here was just pure luck.”

“Luck,” Shae repeats, a small frown creasing her brow. I notice that there are more bruises and cuts along her arms, all of them fresh.

“Maybe I sensed you in my subconscious?” I offer snidely. I can’t keep the sarcasm from my voice. “So who’s June, really? Does she know who you are?”

“No.” Shae shrugs her shoulders, not giving up much. I raise a skeptical eyebrow, and Shae continues. “She’s part of an organization here that helps with supervised independent living until Caden turns eighteen.”

I return her shrug, thinking of the gun I found. It makes no difference to me whether Shae’s lying about June or not. She’s not my target. “Is Caden here?” I ask abruptly.

Shae’s face is expressionless but her body is poised, anticipating an attack. “I know why you’re here, and I can’t let you take him back,” she says.

“You don’t know anything,” I snap, bristling. “And I’m not a little girl anymore. You don’t get to make decisions for me or tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“You don’t understand–”

“That’s what you said when you left. I’m older now. Try me,” I say, folding my arms across my stomach and tapping a booted foot against the flagstone path. My fingers close comfortingly around the handle of a blade that’s tucked into the waistband of my second-hand black fatigues. I don’t trust anyone, far less Shae, who’s deceived more than her share of people.

She stands, both hands in the air, and I back away a couple steps in instinctive response. “If you take him back, they’re going to kill him. The Vectors looking for him have drawn the attention of the Guardians on this side. We don’t have a lot of time. I have to take him somewhere safe. All I’m asking is for you to trust me.”

“Trust you?” I sputter and laugh at the same time. “Like that’s going to happen.”

“You think you can stop the Vectors? There’s a dozen of them within hours, less even, of finding us. Where do you think I was? I was fighting them, trying to lead them
away
from Caden. They’re coming here, Riven. For him. And for you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“And Caden? Can you take care of him?” Shae says staring at me as if she’s trying to anticipate what I’m going to say. “He’s a prince, unless you’ve forgotten.”

I stare back. My voice is cold. “No, he isn’t. He’s more than that, Shae. You know that. He has a purpose. And you must know why I have to take him back. Cale is dying.”

“Then they will both die. What you’re doing is suicide.”

“Don’t you even care that your home is about to be at the mercy of a madman if Caden
doesn’t
go back? What’s the alternative? That he stays here and lives out a life he wasn’t meant for, while everyone we know, everyone we love, dies or is enslaved by Murek?”

Shae sighs, the movement rippling wearily through her whole body, and interrupts my tirade. “Riven, he doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“Caden doesn’t know anything about who he is or where he came from, none of it. He had very little memory of his life in Neospes and what little he did remember, Leila erased. She never meant for him to go back, you know. They were going to kill him.”