Chapter 12
TWELVE
I’m the only kid in my class who walks to and from school without a parent or older sibling. The area I live in isn’t safe, not by a long shot, but my mom doesn’t care if I make it home alive. She would probably rather I disappear, so she doesn’t have to feed me.
The holes in my jeans aren’t artfully placed or fashionable.
The shirt I’m wearing has bloodstains from the time my mom’s boyfriend smacked me so hard that my nose shattered.
I still have the lump to remind me not to breathe too loudly around a guy so high on meth that he thinks his skin is crawling with insects and the walls are bleeding.
My mom told me it was my own fault as she threw a dirty rag at me to clean up with.
It wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t have any respect for her left to lose.
My teacher pulled me to the front of the class to sing happy birthday to me.
I was embarrassed, and I didn’t want to admit it was the first time I’d ever been sung to.
What kid wants to admit their mom never remembers the day they were born?
I only knew when my birthday was because of my enrollment at school and the teachers adding my name to the class birthday tree each year.
I hear sirens in the distance as I approach the front steps of our house.
It’s barely a step up from sleeping on the streets.
It's ancient and decrepit and it belongs to my mom’s dealer.
He arrives twice a week to take his payment from her.
She makes me sit outside while she gives it to him, but I can still hear them.
The door is locked, but I don’t need a key.
I jiggle the handle until the lock springs free and the door opens.
The room is dark as I enter, but that’s not out of the ordinary.
I kick my shoes off and sling my bag to the floor, wincing as I feel the straps pull.
It's threadbare and ratty, like everything else I own.
I've had to use duct tape to fill in a hole, and I know I'm a few short weeks away from having to find a replacement.
I have no money and no way to make some.
Well, there are ways I could make money, but the thought of getting down on my knees in the bathroom of the gas station on the corner and doing…
that stuff is inconceivable to me. I know girls my age who are doing it to eat at night. I'd rather starve.
I do starve.
I start toward the kitchen, and as soon as the door cracks open, the smell hits me.
I gag and step back. It smells like vomit and shit and rotting meat.
There has been a heatwave in Cali for almost a month, and the temperature has gone over a hundred degrees every day this week.
We don't have air conditioning or even a fan.
I've learned to just sweat it out. It helps that I’m skin and bone.
I know now that the heat accelerated my mother’s decomposition.
She had overdosed; vomited and shat herself while she seized on the dirty kitchen floor.
I might have even been home this morning when it happened and not noticed.
Her eyes are bloodshot and milky. Her hands are rigid and twisted like claws, and one of her fingernails is ripped out at the nail bed from where she clawed at the floor in her dying moments.
Her hair is lank and matted. Her lips blue and stretched over what is left of her rotting teeth.
I can see the burn scars that cover her arms and belly, the gray hue of her skin distorting the look until I'm sure she's made of wax and that this is all a nightmare.
It takes me a while to realize I'm screaming.
The smell has crawled up through my nose and down into my lungs.
I think I'll never be able to get it out of my body again.
I'm rooted to the ground. I can't move my arms or my legs, every fiber of my being has turned to stone.
I just stand and stare and bear witness to the demise my mother had been crawling toward my entire life.
I'm only nine years old.
Eventually, long after the sun has set and the traffic has picked up on the road out front, I shake myself out of the trance I'm in. I need help. I need to call someone to get her and take her away. I just want someone to take her away.
We have no landline. I don't have a cell phone, but my mom has one. With shaking knees, I do a quick check of the house. There are only really three rooms to check, so it’s quick work.
Then with a stuttering heart that just won't pump the way it's supposed to, I realize that I can see the outline of the phone in her pocket.
I have to touch her to get it out.
I sit and hug my knees. I let myself cry for the first time, but I hate the sensation of the fat, hot tears sliding down my cheeks. I think the smell has dissipated, but really I've just grown accustomed to it. My body has absorbed the unthinkable stench of death, and now I'm immune.
The feel of my mother's skin slipping from her bones as I wiggle the cell out of her pocket will stay with me forever. If I ever need to throw up on command, that is the memory I will recall. I open the back door to vomit on the rickety wooden steps.
My hands shake as I dial 911.
I pause before I hit call. I'm a smart kid.
I know what will happen if I call emergency services.
There are girls in my class being abused by their foster dads.
I could just run away. I could leave and let the neighbors call it in when the smell finally hits them.
It's tempting, but then I think about the girls kneeling in the gas station restroom and I finally hit the green button.
My voice shakes.
I’m only nine years old.
As the recording of my 911 call plays over the PA system, I have two choices.
I can give in to the chaos of my trauma, or I can retreat into the dark and survive.
It’s not really a choice. I can never lose myself again.
I climbed out of the pit of Mounts Bay by fighting tooth and nail.
I will never be forced back into the desperate girl I once was.
I let the calm wash over me.
Everything that’s trying to destroy the little scraps that remain of my soul slip away.
Instead, I open the box in my mind and I let my skills come out to play.
I honed these talents for two years under the watchful eye of the Jackal.
I learned how to walk in and out of a building without a single eye touching me.
I learned how to endure extreme, bone-shattering pain without screaming.
I also learned how to kill a man. I left all of this behind me when I arrived at Hannaford, but now I let it all come back.
I’m surrounded. There are two exits; the door I just came through and one on the far side of the room.
I see a familiar flash of blond hair, but I push that aside.
I don’t need to be distracted by gorgeous, intelligent, ruthless boys.
There are wooden seats resembling church pews sitting in neat rows, littered with students gaping at the scene playing out before them.
Joey chose the spot with careful consideration to maximize the audience and my humiliation.
I don’t have any allies in this room. I don’t have my knife, and there isn’t anything I can do to stop the recording.
The damage is done.
Joey is smirking at me, and he’s flanked by his usual group of guys.
Every last one of them has approached me for sex, every single one has tried to win the bet.
I look at each one of them long enough to commit their faces to my memory.
I will never forget their willing participation in this.
The girls who surround them are all laughing behind sly hands.
If they try to attack me, I know exactly what to do.
I may not have my knife, but I don’t actually need it.
As long as my busted leg holds together, I’m good.
Even if it doesn’t, I know I still have a good chance of getting out of the room.
I doubt the girls have ever raised a fist in their lives, and the guys…
well, I doubt they’ve ever had to fight for their lives.
I don’t make the first move. I don’t need to.
One of Joey's flunkies grabs my arm in an attempt to stop me from leaving.
Big mistake.
My body is in survival mode. Not private school, I'm-so-sad survival mode, but true life-or-death survival mode. The type of instinctual help you need when your back is against the wall and a guy three times your size is coming at you for blood. The type you need to survive your leg being smashed into pieces and someone looming over you with a knife. The kind of response that none of these rich kids could ever understand. My eyes lock with Harley’s.
He's standing at the end of the chapel, and he's not laughing.
He's the only one who can read the cold, dead calm in my eyes.
He doesn't even try to warn the girl who's touched me. He just stands witness.
Good.
Let him watch.
I swing the textbook that's in my arms and listen to the satisfying crunch as Harlow Roqueford’s nose breaks, shattering completely under the sheer force of my swing.
Her blood flies, I'm spattered with it. The room explodes with her screams. She drops to her knees and cradles her face with both of her hands. I get a fistful of her hair, and her hands scramble at me pathetically. I tighten my grip until she squeals and her hands drop to her sides. Her eyes meet mine and they’re wide, petrified.
Devon lurches toward us, but he stops when I jerk her body closer to mine.
The PA system is still playing the 911 call on repeat, and I can hear the nine-year-old version of me screaming, but the seventeen-year-old me, standing here covered in blood with a fistful of some rich bitch’s hair—she’s hollow.
She’s carved out until there is nothing but cold, dead calm.
She is the Wolf.
“Let her go. You can't take us all,” Devon tries to command, but his voice trembles.
Pathetic.
My eyes stay on Harley. He's watching me with such grim satisfaction that I wonder what this group has been doing to him. I wonder what torture Joey had been putting him through. I wonder what he did to the twins today.
I answer Devon without bothering to glance at him. “Are you sure about that?”
My voice doesn't tremble. It does, however, push them all back. Everyone except Joey takes a step away from me.
He holds his arms out and grins at me. “Looks like you're done, Mounty. This school is a zero-tolerance establishment. The principal has no choice but to throw you out like the trash you are.”
His words should inspire some sort of dread in me, but nothing can penetrate my frozen walls.
I pull Harlow up to stand by her auburn hair, and her whimpers fail to incite any sort of remorse on my part.
She’s crying. Fat tears are rolling down her face and mixing with the blood pouring from her nose.
I think about pushing her, bending her, and seeing how quickly she breaks.
I doubt it would take much. Her eyes are pleading with mine.
Truly pathetic. She would never survive the Jackal.
She’s a child playing a game she has no idea how to win.
“Run,” I whisper, and then I let go.
Harlow flings herself into Devon's arms and he pulls her out of the chapel. The other students part and some follow them out. I see the crowd dispersing, and then I hear why.
“Miss Anderson. My office. Now.”
The principal has arrived.
Joey looks at me, and the sick pleasure I see in his eyes melts the ice I’ve encased myself in a little. He thinks he’s untouchable. Maybe.
Or maybe he just hasn’t found the right opponent yet.