“Luce…”
I glanced at her, trying to hide the impatient annoyance in my voice.
“What the hell happened? Why was Tyler beating the crap out of Benny?”
Sara shook her head and pointed at my stomach.
“What?”
I followed her gaze. I didn’t think anything had happened to my stomach—
My eyes rounded. Dizziness swept over me, my nerve endings tingling and my head was swimming. The first three fingers of my left hand were hopelessly mangled—a fleshy twisted claw, the fingers sticking out at unnatural angles with far too many knuckles. The skin, yellow and blue and black, promised agony.
I looked away, took a huge swallow of air, and covered the mess with my other hand.
It hurt, but in a distant way. More like a fresh memory of incredible pain. I knew enough to worry about shock—but I also knew I wasn’t as normal as I should be either.
“Lucy,” Sara said, the thin veil of concussion peeling away from her eyes. “You need to go to the hospital. Right now.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to—a little voice screamed that the tests would prove I was an alien or a vampire or a Scientologist or something. Maybe they wouldn’t test anything—my injury being pretty obvious. Did they always run tests? I wasn’t sure. Television hospital dramas hadn’t prepared me as much as I thought they might.
“Morgan…she’ll take me,” I said.
Why Morgan? She didn’t have a car, and it wouldn’t have been legal if she had.
Because she was going to know everything sooner than I’d like anyway. I didn’t need to spew my freakishness all over everyone. She’d be the easiest to convince that maybe I shouldn’t go to the hospital.
“Where did Morgan come from? I thought she was grounded?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Are you okay?”
Sara frowned at my evasiveness, but she still touched a spot above her ear and winced.
“I think so,” Sara said.
“Sorry, hon,” I said, checking her temple.
Sara snorted, “Your fingers are kindling, Luce. Get out of here, I’m fine.”
I nodded—when she mentioned my fingers, a dull ache of pain swirled up from my hand. I wanted to find Zack first, but I also knew that Zack was fine, and I wasn’t. Still, as I dug through the ridiculous mass to find Morgan, I couldn’t keep myself from swiveling over my shoulder every six seconds to pick Zack’s spiky hair out of the crowd. By the fourth look, he’d disappeared, no doubt to help Benny to his feet. Stupid good-looking hero idiot.
Daphne ran smack into me. My obsession with Zack was now officially messing with my equilibrium. I gave her a look up and down, but she seemed okay.
“You okay, Daph?”
She made a face and gestured toward my cradled hand. “Are you?”
“I’m…no, not really. Have you seen Morgan? Or Wanda?”
“Morgan is here?” Daphne asked, and seemed to immediately reconsider. “Forget it. Wanda needs you. Right now. Come on.”
I followed her upstairs, where Daphne stopped at a door at the end of the hall. The upstairs was dark, except for a gentle amber light welling out from the bottom of the door in front of us.
“What happened?”
Daphne shook her head. “Benny found them…”
I pushed past Daphne and went in the room. I heard the door click shut behind me.
Only a small desk lamp illuminated the room—judging from the twin bed, the movie posters, and the impressive-looking glowing computer tower on his desk, I knew I was in Benny’s room.
A tiny girl sat on the tiny bed, Wanda. She looked like she had shrunk, curled in on herself. Her hair, coiffed and delicate before, stuck out and hung in tangled lumps. Her shirt was ripped along the shoulder, and one of her shoes sat forlorn and cast off at the foot of Benny’s desk chair.
“Wanda?”
The girl on the bed made a mewling sound—half-sob, half-spoken word. It sounded like despair, and I felt my heart jump.
“Wanda? Are you okay, hon?”
She wasn’t—I knew that much.
Dull, ghostly images skimmed through my mind. Like old yellowed snapshots, I thought of Ms. Crane, my guidance counselor. The images I’d had taken from her by accident—and the feelings came with them. Faded, ancient, and over-used like the images themselves, but I got a hint of it. The violation. The shock.
I touched my cheek and felt my fingers shaking. Calm down, calm. I crossed to the bed and climbed onto it next to her. She still didn’t move or look at me.
“Wanda, hon?”
I touched her back, and she jerked under the motion. She mumbled something, and I leaned in closer.
“What is it?”
I didn’t even try this time. Just a little breath and I felt a live jolt of fear and anger splash into my lungs. Images of Tyler’s lean, ugly face. Twisted and angry. Wanda had said no, and Tyler hadn’t taken it like a gentleman. Grabbing, pawing hands. Wanda’s terror spilling into me, her outrage, even through the alcohol haze. Clothing tearing, just as the door flew open, filling with Benny’s slender silhouette. Benny moving like a flash, grabbing Tyler…
No wonder Tyler had been bouncing Benny’s head off the floor.
“Oh, Wanda…” I breathed, just above a whisper.
“Luce…just. No. Go, please. Just go.”
I frowned and squeezed her shoulder. “Wanda, you’re not okay—”
“Please. Just. Go.”
She didn’t sound angry. Her words warbled, caught in her throat. She sucked in a breath and looked at me through her curtain of hair. The smile she tried to pull off broke my heart.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Can I go home?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Just let me…”
And I was still shaking. I felt weak, almost dizzy. I ignored the feeling.
“Is Benny okay?” she said, suddenly, her eyes lighting up. It looked like fear, or hysteria.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He got… let me just find someone who can give us a ride.”
Wanda retreated, her arms folding around herself, her eyes snapping out of view behind her hair. I didn’t know what to do. I clenched my hands into fists and left the room.
“She needs to go home,” I said to Daphne. “Know anyone with a car?”
Daphne nodded. “Mostly seniors here. I know a couple. I can…yeah. Do you need a ride, too?”
“No, just get her out of here and try to cover with her parents.”
“Yes, sir,” Daphne said, without a hint of sarcasm. I tried a smile, but she made a face and pulled me into a quick, tight hug. Pins and needles pricked at my broken hand.
Daphne ran downstairs. I searched the hallway for the bathroom and went inside. The bright compact-fluorescents stabbed my eyes when I flicked the switch.
I glanced into the mirror and immediately regretted it. My skin looked translucent—the kind of pale reserved for vampires and the Irish. I leaned in close to the mirror, my eyes wide, trying to remember if dilation was good or bad. I flicked the switch off. Waited. Flicked it on again.
My eyes didn’t change. When the lights turned on, my pupils were already two black dimes.
“Crap,” I said.
With more than a little reluctance, I pulled my twisted hand away from my stomach. A wave of dizziness crashed over me the second I jostled it, and I hurled lunch, dinner, and more than a few alcoholic libations into the toilet. When I recovered and cleaned up a little, I went back to examining the hand.
The fingers weren’t as twisted and awful as I remembered—maybe being trampled in a crowd had exaggerated my perceptions. Still, they were pretty gross. The index finger made a side-ways snake shape, the middle finger popped forward then back again, and the ring finger looked…mushy? The skin was torn on all three from the impact of the foot, and they were all red, purple, blue, and yellow. Some blood spattered my hand, but I didn’t think from any compound fractures. Mostly just the tearing.