blood. That Syrena wounds heal faster. Still, shattered glass couldn’t cut her thick Syrena skin. Is she shot after all?
While I’m studying Mom, she’s studying Rachel. She’s waging war with herself and it’s all over her face:
Leave her.
But Emma will fight.
We have no choice but to leave her.
But Emma will make it difficult.
LEAVE HER.
Finally, she sighs and her face changes from war to resignation. I’m not sure if her conscience weighed more than her flight instinct, or if she just didn’t want to scrap with me out in broad daylight for anyone to see.
Together, we walk the ten feet back to Rachel’s car. The driver’s side door is still ajar and the alerting jingle might just give me an eye twitch. I shut the door before joining my mom and Rachel.
Mom kneels beside her. “You’ve been shot,” she tells Rachel.
“You shot me, you crazy bit—”
“We don’t have time for the ER protocol crap, Mom,” I cut in. “She knows she’s been shot. She’s alert. Help. Her.”
Mom nods. She looks at Rachel’s clenched fist where it’s balled against her lower stomach. “I’m sorry I shot you. I need to look at that. Please.”
Rachel gives her The Stank Eye. Rachel is very good at The Stank Eye.
“I’m a nurse, remember?” Mom says, her voice dripping with impatience. “I can help you.”
Rachel inhales and eases her hand away from her stomach, but I can’t bring myself to look at it so I just watch Mom’s face to maybe gauge how bad the wound is. I imagine dark blood and entrails and …
“What the…?” Mom gasps. As an ER nurse, Mom’s seen a lot of things. But by her expression, she’s never seen this. I’m thinking it must be way serious. Also, I’m thinking I might throw up.
Until Rachel slaps a handcuff around Mom’s wrist. “I’m sorry, Nalia. I hope you understand.” Then she clinks the other end of the cuff around her own wrist. I steal a glance at Rachel’s very clean, very intact, very non-bloody-entrails T-shirt.
Rachel is a smart woman.
Mom lunges for her, hands aiming for her throat. Rachel pulls some karate-chop-move thing and slams Mom against the door behind her. “Knock it off, hon. I don’t want to really hurt you.”
“You … you told Galen you’d been shot,” I stammer. “I heard you tell him that. Why would you lie to him?”
Rachel shrugs. “I was shot.” She glances down at her feet. There’s a good-sized hole near the big toe of her boot, and bit of red staining the edges of it. “And I’d better be able to wear high heels after this, or one of you is going to swim with the fishes.” Then she laughs at her own stupid Mob joke.
Mom plops down beside Rachel and leans against the car, too, in obvious surrender. She looks up at me. It’s a look brimming with “I told you so.” And I already know what she’s going to say next. We won’t make it very far before someone notices two women handcuffed together. Bathroom breaks will be impossible. Any public place will be impossible. I’m guessing Mom didn’t anticipate needing a hacksaw on this vacation of ours. But I know what she expects from me now. And that’s just too freaking bad. I hold up my hand. “I’m not going without you.”
“Emma—”
“Not happening.”
“Emma—”
“No.” I whirl around so I don’t have to look at her pleading face. Not to mention I feel guilty now because it’s technically my fault that my mom is handcuffed to the world’s best manipulator. Mom groans and beats her head against the door. Which means she knows that I’m not going anywhere.
Catching my breath, I lean against the front of the car and focus on the individual blades of grass hedging my flip-flop, trying not to throw up or pass out or both. In the far distance, a vehicle approaches—the first one to witness the scene of our accident. A million explanations run through my mind, but I can’t imagine a single scenario that would solve all—or any—of our issues right now.
None of us can risk going to the hospital. Mom technically doesn’t qualify as human, so I’m sure we’d get a pretty interesting diagnosis. Rachel is technically supposed to be deceased as of the last ten years or so, and while she probably has a plethora of fake IDs, she’s still antsy around cops, which will surely be called to the hospital in the event of a gunshot wound, even if it is just in the