Defy Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,1

and when the murmur of the crowd grows into a roar, I know I have no choice.

I have to go.

Warner

“I’m going to kill him,” she says, her small hands forming fists. “I’m going to kill him—”

“Ella, don’t be silly,” I say, and walk away.

“One day,” she says, chasing after me, her eyes bright with tears. “If he doesn’t stop hurting you, I swear I’ll do it. You’ll see.”

I laugh.

“It’s not funny!” she cries.

I turn to face her. “No one can kill my dad. He’s unkillable.”

“No one is unkillable,” she says.

I ignore her.

“Why doesn’t your mum do anything?” she says, and she grabs my arm.

When I meet her eyes she looks different. Scared.

“Why doesn’t anyone stop him?”

The wounds on my back are no longer fresh, but, somehow, they still hurt. Ella is the only person who knows about these scars, knows what my dad started doing to me on my birthday two years ago. Last year, when all the families came to visit us in California, Ella had barged into my room, wanting to know where Emmaline and Nazeera had gone off to, and she’d caught me staring at my back in the mirror.

I begged her not to say anything, not to tell anyone what she saw, and she started crying and said that we had to tell someone, that she was going to tell her mom and I said, “If you tell your mom I’ll only get into more trouble. Please don’t say anything, okay? He won’t do it again.”

But he did do it again.

And this time he was angrier. He told me I was seven years old now, and that I was too old to cry.

“We have to do something,” she says, and her voice shakes a little. Another tear steals down the side of her face and, quickly, she wipes it away. “We have to tell someone.”

“Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

“But—”

“Ella. Please.”

“No, we have t—”

“Ella,” I say, cutting her off. “I think there’s something wrong with my mom.”

Her face falls. Her anger fades. “What?”

I’d been terrified, for weeks, to say the words out loud, to make my fears real. Even now, I feel my heart pick up.

“What do you mean?” she says. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s . . . sick.”

Ella blinks at me. Confused. “If she’s sick we can fix her. My mum and dad can fix her. They’re so smart; they can fix anything. I’m sure they can fix your mum, too.”

I’m shaking my head, my heart racing now, pounding in my ears. “No, Ella, you don’t understand— I think—”

“What?” She takes my hand. Squeezes. “What is it?”

“I think my dad is killing her.”

Kenji

We’re all running.

Base isn’t far from here, and our best option is to go on foot. But the minute we hit the open air, the group of us—myself, Castle, Winston, injured Brendan, Ian, and Alia—go invisible. Someone shouts a breathless thanks in my direction, but I’m not the one doing this.

My fists clench.

Nazeera.

These last couple of days with her have been making my head spin. I never should’ve trusted her. First she hates me, then she hates me even more, and then, suddenly, she decides I’m not an asshole and wants to be my friend? I can’t believe I fell for it. I can’t believe I’m such an idiot. She’s been playing me this whole time. This girl just shows up out of nowhere, magically mimics my exact supernatural ability, and then—right when she pretends to be best friends with Juliette—we’re ambushed at the symposium and Juliette sort of murders six hundred people?

No way. I call bullshit.

No way this was all some big coincidence.

Juliette attended that symposium because Nazeera encouraged her to go. Nazeera convinced Juliette it was the right thing to do. And then five seconds before Brendan gets shot, Nazeera tells me to run? Tells me we have the same powers?

Bullshit.

I can’t believe I let myself be distracted by a pretty face. I should’ve trusted Warner when he told me she was hiding something.

Warner.

God. I don’t even know what happened to him.

The minute we get back to base our invisibility is lifted. I can’t know for sure if that means Nazeera went her own way, but we can’t slow down long enough to find out. Quickly, I project a new layer of invisibility over our team; I’ll have to keep it up just long enough to get us all to a safe space, and just being back on base isn’t assurance enough. The soldiers are going