Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,15

spits on the ground. With her board under her arm, she walks in the opposite direction.

* * *

“You’re late!” the Leech yells.

What I don’t say: I hate you!

“You forgot the cat food! What’s He-Cat supposed to eat?”

What I don’t say: Poison!

“Look at the mud you tracked onto the floor! Scrub that now!”

What I don’t say: You scrub it!

On my hands and knees, I wipe the floor clean of scuff marks.

What I do say: “Clean enough?”

“Enough of your sass.”

I see her arm swing back and then forward. If I have the time to see it, why don’t I move away? Why don’t I block it? Why don’t I defend myself? I feel her palm hard across my face. What she just did, hitting me, that’s against the law. She’s not allowed to do that. But it doesn’t matter. The law is meaningless. Who will enforce it for me? Who will take my side against hers?

In my room I cry, but it’s the kind of crying that is silent and only a little wet.

I cry because I’m so alone. Because of the way Raymond hurt my feelings today. Because of the way Alix ignored me. Because a boy like Brendon will never notice me. Because I’ll never have a real family. Because of all the times I held my tongue and this is what it got me. I cry because of so many hurts and insults that I can’t begin to name them all. I still feel the Leech’s slap across my face.

Enough. Enough!

I don’t want any more of this. I want things to be different. My whole life to be different. Especially for me to be different.

It can happen. It has to happen.

I feel something brewing.

I’m ready.

But ready for what?

What?

The rest of the night I spend on research for our Western Civ project. I dive into it. Here’s one of the things I learn:

The ancient world didn’t have much in the way of official laws and punishments. It was eye for an eye. If you hurt me, I hurt you. In ancient Greece the practice of personal vengeance against wrongdoers was considered natural and necessary.

7

I don’t need a map to get to Ambrosia’s. You can’t miss the place, a three-story, red Victorian on a hill overlooking the ocean. It sits all alone up there. Before Ambrosia’s family moved in a few years ago and fixed up the peeling paint and broken window frames, everyone knew it as the old Hamilton place, and it was haunted. Kids dared each other to creep into the overgrown gardens and through the creaking front door. I personally never set foot inside, but I know somebody who knew someone who did, and she ran out screaming about how the invisible hand of eccentric, long-dead Edith Hamilton had tapped her on the shoulder.

I get off the bus and start walking up the road, which quickly narrows and twists. In only a few blocks, our usual crowded surf-town atmosphere turns more isolated and rural. Trees thicken into a canopy over the road, and then there’s a sign with the address. The metal gate creaks and swings open with a light push. Despite all the money that Ambrosia’s family supposedly poured into fixing things up, I’m still getting the creeps. I try to shake off the feeling that eyes are watching me from deep in the trees. I follow a wide gravel driveway as it leads through a stand of redwoods, and beyond that the path curves for a while before opening into a clearing.

I gasp. It’s the landscaping, the intensity of it. It reminds me of the old movie Raymond made me watch four times, Dorothy from the world of black and white landing smack in color-saturated Oz. There’s a rumor that Ambrosia’s family imports flowers and plants from all over the world and somehow manages to get them to grow like crazy in our foggy climate. I can report for a fact that the rumor is absolutely true.

Pinks and blues and chartreuse. Plants climbing up and hanging down. Thousands of flowers in the shape of tiny silvery fairy bells and others like huge upside-down mixing bowls. There’s a line of cactuses as big as men that are draped in shrouds of white cobwebby stuff. There’s one section of the garden in particular that draws me closer. I didn’t know so many different kinds of pure-white flowers existed. White tulips and white roses and heads of what look like albino cabbage and a semicircle of silvery plants with