The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,68

grind against my skull. That place doesn’t exist.

“Shit,” I mutter, letting my head fall forward again. It’s like a sunflower that’s grown too heavy for its stalk, and my neck screams against the weight.

I can’t move, and while I know Tress thinks the steadily growing brick wall in front of me is what’s going to make me come clean, the true power in her plan is that she’s forcing me to be still. To be quiet.

Tress Montor is forcing me to think about shit.

We camped out in our backyards a lot, lying on our sleeping bags and looking at the stars, Goldie-Dog tucked between us. We talked, pointing out shapes we saw, trying to differentiate stars from satellites, planets from planes. But mostly . . . we were still.

Still and quiet, and together.

I’m not still anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. My life is a rush and a whirl, running from one thing to the next, frantically planning the future and making sure—absolutely sure—that I will never be bored. That I will never be alone. That I will never have time to think.

Now, it’s all I’ve got.

I exhale, my breath sick and rotting in this increasingly small space. I can feel my lips, dehydrated and pocked, sticking to my teeth. I bite down, peeling off a strip of thin skin. I roll it around, get some saliva going, and spit, trying to clean my mouth.

My left foot slips in the mess at my feet, and I go down, my arm jerking hard at the wrist, scraping back skin. I cry out, my voice hoarse and lost as my throat swells, choked tight with tears.

“I can’t do this right now,” I say, like it’s a reasonable statement, like maybe we can reschedule my torture for another time. But it’s also true—I can’t do this. I’m going to lose my mind. I can’t be here.

But I don’t have to be, do I?

I went away for a little bit, earlier. Away to Tress’s yard and that night in fifth grade and an empty driveway and Annabelle Montor’s confused face and Lee coming back late, behind the wheel looking . . .

How did he look? I didn’t know then. All I could think of was getting home before I seized, the entire world shrunk down to the electrical currents in my brain and how they might undermine me at any minute.

But I’m older now, and I know some things. I know how men look when they’re caught.

“Uh-oh, Lee,” I say to myself, holding back a giggle. “What were you up to?”

I close my eyes and think of Patrick Vance. I thought I’d loved him. He went to college last year and on to better things. That had been his wording, but what he meant was, There’s a lot of pussy here and yours isn’t. I could still see his face when I surprised him, knocking on his dorm door only to have him answer it in his boxers, a brunette with sex-bump hair in his bed.

Yep. That face. Patrick’s face. Lee’s face.

The manacle pulls on my wrist, but it’s actually Annabelle’s fingers, tight, gripping, grinding my bones together because she doesn’t know where else to put her anger right now. Lee doesn’t even get the car in park before Annabelle throws open the back door, helping me inside even though I try to squirm away, try to escape the pinch of her hands. She tears open the passenger door, falls into her seat, her mouth a grim line.

“Drive,” she says.

“What’s going on?” Lee asks, voice wary, frightened.

Annabelle’s mouth moves, and I know there are words back there, words she wants to say right now, can hardly keep in. They’re going to roll out like boulders and crush her husband. She glances back, looks at me, considers her options.

“Felicity doesn’t feel good; she needs to go home,” Annabelle says. They’re tight words, harsh, bouncing off her teeth as she bites them clean, not wanting to let more out while I’m here. I shrink into the back seat, balling up my nightgown in my fists as the tension in the car elevates, along with a smell that’s almost overpowering me.

It’s like this when I’m about to seize—everything brighter, stronger, harder, faster, louder. It’s a cloying scent, heavy like flowers, maybe fruit, right on the verge of rotting. I take a deep gasp, searching for fresher air, a pocket somewhere in this car that the perfume hasn’t permeated.

Because that’s what it is. Perfume.

Annabelle Montor always