The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,80

too, and I don’t want to watch this so I walk away. Goldie follows me, her nose pressing into my palm, then into my neck because I’ve fallen down and there is someone looking at me but it’s not Gretchen or David. It’s a nicer face. I crawl closer and there are hands on me, touching, and it’s not a human. It’s almost human, but not quite human, and that means it’s better because being all human is not always good.

Almost human > Human

Human ≠ Good

And I’m touching it back, and it runs its hands down my arms and touches my hair, and there are bars between us, why are there bars between us? I am the dangerous one who should be inside, should be kept away. Should not be here. Goldie presses against me, and there is warmth from her and warmth from the hands and this is what Tress’s life is like now, all animals no humans, and oh my God I want this for myself.

I want to know Tress now, new Tress, this animal life. I want to share it with her and feel her here in this place, and I’m on my feet and I’m going to the next thing, black and white stripes and big eyes that I’m lost in and wiry hair that I run my fingers through and a tap on my back, and there’s a bird face and it’s ugly and I love it and the wings unfurl and they are beautiful and I show my own arms and we talk like this now. Not words. Not words painted on a sign.

I didn’t come here for that; I came here for this. I came to find Tress again and there’s a path and maybe that’s how I find her because she is also not human anymore she is an animal and she would be here, she would be with them and I will find her again. And I’m following and I’m walking where she has walked and I am running and our feet are the same and we are the same and we are together again and Goldie is tugging on my hand now pulling, because we don’t use words now we do this and—

A snap. A flash.

And pain.

Not a flash of David’s phone and not a snap of a picture being taken and not pain of words on a sign but real pain on my foot because it is not Tress’s foot and we are not the same and I forgot that and now I am in water and I am drowning.

It’s . . . familiar.

Why is that?

These are my thoughts and they are clear and cogent for the first time since forever, and I know that I have forgotten more than Tress. I have forgotten much more, but now there is Goldie and she is with me, and she has her mouth on my arm and she is gentle with not teeth and she is pulling me away from water and toward land but something else has teeth and it is coming and I try to tell her but how we talk now doesn’t work anymore and I don’t have words either and there is a crack.

And there is no more Goldie.

Chapter 68

Tress

“Yeah, that electric fence, it’ll get you,” I hear myself saying, an idiotic response to the story of how my dog died.

“Hurts, right?” I ask, digging into what Felicity just told me, doing the same thing she was, trying to find the scraps of what we still share.

Like being shocked by an electric fence.

Like knowing how something dies.

“I loved that dog,” I say, and it’s another dumb thing to say, but it’s true, and like a lot of true things it’s also incredibly sad.

I’m crying when I lay the next row.

Chapter 69

Felicity

Tress’s hands shake a little as she lays the ninth row of bricks, drops of her blood mixing with the mortar. She doesn’t speak as she does it, and I don’t argue. There’s nothing to say. I might have ranted and raved at her about the junior-class secretary thing, but I deserve the bricks she’s laying right now.

I try to calculate, measure the distance that’s left. But there’s an echo in my head still, Tress’s words not letting go of me.

Cheaters gonna cheat. . . .

Cheaters gonna cheat and I know how it feels to drown. These thoughts hold hands in my head, forming a chain leading back into the dark parts of my mind, the ones