One Kick

by Chelsea Cain

  “Don’t have sex with him,” James said.

  Kick wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Excuse me?”

  “People like us, it just fucks things up. You know the rule.”

  Kick did know the rule. She had been the one to come up with it after a particularly traumatic teenage encounter with a boy who burst into tears from the pressure he felt to provide “a positive heteronormative sexual experience.” His mother was her shrink.

  The rule was: Don’t have sex with anyone who knows anything about you. (Also, don’t have sex with your shrink’s children—but that was more of a personal guideline, and Kick had expanded it to include all shrinks’ children.) “I don’t even like him,” Kick said. He was a smug, horny liar with a stupid-looking house and a wife, and she was beginning to suspect that he’d let her Glock get blown up on purpose.

  There was that self-satisfied smile again. James swiveled back to his computer. “But you knew who I meant,” he said.

  “You’re my favorite relative,” Kick said.

  “Well, obviously,” James said.

  13

  WHEN KICK OPENED HER eyes the next morning, the first thing she saw was the map. For a second she thought it looked blurry, but when she blinked it came into focus, every state boundary and pushpin. She made herself get up. Her head still hurt but was better, she thought, than the night before. She reached for the ibuprofen at her bedside. Monster burrowed out from under the covers and rolled over on his back next to her, and she gave him his morning tummy rub. He stayed in bed when she got up, eyes half open, watching her. She was sore and stiff, and she stretched before she made her way to her dresser. After she changed into her running clothes, she went to her closet and found her sneakers on the closet floor, next to the boxes of letters. Kick touched the lump on her forehead and turned back to the map. Adam Rice, in duplicate, stared back at her from the wall. Kick went to her laptop and turned it on.

  The news sites were ablaze with stories of Mia Turner’s miraculous recovery. Kick scanned them, but there hadn’t been any developments of interest since she’d read all the latest last night. Instead, despite herself, she clicked on another story: “Mel Riley: On Death’s Door.”

  Kick read it, then snapped her laptop closed.

  She had to force Monster out of bed. The arthritis in his back had made dismounting to the floor a huge production, involving Kick hoisting him in her arms and him going stiff, then panicking, and finally both of them making groaning noises as he was lowered to the floor. Once he was off the bed, Kick brushed the dog hair off her running pants and Monster blinked his milky eyes and panted happily at her, his tail thumping against the floor.

  “I’m not facing her without you,” Kick said.

  Monster followed her to the bathroom. While braiding her hair in the mirror, she noticed that her forehead looked almost normal, which she found vaguely disappointing, especially since she still had the headache.

  “Are you ready for our marathon?” Kick asked him, sliding his red harness over his snout.

  There had been a time when even the sight of that harness would send Monster bounding about like a hyperactive lamb. They would run ten miles together, and even then Monster only stopped because she did. Now they walked a block to the park and Monster sat tied to the leg of a park bench while Kick exercised.

  Today they had the park to themselves. It wasn’t much of a park, just a plot of grass with a children’s playground set, a water fountain, and five public trash bins all marked with differing categories of recyclables. There was no fencing, so the dog people went elsewhere, up Mount Tabor, or to the trails of Forest Park, or to the local dog parks. Fences didn’t much matter with Monster. Kick always kept him on his leash outside anyway. Sometimes her whistle didn’t work out in the world, and he was so frail she worried about him getting hurt.

  Tae kwon do required focus, strength, and endurance, but mostly it required the ability to deal with looking like an ass in public. It was the opposite of disappearing. Kick could have practiced at home or at the dojo, but going to the park got Monster outside, and there was something about looking like an ass in public that Kick found a little appealing. She had been stared at so much by strangers since her rescue, she liked thinking that some of them were staring now because she looked ridiculous and not for all the other reasons.

  She stripped down to her tank top, dropped to the grass, and did leg lifts until her thighs trembled while Monster fixed his glazed eyes at her with his head cocked. Then she got up, brushed the grass off her pants, and did a hundred lunges, followed by fifty step-ups on the bench, with a pat for Monster each time. Squat thrust, single leg squat. They were not pretty, and they were not exercises for the socially insecure. But they were all a necessary foundation so that if Bishop ever showed up again, Kick could use an eagle strike to shatter his pointy jawbone.

  Kick focused on that as she lowered herself into horse stance, widening her knees, bending them, and holding it. She bent her elbows, held her hands in loose fists, palms up, on either side of her waist, and visualized directing a tiger claw strike at Bishop’s trachea. Sweat began to bead on her neck. Her thighs burned. Kick let her eyes close. I shall be a champion of freedom and justice, she repeated in her mind. I shall build a more peaceful world.

  “In tae kwon do, they say that the elbow is the strongest part of the body,” a woman’s voice said.

  Kick snapped her eyes open but otherwise remained motionless, squatting over the grass like she was peeing in the woods.

  Striding toward her, wearing three-hundred-dollar sneakers and all-white exercise clothes, was her mother. “Since when do you know anything about tae kwon do?” Kick asked her, making herself sink lower into the stance even as she could feel her face turn scarlet from the effort.

  “They offer it at the MAC club,” her mother said breezily. She unzipped the white jacket she was wearing. “After Zumba.” She tossed the jacket over the back of the bench, revealing a white halter top that was no bigger than a jogging bra.

  Kick was determined not to give up on her stance even as her mother stood there with her hand on her hip like she was waiting for a hug.

  To anyone watching, they would have looked like friends meeting up to exercise together. Paula Lannigan worked hard to maintain her figure and she spent a fortune on laser treatments and blowouts and eyelash grower and injectables. She said it was for her TV appearances as a spokesperson for the Missing Person Alliance. If a kid went missing, CNN didn’t want to have someone ugly on to talk about it, apparently.

  “What happened to your head?” Paula asked finally.

  “I hit it on something,” Kick grunted, inching her feet farther apart. The wider the stance, the stronger the base. “Did you bring it?”

  Paula pointedly ignored the question, spun back toward the bench, bent down, and took Monster’s face in her hands. “There’s my boy,” she said in a gooey voice.

  Monster snuffled and licked at her, and Kick couldn’t help but think: Traitor. She resumed her mantra: I shall be a champion of freedom and justice. I shall build a more peaceful world. Her pelvis and hamstrings felt like they had gone to war.

  Paula sat down on the bench. “You made me look like a fool last night,” she said with a glare at Kick. “I left a fund-raising dinner and drove three hours to take care of you after I got the call you’d been hurt. I showed up with the press. The police wouldn’t even confirm you had been there.”

  That was just like Kick’s mother, to make it all about her. Sweat trickled down Kick’s face. “I’m feeling much better, thank you,” she said. She could barely get the words out. Monster had rolled over on his back and was letting Paula stroke his belly with the toe of her sneaker.

  “You have to release a statement,” Paula said. “I’ve been fielding calls all day. You know how rare a live rescue is in stranger abductions. People want to know your reaction.”

  “My reaction?” Kick said. Her legs gave out, but she fell beautif
ully. She lay in the grass for a long moment, finding strength in the exhaustion she felt, the dilated vessels, the heat, the surrender. When her legs stopped trembling enough that she could manage it, she slowly stood up. Her mother regarded her cautiously from the bench like a nice lady who’s raised a chimp as a pet but knows it’s only a matter of time before the chimp rips someone’s face off.

  Kick wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist. “I’m pro–child rescuing,” she said. “That’s my reaction.”

  Her mother held her gaze for a moment. Ever since she’d read Elizabeth Smart’s book, she acted like she had some psychological insight into Kick’s behavior. “Nothing more complicated than that?” Paula pressed.

  Kick launched herself backward toward the ground. Her body hit the grass and she rolled on her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Paula asked with a look of horror that Kick found immeasurably satisfying.

  “Falling,” Kick said. She got back to her feet and threw herself backward again, really putting her weight into it. She winced, then got up and did it again.

  “Stop it,” Paula said.

  Kick rolled up into a sitting position. “Did you bring what I asked?”

  Paula unzipped a hitherto hidden pocket on the knee of her white workout capris and withdrew a business-size white envelope. “Is this what I think it is?” she asked.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t open it,” Kick said.

  Paula held the letter to her heart. “This is disturbed, Kathleen. I know how I feel doesn’t matter to you, but if you pursue this, I will seek a conservatorship over you and your affairs, and no judge in the world will deny me.” She extended the letter to Kick, and Kick snatched it out of her hand.

  The heat from her mother’s body had made the envelope warm. Kick gave it a shake and held it up to the sky, inspecting the triangular flap on the back for signs of infiltration. The envelope appeared untampered with, but who the hell could ever know with Paula? Kick flipped the envelope back over and peered through the plastic window at her name printed above her mother’s address. Her mother thought that it had come to her house by mistake—a bureaucratic mix-up. The truth was more complicated.

  Kick’s stomach clenched as her eyes skimmed the official-looking medical seal on the return address, but she was sure her mother hadn’t noticed.

  “I can take care of myself,” Kick said. She folded the envelope in half, then in half again, and tucked it carefully in her pocket.

  “You can’t take care of yourself,” Paula said, crossing her arms. “You can’t even take care of Monster.”

  Monster had managed to wrap his leash around the leg of the park bench four times, and was blinking at Kick balefully. Kick’s face burned. “Don’t talk about my dog,” she said.

  “Your dog?” Paula said with a look of astonishment. “Who do you think took care of him while you were gone? Who walked him, who house-trained him, who took him to the vet when he was sick? He slept in my bed every night for five years. Look at him.” Monster had stretched out sideways on the grass with his mouth open and his tongue out. “He’s almost sixteen years old. He can barely walk. You want to be a grown-up? Being a grown-up means making tough decisions and living with them.”

  Kick clenched her teeth. Tough decisions? She’d made decisions tougher than her mother could even begin to imagine. If that’s what made a grown-up, Kick was middle-aged. Paula was the teenager. “He slept in a crate in Marnie’s room,” Kick said.

  Paula’s mouth twisted.

  “Monster slept in Marnie’s room,” Kick repeated, enjoying the rising color in her mother’s cheeks. Kick had known all along. Her sister had thrown it in her face enough times. “In her room, not with you.”

  “Your father is allergic,” Paula sputtered.

  Kick’s father had bailed on them almost ten years ago. At some point they’d have to start referring to him in the past tense.

  Kick rolled her eyes and gave Monster’s harness a tug so he’d stand up. “I have to go.” She wanted to make a breezy exit, but it took some doing to unwind Monster’s leash from the bench.

  “Burn the letter,” her mother ordered. She looked pointedly at Monster. “Or I will take control of your affairs.”

  Had Paula really just threatened to euthanize her dog? “You wouldn’t,” Kick said.

  “I’m not afraid of you hating me, Kit,” Paula said. “You decided to hate me a long time ago.”

  “You don’t get it,” Kick said, pulling Monster closer to her. His white eyes were half closed. His ear twitched. He had been such a sweet puppy. When Mel appeared out of nowhere and told her he’d help find him, Kick had been so grateful, she hadn’t even questioned it. “I lost him once,” she said. “I’m not losing him again.”

  “That was fifteen years ago,” Paula said. “You’ve been back with us for ten.” She tried to put her hand on Kick’s arm, but Kick backed away. “A decade,” her mother said, as if that were any sort of length of time at all.

  Ten years to the day, but who was counting?

  “I have to give you credit,” Kick said to her mother. “I thought you’d make a bigger deal about wanting some bogus family photo op today.”

  Paula took a step closer to Kick and cupped Kick’s face in her hands. “Long lens, kitten,” she said. She brushed a stray piece of hair off of Kick’s forehead and frowned at the faint contusion there. “It’s more flattering anyway,” she said. She gave Kick a wink, took a step back, snatched her white jacket off the bench, and jogged off.

  Kick turned slowly and saw a quick flash from the back of a black SUV, the telltale reflection of a camera lens.

  Paula was halfway across the park, a bobbing figure, getting more distant by the moment. The black SUV sped off with a squeal of rubber on concrete. Kick sank onto the bench, defeated. She should have taken advantage of the fact that Paula had removed her jacket. Kick knew four ways to kill someone with a jacket. Now she regretted not trying any of them out.

  Monster nuzzled at her feet. Kick gazed across the park. Her mother was gone. She reached into her pocket and extracted the envelope. It already looked the worse for wear, wrinkled, its corners bent. She examined it with a blank kind of resignation, then slowly tore it open and withdrew the letter from inside. It had been months since Kick had gone to the Trident Medical Group to get tested. She hadn’t told anyone, not even James. It was a simple blood test, funded by a prisoner rights organization. Full medical confidentiality. Kick had it all planned. The results would come back negative, she would be absolved, Mel would die, and that would be that. Kick had done the research. The odds of a kidney match between nonrelatives was 1 in 100,000.

  And if she was a match, well, it didn’t mean she had to do anything about it.

  Kick unfolded the letter and read it. She stared at it for a long time afterward, not knowing how to feel. Then she worked the letter back into the envelope.

  Across the park, the leaves on the trees were coming in and out of focus—one moment individual shapes, the next an indistinguishable blur.

  14

  SAN DIEGO SMELLED LIKE dust and salt, and it was exactly the same temperature indoors as it was outdoors. Beth was wearing her new blue swimsuit, an orange towel wrapped around her chest. The wet suit stuck to her skin. Her eyes burned from the chlorine. Everything was a little blurry. She blinked.

  There was a boy in Mr. Klugman’s kitchen.

  She hadn’t seen another kid up close in so long, she thought he might be imaginary.

  Neither of them moved.

  “Can I have a snack?” Beth asked.

  Mr. Klugman appeared from the dining room and Beth could see her father leaning back in his chair, watching through the doorway. He always watched her when Mr. Klugman was around.

  “Go back downstairs,” Mr. Klugman said to the boy.

  They had been in San Diego for two days. Mel and Mr. Klugman went to the store every day and came home with camera equipment and costumes.<
br />
  “Let them play,” Mel called from the dining room.

  The boy was eyeing her like she might bite him.

  Mr. Klugman shrugged.

  Beth wanted someone to play with. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

  The boy looked at Mr. Klugman before he answered. “James,” he said. “I’m James.”

  “Do you want to play in the pool?” Beth asked.

  “I’m not allowed,” the boy said.

  “Oh,” Beth said, with a rueful glance toward the pool in the backyard.

  Her father got up from his chair and came through the doorway and stood behind her, and she pressed herself back against him.

  “Why don’t you show her your room, James?” her father asked the boy gently.

  The boy gazed up at her father, right into his eyes. Beth could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Then the boy turned away and trudged across the kitchen toward the open door that led down the dark basement stairs. He looked back at her. “C’mon,” he said.

  Beth peeled herself away from Mel and followed him.

  15

  KICK DID NOT REMEMBER walking home from the park, so she was surprised when she found herself sitting on the front steps of her apartment building, Monster on his haunches next to her, head cocked attentively. The envelope from the Trident Medical Group was back in her hand. She touched her forehead and winced.

  “I told you to get that checked out,” Bishop said.

  Kick whirled around, disoriented. Bishop was leaning against her building’s front door. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. There were two Bishops, actually—superimposed, one just slightly to the left of the other, both wearing black baseball caps, black jeans, and gray T-shirts. They merged and stopped shimmering. Kick stuffed the envelope back into her pants pocket, then got to her feet and pulled the keys from her other pocket so she could get inside and Google “concussions.”

  “We need to talk,” Bishop said as she approached.