Pretty Fierce

by Kieran Scott

  Scarface laughed. He brought the knife to my cheek, and I tried to recoil, but I couldn’t move. My feet were tied to the legs of the chair. I couldn’t move at all. The tip of the blade dug into my skin.

  I screamed.

  “I’m going to give you a scar,” he said, “A scar exactly. Like. Mine.”

  The Handsome Man sighed and checked his watch as the pain dug deeper and deeper and my scream grew shriller and shriller. The floorboards in the corner groaned again, and my mother stepped into the light. She looked angry. Disappointed. She couldn’t even look me in the eye.

  “Mom!” I screamed as the blade cut toward my ear. “Do something! Stop him! Stop him, please!”

  “You’re the only one who can stop this, Kiki,” she snapped. “You have to stop. Now!”

  I woke with a start and glanced around the train car. The sun had gone down, and the only light came from the overhead lamps. Oliver was passed out. My heart lurched at the sight of him with his eyes closed, but then he muttered something under his breath, clearly alive and well. But the dream clung to me.

  The Handsome Man. I had almost forgotten what he’d looked like until that dream had brought his image back in detail. I remembered the strange things he’d said to my mother that day. The way he’d focused his dark eyes on her, as if he was seeing a precious jewel for the first time—and he wanted to crack it between his teeth.

  I pushed my hair back from my face and took a few calming breaths, trying to soothe my panicked heart. The images from the dream began to fade, but my cheek stung where the German had cut me two days before. The wound felt fresh. I put my feet flat on the floor, and my heart sunk into my toes.

  My backpack was not where I had left it.

  I leaned forward to see under my seat. It wasn’t there. I checked under Oliver’s seat, under the seats in front of ours, and then, in a fit of desperation, in the overhead rack. Our duffels were still there. And Sophia. We still had our clothes and some food. But my backpack was gone.

  My foot slipped and I saw the edge of my family photo sticking out from under my boot. I bent to retrieve it, using the side of my sleeve to wipe away the tread marks. At least I hadn’t been robbed of the photo.

  But the bag that held our money, my iPad, my gun—everything of real value I possessed—was gone.

  chapter 17

  OLIVER

  “I can’t believe how hard this sucks.”

  “Will you stop? It’s not your fault,” Kaia said, turning to walk backward and sticking her thumb in the air, her board tucked under her arm. The driver of the Chevy coming toward us honked his horn but didn’t slow down. Kaia waved her hand in front of her face, trying to bat away the dust the car’s tires had kicked up.

  “I was supposed to stay awake. That was my only job. Instead I crashed, and look what happened!” I adjusted the strap of my duffel on my shoulder. The sleeping bag tied to it bumped my hip as we walked. I was dying from the heat of walking for an hour under the midday Texas sun. To make everything worse, I’d woken up with a mind-bending headache that not even half a bottle of Excedrin could touch, which didn’t exactly put me in the best mood. “I should go home. What’m I even doing here?”

  “Oliver—”

  “No! I’m serious. You’d probably be better off on your own.”

  I couldn’t believe we’d made it this far, that we’d gotten so close to Kaia’s home and maybe some answers and, at the very least, a shower, and some random jerk had stolen her bag. All that money. Gone. If only a couple of bills had slipped out of her bag, like they had back at the rest stop. Or if I had kept the thousand in my pocket when she’d told me to. Then at least we’d have enough money for a cab. Why couldn’t I have woken up and caught the guy trying to make off with her stuff? Why did I sleep through everything?

  “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.” Kaia threw her palm up as another car blew by us. “I was too tired to think. I should’ve at least wrapped the strap around my leg or something.”

  “So we both suck. Great. That makes me feel so much better.”

  I chugged some water, hoping it would take the edge off the pain in the back of my skull. It didn’t.

  “Could it be any hotter in this godforsaken place?”

  Kaia dropped her duffel and skateboard in the dirt on the side of the road, and put her hands on her hips. “What is your deal?”

  “My deal?” I asked, annoyed. “What do you mean what’s my deal?”

  “I mean, I love you, but if you don’t shift gears in the next two seconds, I can’t be responsible for my actions.” An eighteen-wheeler laid on his horn as he drove by, and it was like someone was drilling an ice pick directly into my head. The dust pelted my face like a thousand tiny cannonballs. “I already have enough going on without your cranky pants attitude.”

  I stared at Kaia, and as irritated and overtired, dirty and emotionally spent and in-pain as I was, a laugh bubbled up in my throat.

  “I’m sorry. Did you just call me ‘cranky pants’?”

  She almost smiled but didn’t. “I believe the phrase I used was ‘cranky pants attitude.’ I called your attitude ‘cranky pants.’”

  I laughed and Kaia did too. I closed the space between us and wrapped my arms around her tightly, which prompted another tractor-trailer to blare on his horn. Kaia turned her face and rested her cheek against my chest. My headache eased ever so slightly.

  “I’m sorry. You’re right,” I said into her hair. “Whining about the situation doesn’t help the situation. Doing something does.”

  “That’s very deep,” she told me.

  “One of my grief counselors said that to me like six months after my mom died and two months after my dad left.”

  “He said that to a foster kid who couldn’t do anything to help his situation?” Kaia looked at me, appalled. “Sounds like he wasn’t very good at his job.”

  “Yeah, he was pretty much an asshole.” I ran my hand over her cheek and kissed her lips. “I wish I’d known you back then.”

  “When we were eight?” she said. “No you don’t. I was in a very antiboys stage at eight and I had a working slingshot. I probably would’ve nailed you with a rock.”

  “At least I would’ve had your attention.”

  I leaned down and kissed her, and for a moment everything was okay. Except when we parted, we were still stuck on a highway on the west side of Houston, miles away from her house on the east side, and my head was still throbbing. I spotted another strip mall in the distance. Houston seemed to be made up entirely of strip malls. But this one had a garish sign strung across the front of one store. It read: WE BUY AND SELL USED CELL PHONES!

  And suddenly I had an idea. Maybe, after all this time, I could finally put the asshole’s advice to good use.

  “Come on.” I tugged on Kaia’s hand, hoofing it double-time toward the mall.

  “Where’re we going?”

  “I’m going to stop whining and start doing.”

  It wasn’t until we were standing directly under the sign that Kaia figured out my plan.

  “I can’t sell my phone,” she said. “What if my mom texts me again?”

  “We’re not selling your phone. We’re selling mine.”

  I opened the door to the shop, and the air conditioning blasted out, throwing its arms around me like an old friend. Sweet relief. The pounding in my head dialed down to a dull tap. Kaia grabbed my hand and pulled me back to the sidewalk.

  “No, no, no. You can’t sell your phone. You worked forever to save enough to buy that thing.”

  Which was true. My part-time job at the auto parts place paid minimum wage before taxes and Robin took half of my net pay and I still had to buy some things for myself. Like lunch. And pencils. And underwear. My phone was my prized possession. But it no longer mattered. It was part of my past—a past that I had no in
tention of revisiting.

  “Let’s see how much my work is worth in Texas.”

  I tugged out the phone, grinned, and walked into the store. Ten minutes of haggling later, I walked out with a hundred dollars.

  “You think this is enough to get a cab back to your place?” I asked Kaia.

  She took a deep breath. “Only one way to find out.”

  chapter 18

  KAIA

  Oliver was bartering with the cab driver, trying to tip him with cans of soup, when we pulled up in front of my house, and their conversation faded into the background. A lump the size of a soccer ball formed in my throat. The house was exactly the same.

  Same olive-green siding, same intricate white trim, same yellow and purple flowers bursting from the flower boxes. My parents’ rocking chairs sat on the porch, angled toward each other as if waiting for them to walk out the front door with glasses of lemonade. Next to them was the wicker couch that I’d always laid out on, my knees crooked over the arm, my bare feet dangling down the side closest to my father, so he could tickle them. The door was the same burgundy color and looked freshly painted. The lawn was recently mowed.

  Was someone living here?

  My heart seized.

  Was my mother living here?

  What if I walked through the door, and she was sitting on the couch in her old, fluffy pink slippers, waiting for me? What if, all along, all I’d needed to do was come home? The idea made me queasy with excitement and dread.

  The taxi’s door opened, and Oliver was there, right in front of me. I blinked up at him. I hadn’t even heard him get out of the car. He offered his hand, but I ignored it and shoved myself out, feeling silly. I walked to the end of the driveway and looked at the garage. I could see the top of my father’s silver SUV through the garage door window. I felt disoriented, as if I’d stepped into a time warp.

  “What?” Oliver asked. “What is it?”

  “My dad’s car. It’s still here.”

  If anyone was living here, it wasn’t a new family.

  My pulse raced. I bounded up the porch steps and over to the fourth shingle under the second window, jabbing my fingers up under the crease. A key fell into my hand and the lump in my throat widened.

  “You okay?” Oliver asked.

  All I could do was nod. Tears were threatening to spill over. I shoved the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door, quaking with pent-up emotions—anticipation battling it out with hope and anger and fear.

  No one was home. That was obvious the second I stepped inside. The air was stale with the scent of too many hot days with windows locked tight. A thin layer of dust had accumulated on the table next to the stairs, where my mother’s favorite framed picture of our family sat. I ran a finger through the dust and swallowed.

  Oliver squeezed my shoulders. “So,” he said lightly. “This is where you grew up.”

  “Sort of. I mean, we were hardly ever here, but…we were here more than any other place. My parents called it ‘home base.’”

  Oliver kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulders again, grounding me. Reminding me that even though my parents weren’t here, he was. He headed toward the foot of the stairs.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked, swiping a hand across my cheek.

  His fingers curled around the top of the newel post and he grinned. “I’m going to go see your room.”

  Oh crap.

  “Oliver! Oliver, no!”

  But he’d gotten a lead on me. By the time I made it to the second floor he was already throwing open doors. To the bathroom, the linen closet, the spare room, and then—

  “Don’t,” I said, eyeing his hand on the doorknob.

  “Oh, but I have to,” he replied playfully.

  He opened the door, and a shaft of pink light engulfed him.

  “Oh. My. God. It’s like a My Little Pony shrine in here!”

  My love of pink had come from my mother. But while she had used the color as a mere accent—a bag strap here, a beaded bracelet there, the occasional stripe on a headband—I had embraced the color with every fiber of my being. When I was four.

  “You cannot judge me by this room!” I said, arriving at the door as he flung himself, face up, onto my canopy bed.

  Damn. It was even pinker than I remembered. A light pink rug, pink and hot pink striped walls, a pink flowered canopy and pink plaid sheets. There were pink stuffed animals, a pink-framed mirror, pink bookshelves filled with pink and purple and white books and toys and knickknacks. There was no color in the room other than pink and white and purple. Except for Oliver. He was all gray T-shirt and tan skin and blond hair.

  “I never had you pegged for a Disney Princess,” Oliver said, pushing himself up on his elbows.

  I walked over and sat next to him. The bed gave a familiar squeak. “I thought about changing it when I was thirteen, but we never got around to it. We were rarely here, so it didn’t seem to matter. I never even thought about the fact that a guy might see it one day.”

  “Are you saying I’m the first guy you ever invited into your Barbie Dreamhouse?”

  “I didn’t exactly invite you,” I pointed out, shoving his chest. “You barreled right in.”

  Oliver reached an arm around my waist. He got that look in his eye he only got when we were entirely alone. It made my heart catch.

  “Just like the day we met.”

  I smiled. The day we met. Probably the single best day of my life.

  Now, an entire year of kisses and phone calls and texts and adventures and secrets and whispers and near-death experiences between us, we were sitting in my pink explosion of a room, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer luck I felt at finding him. I leaned down and kissed him. He pulled me to him, pressing the whole length of his body against mine, and slid his hand under my short hair, around the back of my neck. We kissed for a long time, legs intertwining, chests bumping, hands exploring. For those few spare minutes, there was only Oliver.

  Then he rolled me onto my back, and I winced as one particular bruise on my spine ached. I sat up, remembering why we were here. Oliver almost fell off the bed.

  “What? What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Oliver,” I replied, gasping for air. “I have to show you something.”

  chapter 19

  OLIVER

  Kaia paused for a moment on the threshold to her parents’ room. It was so quick, someone who didn’t know her as well as I knew her might not have even noticed. I could only imagine how hard it must be for her to be there without them. I couldn’t even remember what my parents’ bedroom had looked like before my mom got sick. My only memories of it were lines of orange prescription bottles, the raspy sound of the breathing machine, and my mom’s soft skin when she held my hand.

  Kaia walked over to the closet. The door creaked as she opened it. She shoved aside a row of men’s suits and shirts and disappeared inside.

  “Kaia? What’re you—”

  I stopped when I heard the hum followed by a low click. When I stepped in behind Kaia, she was no longer in the closet. She’d entered a whole new room, and the sight of it made my inner ten-year-old jump up and cheer.

  “Whoa.”

  “Welcome to the Batcave,” Kaia said.

  The Batcave was a long, shallow room with two utilitarian tables and two leather chairs. Set up on the tables were four impressive flat-screen monitors. Tall towers of black servers covered the wall behind those monitors. There were blinking lights and wires everywhere. As I stepped inside I saw glass-front cases lining another wall, and inside were shelves upon shelves of spy gear. There were goggles, glasses, watches, cameras, helmets, recording devices, pens in velvet cases that must have served some purpose other than writing. Another cabinet held a crossbow, nunchakus, a staff, a few pairs of handcuffs, some handguns, and about a dozen glinting knives
.

  “This is intense,” I said under my breath.

  Kaia took a handgun from the weapons case—one that looked exactly like the gun she’d had in her stolen backpack—and laid it on the table, then booted up the computers. The monitors blinked to life, their screens glowing bright green. Each one displayed a box in the center of its screen asking for a password. Kaia typed on one of the keyboards and the monitors turned black.

  “We’re in,” she said.

  “Your family is so cool,” I said.

  Kaia went rigid, and I realized that was a pretty dumb thing to say. Her father was most likely dead, and her presumed-dead mom had abandoned her for more than a year and then basically told her to screw off.

  But still. At least she’d had a family for sixteen years. At least she had parents who loved her for a while. She could remember how that felt. And this… I’m sorry, but this set up was awesome.

  Kaia plugged her phone into one of the computers. “Thank God this was in my pocket and not in my bag,” she muttered.

  Instantly a program booted up. She sat and typed like crazy, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

  “Come on,” she said under her breath. Her knee danced its own manic hip-hop routine under the desk. “Come on…”

  After a few slams on the return button, she cursed under her breath.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Can you track your mom?”

  She swiveled the chair around and shoved herself away from the seat, the anger pulsating off of her. “Sure. Sure I can track her.” She grasped her locket and pulled the chain taut until the skin of her neck turned white around it. “But it’s gonna take hours. Maybe even days.”

  “Kaia, are you—”

  “I’m fine, all right?” She paced past me out into the bedroom, her boots leaving footprints in the thick, light gray carpet. “I’m great. My mother wants to play games now? Fine! We’ll play her games! We’ll play her fucking games.”

  Kaia stormed over to one of the dressers, yanked out the top drawer and upended the contents all over the floor. Underwear and bras fluttered into a pile at her feet. She turned and, with a cry, threw the drawer at the wall. It made a brown dent and thumped to the floor. Then she went for the next one.