by R. J. Blain
Inside was another charm for my bracelet, fashioned to match my brand new living nightmare.
“Your dad is so cool,” Carla said, her eyes fixed on the spider. As though sensing he had an admirer, he skittered out of his hiding place.
The tarantula had at least as many eyes as it had legs. A shudder coursed through me. “If you want my father, you are welcome to fly to Seattle. I’ll drive to Los Angeles. No one will notice.”
Pedro laughed, patting my shoulder. “What will you name him?”
I narrowed my eyes at Pedro. “My father really got my sister a kitten?”
Pulling out his phone, he showed me a picture sent from my father. I sighed as the weight of defeat settled over me. The kitten was black and fit inside the palm of my sister’s hand. Its eyes weren’t even open, and Lisa had it pressed to her cheek, grinning from ear to ear with blissful delight.
Carla rested her chin on my shoulder to have a look at the image. “You have a twin?”
“Unfortunately. Ah, Kitty Killer!” I announced, pointing at the spider. “His name is Kitty Killer, because I don’t think Father will let me feed my sister to him.”
“You are not naming such a majestic creature Kitty Killer,” Pedro scolded, putting his phone away.
“Majestic?” I squinted at the tarantula. “Do you think it’s big enough to eat the cat?”
“Poor Cariña, I’m afraid not. Do you like him?”
Fenerec could smell lies, I reminded myself. I drew a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a sigh as I took a closer look at my new roommate. The color of Kitty Killer’s legs reminded me of Richard’s car and his ridiculous tie. “I like his color,” I declared, and because it was the truth, Pedro grinned at me, bending down to kiss my forehead.
It didn’t change the fact my father was going to pay for his crimes, one way or another.
I think Carla liked Kitty Killer more than she liked me, but I didn’t mind. She spent the next hour glued to the aquarium, cooing at the tarantula.
As if sensing I was seriously considering making a run for the border, Pedro hung around and helped me pack for my trip back to Seattle. Once my classmate left, he closed the door, clicking his tongue at me.
“You would run, he would chase, and we would both be scolded—you for thinking you could outwit him, and me for allowing you to try. No, Cariña, you fly to Seattle tonight.”
“I could swap tickets at the airport. Rome. How about Rome? Do you think he’d find me if I went there? How about Timbuktu? I hear it’s nicer than Seattle in the winter,” I replied, throwing one of my shirts at my suitcase with more force than necessary. “Give me a break, Pedro. You know how much I hate cats. Why would he let her keep a cat when I couldn’t have a dog?”
“You know why,” Pedro chided. “Puppies should obey their fathers.”
“Didn’t like Carla?” I taunted, turning the tables, knowing full well Pedro didn’t have a mate.
“I would compete every day against my friends, and that would not do,” he replied, the image of Fenerec dignity. “I’d welcome you to remain for the winter, but your father would have me for a rug.”
I snorted. Pedro was about the only unmated Fenerec male I didn’t have to worry about. Maybe I classified as eligible, but not to him. Both my sister and I would never be anything more than goddaughters to him, and I liked it that way.
“What about Madagascar?” I pressed, shoving the rest of my clothing into the case before beginning the inevitable fight with its zipper. Pedro stepped on it to help flatten it while I wrangled it closed. “Maybe I could just fly to Florida, then he wouldn’t have cause to complain I left the country. Wait, I could go to Canada. It hardly counts as international, right?”
“How about Seattle? I hear it’s lovely in the winter, and your mother would be quite disappointed if you weren’t there for Christmas.”
I scowled. “Don’t you play that card, Pedro. That’s cheating. He let my sister have a cat.”
“I have a picture of you sleeping with a puppy, who for some reason was covered in glitter and wearing one of your dresses,” Pedro countered.
“Richard does not count as a puppy!” I shrieked. Realizing what I had said, I slapped my hands over my mouth. “Shit.”
“The dress might have been a bit much, don’t you think?”
I coughed, biting my lip. I shook my head.
Grinning at me, Pedro sat on the edge of my bed. “You fly to Seattle tonight, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fly out of Seattle once you arrive, Cariña. Your father needs his tail pulled from time to time. It’s good for him.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s the catch?”
“Catch? Why would there be a catch?”
“You don’t do anything without my father agreeing to it.”
“From time to time I do,” he protested, holding up his hands. “And anyway, I wouldn’t be doing anything against his wishes. I told him I would ensure that you were on the flight heading to Seattle, not that I would make certain that you didn’t do something reckless, foolhardy, and stubborn upon your arrival.”
I snorted. “It won’t work. He’ll just team up with Richard.”
“Then I’m afraid you will simply have to fly to Seattle and cope with the misfortune of your sister’s kitten. Don’t worry, you have a few weeks before it’ll turn into a vicious, purring monster capable of chasing after you.”
Shuddering, I dragged my suitcase towards the front door. “Teach Kitty Killer to do something cool like jump at the glass if he sees a cat,” I demanded.
“Must you name him that?” Pedro complained.
“Yes. His name is Kitty Killer. He’s my spider, and that’s his name.”
“You are as stubborn as the one who sired you. Very well. I shall attempt to teach Kitty Killer to dislike felines as much as you do. It’ll be difficult, but I shall try.”
“Are you sure I can’t go to Rome?”
“I’m sure, Miss Nicolina. Now if you’ve finished delaying, I should get you to the airport.”
Somehow, I was certain my sister’s kitten was responsible for the plane flopping onto the runway instead of rolling to a graceful halt like it should have done. It must have escaped my sister, climbed into the landing gear, and used its tiny little claws and teeth to break the plane.
Touchdown was a gentle bump, which was followed by a not-so-gentle crunch. Planes weren’t supposed to thump, grind, or slide sideways, but mine did all three. They definitely weren’t supposed to buck, and despite all of the safety precautions, I cracked my forehead into the seat in front of me, clipping the hard edge of the plastic tray. Sharp pain lanced through my head and down my spine, curling my toes in my shoes.
When it finally did come to a stop, somewhere after the end of the runway, I drummed my fingers against my cheek, wincing as I touched something wet and warm. The last thing I needed was more bumps, bruises, and cuts.
I sighed while chaos erupted in the cabin around me, grateful I had a window seat somewhere between the emergency exits. My seat mate was a screamer, and in her desperation to get out of the plane, she crawled right over the poor guy with the aisle seat.
At that moment, with hundreds of people swarming towards the same place, I wanted nothing more than to go back to my apartment and keep my spider company. Maybe it was creepy and crawly and made me want to scream when it wiggled its fuzzy legs, but at least it was contained behind glass and didn’t make a lot of noise.
My airline must have sorted passengers by how likely they were to panic, grouped the ones most likely to freak out all together, and assigned me to their flight. I couldn’t really blame them; where there was smoke there was fire, and the air was thick with it. Shrieking my head off like a banshee wasn’t going to change matters any. An additional body jostling for the exit wasn’t going to make it any easier to get out of the plane, either.
So, sighing my resignation, I waited until most of the others were off before unbuckling and violating every
safety precaution in the safety lectures to grab my bag out from under my seat. If they thought I was leaving my laptop with all of my schoolwork on it for someone to paw over—or melt into useless scrap when the plane finally decided to burst into a giant fireball—they were nuts.
If they even tried to take it from me, I was in the mood for a fight, and I wasn’t above finding out if biting someone was a satisfying way of inflicting pain.
The stewardess took one look at me, shook her head, and didn’t say a word about my bag. Hopping out of the plane via its wing sounded more fun than exiting through the back, so I went that way. The plane had tilted, the wing busted up enough the yellow emergency slide wasn’t even needed to reach the ground. I eyed the angle, shrugged, and slid down the wing on my heels, startling the ground crewmember at the bottom, who slapped his arm across my stomach in his panicked effort to slow my descent.
“Careful,” he scolded.
I snorted, adjusted my bag strap on my shoulder, and sidestepped the emergency responder who made a grab for my arm. I made it all of two steps before my heeled boots conspired against me, and with a startled squeak, I stumbled.
Bleeding girls were easy prey for EMS, and the guy who beelined for me caught hold of my elbow and kept me from hitting the ground. “This way, Miss,” he ordered, pulling me away from the other passengers, who were being sorted by the rescue crews.
I had to give the airport credit; it didn’t take them long to reach the downed plane or get everyone away from it. I wasn’t, however, a fan of how they passed me around. All it took was one look at my face for them to decide I was a priority.
When the first of the ambulances arrived, I dug in my heels. “No way,” I said, shaking my head. “There is absolutely no way I’m going to a hospital.”
“Miss, you’re bleeding from your forehead, and you’re unstable on your feet,” the guy holding my elbow said, and ignoring my efforts to break free, he pulled me in the direction of the vehicle with its wailing sirens and strobing lights.
“So put a bandage on it,” I snapped, cussing at where the rocky ground ended and the smoother asphalt of the runway began. Rocks helped my footing. Smooth asphalt made it easier for him to drag me in the direction of an ambulance.
“That’s for the paramedics to decide, Miss.”
I didn’t need to read minds to know what he was thinking. I was obviously a minor, and if he listened to me, it was his job on the line. While I wanted to scream my frustration, he was doing what he was supposed to, unlike me, who wasn’t.
I voiced a single frustrated wail as the paramedics got their hands on me and went to work confirming whether or not I still had a brain inside my skull. I did, but telling them didn’t do me any good. I even told them I probably had a concussion, and all I had to do was stay awake for a few hours.
It really didn’t help that they were right about one thing; my vision was blurred, and I couldn’t count the number of fingers they were holding up to save my life—or prevent a trip to the ER.
“I do not need to go to the hospital,” I snarled at the paramedic, do my best possible impression of my father.
“You’re going to the hospital,” he replied, filling something out on his stupid little clipboard while his larger, muscled buddy herded me inside the ambulance. “Name?”
I snapped my teeth together, dug out my insurance card, and handed it to them. They ultimately won the battle and forced me to lie down on the stretcher, going so far as to use a neck brace and strap designed to make sure I couldn’t move my head.
That was when they noticed the bruises around my throat and ceased asking me questions at all.
I reevaluated my opinion on the passengers who had opted for screaming and wailing after the crash. Maybe they knew they might be subjected to a ride in an ambulance to the ER and were more prepared to do anything possible to avoid it.
Sometime after lying down, I blinked and someone was flashing a bright light in my eyes. At least I was sitting up, though I had no recollection of getting to wherever I was, which was probably some hospital. The stink of disinfectant burned my nose.
“Can I go home yet?” I was whining; I hated it, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
“What happened to your throat?” the doctor asked in a tone warning me she had probably asked me a few times about the bruises and I hadn’t answered her.
It didn’t take me long to figure out they were more concerned about my throat than they were about the cut on my forehead. I drew a deep breath, held it until I could resist the urge to scream, and replied, “Four boys got rough with me, okay?”
“That’s not okay,” the doctor replied. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are these boys from your high school?”
My mouth dropped open. “High school?” Then I remembered I had given them my insurance card, not my school ID. Groaning, I bowed my head and ran my hands through my hair, forgetting I had the corsage still clipped to me. It fell off, and I scrambled for it, clutching it before the doctor could take it away from me. “I’m not in high school.”
“According to your insurance information, Miss Desmond, you are fifteen years old,” my doctor explained in the calm, collected, and patient way I would when dealing with someone either extremely stupid or easily confused.
At least they hadn’t stripped me out of my clothes and put me in a stupid gown. I squirmed on the examination table to dig out my student ID. I handed it to her. She took it, stared at it with her mouth opened, before looking up at me and comparing my face to the picture.
“You’re a Stanford student,” she stated, and I bristled at the doubt in her voice.
“My exam schedule is in my bag, along with my coursework material, if you’d like to have a look,” I offered. “Can I go home now?”
“There’s still the matter of those bruises.”
I was coming to the conclusion there was no end to the embarrassment and humiliation I would face by the end of the day. There was only one way I could think of to convince the woman I was telling the truth, and that was to show her the evidence on my phone—and hope she didn’t call the cops.
She probably would.
I pulled out my phone, which had survived the plane crash better than I did. I didn’t even want to know how many calls I had missed since it was still in airplane mode. I opened up my messages, cringed at the photograph and correspondence between my father and the four Fenerec who had kidnapped me, and showed it to her. “Four boys thought they could make a quick buck, okay? It’s over and done with, and if you would please stop making me talk about it, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.”
When she made a grab for my phone, I shoved it back in my pocket. She wasn’t the only one capable of glaring. There had to be some trick to it, because my expression didn’t phase her, not one bit. “If the ‘Father’ label on the conversation wasn’t a clue, my parents know about it.”
Her eyes narrowed, then she hesitated and nodded. “Do you have someone in the area who can come pick you up?”
I nodded.
“There’s some paperwork, but then you can go—after they arrive.”
She probably wanted a chance to talk to my father or mother about my bruises. Once she directed me to a waiting room with a clipboard so I could fill out paperwork, I turned my phone back on regular mode.
I waited all of thirty seconds before it rang, the display informing it was my father. Dreading the inevitable, I answered, put it to my ear, and grumbled, “This sucks, Daddy.”
I didn’t call him that often, but I was about at the end of my rope.
“Where are you?” my father demanded in a snarl more wolf than human.
A sniffle slipped out before I could stop it. I wasn’t even sure where I was, which wasn’t making it any easier to fight my growing need to cry.
“Baby, I’m not mad,” my father said, his voice instantly calmer. “I’m at the airport and it’s utter chaos. If another woman screams in my ear, I might just kill someone.”
&nb
sp; I grimaced, since it was entirely possible that he would. I flipped to the first page so I could see the header. “I’m at the Regional, apparently.”
There was a long pause. “You’re at the hospital.”
“I tried to tell them no,” I whined. “They wouldn’t listen.”
“You’re hurt.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for an accounting of every single bump, bruise, and scrape I had, and if he didn’t think I was telling the truth, he’d have Mother confirm it, like it or not.
“I might have a concussion. Okay, fine, I probably have a concussion. I smacked my head into the stupid tray. Then they made a fuss over my throat.” After a moment of consideration, I didn’t throw the clipboard across the waiting room like I wanted. Instead, I got up and handed it to the nurse in charge. “The kitten crashed the plane.”
“The kitten crashed the plane,” my father echoed.
“It did. I’m sure of it.”
“Nicolina Angelica Desmond, your sister’s kitten is three days old. It was abandoned and starved. It is entirely incapable of crashing a plane.”
Making fun of the situation beat bursting into tears, which was what I really wanted to do. I was tired, my head hurt, and all I wanted was to be out of the hospital. “It’s a devil kitten. It’s just waiting for its chance to gouge your eyeballs out while you sleep.”
With another snort and a low laugh, my father replied, “Thank you for your considerate warning. I will strive to ensure her devil kitten doesn’t gouge my eyes out while I sleep.”
“I need someone to pick me up from this prison,” I grumbled. “Apparently I’m old enough to fly on my own, but I’m not old enough to walk out of a hospital without adult supervision.”
The nurse behind the counter had a death glare, and she leveled it at me, pointing at the waiting area. Deciding it wasn’t worth the tussle with security, I slinked back over to the hard plastic and metal seats and sat down.
