by Nicole Thorn
Tammy kept taking pictures while I gasped uselessly. I couldn’t hear Poe past the wind in my ears, so I had no way of knowing where he might have been. Tammy said he wasn’t dead, but trusting her would be a dumb choice.
I had to have been approaching death, for all the choking the air caused me. My brain burned, and wanted to fight her off. I couldn’t think straight, and couldn’t move. I had to let her do what she wanted.
“Beautiful,” Tammy breathed, getting one more picture. She bent to me, and laid her lips on my forehead for two seconds. “Thank you.”
When she popped up to her feet, I didn’t know what to think. She should have killed me. She looked like she wanted to kill me. Yet I laid there, heart beating and lungs trying so hard to inhale.
“Guess what I found out,” Tammy asked me, walking away from my body. “There are lots of ways to ruin a person. I could hurt your body, but it feels so boring. Then I thought it would be more fun to hurt someone you love, and then let you live with it forever!”
She crossed the driveway, hopping over Brent’s limp body. I could sit up, but not much else. I still gasped, not quite getting enough air to leave me with rational thought. Poe sat against the garage door, also unmoving. His eyes had opened though, and he looked around at me, and Tammy. I tried to say his name, but I couldn’t.
Tammy focused her attention on Poe. “You think your dirty little secret could stay buried? Nope! Not at all. Your parents should be smarter. Hide away the little girl you let almost die. I saw her face. Tell me what you think when you look at her.”
Poe didn’t speak, but the look in his eyes said everything. Tammy must have enjoyed the rage, because she started taking pictures. “Cut up and down. You let that happen. He said you did. Let him hurt her. You see her, and you think of him. You think of what you could have done, but didn’t. The thought makes my tongue tickle. You know that feeling?” She took another picture. “I thought it would make for another pretty thought, doing that to Clover. Couldn’t hurt her with the other one, but I can do it with you. I can slice up your pretty face, so that she sees me when she looks at you. She’ll see my teeth in every inch of scar tissue.”
She pulled something from her pocket, and it glinted in the moonlight. When Tammy snapped another picture, the flash showed me a blade. She had a blade in her hand, and Poe couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. His eyes landed on me, and I couldn’t save him.
“Does she blame you?” Tammy asked as she twirled the knife. “Does your sister look at you like the hero that never picked up his sword? I wonder things like that. I wonder what breaks a person. Like shattering glass. One second, it’s perfect and smooth. One little hit, and webs start to crawl. Don’t you think it’s pretty?”
I panted, begging my body to be stronger than the wind keeping me down. I couldn’t break the hold, and neither could Poe. We stared at each other, and I wanted to say I was sorry. I love you, and I’m sorry.
I should have done better.
Chapter Thirty: Buckets of the Stuff
My head throbbed, my throat stung, and my body stayed stuck to the ground. But I fought anyway. I fought while Tammy advanced on Poe, taking picture after picture. I winced at every flash, and how angry Poe looked in his trap.
It was on my shoulders, this night. If I’d been smart, I wouldn’t have gone outside alone. I knew that Tammy lurked, trying to terrify me. I had bodyguards for a reason, and I ignored all that so I could be a moron and get some flowers for Poe. Those flowers laid crushed at my side now, and they did nothing but get me hurt. I had Cathy’s voice in my head, calling me names for blaming myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but old habits…
“You didn’t answer me,” Tammy said. “Don’t you think it’s pretty, how this ends? It’s almost like you get to make up for what you let happen to your sister. And the boy sounded so sad.” She turned to look at Brent. “Toss him a dime and he’ll tell you lots of stuff. I love desperate people. Smile for me.” Tammy took another picture of Poe glaring, thinking up ways to hurt her. If he didn’t attack her insides, then he must have hit his head. We didn’t have his abilities to rely on.
I couldn’t talk to him, and that was the part that hurt me the most. I couldn’t call out to him, saying that we’d be fine. I couldn’t make a promise I didn’t know I could keep.
I wished I could have reached for my phone in my pocket, calling someone for help. My fingers couldn’t even move against the invisible resistance there, giving me so little hope to hold onto. I might as well have had a wall on my body, letting me know that I had no power.
Tammy grabbed Poe by the face, holding his head against the garage door. “You really are cute. It’s gonna suck, having all those scars on your face. Maybe it’ll make you seem interesting.”
“Get away from him!” I screamed, breaking through the weakening power she had over me. I didn’t even realize I could until the words shot out of me. With all her focus on Poe, Tammy didn’t have the ability to cut off every part of me.
She turned her head, a grin on her face. “Oh! How cute. She wants to defend you. I’ve heard some interesting things, ya know. Since I know Kelly. She tells me that your little Clover is real loyal. Desperate even. So desperate that she stares at him. Have you ever caught her staring at Peter? He threw her away, and she still stared.”
Poe knew better than to let this bother him. He’d been there when I broke down, and stared, and did all the things I should have stopped a long time ago. I didn’t hide a thing from him. Not a feeling or a thought. He knew I loved him, and that Peter didn’t matter anymore. Tammy reached, and her blow wouldn’t land.
“I don’t like how you’re looking at me,” Tammy said when she faced my direction. “Like I’m crazy. Like I’m the bitch here. I was nice. I let it go when you wrecked my car. Then you stalked me at the party, and showed everyone what I did. I wasn’t hurting anyone. I just wanted the pictures. Then you let everyone know. Do you even care? Do you care about how they looked at me after?”
Another gust of wind hit me, and flew into my throat again. I couldn’t even gasp at it this time, and Tammy appeared above me in a heartbeat. She pressed her knee to my stomach, holding herself up with her hand on my shoulder.
“They think I’m a freak,” Tammy said between her teeth. “They don’t understand, and they wouldn’t get it, even if I told them. I need the eyes. They keep me safe. Watch over me. You don’t understand.”
The air wouldn’t stop coming, and I choked on it. Tammy didn’t seem to react to the coughing, because her eyes stayed fixed on me, unchanging as I died there on the ground. How many more seconds could I take it before I couldn’t stay awake anymore?
Tammy pressed harder into my stomach, and I wished for all my senses to shut down. My brain wanted to explode from this suffocation, but it had no mercy on me.
“I’m going to ruin your boyfriend,” Tammy said. “Poison you to him. Then you’ll be all alone, like I am. I hope it kills you.”
The pressure left my stomach as she stood up, but she didn’t unpin me from the ground. She kicked me in the side, making me let out a wheeze. Tammy didn’t say anything as she took another picture. The flash burned my eyes.
She skipped back over to Poe, getting the blade out of her pocket again. He tried to move forward, but his body slammed against the door, and he winced in pain.
“Not very nice of you,” Tammy remarked. “You know this isn’t anything personal against you. Just Clover. She needs to be punished, and you happen to be the best way to do it. Don’t worry. I won’t cut your eyes.”
She bent down, smiling. “I think you’ll look even prettier after.”
No. The word came as a shout in my head. I wouldn’t let this happen. No more mistakes that I caused, and no more suffering in my name. I started everything that happened with Tammy, and she’d brought my friends into this. Wanting to hurt me so badly that any humanity in her, went right out the door. I didn’t feel so human at the moment, so that worked for me. I c
ould do what needed to be done, and not feel anything until after.
My body wouldn’t move, and my head screamed in pain at the pressure that wouldn’t leave me alone. It didn’t matter. I could fight through the pain for once in my damn life.
That blade glinted with dull light, but something else glinted too. Houses sat around us, and one house had several windows. I felt the glass like it invited me to borrow it. It splintered, sending a sharp stab into my head.
Warmth dripped from my nose, and down the side of my face as I laid flat. I smelled something metallic, but didn’t worry about it yet. Not even when I felt the same dripping from my ears.
I pulled on the glass, begging for it to pop out of the pane above us. The splinters grew, reaching all corners as I shattered it into a thousand pieces, and yanked it into the air.
Bullets, like before. I made bullets of glass, and I could do anything I wanted with them. I wanted them inside of Tammy.
I could move my head, and I saw the two people in front of me. Brent still laid on the driveway, blissfully unaware of what happened around him. But Tammy, she had her eyes on Poe, and didn’t see what I’d done. I had to be careful, so that I wouldn’t hurt Poe. I had control over every single beautiful piece of glass around me.
Blood dripped onto my lips, and I felt it coat my teeth as I strained to use my power. I tasted it on my tongue, and I let the glass fly.
Tammy let out a scream when god knew how much glass went through her skin. The moment it did, wind didn’t trap me anymore. I shot up into a sitting position, my head rushing when I did.
I’d been careful with the glass, not letting any of it get into her eyes or her throat. I didn’t want to become a killer, and I didn’t need her to die today. I only wanted Poe and me safe, so I did what I had to do. Her shirt and jeans shredded, and blood soaked through in moments. I couldn’t even see her skin anymore as blood took over the color. Her face had only caught a few pieces, leaving streaks of blood to cascade down like tears.
Poe pushed up from the ground, wavering only once as he got his balance back. He rushed past Tammy as she fell, and made his way over to me. He took my hands, and helped me get up onto my feet. I could breathe again, and I greedily took advantage, gasping as my lungs begged for more air. My head still pulsed, and my nose still bled, but I paid it little mind.
“Are you okay?” Poe asked. He had his hand on my head, and pulled back bloody fingers. He cursed.
“Fine,” I panted. “I’m fine.”
“You hit your head. I have to get you to a doctor.”
I didn’t bother pointing out how he’d been hit in the head as well, because he might have come back with something about how I got choked, and could have some damage done from the weight on me. I could wait for someone to see me, but the others couldn’t.
Tammy laid only a couple feet from Brent, her eyes on the dark sky above her. Blood ran from her body, and down the slope of the driveway in thin lines. I had no clue how much she needed to lose to die, but I wasn’t risking a damn thing. Same with Brent, who had internal bleeding.
“Call someone,” I told Poe.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket, and dialed 911. I listened to him talk to an operator, quickly telling them what happened. In the back of my head, I worried that we would have gotten in trouble for this. It had been self-defense, but was it our word against theirs? Tammy had an army of cheerleaders to back up her character, and this might have all looked too clean. The girl who harassed me, totally incapacitated while Poe and I looked unharmed. Who knew what would happen?
“They’ll be here soon,” Poe said, “Sit down with me.”
He pulled me down to the sidewalk, and I put my head in my hands. The use of magic had been too much, and I wouldn’t be able to try again until the headache left me. So I groaned.
“Your mother is going to kill me,” I said. “I can’t fix her window right now.”
Poe snorted. “She’ll get over it.”
Three minutes later, sirens filled the soundless night. Several cars joined us, police people and paramedics alike, all rushed to the broken kids on the concrete. They went to Tammy and Brent first, since they looked worse for wear.
“Is she going to be okay?” I called out. No one answered me.
A woman brought Poe and I to the back of an ambulance, and started poking at us, checking our eyes with a little flashlight. The good news was that we didn’t need to go to the hospital, and I did not have a concussion. I just got the hell beaten out of me, and would hurt for the next week or so. I could live with that.
Tammy and Brent got rushed off, and no one filled me in on their condition. I wouldn’t know until later, if I had become a murderer.
“I need you to tell me everything, please,” a policewoman said to Poe and I. “I understand that there is an open investigation.”
Poe nodded. “Yes. Clover and I were about to go for a walk. She left the house while I went to get my phone…”
Poe did the talking for me, maybe seeing that I didn’t feel up for it. It didn’t seem fair, since I did this. Going outside to get those stupid fucking flowers. If it had been the two of us together, then Brent would never have gotten to me. We would have been fine when Tammy came, and I wouldn’t have had to hurt her. I could have walked away with my innocence.
The woman listened to every word we said, taking it down while I thought about Tammy. Her blood smeared all over the driveway, because of me. She would have hurt Poe, so I had no regrets. Him or Tammy, it wasn’t a question. Fear still prickled under my skin.
“Am I going to get arrested?” I asked. Poe put his hands on my shoulders, saying my name.
The officer’s eyes turned soft. “Everything your boyfriend has said to me, feels like self-defense. No one is going to fault you for defending yourself. The pictures that your attacker took will be plenty of proof. So you two rest, let the paramedic do her job, and relax. I have to talk to my partner. Stay here.”
She left, and the other woman got back to work. Other than a few cuts and bruises, I didn’t have all that much damage. Poe had none, managing to avoid Tammy’s knife.
“I should call my parents,” I told Poe when they left us alone in the ambulance again. “They can probably see the lights from our house.”
Poe put his forehead on my shoulder. “I have a feeling we’re going to get screwed out of our sleepover.”
Not bloody likely. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight and if I had to sit up with someone, I wanted it to be Poe. Parents or not, I would get that. I was eighteen anyway.
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised. “Worst case, I sneak you in through my window later, or I sneak into yours.”
Poe looked up at the house. “If you could scale that tree, I’d be impressed. But I think my parents would make an exception here and let you stay over, even without Cathy to keep our pants on.”
Good, because I needed that. “Pants will remain on.”
Poe’s eyes went to my legs, and the scraps I’d gotten from Tammy and Brent tossing me around. Nothing that wouldn’t heal in a week, but it clearly bothered him to see it.
“I wish I could fix it,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m tougher than I look.”
“God I know it.”
Chapter Thirty-One: I’m Not Sorry
“It’s fucked up, is all I’m saying,” Cathy complained as we sat on Poe’s bed. She chewed on a cookie, glowering. “Like, I could have helped. Maybe not a lot, but I could have done something. You should have called.”
As if we could have found a moment between getting our asses kicked, to call up Cathy and share the news. I wouldn’t have, even if I had the chance. One person I loved getting hurt had been more than enough for me.
My parents hadn’t been down for the sleepover, as it turned out. They instead kept us outside for another two hours, talking to the police as if they could have gotten more information magically. Asking why Tammy did what she did, and wh
at made her think it had been okay. They didn’t seem to get the whole, out of her mind aspect, but I was just glad it had ended.
Oddly enough, the thing I had been most thankful for, was that Malon didn’t see any of the blood on the driveway, or on me. Poe had called his parents ahead of time, and they dropped her off with her grandparents for the night. They seemed far more reasonable when they showed up. Not nearly as frantic. To be honest, they looked a little more than relieved to hear that Brent had been taken away.
We’d been informed that Brent wouldn’t be coming back. At least, not for a while. A knife and baggie of heroine had been found on his person, and that alone had been enough to get him arrested. Add on my and Poe pressing charges, and I didn’t think Brent would get the chance to come see us again. I also didn’t think he would have been willing to.
“You should be happy,” Poe said, passing her the tub of ice cream. “Your back isn’t a massive bruise right now, and I would trade you if I could.”
Cathy stabbed at the ice cream with her spoon. “Whatever, man. I could have kicked ass. I still might if I see Tammy again. Bitches get stitches.”
“She’s got a few…” I mumbled. A few hundred, more like it.
“She can use more,” Cathy said. “Like a lot more. So many that maybe she dies a little…”
Poe laughed, but I didn’t. While it made me glad that I didn’t end up killing Tammy, I still thought about what I had done. I sent glass at her, knowing it could have done enough damage to end her life. Still, I had to save myself and Poe.
Tammy had gotten herself treated at the hospital, but needed to stay a bit longer to get more blood into her system. I’d made her lose a lot, I’d heard. Thankfully, the police found her camera, and the knife she’d planned on using to cut Poe. The pictures would supposedly be enough to prove that I had been keeping Poe and myself safe when I hurt her. I wasn’t going to prison, so yay me.
