Page 106 of Worse Than Wicked
Suddenly Baron jerks his hands back like I’m made of scorching embers and not smooth cardboard. He stumbles halfway to his feet, backing away from me like he did Duke. Then he falls to his knees, and a scream of the deepest, blackest anguish rends the night, his throat, his soul. He slams his fists to the ground, battering the earth, punching it with such ferocity that I listen for the sound of his bones cracking. All I hear is that raw, animal scream, as primal and ancient as the first cry of the first infant being born. It sends shivers down my spine, and some answering part of me pushes me up. I crawl to him, wrap myself around him, even though I’m wrapping myself around the embers that will burn me alive.
We’re pulled back from that edge, that dangerous place so deep and dark inside us that it could swallow us and all the world.
Sirens deafen, cut through and silence his screams. Lights blind. Emergency vehicles are speeding down the road.
Baron grabs me, drags me up. “I can’t,” he says.
Still gripping my hand, he runs for the car.
“What about your brother?” I ask, looking back. “And Seeley?”
“That’s not my brother,” he says.
“My cat—”
“I got him out,” he says, stuffing me into the driver’s side of the car. “He’s fine. We’ll come back for him.”
He slides in with me, and I scramble over into the passenger seat as he shoots out of the driveway onto the road, not bothering to look even though it’s a busy road. He roars away, away from the house and the fire and the death, as if wecan outrun it now that we’ve been chasing it so long that it finally caught up.
“What happened?” he asks after a minute.
He sounds better, though barely controlled, and his voice is hoarse, raspy.
“I don’t know,” I say, and without warning, a rush of tears scalds my eyes, pours down my face. I turn to the window so he won’t see. “A car drove by, and—”
“What car?” His voice is flat but impatient, hard as stone.
“I don’t know,” I say again. “A—an Chevy I think.”
“You know cars,” he says. “What kind of car?”
“It was dark, and it happened so fast,” I say. “It slowed down, and the window went down, and in the half-second before it happened, all my brain landed on was that they were going to ask directions. And then they started shooting, and I just threw myself down by instinct, and I covered my head. I didn’t see the license plate. It was a sedan, an older model, a mud brown color.”
He’s silent a minute, his fingers drumming. Then he mutters one word under his breath and rips the car around, sending me crashing into the door.
“Blue.”
“Brown,” I correct, grabbing the dash when he floors it. The car roars forward, everything outside the windows a blur as he bears down, not letting up. We fly toward down, then onto the road that leads toward my old neighborhood. Baron doesn’t speak. I feel sick at the speed, my stomach dropping out when he hits a little dip in the road. And then we’re back in the neighborhood where I grew up, where Hickory House and Lilac Place sit side by side, silent sentinels watching over the agony within their walls.
I cut my name into the closet there. I never spoke, but I left my mark. One day, my brother found me sitting in there,and he sat beside me. He carved his name next to mine. Baron’s brother lived there after us. The mark he’s left will outlast every cut I’ve made.
As we roar past my mother’s house, I remember the night we burned it down. I remember Duke taunting me, mocking me, pushing me past my limits, until I grabbed the gallon of gas and sloshed it along the back wall. I remember him laughing and spinning me around and around as it went up in flames, the sparks dancing in the sky and in his eyes, on a night so much like this one, so different. I remember realizing for the first time that my body was more than a container for my mind, that it mattered too. He brought me to life, made me laugh, taught me the meaning of fun. The realization that I will never again hear him laugh hits me, leaves me reeling.
Baron slams the car into park, throwing us forward. He’s out the door and into the house, and I can hear him yelling before I’m even out of the car. By the time I’ve climbed out, he’s in the front, yelling at someone outside.
“Where is she?” he bellows.
I make my way around. Harper and Royal are sitting on the curved staircase, the set to the right, sharing a cigarette.
“She’s not here,” Harper says, sounding hollow.
“Who’s not here?” I ask.
“Where did she go?” Baron shouts. “Where is she?”
“Calm the fuck down,” Royal says. “We don’t know. Her sister ran in, and grabbed Olive, and said they had to go right now.”
“Who?” I ask again.
