Page 35 of Hell In A Handbasket
“I never considered them the enemy. Not even when Felix and Archer insisted I should. But I’m mad that Soph lied.”
“I know.”
“And I’m mad that her lie was in the pursuit of harming you.”
“Not harming,” I clarify. “Using me, maybe. Studying me. Academics study things they don’t understand all the time. The problem is, Soph was sneaky about it.”
“She’s really, really sorry.” Jen pops up on my left and beams. She knows she’s annoying, which is kinda apt, I suppose, since Minka thinks the same of Jen’s father. “Soph never learned the difference between parasocial relationships and the normal, real kind. Worse, she doesn’t quite know how to manage friendships, so even when she has a chance to turn one-sided situations into a mutual back-and-forth thing, she’s known to mess it up because she’s not entirely friendly or… ya know… normal.”
“She catches you talking about her,” Ellie comes around to stand in front of us, digging her hands into her pockets and angling forward, “she’s gonna para-set-some-shit-on-fire. She’s weird because she spent her formative years living with the guilt of my death, thinking that it was somehow her fault. Which isobviouslyan undesirable way to live. By the time she got me back, the damage had been done. She’s still learning who she is in this new existence where I’m around.”
“So really,” Jen quips. “You’re all just a bunch of trauma trolls who wouldn’t know normal if it was a bread roll, and it smacked you in the face.”
“Us?” Minka counters dryly. “Yourself included?”
“Me? No, I’m completely normal and fine. I grew up in a healthy home with attentive parents. My father remains extremely active in my life, loves me without condition, and left me with absolutelynoweird daddy issues. Unlike the rest of you.”
“Sure, but your daddy is Aubree’s daddy issue,” she counters with a giggle. “Aubree calls him daddy, but not in that parental kind of way.”
“Ew!” Jen shoves forward, gagging and heaving. “You have the hots for my dad? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Your dadishot.” I thrill in the way she pokes a finger in her mouth and pretends to puke. “Don’t come at me, little miss I-lead-a-healthy-normal-life. You mix back-alley drugs and build warheads for your emotionally stunted parasocial boss, and you sure as hell don’t tell yourdaddyabout it.”
“Stop saying daddy like that, you freak!” She folds at the hips, laughing and retching. “I didn’t come out here to be abused like this! I was trying to band-aid relationships between a couple of toxic-turds, and this is what I get?”
“We don’t mind being labeled toxic.” Minka shrugs. “Just don’t waltz around in your house built of glass while we’re holding rocks.”
Cato lets off another round, theboomrocking through the air, though I swear, I’m the only person who jumps.
“See?” Jay claps Cato’s back. “You hit it. Good job. Now look past it and see the next one. Eleven hundred yards.” He waits patiently while Cato presses his eye to the scope and searches. “You got it?”
“Yeah.” He wriggles on the dirt to find a new comfortable position, plumes of dust lifting into the air while his already-muscular shoulders bulge with adrenaline. “I found it.”
“Take your shot when you’re ready. But remember your distance. It means the wind matters even more than it did on the last one. What are you gonna do?”
“We’re teaching him how to shoot now?” Christabelle waddles out of the bus in an outfit not the same as earlier. While she traveled, she looked office-perfect, if not a little uncomfortable. Now, she wears denim shorts, but without the button done up, and a shirt that dwarfs her frame, which means it can only belong to Felix. She massages the side of her belly, gritting her teeth, because I know the baby kicks. But her gaze, silver, almost the same as the gun Felix keeps strapped to his hip, watches over her baby-Malone. The last baby, before the one in her belly makes its grand entrance. “Can we put a basketball in his hands, please? Not a gun.”
“He already knows how to shoot,” Micah answers, glancing back this way. “He’s known since he was old enough to hold a fork.”
“Anyone can shoot,” Jay grumbles. “Not everyone can hit a mark from a thousand feet away. Pull the trigger, kid. I’m getting hungry.”
SOPH
New plan: staynearMinka, but not so near that she can hit me. And while I’m doing that, keep an eye on Aubree. Because she’s got a gift. Maybe.
Still to be determined.
“I know, baby. I miss you, too.” With the phone pressed to his ear, Jay opens a latch on the side of the bus and pulls out a hot plate about half the size of our island counter at home. “I’m starting the grill now so Mommy and Daddy can eat. What did Aunty Laine cook you for dinner?”
He listens contentedly, nodding and beaming. But then his smile turns sour.
“You tell that weasel, Uncle Angelo, that he wasn’t invited onthisroad trip. Daddy said he wasn’t welcome.”
“Jay!” Kane stalks across our temporary campsite in the semi-dark, as day turns to evening and the buzz of mosquitoes becomes a constant noise banging at the base of my skull. “Move on.”
“I don’t wanna move on! That fucker tried to take my place while I was dead.”
Curious, Christabelle glances my way. “He was dead?”
