Damage (10 page)

“Dani! Did you call Jesse’s parents?” Penny calls from the other room.

“Not yet,” I yell back, holding Jesse’s eyes, willing him to believe with me.

“Do you want me to call them, then? What’s his last name?”

Jesse shakes his head again, faster this time. “I can’t, Dani. I’m sorry. Not right now. Your stepmom seems cool. She’ll take care of you.” He sets the apple on the cabinet and turns away, heading back to the front door.

“But who’s going to take care of
you
?” My voice is a whisper, but it’s loud enough for him to hear. He stops and glances at me over his shoulder, but the surprise in his eyes swiftly morphs into terror. “Get down!”

I don’t question his urgency. I fall to the floor so fast my knees slam into the tile. But it isn’t my bruised knees that make me wince; it’s the heat that burns inches above my head. It feels like someone’s set off a blow torch in the middle of the kitchen.

“Leave her alone!” Jesse screams. His hands are under my armpits a second later, hauling me to my feet, practically throwing me into the other room. Behind us, the heat flares again. Strong hands shove at my shoulders. “Run, Dani! Get out the door, hurry!”

I run, arms pumping at my sides, giving the sprint to the door everything I’ve got. I don’t pause to wonder what Penny is going to think about what she’s just heard, or about me and Jesse racing out of the house without an explanation. I don’t even ask Jesse what we’re running from. Even if I can’t see what’s chasing us, I can guess what it is.

He mentioned a dragon, and dragons breathe fire.

I burst out into the cold day and race down the driveway. I hear Jesse slam the front door closed—a barrier that lasts less than a second before the dragon smashes into it, cracking the heavy wood. And then Jesse is beside me, urging me to go faster, faster, the fear in his voice enough to coax more speed from my burning muscles. We hit the sloping part of the drive and hurl ourselves down the hill, running so fast we couldn’t stop if we tried.

We don’t try. It’s still behind us. It’s through the door and chasing us down the hill, sending bursts of fire to lick at our heels, forcing us to run even faster. Faster. Faster.

By the time the gate comes into view, my arms are blurring in my peripheral vision, my joints loose and screaming for my muscles to clamp down and take the necessary actions to stop the forward motion before I ram face-first into the wrought iron.

“Don’t stop! Don’t stop! There’s no time for the combination,” Jesse screams. “We have to jump it.”

Jump it?
It’s four feet tall—even at the lower parts on the sides—and topped with iron spikes. There’s no way we’ll clear it. We’ll rip our guts out if we try. I slow the barest bit and another blast of fire hits the back of my legs, burning my calves through the thick fabric of my wrinkle-free khakis. I gasp and pour on the speed again, my heart slamming in my throat.

Jesse’s right. We have to try to jump it. Better eviscerated than burned alive.

I think.

The seconds it takes to reach the gate tick by faster than any in memory. One moment I’m fifty feet away, the next, I’m airborne, leaping for the fence, arms grabbing iron and holding tight as my stomach muscles clench and my feet shoot up into the air.

The next thing I know, I’m upside down.
Upside down
—suspended in a handstand on top of the fence for a stomach-flipping second—before my feet continue the journey toward the ground. My back arches and terror zips from my toes to the roots of my hair as I realize I’m going to have to let go or have my back slammed into the gate. I have to
let go
, and spin through the air and hope my feet find the ground.

I force my flexed fingers to uncurl and, for a second, I fly.

And then I fall—fast and hard—gravity snatching me back to the earth a second too late. My heels hit first and then my tailbone, the impact sending a tooth-crunching shudder through my body. The pain is sudden and immediate. I cry out, but the sound has barely passed my lips before Jesse is beside me, pulling me to my feet, looping my arm around his shoulders, helping me limp the rest of the way down the hill.

He casts a furtive look over his shoulder. “It’s gone. I think. But I don’t want to quit moving.”

“Me either,” I pant. “I could feel the fire. Was it … your dragon?”

“Yeah, but it’s never breathed fire before. I can’t … I didn’t know it could do that.” His arm tightens around my waist, pulling me along while I struggle to keep my legs moving. My tailbone aches so badly my entire pelvis hurts. There’s no way I could keep going without Jesse’s help. “And it’s never come in the daylight before, either. Did Rachel?”

“No. Never. And she never came so often. It was once a night, sometimes twice if I was having a really good day.”

He glances down at me, lifts an eyebrow. “A good day?”

“If I was feeling good,” I rush to clarify. “She always seemed stronger when I was stronger.”

He grunts. “That’s … I think that was true for me, too. I never really thought about it before, but the Thing was harder to fight after I got out of the hospital, when I was supposed to be well.”

“That’s probably important. We should make a list of things like that.” The thought of writing a neat, ordered list licks down a few of my frazzled edges. “And I have to call Penny. She’s going to be scared to death.”

“Okay,” he says, “but I don’t think we should go back to your house. I’m thinking we should … ”

“We should what?”

“I think we should go to Baptist, but not the emergency room. I think we should go back to where this started and see if we can find any clues.”

The thought makes me shiver. I haven’t been back to the children’s floor since the day I was released. I never want to go back, never want to feel that unnaturally cold air or smell the sour sharpness of industrial cleaner and medicine mixed with chicken noodle soup ever again.

But he’s right.

“All right.” I nod. “After I call Penny and my dad, I’ll—”

“I think we should go before you call them. Otherwise they’re never going to let you out of their sight. We might not get another chance.”

“But I have to call them—they’ll be too worried. Besides, I need one of them to bring me some new clothes. We’re both covered in blood.”

“Yeah … it’s weird that your stepmom didn’t notice.”

“What?”

“It’s weird that she didn’t notice there was blood on our clothes.”

We both think on that for a silent moment as we cross the street and take a turn into a subdivision I’ve never been through before. It’s filled with older houses, all exactly alike, narrow two-story wood structures with small windows and saggy porches on the left or right. First left, then right, then left, then right—all the same except for the varying degrees of neglect.

Penny never drives through here. She takes the long way to the highway. She says this part of town is too depressing. She can’t stand for things to be out of order, allowed to get messy and broken.

So why didn’t she notice the blood on my hands? On my pants?

“I think she was too upset about her brother. She wasn’t herself,” I say. “And it was kind of dark in the kitchen.”

Jesse grunts again, a non-committal sound. He turns left at the next stop sign, steering us past a dingy white house where a big-jawed dog lurks on the porch. It rises to its feet and snarls as we walk by. An animal like that would normally scare me to death. But after being chased by a dragon, a tethered dog just doesn’t hold the same fear factor. Still … this neighborhood isn’t the best, and Jesse and I don’t need any more trouble.

“There’s a gas station down Reginald Street. It might have a phone,” I say. “If we head back to the main road, we could—”

“I was thinking we could go to my house,” he says. “Just for a few minutes. It’s around the corner.”

“Oh. Okay.” He lives around the corner in this neighborhood, a place I’d be afraid to walk by myself in broad daylight. The realization numbs my lips, and I suddenly have no idea what to say. He’s seen where I live, the obscene mansion on the hill. It seems even more obscene by comparison.

“Traci, my foster mom, isn’t much taller than you are,” he continues. “You can wear something of hers. I’ll change too, and we can get some money and maybe a car if Traci’s there. She lets me borrow hers sometimes. If I tell her we’re just going to take it to the hospital and back she’ll probably be cool.”

“Okay, but I really have to call Penny and my dad. I—”

“What will you tell them?” He stops and turns to me, arm sliding from my waist, leaving me colder. But at least I don’t hurt anymore. The ache in my tailbone has mysteriously vanished.

We’re standing in front of a faded yellow house with an exposed concrete foundation that’s cracked in some places and patched in others—as if someone started work on shoring things up but never bothered to finish or fill in the dirt they’d displaced. A mound of earth crouches in the front yard, sprouting tufts of yellowed grass and patches of snow. Around the base of the mini mountain, cracked flowerpots and rusted car parts fight for space in the yard. In the garage, more car parts fill up one side and a collection of white, little girl’s furniture covered with peeling stickers sits on the other.

The place is even more depressing than the other houses on the street. It makes me hope it isn’t Jesse’s … until he opens the metal gate, erasing any doubt. I hesitate for half a second, but catch the gate below the rusted flower decoration before it slams closed. I hurry after him, careful not to trip on the junk littering the yard.

“How are you going to explain why we ran? From the bus and your house?” He pauses on the steps and fishes a key from the mouth of a ceramic frog. It’s a strangely cute thing, at odds with the rest of the rundown yard and porch.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’d better think of something,” he mumbles, pulling open the screen door and working the key into the lock. “Or they’ll think I hurt you.”

His words startle me. He’s being ridiculous. He saved my life. “No one will think you hurt me. I won’t let them.”

“You’re you and I’m me, and no one’s seen us together before today,” he says in a tired monotone. “They’ll think the worst, no matter what you tell them.”

He tugs on the door, propping it open with one foot while he stuffs the key in his back pocket. Behind him, I get my first glimpse of where he lives—a cramped place stuffed with too much furniture that smells of old grease and older smoke. I fight the urge to wrinkle my nose, very aware of his eyes on me.

“Come on, we should hurry,” he says. “We don’t know how long we have. I’ll try and find the phone—I guess your parents will think even worse things about me if you don’t call.”

“Forget it.” I slip past him into the house, ignoring the smell in the kitchen and the piles of dirty dishes by the sink. “I’ll call them after we go to the hospital. I need some time to think about what to tell them, anyway.” And how to explain that I might not be coming home for a while.

Rachel hurt Jesse. There’s a chance she could hurt Penny and my dad, too. If I can’t find some way to get her under control, I can’t risk going home. Even if I have no money, no clean clothes, and will probably end up on the streets in the middle of a freezing New York winter. But better to freeze than be responsible for the deaths of people I love. Better to die alone than put anyone else at risk.

My throat gets tight and something heavy pushes at the back of my eyes. I swallow. I refuse to cry. That won’t do anyone I care about any good, and I don’t want to give Rachel the satisfaction. She’s gone for now, but a part of me is certain she knows what’s going on in my world, that she’s aware of how close she is to driving me to the edge. I won’t tumble over. Not now. Not ever, if I can help it.

I turn back to Jesse. “Are your parents home?”

“Foster parents.” He shakes his head. “No. I guess Traci’s still out, and Trent … ” He shrugs. “I don’t know where he is. It’s better that they’re not here. We can get in and out faster and get a cab to the hospital. I’ve got some money.” He heads down the narrow hall leading out of the kitchen, his shoulders looming even larger in the cramped space. “The bedrooms are upstairs.”

I follow him, trying to ignore the nervous sensation fluttering in my stomach. After everything that’s happened, the fact that I’m following a boy into his bedroom for the first time shouldn’t even register on my stress radar.

Just like I shouldn’t have been chased by an invisible dragon and I shouldn’t be feeling so good with my sugar unbalanced and I shouldn’t have been able to flip over that gate like some kind of ninja assassin. “Shouldn’t” isn’t a word that’s doing me a lot of good today.

So I don’t waste time berating myself for the mix of nerves and excitement that pulse along my skin as I trail Jesse up the stairs. I simply acknowledge it and make my feet move, knowing that he’s right. We don’t have time to waste.