Rage (14 page)

And then, catharsis.

Purged of their overwhelming burdens, at least for the moment, her people breathed easily. Children ran with renewed energy. Babies nestled in their mothers' arms, lulled with the sleepy satisfaction of being loved. Adults smiled, contented by the sounds and sights of the children at play. And beyond the mountains, the war halted as soldiers on both sides felt no urge to fight.

In the sea of refugees, Melissa Miller sank to the ground, exhausted. The red wave receded, leaving her limbs trembling and her heart pounding and a stitch in her side that felt as if she'd been gutted with a spear. She closed her eyes, and War heard the negotiations begin anew, to get the supply trucks first through to those civilians enmeshed in the battle-scarred town and then beyond, to those who had taken their children and fled.

As bone-weary as Missy was, she grinned. She had helped. It wasn't much, and it wasn't permanent. But it was a start. It was a spark of hope, here in this place where hope had been as rare as desert snow.

"It does snow here, occasionally," Famine said. "The locals never know what to make of it."

Missy opened her eyes to see Famine offering her a hand.

"The trucks will go through," Famine said. "The people here may still starve. And they may still slaughter one another in the name of justice. But not today." Her grin cut through the shadow of her face. "This is more like it for your first day on the job."

Missy blinked stupidly at the black-gloved hand. And then she accepted it, and Famine pulled War to her feet.

"Never could stand it when people sulked," the Black Rider said.

***

Missy had to make a pit stop before she went home. The girls' locker room reeked with the acrid smell of ammonia. At least no one had defecated in her bag. That had to count for something, right?

Ares allowed her to load the duffle bag on to the saddle, although the horse snorted sharply.

"I know," Missy said. "It sucks. People suck sometimes." Life sucked sometimes, and that was the truth of it. The thought made her think of Adam, of his easy lie about how he'd missed her. Strangely, that stung even worse than how he'd played her so completely.
Let me make it up to you,
he'd said, and she'd been so ready to believe him.

She had been such a fool.

The warhorse blew out a question punctuated by a flicking of its ears.

Missy didn't need to speak Horse to understand. She smiled faintly as she scratched behind its ears. "I'm okay," she lied. "Just tired." Yes, that too. She pulled herself onto the saddle and asked Ares to take her home.

After taking her to her front door, Ares whinnied a farewell before leaping into the sky. She watched the steed until it was out of sight, and then she fished out her house key from her wet bag. At least she'd had it in the side compartment, away from the worst of the soaking clothes. It struck her as grossly unfair that after she had helped hundreds of thousands of people today, she was left holding a bag of urine-soaked clothing.

Life
really
sucked sometimes.

The house greeted her with silence. It was similar to the quiet that came after a session with her razor: empty, peaceful, the stillness of a leaf after a slow-motion tumble to the grassy floor. There was no need for her to check the calendar posted on the refrigerator; she knew the schedule by heart—her mom and sister were off at their mother-daughter book club before Sue had Cheer and her mom had an afternoon out with friends; her dad was at the office until God knew when. Missy was alone.

Missy had been alone a long, long time. An empty house was nothing more than a physical reminder.

The enormity of the day's events crashed down on her as she marched downstairs to the laundry room, where she dropped her soiled duffle bag and stripped off her gloves. She had traveled to a distant land, on horseback, all in the blink of an eye. The wind had whipped her hair hard enough to sting her face, and the desert sun had been merciless.

Missy unlaced her cleats and peeled off her socks.

She'd heard the firecracker pops of gunfire, had smelled the unwashed bodies of a quarter million people spread over the dusty ground like rancid human butter.

Missy unstrapped her shin guards and shucked off her shorts.

She had felt their pain, and with Famine beside her she had eaten their fear. A taste lingered in her mouth, like bittersweet chocolate.

Missy pulled off her goalie shirt.

She had cut them open and revealed their tortured hearts. She had bled them out and left them with the hope of salvation.

Missy threw her dirty laundry, bag and all, into the washing machine and added detergent.

She thought of a little boy, or maybe a girl, laughing in delight and kicking a ball with dirty bare feet over the hot, rocky ground of the desert, oblivious to the misery that weighted down the air. The toddler chased the ball, and on the other side of the mountains, delivery trucks began their long-delayed runs.

Missy started the wash cycle, tossed her soccer equipment onto the mat in the corner, then trudged up the stairs, clad only in her sports bra and underwear.

And before all that, Missy's team had won the game.

She had done all that—her, Melissa Miller.
She
had done that.

War can be a tragedy, certainly. But you could be something more.

For today, she had been that something more. Grinning, she fell onto her bed, her sweat and scars mingling as she lay prone, too tired to do more than just breathe.

Her life waited for her: the aftermath of the party loomed, and Monday was fast approaching. But that would wait. Later, she'd begin picking up the pieces of her life. She thought of Famine, remembered her cautionary tale of Pestilence. Missy couldn't undo what had been done. But maybe, like the White Rider, she could rein in the damage. At the very least, she could prevent it from getting worse.

And hopefully, it wouldn't take her five hundred years to fix.

Later, she told herself again. She'd figure it out later. For now, it was just her on her bed, safe in her room—no desert winds, no supernatural threats, no urges to pick up her razor and split her skin. For now, it was just the memory of winning the game, and the ghost of her cat nuzzling in her usual spot, settling in the crook of Missy's elbow.

For now, it was good.

As she drifted off, she felt a blanket cover her, then a kiss of frost against her brow. She would have smiled, but she was already fast asleep.

The phone woke Missy two hours later. With a groan, she buried her head under her pillow, but the answering machine volume had been set to Obnoxiously High, so even up in her bedroom Missy could hear the muffled sounds of a girl leaving a message. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself back to sleep, but no luck—she was up.

Sighing, she sat up in bed. And then she blinked as she saw she was all but naked. What had she been thinking, crashing out without a long-sleeved nightshirt? All she needed was for her mom to duck her head in at the wrong time and see Missy's scars. That would have been the end of everything.

She has to go home and cry to her mommy.

No. No, no, no. She didn't want to think about Adam, about the shreds of her social life. Not now. Not ever.

Missy grabbed clothing from her bureau, intending to just throw on any old outfit, but as she looked at the black and black and black, she thought of a painfully thin woman shrouded in shadow. So Missy rummaged, and she pulled out a bright red long-sleeved shirt adorned with a vampire's smile, along with red stockings and tattered black shorts that had faded to a soft gray. There. She was practically dripping with cheer.

That made her think of her sister in her Cheer uniform, a plastic smile on her face as she told Missy that she was a sick excuse of a sister.

No.
No.

To make sure she wasn't thinking about Adam or Sue or her life in general, Missy stormed down to the laundry room to throw the stuff currently in the washer into the dryer. She was too keyed up to eat, so she retreated to her room to attack her homework.

Three hours later, Missy was studying for Monday's pre-calculus test. Her peed-on clothing and soccer uniform were clean once more and already folded neatly in their drawers; her duffle bag was on the mat in the laundry room, along with her now clean soccer equipment. It had taken her a while to get all the grass and dirt out of her cleats, and the process had ruined her nails. But damn if it hadn't felt good.

She had finished her homework and had one more chapter to review—forget idle threats by Famine, logarithms were going to be the death of her—and then it would be on to frozen pizza and a movie. She already had a flick picked out, an oldie but goodie that she and Erica used to love to watch. A boy gives a girl his heart, and she gives him a pen. The pen, in this case, was mightier than the sword.

W
HETHER FROM A PLAYWRIGHT OR A PROPHET,
War said,
IT'S NOTHING BUT WORDS.

Maybe so. But words mattered.

Freak,
Adam whispered.

Some words clearly mattered more than others. She shoved thoughts of Adam away and threw herself into math as if she were smothering a grenade.

Missy was reviewing the relationship between distance, speed, and time (and wondering idly about the metaphysics of traveling half the world by flying steed and returning to find less than an hour had passed) when the house phone rang. Once again, the machine picked up; once again, a girl's muffled voice left Charlie Brown grownup sounds, all whines and meaningless tones. Missy thumbed the tip of her pen, felt the indent press against the sensitive pad of her finger as the caller rambled.

Finally, silence.

It was probably Sue, leaving Mom and Dad a message. Sue always did the right thing, at least to their parents' faces. She always called. She always smiled when they were looking, always was a team player. Sue was the perfect daughter; Missy saw that reflected in their parents' eyes every time they looked at her. Sue didn't wear clothing that made her look like a starving artist; Sue didn't put on enough makeup to give hookers a run for their money. Their parents never complained about Missy's chosen appearance. They didn't have to; they had Sue.

Missy padded her way downstairs to listen to her perfect sister's perfect message. A big red number two greeted her, reminding her of the call that had woken her from her nap. She pressed Play on the answering machine and grabbed a glass from the drying rack.

"Hey, Missy. It's Erica."

Missy froze, glass in hand.

"Call me, okay?" That was the first message. Erica's second, and last, message, was more imploring:

"I've texted and emailed, and I even left you voice mail on your cell, but maybe you're offline. Don't blame you for that. I just, you know, want to make sure you're okay. Last night was reallyha rsh."

Missy's breath was coming too fast; her blood was pounding behind her eyes, roaring in her ears.

"So, um, give me a call, okay? Or text me. Just, you know, let me know that you're okay. Okay? Thanks. Bye."

Missy hit Erase so hard that she broke her nail. She slammed the glass on the counter.

What the hell had Erica been thinking? Her parents could have heard that. Missy would have been bombarded by questions, by accusations. They never would have left her alone, not until she admitted what Adam had done to her.

Sue's voice, hissing in rage and bitter disappointment:
I'm embarrassed to know you.

Missy clamped her hands over her forearms and hugged herself, shivering. She wanted to cut and cut and cut, wanted to saw away at her flesh until her blood made it all better. She wanted the razor to caress her, its kisses stinging her like frostbite. And if she cut too much, or too deeply, well, would that be so bad?

I don't need the blade,
she thought desperately.
I don't. I don't. I don't.

Death's fingers along her cheek, colder than ice; his voice, heating her body with just one word:
control.

Maybe it wasn't as awful as she feared. Maybe Adam and the others got a good laugh at her expense, and that was the end of it.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Hope in five small letters. She clung onto the idea of
maybe,
but it wasn't quite enough to pull her from the undertow of despair.

She had to know. She had to go online, right now, had to check her messages and see for herself that Adam hadn't done anything worse than shred her dignity and pocket some cash. She dashed out of the kitchen. She'd prove to herself that her life wasn't over, and then she'd eat and do her studying and figure out how to rebuild what Adam had demolished.

In her room, she picked up her cell phone and turned it on for the first time since Friday evening. She had twenty-seven text messages waiting, and three videos in queue.

Oh, God.

She had one voice mail message and five missed calls. All the missed calls were from Erica.

Okay. She blew out a breath and tackled the voice mail first. Voice mail was easy. Voice mail was one-to-one, simple to review and erase and move on. It was also from Erica, asking if Missy was all right.

Was she? She didn't know, not yet. Swallowing thickly, she keyed up her text messages.

The first one simply said HAHAHA!!!!! She didn't recognize the sender's number. Delete.

The second one called her a CUTTERSLUT. Three guesses who that was from. Delete.

The third was from Jenna, and it said that Missy was gross and emo and pathetic. Yeah, well, minus the emo, that also described Jenna, so there you go. Delete.

The fourth was from Trudy, and all it said was LOOSER. Missy hit Reply and texted back: Spell your insults properly, LOSER. Smiling grimly, Missy hit Send and then deleted Trudy's message.

Okay. Twenty-three to go. And if even one more was from Trudy, not only could Missy handle it, she would even bust a gut laughing. Encouraged, she checked the fifth message.

NEXT TIME SLICE UR WRISTS THE LONG WAY 2 GET IT RITE