All the guys at my school are equally predictable when pussy is introduced to the equation. Apparently, rich guys are no different.
“Are you?” asks the one with glasses, cocking his head.
“No,” I say. “So just delete it, and we’ll leave you alone, and you can laugh about it to all the other entitled pricks at your school.”
“You said there was another reason we’d want it,” says the big guy in the middle, his phone held casually in his hand, as if he’s just dangling it there to tempt me.
I snort at that. “If you want to ruin lives, you’re going to be in for a serious disappointment with me. My life is already ruined. Hell, I was born ruined. Your worst day would be a fucking stroll in the park for me.”
Cameraman just smirks at me, that infuriating look that makes my fingers curl into a fist. “You think we can’t ruin you. That’s cute.”
“Do you even know who we are?” the other brother asks.
“Some sick bastards from the right side of the tracks who want to come gape at the rest of us like we’re zoo exhibits before you go home to sleep on your pillows made of money,” I say, raising my voice to speak over the din on the tracks. “Am I supposed to know your names? Y’all all look the same to me.”
“Aw, she thinks money solves all problems,” Glasses Guy says. “It’s so quaint. I didn’t know people so naïve still existed, even in Arkansas.”
“I think there’s nothing you could dream up in your fancy mansion with a pool that would be worse than the shit a Faulkner High kid survives on a daily basis.”
Cameraman’s eyes glint with malicious intent. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”
I’ve spent my life clawing my way out of the trash heap of an existence I was born into, and I’m sure as fuck not going to let that picture wind up on the internet and kill whatever slim chance I have of getting a scholarship out of this place. I have one shot. I need to get that phone, and reasoning is obviously not going to work with this asshole. So, I use a language his primitive brain can understand. I kick him in the nuts.
He lets out a rough exclamation, doubling over in pain.
I snatch for the phone, wrenching it out of his hand before wheeling around and sprinting across the lot.
Mr. Behr’s car is gone. He must have snuck off while I was busy saving both our asses. I’m exactly zero percent surprised, but it still pisses me off that he ditched me to deal with three huge men while he slunk off to safety, using the noise of the train to cover his retreat. Whatever. It’s every man for himself in this world.
One of the guys shouts behind me, but I don’t turn back. I run straight for the train as it barrels down the tracks, the beam of its light transforming the rails ahead into gleaming silver streams. The glow only barely illuminates the lot, but I know my way. I run for the bright parallel lines, glancing at the looming dark shape behind the light, knowing that timing is literally everything in this game of life and death. One second separates one from the other. One second.
I think I have it. I’m never sure—that’s the thrill of playing chicken. My feet slam the pavement harder with each step as I curl into myself, my muscles tensed to spring. The horn screams above me, the scent of hot creosote and exhaust filling my nose, my lungs. I jump. The light blinds me.
I hear a shout of warning. Alarm. Panic.
But it’s too late. I’m suspended in the light like the particles of dust caught in the beam.
For a second, I’m weightless. I’m free. Life and death are the same. There’s nothing but sheer, raw existence. I am both infinite and utterly insignificant at once; the infinity between stars and the pause between heartbeats.
I am—
I am—
I am.
I hit the ground hard, my senses coming back to me after the moment of magic, the one where I leave my body for a second, where I’m not Harper Apple, the girl from the trailer park who ruined her mother’s life by being born, the girl who skipped freshman year, the girl who’s blowing her math teacher. Returning is harsh. My breath is ripped from my lungs, the asphalt burning into my face. My body is so heavy that I don’t realize it’s not only my weight for a second. The stink of the train, the tracks, the ground, all invade me as I feel the crush of his body on top of mine.
He flips me over, crushing his forearm down on my throat, cutting me off from drawing in the air he knocked out of me. The train is so loud, the thwack and clank of it rushing over the tracks so close I can feel the heat blasting from it, the air a hot rush over my burned skin. It pulses louder and quieter as he holds me pinned, red spots throbbing across my vision.
I open my mouth, wanting to scream at this psycho, demand to know if he’s fucking crazy or just has a death wish, but I try not to ask obvious questions even when I have all the air in the world. And right now, I don’t have any. I buck my hips, trying to throw his weight off, but he’s lying on me, between my thighs, his body too tight to mine to throw off our center of gravity.
His face hovers over mine, his eyes twin pits filled with darkness that threatens to swallow me whole.
“I could kill you right now.” His eyes hold mine, and I feel myself sinking into that darkness, feel it calling to mine, sucking me in like a black hole. “No one would even care.”
I know he’s right, that it would barely make the news, a little paragraph in the paper, “Body Found Near Tracks.” I’m nothing, just another casualty of poverty, chalk it up to gang violence like every other death that gets a mention onLocal News with Jackiebefore she cuts back to the anchorman.
I struggle, but the lack of oxygen makes my muscles burn, weakening already. I try to get in a right hook, but he snatches my wrist and pins it to the ground. I use my left hand, but he barely flinches when it connects with his cheek. He watches me for a second, his eyes dark and hollow. They’re not the eyes of someone pissed that I kicked him in the nuts and stole his phone or punched him in the face. No rage burns in his gaze as he weighs whether he wants to watch my life blink out in his hands. His eyes are empty.