Page 55

Sam takes off, sprinting up the path, the sound of her boots muffledin the haze. Instinct makes me run after her, even though I only vaguely know what’s about to happen.
Up ahead, the girl sees Sam and recoils. As if Sam is aiming for her. She struggles under the man’s grip, legs unsteady, the tote bag raised like a shield in front of her. Sam passes her in a wide arc, heading instead for the man, not slowing, smashing right into him.
The collision knocks him away from the girl and into the grass. Sam bounces off him, staggering backward. The girl hurtles away, wanting to look back but too scared to. I leap in front of her, hands raised, adrenaline frothing inside me.
“Friends,” I say. “We’re friends.”
Behind her, the assailant slips over the grass as he tries to flee. Sam hurls herself at him, leaping onto his back. Quickly, I guide the almost-victim to the closest bench, set her down, order her to stay there. Then I’m off, rushing toward Sam.
Somehow, she’s pushed the man onto his knees. He slumps more the longer she’s on top of him, bending so far forward his face brushes the grass.
Something Coop said earlier fills my skull.We don’t know what she’s capable of.
“Sam, don’t hurt him!”
My voice cuts across the park, distracting Sam. She looks up. Not long. Just a split second. But it’s enough time for the man to kick at her. His foot hits her in the stomach and sends her rolling through the grass.
The man rises in a lunge, legs spaced apart and bent at the knees. A sprinter at the starting line. Soon he’s off, shoes slipping a bit on the slick grass. Sam’s still on her back, trying to flip onto her side, sucking in air to cool the pain in her stomach. Not down for the count, but close enough.
I break into a run, awkwardly, with one hand in my pocket fumbling for the pepper spray.
The man is completely up now, also running. But I’m faster, all those jogged miles paying off. I catch the man’s sweatshirt, jerkingthe hood off his head. There’s a baseball cap underneath, slightly askew. I see a shock of raven-black hair, cocoa skin on the back of his neck. One hard pull of the hood is all it takes to slow him down, sneakers sliding, arms flailing.
When he whirls around, I expect to see his face. Instead, all I see is the blur of his hand as it streaks toward me. Then the slap comes—a brutal backhand whipping my cheek so hard my entire head jerks to the right.
My vision clouds with a red pulse of pain that blocks out everything else. I haven’t felt pain like that in years. Ten years, to be precise. Fleeing Pine Cottage. Screaming through the woods. That thick branch knocking me dizzy.
Suddenly it’s like I’m right back there again, feeling the deep, throbbing hurt from that branch. Time contracts, becoming a dark tunnel that I’m about to fall through, not landing until I’ve returned to that cursed woods where all those bad things happened.
But I don’t. I’m back in the present, shock numbing my body. I let go of the hood, my hand opening against my will. I can still see the man through the red haze clouding my vision. Now free, he’s running south, getting farther away, soon gone.
His presence is replaced by two others, swooping in from different directions. One of them is Sam, hurrying up behind me, saying my name. The other is the girl we just saved. She’s left her bench and comes toward me, hand deep in her tote bag.
“You’re bleeding,” she says.
I press a hand to my nose as something hot and wet trickles from my nostrils. Looking down, I see blood glistening on my fingers.
The girl hands me a tissue. While I dab at my nose, Sam presses against my back, encircling me with a hug.
“Goddamn, babe,” she says. “We’ve got a fighter on our hands.”
I breathe through my mouth, swallowing crisp air that smells faintly of grass. My entire body hums with a mixture of adrenaline and fear and pride that Sam might actually be right. Iama fighter, aglow with radiance.
The girl we saved—she never does give us her name—also seemsastonished. She speaks in awed, hushed tones as we whisk through the fog on our way out of the park, asking us if we’re vigilantes.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” Sam says.
Once we’re on Central Park West, I hail a cab and make sure the girl actually gets into it. Before closing the door, I shove a twenty into her palm, closing her fingers over the bill and saying, “Cab fare. Don’t ever walk through the park alone this late again.”
15.
My face still hurts when I wake up—a dull residual pain that trails along my cheekbone to my nose. In the shower, I make the water as hot as I can endure and spend a good five minutes sniffing steam into my nose, huffing it out, dislodging the dried blood caked to the insides of my nostrils. I then lift my face to the spray, the hot water stinging my skin.
When I think about last night, a tremor grips my legs so violently that I have to lean against the shower wall for support. It’s hard to believe I was that foolish, that quick to leap into danger. The man in the park could have been armed. I could have been stabbed, shot, killed. All things considered, I’m lucky I got away with a mere backhand to the face.
Out of the shower, I swipe my hand over the bathroom mirror, making a clear streak across the fogged surface. The reflection staring back at me has the faintest of bruises on her cheek, barely noticeable. Yet it’s tender to the touch. A little pressure from my fingertips is enough to make me wince.