Page 95 of Blade

“Stop!”

“It’s all right!”

“There’s nowhere to go . . .”

She stood only a few feet away when she leveled her accusation again. “You told Dawn. You knew what she would do!”

For weeks, she’d been coming to his bed. Disgust. Relief. The snowball growing with each swell of emotions.

“Come here now, Ana. Nice and easy,” Emile said.

“It’s no big deal.”

She slipped her hand inside the boot of the skate, removed the guard, as the narrative shifted in her head. This place. These people. Indy was dead because of them. Fear finally turning to rage.

It was time to fight.

“Ana!” Dr. Westin was out of breath when he caught up, the two men boxing her in.

“Get away from me!” Ana said.

But they didn’t listen. “Calm down. You’re acting crazy,” Emile said, taking a step closer.

Ana lifted her hand higher, the one with the skate, the heel of the blade angled to strike. She swung it at his head, and he stepped back. She could see the fear in his eyes.

“Everybody, calm down,” Dr. Westin said. She could hear the fear in his voice.

All because of the blade.

“Ana,” Dr. Westin said. “What do you want us to do? It’s cold, and you have no shoes. No coat. Let us take you home. There’s nowhere to go.”

But their fear had lit a fuse.

“You killed Indy! All of you. Stay away from me ...”

Emile’s voice sharpened. “Come on, Ana—you’re acting like a child!”

Disgust. Relief.

She could see things now, in this new narrative, the walls of a cage she’d put herself in. Thinking this was all there was—The Palace, Dawn, Emile—with everyone else gone. Her family, the Orphans. Her mother was dead. Indy was dead.Dead.The men kept talking, pleading with her. The cage door open. Freedom waiting on the other side.

Freedom from this tarnished dream and the person she had become, the child trying to hold on to it.

Her eyes turned again to the highway at the other end of the field, the lights from the cars and trucks passing through.

She lowered her hand from the air, picked up her other skate from the ground, then turned, and ran toward the road, toward freedom, the men calling after her but unable to follow. Emile with his limp, and Dr. Westin exhausted from the chase down the mountain.

She didn’t look back as their voices faded. Making her way to the edge of the field and under the split rail fence. To the shoulder of the highway. And she kept running, then walking, skates hanging by their blades, clenched in her hands.

Exhausted, feet numb and bleeding, she came to the truck stop after a quarter of a mile.

Black pavement. White painted lines. Bright streetlamps shining on the tops of metal trucks, their sides red, blue, orange, yellow. Their tires as tall as her shoulders when she limped past them. The drivers’ cabs dark, the truckers asleep somewhere inside.

Walking between them, she got to the other side, away from the highway, where she might be seen. There was a small structure. The sign readFacilities, so she went inside. There she found a row of vending machines that lined the wall to the left. On the right was a broken door, hanging from one hinge. Behind it, a toilet and sink and a stench that made her gag.

But she washed her hands. Wiped her face. Dried them with the sleeves of her dress. Then she leaned her body against the back of a vending machine that was warm and buzzing, the motor inside keeping the drinks cold. She slid down to the ground.

Her head was light, high from the rush. It felt euphoric, this thing she’d done, breaking out of the cage, running from the despair and all she’d lost. And before she could come down and think of what to do next, think of Indy, the door opened and a man walked in.