Page 22 of Handsome Devil

Last time I did it barefoot, I limped for a whole month.

Andrin waltzed out to the hallway, knowing I’d follow him.

We walked into the woods for ten minutes. It was prohibited for students to go past the first line of trees, but we ignored it.

The icicles in the muddy ground prickled my feet, twigs slipping between my toes. I felt like a rabbit caught in a net, my pulse out of whack.

When we reached deep enough inside the woods, Andrin tugged a handkerchief from his sports jacket.

He wrapped it around my eyes, double knotting it so that I was completely blind.

“Ready?” he asked.

No,my mind screamed.

Two, six, two.

Two, six, two.

Two, six, two.

I tapped my side. It was a way to reassure myself. To pretend I was in control.

My lucky numbers.

I nodded, then gulped.

An ear-piercing bang rang in the air. The scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils. Nocturnal animals screeched. Wings flapped.

I started running.

More bullets followed. They chased me like bad memories, always too close, no matter how fast I went.

Boots shook the ground behind me.

Andrin trained me to survive without my sight by playing a hunting game.

He chased. I ran.

I’d become an expert at living in darkness. Andrin said people like us, people who were screwed up in the head, they need to perfect the art of living like monsters, in the pitch black.

Instead of my eyesight, I relied on my hearing. I listened to his footsteps, to their pace, to the low but deadly whisper of acocking gun, to the heavy breathing of the forest animals lurking around us.

My skin tingled at the heat of another living, breathing body in my proximity, even if I didn’t see it. I’d memorized the position of every tree, every trunk, every obstacle in the forest. Mapped out my surroundings in my head.

I managed to escape him, weaving between trees, jumping over obstacles, dodging low branches.

“Boy!” Andrin barked behind me. By the sound of it, he was half a pace away from me. He was getting tired. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

My mind went blank. I gasped and tripped over a tree trunk.

Something soft but firm, probably rotten wood, scraped my shins. The hot, unmistakable sensation of blood coated my legs.

I fell face down into the mud. I heard Andrin walking leisurely behind me.

Everything hurt. Most of all my heart.

A boot pressed against my palm, digging in pointedly to break the little bones. “Yes, it is your birthday. I remember. Seven is old age for an adoption candidate. Your window of opportunity is closing in.”