Family(3)
“Fine,” she said, her voice iron. She pushed me into the box, and I hit the back and felt it wobble, as though it would tilt and fall over, leaving me on my back. My eyes widened but she stepped in and stabilized it with one foot, returning it to equilibrium. I had tipped it before, in the past, and it was horrible, being stuck laying flat. I preferred it the way it was, end up, and she knew it. “Don’t push me, Sienna,” she said, holding me inside. I saw her eyes, and there was something else in there, something deep, behind the irises, something beyond fire or anger. She shut the door and I heard the pin secure it – there was no escape, not now. “And I won’t push you,” she said through the small, mailslot-like hole that hovered in front of my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not really sorry but realizing at last, as my fury abated, that this was not where I wanted to be. “I’m sorry! Please, let me out!”
“You should spend your time in there thinking about how you’ll do things differently when you get out,” she said, her inflection dull, dead, as bored as if she were doing something menial that required no thought. Cleaning the bathroom, perhaps. “We won’t have this happen again.”
“I hate you,” I said, and I sobbed, and realized I hated myself for doing it, for showing this measure of weakness. “I wish my father were here. He would have loved me. He wouldn’t have ever done any of this to me. Not like you, you f—”
“Your father would understand,” she said, acknowledging the man even existed for only the second time since I’d known her. “This – all of this – it’s for your own—”
“You don’t care anything about my good,” I said sullenly, and stared back at her eyes. “You don’t care about me at all.”
She stared at me again, a long, uninterrupted silence between us, and I thought I caught just a waver, that certain something in her eyes, as it threatened to break loose. But after a moment it was gone, replaced by the implacable look of Mother, just as she was every time I went in – undeterred. “It’d be easier to think that’s true,” she said, voice husky. “But if it was, I’d let you out. You need to learn. Following the rules will save your life. Discipline will save your life.”
Her fingers came up and I saw them move through the slot, and it started to slide closed as I held myself together for only the seconds before it was shut, leaving the darkness to surround me. I began to sob, slowly at first, as one made its way out, then another, and another as I started to break down, great heaving emotions causing me to lay my back against the wall of the box and slide down, my arms wrapped around my knees as I sat in the darkness, alone – just like always.
Chapter 2
Now
The rocket-propelled grenade hit our car with the force of a sledgehammer against an egg, waking me out of a sound sleep. We had been on our way back from Eagle River, Wisconsin, and I had fallen asleep. It had been a long day – and night, and several more of those before this one. I don’t know when I had passed out, but I knew that most of the sleep I’d had over the last few days had taken place in hotel rooms and cars, and I was lucky that I had abilities to heal that were above normal humans, because otherwise I would have had a permanent crick in my neck.
I felt the shock of the explosion reverberate through my head as the car, already swerving, was lifted from the ground and went into a sideways roll. I felt my body jerk to the side, my head hitting the window it had been resting against, breaking it as the roof crumpled above me as it hit the road.
Everything seemed to be at half speed, as though I could see the fragments of glass rush in front of my eyes in slow motion, pelting Andromeda, who sat next to me, and Scott Byerly, who was in the seat beside her at the other window. I saw Zack and Kurt in front of us, their heads jerked to the right by the motion of the car flipping, Zack’s hands still anchored on the steering wheel.
The car came upright again, all four tires exploding from the force of our landing. My seatbelt held me tight, snug against the soft leather interior, and my head smacked the headrest. When I blinked away the feeling of disorientation, I realized that the front of the car was smoking at the hood, and the windshield was broken, only shards left, like little pebbles all stacked together around the edges of the window.
It was Scott who spoke first, bleariness heavy in his voice. “What. The. Hell. Did we just set a record by hitting the world’s largest roadkill?”
I felt a stinging pain on my forehead, and when my hand reached up, I felt sticky blood, and my fingers came away with crimson adhering to the whorls of my fingerprints. “Roadkill doesn’t explode when you hit it,” I said. “That was an RPG.”