Seventy-One

My eyes fluttered open. Jael knelt beside me.

“He is awake,” Jael said to Mel. “That is unfortunate.”

Jael pulled on my ruined arm harder than E ever had. Pain sparkled before my eyes, the joint crackled, the noises twisting my gut. I yelled just as my shoulder snapped back into place.

“I am sorry,” said Jael.

“Think nothing of it.” I wept.

Outside crowds cheered and cowbells clanged as the marathon continued.

Mel gave me a kiss on the shoulder. “There, it’ll feel better soon,” she said. “Also, they’ll give you drugs.”

Across the room E was being yanked to her feet by the cop, wrists handcuffed behind her. CapnMerica videorecorded the arrest. Dorothy’s aunt Ruby sat in her wheelchair, her face in her hands. Dorothy knelt beside her, rubbing her back.

Ruby looked up at me.

Mel and Jael helped me to my feet. I knelt next to Dorothy.

“I’m sorry I shot you,” Ruby said.

“That’s okay.”

“I was trying to shoot that girl.”

Mel said to me, “The Taser electrodes hit you both.”

“Thank you,” I said to Ruby. “You saved my life. I’m pretty certain E was going to choke me to death.”

“Far Li says you attacked her,” Mel said. “She’s claiming self-defense.”

“The trolls will love that,” I said. “It’s her word against ours.”

“Not so much,” Dorothy said. She pointed at the X-Men Cyclops, standing on her mantel looking across the room. “He was watching.”

“So there’s video evidence,” I said. “How long was I out?”

“Only a couple of minutes,” said Mel. “We were on the steps with the cop when we heard you get tased.”

“So Dorothy doesn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Far Li killed Russell before she came here.”

“Who is she?” Dorothy asked.

“She’s Shu Li’s sister.”

Dorothy looked at the ground. “Oh.”

Ruby asked, “Who is Shu Li?”

I told her how Shu Li had committed suicide, and how Far Li had wanted revenge.

“But why would she come here?” Ruby asked me. “Dorothy wouldn’t bully anyone.”

How to answer that. Do I tell her about the incoherent rage? The trolling? The bullying? The way the Internet had turned into a pipeline of raw emotional sewage? The ridiculous alliances, the death threats? Do I enlighten a woman who thinks of the Internet as nothing but a way to get e-mail, buy a book, or read a newspaper?

Should Aunt Ruby know that Dorothy travels the web as NotAGirl, and while she didn’t do the bullying herself, she hung out with guys who did? Would any of this help her make sense of a world where a crazy woman would try to cut off her niece’s head?

“Mistaken identity,” I told her.

Dorothy hugged me and whispered in my ear, “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

I hugged her back with one arm, the other dead by my side.

I turned to Mel and Jael. “Can I have drugs now?”