I regret spitting into the cup as soon as I get past their white picket fence.
No, I don’t.
Yes, I do.
I’m bouncing back and forth on the tips of my toes like Rain Man until I make myself move. I take a longer way, via a gravel path near the ravine, among the trees, so I can think. There’s something about the way gravel sounds, shifting between my shoes, that makes me feel alive. Some people need skydiving, I need long, windy gravel paths to get lost in. It won’t take long to get back to town. It’s only about a mile away. As I walk, making good time, I take in the sounds and the trees and the water that travels between the rocks and the hills. Despite the serenity that surrounds me, everything is so fucked up. I have purple eyes, a fucked up symptom of a fucked up disease. In fact, a lot of people have purple eyes. And some people who don’t have it want it so much they’re willing to be stuck inside a quarantine with a murderer, someone who may have a proclivity toward hunting us down. And I’m walking in the woods. Alone.
I’m an idiot.
I walk faster. I’m almost to the path that leads up to Sullivan Street, but I need a couple nature-y breaths. I look over the expanse. Brilliant greens and golds. I stop. The sound of water brushes against my ears. I close my eyes and inhale.
I am everywhere and nowhere, lost in my own reverie, until fingers jab my ribs, hard.
“What’re you doing here?”
My heart thumps as I whirl to see Natalie’s angry eyes.
“I was just headed home,” I say. I try to move past her but she sidesteps, blocking my path.
“I think we should talk,” she says.
“About what exactly?”
“You and the other purple-eyed freaks, walking around, spreading purple eyes everywhere.” She pauses and her jaw stiffens. “I saw what you did to Luke.”
My palm hits my stomach and I want to look anywhere but her accusing face. She waits, lips tight. The leaves rustle around us. I have to somehow tame the broiling acid in my stomach. Guilt and fear sloshing against each other. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know I had it—”
“Shut up,” she says. She grabs my shoulders, but then she clutches her hand back, as if my maroon cardigan burned her. “Just...shut up. I’m sick of hearing people say that they didn’t mean any harm. Well, harm happened.” Natalie’s fists are so hard, her knuckles look like they might pop out of her skin. She stretches them, running her pointer finger over the outline of something in her pocket. “You’re going to stay in your house from now on. And you’re going to stay away from Luke and everyone else in Allan.”
“We’re all in the quarantine together, now,” I say.
She slips her fingers into her pocket and pulls out a long, black switchblade. When it flicks up, I jump back. My thighs shake. She smiles.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she says. “But I will protect this town.”
Shit, she is some sort of vigilante now? My heart yammers and my feet don’t want to stay on the ground. I have to get away from her. Now. I flash my gaze quickly up and to the right. She falls for it. She turns around and lowers her knife. I swipe past her, pushing her as I go. I hear the startled cry, the crush of leaves, the squish of dirt. But she gets up fast. Her steps stomp and crash along behind me.
But I don’t see any of that, of course. All I see is the path before me, strewn with jagged roots and unforgiving rocks. I run, I hop, I dart, I skip, and somehow I manage to burst out of the woods and on to Sullivan Street. I dash down it, only turning back once—coast clear—before turning onto Main Street panting and wheezing.
I lost her. I pause, my hand up against the glass of Roy’s Sports Bar, as I let my breathing slow. A gray, hazy mist has settled over the bones of the town. Droplets descend on the tips of my eyelashes. Aside from some cops dangling on a corner a block away, there’s no one around. I’m in a ghost town. I squint through the windows of Roy’s. Half-drunk pints rest next to tabletop menus that spell Yuengling wrong in the list of specials. Men and women cup their chins in palms as they stare at the news. The governor is chatting with a correspondent.
Steps pound toward me. I shift. Natalie bangs right into me sending us both to the ground. My head hits the bricks. Pain sprouts through my brain. I shift and move under her weight, but she’s too heavy. “Get off me.” Her hand crunches my shoulder, her other hand crushes my thigh. She may just be trying to get up, but she has chosen the most excruciating way to do it.
“You’re the one who blocked me. I was just trying to talk,” she says, face red, the vein in her neck punctuating as she hovers over me, still not up. Other footsteps click toward us and large hands grab at my shoulders and underarms, pulling me up. Flashes of blue and gold. Another cop pulls Natalie away from me.
“Thank y—” I start to say, but I’m pushed face first into the brick wall. The mortar scratches at my cheek. A forearm presses into my shoulder blades, squishing my rapidly beating heart. I pinch my eyes closed as cold metal licks against my wrists.
The cop clicks the handcuffs in place.