Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(51)

Getting run over by a truck was perhaps the most annoying thing that had ever happened to her. She was deadish for three whole days, and ended up missing every last performance of her dance recital. The other girls said they did fine without her, which just made it worse. The only good thing about it was the food at the revival center on the day she regained consciousness. They had the best homemade ice cream—so good that she once splatted just to get another taste of it. But of course, leave it to her parents to send her to a cheapo revival center with sucky food.

“So you were there when it happened?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Citra said for the second time. Then she took a deep breath and said, “It wasn’t an accident. I pushed you.”

“Ha!” said Rhonda, “I knew it! I knew someone pushed me!” At the time her parents had tried to convince her that it was unintentional. That someone had bumped her. Eventually she came to believe it, but in the back of her mind she always held on to a little bit of doubt. “So it was you!” Rhonda found herself smiling. There was victory in knowing that she hadn’t been crazy all these years.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Citra said. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“So why are you telling me now?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Citra repeated, like it was a nervous tick. “Being a scythe’s apprentice means I have to make amends for my . . . well, for my past bad choices. And so . . . I want to give you the chance to do the same thing to me.” She cleared her throat. “I want you to push me in front of a truck.”

Rhonda guffawed at the suggestion. She didn’t mean to; it just came out. “Really? You want me to throw you in front of a speeding truck?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“And your scythe is okay with that?”

The scythe nodded. “I support Citra entirely.”

Rhonda considered the proposal. She supposed she could. How many times had there been someone in her life she wanted to dispose of—even just temporarily? Just last year she had come remarkably close to “accidentally” electrocuting her lab partner in science because he was such an ass. But in the end she realized that he’d get a few days vacation, and she’d have to finish the lab alone. This situation was different. It was a free revenge ticket. The question was, how badly did she want revenge?

“Listen, it’s tempting and all,” said Rhonda, “but I’ve got homework, and dance class later.”

“So . . . you don’t want to?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just busy today. Can I throw you under a truck some other time?”

Citra hesitated. “Okay . . .”

“Or better yet, maybe you can just take me out to lunch or something.”

“Okay . . .”

“Just next time, please give us some warning so you don’t freak out my mother.” Then she said good-bye, stepped inside, and closed the door.

“How bizarre . . . ,” said Rhonda.

“What was that all about?” her mother asked.

And since she didn’t want to get into it, Rhonda said, “Nothing important,” which irritated her mother, just as it was intended to.

Then she went back to the kitchen, where she found her ramen had gotten cold. Great.

? ? ?

Citra felt both relieved and humiliated at once. For years she had held onto this secret crime. Her gripe with Rhonda had been petty, as most childhood resentments are. It was the way Rhonda always spoke of her dancing as if she were the most talented ballerina in the world. Citra was in the same dance class, back in that magical childhood time when little girls nurtured the delusion that they were as graceful as they were cute.

Rhonda had led the pack in disabusing Citra of that delusion through eyeball rolls and exasperated exhales each time Citra took an imperfect step.

The push wasn’t premeditated. It was a crime of opportunity, and that one act had cast a shadow over Citra that she hadn’t even realized until she faced the girl today.

And Rhonda didn’t even care. It was water under a very old bridge. Citra felt stupid about the whole thing now.

“You realize that in the Age of Mortality, you would have been treated much differently.” Scythe Curie didn’t look at her as she spoke—she never looked away from the road when she was driving. Citra was still getting used to the odd habit. How strange to actually have to see the path of your journey in order to make it.

“If it was the Age of Mortality, I wouldn’t have done it,” Citra told her with confidence, “because I’d know she wouldn’t be back. Pushing her then would have been more like gleaning.”

“They had a word for it. ‘Murder.’”

Citra chuckled at the archaic word. “That’s funny. Like a bunch of crows.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.” She did a quick maneuver to avoid a squirrel on the winding road. Then Scythe Curie took a rare moment to glance over at Citra, when the road ahead straightened. “So now the penance you’ve given yourself is to be a scythe, forever doomed to take lives as punishment for that one childhood act.”

“I didn’t give it to myself.”

“Didn’t you?”