Never Have I Ever(104)

“What happens next?” Luca asked her, wavering beside me. He had put the Picasso in the duffel. It was full, and he was ready to go, if he was going. But he paused, looking back and forth between us. I could see that he was panicked.

Roux told him, “We leave. I’m going to tie her ass up, and then I’ll get some clothes on and we’ll take off. Please go load the car.”

That reassured him, but she was lying. If he left, she would put a bullet in me. I laid a hand on him, keeping him beside me.

“Ezra, wait,” I said, as if that name had power to pause him, and it worked.

“Go start the car,” Roux said, calm and sure. Talking over me. “I’m right behind you.”

“Your mom wants to see you so bad.” I kept talking directly to him. He was still looking back and forth between us, his chin trembling. “She’s so worried. She loves you so much.”

He hesitated, teetering on some internal cusp.

“Your dad is worried, too, I bet,” Roux said, and at her words he flinched.

He’d refused to talk about his dad, I remembered. But there was no mention of a father on the website.

“Your father is not with her,” I said, trying to stall him. I could feel momentum gathering in his body. He pressed his lips together, firming his chin, and now his gaze was fixed on Roux. Still I kept talking, desperate. “It’s only your mom.”

He said, “She picked him. She knows what he’s like. She picked him over me.”

He started across the room, bag in hand, obedient but unthinking. He crossed through the gun’s field of vision, and this time I was ready. This time I used it.

I grabbed the poker off the little stand and moved toward her, staying behind him, lifting the poker as I ran.

“Get out of the—” she said, gun swinging wildly, trying to find me. I dodged left, keeping him between us. Then I shoved him, and he got tangled in his own long legs and the bag, falling in slow motion. I ran at her, the poker raised, swinging for the gun hand, the only thing I could reach this fast.

I heard the roar of the shot.

She must have missed, because I was still moving. I brought the poker down, as hard as I could, across her arm. She screamed, and I felt the give of bone under the blow. The gun went flying toward the sofa, thumping to the carpet. I heard Luca screaming, too, high-pitched and terrified, like a child. He was trying to crawl out of the way, the duffel bag abandoned. Roux, her wrist hanging down at an odd angle, was already moving for the gun.

I dropped the poker and leaped for it, too, reaching. I saw without understanding the bright red running down my outstretched arm. I was closer, but Roux spun to me.

She grabbed at me, trying to pull me back with her good arm. We got snarled up in each other, falling. She rolled, banging us both into the coffee table, but it got her on top. She jabbed her good hand down hard at my shoulder. An exquisite kind of pain came then. The world went white at the edges of my vision. Her hand drew back wet with blood, and now I could feel it gushing out of me in beats, so warm. I understood she hadn’t missed.

That red, wet hand came clawing at my face, trying to find my eyes, and I hit at her, banging at her other wrist where it hung all kinds of wrongly. She reared back, yelling something. Words. She was telling Luca to get it, to get the gun, but I couldn’t see him. I bucked her off, and I scrambled toward the couch on all fours. Then it was in my hands, that cold, black metal, surprisingly heavy. I heaved myself up, sitting on the floor with the gun in my good hand, sweeping back and forth, seeking her. Luca was still on the floor as well, moving away from the bag and both of us, scooting backward toward the front door. He was shaking his head no, and his eyes were huge.

Roux scrambled to her feet, and I saw that she now had the poker in her good hand.

We faced each other in the empty room. She already had the poker raised, but she was four steps away, and I had the gun leveled directly at the center of her chest.

I could feel a worsening pulse of awful pain deep in my shoulder. I felt it as a burning, the slick heat of the blood running out of me. She undulated in my vision, as if she were underwater again. As if I were seeing her magnified, the way things always are beneath the waves. A darkness was closing in at the edges of my eyes.

My phone was ringing again, somewhere, buzzing against the carpet. Luca’s mother. But Luca was scooting backward toward the door, crying.

“Luca!” Roux said, but he scrambled to his feet and ran out.

The door slammed behind him, and instantly, outside, I could hear rough male voices yelling. Telling him to get down, get down on the ground, right now. The police? Had they come already?

I could hear Luca yelling back, “Okay, okay, okay! My God, don’t shoot!”

“Okay,” Roux said, echoing the boy. “Okay.”

I thought she would lift the poker and come at me, the way I had with her. But she didn’t. She dropped her arm. Let the poker slip out of her hand. It thumped onto the floor.

In mere seconds the police would be in the room with us and all the explanations would begin. Outside, the boy she’d stolen was lying down in wet grass, I hoped unharmed. Two doors over, Char’s life was in tatters. Just down the street, my family slept, innocent and trusting, loving me, with no idea of what I was doing now. No idea of all I’d done.

“You know what, Amy?” Roux said, prepping her mouth, curling her lip, readying to say something insouciant. Or sarcastic. Maybe a taunt, or a threat, or a reference to her godforsaken game. She looked me in the face, as if the gun weren’t even in my hands. She repeated, “You know what?”