All the Rage(11)

“This too close to you, Romy?” he pants. “Gonna cry rape?”

Air burns my throat and my lungs beg for reprieve, but I can’t slow. I need my body to tell his I will always be able to get away, that he should quit now and find someone weaker.

Sweat soaks the back of my T-shirt, pools underneath my breasts. I fall behind, coming shoulder to shoulder with him and as soon as I am, he snakes his foot out and hooks his ankle around mine and an explosion of words fills my head.

Tripkneesteethliphit the ground running, that’s what I do.

The track bleeds into my knees and my knees bleed it back out. My face eats the dirt, drives my lips into my teeth. I taste my own metal and salt. The breath is out of me. I let the pain. I let the pain mute color, sound, mute everything but itself until rough hands turn me over and Coach Prewitt’s face is inches from my own. I reel air back into my lungs while she gives me her spiel. It never changes.

“You eat, Grey? You eat today? Hydrate?”

“It’s not that,” I manage.

“Then what happened here?”

I wipe my mouth on my arm and leave a thin red line on my skin. Everything I say next comes out in slow bursts as I try to catch my breath around all the hurt.

“He—tripped—me.” I pause to cough. “Did it—on purpose.”

Prewitt turns to him. “This true, Garrett?”

“Like hell I did.” But he lacks conviction, breathless as I am.

“He was chasing me.”

“It’s track, Grey. Was everyone behind us chasing you too?” A few people laugh. He shakes his head, smirking. “Her legs went right out from under her. Damnedest thing.”

“If you weren’t running so goddamn close—”

“Enough of that,” Prewitt says. I struggle to sit up, but she claps a hand hard on my shoulder, keeping me still so she can inspect the damage. “Bit your lip. Knees took the worst of it, but you’ll live.” She grabs my hands and turns them over. My palms are, somehow, mercifully unscathed. “Head down to the nurse’s office and get yourself cleaned up.”

She pulls me to my feet. Blood trickles down all my newly opened spaces. I take a few cautious steps, legs stiff and ankle protesting. Prewitt notices.

“She’s faking,” Tina mutters.

“Yeah, that’s fake blood, you stupid—”

“I said enough,” Prewitt says sharply. “Young, walk her to the nurse’s office.”

Penny steps forward. I step back.

“I don’t need that,” I say. “Her.”

“You’re hurt. She’ll take you in.”

“No.” But no is a dead word. “I can get there on my own.”

“That’s not how we do it here.” Prewitt squints at me and all those lines around her eyes scrunch up. “And you know that.”

I’ve got another no on the tip of my tongue, but Prewitt’s just daring me to say it and I’m tired, so I part the crowd by limping through it. Penny has to jog to catch up and after that, we’re evenly matched. She might even be slowing down for my benefit, which makes me angrier than I can say, but if I could speak I’d tell her I hate her. I hate you. I want my silence to carry that to her, somehow, because she should know it forever and ever amen.

We reach the building. Climb the stairs up. The movement pulls at my split skin and God and Christ, it hurts. I watch my blood dot the floor as we reach the fork in the hall. Penny moves left and I go right.

“You’re supposed to go to the nurse’s office,” she says, but I keep putting distance between us. “You should get cleaned up.” A second’s silence. “Brock tripped you?”

I turn and walk backward so she can see me in all my wrecked glory.

“What do you think, Penny?”


I hobble to the showers and rinse off, watching the water turn pink before swirling down the drain. I get a better view of my torn skin. It does look bad enough for the nurse’s office. I finish up and get dressed, carefully edging my shorts up past my knees, trying not to stain them with blood.

I’m pulling my shirt over my head when the faint trilling of girl reaches my ear. The door swings open a minute after that. Tina leads the pack. When she sees me, she gives me the kind of look everyone else is glad they’re not getting.

“Brock tripped you?” The other girls quiet as they begin undressing because everyone always gets quiet when they’re about to witness something worth repeating later. “Jesus, what boy don’t you lie about?”

The stupid thing is, I used to like Tina. Coveted her whole who gives a f*ck? attitude more than I did her breasts, even though I wanted those too. I admired her, for the longest time, because she seemed so above it all. She’s not—she was waiting for her moment to be right at the center of it. She took my place as well as she could. She’s not Penny’s best friend by a long shot, but she’s the girl Penny calls when Penny needs a girl. Sometimes, I think Alek chose her for Penny, after the disaster that was me. Tina’s father owns the Grebe Golf Club and damn, if that isn’t Sheriff Turner’s favorite way to spend his free time.

“Seriously, why is she still here?” Tina turns to Penny. “She lies, right? She lies and Kellan—” My body is an alarm gone off. My body is not my body. My skin tightens enough to suffocate, keeping me in this moment where I stop and she doesn’t. “—has to leave. How is that fair? ‘I want him.’” She does the kind of vocal gymnastics that make her sound like a breathy, love-struck girl and I want to be the violence in her life. “‘I dream about him.’”