All the Rage(51)

“Nice story,” she says.

Thud, again, louder now and not so soft. Tina goes back to fumbling for her clasp. This is how little it matters to her, as little as it did the night she stood over me and wrote on my skin.

“Besides, anyone would have done it,” she says quietly, so only I can hear it.

My heart pleads with me to do something about this, so I can breathe around it. Tina and that road.

She put me on that road and invited people to my body, anyone.

What happens next is something I don’t remember deciding to do but knowing, after, that I would do it again and again, a thousand times.

I shove her into the lockers, drive her into that metal as hard as I can. The sound she makes is better than any song I’ve ever heard. I want it on repeat. I dig my nails into her arms, feel her softness give in to me. Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there’s a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hair and rip it out of her skull. You don’t get to do this when you’re a girl, so when the opportunity for violence finally presents itself, I want all of it at once. That same stillness seems to come over her too, and for one second there is nothing—and then—

Inside me goes wild, turns all of me into a weapon. I was born to hurt and so was Tina. I strike her, break her skin, but she doesn’t just stand there and let it happen. She comes back at me as hard and in the ways I want her to, in the ways only Tina would.

At first, the only thing I feel are the parts of her I’m trying to ruin. Then her elbow finds my center and steals my breath and everything is alive in me after that. Everything. Every blow she lands, I return however I can. It’s messy. It’s my foot on her bare toes and the sound she makes, it’s her hand in my hair, it’s those strands free of my scalp.

Girls are shouting, girls are too scared to pull us apart. Tina pushes me into a row of lockers, some of them open, and my forehead meets the edge of metal, and there’s pain but what is pain even, really—this is release, nothing worth stopping for.

We are not going to stop.

Someone will have to stop us.

It isn’t until Coach Prewitt comes in with Principal Diaz that I realize there’s blood in my eyes. She’s bleeding, a girl whispers. I’m bleeding. I bring my hand to my forehead and the tips of my fingers are soaked in myself.

I lower my hand and Tina is across the room from me and she looks like hell. There’s a scratch on her shoulder and a bruise on her cheek. I did that. But … I stare at my hand again, the red. Her bared stomach. This can’t be over.

I haven’t written on her yet.

I lunge for Tina, but Diaz grabs my arm and shouts, “Hey, hey, hey! Enough!”

Tina stumbles into Prewitt, her eyes wide and terrified, like she was never fighting back because now is exactly the time to act that way. I should act that way, but I can’t.

I want to hurt her until I feel finished.

“What is going on here?” Diaz demands, her voice echoing ferociously around the room but before anyone can say anything—and Tina’s mouth is open enough to do it—she takes a look my face and changes tack. “Ortiz, get dressed and go to my office.” She shakes her head. “Disgraceful. This is—” She casts around for another word, finds none. “Disgraceful. I expect better from all of my students, but you two—”

“Grey started it,” Tina says. Did I?

“I said get dressed, Ortiz,” Diaz snaps. “Grey, follow me.”

She leads me out of the locker room, the sound of her heels clacking on the floor. I bring my hand to my head again. The cut is above my right eyebrow and the bleeding hasn’t stopped yet. Diaz glances at me. “It’s all over you.”

I look down. She’s right. My collar … everywhere.

“Where are we going?” I ask, a little thickly. Blood doesn’t make me woozy at all but the adrenaline from the fight is fading and this is so strange.

It’s strange, feeling it all come out of me like this.

“I’m taking you to the nurse’s office to get that cleaned up,” Diaz says. “I don’t know what possessed you. That was an awful display.” Awful, I think, and then I laugh, just a little. Diaz rounds on me. “You think this is funny?”

I press my lips together and look away. I think it’s hilarious. There’s a girl out there everyone thinks is dead and maybe she is because you know all the ways there are to kill a girl? I do. But I’m supposed to worry about whatever trouble this stupid little fight at school is going to bring me beyond the satisfaction I felt while I was in it.

In the nurse’s office, DeWitt looks me over. I wait for him to tell me I’m old enough to take care of myself, but instead he inspects my forehead with gentle hands and says it’s beyond any of us.





the stitches seem so unnecessary once most of the blood is cleaned away and I can see the cut, but Dr. Aarons numbs my forehead and says it’s deep enough and hold still.

I’ve never gotten stitches before and there’s something about the odd pressure of the needle as it goes in and the pull of my skin as it’s brought together. Mom can’t handle the sight and waits for me in the waiting room. She’s been having a hard time looking me in the eyes since she picked me up from school.