“Aren’t you coming?” Muriel asked.
“Nah, I’m going to sit this one out.” I tried to keep my face blank and not let on that anything was wrong. “You guys go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go on.” I waved her away. Drew was already waiting at the entrance of the store.
My stomach was tying itself in knots. I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying not to double over and draw attention to myself. Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply through my nose, exhaling slowly through my mouth to relax against the pain.
Breathe in… breathe out… breathe in… breathe out…
It didn’t help. Each breath made my head pound harder. I gripped my shopping bag so tight that my fingers ached and my nails dug into my palms.
The glint of metal. I see dirty floor tiles underneath. Blood. Screaming.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to focus on the vision. I needed to see a face. A place. Something.
A hand holding a knife. No, not a knife—it’s pointed, like an ice pick, but bigger. Blood drips from the tip.
I concentrated harder, looking for signs of where the person was. What store they were near.
The bookstore. A lady. She’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Black with big blue and yellow flowers. She grabs her side. When she pulls her hand away—blood. It spreads, across the flowers on her shirt.
My eyes snapped open. I was sitting in front of the bookstore in my vision. Looking around for the woman, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, exactly. But I knew whatever it was wouldn’t turn out good for the woman.
Boys. Dressed in all black. The knife.
I searched the hallway for the group of boys or the lady in the Hawaiian shirt, but there were too many people filing by for me to see, so I stood on the bench and strained to see over people’s heads.
Purse. Screaming. Stabbing. Blood.
I was frantic to find the woman. Jumping off the bench, I stood in the middle of the aisle. People pushed and shoved their way past me. Some yelled at me to get out of the way. Others just brushed past, bumping into me. I stumbled backward, but stayed where I was. I wasn’t moving until I saw the woman or the group of guys.
Then I saw them. The group of boys walked toward me. I looked over my shoulder. The woman walked toward me from behind. I watched as the two came closer and closer to each other.
I tried to make eye contact with one of the guys. If I could create a bridge, I might be able to figure out what they were planning, but without it, there was no way for me to zero in on their thoughts. There were just too many people around for me to pick out one person’s thoughts.
I turned and jogged to the woman. Keeping pace with her, I put myself between her and the boys who headed straight toward us. I watched the boy closest to me. I saw the lights glint off the metal weapon he held half in his hand, half stuffed up his shirtsleeve.
When we passed the group of boys, I watched the one with the pick lunge toward the woman. I shoved her out of the way.
I didn’t move fast enough. I felt a stinging in my side, looking down, I saw blood seep across my blue T-shirt, turning it a deep purple, and I had the stupid thought that it was a pretty color.
I held my side with my hands, blood smeared across them. The sight made me nauseous, and bile rose in my throat, stinging it. I stumbled to the wall and leaned against it. The group of boys ran through the crowd, which kept moving past. No one realized what happened except the woman in the Hawaiian shirt. She screamed for help. People stopped and stared, but no one did anything. They just watched as my blood dripped on the dirty, tiled floor.
13
Abaddon
Muriel and Drew rushed out of the store when they heard the woman’s screams. Muriel saw me slumped against the wall and ran to me, while Drew dialed 911on his cell. I heard him tell the operator there had been a stabbing at the mall, and I wondered who’d been stabbed.
Me? Is that what happened?
“Milayna? What happened?”
“A group of boys,” was all I managed to say.
It didn’t take long for the EMTs to get there. They loaded me into the back of the ambulance and rushed, sirens blaring, to St. Mary’s hospital. Drew and Muriel followed in Drew’s car.
“You were very lucky,” the doctor told me three hours later. “The knife didn’t hit any major organs.”
The knife pierced right through my side. Going in the front and exiting the back. It was far enough to the side that it missed everything important. It just caused a lot of blood, making it look much worse than it really was. Than it could have been. However, it did hurt like a mofo.