“Stop! If you’re going to drive like a crazy person, you’ll have to let me out!” When Brody didn’t seem to hear her, she began to panic, grabbing the door for safety.
Finally he got his temper under control and slowed the car down. “I’m so sorry, Mina. I should have been there to protect you.” He reached out to touch her bruised cheek, but Mina flinched back in fear. He dropped his hand dejectedly. She had hurt him unintentionally.
“You see, now you’re scared of me. I’m not angry at you—I’m angry at myself that you got hurt.” Brody looked at Mina, and she could see fear written in his eyes.
“Brody, it could have been worse. A lot worse. But you saved me.” Mina gently reached out to touch Brody’s arm, to comfort him, to show him that she wasn’t afraid.
“Who was he, Mina?” Brody’s jaw clenched and unclenched in anger.
“I don’t know,” Mina answered truthfully. “Some guy in an alley. An evil, evil man.”
She watched as Brody’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “He threatened you, and you don’t know who he was. He seemed to want something. He said he’d be back.”
“I told you, I don’t know who he is. And I don’t have what he wants.” Mina felt her own anger rise.
“But you know what it is?” Brody asked, unbelieving. “If you know what he’s after, then give it to him.”
“I don’t have it, and even if I did, I couldn’t give it to him. You have to believe me.”
“Maybe I could, Mina, if you told me what’s going on.”
He looked at her accusingly, but Mina’s silence was the only answer that Brody got.
“Please take me home now,” she said a few minutes later.
“Absolutely not! We need to go to the police.”
“No, I want you to take me home. I don’t want to go to the police, and if you take me I will deny everything.” Mina turned on Brody angrily. “I never asked you to get involved. I never asked you to sit with me and chauffeur me around. Hanging out with me for two days does not give you permission to decide what I should and should not do. Besides, this would never have happened if you hadn’t run over my bike! I never asked for your help, and I don’t want it. Take me home.” The last words flew from her mouth, and she instantly regretted her tone. But it was too late to take them back; the damage was done.
Neither of them spoke a word until they reached the international district, delineated by faded Mexican stands and restaurants and the occasional Chinese joint. She demanded he stop one block from her home. “Stop, here!” She pointed, and Brody pulled over.
“Mina, I’m sorry!” Brody began but was interrupted by Mina’s sudden exit from the car.
Mina quickly slipped between the colorful stalls and people, trying to lose him. She waited until his car pulled away into the night and she could no longer see his taillights. When Mina was sure Brody wasn’t on her street, she ran all the way home, trying hard not to look over her shoulder. She grabbed her key to the blue street-level door, ran straight up the stairs, and yelled goodnight to her mom, claiming she was tired.
Once safe, Mina crawled into bed, cradling her hands around her knees, and cried herself to sleep, wishing she hadn’t stumbled on the Pandora’s box that was her family’s curse, and wondering how she’d ever survive.
Chapter 9
Mina had the full intention of going to school the day after the attack by covering her bruises with makeup. She was about to tell her mother about the attack at the library, but then decided against it when Sara took one wide-eyed look at the bruise and began to shake. Mina quickly played it off as another clumsy gym class incident, which was not uncommon for Mina, and it seemed to ease her mother’s fears.
If Sara found out that her daughter had been attacked by a large man in the alley, she would make them run again, Mina knew.
She went to the small closet that housed the family’s laundry and reached into the dryer to pull out a clean hoodie. “What the…?” Mina said aloud. The hoodie she’d pulled out was red, and she hated the color red. She reached up to pull out another zippered jacket. This one was red, too. In fact, all of Mina’s hoodies were now permanently red.
Her mother had warned her that the Story would try to mold Mina’s lifestyle into a fairy tale, but she hadn’t believed it until now. When she went to show her mother, she could tell it shook her, perhaps more than anything that had happened so far. Sara didn’t blink an eye when Mina asked to stay home from school. Something about the red jackets terrified her mother into compliance.
Sara went on a one-woman war against the color red. She threw every piece of red clothing in the house in the garbage. She scoured the house high and low for every red ribbon, washcloth, marker, and pen, and even burned the red Christmas stockings. Gone. All of it, gone.