When I walked into the kitchen, my mother was sitting at the table in her pyjamas with a cup of chamomile tea in front of her. My boots were broken, my ears were ringing, and I’m sure I smelled terrible, let alone the fact that I looked awful with my smeared makeup and scraggly ponytails. Her stunned facial expression verified all of these things.
“I’m fine,” I said before she could say anything. “I just look bad because it was very hot in there and there were a lot of people.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “What happened to your boots?”
“They broke. They were bad quality, I guess.”
“How was the drive?”
“Uneventful. We came straight back. Pretty much everyone was asleep on the ride home. Totally safe.”
Mom poured me a cup of tea, and I pulled off my boots. Sighing, I plopped heavily into the chair across from her. “It was a pretty fun night, though.”
“How was the concert?”
“It was great! This band none of us had heard of opened, and they were only okay. But Surgical Carnage was great! Everyone was freaking out, and there was a mosh pit —”
“What happened to your hand?” Mom interrupted.
I looked down. It was really red, and definitely swollen. “Well, I had to help out Fern.” I smiled. “Some guy, a real jerk, sort of assaulted her. In the crowd, he started trying to grab her. So I punched him in the face.”
“Is it broken?” Mom got up to get me some ice from the freezer. As she wrapped it in a cloth, I moved my fingers. My hand definitely hurt, but my fingers all moved.
“I don’t think so.”
She handed me the ice and I pressed it to my hand. “So you punched a guy in the face?” She was frowning, and I realized that I should probably try to take some of the glee out of my story.
“Well, I had to. What else could I do? I had to get him away from her.”
“But weren’t you there with any boys? Didn’t they help?”
“There were a lot of people there, but I was the closest.” I scowled. “Besides, you can’t always wait around for some guy to save you.”
Mom fumbled for words for a moment. “That’s true. But I don’t think . . . I don’t know if . . . I don’t know if that was the best idea . . .”
“Mom, nothing happened. It was like self-defence. I hit him good to get him away from Fern, and then we immediately got away from him.”
“What did the police say?”
“Nobody called the police,” I retorted. Mom didn’t get it. Why, once again, was I surprised? “I took care of it. The guy was an idiot.”
“Was Josephine okay?”
“What does she have to do with anything?” It hit me right away that I’d lied and said that Josephine was going to be at the concert with us. Stupidly, I tried to recover. “Of course she was fine. She wasn’t there when it happened. She’d gone to the back area of the club, with this other girl, Yvonne.”
Mom studied me. I could tell she didn’t believe that part of the story. “Well. I guess it was a tough situation, and I’m glad you helped Fern,” she said. “But, Rachel, you have to remember, people can be unpredictable. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
“Just promise me that you’ll do your best to stay away from tricky situations like that.”
“I do already. I promise.”
We said goodnight and headed to bed. I washed the makeup off my face, got changed, and crawled under the covers. My journal sat on the nightstand. I wrote:
Riding through the night on blackened wings
Singed with blood and vengeance, hear the angels sing
The demon crawled inside me when you hurt my friend
Don’t get mad at me when I know I must defend
I crack your face and the blood spills out
No one’s going to hear you if you scream and shout
Your blood is on my fist and my teeth are bared
This is what you get for trying to make me scared
FOURTEEN