“Someone tried—” I paused, biting my bottom lip. I could feel the lump tightening in my throat, but I couldn’t cry in front of Miranda, in front of my student. And I couldn’t drag her into this. “Someone just cut a little too close to my car while they were leaving the lot.” I felt my heart thunder, remembering the brush of metal against my hair even as I lied about it. “They must not have seen me.” I managed a small smile.
Miranda studied me suspiciously. “You look like you were crying.”
My hand flew to my face. “Oh, do I? Probably because I was thinking of how much my insurance was going to go up. You know, hit and run and all.”
I saw Miranda’s gaze go over my shoulder and examine my shit heap of a car. “You have insurance?”
“Um, what are you doing out here? It’s late. Can’t possibly have been in detention.”
“I stay late a lot.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “Heddy—Ms. Gaines—lets me do some administration stuff for her while I wait for the bus so I don’t have to hang outside the whole time.”
“You stay until”—I glanced down at my watch—“after six every day?”
“Oh, no. Not every day. Today I talked to you, and that made me a little bit late so I missed the earlier bus.”
My near-death-experience emotional rush was replaced by an apologetic blush. “Oh, no. I’m really sorry.”
Miranda yawned, then shrugged. “No big deal. Not the first time I missed it,” she grinned, wide and genuinely. “Won’t be the last.”
“Why don’t you let me drive you home?”
She shook her head with a sweet smile. “That’s okay. It’s probably out of your way.”
“It’s the least I can do for making you miss the first bus. And you may have saved me from a potential mow-down. I kind of owe you.”
Miranda opened her mouth just as the Muni bus wailed to a stop at the curb. “That’s my bus,” she said, taking a step back.
She gave me a tight wave before turning around on her heel and sprinting toward the bus, backpack bobbing behind her. I watched until she boarded. She turned and glanced back at me, her whole body illuminated by the heavy yellow glow of the bus lights.
The bus belched out a puff of black air as it groaned away from the curb; I watched the illuminated trip board blaring HUNTERS POINT/ BAYVIEW and sighed. Hunters Point was the most undesirable place to live in the whole city. Miranda wouldn’t let me drive her home because she didn’t want me to know where she lived.
“It never changes,” I mumbled to myself.
I had almost managed to forget I that I had been a half-inch away from being a hood ornament until I opened my apartment door. Nina immediately jumped off the couch and slammed her pale hands against her open mouth.
“Ohmigod, Soph, what happened?” Her coal-black eyes were huge and saucer wide. She was on me in a heartbeat, and the second she slid her ice-cold arms around me, I crumbled.
“Someone tried to kill me!” I wailed into the crook of her neck.
Nina stiffened. “Again?”
I pulled back and attempted an indignant huff, then fell back against my best friend. “Yeeeeeeees!” I hiccupped, then burrowed my face into Nina’s neck. “I got run over!”
Nina took a few careful steps back, keeping one hand splayed against me while the other pressed against her perfect little ski-jump nose. “By a manure truck?”
I started. “Wha—?” Then I snaked a hand under my shirt and pulled off Lorraine’s fetid “charm,” tossing it across the room. “That was supposed to protect me.” I fell into another heap of tears, this one due both to my recent dance with a Goodyear and the fact that I smelled like a giant cow pie.
“Oh, Sophs, it’s going to be okay. No one’s going to kill you, I promise. I mean, look how many times people have tried.”
“But why do people keep trying? It sucks so much! I never try and kill anyone.”
Nina cocked an eyebrow and I frowned.
“Okay, okay. But they were all really bad people.” I clapped a hand to my chest. “I’m a good person and yet people keep trying to pummel the crap out of me.” I pressed the pads of my fingers to my swollen bottom lip. “And they keep getting closer and closer.”
Nina went to the kitchen while I settled myself on the couch. ChaCha circled me, looking concerned, and I cuddled her to me until Nina returned with an ice cube wrapped in a dishcloth. She pressed it gently to my lip. “You have a swollen lip and a couple of scratches. That’s so not a big deal. Remember when you almost got staked? And you got stabbed in the leg? Those were way closer. And you escaped a fire! Goodness, Adam was hell bent on taking you out and you survived that.”
“For some reason, none of that makes me feel any better.”
ChaCha whined on my behalf and shoved her little dog muzzle in my armpit.
The door clicked open and Vlad walked in, shaking off his duster and narrowly missing hanging it up. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Sophie’s upset that people keep trying to kill her.”
“Still?” Vlad’s lip curled.
“Again.”
Vlad shrugged and picked up the mail on the table. “Try being a vampire. They make movies about all the people who want to kill us.”