She dropped to her knees, and Momma, with her tireless, sinewy strength dragged her across the ground while Penny screamed and fought, using every ounce of power she had in her. Digdeepdigdeep.
It happened so swiftly, the shift of shadows. Penny wasn’t even sure what she was seeing at first. Momma seemed to freeze, stunned. Her arm dropped like a doll’s arm, falling limply to her side. Bobo held the flashlight aloft, the lens turned red with blood. He brought it down again, hitting Momma with a revolting crack across the head. Her head snapped to the right with the blow. It was almost comical, like cartoon violence. Then the old woman dropped to the ground, slumping into a stiff-legged seat. Bobo moved in fast knocking her flat. Then he sat astride her, hitting and hitting again.
An inhuman sound escaped him, a horrible wail of rage and misery.
Moooommmaaa!
The girl—not Penny—lay still, staring, her heart hammering. Then she got up and ran. She didn’t even notice that it had started to snow.
TWENTY-ONE
Rainer could tell, just by the way she got out of bed, that Finley wasn’t quite awake. Awake, she moved quickly, walked so fast that he almost couldn’t keep up with her, all her movements purposeful and swift. But when she was like this, she moved slowly and deliberately. She sat up, her white skin glowing.
“Fin?” he said.
She stood naked, the perfect curves of her body painted from the light washing in through the curtain from out in the shop. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the art on her skin, just her dark silhouette. She dressed, and he watched as he quietly pulled on his own clothes.
“I’m coming with you,” he told her.
“Okay,” she said easily.
That was the other thing. When she was like this, she never argued. If she’d been awake, she would have told him that it was time for her to go. And if he tried to stop her or go with her, she’d get mad. Tell him that he was trying to control her, not respecting her boundaries, being a Neanderthal. He didn’t get it. Did girls want you to take care of them and protect them, or not? Girls want what they want in the moment, his dad always said. The next moment they want something else. You just have to give it to them and not ask too many questions. That’s the trick to getting along with the ladies. So far, Rainer hadn’t seen anything that proved his father wrong. “All right, baby, whatever you say.” That phrase right there is the key to my successful marriage. Rainer’s parents, unlike the parents of most of his friends, had been happily married for thirty years. So there must be something to that.
Rainer had first seen Finley in high school detention, though he’d heard about her before that. Freaky Finley they called her. Or Finley Firestarter. He wasn’t sure why she had those names. But there was something different about her, those dark, bottomless eyes, that cool half-smile she wore, like she was in on a joke that no one else was getting. Rainer didn’t believe in love at first sight—until he saw Finley.
Her hair was longer then, an impossibly thick jet-black mop around her shoulders. She didn’t have any ink, just a row of piercings in her right ear. It wasn’t anything physical: not her snowy skin, or the perfect curve of her ass, or the beautiful swell of her breasts. Something about her called away a piece of him, and it floated through the air and she breathed it in, and it was forever lost to her. Loving her was like trying to get that piece of himself back, a deliciously pleasant, totally lost cause.
“Miss Montgomery,” said Mrs. Patchett that day. The gym teacher was affectionately known among the badly behaved of Roosevelt High School as Miz Hatchet. “What are we in for today?”
“Tardiness,” said Finley quietly. A couple of the girls in the front row laughed. Even among the misfits, she was a misfit.
“Take a seat,” said Miz Hatchet. “No phones, music, video or e-books. Homework only. Or quiet reflection on what brought you here in the first place. In your case, tardiness. You might do some thinking about what your being late means to others.”
Rainer watched Finley walk up the aisle, a big pack over her shoulder, a notebook clutched to her chest, willing her to sit where he could watch her. She picked the seat over by the window, took out her notebook and textbook and proceeded to do what looked like algebra homework. The rest of the losers just sat, staring outside or discreetly texting each other. Miz Hatchet pretended not to notice, staring at her own phone.