I prairie dogged the lid up off my head and hauled my thick midsection onto the road surface. Getting to my feet felt like pulling myself up a rope in gym class. I swayed drunkenly. When Maeve appeared in front of me, I was too drained to fight. I stepped and tried to stiffen my body for battle. My hands curled into fists.
'Tomato?!' gasped Maeve. She was standing with her back toward the petrol station, retreating. 'Tomato…sauce? That sauce ain't yours.'
'You,' I growled and pointed a mean finger at her. 'Don't. Call. For help. I'm warning you.'
'ELIII!' she screeched. 'Get Arn! KAYTEEEE!'
'I TOLD YOU.' I couldn't stay quiet. I couldn't be cautious. 'I have killed a LOT of, of, I've just killed a LOT today, Maeve, and I will mess you up majorly. Lucky for you we go way back, so I'll tell you one last time. Don't you make a peep.' My cheeks were puffy and spit collected around my teeth. I must have looked horrifying as I waddled toward Maeve, my belly bulging, my skin filthy, my hair wild and sticky. Before she could react, I had her by the shoulders and pressed her to the ground and found myself kneeling on her elbows, my hands wrapped around her hair, then my palms were pushing into her throat. 'YOU TAKE ME TO HIM.' My voice was demonic. 'WE END THIS.'
'What are you… gug… what are you gonna do to him?'
Maeve could barely breathe. I wanted to see how tightly I could squeeze her throat.
'This Napoleon-thing, this dictatorship, this calling-himself-king?' Maeve nodded timidly. 'I'm calling Time Out. I've had enough. I'm taking what I need to live and I'm going back to my island with my baby.'
'ELIIiUGGhghgh.'
I had to shut her up. She kicked and rolled and wiggled. I fought to undo her belt buckle, pulled Maeve's pants down, forcing the pants over her knees, yanking her knickers down too, just to humiliate her. I rolled her onto her front, pulled her pants all the way off, forced her hands beneath her shoulder blades and tied them using her pants and undies as rope. There was an entire pant leg spare when my knot was done. I waggled the cuff of her pants near her mouth. She tried to turn her head away.
'They're gone… gonna… gonna end you,' she rasped as I dragged her over to the manhole, hands in her armpits and hair, clawing, yes, and stomping her a little, okay. I was furious, and she owed me – plus she'd fucked with my baby, and no one fucks with Eden Shepherd's baby.
I dragged her head over the open manhole. Just her head.
And her shoulders, and chest. But it wasn't my fault she fell.
'You love copying everything i do, huh? Huh?! I just spent a day in the sewer. See how you like it, you copycat CUNT.'
I didn't throw her into the black mouth. I simply let go of her head and arms and boobs. She was free to save herself if she could do it within a nanosecond. Not my problem if she didn't grab the sides with her feet and stop her fall. Not my problem if her bottom half followed the top. Not my problem if she couldn't handle gravity. When she walloped the hard floor, I heard what sounded like an orange splitting as her meat whacked the concrete, PLECK. I hadn't tried to kill Maeve. She'd messed with my baby, that's all. I was just getting her out of the way. And it wasn't my problem if she had a skull that broke easily. Too much candy in her bones. Not enough calcium. Bitch was soft as an Easter egg.
The sky was filling with tea-coloured light. An Indian summer. Kids standing on the quad in their graduation gowns, signing each other's yearbooks, talking about working minimum wage all summer. Everywhere except here.
I had to spin around two, two and a half times before I got my bearings. I was drunk on anger, exhaustion, exhilaration. And hunger. So fucking starving I would take on anyone. I'd fight all six of them. I staggered to the BP station, pulled my fists up near my cheeks, ready to punch. I expected Eli behind the counter, Anya on the floor with a blade. The doors opened for me. No one was home. I bit straight into a chocolate chip cookie, right through the plastic. It could dissolve in my stomach. I sucked the crumbs through the hole in the bag, gulped it down, gobbled another. I cradled a huge, two litre bottle of Fanta from which I sucked huge gulps of delicious relief. I slid to the floor in sugary ecstasy and ended up sitting on the tiles while I put a bag of Doritos and several energy bars, with seeds and honey, into the furnace of my belly. My baby appreciated the feed, but she was begging me to sleep. My eyelids felt bruised, but sleep wasn't safe. Anya would crack my head open if she found me, or maybe use petrol on me. The thought didn't even frighten me. I had a hundred layers of skin now. She could kill me or I could kill her. A straightforward trade. I was an animal now. This was how wolves and wild pigs and bears and deer got through every day. Nothing personal.
I ransacked the store, popping cans of Sprite partly for the satisfaction of draining an entire something. I could feel the heat coming off a body in the shadow of the store room. A man's voice said, 'It's okay,' and I whipped the can of lemonade behind my back and retreated against the counter and suspended my breathing.
'I wasn't – GET BACK. DON'T MESS WITH ME.'
'Eden.' Eli – the new fat-cheeked Eli with jiggling manboobs – waddled toward me, palms open, exposed, vulnerable. There was an awkward silence between us like on a first date. 'Take five, okay? Take a look at what you're attempting to do to our utopia.'
'Utopia, huh, okay, Elijah.' I spat towards him. 'Rosa Luxemburg said utopia isn't just for the government and the power-party: it's for people who dissent, okay. If you think you stand for a free society, it means you have to let me go. Even if you and your crew are scared of me.' He wasn't even listening. It would take about a thousand years to explain Rosa Luxemburg to him.
'Please: have something to eat. Then we'll have us a good old catch-up. Here.' Eli selected a packet of bhuja mix and offered it to me.
I despise bhuja mix – but I took it from him. Of course I took it. I'd been training for nine months to seize every scrap of nutrition.
'Your baby,' Eli said, a smile splitting his face, 'Is she well?'
'Don't talk about my baby.'
'He cares very much about the welfare of your child. Only though cooperation can you protect her. No more stunts, please, angel.'
'Angel? Seriously? You're eight months older than me. You're a sellout. Go. Run to your stupid master. My baby needs protein.' I tore open a box of pork rinds, stuffed one into my mouth. The frozen, crisp bubbles of fat melted against my hot tongue, warmed my throat.
Eli kept a sideways eye pinned on me as he strode to the door, opened it and called, 'Maeve? Maeeeeeve?'
He appeared to hear a noise from the sewer and ran toward where I'd dropped Maeve.
There was commotion around the manhole, Eli and KT, pointing at me, Eli acting shocked, making the sign of the cross on his wobbling chest.
Something stabbed my bladder and I clutched my guts. There was a gurgling inside me like water going down a plughole. I plunged into the restroom of the BP station, pulled my knickers down and twitched with pain as my body rejected the rich food. I couldn't go anywhere right now. Stuck with diarrhoea. They'd trapped me with my own gluttony. My fingertips curled and my feet pointed inwards and I gasped and cursed as my butt squirted the green bubbly poison-soup out. Soon enough a girl, one of the guardians of Adam's realm, knocked at the door and said, 'When you're ready, you will be taken to him.'
I lifted my sore red bottom from the toilet seat, tinkered with the door lock, checked it three times, sat back down and released more acidic slurry into the toilet bowl. I wanted to threaten the people waiting outside, I wanted to hex them, but the enemy was inside me.
'We can wait,' said the voice, smug, cocky. 'Take all the time you want.' A girl with a strong, decisive, voice. A voice that was always right.
I dropped my skull into my hands and tried to push the tears back into my eye sockets. I sniffed then leaned back. No window I could squeeze through. Trapped.
'So you caved in, Esther Wadlow. Not here to help, are you.'
'Not exactly,' Es's voice said, and giggled. 'Community of Equals is so yesterday. Oi – how long you gonna be in there anyway?'
'What does it matter?'
Chan's voice cut in. 'King's got somethin special for you. Don't keep him waiting.'