“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.”
I peeked over the edge of the couch, my eyes narrowed. “Yeah, but you’re immortal. It really has much more weight when you’re full of blood and can actually die from being pummeled by a car.”
“Potato, potah-to. Do we have anymore O neg?” Proof positive that even at a hundred and thirteen, a sixteen-year-old never changes.
I stepped into the shower and scrubbed every inch of myself until my skin hurt, trying in earnest to get rid of the feelings of parking lot and imminent death. When I was nice and pink and warm, I slipped into my bathrobe and padded into my bedroom, ChaCha trotting happily on my tail.
I yanked open my top drawer and frowned, poking around at what should have been a sea of silk and lace. Or, more accurately, cotton and elastic stretched to the hilt.
Either I was woefully behind on laundry duty or there was a panty prowler afoot.
“Um, Neens?”
Nina came floating into my bedroom trailed by a cloud of pale pink silk and marabou. She was also wearing kitten heels, and her eyes were made up with thick swaths of black liner that winged at the sides, fringed with the most enviably long eyelashes I’d even seen—boxed or otherwise. The heavily lined lashes and lids only served to make the flat red color on her lips even more dramatic. She blinked at me and gingerly patted her hair—a spectacular waterfall of glossy waves the size of juice cans.
“Did you just do that while I was in the tub?”
Nina flicked an imaginary hair from her eye. “Maybe.”
“Wow. And here I thought you were directing a commercial, not starring in the
Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest, a rainstorm of marabou feathers showering her wrists and my carpet. “You have no vision.”
“I have no underwear, either.”
She cocked a slightly interested—if overtly confused—brow. “What are you talking about?”
I gestured to my knicker-free drawer. “I did laundry two days ago. Suddenly, I have nothing. Have you seen my underpants?”
“I try not to keep too tight an eye on your undergarments, Soph. That’s just disgusting.”
I yanked the pants I was planning to wear from where they lay on my desk chair and waggled them in front of her. “Not as disgusting as going commando in a poly-blend. Do you know what happened to my underwear?”
I could tell by the slight flash in Nina’s eyes and the delicate way she pinched her upper lip that there was something she wasn’t telling me.
