Shane had given her lessons in how to trip people up--it had been a game, one that had ended up with her on her back more than him on his, and she'd loved the laughter and the feel of his weight pinning her down. But now she walled all that away and stripped it down to its purest parts.
She could do this. She had to do it.
She stepped forward into Gina's body, and got her left foot behind and between Gina's. That put her lower leg at an angle, below Gina's knee.
As Gina stabbed at her with the knife, Claire grabbed her wrist, forced it up and in, and overbalanced her. Gina started to step backward, then yelped as Claire's braced leg took the strength out of her knee.
She went down on her back. Claire twisted the knife out of Gina's hand and dropped down with one knee on her chest, holding her down. She froze, looking down at her, breathing hard. She felt hot and shivery now, and the impulse to take that knife and do something terrible with it boiled up inside. It tasted like rage and fear and all the terrible things she'd ever felt, and for a second, just a second, she thought about what it would be like to make Gina feel that, to make Ginahurt.
Gina's eyes went wide, watching her. She knew. She could see it, too, and for the first time ever, Claire saw that Gina was actually afraid.
"This is what I saw," Miranda said, a quiet little voice at Claire's elbow. "But you're not going to do it. You're a good person."
Claire didn't feel like a good person, not at the moment. She felt sick and a little bit faint, and she didn't resist when Miranda took the knife out of her hand.
"But I'm not that good," Miranda said, and stabbed the knife down at Gina's chest.
Claire screamed and knocked Miranda out of the way, a firm body check that sent Mir stumbling, then rolling. The knife fell to the grass. Gina scrambled for it, but Claire got there first, picked it up, and held it at her side. Gina slowly climbed to her feet, breathing fast, chin down. The fear was gone now, replaced with an insane amount of rage.
"Monica," Claire said. "Call off the pit bull. Now, before this gets worse."
A few torturous seconds of silence passed before Monica said, "Gina. Yo, bitch, chill. We'll finish this some other time."
"Give me back my knife," Gina said.
"Um...no." Claire folded it up and slipped it into her jeans pocket. "The last thing you need is a weapon."
"I'll buy you another one. Come on, Gina. We're going." Jennifer took Gina's arm and tugged on it, glancing at Claire with a mixture of fear and respect. "Like Monica said. We'll get this later."
Gina pointed at Claire. "You. I'll getyou later."
Claire shrugged. "Go for it."
Jennifer pulled her friend away. Monica had already turned her back and was walking away. She paused right before she turned the corner to glance back and nod slightly to Claire.
Odd. It almost looked like respect, too.
Silence. Claire listened to the breeze, the distant laughter of students coming from beyond the trees, and all of a sudden she couldn't stay on her feet. She sat down--sprawled--and rested her forehead in her hands.
Miranda crawled over to sit next to her. "Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"Stopping me. But you don't know. You don't know what it's like."
"Getting bullied? Kind of do."
Miranda was looking at her with sadness and a strange kind of pity. "No, you don't," she said. "It's been happening since I was in kindergarten. Not them all the time, but other kids, you know. Every day. It never stops, and it never goes away, thanks to the Internet--it just keeps happening every minute, every day. And I just want it to stop. I think about how to do it, you know. How to kill them. All kinds of elaborate things, like trapping them in pits and burying them alive, or covering them with concrete."
It was the most sensible thing Claire had ever heard her say--and the most painful, too. She put her arm around Miranda. Close up, she expected Mir to smell bad, but she didn't; she smelled like lemon shampoo and soap. With a little clothing upgrade and better makeup and hair, she'd be pretty.
Oh, God,she thought, amused.Eve's rubbed off on me. Because the old Claire, the one she'd been before the Glass House, would have never even thought about Miranda's appearance.
"Explain to me why you came to find me," she said. "Was it just that you saw the knife fight?"
"Yes," Miranda said. And then, immediately, "No. There's something else."
"What?"
Miranda looked up at her with those odd, unsettling, luminous eyes. "It's about Shane. I think he's in trouble. There's something wrong in his head. I can almost see it."
Claire's phone beeped for attention--a text. She checked it. It was, shockingly, from Myrnin; she didn't
think he even knewhow to text. Evidently, he'd found his cell phone again.
It said,Where are you, stupid girl? Run faster!
Claire sighed. "Dammit! Can you tell me about it while we walk?"
Miranda didn't, of course, have many details. Psychic impressions were the most useless thingsever , as far as Claire could tell...it was always feelings and impressions and vague warnings, and half the time it seemed like Miranda made things worse by trying to prevent something bad. Like today. The whole thing with Gina wouldn't have happened if Miranda hadn't come along trying to stop it. Well, probably.
Miranda's cold-blooded violent streak worried Claire almost as much as Gina's psycho tendencies. She thought about revenge in dangerously graphic terms.
"Let's try this again," she said as they walked down the mostly deserted street that led to the cul-de-sac where Myrnin's lab entrance was located. "So what you see is that Shane's in trouble because he gets in a fight."
Miranda nodded, so vigorously her tangled hair bounced. "A bad one," she said. "And gets hurt. I can't tell how much, but he gets hurt a lot, I think."
"Is it day or night?"
Miranda thought about it, frowning. She kicked an empty plastic bottle and flinched when a dog barked in one of the yards they were passing. The houses on this street were run-down, with bars on the windows. Only the Day house at the end of the street--a mirror for the house where Claire lived, the one owned by Michael Glass--looked nicely kept up, and even it needed a new coat of paint. "I can't tell," she finally said. "It happens inside. In a room. People are watching. There are bars."
"Like, with drinks?"
"No, like a cage."
That was sickly likely, because Shane seemed to end up behindthose kinds of bars way too often. "How many people?"
She shrugged. "It's dark; I can't tell. Maybe a lot? No--more. More than a lot. From a long ways off. There but not there."
That was definitely vague and not at all helpful. The fighting--well, that was something that honestly wasn't all that unusual. Shane was a born fighter. But the getting badly hurt--that was unsettling, all right.
"Is there any way to tell when it's going to happen?"
Miranda shook her head. "It's pretty clear, so maybe a few days? A week? But I don't know. Sometimes it's tricky. And sometimes it goes away, too. Things aren't always obvious."
"Okay, well, thanks. I'll try to look out for him." That wasn't much, because Claire knew she couldn't spend all her time watching out for him. Warning him would help, but knowing Shane, it wouldn't solve
the problem, either. If he felt like he needed to be in the fight, he'd be in it--whether he got hurt or not.
"You should get home," Claire said. "I have to go to work. Mir?"
Miranda stopped, looking at her. She was getting taller, Claire realized; still growing. She was taller than Claire was now, and would probably be Eve's height or better before she was done.
"Tomorrow, meet me at the house," Claire said. "If Myrnin doesn't need me, we'll go shopping. Okay?"
Miranda smiled at her--a sweet, delighted, heartfelt expression that lit up her whole face. No, her whole body. It was like nobody had ever offered before. "Okay!" she said. "I've never been shopping."
Claire blinked. "Never?"
"No. My parents used to buy me things before they died. And now people sometimes bring me things, but I've never gone myself. Is it fun? It looks fun."
"It's fun," Claire said. She had a sudden impulse to hug the girl, so she did. Miranda felt all bones and awkward angles, but she hugged back enthusiastically. "You go straight home and stay there. Monica may back off, but Gina's kind of nuts. I think she's after me, though."