Intersections Read online

  The baby peeped again. Tori kissed her head. She got to her feet. She took a step. Then another. The snow came up to her hip with one of them, and she struggled free, but after that she reached the line of trees where the drifts were smaller.

  The light had not gotten any closer, but it still shone bright enough that she could follow it, and Tori started toward it.

  4

  "You're not like other girls." The boy who says this is pale, face spotted with pimples, his black hair long enough to cover one eye. The eye that shows is lined with black. The black gloss on his lips has rubbed off long ago, because he's been kissing her for an hour.

  "You just met me," Tori says. "You have no idea."

  They've already compared scars. His are on his wrists, faint white lines crossing horizontally and hashmarked from the stitches. She's seen worse, but doesn't say so. It would seem rude.

  Hers is on her side, a long and curving mark. Ragged. No doctor had stitched her, and the wound healed ugly. This boy in front of her traced it with his fingertips, reverent. Possibly it aroused him more than the sight of her bare breasts. He kissed it with more passion than he'd kissed her lips.

  He asked her what’d happened. She told him the truth. When she was three, a dog tore itself free of its leash and bit deep into her side. Her mother had cleaned and bandaged the wound, and even as a toddler Tori had been aware that somehow, Mom had always blamed her for what happened.

  Since then she's been terrified of dogs, something they must be able to sense, because every dog she has ever encountered insists on trying to bite her. They always bark and snarl at her, even the ones whose owners assure her would never bite. They leap against their leashes or chase her down the street.

  She has other scars in other places, fainter, and from other things, but the one on her side is the only one that anyone ever seems to notice.

  "You're not like any of the other girls I've ever been with," he says.

  Tori smiles, thinking that by the way he fucked, he can't have been with many other girls at all. "Huh. Okay."

  "There's something really dark in you, I mean."

  "...Like how?" Tori has never been Goth or Emo or anything like that. She'd been wearing black when she met this kid, but that was her wait staff uniform, not her personal fashion choice.

  He shakes his head so the hair falls again over his face. He brushes it away. "I don't know. But it's there inside you. I could feel it. You know. When we were..."

  “Fucking,” she finishes for him.

  He touches his lip. There’s a mark there, hidden beneath the streaks of black. “Yeah. Then. When you bit me….”

  “I’m sorry.” Embarrassed, Tori shakes her head. Turns away. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No,” he says, hastily. His hand on her arm. Fingers stroking her skin. “I liked it. Can you do it again?”

  “You…want…me to bite you?”

  He is eager. Shining eyes. Open mouth, offering his tongue. “Yeah. Please.”

  “You want me to…hurt you,” Tori clarifies, something blooming inside her that is definitely dark.

  That is what he wants. As it turns out, yes, she can give that to him. All of it, maybe more than he was even looking for, but when she leaves him bruised and bleeding in the pale cavern of his tangled sheets, he is sleeping with a smile on his scarred face.

  In his kitchen, she raids the cupboard and the fridge, desperate to fill her aching, empty belly, but scavenges nothing but a few packages of saltines and the barest scrapings from a peanut butter jar. It is not enough. She is weak and shaking. Her hunger gnaws at her. Inevitable. Undeniable.

  Dark.

  5

  It was this dark thing, whatever it was, inside her that Tori called on now to keep herself moving through the trees. The food she’d glutted herself with only hours before had felt like a rock in her gut until now, when she was starving again. Each step took several minutes to complete, since she sank up over her knees every time and had to carefully pull her feet out of the snow to take another. Toes that had been broken a long time ago complained at the cold. The wind blew up, harder and fiercer, finding all the gaps in her clothes. The bag on her back had become so heavy she thought longingly of letting it drop, but to do that, she'd have to unhook the straps from her shoulders, and she was afraid she'd lose her balance and fall over.

  The light didn't seem to be getting any closer. Wind whipped the tree branches so violently that the house ahead of her shimmered in and out of view. Several times the stinging snaps of branches whacked her in the face. Her hair, torn free of the simple elastic band she'd used to tie it back, snagged and tangled, then slapped across her face and blinded her.

  She wasn't going to make it.

  Another squall of wind stole Tori's breath and seared her lungs. Against her chest, the baby struggled as though she meant to scream but either nothing came out, or the wind blocked the sound. The step Tori had been taking faltered. She went into snow up to her hip again and only managed to keep her balance by wrenching herself upright. Something low in her back shrieked in agony before the pain settled into an immediate dull throb.

  Something dark inside her. Something different than the other girls. Something hard, something sharp, something fierce. It reared up, forcing her shoulders to straighten. She took another step toward the light.

  The snow here wasn't as deep. The trees thinned. At last, the house seemed closer, one bright light in a lower window but the others dimly gleaming. Someone was still awake, thank God.

  Here in this small clearing, the snow had been carefully shoveled away from around a small pile of stones that looked as though they'd been deliberately piled. The single red blossom stuck into the pile gave away its purpose, and Tori paused in the knee-deep snow just beyond it. Something about the rocks kept her from moving closer.

  The wind growled, or something did. Shadows coalesced and moved low to the ground. With her hair slapping at her face, the darkness looked like more than shrubbery or trees being tossed by the wind. It didn't feel like bushes.

  It felt alive.

  She had no weapons, and her hands had grown so numb she could barely curl them into fists, but she did as she forced another step. Her foot slid through the snow and off what had been rocky, uneven ground, to find a smoother landing. Grass, she thought as she whirled, trying to keep whatever it was in her sight. A lawn. She was close to the house. Almost there.

  Another step. Another swirling set of shadows. The sound of breathing whistled in her ear, along with an animal stink. Heat. She couldn't see anything but creeping darkness, now stretching out long and black from the house itself. She was going to make it if she had to get there on her hands and knees. If she tore herself to shreds, she was going to make it. She was going to keep her baby safe.

  The darkness reached for her, but Tori reached back.

  6

  The dog growls.

  Snapping, snarling. Teeth. The stench of wet fur. Blood.

  The dog lunges.

  The collar and chain attached to it choke the dog off its paws, and with a yelp it lunges again. There's a wooden picket fence between them, so even if the chain breaks, Tori is safe. Her heart pounds and her palms sweat every time she passes this yard, though. Many days she'll take the long way home after school, but tonight Mom is making tacos, and if she doesn't get her homework finished on time, John won't allow her to have more than one. Food as a reward is Tori's motivation, worth even the terror.

  This dog’s teeth have ached to get into her flesh for years. He's old, gray-muzzled and won't leave the shade of his doghouse for anyone else. Not the mailman or delivery people, not the paper boy or kids selling magazines or cookies. Only Tori makes him rage this way.

  Earlier this morning, her backpack straps came loose on the way to school. The pack is old and worn enough that she can no longer fix the buckles. She's been carrying it by the top loop all the way home, switching the pack from hand to hand when her fingers begin to cram