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“Two minutes is up,” Q snaps back, gliding across the room to pick up my stick.
She doesn’t look at me again, but I get the message loud and clear.
I’m out when she says I’m out.
And not just in the game.
I watch from the box of shame as Brad and Carter face off in the center of the store. Q’s presence seems to have shaken everybody up. They all seem so quiet and distracted. After tapping sticks with Brad, Carter easily gets the jump on him, sending the ceramic shard skidding across the hardwood, straight toward our goal. But right before it goes in, Q slams her stick—my stick—down on the ground sideways, blocking the entire goal with a triumphant smirk. The chunk of fine china ricochets off of it, and Carter’s shoulders bunch up around his ears.
I know, if she had been anyone else, he would have laid into her for cheating, but with her being his only source of food, water, and shelter at the moment, he bites his tongue and glares at me instead.
I know, big guy. I know.
Loudmouth hustles after the broken piece of plate and sets it back in the center of the store.
“I got this,” Q announces, leaving her post as goalie to take Not Brad’s spot across from Carter.
Not Brad shrinks away from her the moment she gets close, but Carter holds his ground.
Placing the mangled end of his makeshift hockey stick on the ground next to the broken plate, Carter looks at Q expectantly. He’s not just going to let her have this. He’s still a competitor through and through, and as stupid as that might seem right now, I get it.
In this post–April 23 world, the only things you get to keep are the things you refuse to let someone else take away from you.
Carter taps his stick on the ground and lifts it a few inches in the air, waiting for Q to smack it with the end of hers—the signal that it’s go time—but as usual, Q plays by her own rules. As soon as he lifts his stick off the hardwood, she whacks the ceramic puck as hard as she can, sending the shard careening directly into Tiny’s portly gut. The room goes from silent to deafening as Tiny clutches his stomach with a guttural wail, and the puck falls to the floor with a heart-stopping shatter.
Q makes a show of dragging an inch-long fingernail down her tongue and using it to write the number one in the air. Then, she turns toward me, victory shining brightly in her vomit-colored eyes as she tosses her almost waist-length dreads over her shoulder.
“Take care of that,” she barks, flicking her ring-adorned fingers in the direction of her latest victim. “And yo, when I said you looked like shit the other day …”
The corners of her full mouth twist into something truly evil as she stalks toward me. I try to keep my face neutral as she approaches, but when she reaches out to drag one of those talons along the edge of the toilet seat around my neck, I flinch.
“I was wrong,” she coos, gripping the rim between her thumb and forefinger. A glimmer of malice flashes across her face just before she leans forward, placing her lips against my ear, and whispers the word, “Flush.” Before I have time to react, she jerks her hand to the left, sending the toilet seat spinning around my neck like a horseshoe. Q throws her head back and cackles as sharp, stinging heat sears my cheeks and burns my eyes. “Now, you look like shit!”
She turns and sashays toward the entrance, still chuckling to herself, and Brangelina parts for her like the Red Sea. I quietly lift the toilet seat over my head and clutch it to my chest like a teddy bear. Carter squeezes Tiny Tim’s shoulder while keeping his furious eyes locked on me. Loudmouth is practically rocking in the corner.
And, in that silence, we hear it.
The pounding.
Q stops for a second, listening like the rest of us, but when she spins around, it’s like there’s a completely different person in her place. Her face lights up, her mouth splits into a manic grin, and her wide eyes dart from person to person, scanning our expressions for signs that we hear it too.
Completely ignoring the fact that we’re all glaring at her like she just stabbed our dog, Q snaps her fingers and yells, “Ohhhh shit! Y’all know what time it is?”
Tiny Tim shrugs off his anger and nods.
Loudmouth appears to be blushing.
Brangelina grins at each other and does a dramatic jump high five.
And Carter’s lingering gaze heats my skin.
“It’s bath time, muhfuckas!”
Rain
Q’s husky voice grows more and more distant as she takes off down the hallway, yelling, “Bath time, bitches!” at the top of her lungs.
Brangelina and Loudmouth follow, no questions asked, and even Tiny Tim, with a wince and a moan, saunters off behind them.
