“Wanna eat some birdshot?” Atlanta asks. “Because I’m talented with this shotgun. I’m the surgeon, and this here is my fuckin’ scalpel.” It’s a lie, really. It’s mostly because she’s in pretty close quarters, and a shotgun is called a scattergun for a reason: you don’t have to make one bullet count because you have a whole swarm of little lead bees to send at your enemies. That’s what’s great about it: no need to be surgical. “Unless you want your face erased, drop the baton, step back into the dang barn. Go on!”

Another hiss from the Skank, but she does as told. The baton drops. She slinks backward.

Atlanta tells Chris to pick up the baton. He does.

“We’re gonna leave,” Atlanta says. “Like I said, this friend of mine is under my protection. Whole dang school is under my protection. You come at us, I’ll make shotgun gravy out of your tender vittles. Tell your friends, too. Mitchell Erickson and whoever else. This ends here.” Skank and John Elvis don’t say squat, but when she says Mitchell’s name they share a panicked look.

Atlanta can’t help getting in one more barb: “And by the way, your music’s like someone set fire to my ears and then pissed on ’em to put it out. Talentless shitbirds.”

Then she and Chris back away from the barn.

They leave the way they came, Atlanta keeping her gun up all the while. She sees John Elvis and the Skank standing there, watching them go.

They don’t look happy. Well, boo-fucking-hoo.

On the van ride back, it’s like someone uncorked a bottle of high tension and happy gas. Everybody’s laughing. Giggling. The rush of courting danger. The uncertainty in the thick of it. The release of triumph, of slingshotting a stone into the eye of a giant, of still being alive to tell the tale. It’s all Did you see his face? and I know, right, what a skank, did you see that ass crack? and Shane’s leaning forward from the backseat over the center console, begging to find out what happened. “I heard gunshots! Did I hear gunshots? I swear I heard—”

Atlanta shushes him with a look, then nods. “You did. Chill out, man.”

Shane whistles low, like a mournful choo-choo.

“Guess I owe you five hundred smackaroos,” Chris says, cheeks pink, face giddy. “I like that word. Smackaroos. Sounds like a brand of underwear that comes packed with heroin. ‘Hey, Mom, can I wear my Smackaroos today? Can I can I can I can I?’”

“Call it a hundred,” Atlanta says, laughing. “I enjoyed that too dang much to take any more than that.” And it occurs to her then that she did enjoy it. She feels higher than the Adderall flew her and like she accomplished something—like she really, truly accomplished something.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN