Lobo had taught me, had made me practice, springing on me when I came home from school, or with my arms full of groceries, grabbing me from behind.

I knew these things. Groin, knees, eyes, throat. Where to hit, how to hit. To hit until I heard the sickening crunch, the wet sounds of blood, the gurgling—and then to keep hitting and kicking. Keep going beyond what I felt was safe. Nothing was safe. Nothing would ever be safe, not for me.

Jake was down in the wet, red snow. I was kicking him after I hit him, my hand burning, striking at the giving surfaces of his body with my boot until he curled into a ball too tight for me to find a space to beat. And then I hit his head again until he uncurled, useless now, relaxed and bloody. He barely cried.

I put the heaviness back in my pocket. A string of blood leaked from it. My gloves felt sticky and the smell was overpowering, salt and mineral mixed with the clean scent of snow. It made me want to vomit.

I didn’t look at Jake. I staggered back through the trees.

The man was still standing in the road, looking at our stuff. He was paging through one of our books, shaking the leaves, checking for money. Grayson had forgotten to take the book with him, or maybe he had left it for me. Maybe it was Jamey’s, another one she had never returned from the junior high library when she dropped out of school—when would that have been? When the lost spring came, or when her pregnancy started to show? When she was thirteen? What was the title of the book the man held? I would never know it now.

I stepped from the trees and pulled out the gun. “I’m just here for Jamey.”

The man turned. He dropped the book and held up his hands. “Shit. Where’s Jake?”

“I just want my friend. My family. Then I’ll go.”

I kept the gun trained on him. The barrel of the gun was red, leaking a stringy line. I sidestepped to the truck without looking at it, staring at the man. The back door of the truck hung open. Still keeping my eyes on the man, I opened the driver’s side door.

“Jake’s dying. You should fucking see to that,” I said. I waved the gun at the man, dismissing him.

“Fuck.” He dropped his hands. He ran to the edge of the trees, then ran away.