Nita did know that. Her mother hated the idea of Nita having her own computer. She’d always hogged the one they did have, doling out uses of it sparingly, always keeping control over Nita’s internet time and access.

Her mother didn’t want Nita getting ideas, after all.

But Nita just stared at her with dead eyes. “It’s mine.”

Her mother’s jaw tightened, and her voice was cold. “I see you’ve learned some sass out there in the world. We’re going to have to fix that.”

Nita flinched, a fear as old as she was crawling through her heart and settling in her chest, making her nauseous. That was the tone that meant dead animal bodies in her bed.

Her mother went to the bag and scooped it up, her expression cold and angry. Nita had no doubt she had some dramatic demonstration of control planned. Shattering the laptop over her knee. Throwing it in the toilet. Something to show Nita who held the power here.

Her mother always had to be in control of these things.

Nita knew that. So when she’d decided to finally end this, she’d taken what some might call the cowardly way out. Nita called it practical.

Google had told her easy ways to make a bomb using household chemicals, and she’d spent the last hours carefully building the device inside her backpack.

When her mother ripped it open, she severed the lining keeping two different chemicals apart. Their molecules mixed, and the chemicals bonded to each other, starting a chain reaction.

Nita ducked behind the desk near the window as the bomb exploded.

The blast wave hit her before the sound did. She’d made the bomb as powerful as she could, knowing her mother’s ability to heal and knowing that Nita herself would be farther away and would also be able to heal.

She might have gone a little overboard.

A ball of fire smashed outward, crashing through the window and into the world beyond. Nita braced as the force ripped the skin from her hands, her bones shattering and her muscles melting. The desk she cowered behind was crushed, and flying shards of glass rained down on her. She’d held her breath so the flames wouldn’t get inside and melt her from within, but her flesh was blackened and cracked.

If she were human, she’d have died instantly.

But she wasn’t, and she’d been prepared. She’d shut off all her ability to feel pain, which allowed her to focus on healing herself quickly, rebuilding melted muscles, fusing shattered bone, regrowing layers of skin that had been scorched off.