Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [77]
I wasn’t laughing now.
I’d long since lost track of the minutes that had passed since Tyler had brought me to the Tombs, no more than fifteen feet from my personal Someplace Magic. It seemed like hours before he released me, wiping his brow with his wrist. I slipped beneath his arm and staggered away. The world swayed in the opposite direction. My cheeks were numb, my chin scraped raw from his stubble. I could scarcely feel my lips at all. My head felt stuffed with cotton and my mouth was sour with the acidic after-tang of Earl’s whiskey. I would have spit if I could have moved my lips.
I wanted to crawl beneath my comforter, to pull my sheet over my ear, to forget Mandarin’s test, to forget everything.
But then Tyler reeled me in again. This time, his rough palm crept under the hem of my dress, sliding up my thigh.
“Tyler …,” I protested from the corner of my mouth.
“Shhh,” he said.
I pulled back an inch. “Tyler …”
“Shhh … Just relax. It’s all right.”
If I can just get through this, I told myself, I’ll be all right. I thought of the Virgin Mary rock, somewhere in the jumble of boulders above me. I tried to picture her face, but I couldn’t. My memory was blurry, as if someone had smudged the ancient paint.
“It’s getting late. Let’s go back, all right?” I begged.
“Come on, girl. You wanna be like your friend Mandarin, don’t you?”
He was right. But I wrenched away anyway, stumbling the last few feet to the edge of the river.
Escape! Dive in and swim for the other shore!
Instead, I knelt on the bank, my shoulders tensing in expectation of Tyler’s hands. When they didn’t come, I pushed back my sweaty bangs, feeling the base of my palm smear Mandarin’s eyeliner. I wanted to throw up, but the sick taste in my mouth didn’t seem to be connected to the commotion in my stomach.
I stared in the water, hoping for a reflection.
I saw nothing. But I knew exactly what I looked like: a little girl playing dress-up. Like I’d never outgrown my pageant days, after all.
Tyler’s arms curved around my middle and pulled me upright. I tried to pry them off. “I need to find Mandarin!” I meant to sound forceful, but my voice cracked.
“Calm down. We’ll go find her, all right? In just a minute.” He yanked me closer and pressed his body against mine, bunching my dress around my hips. I dropped my arms to cover my underwear, but he caught them and didn’t let go.
Grab, kiss, pull away. An endless cycle. I’d never even kissed a boy before—and now this? This wasn’t romance. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be like.
And yet Mandarin did this and more, all the time, over and over again. While already I felt like I’d been there forever, numb-faced and slobbered on, in the dark places of the Tombs.
Maybe this was my purgatory.
“No!” I shouted. I wedged my arm between our chests and pushed Tyler as hard as I could. He slammed into the ground. I hesitated, amazed by my own strength. That gave him time to jump up again, like someone had jabbed a rewind button.
“You little bitch,” he snarled, lunging for me.
I hit the ground without any awareness of my fall. My vision shifted, then righted again. I tried to scream, but Tyler cut it short by collapsing on top of me. Now I was choking on sobs, and his hands were everywhere. Beyond him, the stunted trees seemed to shudder and twist.
Then I heard a crack somewhere just outside my closed eyes. Tyler rolled off me, cursing furiously.
I peeled my eyes open.
Mandarin was crouched on a ledge above us, her face contorted with rage, one arm slung back to hurl another rock. When it slammed into Tyler’s shoulder, I scrambled away on my hands and knees. From the edge of the river,