“You can’t let her drag you down, Britt,” he said. “You just can’t.”
“I’ll try to remember that over the next six years when she’s having one of her phases.”
Britt started walking back toward the car. The pad between her legs felt especially bulky. It seemed somehow appropriate that she was bleeding. The wounds weren’t visible, but they were there.
The drive back was silent until they were a couple of blocks from the house.
“I want you to have the AUG,” Steve said.
Britt kept her gaze out the window as she took in his offering. He wanted her to have the rifle—her favorite one, the first one she’d shot.
“And the 1911 if you want it,” he said.
Her favorite handgun.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said.
She didn’t want his pity gifts, his attempts to assuage his own guilt.
“I want to,” he said. “I’m going to leave the bag with them in your room when we get back. Please take them. You can sell them if you want.”
They were expensive. She could get at least a couple grand for them.
“Okay, fine. I’ll sell them. We’ll need the money,” she said.
She was just trying to hurt him. She knew she would never sell them. She knew she would keep them forever.
Britt was right, of course. When Britt’s mother got word she was being dumped that night at dinner, she told Britt to pack her things. Steve was kind and did his best to convince her to give it a few days so they could find an apartment, but she was stubbornly committed to making it worse than it had to be. Britt filled two trash bags with the possessions she’d accumulated under Steve’s roof and threw them, along with the duffel bag with the guns, into the trunk of her mom’s car. Within an hour, they were gone.
“Where are we going?” Britt asked as they pulled onto the freeway.
“I don’t fucking know,” her mother said.
Her mother was driving too fast, ninety miles per hour. Britt hoped they would get pulled over. She hoped her mother would get into an altercation with a police officer and get thrown in jail for a night or two. Britt would have to go to some kind of juvenile center for kids whose parents were fuckups, but that didn’t sound so bad.
As her mother sped along, undeterred, Britt watched her face. It was a face that looked so much like her own that hating it felt wrong. She hated it, though. She hated her mother.
I wish you were dead,she thought.
It was only when her mother said, “What did you say?” that Britt realized she’d said the words out loud.
“What?” Britt asked.
Her mother took her eyes off the road.
“What did you just say?” she asked again.
“I didn’t say anything,” Britt said.
Her mother stared at her until a car honked at them, laying on the horn for several seconds. Her mother was drifting into the other lane.
“Mom!” Britt said.
Her mother corrected, and they were back in their lane, her mother’s eyes on the road. She didn’t ask again what Britt had said. Britt continued thinking it:
I wish you were dead.
Chapter 12
