Not fear. Not panic. Quiet like a door shutting. Quiet like my body deciding it’s done being pushed around.
I rip my hair free and stumble back, scanning blindly for something, anything, because I can’t beat her with hands alone. She’s bigger than me and mean in a practiced way. She’s always been the kind of woman who knows how to hurt without leaving marks that matter. But now she’s crossed a line into new territory.
Near the edge of the dock, there’s a loose board where repairs were half-finished earlier. Weathered wood. Splintered on one end.
I don’t think.
I grab it.
Bethany lunges again, fingers reaching for my throat, and the world tunnels down to her hand and the water waiting behind me like a mouth.
“Skank,” she sneers.
“It’s Brittany, bitch,” I say, and I swing.
Hard.
The crack of wood against bone is louder than I expect. Not like in the movies. It’s sickening. Real.
Bethany drops.
One second she’s upright and furious. The next she’s flat on her back in the gravel, eyes rolled halfway, body slack like someone cut her strings.
The board falls from my hands.
The world goes silent, and it’s a different kind of silence than camp at dawn. It’s the kind that makes your stomach flip because your brain finally catches up to what you did.
I stare at her.
Waiting for her to move.
She doesn’t.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
My cheek throbs where she hit me. My scalp screams. My hands shake so badly I have to press them against my thighs to steady them. I drop to my knees beside her, fear crawling up my throat.
“Bethany?” I say, and I hate that my voice sounds like I’m begging.
Nothing.
A thin line of blood trails from her temple into her hair.
I swallow hard and lean closer, terrified to touch her, more terrified not to. Then I see it.
Her chest rises.
Slow.
But it rises.
Relief hits me so hard it makes me dizzy. I let out a breath that sounds like a sob and a laugh at the same time.
“I didn’t mean,” I whisper. “You grabbed me. You hit me.”
She doesn’t hear me. Or she does and she’s choosing not to. I don’t know which is worse.
The lake laps against the dock like it’s applauding.
