There’s no hesitation in him at all. No late-afternoon softness. No light left in his eyes now. He hits the one who shoved me with the kind of force that comes from instinct, not thought, driving him backward into the doorframe hard enough to rattle it. For one breathless second, he looks feral in the purest sense of the word.
Then the others hit him.
It happens too quickly to stop. One slams into his side. Another catches him from behind. The shape of the fight collapses all at once, turning into a tangle of limbs, blows and bodies crashing into the floor. They dogpile him with ugly efficiency, like this is familiar, like they have done it before and know exactly how to turn one furious boy into something pinned and overwhelmed.
“Stop!” I shout, trying to get to them.
The leader catches me before I make it halfway.
His arm snakes around my middle, yanking me backward into him, the world narrowing instantly. The smell of him. The grip. The body at my back. My pulse goes wild. The room starts slipping at the edges, old fear pouring through me too fast, the kind that makes my skin feel too small to contain it.
No.
Not this.
Not again.
I twist violently, spitting over my shoulder.
It lands.
He jerks back with a curse, his grip loosening for a second, just enough that I wrench forward out of it, breathing so hard itfeels like my ribs might split. My whole body is shaking now. I can hear it in my own breath.
On the floor, the boy beneath them sees it happen.
“Leave her alone!”
The words come out mangled because one of them has a hand over his mouth now, pinning his head sideways into the rug while the others keep him down. His whole body bucks against them. He looks less like a person and more like rage in a body too outnumbered to do anything useful with it.
Then one of the boys at my dresser notices Rose.
“What’s this?” he says, picking up the jar.
My stomach drops so fast it makes me dizzy.
“No,” I say immediately, turning toward him. “Don’t touch that.”
He grins at my panic.
That’s what does it.
Not the moth. Not the jar. My panic.
He lifts Rose higher, away from me, while another one laughs from the floor. “She’s got a little pet.”
I lunge for it and almost make it.
Almost.
The boy who had grabbed me before catches my wrist, yanking me backward hard enough that my shoulder burns. The jar tips in the other boy’s hand as Rose flutters frantically against the glass.
“Please,” I gasp. I hate myself for how pleading it sounds. “Please don’t.”
They pass the jar between them like a toy after that.
Every time I get close, they move it.
Every time I reach, they laugh.
