Pearls of the Soul
Title: Pearls of the Soul
Word Count: 2500
Warnings: Sex, character death
Author's Notes: Written for the Brigits_flame July contest, prompt, "Bad Advice." To be honest, this one freaked me out a bit. I think it works, though, so I'll be curious to see what you all think of it.
“Breathe in, little one. Breathe in peace, and breathe out fear.”
Grandma Li’s hands smoothed over Anni’s shoulders, brushing away the dust from her tumble into the dirt at the hands of her classmates and so-called friends. Anni’s breath caught in her mouth as she tried to breathe out fear. Fear was solid and sticky and clung to her tongue the way Mama’s dumplings did when she tried to substitute the less expensive all-purpose flour for the rice flour that the family recipe called for.
“How?” Anni choked out.
“Trust your body, it knows how to breathe.”
“But why?” Anni didn’t know whether she referred to the humiliation she had suffered or the advice Grandma Li was giving. But it didn’t seem to matter to her wise old Granny, who answered as if there had been no ambiguity in the question at all.
“We all have to breathe, Anni. And when you breathe in peace, you take your problems and coat them in light. Just like an oyster, you take an irritation and make a pearl in your soul.”
Anni struggled to breathe. Peace. Fear. Peace. Fear. Slowly her sobs quieted and her breathing calmed.
*
The next day when the group confronted her on the playground, she closed her eyes and breathed in peace. Their taunts washed over her, until eventually they gave up. When she opened her eyes they were gone.
*
“Never mind. It’s just Anni.”
Anni peers around the door, a smile playing on her lips. They had jumped so high, those boys, when she pushed the door open!
“Who’s Anni?”
“Just my sister. Go away, Anni!”
Anni giggles. “I scared you, didn’t I?”
“I said, go away!”
Anni leaves the door open and sits down in the hall outside. She shoves her hand into the bag of lemon drops her father had brought back from his trip. Special lemon drops, he had said, just for her. The taste explodes in her mouth, a symphony of sweet and sour playing in concert.
“That’s not away!” Derrin swoops the bag out of Anni’s lap, and she cries out in protest. “You should have gone away when I told you to.”
“Give me my lemon drops.” Anni curls into a ball on the floor, determined not to leave. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. He’ll give them back eventually.
“Jesus, stop doing that weird breathing thing. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Come on Derrin, it’s not like you want them.” Someone crouches by Anni and she peeks open an eye to recognize Derrin’s friend. “Hey, we’re working on a really important project for school. You mind giving us the space?”
“That won’t work, Rod, she’s dumb as the goddamn lemon drops,” Derrin says.
Anni sits up again. “Mama doesn’t like it when you say those words.” She looks over at Rod. “Can I have my lemon drops back?”
Rod turns and holds out a hand to Darrin, who rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. “Fine.”
Candy safely in hand, Anni runs off.
*
Anni glances up and down the hallway, fear building in her throat. Halogen lights cast a harsh glare over the graffiti covered lockers and scuffs on the tile floor. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Just yesterday Mrs. Bryant had locked three kids out of the classroom and sent them to after school detention, declaring that three days were more than enough time to adapt to the new school and find their way around.
It wasn’t enough time. And Anni doesn’t know where she is.
She darts behind a locker bank as a door opens further down the hall. Footsteps come toward her, and she closes her eyes. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Whoever it is, they won’t notice her.
The footsteps stop. “You’re Derrin’s little sister, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”
Anni opens her eyes to see the friend from the project she had interrupted eighteen months back. “It’s my first week here,” she says.
“Oh. Where are you supposed to be?”
“Mrs. Bryant’s science class.”
“God, I remember her.” Rod turns as if to spit on the floor, and then thinks better of it. “Raging bitch, through and through.”
“I’m going to get in trouble,” Anni says.
“Not if you don’t show up.” Rod winks at her. Anni turns her head on one side, considering the words.
“Tell you what,” Rod continues. “I’ll tell you how to get back to your hall. It’s just down to the end of this one and then take the first three lefts at the next intersections. What you do when you get there is up to you.” He points out the direction and continues on his way, leaving Anni standing next to the lockers, looking after him.
*
The man comes out of nowhere. Anni cries out as he grabs her from the side and pushes her off the greenway.
“Your wallet!” he demands. Anni doesn’t have one, but she digs in her pockets for the change left over from lunch.
“Faster!”
“I’m doing my best,” she gasps out, but he slaps her upside the head.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
“This is it? You have to have more!” He paws at her neck, trying to break the chain of the small pendant she wears.
Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
“Hey, what are you doing?” And suddenly the man is gone, crashing through the bushes towards another path in the park. Anni opens her eyes to see Rod dismounting from his bike, carefully setting the kickstand so that it will remain upright.
“Are you all right?”
She nods, not trusting her voice.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He was just there.” Her words sound strangled, fighting around the surge of adrenaline and her racing heart. Breathe. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear.
“You need to pay more attention, Anni. I’ve watched you, you walk around like you’re in your own little world all the time. It’s not safe.” He’s close now, closer than Anni can comprehend. Breathe. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. This odd feeling of desire will go away.
“And you do that weird breathing thing. All deliberate, like… I don’t know.”
“I breathe in peace,” she whispers. “And breathe out fear.”
“What does that do?” he asks. He’s so close she could lean forward and touch him. Bury her nose in his neck. Would he wrap his arms around her, she wonders. That would be nice.
“It’s calming,” she says. “Makes the bad things go away.”
“Anni, you have to take action to make the bad things go away. People aren’t always going to be around to save you.”
“You were.”
He reaches out, hesitantly ghosting his fingers over the angry red handprint along the side of her face. “Not in time.”
“I should have started sooner.”
“Anni, I…” He hesitates, inching closer before plunging in and putting his lips on hers. He tastes of sweat and life, peace and fear. She leans into him.
“Really, Anni? Do you really?” He stumbles over the words, and she isn’t sure what he’s trying to say. She nods.
“Come with me, then? I built a hideout back this way.” She follows him as he wheels his bike off the paved path and into the bushes. He’s so pretty, surrounded by the sunlight and greenery and songbirds calls. She wants him to touch her again, wants his slowly growing muscles to wrap around her and his lips, with their small downy hairs, to brush against her skin. She wonders what the bulge between his legs is, but instinctively she wants it pressed against her as well.
When they reach the shelter he has built out of wood and branches, she follows him inside. She doesn’t object when he kisses her again, when he runs his hands up and down her body and squeezes her newly emerged chest. She moans when his hands roam under her clothing and shakes when his fingers find that spot between her legs. And when he pushes into her she wraps her legs around him, letting him support her feather-light weight, and reveling in the newness of the sensations coursing through her.
*
Anni doesn’t know when she notices the difference. It comes gradually, this feeling of heavy and light combined. She focuses inward, examining her extremities and then her center in search of the source of this new feeling. Inside her, something grows.
Her monthly bleeding stops, and she doesn’t know why. But that’s not a bad thing, she reasons - it was always unpleasant and painful anyway.
“I don’t need them,” she says, when her mother tosses a package of pads on her bed after a trip to the store.
“What do you mean, you don’t need them?” her mother asks.
“I’m not bleeding anymore,” Anni replies.
Her mother stands in the doorway, her eyes narrowed, looking critically at her daughter as if seeing her for the first time. She disappears without saying a word, and Anni hears the front door slam and the car start up again. Within twenty minutes, her mother is back in her doorway, holding out a small box.
“Go into the bathroom and take this. Follow the directions.”
Anni does as she says, though it seems quite odd to her that her mother would want her to pee on a little stick. After she’s done, she wraps the stick in toilet paper and brings it back out into the bedroom.
“What is this for?” she asks.
“You’d better hope to God it comes out negative,” her mother replies.
“Why?”
“If you’ve been fooling around with some boy and gotten yourself knocked up, I’ll not be having any more to do with you.”
Soon, the window in the little stick turns pink. Her mother’s jaw is so sharp that Anni thinks you could cut paper with it. She gets up and walks out of the room, returning with a single black duffel bag. She hurls it onto the bed.
“Pack your things.”
“Where am I going?”
“I don’t care.”
*
Anni’s hand only shakes a little as she knocks on Rod’s door. The bag slung over her shoulder feels like it could keep an entire ship anchored in place.
“Oh, hi there Anni.” Rod’s mother pushes open the screen. “Come on in, let me get Rod.” She walks down the hallway and calls up the stairs, “Rod? Anni’s here.” Then she disappears into another room further down.
Anni hears the clomping of elephant feet and Rod jumps the last few steps down into the hallway.
“Hey Anni, how’s it going?” His eyes take in the bag and the smile fades from his face. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Anni says.
“What do you mean? What’s happened?” Rod glances down the hallway. “Here, let’s set this down and we’ll go in the back yard.” He takes the bag from her shoulder and leads her around the side of the house. “What’s going on, Anni?”
“My mother says I got myself knocked up and I’m not to come home.”
“Knocked up? You’re pregnant?”
“I guess so. The little stick was pink.” Rod’s face looks confused for a moment, then grim.
“Anni, this is bad. We can’t have a kid. I’m 15 and you’re 14. You’ll have to get rid of it somehow.”
“How?” Anni curls inward as the volume of the past hour comes crashing down. A child, no family, no place to live.
“I don’t know, Anni, but there has to be some way, right?”
It’s too much, all too much. Rod’s voice swims toward her, individual words popping through but the meaning lost in the molasses that is threatening to suffocate her.
“I… I have to go,” she chokes out, and then she’s running. Leaves and branches catch at her body, but she crashes through them as if they weren’t there. Vaguely, she is aware of sounds behind her, of Rod following her through the woods behind his house and into the forested park. He catches at her elbow once, but she pulls away. Then he grabs the back of her shirt and they skid to a stop. She leans over, hands on her knees, gasping for breath.
“Sorry, sorry Anni, but god, don’t do that! You can’t just run away. This is a huge problem, we have to figure it out!”
Problem. The word sparks a memory in Anni’s mind. When you breathe in peace, you take the problems and coat them in light. Just like an oyster, you take an irritation and make a pearl in your soul.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. All of this will go away.
“Anni. Anni, don’t do this! You can’t just check out! For god’s sake, stop it! Stop!” Rod grabs Anni by the shoulders.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. He’ll stop shaking me. All of this will go away.
“Anni! Look at me. Open your eyes! Say something!”
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
Rod releases her, and the little extra push at the end leaves her off balance. She takes one step back, then two, and then tumbles over the edge of a ravine that she didn’t know was there. She scrambles to grab a stick, a bush, anything to stop her fall. Her head cracks against a rock at the bottom, and her eyes cloud over.
There is a great crash and skid as Rod dives over the edge of the ravine. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, Anni, are you all right?”
*
Anni floats. Looking down, she sees Rod crouched in the ravine, crying over a body with an arm and leg poking out at awkward angles. Her.
There is a blob floating beside her. She watches as it pulsates and quivers before disappearing into thin air.
She floats higher and higher. Rod’s head is nothing more than a small red dot against the green, and then he’s not there at all. Higher.
“Why are you here, Anni?” The voice vibrates around her, penetrating to the very essence of her being.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“You were young. You had what you needed. You should be down there still.”
“I did what I was told. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Turn problems into pearls.”
Anni is surrounded by light. It dances around her, carrying the hint of song and love and honeysuckle. She feels it move through her, grab at something within and pull it out into the air.
Clumps. Brown, irregular, slimy and foul smelling. More and more of them, each clinging to her essence before surrendering to the light. Soon the air around her is full of floating clumps, each encased in a thin gold bubble.
“You are not an oyster, Anni. Go back and try again.”
Anni plummets down, the earth whizzing from a blur to a patchwork quilt to a model train set to Rod’s red head to the ravine to her body. She opens her eyes. Pain floods through her being.
“Oh thank God, Anni, thank God. You stay right here, I’m going to go get help. I’ll be right back, Anni, you just hang on now, you hear?”
Hang on, Anni thinks. Hang on. She can do that.
Word Count: 2500
Warnings: Sex, character death
Author's Notes: Written for the Brigits_flame July contest, prompt, "Bad Advice." To be honest, this one freaked me out a bit. I think it works, though, so I'll be curious to see what you all think of it.
“Breathe in, little one. Breathe in peace, and breathe out fear.”
Grandma Li’s hands smoothed over Anni’s shoulders, brushing away the dust from her tumble into the dirt at the hands of her classmates and so-called friends. Anni’s breath caught in her mouth as she tried to breathe out fear. Fear was solid and sticky and clung to her tongue the way Mama’s dumplings did when she tried to substitute the less expensive all-purpose flour for the rice flour that the family recipe called for.
“How?” Anni choked out.
“Trust your body, it knows how to breathe.”
“But why?” Anni didn’t know whether she referred to the humiliation she had suffered or the advice Grandma Li was giving. But it didn’t seem to matter to her wise old Granny, who answered as if there had been no ambiguity in the question at all.
“We all have to breathe, Anni. And when you breathe in peace, you take your problems and coat them in light. Just like an oyster, you take an irritation and make a pearl in your soul.”
Anni struggled to breathe. Peace. Fear. Peace. Fear. Slowly her sobs quieted and her breathing calmed.
*
The next day when the group confronted her on the playground, she closed her eyes and breathed in peace. Their taunts washed over her, until eventually they gave up. When she opened her eyes they were gone.
*
“Never mind. It’s just Anni.”
Anni peers around the door, a smile playing on her lips. They had jumped so high, those boys, when she pushed the door open!
“Who’s Anni?”
“Just my sister. Go away, Anni!”
Anni giggles. “I scared you, didn’t I?”
“I said, go away!”
Anni leaves the door open and sits down in the hall outside. She shoves her hand into the bag of lemon drops her father had brought back from his trip. Special lemon drops, he had said, just for her. The taste explodes in her mouth, a symphony of sweet and sour playing in concert.
“That’s not away!” Derrin swoops the bag out of Anni’s lap, and she cries out in protest. “You should have gone away when I told you to.”
“Give me my lemon drops.” Anni curls into a ball on the floor, determined not to leave. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. He’ll give them back eventually.
“Jesus, stop doing that weird breathing thing. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Come on Derrin, it’s not like you want them.” Someone crouches by Anni and she peeks open an eye to recognize Derrin’s friend. “Hey, we’re working on a really important project for school. You mind giving us the space?”
“That won’t work, Rod, she’s dumb as the goddamn lemon drops,” Derrin says.
Anni sits up again. “Mama doesn’t like it when you say those words.” She looks over at Rod. “Can I have my lemon drops back?”
Rod turns and holds out a hand to Darrin, who rolls his eyes and heaves a sigh. “Fine.”
Candy safely in hand, Anni runs off.
*
Anni glances up and down the hallway, fear building in her throat. Halogen lights cast a harsh glare over the graffiti covered lockers and scuffs on the tile floor. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Just yesterday Mrs. Bryant had locked three kids out of the classroom and sent them to after school detention, declaring that three days were more than enough time to adapt to the new school and find their way around.
It wasn’t enough time. And Anni doesn’t know where she is.
She darts behind a locker bank as a door opens further down the hall. Footsteps come toward her, and she closes her eyes. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. Whoever it is, they won’t notice her.
The footsteps stop. “You’re Derrin’s little sister, aren’t you? What are you doing here?”
Anni opens her eyes to see the friend from the project she had interrupted eighteen months back. “It’s my first week here,” she says.
“Oh. Where are you supposed to be?”
“Mrs. Bryant’s science class.”
“God, I remember her.” Rod turns as if to spit on the floor, and then thinks better of it. “Raging bitch, through and through.”
“I’m going to get in trouble,” Anni says.
“Not if you don’t show up.” Rod winks at her. Anni turns her head on one side, considering the words.
“Tell you what,” Rod continues. “I’ll tell you how to get back to your hall. It’s just down to the end of this one and then take the first three lefts at the next intersections. What you do when you get there is up to you.” He points out the direction and continues on his way, leaving Anni standing next to the lockers, looking after him.
*
The man comes out of nowhere. Anni cries out as he grabs her from the side and pushes her off the greenway.
“Your wallet!” he demands. Anni doesn’t have one, but she digs in her pockets for the change left over from lunch.
“Faster!”
“I’m doing my best,” she gasps out, but he slaps her upside the head.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
“This is it? You have to have more!” He paws at her neck, trying to break the chain of the small pendant she wears.
Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
“Hey, what are you doing?” And suddenly the man is gone, crashing through the bushes towards another path in the park. Anni opens her eyes to see Rod dismounting from his bike, carefully setting the kickstand so that it will remain upright.
“Are you all right?”
She nods, not trusting her voice.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. He was just there.” Her words sound strangled, fighting around the surge of adrenaline and her racing heart. Breathe. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear.
“You need to pay more attention, Anni. I’ve watched you, you walk around like you’re in your own little world all the time. It’s not safe.” He’s close now, closer than Anni can comprehend. Breathe. Breathe in peace, breathe out fear. This odd feeling of desire will go away.
“And you do that weird breathing thing. All deliberate, like… I don’t know.”
“I breathe in peace,” she whispers. “And breathe out fear.”
“What does that do?” he asks. He’s so close she could lean forward and touch him. Bury her nose in his neck. Would he wrap his arms around her, she wonders. That would be nice.
“It’s calming,” she says. “Makes the bad things go away.”
“Anni, you have to take action to make the bad things go away. People aren’t always going to be around to save you.”
“You were.”
He reaches out, hesitantly ghosting his fingers over the angry red handprint along the side of her face. “Not in time.”
“I should have started sooner.”
“Anni, I…” He hesitates, inching closer before plunging in and putting his lips on hers. He tastes of sweat and life, peace and fear. She leans into him.
“Really, Anni? Do you really?” He stumbles over the words, and she isn’t sure what he’s trying to say. She nods.
“Come with me, then? I built a hideout back this way.” She follows him as he wheels his bike off the paved path and into the bushes. He’s so pretty, surrounded by the sunlight and greenery and songbirds calls. She wants him to touch her again, wants his slowly growing muscles to wrap around her and his lips, with their small downy hairs, to brush against her skin. She wonders what the bulge between his legs is, but instinctively she wants it pressed against her as well.
When they reach the shelter he has built out of wood and branches, she follows him inside. She doesn’t object when he kisses her again, when he runs his hands up and down her body and squeezes her newly emerged chest. She moans when his hands roam under her clothing and shakes when his fingers find that spot between her legs. And when he pushes into her she wraps her legs around him, letting him support her feather-light weight, and reveling in the newness of the sensations coursing through her.
*
Anni doesn’t know when she notices the difference. It comes gradually, this feeling of heavy and light combined. She focuses inward, examining her extremities and then her center in search of the source of this new feeling. Inside her, something grows.
Her monthly bleeding stops, and she doesn’t know why. But that’s not a bad thing, she reasons - it was always unpleasant and painful anyway.
“I don’t need them,” she says, when her mother tosses a package of pads on her bed after a trip to the store.
“What do you mean, you don’t need them?” her mother asks.
“I’m not bleeding anymore,” Anni replies.
Her mother stands in the doorway, her eyes narrowed, looking critically at her daughter as if seeing her for the first time. She disappears without saying a word, and Anni hears the front door slam and the car start up again. Within twenty minutes, her mother is back in her doorway, holding out a small box.
“Go into the bathroom and take this. Follow the directions.”
Anni does as she says, though it seems quite odd to her that her mother would want her to pee on a little stick. After she’s done, she wraps the stick in toilet paper and brings it back out into the bedroom.
“What is this for?” she asks.
“You’d better hope to God it comes out negative,” her mother replies.
“Why?”
“If you’ve been fooling around with some boy and gotten yourself knocked up, I’ll not be having any more to do with you.”
Soon, the window in the little stick turns pink. Her mother’s jaw is so sharp that Anni thinks you could cut paper with it. She gets up and walks out of the room, returning with a single black duffel bag. She hurls it onto the bed.
“Pack your things.”
“Where am I going?”
“I don’t care.”
*
Anni’s hand only shakes a little as she knocks on Rod’s door. The bag slung over her shoulder feels like it could keep an entire ship anchored in place.
“Oh, hi there Anni.” Rod’s mother pushes open the screen. “Come on in, let me get Rod.” She walks down the hallway and calls up the stairs, “Rod? Anni’s here.” Then she disappears into another room further down.
Anni hears the clomping of elephant feet and Rod jumps the last few steps down into the hallway.
“Hey Anni, how’s it going?” His eyes take in the bag and the smile fades from his face. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” Anni says.
“What do you mean? What’s happened?” Rod glances down the hallway. “Here, let’s set this down and we’ll go in the back yard.” He takes the bag from her shoulder and leads her around the side of the house. “What’s going on, Anni?”
“My mother says I got myself knocked up and I’m not to come home.”
“Knocked up? You’re pregnant?”
“I guess so. The little stick was pink.” Rod’s face looks confused for a moment, then grim.
“Anni, this is bad. We can’t have a kid. I’m 15 and you’re 14. You’ll have to get rid of it somehow.”
“How?” Anni curls inward as the volume of the past hour comes crashing down. A child, no family, no place to live.
“I don’t know, Anni, but there has to be some way, right?”
It’s too much, all too much. Rod’s voice swims toward her, individual words popping through but the meaning lost in the molasses that is threatening to suffocate her.
“I… I have to go,” she chokes out, and then she’s running. Leaves and branches catch at her body, but she crashes through them as if they weren’t there. Vaguely, she is aware of sounds behind her, of Rod following her through the woods behind his house and into the forested park. He catches at her elbow once, but she pulls away. Then he grabs the back of her shirt and they skid to a stop. She leans over, hands on her knees, gasping for breath.
“Sorry, sorry Anni, but god, don’t do that! You can’t just run away. This is a huge problem, we have to figure it out!”
Problem. The word sparks a memory in Anni’s mind. When you breathe in peace, you take the problems and coat them in light. Just like an oyster, you take an irritation and make a pearl in your soul.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. All of this will go away.
“Anni. Anni, don’t do this! You can’t just check out! For god’s sake, stop it! Stop!” Rod grabs Anni by the shoulders.
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. He’ll stop shaking me. All of this will go away.
“Anni! Look at me. Open your eyes! Say something!”
Breathe. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear.
Rod releases her, and the little extra push at the end leaves her off balance. She takes one step back, then two, and then tumbles over the edge of a ravine that she didn’t know was there. She scrambles to grab a stick, a bush, anything to stop her fall. Her head cracks against a rock at the bottom, and her eyes cloud over.
There is a great crash and skid as Rod dives over the edge of the ravine. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, Anni, are you all right?”
*
Anni floats. Looking down, she sees Rod crouched in the ravine, crying over a body with an arm and leg poking out at awkward angles. Her.
There is a blob floating beside her. She watches as it pulsates and quivers before disappearing into thin air.
She floats higher and higher. Rod’s head is nothing more than a small red dot against the green, and then he’s not there at all. Higher.
“Why are you here, Anni?” The voice vibrates around her, penetrating to the very essence of her being.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“You were young. You had what you needed. You should be down there still.”
“I did what I was told. Breathe in peace. Breathe out fear. Turn problems into pearls.”
Anni is surrounded by light. It dances around her, carrying the hint of song and love and honeysuckle. She feels it move through her, grab at something within and pull it out into the air.
Clumps. Brown, irregular, slimy and foul smelling. More and more of them, each clinging to her essence before surrendering to the light. Soon the air around her is full of floating clumps, each encased in a thin gold bubble.
“You are not an oyster, Anni. Go back and try again.”
Anni plummets down, the earth whizzing from a blur to a patchwork quilt to a model train set to Rod’s red head to the ravine to her body. She opens her eyes. Pain floods through her being.
“Oh thank God, Anni, thank God. You stay right here, I’m going to go get help. I’ll be right back, Anni, you just hang on now, you hear?”
Hang on, Anni thinks. Hang on. She can do that.