Chapter Five – Part 5
Allison wanted to run away as fast as she could. Instead, she found herself walking back toward the library steps. The walk was endless. Chuck made no move to meet her halfway. He stood at the top of the steps waving her notebook as if using a treat to entice a trained animal to do a trick.
Allison loathed herself as she climbed the stairs. She loathed herself for being so afraid, and for being so blatantly manipulated despite her fear.
She reached the top step and grabbed the notebook. She forced herself to say, "Thank you."
"No prob, sweetcakes. Anytime." He didn't let go of the book. "I wanted to apologize for the costume party."
"Don't bother," Allison said.
Her head was flaring now, the pain distorting her vision. Her view was fracturing and wrapping itself around the notebook.
Please, not a bad one, not here. Not now.
She pulled frantically, but Chuck was a lot stronger than she was. Macy might have been able to pull the book away, but Allison couldn't do more than tug futilely.
"No, really. Too many beers and I don't know what I'm doing. No hard feelings?"
You've got to be kidding? Allison thought.A blood‑red haze gripped her head like a punch‑press linked to her pulse. As if that drunken grope was accidental?
She realized the only way she'd get her notebook back was to accept this creep's apology.
No!
The pain hit some sort of breaking point, lancing through her skull and vanishing.
As it did, she tried one last heroic tug.
To her surprise, with a tearing sound, the notebook actually came free. Chuck's smile evaporated into a look of shocked surprise. He stared at his hand.
His hand now had a narrow red cut, diagonally across the palm, where the wire of the spiraled binding had caught. The spiral wire had unwound for two inches and now bobbed out the top of the notebook like an antenna. As Allison watched, a piece of the notebook's red cover, the exact size and shape of Chuck's thumb, drifted gently to the ground.
"Hell yes, there are hard feelings," Allison said. She turned and walked away, trying her best not to run.
After half a block she passed the van that had almost hit her. The young kid in the passenger window still stared at her. She ignored the kid and the van as she walked back past the High School.
