Page 17 of Violet Spark
I flattened my palm on my knee and stared down. “Who am I…? Mostly, I’m purple.”
“What?”
“I cut myself pretty bad at work, and now I’m purple.” I took a picture of my hand and sent it to her. “I think I accidentally got some pomegranate dye under my skin. It’s kinda cool though, right? I bet nobody in Nooo Yark Ciddy has freezie tatts.”
“Are there red streaks or black areas? Swelling or blisters?” Her adulting tone was back, and for a second she sounded like her mom and older siblings who were all doctors. “It doesn’t look like necrotizing fasciitis, but—”
“Swann! I don’t have a flesh-eating disease.” I frowned at my hand. “I don’t think so anyway. That kills you fast and it’s been, like, a day already.” A whole day. “You’re supposed to be making me feel better.”
“It might just be a stain, but keep an eye on it. Go to a clinic if you get fevered or fatigued, or if you start vomiting.”
Oops. Too late. But I wasn’t going to tell her that now. And besides, it seemed like the toxic smoothie wasn’t going to kill me after all.
“Okay.” I was getting really good at lying. “Hey, I gotta get home. But thanks for talking me down.”
“That’s what friends are for. Call me right away if anything, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And you should demand a refund for those gloves. Something is definitely wrong there. Not just because fingerless is so eighties.”
I laughed again. “Love you, girlfriend.”
“Love you, sweetie.”
I texted my mom to tell her I was on my way home and swiped away from my messages when she started typing back right away. I went back to YouTube. Ugh. That video was getting more views than anything I’d ever put up. Took everything I had not to look at the comments again.
Instead I searched for reviews of exploding VR gloves. Nothing. I tried to look up how much energy it took to make a big hole in, say, drywall or a MageLord. Google didn’t seem to know that either. By the time another bus rolled around, I was done.
My hand didn’t really hurt anymore, so I quit poking at it—thanks, Swann, for making me Google images of flesh-eating bacteria—and stared out the window.
I’d freaked out for no good reason. Yeah, the Brayden thing sucked. Everything going on with Mom and school sucked. Watching my EldWitch die and accidentally destroying my gaming system really sucked. Everybody else watching a streaming video of my life suckingreally, reallysucked.
It was time to hit the reset button. On my life.
When my phone vibrated again, I checked messages. Rique wanted to let me know some guy had stopped by looking for me.
Brayden, probably, feeling bad about his MageLord galloping off into the sunset while my EldWitch bit it. Well, screw him. Not literally, of course. He’d had his chance and he blew it. Again, not literally. Blowing things up was kinda my thing. Heh.
It couldn’t happen anymore, of course. The gloves were burned out along with the batteries. But maybe I could pretend they’d lit a spark in me. Yeah, that sounded inspirational.
I’d help Mom more. I’d add management experience to my resumé and start sharing that around. Maybe I could even use that video to funnel some views to my channel and start getting paid for my tutorials and streaming.
Who did I want to be? Anything was possible with Mojimo 2.0.
CHAPTER SIX
“I’D LIKEto speak to the manager. Now.” The low, male voice—accent I couldn’t quite identify—made me want to slink out the Desert Freeze back door.
We rarely got complaints. People usually drove away before they realized they were pissed about something and then they were too lazy to drive back, yay for us. But the people who did complain were always assholes who wanted free stuff.
Except this visit wasn’t exactly unexpected. If I had to guess, this guy or his wife or—oh God—his kid had been on their knees hurling purple recently. I couldn’t have been the only person who’d gotten sick.
I peeked around a mixer. It was some dude in a black suit. Lawyer? Damn, someone must’ve beenverysick.
“Imogen,” Rique called.
In an existential cloud of doom, I stepped around the machines while Rique snuck away. And he thought he had the balls for fast food management? Coward.
