Page 28 of Braving the Valley
My lungs hurt.
My stomach hurts.
My cheeks hurt.
I'm cackling like a maniac, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it, but I have to keep moving. My Firefly needs me. I dart between bodies as I try to regain control of myself. I catch up to her at the end of the hall, and I grab her by the shoulder and force her to stop.
"Firefly," I manage between laughs, trying to kill the noise, to stop laughing. "What happened?"
She looks at me while I choke on air, trying not to laugh. Her upper lip retracts over her teeth with her sneer, and it makes me feel . . . inferior. I don't like it.
"Fuck off," she snaps with an eye-roll.
It takes everything in me to stop laughing, to suck it back in and hold the laughter inside me. The twitch in my fingertips and the tickle in my brain long to grab the lighter and ignite the flame.
I need to calm down.
I need to get out of here.
This is too much, too much noise, too much stimulation, too much everything when my brain struggles to process letters on most days.
If I can't laugh my ass off or light the flame to silence all the shit in the world, I need another way instead.
There's too much damnednoiseright now, and it makes all of me prickle.
Quiet!
"Come with me," I blurt.
"Go away, creep," she says.
Someone gets tackled to the floor and more blood splatters across the stone. Guards are showing up now, tearing students off of each other and putting them in restraints. She grimaces, her cheeks flushed the color of burning embers, her eyes wide and wet, and her mouth sticky with thick saliva.
"Why are you crying, Firefly?" I ask her.
She doesn't answer.
"Who made you cry?" I demand.
She shakes her head and closes her eyes, trying to drown me out too, I guess.
I get it, but it pisses me off.
"Your mom?" I push. "Your dad? A boyfriend back home?"
She doesn't have a boyfriend, though. The ones that do always bring it up like it's a badge of honor, like it will save them from me. It doesn't. If anything, I take it as a challenge.
"Did you gain weight? Is that what's bothering you?"
I hope she did.
Doesn't she understand? Maybe not, I barely do, but I know we're tied together, her and me. I need her alive and well, my little Firefly, to keep the noise at bay and control all the bad thoughts, the memories and urges that come back and threaten to bring me under. And she needs me to save her from herself.
"Get away from me!" she snaps finally. "What is wrong with you?"
"Come on," I tell her.
I sat with her in the bathroom. I could've left her there and let Oliver come back and do all the vile things he wanted to like rape her and probably even worse. I even took her to my table. I fed her, and with the noise picking me apart at the moment, I'm starting to get really tired of her shit.
