The side exit by the loading dock sticks when I push it. I have to put my shoulder into it, and the door grinds open with a sound like it's complaining. The hallway noise — lockers slamming, voices bouncing off cinderblock walls, sneakers squeaking on linoleum — cuts off behind me like someone pulled a plug.
I stand in the alley with my backpack over one shoulder and my books pressed against my chest.
I've been doing this for days. Showing up. Sitting in class. Eating lunch at the table with Ethan and Peter and Gwen. Saying I'm fine and thanking them and insisting I'm okay now. The words come out on a three-second delay, like I'm reading from a script someone else wrote. I don't know if anyone believes me. I don't know if I believe myself.
The alley smells like garbage and wet concrete. A dumpster sits against the far wall, lid half-open. There's a pretzel on top of it.
There's a purple imp sitting next to the pretzel.
Impmon grins at me. Not a friendly grin. The other kind — the one that means he's about to say something that'll make me want to throw something at him.
"Took you long enough," he says. "I've been waiting. Do you know how boring dumpsters are? Nothing happens. A rat showed up once. It wasn't even a big rat."
I stop walking.
I don't have the energy for this. I don't have the energy for anything. I've been performing for three days straight — the grateful survivor, the friend who's doing better, the girl who's okay now — and I am so tired I can feel it in my teeth.
"Go away," I say.
He takes a bite of the pretzel. Chews. Swallows. The whole production.
"Nope," he says.
I stare at him. He stares back. His green eyes are bright and sharp and completely unbothered. The silence stretches. A car passes on the street at the end of the alley. Someone's playing music with the bass turned up too loud.
He breaks the first.
"You've been boring lately," he says. "It's annoying."
I turn and start walking.
He hops off the dumpster. I hear his feet hit the pavement behind me, light and quick. He keeps pace beside me, hands behind his head like he's out for a stroll.
I speed up.
He speeds up.
I stop.
He stops.
"I don't want company," I say.
"I didn't ask what you wanted," he says.
I try a different angle. "I'm not in the mood."
"You're never in the mood," he says. "That's the problem. You walk around like someone died."
I flinch. He doesn't notice. Or he does and doesn't care. I can't tell with him.
I try silence. I clamp my mouth shut and walk, and I can feel him beside me, a small purple presence that radiates commentary like heat.
"So that school," he says. "It's ugly. Who designed that? Did they hate kids? The color alone — that's not beige, that's despair. That's the color of a room where hope goes to die."
I keep walking.
"And the weather. What is this? It's not cold, it's not warm. It's just — there. Like the sky can't be bothered to commit. I've seen more interesting weather in a screensaver."
My jaw is tight. I can feel the muscles in my neck pulling.
"And this pretzel. This pretzel is a crime. The guy who sold it — I saw him. He has a face like a thumb. You know the type. And the pretzel tastes like cardboard that gave up on life. I'm only eating it because I stole it and I have principles."
"You have principles," I say, before I can stop myself.
"Thievery is a principle," he says. "I'm very principled."
I walk faster. He keeps talking. I can't outwalk his voice. It follows me like a shadow, like the thing I've been carrying for three days, except this one is purple and won't shut up.
I stop in the middle of the alley. Turn.
My jaw is so tight it hurts.
"I said leave me alone," I say.
Impmon tilts his head. His pointed ears catch the light.
"Why?" he asks.
The question is so simple it catches me off guard. Why. Like it's obvious. Like the answer should be obvious.
Because I'm tired. Because I've been performing for days and I can't do it anymore. Because Peter and Gwen said all the right things — you're not responsible, it wasn't your fault, you were a victim too — and none of it touched the thing inside me that feels like barbed wire. Because I hurt people. Because I robbed a bank. Because I shoved a police officer and I can see his face every time I close my eyes, not angry, not scared, just confused, and that's worse. Because I hit Impmon and he looked at me like he was trying to figure out where his friend went.
I don't say any of that.
"I don't need this right now," I say.
Impmon looks at me for a long moment. His green eyes are sharp, sharper than they have any right to be on a face that small.
Then he says, "You think I care about that?"
I blink. "About what?"
"About you hitting me. About the money thing. About any of it." He waves a red-gloved hand, dismissive. "I already forgot."
I stare at him.
"You hit me," he says. "I hit stuff. It's over. You're the one still carrying it around like it's precious. Like it's a trophy. 'Look at me, I feel bad, everyone look at how bad I feel.' It's boring."
He says it like I'm being stupid. Like the solution is obvious and I'm the only one making it complicated.
I open my mouth. Close it.
I don't know what to do with that.
I stand there. The barbed wire in my chest doesn't disappear. It's still there, still sharp, still catching on everything. But something shifts. A millimeter. Enough to breathe around.
I look down at my hands. Pick at the chipped polish on my thumbnail — the dark blue I put on three days before the accident. It's growing out. The new nail underneath is bare and pale.
Everything else stays the same.
Impmon watches me pick at my nail. He reaches into a nearby bag — definitely stolen, it has someone's initials monogrammed on the side — and pulls out a second pretzel. Holds it out to me without looking.
I don't take it.
He shrugs and eats it himself.
I turn toward the street. My backpack feels the same weight it did when I walked in. My books are still pressed against my chest. But the three-second delay is shorter now. I'm here. Present. Not fixed. Not healed. Just here.
Behind me, Impmon doesn't follow.
I don't tell him to leave.
I walk out of the alley and into the afternoon light, and the sound of my shoes on the pavement is the most real thing I've heard all day.
***
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