Chapter 4

Saturday, December 13, 2014, 10:31 a.m. The shower, even dialed back to conserve hot water, felt divine. Scrubbing her underarms first, Rebecca washed and rinsed her hair, loaded it with conditioner and leaned against the tiled wall. She closed her eyes and tried to relax. Her stomach churned; her bowels felt dangerously volatile. Unconsciously rubbing her belly, she gave thanks for the thousandth time that she didn’t inherit her mom’s irritable bowel syndrome, though currently, it felt so. Who wouldn’t suffer symptoms in a situation like this, though, she wondered.

Was she alone, really? In all of Huntington, all of West Virginia? The fact that she hadn’t spotted helicopters and jet fighters buzzing the town indicated it wasn’t a localized event. Her call to Aunt Kellie in Wisconsin, though not definitive, seemed a harbinger. The surprise phone call had increased her frustration, rather than appease it. She was likely insane, stashed away in a mental hospital, foaming at the mouth.

Racing downstairs, she had made it to the kitchen just as the ringing stopped. “No!” she cried, snatching up the handset. “I’m here, I’m here! Is anyone there?” Panting, she listened to the dial tone. “Don’t you do this to me!” she screamed, flicking the tongue. “Please! I’m here! I really am!”

Frantic, she tried to remember how a landline dialed back. “Think, Rebecca, think!” Was it *69? Desperate, she punched the three-button combination and held her breath. Come on, come on, come on, she thought frantically. Following the 7th ring, her call went to voicemail.

“Hey, you’ve reached the incredibly ancient landline of the Turcotte family,” Dennis Turcotte announced. “Howard, Andy, and Phil, they hang out here too,” he whispered conspiratorially. “So let us know whom you intend to torment with your message. We know with certainty this is a collection call, a charity no one bothers about, or...” Dennis paused dramatically. “ ... a political message.” Rebecca heard raucous laughter in the background, also a TV. “So, whatever it is, rest assured no one will ever fucking call you back, asshole!”

The instant she heard the beep, Rebecca shouted: “This is Rebecca Bows in Huntington, West Virginia! Someone from there just called me! When you get this message, please call me back!” Panting, she continued: “Do you know what’s going on? Why did you call me? Do I know you? Do you know my parents? Are you one of Maudie’s friends?” Frantic, she thought what else to say, suddenly brain-locked. “I don’t know if--” she got out before the cut-off beep sounded.

“No!” she screamed. “Fuck no!”

Smacking the wall beside the phone, she punched *69 again. A recorded voice announced: “Thank you for using Verizon. The number you want is currently unavailable. Press 3 to hear your available options, or 4 to speak with a representative. Please note that due to unexpectedly heavy call volume this morning, the predicted wait period to speak with a representative is ‘beep-beep’ minutes. Please make your selection now...”

Holding away the phone, Rebecca stared at the cream-colored handset. “‘--beep-beep minutes’--? What the fuck is ‘beep-beep minutes’?” Stabbing 4, she listened to a variation of the previous message 3 times, before hanging up in tears.

The water had started to cool.

Quickly rinsing her hair, she killed the shower and shoved her hair straight back from her forehead. She vigorously dried, and then wrapped her hair in a towel. She unlocked the hall door, cracked it carefully open, and then swung it wide to let in fresh air. The bathroom fan was a joke. It exhausted nothing.

Am I hungry, she wondered? How long ago since I ate?

That would be 7:30 last night, she remembered, when Amy ran them through McDonald’s drive-through on the way to the party. The thought of a cheeseburger and fries made her stomach lurch. Still, she needed to eat.

In her bedroom, she struggled on a pair of black cords and a red and blue flannel shirt over her Lady Gaga T. On the edge of her mattress, she slipped on clean socks, and then her black leather boots. The red Chuck’s went back into the closet with the other two pairs she owned: pink, and green. When her stomach complained noisily, she muttered, “OK, fine, I’ll feed you, already. I have to do this first, though.”

She dialed 911, hoping for a better result this morning. She also tried both TV stations and The Herald-Dispatch newspaper again. Laughing in disgust, she Googled numbers for the Huntington police department, the state police, and the FBI field office in Richmond, VA. None rewarded her with a human voice. She wanted to hurl her phone against the wall.

She tried the TV next, and it surprised her, how many stations remained on the air: ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. She watched MTV for a time, before realizing she had become comatose, standing with her mouth open and her eyes focused somewhere in Ohio. Stabbing the remote, she threw it on her bed in disgust. Let’s eat, she thought.

The bounty of Mom’s final trip to Kroger’s Supermarket jammed the refrigerator shelves. Liberating a Diet Coke, she popped the lid and guzzled half the contents. Belching loudly, she wiped her lips and laughed, imagining Mom’s instant reprisal: “Were you born and raised in a cattle barn, missy!”

“Yes, Mom,” she muttered, taking a more reasonable sip of soda. “I was born and raised in a barn.”

Grabbing a package of deli-sliced ham, another of white American cheese, and a surprisingly red tomato, she prepared a thick sandwich on wheat bread. Her pleasure would be tempered knowing this sandwich was the last she’d ever make in 2014. She wolfed it down.

Aaron. She hadn’t tried him last night. Un-pocketing her iPhone, she considered how unexpectedly last night had gone. Aaron was cute, but not a hottie like Gunther Tripp or Dale Ivey. Not that Gunther or Dale beat down her door in search of hot tamales; for such a cute girl, Rebecca was amazingly inept with guys. Amy complained that being her BFF impacted her own sex-life. Rebecca suspected the rib wasn’t entirely good-natured.

“Are you OK?” she texted. “You were there, and then you weren’t. Let me know if you want to talk, OK?”

Just spread your legs for the asshole who meant to rape you, you pitiful cunt, she thought.

Angry, she dropped her phone on the table and carefully wrapped it and returned the sandwich makings to the refrigerator. She scooped crumbs into her palm, rinsed them down the sink, and then wiped the counter clean with a sponge. It hadn’t fully sunk in how different she was this morning. Nothing advanced maturity like strife.

“Let’s go, guys.” Grabbing her iPhone, she headed upstairs for her coat and the shotgun. The time was 11:21 a.m.

-------//-------

Teddy looked good. His pure normalcy in the face of all this insanity brought tears to her eyes. Performing a walk-around, she carefully inspected each tire, which Dad had replaced in late September, roads being what they were in Huntington, West Virginia. All looked properly inflated.

She touched the dark blue hood with her fingertips. “You got gas? You better got gas, bucko.”

Dad was notorious for running the RAV4 on fumes. Twice during her driving lessons, Rebecca had immediately headed to the Marathon station at Route 10 and Washington Blvd, praying she wouldn’t run out. Both times the fuel light came on when she had started the engine. Her dad still drove the car a lot, and this morning was no exception, she discovered: her laughter was immediate and bitter.

“Way to go, Dad!” Continuing to laugh, imagining her fingers encircling Dad’s scrawny neck, turning his face a delightful shade of puce, she tapped the gas gauge, not expecting it to move off the 1/16th mark. Marathon station, here we come! she thought.

Setting the Remington on the passenger’s seat, she killed the engine and said: “I should check your oil before I go, shouldn’t I, big guy?”

She removed her gloves, got out, and found a cloth in the toolbox in back. The oil level perfectly aligned with the line on the dipstick, and she checked the coolant reservoir, as well as the brake fluid before closing the hood. Though sufficient for now, this was the extent of her knowledge of Teddy’s inner workings.

Opting for safety, she relocated the shotgun to the back floorboards—you bet, she checked the safety!—buckled up and restarted the engine. She laughed again, disgusted.

Were the pumps working this morning, she wondered? Continuing electricity offered her hope, as did knowing the Marathon station stayed open 24/7. When she passed it last night on the way home, the station was brightly lit, a car, and a pick-up truck sitting at the pumps. The same two vehicles that she’d discover in just a few minutes time; the station was only a short hop from the house.

Exhibiting new-driver’s syndrome, Rebecca grasped the wheel firmly with both hands, checked all three mirrors for obstacles, and then twisted both ways, checking visually over her shoulders. Like all new drivers, she had poor spatial skills. Also, she was Rebecca Bows, bungler extraordinaire. Shifting into reverse with her foot planted on the brake pedal, she drifted slowly down the driveway into the street. She hit nothing, an auspicious start.

Slowing at the wrecked Jeep, she lowered the passenger’s side window. The by-now familiar smell of antifreeze and gasoline remained, though diminished from last night. Whatever force had caused the event had also suppressed fire, which otherwise might have ravaged the Jeep and the big black Suburban. The smell of gasoline made her nauseous.

Her concept of the event’s scope had expanded somewhat. Last night at 9:24 p.m., Huntington was in full swing, in many cases just getting started. Logic dictated that thousands of accidents had occurred, just in Huntington, alone. Restaurant kitchens would have ranges fired up with multiple burners going. The same applied to homes all over Huntington, she figured. There were scores of fireplaces left untended, cigarettes burning down to the quick, candles wicking away--all those unmanned airplanes she hadn’t seen tumbling to earth. Half of West Virginia should be ashes this morning. Yet, she still hadn’t witnessed smoke, anywhere.

Raising the window and continuing, Rebecca rounded the curve at Holderby Road and spotted the Marathon station ahead. Route 10 (more commonly known as Hal Greer Boulevard) looked unnervingly different in daylight. The absence of motion in her field of view triggered a gooseflesh eruption across her entire upper body. Look for birds, she thought, rubbing her biceps through her coat.

She spotted none, not even the ubiquitous winter gulls perched atop roofs or circling at random. She eased away from the stop sign, motoring the half block to Washington Boulevard where she rounded the island and swung into the Marathon station’s parking lot. The same Toyota Corolla and silver Dodge Ram sat where she’d seen them last night. The Ram’s driver’s-side door stood invitingly open. Would the battery be dead, she wondered? The truck had sat all night with the dome light on.

She pulled up to Pump Number 2, set the parking brake and killed the engine. Unlike the pick-up truck, evidently being fueled the moment everyone had vanished, the Toyota’s fuel flap was dogged tight, and the doors closed. She blinked in surprise at a riff of country music as she opened the door--Blake Shelton, she realized, coming from the direction of the pick-up. She was more surprised to hear the pick-up’s big block engine idling at the pump. She hadn’t noted that last night or was too overwhelmed to care.

Anxious, she gazed about, afraid to approach lest the owner start hollering at her to get away from his truck. The Ram screamed redneck, a sizable chunk of the local populace. But practicality demanded that she do something other than walk away; the Ram presented a fire hazard with the flap open, and the pump handle stuck in the fill tube. A hazard too damned close to home.

She approached the cab, looked around anxiously and then reached inside and twisted the key counter-clockwise. The V-8 engine shut down, sounding somehow relieved. She removed and dropped the keys on the driver’s seat and closed the door, leaving it unlocked for the driver’s return. She removed and returned the nozzle to the pump, screwed on the gas cap, and shut the flap.

She had never used her Visa debit card without permission and felt disquiet at doing so now. Unless the convenience store was a miraculous exception to last night’s mass exodus, however, no one stood behind the counter inside to accept her $12.00 in cash. The thought of venturing inside the store for any reason this morning made her insides roil. Card in one hand, wallet in the other, she stood undecided and frightened.

The tank held 16 gallons and she pumped 14.9. The debit to her card was $42.88. Replacing the nozzle, she answered yes to a printed receipt, and considered popping the hood to check the engine’s vital fluids again. Put that off until later, she thought, following a bit of exploration. It was a determination that she wouldn’t follow through on today, or ever.

You want to explore, she thought, go inside. The resultant shiver made her back a step; nonetheless, she balled her fists, clenched her teeth, and whispered harshly: “Do it, Rebecca! Otherwise, you might as well go home and hide under your fucking bed!”

Despite the allure of that proposition, she opened the rear door and retrieved the shotgun from the floor. She had never noted the sign on the building stating the establishment was Clark’s Pump-N-Shop. Clark, who? she wondered. At the entrance, she paused, right hand uneasily gripping the door handle, shotgun grasped in her left hand. Had someone taken refuge inside? Was someone watching her now, full of ill-will, ready to pounce on her the moment she entered? She visualized herself correctly as prey.

Half-opening the door, she called inside: “Is anyone here?”

The fully stocked aisle’s remained quiet.

Slipping inside, she thumbed the safety to the off position, tucked the shotgun tight to her side, and crab-walked left to right, clearing the aisles as might a police officer. Returning to the entrance, she hollered the challenge: “I have a 12-gauge shotgun in my hands! I won’t hesitate to use it, dammit!”

She patted her coat pockets for spare shells.

“I’m scared and I’m jumpy and I might shoot you entirely by accident! So please if you’re in here, give me a shout, okay!”

Softly counting to 30, Rebecca shook out her shoulders, crept to the counter, and stretched over, checking the space behind. No bodies lay on the floor. She headed toward the back--extracting her cell phone and activating the flashlight app just in case--and checked the employee’s break room and bathroom, the janitor’s closet, the small stocking area containing cases of bottled water, soft drinks, and juices, and then the cooler. She wasn’t stupid enough to venture into the cooler and chance being trapped inside. Lastly, checking the customer bathrooms at the far end of the store, she relaxed. The door to the storage area behind the counter was locked.

“OK. I’m alone.” In the greater scheme of things, she hoped that wasn’t true. “So, Rebecca, what do we do now?”

The shelves were fully stocked, and the coolers alone contained enough water, sodas, and juices to last her a year. Clark’s was just one convenience store of how many in Huntington, she wondered. Factor in the Kroger’s and Food Fair and you were talking several lifetimes of supplies.

Electricity worried her. She couldn’t imagine the power grid remaining up for more than a day or two, certainly not more than a week. It said a lot about automation that it hadn’t failed already. Power stations required fuel: natural gas, coal, and fuel oil to operate (the thought of a core meltdown made her insides nearly implode), and logic demanded that all would soon be depleted. Power failure meant goodbye to refrigeration, showers, the ability to wash clothes, flush the toilet, pump gas, etc. Produce would quickly spoil, also meats, dairy products, and breads. Packaged items might last a couple of months, but only canned goods had an encouraging shelf life.

She had other considerations besides power. The station was less than a mile from her house. An electrical short and you could welcome Armageddon to town. (Presuming the moratorium against fire got lifted.) Same with the other two Marathon stations on Route 10: she couldn’t--wouldn’t--take the chance of getting burned out of her house. Or getting burned in it, alive. Killing the pumps was a good idea, she thought.

She found the breaker box in the rear of the store. The owner--or whoever oversaw labeling of the circuit breakers--was Rebecca’s kind of anal asshole. Each pump was clearly identified, and so were the interior lighting, signage, exterior lights, and the breakers for coolers and other electrified equipment. Snapping each pump breaker to the off position, she then killed the exterior lighting, the inside and outside signage, and all the interior lights except the fixture directly over the entrance doors, marked appropriately in black magic market: Never Turn Off!

“Yes sir,” she muttered wryly, snapping off a salute.

The cramped office to her right contained a desk overrun with paperwork, an ancient CRT monitor, and an overflowing ashtray in violation of a sign forbidding the smoking of tobacco products. Stacked binders containing paperwork perched at the edge of the desk beside an oversized keyboard, and a desk phone. Curious, she picked it up: no dial tone. Punching a button on the right side made it light up milky white and connected her to Verizon. She dialed 911.

The recorded voice, which she had come to nickname Ms. Irritant, invited her selection of emergency services; disgusted, Rebecca hung up. Gazing at the framed photo of a stout woman and three young girls (nearly crowded off the rear of the desk by flotsam) she wondered if the pictured were Mrs. Clark, and the children. If so, she wished them peace wherever they were.

She turned away. Turning back, she grabbed the big set of keys from beside the phone—might as well lock the place up while she was at it—and then lifted the handset again, poked the 2nd button, and then paused, undecided. Her impression of Dennis Turcotte was that of a southern boy, with an accent much like that of her aunt, uncle, and cousin Jeanine in Knoxville, Tennessee. Aunt Sarah’s number was 865-something. She dialed 865, and then 7 random digits. The line began to ring. The voice answering bore a southern accent identical to that of Dennis Turcotte and her Aunt Sarah.

“You have reached the non-emergency line of the Knoxville, Tennessee, Police Department, 6th Precinct. Please enter the extension of the person to whom you wish to speak or press 1 for a directory. If this is an emergency, please hang up now and dial--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rebecca muttered in irritation. “I’ve done that already.” She punched 1 for the directory. Simply because she had a classmate named Cindy Madden, she selected the extension for Lt. Dean Madden, acting chief of detectives. “One,” she counted softly. “Two, three, four, five...”

Following the 20th unanswered ring, she hung up, laughed bitterly, and said: “Told you he was a Tennessee boy.” Still laughing, she exited the office.

Jessica 4

Saturday, December 13, 2014, 9:52 a.m. Jessica awoke to rolling thunder. Blinking sleepily, she turned onto her side and hissed in pain. What’s wrong with my knee, she wondered, looking down. Her second question was how could that be thunder she heard? She pushed up on an elbow and listened to the drum of rain on the roof; rivulets of water coursed down her window, visible through the blind’s thin white plastic slats. Wait ... it was raining? Had a warm front rolled in overnight?

She grabbed her cell phone and checked the weather app. The current temp was an impossible 72 degrees, rain forecast until 8:00 p.m. that evening. Confused, she looked from her phone to the window and back again. Then flinched as a crackling bolt of lightning struck nearby. “God!” she choked as a thunderclap seconds later shook the house. She almost cried out for her mother.

Her iPhone still carried a 79% charge. Relieved, she set it aside and sat up. Unwrapped, her knee looked marginally better, though her ice had melted hours ago, leaving a bag of tepid water on her knee. She wondered if the remaining ice in the refrigerator had begun to melt. She needed to get ice back on her knee while she still had ice. First, she had to go pee.

Standing proved a challenge; her knee was stiffer, if less swollen, and more prone to buckling beneath her weight. She went from bed to bedside table, to dresser, to door jamb, distracted by unwanted movement between her legs, and none on her chest. She unbuttoned her flannel shirt, looked at her slender boy’s chest under the torn T-shirt and buttoned it up again. She felt equally irritated and entranced by the presence between her thighs, wondering when she’d investigate herself more fully. She couldn’t imagine her boy’s package being hers for good, stupidly wondering if her erection was bigger than her rapists’.

“Get a grip,” she muttered. “Better yet, get this bloody fucking T-shirt those bastards raped you in off and put something else on, you idiot! Right now, Jessica!”

She yanked open the flannel shirt, tugged it off her shoulders and hurled it across the room. It took 10 seconds to free herself of the T-shirt’s clutches, the shirt battling every attempt at freedom; then she hurled it into the opposite corner.

Panting and furious, she wanted to hurl herself through the bedroom window and end it all. Then she caught her reflection in the dresser mirror and just stared. Her boy’s chest, wide hips and bulging underwear evinced a sense of security foreign to Jessica, or to any human female. Blinking, she stumbled to her dresser, grabbed a clean T-shirt from the drawer and pulled it on over her head. She’d always hated the way her nipples poked through a shirtfront when she didn’t wear a bra. Despite the absence of nipple pokes now, she unconsciously hunched her shoulders, muttering invective that her mom would have a cow hearing and fled across the hall into the bathroom.

-------//-------

This was a problem. Peeing upstairs in either toilet would leave her with one remaining flush. Devising a method to flush the toilet after each use was paramount; otherwise, the upstairs would begin to wreak like a project’s high-rise tower—not that she’d ever set foot in one. She wanted only to climb back into bed and forget all this in sleep.

She pulled aside her shorts and went pee, for the first time in her life standing up rather than sitting on the toilet or squatting. It felt only marginally less weird than it had last night, but she could get used to standing like this. She tucked hair behind her ears as she always had, still suffering sticker-shock at the loss of her female equipment. She fingered her penis uncomfortably, directing the stream away from the edge. Her brother peed like this, she thought. So had Harold and Dennis. Like it or not, you are a boy now, Jessica.

For the first time, her vestigial estrogen only grumbled dissidence rather than shout curses at her.

Hovering her hand over the flush handle, she hesitated. Wouldn’t it make sense to save the water and urinate 2 or 3 times before flushing? The smell would grow rancid soon enough, but the room had a window, after all, for ventilation. Open it now and let Mother Nature assist in deodorizing the room, she thought. Good idea.

Pulling back the curtain and stepping carefully into the tub, Jessica unlocked the window and with some difficulty, raised the lower half. It was made of frosted glass, leaving her unprepared for the tableau outside. “Wait!” she gasped, grabbing the sill. “What the fuck?”

In every direction stretched a landscape of spring greenery, early blooming trees covered in light green foliage. Flowers that shouldn’t see daylight for another 4 months surrounded tree trunks and sprouted from flower beds up and down the street. Where yesterday the Olson’s grass was a sickly-looking yellow-brown, it now presented a lush green, with only the occasional blotch of brown remaining to catch up. She looked down to discover her mother’s crocuses just wilted stalks, and her tulips past their prime, some already dropping petals. What the fuck?

She jumped, squealed, and almost fell backwards as another blistering lightning bolt crackled the air. An instant later a deafening thunderclap shook the entire house, making her gasp and scramble out of the tub.

Hurrying back to her bedroom, she twisted open the blinds to confirm her own view of spring. Maddie’s bedroom window also revealed spring out back, and Henry’s did too. It couldn’t be December 13th, she thought. She’d somehow jumped forward to mid-April and morphed into a boy.

Back in her bedroom, she grabbed the iPhone off her nightstand and checked the date. Apple obstinately insisted today was December 13, 2014. “That’s impossible!” she screeched. “Have you looked outside? It’s not December 13th! At least not in White Pine, it’s not! Stupid fucking phone!”

Hobbling to her dresser, she grabbed a clean pair of underwear from the top drawer and gazed at them distractedly for a moment. “Maybe I should...?” She glanced in the direction of Henry’s bedroom. Why, when she wore boy-shorts every day? Truthfully, though, boy-shorts were not designed for boys to wear. The last 12 hours had certainly proven that. Sighing, she hobbled to Henry’s bedroom and swapped her soiled boy-shorts for a clean pair of his Jockey underwear. It made a big difference, comfort wise. She’d thank him next time she saw him, she thought. What would he make of his new big brother, she wondered.

Following an arduous descent of the stairs, she hobbled to the refrigerator and placed her hand against the door. Despite the storm’s abated intensity, she jumped at another thunderclap and grumbled irritably about storms in general. Regardless of gender, thunderstorms scared her.

She removed another Ziplock bag from the drawer, yanked open the freezer compartment door and shoved her hand into the ice bin. The ice was wet now and melted together in clumps. Grabbing a handful, she dropped it into the baggie and went back for a second handful. This clump refused to fit. She grabbed a clean hand towel from the drawer, wrapped it around the ice and smacked it down on the counter.

“I gotta get a generator,” she mumbled. “I gotta get my head examined. I gotta get something to fucking eat!”

She was starving. All the food she’d taken upstairs this morning and she’d not eaten a morsel. She zipped the bag closed and crab-walked to the kitchen table.

The thunderstorm had moved far enough north to open a 6 second gap between lightning bolt and thunderclap. it remained sufficiently forceful to make her jump with every crash-bang, though, and one especially bright flash made the kitchen lights flicker. She stupidly let herself get excited about that.

She iced her knee, sighed, and gazed despondently around the kitchen. The faucet caught her eye. She’d checked it earlier, but you never know, right? “Of course not,” she muttered. “Don’t be stupid, Jess.”

She shifted the ice pack and eyed the landline. On impulse, she arose and hobbled over, grabbed up the handset and punched in her cell phone number. It rang upstairs, perfectly clear in the otherwise silent house. She still couldn’t remember her mom’s or the twins’ cell phone numbers, Robin’s number, or the blasted landline number, for that matter.

“Go upstairs and look at your phone,” she grunted. “That’ll tell you, dummy.”

Instead, she punched in 9 numbers at random and listened as the line rang and rang and rang. Eventually, she gave up and punched in a 2nd set of 9 random numbers, this set starting with the area code 304. She glanced at the kitchen clock while listening to the number ring in Huntington, West Virginia. The hands read 10:16 a.m.

-------//-------

“Don’t do it,” she muttered, standing before the refrigerator. “Save the cold food as long as you can, Jessica.”

The upshot was that if power remained down too long, she’d lose the cold food no matter what she did; the 2011 ice storm had proved that. “Give it until this afternoon,” she compromised. “If the power stays off, start eating the cold stuff before it goes bad. Learn from your mistakes, Jessica.”

“Right,” she muttered, releasing the handle.

Mom had stocked up on Dinty Moore Beef Stew, one of her favorite canned foods. Grabbing a can from the pantry, she popped the lid and automatically opened the cabinet door for a bowl. She’d set it on the counter and grabbed a spoon before remembering the microwave was as useless as everything else in the house this morning. “Fuck!” she shouted, batting the bowl into the sink.

Seething and frustrated, wanting to kick something despite her bad knee—”Dammit!” she hollered—Jessica returned to the refrigerator and yanked open the door. “I want a bottle of water, and fuck anyone who says otherwise!” She grabbed a Dasani from inside the door and slammed it closed.

“Stupid cunt! Get hold of yourself, dammit! You can’t lose your temper, like this, Jessica! Get it together!”