Free The Almost Girl – ebook edition Page A

Some kind of army grunt?”
    “Something like that. Bet you’re wishing that you’d just let her go when I’d asked you, right?” I know my lack of fear must be aggravating him, but honestly, it’s like fighting an uncoordinated toddler. Given the odds, I could quite conceivably fight him blindfolded.
    “Shut up. Who has the knife, anyway?” he taunts lunging blindly at me.
    I spin again and clip the knife out of his hand with the heel of my boot so that it flies upward and lands in my own fist. “This knife?”
    “Doesn’t matter. I don’t need it,” he says with forced bravado. His eyes dart to the motionless forms of his friends. I can see the fear in his eyes and a dawning understanding of what he has gotten himself into, underscored by sheer disbelief that a girl is somehow getting the best of all of them. It is the same fear that makes him charge toward me in a football-type tackle.
    I dance out of the way and laugh again. I’m exhilarated. It’s the first real combat exercise I’ve had in weeks, this coming from someone who typically trains three hours a day in a rigorous simulation mode and then another hour in actual combat. I should be sluggish, but I’m wired. Ever since the clinic, it’s as if I can feel the neurons firing inside of me, getting stronger. And now, my body feels wired, like it’s plugged in to a giant electrical outlet, every move charged with lethal fire. I am invincible.
    My last move has brought me near to where Charisma is sitting, and I notice that her head is slumping forward onto her knees. She’s nearly unconscious. A surge of anger rips through me and I advance on the boy. His eyes widen because now I am no longer laughing. My face is dead, emotionless. It is a look that has been partially responsible for the rank I hold in my own world.
    “You like to take advantage of defenseless girls?” His head snaps back as my fist makes contact with his right cheek. It’s barely a touch, but he stumbles backward. “You put something in their drinks, and then what do you do? Pretend to care about them? Then you hurt them?”
    Each word is a staccato of fury. Fury at what girls here had to put up with over and over again. I’ve seen it at almost every school I’ve been to, and until now, I’d always walked away, telling myself that there was nothing I could do.
    Where I come from, girls – women – know how to defend themselves from everything and everyone: human, animal, or machine. Drugged or not, any girl from my world would have had this guy, or one three times his size, on his backside before he could even lay a finger on her.
    In this world, in neighborhood high schools, others like this boy prey on innocent girls, and more often than not get away with it because the girls are too ashamed or humiliated or aren’t able to remember to do anything about it. It sickens me. Drugging another person in my world for something as revolting as sexual gratification is an offense punishable by exile – a fate more feared than death. Let’s just say it doesn’t happen too often. Exile is not a gentle end.
    Someone needs to teach this boy a lesson. For Charisma, I’d be that person.
    I grab the boy by the front of his shirt and pull him close to me. He’s a fair head taller than I am, but I am practically holding him off the ground. I press the butt of his knife against his crotch so deeply that I can see the water spring into his eyes. My voice is a low snarl. “I ever see you near her, I will end you. Got it?”
    Without waiting for any acknowledgement, I spear my knee into his groin, feeling the immediate grunt radiating up through his entire body as he collapses against me, crying. I shove him away, a whimper from Charisma drawing my attention. The boy is curled into a fetal ball on the ground, but I still send his knife spinning behind me without a backward glance. I know without looking that it thumps right into the sliver of space on the ground between his stomach and