Free Mercy by Rebecca Lim Page B

she’s holding herself that she thinks I’ve engineered all this deliberately to give myself a bigger profile.
    Someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s the spotty tenor 98

    who’s been following Tiffany around like a whipped dog for the last few days. By the weirdly attentive look in his eyes, it seems he may now have switched his unnerving allegiance to me. Behind him stands the bulky, dark-haired bass singer, Tod, and three local girls, the witchy Brenda — Ryan’s ex — among them, all watching me closely.
    ‘That was fan tastic,’ the boy breathes, and I have to move back subtly or risk being engulfed by partially digested Spanish onion. ‘So are you coming tonight, or what?’
    I feel Carmen’s forehead wrinkle up, me doing it. If something’s on tonight, Tiffany and her posse haven’t bothered to keep me informed, which is typical because Carmen always finds out about the good stuff way after it’s already happened.
    ‘Uh, I …’ I draw out the syllables hesitantly to give someone a chance to fill me in on the details.
    ‘You have to come,’ purrs one of the girls standing beside Tod, a horsy-faced dirty blonde in tightly layered tops and even tighter jeans, with impossibly long and perfect peach-coloured nails. ‘If only to put that Tiffany Lazer of yours in her place.’
    ‘She’s getting on our … nerves ,’ adds the other girl I 99

    don’t know, a crop-haired, biker-chick brunette wearing way too much heavy navy eyeliner.
    ‘Thinks she’s better than all of us,’ the flame-haired Brenda interjects waspishly. ‘When clearly she’s not.’
    ‘So will you come?’ Spotty Boy leans forward expectantly. I watch his Adam’s apple slide up and down as I step back a fraction.
    ‘Um, sure,’ I say, assuming a polite smile. ‘How do I get there again?’
    ‘Brenda will pick you up,’ replies Tod quickly. ‘Won’t you, Bren?’
    ‘Sure,’ says Brenda, with a sidelong look at the girls she’s standing with. ‘It’s not like I don’t know the way to where you’re staying.’ Her laughter is forced. ‘Eight thirty, then.’ She smiles in a way that doesn’t reach her extraordinary violet eyes.
    ‘Eight thirty,’ I agree, not sure what it is I’ve agreed to, but I’m no coward. Bring it on.
    We leave the assembly hall in formation, all of them flanking me as if I might somehow change my mind and do a runner.
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Chapter 12
    It’s eight thirty, and Ryan’s escorting me out through the front gates after dinner, following the usual elaborate ritual of imprisoning the dogs behind the steel side gate so they don’t rend me limb from limb like an ancient Roman sacrifice. He tackles the padlock and chain and we’re finally standing outside his house on the footpath.
    All this time I’ve been conscious of his hand at my back. He’s looking the goods in a beat-up dark leather jacket, faded tee and lean indigo jeans. But I give good poker face, and he has no way of knowing what I’m thinking. Carmen’s heart feels like it’s just broken sub-nine seconds on the 100-metre sprint.
    ‘You don’t have to stay,’ I tell him tightly, looking up and down the street for Brenda’s car.
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    ‘It doesn’t bother me either way,’ Ryan drawls.
    ‘Stand under the streetlight, yeah?’
    We move under it just as Brenda pulls up in a sleek hard-top convertible in an unmissable bright yellow.
    Her flashy transport clashes terribly with her hair, but it’s not up to me to point that out. I realise suddenly that maybe Ryan’s here to see her under climate-controlled conditions rather than keep me any kind of company.
    I’m not sure what to feel about that.
    Brenda kills the engine then looks coolly through her windscreen at Ryan, who stares back equally intently from the kerb. No one seems game to break eye contact first and I’m trying hard not to laugh as the seconds tick by. I wonder how these two left things when they finally called it quits, what was said. From Brenda’s