Free The Detour by S. A. Bodeen

woke, I felt a little better. I rolled over on my side and stared down at the spaghetti and broken shards of china. I’d have to be careful or I’d end up cutting myself and—
    I blinked.
    Stupid.
    I’d been worried about finding a weapon, and there was an entire pile of sharp objects. Some were too tiny; I wouldn’t have been able to pick them up without cutting myself. But some were larger. Those could definitely do some damage.
    I stood and walked around the bed. I chose a jagged piece the size of my palm. A pink flower lay nearly in the middle of it, as did a stain of spaghetti sauce. I picked out another piece of the flower part for good measure. And then, another. I walked back around the bed and slipped them under the pillow. Then I went to the bathroom and brought out the flimsy wastebasket.
    I didn’t really want to clean up the mess. But it might mean a better chance of Mrs. Dixon not noticing that any of the pieces were missing.
    The crunch of tires on gravel. A car door slammed.
    â€œCrap.” Quickly, I reached for the debris.
    Footsteps on the stairs signaled that I was nearly out of time.
    Click!
    The door flew open.
    Mrs. Dixon stood there, in the same flowered smock, scrub pants, and shiny red clogs as before. “You’re cleaning?”
    I nodded and tried my best to look like I wasn’t rushing to get done. But my heart pounded. A bead of sweat slipped down my temple.
    She came toward me.
    I froze, then straightened up and backed away from her. She held out her hands. “Here, you’re making more of a mess. I’ll do it.”
    When I didn’t move, she took the wastebasket from me. I glanced down at the mess and walked around her, sitting on the other side of the bed as she cleaned. She said, “You seem to have recovered.” But her tone was almost snide, like she thought I had been faking.
    â€œI took a nap.”
    She paused and locked her eyes with mine. “Must be nice, to take a nap when you feel like it.”
    My right hand clenched into a fist. “There’s not a lot else to do in here.”
    She tilted her head. “I imagine when you’re home, you have the luxury to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to do it.”
    She was pissing me off. Was it on purpose?
    Mrs. Dixon kept talking. “That must be nice. You didn’t even have to go to high school, did you?” Obviously, she knew the answer already or she wouldn’t have brought it up. Was she trying to make me sound like some kind of pampered, spoiled teenager who had always had everything handed to her?
    Because sure, maybe it seemed like that on the outside. Maybe the damn bio on the back of my books made it seem that way, but I had been through a ton of lousy years before anything got better. The past few years had been pretty sweet, though. I loved having a nice car and being able to buy pretty much anything I wanted and choosing what I wanted to do every day. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I relished going to conventions or conferences or book signings and having people fight to talk to me, get near me. Finally, I was the girl at the lunch table whom everyone wanted to sit by.
    No one was going to make me feel bad about my success. No one. The universe owed me, and no one would get me to think differently. Especially not Mrs. Daryl Dixon.
    I realized my face had grown hot, and my heart was pounding.
    She bent back over, pushing the mess into the wastebasket. The back of her neck was exposed. Soft. Pale.
    Vulnerable .
    I gulped.
    Those sharp pieces of broken plate hidden beneath the pillow could do some damage to that patch of flesh.
    My hand slid under the pillow.
    My fingers closed around a jagged piece of china. I quickly flipped it around so that I held the smooth side. Then I slowly got up on the bed, rising to my knees.
    â€œYou have no idea how lucky you have it, do you?”
    Just keep talking.
    Gingerly, not to