Free Normal by Graeme Cameron Page A

down on her, the bow on my back a mere accessory now, I made the last ten feet airborne, arm thrust out superheroically before me, hand brushing the back of her neck, fingers closing around streaming hair.
    And then she was out of the trees. The sunlight hit her like a bullet, knocked her straight to the ground. Her flailing limbs slapped against concrete, mimicking the sickly sound of dropped oranges, and she lay there, screwing her eyes tight against the glare as I sprawled in long, damp grass just inside the tree line, a dozen strands of wet brown hair clutched in my fist. The traffic noise drew nearer by the second; the rumble of heavy axles, the swoosh of displaced salt water. And then the deep, grumbling roar of a big diesel engine, closer and louder, drowning the air, the earth trembling under its weight. Kerry yelped and sprung to her feet, eyes wide, disoriented, flinging herself to the safety of the verge as the truck thundered past—twenty-five yards away, beyond the copse into which she stumbled.
    She stood motionless, staring off toward the road. A steady stream of cars hustled by, their reflected sunlight shimmering through dripping thaw and rising mist. She turned to me across the narrow farm track, her jubilant face crossed with hesitation, as though seeking my permission to turn and run. Her eyes widened, the corners of her mouth drawing back into a grimace as she stared down the shaft of my arrow. I held her in the sight as she stumbled back, turned to run in a whirlwind of elbows and hair, all wintry soft-focus and adrenaline-rush slow motion. I thought of Lindsay Wagner, briefly. And then I fired.

CHAPTER
TEN
    My biggest flaw, I think, is the attachment I have to my comfort zone. Sure, I like to challenge myself from time to time, but the unknown is something I consider best avoided.
    It was with trepidation, then, that after a long afternoon on the road I found myself in something called a “New Look,” uncomfortably unsure of what I was looking for and, indeed, at. I was surrounded by low chrome rails, hung in a seemingly random manner with numerous headache-colored garments. The racks were overfilled, making it virtually impossible to examine their contents; those items hung on the ends of each rail, which apparently were representative of the stock in general, appeared entirely inappropriate for the season.
    The staff was no help—two girls of around school-leaving age, preoccupied with inspecting their nails. They were big on teamwork where the customers were concerned; it took one of them to ring up each sale, and the other to fold and bag the merchandise. A single trained chimpanzee would perhaps have been more cost-effective. Needless to say, neither saw fit to offer me assistance, and I was left alone in my bewilderment.
    The problem with being lost, of course, is that it naturally makes one look lost. As a consequence, I imagined every eye in the shop to be trained on me, deriding my helplessness, thanking their lucky stars that they didn’t have one like me at home. Or maybe just questioning my motives for loitering in a women’s clothes shop. The frustration and self-consciousness gnawing at my spine signaled a crushing defeat and so, with an affected expression of disappointment, I hastily tur—
    “What do you think? How does this look?”
    Oh, no.
            
    Stay calm. Appear unfazed. Drop shoulders. Smile. For Christ’s sake, say something. “I’d say you were about three months early with it, but I like it, it suits you.” A town of twenty thousand people, and I have to get caught browsing ladies’ underwear by this one.
    “It suits me?” Caroline, or possibly Rachel, threw me a smirk and turned to the full-length mirror screwed to the wall. “What does that mean?”
    It meant that her arse looked fantastic in it, and I wanted to bite her perfectly toned ankles as they peeked out below the hemline, but “I mean it looks like it was made especially for