Smells Like Winter

36: Cold Pizza Tastes Better With Friends

The diner, which was crowded and bristling with voices and laughter only a few seconds ago, had now gone terribly silent. So many pairs of eyes, staring her down, eating her up, and the tension in the atmosphere was building up, escalating so rapidly that her muscles ached. Maddy felt like vanishing into thin air, disappearing from the face of earth, shrinking into a little worm and finding her way underground, where she would be out of view.

"I think we should go," whispered Logan, like a little kid letting them in on a secret.

"No shit," replied Maddy breathlessly She felt like the air was diminishing, like the stares from all those strangers were eating her up. Her lungs pressed against the sides of her heart.

The waiter took another step back, and then he ran for the landline phone. Oh no.

Maddy and the others all jumped up like coil springs, hands on their guns without daring to draw them out.

An old woman screamed, and then everything was chaos; people getting up and flying out the door, people taking their phones out -to call the cops no doubt -people crying and wailing and shrieking.

"Out," ordered Carter, his voice steady and compelling.

Maddy threw herself towards the exit, heart pounding in her ears. There were so many people, it was suffocating. She pushed through the tables and strode past the scared people who looked at her as if she was a terrorist. Out. She had to get out. Out, out, out. It was so stuffy and stifling in there, she needed to be out in the fresh air, she needed to shake off all those stares piercing through her. She reached for the door handle.

"Nah, I don't think so." A dark-skinned man took a step in front of the exit, blocking the way out. His accent was american, and Maddy found herself against his massive, hefty body, the body of a boxer. He was bigger, taller, and the way he stared her down made her swallow thickly. "You ain't going nowhere until the cops say so." He nodded towards the waiter from earlier, who was now on the phone behind the counter, reporting them to the police, no doubt.

Maddy's knees were shaking, but she dug her heels deeper into the floor to prevent herself from trembling.

Dangerous. The word echoed loud and clear in her head. She wanted to get out, and no one was gonna stop her from doing just that.

She didn't think or realise what she did next.

"You sure about that?" she asked, her voice louder and clearer than she could ever expect, and in an instant, her gun was drawn from under her hoodie, the shiny silver barrel pointing straight at the man in front of her.

He went utterly rigid and took a stumbling step back, like a scared little kitten. The screams multiplied and got considerably louder. A woman started crying.

"Get out of the way," growled Maddy, and she didn't recognise her own voice; she sounded wild and savage and nothing like the quiet girl she had been her whole life. Hell, she was threatening a man with a god damn gun. "Now," she snarled at him, urging him with the gun.

The man started shaking badly as he walked out of the way and lifted his hands up. Maddy kicked the door open with her foot, both her hands too busy holding the gun, the knuckles flexing white from the tightness of her fingers on the grip, her right index finger surprisingly stable on the trigger. She jumped outside and started running back in the direction from which they'd come, not even checking to see if the others were following.

She knew they were.

"I can't believe we're doing this again," groaned Mia moodily from right behind her.

"Doing what?" asked Maddy breathlessly, running faster.

"Running. We always end up running," panted Mia in response.