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Lisa See
#03 . . .WARM BLOOD
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"I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU."
On the concrete steps outside Midtown High, Scout Sato crouches with her head in her hands. Spencer elects to sit, her bruised, Band-Aided knees knocking gently against each other as she watches her older sister experience the five stages of grief all at once.
First, denial. "I can't fucking believe you," Scout repeated, her voice muffled and her face still hidden behind her hands. "Are you kidding?"
"No."
"Fuck. Fuck." Next—anger. "On the first day of school? Seriously? You couldn't wait?"
"No," Spencer said again; she couldn't think of a better answer. Mrs. Davis' attempts to verbally discipline her had fallen flat, as everyone's always did; except for Scout, of course. Her disapproval was hot and acute, acerbic, corroding Spencer's carefully-curated facade like acid to skin. Red wound weeping, epidermis, dermis and fat seared to the burn.
Scout Sato—cell death in the flesh.
"The fuck were you thinking?"
"He deserved it."
"Oh, they always do, don't they?"
"He did." Though the city was loud around them—to say nothing of the school, bustling and bristling with animal life, sweaty and adolescent—the world was quiet when Spencer spoke. She sounded so small. And perhaps, for just a second, ashamed.
"He did." Scoffing, Scout finally moved her hands from her face. She instead hugged her arms. "And what exactly did he do to deserve it?"
"He said the c-slur."
"Oh, the c-slur. That was worth what you did to him? You fractured his jaw and shattered his collarbone."
Don't forget his nose. "I know, Scout. I was there."
"Drop the fucking attitude. His parents could press charges."
Spencer was silent. Unable to meet her sister's eyes, she stared down at her hands instead, tracing the skin of her knuckles with her thumb. Skin was the wrong word; the tissue here was scar more than anything else, torn time and time again. Already it had begun to scab, thin and dark and red over her metacarpals. A vulture to her own carrion, she picked at it, scraping the dried blood off at the edges just for the clinical satisfaction of seeing it seep fresh underneath.
