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She shrugged and licked at a droplet by the side of her mouth. “You can talk to me, you know. I know you probably think I’m just a kid but—”
“You are just a kid.” I snatched the boot from her and made a show of inserting my broken limb and hissing between my teeth as I strapped up the Velcro. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“Things obviously aren’t fine if you travelled halfway across the ocean and left behind everything you ever knew.”
I went cold. “Enough. I mean it.”
“But I want to get to know you. What do you miss most about Turkey? I want to know—”
“I said, enough.” Pushing myself awkwardly upright, I towered over her.
But she sprang up, temper flaring in her eyes. “You can’t just appear in our lives and not tell us who you are, you know.”
“I didn’t ask to appear in your lives. You’re the one who found me, remember?”
“And I’m glad I found you before you died—”
“You’re glad? What about me? You didn’t think to ask what I wanted, did you?” The scorn and hurt dragged confessions from my soul. “You just saw me, floating there, alone and mostly dead, and thought to yourself. ‘Oh, I know. I’ll go save him. He looks like he has so much to live for.’”
Neri shrank back. “What?” Her forehead wrinkled with pain. “Why are you saying it as if keeping you alive is a bad thing?”
“Because it is!” My snarl cut between us, slicing through my sickly fear and making my chin drop to my chest. “Kafami sikeyim.” Sucking in a gust of air, I shook my head. “Look, I’m—”
“What does that mean?”
I blanched. “Nothing. Forget I said it.”
Her eyes churned with quick-fire intelligence. “It means fuck, doesn’t it? It’s a swear word.”
“Was that a good guess, or do you like languages as much as your mother?”
‘Fuck’ wasn’t quite the translation, but no way would I elaborate and tell her it meant ‘fuck my head’ which loosely meant, ‘fuck me’.
“Good guess.” She crossed her arms. “And don’t distract me. You wish you died. You wish I’d never found you—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did! You literally just said it was a bad thing that you’re alive!”
I winced as her fury clashed with mine, causing vicious sparks.
This wasn’t right.
In what world did the rescued yell at the rescuer?
She’s just a kid.
A kid who didn’t know how awful the world could be.
I couldn’t blame her.
I couldn’t curse her.
She didn’t have a clue why we’d been running or who I truly was.
Choking back my endless guilt for surviving, for being the very fucking reason my family was gone, I snapped, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” She crossed her arms over her flat chest. “You blame me for this.”
