YIPYIPYIP. The dog won't shut up. "Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about because you won't tell me anything—"
"I had nothing to do with your father leaving, and Vera misses you, and I know you miss her—"
"Stop talking about Vera for one second, why don't you!" I have to shout to get over the sound of the dog, going completely insane at some bird in the garden or something.
"—you're completely out of line—"
"Are you surprised? I'm the problem, remember, I'm the daughter who's doing everything wrong—" For god's sake, shut up!
YIPYIPYIPYIPCRASH.
I jolt. With a clenching feeling in my gut, the rain in the kitchen stops. Mom and I stare at each other, suddenly silent. Voices begin yelling outside.
With a steely, anguished look, Mom tears her eyes away from me and hurries out of the kitchen. After half a beat, I follow, drenched, heart pounding.
Outside is a wreck. A car has gone headfirst into a streetlight. People are yelling, calling for an ambulance, shouting at each other, trying to get the drivers out. It looks like they're alive, they weren't going that fast, the car's not too badly smashed up. Then my neighbour, Mrs Law, bursts out of the hubbub, shrieking—she runs to a lump in the road, starts shouting at everyone else. "You killed him!" She shouts. "Why can't you fucking look where you're going?! You bastards! You killed him!"
Mom runs forward to help. She puts an arm around our neighbour, speaking quietly.
I walk forward numbly, taking in the scene. The lump on the road is the dog, a matted pile of flesh and fur and blood. Half knocked into, half run over. Roadkill.
"She's unconscious!" Someone yells, tending to the driver who crashed. "I think she hit her head!"
"Where's the ambulance?!"
"He just ran out of the house," Mrs Law sobs, "I don't know. He went through a window, just jumped out, I don't know what came over him, then he was on the road, and the car tried to avoid him, and—"
I gaze down at the mangled corpse with detached horror. Disgust and nausea wells up in me.
Well, he's finally shut up.
I did this.
I go back into the house and lock myself in my room.
YOU ARE READING
Witch in Hiding (#1 in the Witches Trilogy) (EDITING)
FantasyVinni is in trouble. Not just because she's failing maths or playing second fiddle to a perfect younger sister or pretending not to miss her absent father, but also because she's just found out she's a bona fide witch, and someone is out to kill her...
