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JUNE’S SKIN FELT HOT under the T-shirt where the stun gun hit her. She didn’t feel damaged, thankfully, just sore, like a long day at the climbing gym. She was more banged up from falling across her mom’s bike. Mostly she was scared at finding herself thrown into a strange car with strange men. But that fear was rapidly converting to anger.
She was sure now that these men were not with the government, despite the badges and flashing lights. They wouldn’t have used a stun gun on her. They’d simply have had the local cops knock on her door and bring her in.
But why did they want her to begin with?
The only thing that made sense was that it had something to do with her mother’s lab.
She took careful inventory of her surroundings. The back doors were locked, and the driver watched his mirrors and the road ahead. The negligent way her seatmate kept an eye on her told her that he didn’t consider her a threat, just a girl like any other. Until he began to leer at her a little, checking her out in her handcuffs, like he might ask her out for dinner when the whole thing was over.
As if he didn’t quite get that he’d fucking zapped her with a stun gun and abducted her.
She recognized this particular look from the guy who got her staggering drunk on Everclear-laced “punch” early in her freshman year, so that he could rape her in the coatroom of a fraternity. The kind of guy who told himself that the girl came to the party to get drunk and laid and he was just helping her out, and that No really meant Yes because dude he was so damn handsome that a girl couldn’t really be turning him down on purpose.
She reported the rape to the campus cops, but his asshole buddies rallied with bullshit stories of how she’d gotten drunk and came on to him, and the investigator couldn’t do much. She didn’t even know if he believed her.
So, with no other option available but to allow the whole thing to eat her alive, June decided to consider the incident a powerful lesson in poor judgment and a strong incentive to take full responsibility for herself. She stopped going to big parties, started self-defense classes, and never drank anything she hadn’t poured herself.
She never thought of herself as a violent person, or someone easily angered. The self-defense training was just that, a means to protect herself. But she had been known to harbor a grudge, and now she took long, deep breaths, oxygenating her blood and stoking her anger to a pure white heat while she waited for a red light.
When the driver stayed in the lane for Old Middlefield, she knew she was running out of time. Once they hit the freeway, she was fucked. There would be no red lights. She saw the sign for Las Muchachas, tightened her abs, locked her left hand on the back of the driver’s headrest, and pivoted on her seat to kick the man she now thought of as the date rapist directly in the face.
She was wearing her favorite heavy hiking boots, and her legs were very strong from running and biking, so the kick had substantial force. He rocked back and tried to block her, but she kept kicking him as hard as she could in the face and neck and forearms.
When he finally went on the offensive, reaching out for her with thick hands, she leaned in with a wrist lock, grabbed his vulnerable little finger and bent it back, not an easy thing to do with her wrists cuffed but very effective. The date rapist’s meaty blood-streaked face twisted up and he shouted in pain, the driver was yelling and trying to pull over, and she really should have thought this through first but she was in it now and not giving up because the alternative was entirely unacceptable.
“Give me the fucking stun gun,” she growled. His finger was at the edge of breaking. His face was torn up from her all-terrain soles, but he was clearly furious and she didn’t want to get close to him. He was much bigger and stronger than she was, and the enclosed space was not to her advantage. She didn’t know how long he’d give a shit about his finger. If he zapped her again or pulled her into a clinch or even hit her once in the face with a closed fist, she’d be finished. She shouted it again, loud and hard, “Give me the fucking stun gun!”
“Okay, okay,” he said, and fumbled in his pocket. But she could read his intentions in his piggy little eyes and as the stun gun came out, she broke his finger. She could feel the crunch as the bone broke, a small weak bone despite the meatiness of his hand. He howled, but he’d already reached the same calculus she did, so despite the broken finger he pushed the stun gun toward her, trigger down and contacts crackling bright.