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I look around, stretchingto attack me I’ll be really pissed if she waits until ht if you can’t even weasel out of an hour of hard labor?

I takeI stretch o

My neck hurts, s and feet hurt, evenfro held still At this rate, I won’t have to throw the fight, I’ll lose it honestly

I pretend not to watch the latrine duty s There are about ten of theroup

When they are a few steps away, they start stripping off their filthy clothes Griet tossed into the laundry pile So the ditch instead of working on the truly toxic part of the latrines, but not everyone was that lucky The only thing they leave on are their boxer shorts

I try very hard not to look at Raffe as I realize he’ll be expected to take his shirt off He es under his shirt, but there’s no way he can explain away the blood stains exactly where wings would have been

I stretchnot to look scared I holdand not notice Raffe lagging behind

But instead of rab the hose we’ve been using to fill our tubs They line up to hose each other off I could kickthis Of course they’ll hose off first Who would want latrine workers to walk straight into the shared showers?

I steal a glance at Raffe He’s keeping his cool, but I can tell by holy he’s unbuttoning his shirt that he didn’t see this coured he could slip away once they got into the building since the showers couldn’t take everyone at the saood excuse to drift away fro noticed

Raffe finishes unbuttoning his shirt and instead of taking it off, he slowly starts unbuttoning his pants Everyone around hi to look conspicuous Just when I’ if we should make a blatant run for it, the solution to our probles

The woman alked with Raffe to lunch tosses her honey hair as she smiles up at him

Dee-Dum walk by at that moment "Oh, hi Anita!" They both say with casual surprise Their voices are slightly raised, as if to lares at them as if they’d just hawked and spat I’ve seen that look a irl to a band geek when he gets too familiar in front of her clique She turns back to Raffe, her faceinto a radiant smile She puts her hand on his arm as he’s about to take off his pants

And that’s all the excuse I need

I grab the sudsy shirt out of the gray water and throw it at her

Itaround her hair Her perfect hair cluy mass, and her mascara smears as the cloth slides wetly down her blouse She eh-pitched squeal that turns every head within earshot

"Oh, I’ary voice "Did you not like that? I thought that’s what you wanted Iyour paws on rows by the second Oh, yeah, baby Step right up Co crowd, discreetly buttoning up his shirt And I thought he looked griht

Anita’s enormous eyes look up helplessly at Raffe She looks like a distressed kitten, bewildered and hurt Poor thing I have second thoughts about whether I can do this

Then she looks aton who she’s looking at She looks spitting-e

It’s impressive how vicious a pretty woman can look when she sets her mind to it Either she’s one hell of an actress, or Dee-Duenda when they set this up I’ll bet she doesn’t even know about the fight Why share the profits when you can get revenge instead? I’m sure this wasn’t the first time Anita has snubbed Dee-Dus were hurt

"You think anything you do would get a guy like his the wet shirt back at randpa to be interested in you"

Okay Turns out I can do this

I lean a little to o at it in all our fe, nail-scratching We squeal like cheerleaders who fell into a mud pit

As we stumble around in our drunken dance, we bu the whole area ater

She trips over it while clinging ontodown Our bodies contort around each other as we roll in the nified when your head is being pulled down to your shoulder by your hair It’s ehting

The crowd goes ith their cheering and clapping I catch a glilee

Just how does so? Land in the mud face-down and let her scratch me a few times while I curl into a ball? I’ht

All thoughts of the fight are shattered by a gunshot

It coh to o off in rapid succession

Then a screah the woods A very human, very terrified scream