Born to Run by John M. Green Page A

precious bottles to the floor, almost delicately, but this time successfully flicks off her books with a rough sweep of his arm. He yanks her
    up onto the table and the back of her head smashes down onto her school paper. Her blood is soaking into it and finally obliterates what the five wet stains hadn’t. The “A” is
    gone; no longer will she ever be able to boast of it. The “+” is still there, encircled by blood, like a shield against evil but it wards off nothing as she woozes in and out of
    reality.
    He tears at the waist of her jeans and pulls them down to reveal her white panties. He rips them down.
    The pain searing her neck and under her head blocks Isabel from fully grasping his intentions, at least until his filthy thumbnails are digging into the
    insides of her knees and he is forcing her legs open. She gasps with the shock as much as the rasping pain of his hard plunge into her. His forearms bulge with the power of desire and are pinning
    down her shoulders. His breath stinks of beer and tobacco and ham—honey-baked, she thinks, as though it might be important—and as she squirms, his spit slobbers into her eye. She
    can’t wipe it, she can’t do anything to help herself, and both terror and rage clash inside her.
    Her vomit sprays over his neck and denim shirtfront. If only she’d had better aim… The rest oozes down the sides of her sad face, and the
    bilious chunks splatter and plop into the blood that has soaked and matted her once black hair.
    ¿Dónde está mi mami? She tries to wriggle free and vainly twists her head searching. The startling pain again flares across her neck.
    His white-knuckled fist, an inch from her eyes, intimidates her even more than the macabre contortion of his scowl and the belligerent purple veins pulsing on his arm that make his wolf tattoo
    snarl. She can’t think of… down there, but instinct, maybe disgust, sinks her teeth into his arm, just below his fucking wolf tattoo, and she clamps her eyes and her mouth till her
    tongue recoils from the repulsive taste of blood. His blood. She hopes it is his.
    It is his turn to scream.
    Good.
    His spare hand grabs again for the broken bottle, “I’ll fix you,” he shrieks in her ear.
    Bad.
    She dares to open her eyes as he pulls himself out of her. He is towering over her, bristling, his penis still partially erect and flailing from side to side
    and his arm is soaring, brandishing the bottle neck, like a ghoul with a burning torch in a horror movie. His eyes are ablaze and his howl shrieks like a zombie’s. One hand pushes her legs
    apart and his other arm winds back and round in an underarm so swift and sure that she faints in shock before he hits his target, a small mercy, so she never hears him yell, “You’ll
    never forget your first fuck now.”
    He holds his penis fondly in his hand, the blood streaming from his wrist mingling with hers. He starts stroking. When he is finished and zipped up, he walks
    toward the door. “Tell your fuckin’ whore mother,” he spits out the corner of his mouth, “she’ll have to get her booze from some other stupid cunt from now
    on.”
    A frayed grey bath towel is limp over the arm of the sofa where Maria Rosa’s head had been resting just minutes earlier. He snatches it up and presses
    down on the blood on his arm. “Fuck you,” he scowls at her and swipes the rag across his face and his shirt, but it just smears her blood and chuck into a fetid brown sludge. He tears
    the stinking shirt off and heaves it at Isabel. “Clean yourself up,” he orders her, “You disgust me.”
    His foot has almost kicked the door open when he remembers his beers. He swivels back to the gory butcher’s block and leans down to get them careful to
    avoid any of the red drips. Isabel’s eyes stutter open and, almost instinctively, she pries the bloody shard out of her body, unleashing a venom that impels her to slam it down onto his
    bare shoulder, just above the wolf tattoo. But the