Shawn's Law by Renae Kaye Page A

formed.
    “Ooh, nice and juicy.” Christine looked excited by my injury.
    I personally think that Christine’s husband needs to take her out to dinner more often and maybe to a party where she can interact with real people. But that was my introduction to Christine, and it will always stick in my mind. She was ever so impressed that my body could produce something so utterly repugnant, and she took great pleasure in jabbing it a couple of times with her finger, just to watch the liquid that had formed under the skin move around. Shawn tells me that Christine always enjoys his more grotesque injuries. The time he turned up to emergency with explosive gastro she was unimpressed and told him that he was usually the fun patient, but gastro isn’t her idea of a good day.
    I’m not sure I’ve met anyone whose idea of a good day is to be vomiting continuously into a bucket. I’m sure I’ll find one one day, though.
    Four hours later Shawn drove me home. I was pumped full of antibiotics, antihistamines, and painkillers. My injury had been lanced, cleaned, and dressed. My fingers were still swollen, but the swelling had lessened dramatically. The cut on my face from falling headfirst into a bush had also been cleaned and disinfected, as had the gash on my leg from falling in the tree. In comparison, Shawn, with his eight bites, was fine.
    “Why did this happen?” I asked the doctor at one stage. “I’ve had plenty of bites previously.”
    The doctor shrugged and said that each person has a different tolerance to bites. Some people were bitten twice before the body decided to react with such vigor, some people were bitten three hundred times. He could only assure me that I would probably have a bad reaction again, so I should be mindful of anaphylaxis and carry antihistamines with me when I went bushwalking.
    Shawn ushered me inside my house and helped me sit on the lounge while he made me something for dinner later and fed the dogs. “I’m really, really sorry,” he told me for the fiftieth time. “I’ll be more careful next time. And I’m really sorry I can’t stay and look after you, but I need to get back to Mum or else Lisa won’t sit with her again.”
    I told him I’d be fine, thanked him for the sandwich, and kissed him good-bye before he walked home.
    I didn’t realize it would be weeks before I saw him again.

Eight

     
    Shawn
     
    Avoiding Harley, and strawberry-flavored condom dollies.
     
    H AVE YOU ever looked in the mirror and hated something about yourself? Did you ever wish for beautiful blond hair instead of your normal black? I tried to bleach my hair once because I was sure that blonds had more fun (and a lot more sex) than I was having. I tried the peroxide solution.
    My hair turned green.
    I tried pretending for a couple of days that I really did mean to dye it that color, but I don’t think anyone believed me. When my hair began falling out in clumps, I had to take drastic action. So I shaved it all off.
    I looked terrible, like a chick shorn of its fluff. And I managed to get my skull sunburned the day after. Not only did I have to deal with the itch of the hair growing back, but my whole head peeled and it looked like I had the worst case of dandruff that any person had ever had. I wore beanies for weeks and looked like a total dweeb by sweating through the wool in summer.
    But I would’ve gladly gone through that again than suffer the embarrassment of knowing it was my fault that Harley was hurt. What sort of person doesn’t recognize an anthill, for goodness’ sake? Here I was thinking he would fall from a tree or get bitten by a snake, and it turns out that a mere ant sent him to the hospital. All because of me and Shawn’s Law.
    So I hid and avoided him. I sent him a ton of text messages over the next couple of days to make sure he had recovered, but then, like an alcoholic finally admitting they had a problem, I decided to cut myself off from him, completely.
    I didn’t read his