Around 1:00 a.m., I was lying in the center of my bed, on top of the covers, still wearing Jasmine’s dress. I had vomit in my hair and on my face and I didn’t care. My mind was still processing what had happened.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Jasmine and Carly were probably ready for me to pick them up.

Instead, I was greeted with a text from someone else. It was a photo of my Visa and a short message.

Everett: Want this back?

I felt something finally. It was the annoyance I was so familiar with. But why did he have my credit card?

Me: That’s stealing.

Everett: Nope. I paid for your drink and fourteen limes and the bartender asked if I was your boyfriend and I told him yes.

Me: That’s lying.

Everett: Yep.

The annoyance within me flared to a burn. And yet, something about this amused me.

Me: I did not have fourteen limes.

Everett: Well, that’s how many I was charged for. And I didn’t lie about that part.

Me: Oh, and you are not my boyfriend.

Everett: Thanks for clarifying. You’ve still not answered my question.

Me: No, I don’t want it back. Please, buy yourself something pretty at Tiffany’s. On me.

Everett: Wow, ten minutes of conversation and you can read me like a book.

Me: I don’t think it was ten minutes of conversation.

Everett: Are you always this contrary?

Me: I’m not contrary.

I settled back into my bed. The side of my lip twitched again. It was the oddest sensation.

Everett: Do you always run like a bat out of hell from bars?

Me: I always run from strange men.

Everett: Meet me for breakfast tomorrow. You can repay me for the fourteen limes with a greasy breakfast fit for a hangover. Wear tennis shoes, so you can run away with more grace this time.

Me: I’ll wear heels.

Everett: Of course you will. Schmidt’s. 9 a.m.

Me: Fine.

My reply was reluctant. Did I really want to have breakfast with him? I weighed the pros and cons and decided I would. More out of curiosity than anything else. He couldn’t be as scary in daylight. He’d stand out, in black. Like a cartoon character.

Another text came through.

Jasmine: Can you come pick us up?

She’d included an address. My annoyance flared up again. I suddenly remembered I was wearing her dress. I wasn’t going to change.

I showed up to the unsuspecting house fifteen minutes later. I’d thrown my puke speckled hair into a bun and had washed my face and brushed my teeth before leaving the apartment. Jasmine and Carly were sitting on the curb, in the dark. Carly was alternating between barfing in the street and hiccupping. I assumed the latter was causing the former. I sighed and opened the door to the backseat, pulling a grocery bag from the floor and hastily handing it to Carly. Jasmine was more sober than usual and eyed me carefully after we’d settled Carly into the seat.

“Is that my dress?” she asked, accusation thick in her voice.

“It is,” I confirmed, belting Carly in. I stood back onto the curb and looked at Jasmine with challenge, willing her to say something, anything. She squinted at me in the dark, as if she couldn’t figure me out.

In the end, she shrugged. “You can have it.”

“Good,” I answered. “Because I’m pretty sure there’s puke on it.”

The alarm clock blared at 8:30 a.m. but I was already awake. After returning from picking up Carly and Jasmine earlier, I’d fallen into the shower and numbly scrubbed off the puke. It was how I dealt with situations that brought up unwelcome memories. I turned my mind off. A therapist had told me it was common for those who had been through traumatic experiences to block the memories, to make themselves numb to avoid feeling.

The problem was, I didn’t have to make myself numb. I just was. My brain swam in Novocain. I walked through life, straying from potentially dangerous situations. If I was even the slightest uncomfortable, there was no question of fight or flight. I’d always fly. I didn’t care, I didn’t let myself soak up anything. I relished the numbness.

I was emotionally bankrupt. That’s what a therapist had told me, when I told her how little I felt. Emotions were always vague, fleeting little things. I felt them in small spurts, similar to how one might feel a drop of water hit their skin and wonder if it would start raining. Except for me, it never rained.

So why did I agree to join Everett for breakfast? I wasn’t sure. Not even in the slightest.

I walked into the bathroom and turned on the light, squinting a bit as the fluorescents chased away the dark. I’d slept poorly, though that wasn’t unusual. I didn’t care much for sleep. I found no solace, no rest, in sleep.

I started brushing my teeth when I looked up. My reflection told a story of a pale-skinned girl, with circles under her eyes so dark they looked like bruises. My hair was a frizzy mess from laying on it while wet. With my free hand, I gathered up the hair and left the toothbrush in my mouth to enable my other hand to tie the mess into a bun on top of my head.

When I departed my room, Carly was in the kitchen making scrambled eggs.

“Hey,” she said while piling eggs on a plate.

“You’re up early.” It was my usual greeting. Though I much preferred Carly to Jasmine, I still wouldn’t say we were close in any sense.

Carly gulped a glass of orange juice, nodding. She was wearing an oversized tee that hung to her thighs. “I feel surprisingly good after last night.” I recalled all the puke and then was reminded that my car was likely a mess. Carly flipped her black hair over her shoulder and looked at me quizzically. “What’s that look for?”

“My car is a mess.” The mild annoyance crept in. Annoyance and I were quite familiar with each other. Especially when it came to my feelings for puke all over my upholstery.

Carly’s face fell. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up after breakfast.”

“I have breakfast plans.” I wasn’t sure why I told her, but it caught her attention. She turned to me with a knowing grin.

“A date?” she asked, seemingly hopeful.

I nearly shuddered. “No. Someone did me a favor and I guess I owe him pancakes now.”

Carly’s grin didn’t fade until I watched her run her eyes down. The smile slid off her face in an instant. “Are you wearing that?” she asked, gesturing with her spatula.

I looked down at myself. I was wearing stretched out yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, my usual attire. I shrugged when my eyes met hers again. “Yeah.”

Her eyes practically doubled in size. “No,” she emphasized, dropping the spatula on the counter and turning the stove off a second later. “You are not wearing that. And your hair?” she looked at the mess on my head and her face was pained. “Come here,” she insisted, dragging me down the hallway.

Thirty minutes later, I was walking down the sidewalk towards the pancake restaurant. Carly had forced me into a summery, coral and navy colored dress and navy heels. She’d made my bun look less like a nest and had even swiped some makeup on my face, hiding my dark circles. I felt out of place, which fit the situation, as I wasn’t sure what to expect.

My hands started tingling when I made out the sign on the side of the building, trying not to focus too hard on the people milling about on the sidewalk, the few that stopped to give me a second glance.

I was finally feeling more than annoyance: I was feeling longing. For my stretched out yoga pants.

I’d told myself on the walk to the restaurant that something was off the night before, the night we met. There were millions of other men in California. What was so special about him? It was the liquor or the spontaneity that messed with my brain. I didn’t feel things. Lust didn’t grip me like a vise, twisting me inside out with desire. That was irrational. That was not me.

My eyes tracked the man in black on the sidewalk. I couldn’t explain how I knew it was him, but I did. And then he turned.

My eyes betrayed me the moment they met his. They refused to break contact and a moment later, my equally traitorous heart stuttered in my chest. He was walking across my path, head turned in my direction while I stood, a statue on the sidewalk. I vaguely registered the jostling by other pedestrians, rushing to their destinations.

He stopped his path and angled his body to face mine, his eyes pinning me in place. The entire world kept moving around me but I was seconds away from my heels forming roots into the concrete.

He walked towards me, confident in his stride. My heart stirred in my chest and I knew, without hesitation, that this man would destroy me. The thought made me breathless. With fear and expectation. More prevalent than those, however, was desire. What was happening to me?

When he reached me, my breath came back loudly, as if I’d been startled. He cocked his head to the side, looking me up and down. “Going somewhere?” he whispered.

The foot traffic jostled us a bit, so he reached a hand out to steady me, his hand touching the bare skin of my arm. The touch sent a little shock and I glanced down, disorientated. I noticed his shoes then. My mind blanked.

“They say the first thing you notice about someone is their shoes, but that can’t be true because I just barely noticed yours.” The thought flew from my mouth without provocation. I looked up at him, a little embarrassed. A smile curled one side of his lips and his eyes crinkled. He still looked tired.

And why did that last thought send me into a land of inappropriate visions?

“I didn’t notice yours either,” he admitted. He stepped back and looked down. “Hmm,” he murmured.

I blinked rapidly. Were we really talking about our shoes? “What?”

“You did exactly what you said you’d do.”

It took a moment for it to click. “I couldn’t find my running shoes,” I answered.

“Hopefully you won’t need them this time,” he said, pulling gently on my arm to lead me to the restaurant.

“Where’s my card?” I blurted out.

Everett looked at me as if I’d wounded him. “Breakfast first,” he insisted, his head angled to me, his hair in his eyes.

I’m not sure what it was about my face that made him laugh at that moment, but he did, and the sound reached into my belly and teased the desire that lay there in wait, like a snake waiting to strike. How was it possible that he looked the same in the daylight, with the morning sun lighting up his features, drawing more attention to the lines around his eyes and mouth? And why couldn’t I stop looking?

“I’m not hungry,” I said as he led us to a booth in the back. I kept my eyes averted from the other patrons as some of them looked at us. What did they see when they looked at me? Were they admiring the dress or fixated on my scars? I hadn’t bothered hiding them this morning.

And on that thought, I looked to Everett as he gestured with his hand for me to have a seat in the booth. Why hadn’t he mentioned anything, asked about my scars?

He took the seat across from me and asked the waitress for a coffee before looking at me.

“Water,” I answered.

After the waitress walked away, Everett broke eye contact to open up his laminated menu, perusing the available options. He didn’t say anything as his eyes glided across the menu. He made little hums here and there, and nodded as if in deep thought about waffles and sausage links.

He lifted his eyes to mine. “What are you going to have?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ll have something.” His eyes didn’t waver. I squirmed a little and crossed my arms over my chest.

“No.”

His eyes narrowed, but not in anger. More like in contemplation. The waitress returned with our drinks while we were engaged in an unannounced staring contest.

She wrote down Everett’s order before turning to me. Before I could open my mouth to answer, Everett interrupted me. “Key lime pie. And if you have extra limes, could you toss those on her plate, too?”

“Sure thing,” the waitress cooed before sauntering away. I watched her departure with fake interest, trying to avoid looking at Everett. His gaze on my face made my skin itch.

“I said I wasn’t hungry,” I finally said, smoothing out the skirt of my dress.

Everett picked up his cell phone, black like his clothing, and glided his fingers across the screen with one hand while he poured creamer only into in coffee.

“That’s very rude, you know,” I said, my eyes tracking his hands, the way he poured the creamer to the very top without overfilling.

His eyes shot to mine in an instant, one black chunk of hair hanging over his forehead in front of his left eye. “I never claimed to be anything else.” A repeat of his line the night before.

He didn’t smile. Instead, he stared at me. His eyes didn’t glide over me. They were completely focused on my own. I felt the challenge that they insinuated.

“You need a haircut.”

That incited a small smile from his lips. “According to you?”

I squirmed a little in my seat. “Well, actually yes. And the general population.”

Everett arched an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” he asked, leaning forward on the table. “Have you surveyed the general population on the matter of my hair length?”

He was teasing me. My eyes tightened with annoyance. “Of course not. But the general population keeps their hair at a length that can manage a semblance of a style.”

He rubbed his chin in contemplation. I could nearly hear the rasp of his fingernails against his scruff. “Are you saying my hair is not styled?”

I sipped my water and let the liquid cool my tongue. “Yes. It looks like a rat made a bed on your head.” It was a lie, but it had its intended effect.

His eyes opened up then, fully, startled. “Now that is a rude thing to say.”

I nodded. “I never claimed to be anything else,” I said, throwing his words back at him.

Everett leaned back in his booth and, while staring at me, he ran his fingers through his thick, black locks, pushing them away from his face. In doing so, he exposed his forehead. Immediately, my eyes found the line that followed his hairline. It was faint, but it was white, clashing with his deep olive complexion. I knew it was a scar, even though it had faded a bit, and there was a small dent off the center of his forehead. I felt something spark within me then. Something more than mild annoyance. I met his eyes and saw the words he didn’t speak. We both have scars.

I didn’t realize my finger was brushing the one on my arm until I saw his eyes glance down. I hastily pulled my arm back and under the table. I wished fervently I’d worn something with sleeves.

“Why don’t you ask me about my scars?” I spoke without thinking.

He sipped his coffee, making a quiet slurping sound. His eyes held mine the entire time. He pulled the cup away from his mouth and licked his bottom lip before setting the cup on the table. He pushed one hand up his forearm, pushing up the jacket sleeve. He pushed it past his elbow before bringing his hand back to the table. My eyes darted between his and the arm. I knew that whatever he was doing, he was doing deliberately. His hands rested on the table top in front of us, veins raised under his knuckles. And while I stared at his hands, he turned the exposed arm over, bringing the underside of his wrist up for me to see.

The first thing I noticed was the scars. Beneath the sprinkling of hair they sat, little white and red circles, tracking the paths of his veins up to his elbow.

“Why don’t you ask me about mine?” His voice startled me, such was my concentration on his skin.

He was exposing his scars to me. I tried to summon up embarrassment, but instead I felt relief. We were on the same playing field. Where my scars were jagged and angry, the result of an attack, his scars were deliberate, repetitive. I yearned to learn more. I blamed it on my compulsion to study people. I didn’t truly care about Everett. But exposing scars that were normally hidden was as honest as nudity, if not more so.

But I barely knew him. “Because that would be rude.”

“You like that word, don’t you?” He pulled his sleeve down, hiding the circular scars that covered his arm like confetti. “I gravitate towards frankness, which you seem to think is rude.” He leaned forward on the table, pulling me under and into his presence. “How did you get your scars?”

I sipped my water again, my throat going dry at having his full attention upon me. Before I could answer, the waitress set our plates on the table in front of us. Everett pulled back, the spell was broken.

I looked down at my key lime pie. It was dyed a bright green-blue color, clearly unnatural. I pushed the plate away from me and took the bowl the waitress had set down, filled with lime wedges. As I brought the first one to my mouth, I felt Everett’s eyes on me and I looked up. He hadn’t even picked up his silverware yet. He just stared at me. In the daylight, his eye color was so light it looked as bright as the color of the fraudulent pie.

I took a bite of the lime while holding his gaze. He shook his head and cut into his stack of pancakes. I watched as he drowned them in syrup and it annoyed me. His pancakes would be soggy and gross before he had time to finish them.

He took a bite and met my eyes again. With his mouth full of pancake, he raised an eyebrow at me and gestured to my bowl of limes.

“What?” I asked, confused.

He swallowed and sipped his coffee. “Are we going to take turns watching each other take one bite of food?”

I wasn’t embarrassed that he caught me staring. As I’d mentioned before, not much affected me. Feelings were like a rich piece of cake; too much made you sick. My indifference was like a comfort blanket. I wrapped myself up in it and kept myself from feeling. Life was easier this way.

So why did Everett make me feel different? Was it the clothing I wore? Was this a costume, the heels, the dresses? When I put them on, did I subconsciously become another me? It was a bit unsettling and I swallowed my bite of lime with discomfort.

I watched him eat another bite and lick the sticky syrup from his lips. He had nice lips. They were wide, not too thin, with a pointed cupid’s bow at their center. Around his lips was his several-days-past-five-o’clock shadow.

“Do you have a job?” Apparently, his presence lowered my guard, and I spoke more freely than I usually did.

Everett nodded and ate two more bites of pancakes before answering. “I do. But I don’t work in the summer.”

I ate another lime, contemplating. “What do you do?”

“I work with middle school students.”

“Teaching?”

He ate the last two bites and settled back in the booth, getting comfortable. “No.”

I noticed he didn’t elaborate. As I was finishing my last lime wedge he asked, “Do you have a job?”

“Yes.”

He took a sip of his coffee, again making that soft slurping sound. It distracted me. “What do you do?”

“I’m a waitress.”

Everett pursed his lips, seemingly finding this information interesting. When he didn’t say anything, I bristled. “What?”

He shrugged and reached into the messenger back he’d brought with him. He pulled out a small green notebook. I watched him flip open the lid and write something, careful to keep it from my view. I narrowed my eyes.

We sat like that for a couple minutes, me glaring at him while he scribbled some words onto paper. When he was done, he put the notebook back and looked at me again, as if nothing had happened.

“That was not polite,” I said, still glaring.

“Ah, another way to say, ‘rude’. Good job. I’m sure you’ll find several synonyms for me.”

For some reason, that seemed to only further ignite the annoyance within me.

The waitress dropped off the check and Everett reached into his wallet. He slid my credit card across the table top to me and before I could put it with the check, Everett was out of the booth with his messenger bag and walking to the cash register.

I sat at the table for a moment, wondering if this was goodbye. Was I supposed to walk out the door and be on my way back home?

I stood up and brushed my hands down the front of the dress before walking towards the door. I passed Everett as he paid and stalled a minute, deciding at the last second to wait for him before exiting the restaurant.

Everett turned around and opened the door for me, so I walked back outside on to the sidewalk.

“Thank you for breakfast,” I said, awkwardly teetering on the sidewalk, trying to keep away from the foot traffic.

“That wasn’t breakfast for you, was it? If so, I am disappointed. All you ate were some limes.”

He was facing me, our bodies just inches apart to keep from being separated by the people passing around us.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

He was looking at me again, staring at me despite the many people that bumped us as they moved along the sidewalk. “When you do feel hungry,” he started, his voice lower than before, “what do you prefer to eat?”

I swallowed thickly. “I like cheeseburgers, with extra cheese.” Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. As if he read my mind, I saw the side of his lips lift up ever so slightly.

“You ask for extra limes, extra cheese…” he started, staring at me, breathing in the space that I breathed. “What other extras do you like?”

My mouth went dry at that. His voice was warm, smooth, like chocolate fondue. “Extra space,” I whispered. “I like extra space.” I backed up a step, praying for balance.

He regarded me for a minute, looking out of place wearing all black under the bright sun. “Did you walk here?” I didn’t answer, just stared at him as if he would eat me alive – which he probably would. I took another step backwards and glanced over my shoulder.

As if he knew I was slipping away, he held a hand up to halt me and stepped forward until we were breathing the same air again. Being this close to him was like holding my breath under water. Exhilarating. Dangerous, if I didn’t come up for air.

“Parker.” It was the first time he’d said my name.

I met his eyes again, the clear blue-green of them mesmerizing. “Do you want to go to lunch later?” A second after he said it, he winced. Did he, too, experience that quick kick of regret the moment words left his mouth?

I still didn’t answer. I think we both knew the answer to his question. I backed up again, ready to leave, but his next question stopped me. “It’s rude not to answer questions.”

I chewed on my lip as I contemplated. The question he’d asked before in the restaurant, the one I hadn’t answered, popped into my head. “Morris Jensen,” I said.

Someone bumped Everett in their rush across the sidewalk. I saw Everett turn angrily, glaring at the impatient pedestrian, before he turned his eyes to me again. Anger furrowed his brow and thinned his lips. There was a fire in his eyes that I found captivating. “What did you say?”

“Morris Jensen,” I repeated. “That’s how I got my scars.”

I couldn’t tell you why I told him. Maybe because I wanted to tell someone, even if it was a mostly-stranger. Especially since I didn’t plan on seeing him again.

“Goodbye,” I said awkwardly, turning around and walking towards the apartment.

Ten steps down the sidewalk, I braved a glance back. Everett had moved to the exterior wall of the restaurant, his body shadowed beneath the awning, as he wrote in the notebook I’d seen earlier.

I watched him scribble words down, leaning against that wall, cloaked in the harsh shadow. And then his eyes lifted and he stared at me, his eyes piercing in the dark.

I did this often, staring at people, watching them do day-to-day things. But never so openly, so brazenly. I enjoyed watching mannerisms, quirks, or the moment a person made a decision, let that decision wash over their face, tighten or relax their muscles. I liked predicting their next movements, probably because I’d been blindsided by the person who had irrevocably changed my life. Morris Jensen.

But Everett held my stare. It was intense, but curious. An animal observing its prey.

Quickly, I spun on my heels, somehow maintaining my balance, and hustled down the sidewalk to the apartment complex.

That afternoon, I cleaned out my car and left the windows open to air it out. I was soaked in sweat by the time I’d finished and took advantage of the quiet apartment to take a leisurely shower.

When I jumped out of the shower, I was startled by Jasmine busting in the room. I hastily wrapped a thick towel around me and stared at her as she plopped down onto the toilet.

She looked at me coolly, daring me to say anything. Jasmine, while not close to me in any sense of the word, knew things. Things like how much I guarded my privacy and how I was an avoider of conflict. Often, she took advantage of both of those things at the same time, like she was doing at that moment.

“You have another bathroom.” It was said quietly, as I always spoke around her. The apartment boasted three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Luckily, I’d been given the master bedroom, which came with its own en suite bathroom. It was luck more than anything else, after living in this apartment for three years and being the only remaining roommate from the original group that had first moved in here years earlier.

“Yeah, Carly’s in there. She’s sick.” Jasmine stared at me with eyes too big for her face, but the look she held was sharp, conniving. To say we didn’t get along would be like saying that grass is green. It was obvious to Carly, to any one of Jasmine’s boys that she paraded in and out of the house. I didn’t hate her, but she seemed to hold some kind of contempt for me.

I stood there, inches from her as she used the toilet. We stared at each other while the water dripped from my face onto my chest. We were at a standstill. She would expect me to leave the bathroom, but I decided I didn’t want to.

“Carly said you had a date this morning.”

My eyes narrowed. Annoyance. Carly, while sweet and unassuming, had a big mouth. Instead of answering Jasmine, I pinned her with a stare.

Jasmine finished up and stood up, pulling her shorts back up. She smiled at me, an unfriendly smile. Her blonde hair fell around her shoulders like she’d just come from a salon. It was the kind of hair that people envied. Blonde, soft, full of body. Luckily, I felt nothing but annoyance for her. She was a rash that wouldn’t go away; itching at my skin with her stares and words.

“Was he cute?” she asked as she washed her hands, using too much of my soap and splashing water all over the mirror.

“I don’t know.” It was honest. He wasn’t a man you’d see in any model magazine. He was tall, in shape, with piercing eyes and a quick tongue. His hair was too long and he didn’t seem to like colors that weren’t black, but he still called to me on a deeper level. A level that was unnerving and, let’s just be honest, annoying. As I mentioned, I felt annoyance often. It was the other emotions that were tricky, slipping through my fingers like oil.

“What’s his name?”

I picked up the hand towel after she finished drying her hands and wiped up around the sink and the mirror, roughly, to show just how annoyed I was with her. Not like that did me any good. If nothing, it seemed to widen her malicious grin, her pearly whites sparkling with gleeful animosity.

Instead of answering, I carefully pushed her out of my bathroom and then continued pushing until she was out of the bedroom completely. She resisted a little, but she was no match for me with her skinny legs and little body fat.

“Why are you so weird?” she asked right before I calmly closed the door in her face.

I hesitated a moment. “Why do you care?”

She narrowed her eyes a moment, as if considering my question. “I don’t,” she finally answered, before spinning around and moving down the hall.

It probably should have hurt my feelings, but since I didn’t have any, I felt the usual – indifference.

Carly had moved in shortly before Jasmine, but they both hadn’t been here a full year yet. Carly and I got along a bit better than Jasmine and I did, but I still felt nothing about it one way or another. Years of bouncing around foster homes had enabled me to not care about making a connection to anyone. And the fake connections I cultivated myself had caused the scars on my body.

I wrapped the towel tighter around me and grabbed a second towel for my hair. And then I sat at my desk and booted up my laptop.

I checked my bank account first before I started paying my bills. My waitressing job paid most of the bills, but I was fortunate to have my rent and schooling paid for with grants and scholarships, as I had emancipated from the foster care system when I was eighteen. I had one more year of college left before I would be on my own, but I had a well-padded savings account from my settlement with Morris Jensen.

I suppose I should feel like that money was tainted, dirty, and came at the cost of permanent scarring. My lawyer had kindly mentioned the money would more than cover any plastic surgery I desired, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care where the money came from. I’d been forced into shock from the experience, so far into shock that most of the experience was still out of focus in my memory. A therapist had suggested I never came out of shock. She’d warned that the moment I came out of shock, when I fully grasped the entire situation, it would be traumatic and I would have a hard time coping.

I know that’s partially why I took comfort in my lack of emotion. The longer I existed without being ruled by emotions, the safer I was from what I had subconsciously buried in my memory.

As far as Morris Jensen, I didn’t specifically remember anything. I knew what the doctors and police officers had told me. They’d asked me, when they’d caught him, about the bullet in his stomach. But I didn’t remember the entire event. I remembered flashes. I remembered the dark, the screaming. I remembered tires squealing, the radio blaring. I remembered the crack I’d heard when my head had bounced onto the asphalt, the smell of oil and fear. Most of all, I remembered the smell of my own fear, tinged with blood and sweat. And if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I remembered the moments after, when I’d been completely changed.