I wake up in so much pain that I can't even think straight enough to know from what part of my body it's coming. It blinds my eyesight, racks through my brain, stinging like nothing I've ever felt.

   "Sammy!" I call out, even though all I know of where I am is the feel of tiles on my skin. My eyes are squeezed shut, trying to stop the pain. "Sammy!" Whatever he was doing with my hand, I calculate, it hadn't worked.

  He runs around the corner with dark circles under his eyes, and I know instantly that none of them have slept. I don't care, with the insane pain I'm in, so I just groan when he steps into the doorway.

  "Why didn't you just chop it off?!" I yell, pushing my head against the bathtub.

  "Very funny." He says like he's bored, but the dark moons under his eyes and the way he leans against the sink when he inspects them reminds me that he was worried. All of them, enough to stay up on a work night making sure I don't die.

  He pokes at the circles, pulling at them so the pink flesh under them shows through.

   He sighs at the mirror, and turns around to look at me. "Dad's sent a letter to the school. He told them about the acid-rain. But people will want to look at it. Don't let them. Keep the bandages over it, and a glove. Aaran, never take that glove off, okay?"

  Sammy gestures to my hand, and I finally look down at it. It, and my other hand, are covered by brown leather gloves, and stitching of blue runs from the start of the back of the wrist along the fingers like wiring. I've seen people wearing ones similar.

  "And since it's your left," Sammy mimes an action of punching in the air. "You can still throw a mean right-hook if anybody crosses the line."

  I know who he's talking about instantly, but then the wave of pain comes once again. It blinds. It stings. It hurts so much when I scream I can almost feel the tiles beneath me shaking.

  Before I can register what's going on, something sharp sticks into my arm. In the first few scratching of finding a vein, I don't feel whatever pain the massive needle Sammy is sticking into the crease of my elbow. But as soon as it starts to  plunge through my skin, I panic.

  There's no way I'm losing my arm.

  I kick against the floor. Scramble around. Make Sammy fall over from his crouch, taking the needle out with him. Call out when Jarvis comes and kneels on the other side of me, pushing my forearms against the bathtub to hold me still.

  The needle comes back, and when I panic, I can't get away.

  I hate being powerless. I can't move, and when I try to shout, dad comes into my line of vision towards the ceiling with a line of thick black tape in his hands. 

  Trying to turn away, I close my mouth to get further away. I forget that I can't turn the whole way to put my back to him. And the tape stops me from making much more noise than frantic mumbles.

  The pain in my hand comes back again. I scream against the tape. My voice breaks as my hope gives out for somebody to make it stop quickly, and water gathers in my eyes.

  Sammy's hand is shaking as he pushes the plunger of the needle down. He's bothered by doing this. I glance without moving my head towards Jarvis, and he's turned away from me.

  Dad's poker face is still strong, and he just looks on at his sons holding down his frantic daughter because none of them have told her any calming words or what's going on. I'm panicking and I have no clear idea of what's happening other than they're stopping me from getting to my hand.

  Which is the thing that's causing all this agony.

  When the salty tears from my eyes start to wear away the adhesive of the tape on to which they fell, Sammy's just putting something cotton and with a strip of long tape over the bloody wound the needle left. He nods to Jarvis, and they both join dad at the other side of the bathroom.

  When I realize that I've noticed that they've left the tape on my mouth on, and the thought isn't covered in pain, I pull the tape off.

  Whatever Sammy stuck in me, it was to help. I can't feel my toes or the tips of my fingers, but I can't feel the pain from my hand either.

  After a long second, I let out an equally long sighing breath.

  "If any of you," I push myself against the bathtub to stand up and point to them, "hold me down like that again, I will use your veins as the bows in my hair as I walk the hell out of here. I swear to mother and all her jewels."

  I didn't know my mother. I was the one that killed her during childbirth. Accidentally, of course. Apparently, she was renowned for sparkling rubies on her neck and wrist at all times. According to a story dad once told me, she even wore a bracelet as she was delivering me.

  The promise I made to her corpse and the rubies of her past stabs them all deeply in the heart.

  When I walk to push past them, they let me by stepping aside.

  But I collapse in the hallway. I fall into my own blood, and I hit my elbow on the floor where I had kicked the carpet up in my scrambles. The blood on the remaining fabric has hints of acid that burns my nostrils.

   "Called it." Dad says from the bathroom as Jarvis helps me up. "Don't go acting so strong when you can't even stand. Be strong when you've got a weapon in your hand, Aaran."

  I stand, staring at him for a moment. I almost say something mean. More than mean.

  Because I almost say but mum didn't have a weapon in her hand, did she? And she wasn't strong. 

  That would be mean. That would be horrible. Spiteful. I didn't even know her. She could have been lovely. She could have been the best.

  I can't keep using her as an accessory to insult the rest of my family.

  So I don't, and hope I'm never as blinded by painkillers and annoyance to even think about doing it again.

  When I lean against my bedroom door once I've shut it, I wait until the sound of all three of their footsteps sound through the house. It's still dark outside, but the acid rain has stopped.

   I take two bands and a big and long hair clip from under my pillow, putting them into my pocket. I use my right hand.

   When I grip the ledge outside my window to lean out, I expect my left hand to let out screams of agony. 

  But the muscle works just fine. There's no pain. There's no searing tearing sensations of skin that was mending being stopped in its' process. I almost pull off the leather glove to check for discolouration, but stop myself. Sammy told me not to. Might as well listen if I'm going to have a try and this whole 'less spiteful' thing.

  I jump from the window.

  The box of crates that are always outside the flat below us's window cushion my fall. I land in a crouch, but I know they don't keep their shutters closed unless of sunshine.

  I spin on the spot to glance through the open gap, and meet their hallway.

  The Tiimi's.

  It's just like our's, but more friendly. On the wooden ground is no torn carpet, but they've put some kind of fatty polish over the wood, and it gleams in the light from the candles on the wall.

   The wax sits on a stand of various car windscreen mirrors. They're lodged in by some expensive super glue, and it's a good make-shift candle stand. It wouldn't work for us. The walls are too worn.

    The glass is covered in the melted wax that splays out like yellow cobwebs on an ice rink.

   It looks welcoming.

  I imagine being shown around it by Barron after I've told him to hide another one of his whiskers during a lecture and he decides he'd like to be friends with me. I imagine what family he has. Apart from he doesn't like to listen in class lectures, I know nothing other than his name about him.

  Well, apart from I know where he lives. I also know that once he sang really loudly at the weekend, something that was supposed to be heartfelt, but ended up being very funny. His voice was different, though. It didn't sound like his. Maybe he had a friend round.

   That's entirely likey. Not everybody doesn't have friends, I remind myself.

  But he doesn't even know that I'm his neighbour. Blissfully ignorant, I guess.

  I turn back around on the crate when I hear somebody start to exit from one of the rooms in the hallway. Crouching down to sit and slide off, I stop when my knee touches something as I settle.

  And I come face-to-face with the tilted head of a guy grinning.