Read Online Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson - Free Book Online

like sleek black birds in formation, the two big males flanking the sinewy female. The Bitch let her breath out, something between a growl and a hiss.
    Stacia could smell the dogs, and she felt Genny’s arm trembling. She stopped walking and began their pet argument, one as old as the dogs themselves. She tucked her cane under her arm and signed that they should walk home on the other side of Grace Street, to give the dogs a wider berth, then reached for Genny’s hands so she could feel the answer she already knew by heart.
    Genny signed, You know there’s no sidewalk. We’ll end up in the ditch with every hip we’ve got smashed into fifty different pieces.
    They started walking again. Mama knew she would never win the argument, but the ritual of asking seemed to soothe Genny.
    The dogs started walking when they did. The hair on the Bitch’s spine rose, and her legs stiffened so that her usual lithe gait became eerily mechanical. All three flattened their ears so tightly against their sleek, elongated skulls that they looked like evil seals.
    They came abreast of the gate. The Bitch, as always, tried to stuff her narrow head through. This time, however, the chain had been wrapped only twice, and as she levered her snout into the narrow crack, the gate gave.
    Mama felt the muscles in Genny’s arm tighten. She stopped walking and reached for Genny’s hand just as it was opening, the fingers spreading into rigid lines. Then Genny was gone and Mama was pushed, staggering and falling a long way sideways, landing hard on her shoulder on a wide surface so nubbled and unyielding that she knew she was in the street. She felt her body bracing futilely as imagined cars came speeding toward her, and she lay there waiting to be dashed to pieces in the road.
    After an endless moment, she realized she was still in one piece, and she tried to collect her wits. Her head was swimming, and the wind had been knocked out of her. She was dizzy from not breathing. She had to struggle to pull in a mouthful of air that was acrid with the smell of dog and road oil.
    She rolled onto her stomach and got gingerly to her hands and knees, trying to feel her way to Genny or her cane or the curb.
    But she had lost all sense of direction, and the street spread itself out flat and smooth under her hands. She smelled the bright copper of fresh blood mixing with the pollen of the May air, and she could feel it coming from her shoulder and arm. There seemed to be a lot of it. She did not know where Genny was, and she started pushing her air out in deep vibrating shoves. She pushed air out, hard, again and again, because years ago, when they were children, Genny had taught her that was how to make screaming happen.
    Mama, deaf and blind, disoriented, didn’t know if the dogs were out or if a car had hit them, but Genny had seen exactly what was coming. To her, it had looked like the gate was giving birth to something evil. The Bitch’s face came shoving through first, stretched tight with the lips pulled back and open and her eyes showing a quarter inch of white. Then her head popped free and she got one shoulder through, her claws raking at the concrete. The two males barked violently, cheering the Bitch on. For an endless fraction of a second, it seemed she would stick at the second shoulder, but she braced her powerful back legs and shoved, twitching her shoulders back and forth, working herself out. Genny watched her long narrow hips slither through easily, and in two bounds, the Bitch was on her.
    The dog hit Genny at an angle, knocking her into Mama.
    Genny clutched at Mama, but her hand was ripped open by Mama’s weight as she fell. Mama’s cane sailed away in a high arc and then clattered and rolled in the street. Genny was falling, too, feeling hot breath and then the slide of the dog’s teeth against her skin as they missed a spine-snapping hold on the back of her neck. She turned in midair with the dog still on her, and she hunched her