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bullying his freshman year. The
teachers had claimed that bullies were people looking for control over their
own lives. That they hurt other people because they were being hurt
themselves. And Brent wasn’t so naïve as to think there weren’t dads out there
who hit their kids. Grandma hit Maggie sometimes, didn’t she?
    “Get up,” he
said.
    Perkins looked
confused. “You’re not going to hit me?”
    “I’m not sure
yet. Just get up.”

Chapter 15.
     
    Maggie stormed
into the house and slammed the door. Grandma was waiting for her, probably
with another list of rules, but she went straight to her room and slammed the
door there, too. As she had been warned Grandma had removed the speakers from
her computer desk. There were bare wires hanging over the edge of the
desk—instead of unplugging them properly, Grandma must have cut them with
a pair of scissors. Maggie howled in rage and tore open her desk drawer
looking for her headphones.
    If she didn’t
get some music soon, something to channel her rage, she was going to explode.
It was that simple.
    There was a
knock on her door. Maggie ignored it. She found her headphones and shoved
them into her ears, hard enough to hurt. Sat down at her desk and booted up
her computer. She had twenty-three emails waiting and new friend requests on
Facebook but she didn’t want to talk to anybody—she needed to be alone,
more than she ever had before in her life.
    Grandma
knocked on the door again. Louder this time.
    Maggie found
the track she was looking for, an old cut of thrash metal, and dragged the
volume slider all the way up. The music surged into her head, driving
everything else out, filling her up with darkness, somebody else’s darkness,
anybody’s darkness but her own.
    It was good.
It was pure. It didn’t hurt anybody.
    And then as
soon as it had begun it stopped. Maggie whirled around in her chair and found
Grandma staring at her through those huge glasses. She held the ear phones in
her hands and as Maggie watched she pulled them apart until the plastic
insulation split and the wire inside tore.
    “I thought I
made myself clear,” Grandma said. “No music.”
    “You can’t do
this to me right now,” Maggie said. She would try to be reasonable. She would
try to talk Grandma through this one. She promised herself that much. It was
going to be hard.
    “You may not
understand why I do the things I do,” Grandma said, and Maggie could see the
old woman was about to launch into a whole speech. Probably about how she knew
what was best for Maggie, and that was all she wanted. How all the horrible
effed-up things she did were really just gestures of love.
    I hate you.
I hate you, you miserable old dried-up piece of—
    “I’d like your
help,” Grandma said, and Maggie realized she’d missed the whole speech. A
tight ball of heat and fury was turning and turning inside her brain and it had
blacked out the whole thing. “Brent still has a chance at a normal life. But
if you and I are going to be enemies, then—”
    “There’s a
radio in the car,” Maggie said, and jumped up from her chair. She ran to the
kitchen and the rack where they kept the car keys. They were missing, of
course. Maggie spun around and saw Grandma tottering toward her. She had the
car keys in her right hand. On her left hand, she’d already turned her
engagement ring around so the diamond was on the inside.
    “You can’t do
this,” Maggie said. She had promised she would try to work this out calmly and
rationally. The problem was she wasn’t calm or rational inside. It was
really, really hard to fake it on her face. “I have just had the worst day of
my life and I need to listen to some music. I have a right to that!”
    “There’s a
difference between a right and a privilege. Your generation always has had
trouble knowing where the line is.”
    “Please give
me the car keys.” Maggie lowered her head and stared at the floor. If she had
to look at Grandma’s prune face