At that very moment, as she wondered how she would look all black and blue at school tomorrow, she heard the Cadillac door slam shut. Just like that, her chance of touching the most beautiful boy in the world was gone. Twana swore to herself and kicked the red-headed girl in the back of the leg.
“Ow,” the red-head said, wheeling on Twana.
“You ruined it for me, you big fat animal,” Twana shouted.
The redhead laughed and drove her shoulder into Twana’s face.
That was when Bieber’s limousine exploded. The bomb’s shock-wave washed through the crowd, shoving fans over and outward from ground zero. Even the burley guards fell over in the concussion. Wounded teenage girls screamed in the aftermath of the blast.
Twana lay on the ground, the big redhead on top of her. Flying debris had opened a wound on the back of the redhead’s scalp. She wailed and pressed a hand against the bleeding.
“Are you alright?” Twana asked, her ears ringing so loudly that she felt she had to shout above their driving whine. Twana took off her scarf and handed it to the redhead. The girl took it and pressed it against the cut on the back of her skull.
“Everybody stay calm,” someone shouted.
Nobody listened.
Once the car had gone up in flames, the throng of Bieber fans forgot about their idol. They forgot about what it did to them when he got up on the stage in the limelight backed by a line of hip-hop dancers to belt out the lyrics of his super-hit, STAND.
Those on the outer fringe of the blast routed first. Those closer to ground zero struggled over each other, a clod of writhing bodies, clamboring for purchase, for equilibrium.
Twana lay on her belly and covered her head with her forearms. The redhead crawled over her and moved off with the rush of boots and sneakers. Someone stepped on the small of Twana’s back. She ignored the pain and curled up. She couldn’t stand up in the rumble. She couldn’t even move from her position. She’d heard about people dying under the trampling feet of frenzied fans. She’d always wondered why someone in such a situation wouldn’t just stand up and move with the flow. Now she understood. If Twana even uncurled from her defensive posture, she felt that those feet, those pumps, those boots, those heels, those sandals, would all come down on her. They would break her bones and leave her dead. She felt she had a better chance of surviving if she remained right where she lay, curled in a fetal position on the sidewalk.
Twana felt something beneath her, a small lump against her sternum. She worked her hand up underneath her weight and grabbed the little mass. She dragged it out from beneath her and moved it to where she could get a better look. When she finally recognized the thing for what it was, her lips pursed together and she issued a little mousy chirp. She felt bile rise from her belly and threaten to shoot out onto the concrete. She held a severed finger, its meaty end puckered with red tissue. She dropped the little member and curled away from it. But then, something entered her mind, a memory that felt foreign in the rush of the panicked crowd. The finger had a birthmark just below the second knuckle, a birthmark shaped like a heart.
“It can’t be,” Twana said out loud and worked her way around so she could get a better look at the finger. Her suspicions proved correct. There, as plain as day, was the birthmark in question, shaped like a heart. She remembered reading an issue of Teen Bo a few weeks back about signature nuances of pop stars. She’d been particularly drawn to Bieber. When the reporter had asked him to disclose something about himself, something that nobody knew, Bieber had confessed about an odd birthmark on his left ring-finger, just under the second knuckle, shaped like a heart. Twana had stored the interesting fact in a vault of almost limitless trivia she had filed in her mind about Bieber.
She put the severed appendage in her hip pocket and wrangled to a defensive turtle-shell position, working against the mash of fleeing feet. She no longer worried about being trampled by hundreds of Bieber fans. She just haunched there, her hands over her head to protect her from the clomping, her face curled up into a grin. She’d come only to touch Bieber’s hair; but she’d done much better than that; she’d caught Bieber’s finger and nobody would ever take it away from her.
Chapter 2
Twana took the train home late that night. Cops and ambulances had come to the scene of the car bombing to see to the wounded and to take down reports. The cops had requested that witnesses stay close by. Twana knew that should they discover what she had found on the sidewalk they would probably arrest her. So she slipped away without a word. She was entitled to the finger. She didn’t plan to give it up.
The train glided along its lonely track, rattling through the city down to the south end where houses stood like collapsing remnants of their former selves. It trundled by the projects, a collection of buildings huddled against the rest of the world. Finally, it came to a stop at her station. The doors swooshed open. Twana exited the train and walked into the night. Someone had tagged the cinder-block walls again. It seemed the station administration had to bring in painters to whitewash over gang graffiti on almost a weekly basis these days.
As she walked the platform, a luxury space bus passed overhead, closing in on the nearby space port. Twana looked up at the craft. The transport undoubtedly carried hundreds of the most privileged, all spread out in their own private cabins, eating whatever they wanted whenever they wanted as they returned from off-Earth exotic vacation spots. Twana had never been near a space bus. The people who lived in her neighborhood would probably never venture beyond the borders of their own town, much less to the stars. The space bus slowed its approach and made its gradual descent toward the InterTran space port, less than five miles away from the train station.
Twana swallowed her envy and continued her walk along the platform. She yawned. She wanted to get to bed.
•
She got home late. Butch’s car, a slammed down Civic, sat at the curb in front of the house. She frowned. She’d forgotten that Butch had come home for a couple of days ostensibly to visit Ma, but truthfully, he was probably lying low after some job he had pulled.
She let herself in and went to her Bieber-poster-festooned bedroom. With the door shut behind her, she took the severed finger out of her pocket and held it up in the light where she could get a good look at it. Such a small thing, insignificant really, but so valuable. If she wanted, she could have Butch sell it for her on the black market and make a fortune. But she wouldn’t do that, not to her precious love, Bieber. She had plans for the finger. Why have just the finger when I can have the whole thing? She thought and smiled.
Twana went through a little makeup kit she kept on her dresser and found a nearly empty lipstick case. She wound out the rest of the red stick and used a tissue to pull it out of the case. She spent a few minutes cleaning out the tube with a paper towel. She hunted through a drawer full of junk in the top of her dresser until she found a gold heart pennant. She debated taking the little heart off the chain, then decided to leave it. She ran the gold chain through a loop in the lipstick case and hung it around her neck.
She picked up the finger from her dresser and put it into the lipstick case. She snapped it closed and looked at herself in the mirror. The lipstick case dangled over her chest. She smiled at her reflection and turned to the side to look at her prize from another angle. Not losing her smile, she changed into her pajamas and went to bed.
Chapter 3
Meanwhile, Somewhere on Planet Hull...
The new weapon employed by the Voles changed everything for the Ice Beetles of planet Hull. General Nichang thanked Tyche the God of Ice for the tattered RECON Lieutenant who had brought an early warning of imminent attack. Normally, Nichang would have ordered females, children, and elderly to the depths of the ice caverns, as far back from the hot line of combat as possible. But rumors of the new weapon had led Nichang to break protocol and place the defenseless citizens of their subterranion city state in the caverns near the surface.
The Voles’