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I'd found that about 90 percent of the time, the most effective response was to ignore her. But<br />
we had just crossed over to the other 10 percent, because it's impossible to ignore someone<br />
announcing to the world that your mother just punched you—even if it was true. I stopped<br />
walking and turned around. Mia stood near a vending machine, knowing she'd drawn me out. I<br />
didn't bother asking how she'd found out about my mother giving me the black eye. Things<br />
rarely stayed secret around here.<br />
When she caught full sight of my face, her eyes widened in unabashed delight. "Wow. Talk<br />
about a face only a mother could love."<br />
Ha. Cute. From anyone else, I would have applauded the joke.<br />
"Well, you're the expert on face injury," I said. "How's your nose?"<br />
Mia's icy smile twitched a little, but she didn't back down. I'd broken her nose about a month<br />
ago—at a school dance of all places—and while the nose had since healed, it now sat just the<br />
tiniest bit askew. Plastic surgery could probably fix it up, but from my understanding of her<br />
family's finances, that wasn't possible just now.<br />
"It's better," she replied primly. "Fortunately, it was only broken by a psychopathic whore and<br />
not anyone actually related to me."<br />
I gave her my best psychopathic smile. "Too bad. Family members hit you by accident.<br />
Psychopathic whores tend to come back for more."<br />
Threatening physical violence against her was usually a pretty sound tactic, but we had too<br />
many people around right now for that to be a legitimate concern for her. And Mia knew it. Not<br />
that I was above attacking someone in this kind of setting—hell, I'd done it lots of times—but I<br />
was trying to work on my impulse control lately.<br />
"Doesn't look like much of an accident to me," she said. "Don't you guys have rules about face<br />
punches? I mean, that looks really far out of bounds."<br />
I opened my mouth to tell her off, but nothing came out. She had a point. My injury was far out<br />
of bounds; in that sort of combat, you aren't supposed to hit above the neck. This was way<br />
above that forbidden line.
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