You'll Thank Me for This Nina Siegal (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📖

Without even a pause, Dirk swung the giant stick at Lotte, crying out, “Hack!” She jumped, missing the biggest part of the stick, but one of the smaller branches hit her on the side of the calf. She cried out in pain and grabbed for her leg, falling over. Then Dirk started laughing, like some kind of psychopath.

“Dirk!” cried Karin, but he seemed not to hear.

From the heath, Lotte stared up at Dirk, wildly.

“You jump pretty well,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

“What the…What is wrong with you?” said Karin. “Seriously! That is not at all funny.” For a second time, she found herself crouching down beside Lotte. This was so crazy. He was being such a shit.

Karin could not believe it was going like this. She wished so hard that she had her phone so she could call someone and complain. Before she stood up, she decided to try to disarm him. Get that crazy stick out of his hands.

From a crouched position she sprang up, like a frog, her hands out in front of her. She managed to knock him over, probably just because of the surprise of it, and the stick toppled backward onto the ground behind him.

“I’ll get it,” called Margot, and for a second Karin thought she was going to join the girl team against the crazy boy. But no. A second later Margot was standing holding the butt of the giant silver branch toward Karin like a spear. “Don’t you move,” she told Karin. “Or I’ll…”

She didn’t finish her sentence, but Karin didn’t think she had it in her to do anything. Margot was pretty athletic, but she wasn’t brave—Karin knew that much. She climbed on top of Dirk and tried to jab her elbow into his chest right in the center of his rib cage, where it might hurt. But she had misjudged Margot, who somehow got up the courage to jab the stick right into Karin’s butt. “Owww!” Karin cried out, reaching back to touch the place where she’d been wounded. “Fuck! That is so crazy. What are you guys doing?”

Dirk took the opportunity to stand up, while Karin and Lotte were still on the ground. He stood over the two of them, wiping his hands against each other. “You guys are too easy,” he said. “You barely put up a fight.” As if it was all just a big joke.

“Why are you being like this?” Lotte almost whimpered from behind Karin. “This is so seriously wrong.”

Dirk tried to fake a big yawn. “You guys are so boring,” he said. “Come on, Margot, let’s just go on our own. They’ll figure it out for themselves.” And just like that, they took off again, on the trail, over a mound through the purplish heath. Of course neither Karin nor Lotte wanted to follow.

They both sat there on the ground for a few minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened. Karin thought about this book that her mom had given to her to read in English called Lord of the Flies. It had given her nightmares. It was about boys deserted on an island after a plane crash, without any adults. They have to fend for themselves, but about half of them were just nasty and caused problems, while the other half tried to get back to civilization, like by sending out smoke signals and stuff like that. But the little kids went missing in the end; the bad kids won. She couldn’t quite remember, but was one of the boys killed by the others?

“Do you think he did that just to get alone with Margot?” Lotte asked after some silence.

“Probably,” conceded Karin.

“Geez, I would have told them to just go off on their own if they just asked,” said Lotte. “Who wants to be with them anyway?”

“I know,” said Karin. “Exactly.”

Karin looked at Lotte’s leg, which had a red mark on it where Dirk had hit her with the branch. “I wish we had some ice for that,” said Karin. “My mom would always put ice on it. Or arnica.”

“Arnica,” said Lotte. “My mom is crazy for that stuff. She smears it on everything.” Then she thought. “Oh, I might actually have some in my bag.” Lotte scooted herself on her butt across the sand to grab her backpack, which had fallen a while ago. She rooted around and actually found the cream. “That was so weird,” Lotte added. “I really can’t believe it.”

“I know,” agreed Karin. “Can you look at my back? Margot really stabbed me with that thing.”

Lotte finished putting the arnica on her leg and scooted over a little bit to sit next to Karin, who leaned forward and lifted up the back of her shirt to show Lotte. “Hmm,” said Lotte. “It might sting if I put this on.”

“Is it bad?” asked Karin.

“I mean, not really,” said Lotte. “But we have to tell Rutger or whoever about it later. That’s really weird, what they did. Just to get away from us? What do you think they plan to do?”

Karin just shook her head. She literally had no clue. Smoke pot? Have sex? Here, in the forest? That didn’t sound at all appealing to Karin.

Truly, Karin could not figure out how Margot could be attracted to Dirk. She did not get the whole thing about boys, not really. At school she felt a little flutter sometimes when she passed a certain boy named Isaac, who wore round glasses. But she’d never spoken to him. She’d liked other boys when she was littler, like Jimi in her Group 8 class, who was calm and placid and beautiful, with blue eyes and angelic blond curls. But since starting secondary school this year, she had noticed that other girls were kissing boys and talking to them in a whole new way, and Karin didn’t have any idea how to begin doing all of that. She was a little afraid of the whole thing of