running

- and getting shot at.

A life experience, probably. Hopefully not the last life experience he has. Up ahead, his girlfriend (should he call her that? His ex-girlfriend? The girl who once pretended to like him to see if he knew anything about his psychotic information-stealing mother, which he didn't, because she was secretly a world-class spy?) is yelling at him to hurry up, but he's never run this fast before, and his legs are wearing out, and his heart is pumping and the adrenaline is surging and -

a week earlier

Cammie wasn't the worst girlfriend I'd ever had. She wasn't the best, either. She was pretty, in an understated kind of way, and she knew a lot of things, even though she didn't go to college. I met her at a coffee shop by my apartment building, where she was working as barista. We dated for ten months exactly, and those ten months, if I were to recall them, weren't very distinguished. With relationships, there are always very distinctive characteristics; the type of shampoo she uses that makes you want to kiss her, or an inside joke that can make you smile even if you've been broken up for a while. But Cammie, she didn't leave anything.

We didn't fight much. We talked a lot. She said the right things but always looked bored. At six months, she moved in to my apartment, and I never saw where she stayed before that. At eight months, she wanted to meet my family. At ten, she took everything of hers and left, and I never heard from again. For some reason, I wasn't that sad, or maybe I was just too busy with college to really notice.

This was two years ago.

:::

I was fixing myself dinner when there was a knock at the door. My dinner, which was a pathetic combination of canned beans and leftover turkey, was looking at me sadly, so I stuck it in the microwave before walking over to the front door. It was probably Grant looking for a place to crash after another fight with his girlfriend, or my landlady, because I could never remember/afford to pay the rent.

Peeking through the peephole - who had named that? Probably a weirdo who used peepholes for creepy purposes - I saw, surprisingly, not my landlady or Grant, but Cammie. She didn't look that different, except she was wearing earrings. They looked new. Maybe she had a new boyfriend.

Confused, I opened the door.

"Hi, Zach," she smiled. She was wearing a thick, expensive-looking overcoat, and her hands were deep inside her pockets. Her eyebrows are furrowed, and her forehead is dotted with beads of sweat. "Can I come in for a minute? I need to talk to you about something important."

She didn't wait for an answer, and instead slipped under my arm and headed straight for the kitchen. I could hear her banging open cabinets and opening the fridge, and, growing steadily more confused, I closed the front door and followed her. Her coat was now laying on the counter, and she was standing on a chair, reaching for an unopened bottle of whiskey I vaguely remembered receiving as a gift.

"How did you get up here without getting buzzed in?" I asked slowly, looking at her coat. I swore I thought the barrel of a gun sticking out the pocket, and I stared at it for a moment, before the sound of the cabinet slamming brought my attention back to the problem at hand: my ex-girlfriend rummaging around in my kitchen for alcohol, and - "Holy shit!"

"This stupid shirt," Cammie muttered, using a pair of kitchen scissors to cut away at the bloodied blouse she was wearing; a fragmented bullet appeared to be lodged in her side. She looked up, clearly in pain but obviously used to it. I gaped, as she asked nonchalantly, "Do you have any salt?"

"Uh," I stammered, staring, hoping my voice didn't actually sound as high as I imagined. "I'm not - I, uh, salt. Salt is in the pantry. I'll get it for you. Um, should you really be...not at a hospital? Because I think you've been shot at -"

"No," Cammie said, as I reached into the pantry. "Put a tablespoon of salt into a cup of warm water."

"No, you haven't been shot at?" I asked, filling a small glass with water and adding what I thought was a tablespoon of salt. "It's pretty evident by um, the bullet, that you've been shot at, Cammie, I mean, no offense or anything."

"No, I shouldn't be at a hospital," Cammie said, as I handed her to glass. She stirred the salt with her little finger until it dissolved. She frowned as she cut away at the last of her blouse, leaving a big, empty space. Her wound dribbled blood as she reached for a paper towel. "God, Kevlar sucks."

"Kevlar," I repeated. "The stuff the army uses for its uniforms." I pause, then, in a noticeably strained voice, "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, this happens a lot," Cammie shrugged.

"Does it now?" I asked, nodding feverishly. "Well, that's...exciting."

Cammie clapped a bloody hand to her forehead suddenly, and she gasped, "Shit, I forgot -" Her hand left a bloody mark on her forehead and hair, but she seemed more concerned with me, looking worriedly in my direction. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"No, I was undercover, you think I'm a barista," Cammie was muttering, tugging at her hair with a frown. She regarded me again. "Well, you were going to find out sooner or later, I guess. Sooner, rather, because later you'd be dead." This seemed to be a vocal train of thought. She pressed her lips together. "Zach, I haven't exactly been honest with you about who I am."

I blinked at her.

No kidding.

a/n: thoughts?