Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 21:41:35 -0700
From: RC in Sacramento <sacwriter@hotmail.com>
Subject: Munchkin (the sequel to 'Becka the Beast')

This is a work of fiction. It depicts the often sexual relationship between
two young girls. If this offends you or if you're not old enough to be
reading this stuff, then get out NOW. If, however, you're where you want to
be, then enjoy.

			MUNCHKIN
		       Chapter 1
		      by Sacwriter


	Joe Munson stood in front of the bathroom mirror and scowled, but the face
in the mirror just scowled right back. It wasn't a very impressive face, it
was short and thin, and topped with a ragged mop of coal black hair. It also
sported a pair of glasses in clunky black plastic frames shielding gray
eyes, resting on a shoe button nose so small that they kept slipping down.
He'd spend the rest of that day absentmindedly pushing those glasses back
up. The mouth below that nose had lips that were thick and pouty and would
probably look good on a girl, but were much too effeminate for a seventeen
year old boy. The face looked young, and sensitive.
	No, not very impressive at all.
	He picked up the hairbrush and ran it under the faucet, and then attacked
all the stray cowlicks, but it didn't seem to do much good. It didn't help
that his haircut looked like it had been done in somebody's kitchen with a
pair of scissors and a bowl. Which wasn't fair, he thought, his Aunt Mattie
hadn't used a bowl on him in years. But the style still wanted to come out
that way just the same. When he was done it still looked like crap, but
unfortunately experience told him that this was probably the best that he
could hope for.
	With a weary sigh Joe stepped away from the sink and left the bathroom
altogether, then headed to his room where he donned his shirt and collected
his bag of schoolbooks.  Before he left he gave his bed a quick inspection,
and stopped to smooth out a few stray wrinkles. His Aunt Mattie was a real
fanatic about a tightly made bunk, but then nineteen years in the Army would
probably do that to anyone.
	He had already scarfed down a couple of Pop Tarts for breakfast, but he
returned to the kitchen anyway to say goodbye. His aunt was sitting at the
table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, already combing through the
want ads. She had a red marking pen in one hand, and her cane was hanging
from the back of the chair next to her. She was wearing a pair of khaki
shorts, and an old OD green undershirt that over the years had probably seen
the dirt of a half dozen different countries. He had long ago gotten used to
the metal and plastic that began where her right leg ended.
	She smiled when he entered the kitchen, and turned her cheek for a kiss. He
gave it, and added a hug for good measure. She may have been a cantankerous
old warhorse, but she was his warhorse, and he loved her. She had been the
only one of his so-called family who would take him in when his parents had
died, and he wouldn't have changed her for the world. Well, maybe just to
get rid of the cigars.
	"Hey, sport," she said, smiling. ""Surprised to see you up this early. I
thought you'd sleep in after all that studying last night. You ready for
that trig test?"
	He gave a groan and rolled his eyes theatrically. "Mattie, nobody is ever
ready for trigonometry! But yeah, I think I've got it covered. How about
you, is there anything in the paper today?"
	She snorted. "Oh, yeah. Lots of openings for one-legged truck drivers. I
better get dressed, they'll be pounding at the door any minute." She said it
with her usual wry humor, but after four years he knew her too well. He
could hear the echo of old pain behind her words.
He knew his Aunt Mattie was about as tough as you could get, and one thing
she never had patience for was self pity. But after all this time Joe could
see through the cracks to the bitterness and loss she always kept hidden.
Mattie had joined the Army right after high school, and had driven trucks
for Uncle Sam all over the world for the next two decades. Until the day she
had rolled a deuce and a half truck and lost her right leg, along with the
ability to drive anything with a stick. Retired on full disability just nine
months before her twenty years were up, her benefit checks were enough to
keep food on the table but not much else, not for two people. Denied the
chance to do the only thing she had ever been trained for, she had drifted
from one low paying job to another, with long periods of unemployment in
between.
She stood up now and hobbled over to the refrigerator, opened it and got out
the bag lunch that she had made for him the night before. She handed it to
him with a smile, and then gave him a shove towards the door.
	"Better get going, Einstein, you've got a job to do. C-students don't get
the scholarships. Remember, I'm the brawn..."
	"And I'm the brain," he finished, grinning. He gave her a quick hug and
then disappeared out the back door.

As he waited at the bus stop Joe thought about their parting words, his
mouth twisting wryly at their accuracy. He didn't think of himself as
particularly brainy, but his aunt was definitely the brawn in the family, at
least when compared to him. Mattie was tall and fit, with the arms and
shoulders of a veteran long haul trucker. After the loss of her limb she had
become obsessive about keeping in shape, and worked out daily on the weight
bench she had set up in the garage. She could bench press a hundred and
forty pounds and one of her favorite tricks was to twist the cap off a
bottle of beer with her bare hands. With her chiseled features and Nordic
looks, Joe could easily see the Viking ancestry from his father's side of
the family.
	But Joe took after his mother and had her delicate, fine boned build and
Mediterranean coloring. And also like his mother, he had stopped growing at
four feet, ten inches tall. His aunt  surpassed him in height by more than a
foot, as did most of the adults he ran into. Finally, he had the toothpick
arms and sallow chest of a boy half his age, and no matter how hard he
worked at it he could never seem to add so much as an extra ounce of muscle
to his spare frame.
	So yeah, definitely not the brawn.
	Now in his fourth year at Roosevelt High, Joe had yet to meet another
student who didn't tower over him. Hell, even the freshman girls were all
taller than he was. It hadn't been this bad when he lived in Dearborn, but
out here on the west coast everyone seemed bigger, as if they were some sort
of different race. Yeah, Californicus Giganticus. Maybe they brewed growth
hormones in with their Starbucks coffees. Whatever it was he had felt like a
freak ever since he had gotten here, and worse, like a target.
	The bus finally appeared around the corner, and Joe felt his stomach
tighten up with the familiar tension that he knew he would carry with him
the rest of the day. The big yellow vehicle pulled up with a squeal of
ancient airbrakes, and when the doors slid open he quickly climbed aboard
and made his way to his usual place in the back. It smelled of mildew and
rubber, and the peculiar gamy tang of teenage bodies. On the way he kept his
gaze down, careful not to look anyone in the eyes, especially not the loud
talking jocks who had taken over the front seats. Don't see them and they
won't see you, he silently thought, trying to wrap a cloak of invisibility
around himself.
	To further the illusion Joe pulled out the paperback Sci-Fi novel he was
currently reading, and quickly buried his nose in it's pages. In minutes the
swaying bus and it's occupants faded away to a dull, colorless background.
The old bus became a gleaming starship, and it's faceless occupants were his
loyal crew, and for the next twenty minutes Joe gratefully traded realities.
At school he waited until the bus was almost empty before he rose from his
seat and made his way down the aisle. In the parking lot he hung at the back
of the milling crowd, then slipped through them and into the ugly brown
brick building. Once inside he made his way to the second floor, following
the hallway to where his locker was. He wanted to drop his Trigonometry book
off and exchange it for his English text, which was his first class, and
that was the only thing on his mind. So it came as a shock when he turned
the corner and saw who was standing by his locker.
Becka Jackson.
	Joe quickly reversed course and slipped back around the corner, his heart
pounding through the fist that had suddenly clenched around his chest. Damn!
The last person in the world he ever wanted to see, and there she was,
hanging out at his locker. Why, was she waiting for him? Was she choosing
today to ruin his life all over again?
	Joe gritted his teeth against the flash of anger and bitterness, burning at
the back of his throat. For almost four years he'd avoided her, and with
just three months to go before he could kiss Roosevelt High School goodbye
forever, she picked now to look him up! What, hadn't she caused him enough
pain and humiliation, she had to come back and dish out some more? Get in
her last shots while she still had some time? Dammit, dammit, dammit!
	Joe turned around and headed back the way he came. He'd have to do a lot of
backtracking to get to his class without going past Jackson, but it couldn't
be helped. And he'd have to go there without the right text book, too. But
like most of his life since the fire, he thought bitterly, he had no choice.
No damned choice at all.
* * *
	The morning passed endlessly, as Joe stumbled from one class to the next,
with a specter seeming to hang over his head. He remembered a story they had
read in class, the one about the sword of Damocles. When king Dionysius
heard Damocles talk enviously of the luxurious life that the king led, he
invited Damocles to a feast, but made him sit underneath a razor sharp sword
hanging from a single thread. Damocles had to sit throughout the whole meal
waiting for that single thread to break, and the sword to plummet down and
skewer him. The point being, of course, that this was what the tyrant king
felt like every single day. Joe found that he now held a new appreciation
for the old story, as he waited all morning for his own particular sword to
fall.
	Constant thoughts about her swept through his mind again and again, like
bits of flotsam in a whirlpool. What was she doing there? Was she waiting
for him? And why? Ever since that first day of school he'd avoided her, even
going so far as to drop the occasional class that they had both been
assigned. In the past three and a half years he had actually felt, if not
safe, then at least reasonably sure that Becka Jackson had no more interest
in him at all. But now that surety was gone, and the usual tightness in his
belly was replaced by an even worse sense of anxiety.
	Joe tried not to think of himself as a coward, and he was pretty sure that
he wasn't one. In fact it was the one fierce point of pride that he
stubbornly clung onto, that no matter how frightened he was he always fought
back whenever one of his tormentors laid a hand on him. The taunts and the
insults he ignored, never giving them the satisfaction of seeing a reaction,
using his indifference as a shield. But he knew that if he never fought back
then the casual abuse would just continue to escalate, so he had drawn a
line at any sort of physical attack. Shove him, trip him, throw garbage and
trash at him, and they knew they would have a fight on your hands.
	Not that he ever won one. Courage alone wasn't enough to change the laws of
physics, not when most of his tormentors topped him by over a foot. But the
fact that he always fought took away the fun for most of them, and in the
end gave him a measure of protection. So no, even though they could hurt
him, he wasn't afraid of the bullies and psychos. He avoided them, but he
never ran from them. But that rule didn't seem to hold for Becka Jackson.
	Joe took his lunch outside in the bleachers overlooking the baseball field,
where he and a handful of other 'misfits' usually hung out. He was sitting
on the top tier and disconsolately chewing on a baloney sandwich, when Milo
Michaels plopped himself down on the wooden plank next to him. Milo was
seventeen and black, and so skinny that the bench seat didn't even vibrate
when he sat down. It was doubtful that he weighed more than Joe did despite
being over half a foot taller. His arms and legs, elbows and knees stuck out
at all angles, and even when he was immobile he still managed to look
awkward. Today he was wearing a Sacramento Kings basketball shirt that fell
to his knees, but no one in their right mind would ever make the mistake of
thinking Milo could play the game. Dungeons and Dragons, yes; any sort of
contact sport, no way. In short Milo looked like what he was, a nerd, a
member of the lowest pecking order in the entire school. He was also Joe's
only friend at Roosevelt High.
	"Hey man, three day weekend! You wanna come over to my place Saturday? Got
the new 'Resident Evil' cartridge, we can spend the whole day wasting
zombies."
	" I dunno, Milo. Seems to me we should be able to come up with something
better to do than Playstation. Besides, you know the only one I like is MX;
Unleashed."
	"Yeah, well that's 'cause you always win on that one. For a guy who don't
even own a bicycle, you sure are hot and heavy for those dirt bikes.
Besides, what else we gonna do, go to the mall? Man, that's so lame. Even
the ugly chicks dis us there. Okay, tell you what, we'll play MX, but we
also got to play something I like, alright?"
	"I dunno. Maybe. I'll let you know tomorrow."
	"Okay. Just don't wait too long, though. Viromir wants to get a D & D
going, and if you bail I got no excuse not to go."
	Joe winced, but tried not to show it. Man, sometimes Milo was just such a
geek! Dungeons and Dragons, for crying out loud. And the way he always
called Kenny Washburn by his D & D characters' name, 'Viromir', was so
embarrassingly un-cool. He'd tried over the years to break his friend of
some of his more nerdly hobbies, but his advice was always blithely ignored.
Milo continued his role playing games, read his comic books, and collected
his Star Wars and Babylon 5 action figures, no matter what other people
thought of him.
	They spent the rest of the period eating their meals and talking
companionably, two young men with nothing in common other than they were
both outcasts. Still it had provided the basic common ground on which a real
friendship was planted and had grown. In fact, Joe eventually came to the
conclusion that Milo actually led a more normal existence than he did. He
had other friends, albeit strange ones, people with whom he shared his life.
Hell, Milo had a life. All Joe had was Milo, so who was he to judge?
	Milo was also strangely upbeat, with a strong sense of self worth and a
confidence that someday everyone else would appreciate him too. When Joe had
once called them both geeks, Milo had angrily informed him that he wasn't a
geek, he was a nerd. Bemused, Joe had asked him what was the difference.
	"Five years after he graduates, a nerd will be writing code in Silicon
Valley and making $150,000 a year. Five years after a geek graduates, he'll
still be living at home with his mother."
	Joe had asked him what category he fell into. Milo had shrugged, and said
"Hell, dude, you're just a plain old freak. I don't know what's going to
happen to you."
	As he sat there now picking at his sandwich, Joe considered his latest
problem, and how his friend might be able to help him. He had long ago given
up on being a part of the school social scene, had in fact purposely
isolated himself from the rest of the student body and most of the faculty
as well. But because Milo did have other friends and because he had grown up
in Orange County, the other boy was much more in tune with what was
happening at the school. Maybe he would have a clue as to why Becka Jackson
would be hanging out at his locker. With that in mind he mentioned the
incident to him, and was surprised at the other boys' answer.
	"Shoot, man, no mystery there. You know the girl with the locker just to
the left of yours?"
	"No, not her name. Some Goth girl with pink hair."
	"The Goth chick is Marni Nixon, and she's the president of the GLSA. You
know, the Gay and Lesbian Student Alliance? Jackson was probably there to
see her, dude."
	"What, do you mean she's gay or something?"
	Milo gave him a look as if he had just sprouted three heads. "Man, where
you been the last five months? Didn't you hear what happened to her? Don't
you read the school paper?"
	Joe felt the back of his neck turning red, the way it did when one of his
teachers called on him and asked a question he didn't know the answer too.
"Why should I want to know what goes on around this dump? Three more months
and I'm out of here forever, anyway."
	"Well if you DID read it, you wouldn't have to be asking me about what went
down with Jackson, now would you? Man, it was about a month or so after
school started. Turns out her old man was a big time drug dealer or
something, and Becka turned him in and testified against him. They said she
ripped his face off with a broken bottle before the cops got there."
	Joe winced, but remained unconvinced. "That sounds like something she'd do,
but how do you know it really happened? And what's this got to do with her
hanging out at my locker?"
	"I know it's true because it was in the school paper, and I know that's
true 'cause they covered the trial on the news, that's how. Here's how it
went down, man."
	The incidents of last September had apparently caused quite a stir at
Roosevelt High, and had been the subject of most of the student gossip for
months after. Joe listened to the story his friend told in rapt silence,
shocked at how much had happened that he had remained unaware of. Becka
Jackson assaulted by her father Ralph Danning and hospitalized, then
becoming a witness against him for the DEA in a major drug trafficking case
that made the nightly news for over a week. The kidnapping and attempted
murder of Gia Cameron by Danning's partners in crime right on school
property, only to be rescued by Becka and three of the most popular girls in
school. And then to top it off the dramatic finish, Becka and Gia coming out
of the closet and announcing that they were gay, and then Becka being
adopted by the other girls' family, thereby making her lover her sister! All
of this, and he hadn't known a thing about it.
	Joe felt his face burning, feeling a wash of shame at his isolation,
knowing part of it at least was his own fault. Maybe he was the school
pariah and had no friends other than Milo, but Milo had known. Christ, it
had been in the school paper, he could've picked one up and simply read
about it. But in the end he had willingly conspired at his own isolation,
had purposely cut himself off from any contact with the rest of the two
thousand students here. He had built a wall of indifference around himself
as protection, but how high those walls were had been his choice, and much
of the blame for his loneliness had to rest solely on his own narrow
shoulders.

	After lunch Joe left Milo with a renewed promise to call him about plans
for that weekend. He then spent the rest of the school day following his
regular class schedule, although he was hampered by not being able to return
to his locker and collect the right textbooks. Still he was able to ace the
trigonometry test, and he kept careful notes about his homework for his
other classes. But he knew that at the end of the day he would have to
return to his locker and risk running into Becka Jackson again, there was no
way around that. So when the time came he approached the hallway where his
locker was with all the trepidation of a gazelle going to a waterhole in
lion country. As he worked the combination on the lock, he kept a wary eye
out for tall girls with blonde hair.
	He should have remembered to watch out for more than one lion. As he
reached into the locker a figure he hadn't even seen reached out and slammed
the metal door on his arm.
"AAUGHH-Jesus!" he cried, as the pain exploded across his forearm and shot
agonizing bolts all the way up to his shoulder. The books he held in his
other hand fell to the ground and he almost followed them, clutching his
injured limb against himself. For a moment Joe thought it was broken, and
fought the burn of tears. He caught his breath and blinked them away, only
to find himself backed up against the wall by Gary Harper and his two
followers, Matt Ingles and Ronnie Hooker, looming over him and grinning at
his pain.
	"Hey guys, look at this. The munchkin got his tail caught in the door.
What's wrong, faggot, didn't your mommy ever teach you how to use a locker?"
	The other two morons laughed too, and Joe couldn't help wondering if they
actually thought it was funny or if they were just being obedient. Harper's
sense of humor was about as sophisticated as dog crap. Joe glared at him,
hissing in pain, knowing what was going to happen. But he wouldn't say a
word, because he wasn't going to beg, and he knew that nothing else would do
him any good. Harper must have seen it in his eyes, because he lost the grin
and frowned, then suddenly slammed the side of his fist into the locker
right next to Joe's ear. Joe couldn't help it, he flinched, but he still
didn't respond.
	"Hey Gary, the little homo doesn't look too clean to me. You think maybe he
could use a swirly?" Hooker said, trying to be helpful. "Or maybe he's too
clean, and he needs a royal flush?"
	The other two seemed to think that was a hilarious idea, but all Joe could
feel was a rush of panic starting. A swirly was an old school tradition,
where the victim was dragged screaming into the bathroom and his head shoved
into a whirling toilet. In a royal flush, the predators made use of the
toilet first. Joe had had a lot of humiliating things done to him since he
had come to Roosevelt, and had to swallow most of it, but the thought of
what these giggling bastards were planning for him was too much. He knew
that he couldn't take it, that this would be the final push that would break
him, destroy the last piece of self respect he had left. No matter what else
they did to him, he couldn't let this happen.
	Through gritted teeth he said, "Hooker, each time you open your stupid
mouth, you let everyone know that you're the dumbest fuck in the state of
California."
	There was an instant of surprised silence, then Hooker lost his smile, the
grin turning into an angry scowl, which deepened when Ingles giggled at him.
Joe turned to Ingles and said, "What are you laughing at, moron? You're the
second dumbest fuck in California.
	"And you, Harper, I guess that makes you the king of the losers. Pretty
pathetic, isn't it? The only ones who'll follow around a stupid little dick
like you is a couple of mouth breathing, low life-oooff!"
	Joe was expecting it, but it still caught him by surprise, the fist coming
out of nowhere and hammering into his stomach, pain exploding like a cannon
shot. It hit him so hard that it bounced him off of the wall of lockers
where he sank to the floor gasping for breath, Harper's hate twisted face
glaring down at him. Suddenly his plan didn't seem so brilliant. The idea
had been to get Harper so angry that he would forget about the bathroom and
just beat him up out there in the hallway. With a sinking feeling he was
suddenly certain that Harper wasn't going to stop with just a beating.
	"I don't know, Gary. Sounds to me like he knows you pretty well. You really
are a dick."
	It was weird, but for a few precious seconds time did seem to stand still.
Harper's head spun around, his anger at Joe suddenly forgotten at the words
spoken in a girl's hard voice. The one it belonged to was tall and blonde,
and stood across the hall from them with her arms crossed over her chest,
giving Joe's tormentors a stony look that gave nothing away.
	Becka Jackson. Oh, crap.

	There were days when Joe felt like the most pathetic loser on the planet.
Utterly beneath the notice of his peers, and the favorite target of anybody
with the psychotic need to bully and torment. No friends, no social life,
and yeah, still a virgin at age seventeen. If this was the bible, he would
have been a leper.
But dammit, he hadn't been born this way! Back home in Michigan he had a
life, friends he hung with, laughed with. Felt safe with. Tommy Dolan, Ed
Chan, Willie Singleton. Bill Smalley and his sister Gretchen, who was the
only girl Joe had ever kissed. Kids he had grown up with since kindergarten,
before the size difference became obvious, who accepted him without even
thinking about it. Back then no one ever called him 'munchkin', to them he
was just Joe. Joe Munson.
	And then Mom and Dad had died, and he had left everything behind to come
live with Aunt Mattie. And ran head long into Becka Jackson.
	Everything, everything changed with that damned fire. By the time he got to
California and moved in with Aunt Mattie, Joe had just taken so many hits
that he was barely functioning. He felt disconnected, adrift, like a boat
someone had set loose on a cold and hostile sea.
	School started, whether he was ready for it or not. It had rained the night
before, heavily, and it left the lawn outside Roosevelt High's cafeteria a
muddy mess. There were four lines of students standing there, one for each
class, slowly wending their way inside to register and pick up their
schedules. Joe was at the head of the freshmen line just entering the
building when the first fat drops of a new storm started falling, causing
the people behind him to either moan or to curse. The rain didn't matter to
him, he barely acknowledged it, he was almost completely on auto pilot that
morning. But he was rudely snapped out of that state when someone in a cut
off denim jacket suddenly pushed him out of line.
	Joe cursed when he stumbled into a mud puddle and felt the cold wet splash
upwards to soak his socks, almost lost his balance and fell. He stepped
forward and tried to push his way back into line, but was suddenly doubled
over by a fist that drove the wind from his lungs and left him doubled over
in pain. Before he could straighten up his attacker, a girl with tangled
blonde hair and bulky clothing, reached over his back and grabbed the bottom
of his T-shirt with both hands. With a quick wrench she pulled it up over
his head, trapping his arms in a tube of cotton, and exposing his fish white
body to the elements and everybody else. She spun him around, then planted a
foot in the middle of his butt and shoved, sending him sprawling into the
mud. He could already hear the abrasive laughter of a hundred teenage
voices, before he even pulled the muddy T back over his head, and sat up on
the cold and filthy ground.
	It was just too much. The grief, the loss, and now the humiliation. It hit
him all at once. He couldn't rise, could barely move, he simply buried his
head in his arms and wept, his whole body shaking with the force of his
pain. He cried, thereby permanently marking himself in front of the whole
school. In front of Gary Harper, who could sense weakness like a shark
senses blood.

	"This's between me and the munchkin, Jackson, it's got nothing to do with
you. Go mind your own damned business," Harper said. There was a tension in
his voice, a mixture of anger and something else. Was it uncertainty?
	"And if I say it's my business, what're you going to do about it? Huh,
Gary? Are you going to argue with me? Well before you do, maybe you should
remember two things. First, my name isn't Jackson anymore, it's Cameron. And
second, you're still the same little pissant you always were."
	Ingles gave a nervous giggle, which bought him a glare from Harper. Gary
looked around at his two henchmen and licked his lips, deciding that he
couldn't depend on them if it came to a confrontation with the blonde girl.
He felt his anger burn the back of his throat, but with an effort he
swallowed it like a large and bitter pill. It was humiliating, but he still
stung from the last time he had gone up against Becka Cameron, and he wasn't
ready to repeat the experience.
	Harper slapped Hooker on the chest and with a jerk of his head indicated
that they should go. "She's not worth the aggravation, man. We'll get the
little faggot some other day."

Becka watched the trio leave, letting a small smile play at her lips.
Despite the face saving words she knew a retreat when she saw one. She
looked down at the kid they had been picking on, saw he was still huddled on
the floor. He wouldn't meet her eyes, and flinched when she moved towards
him. Probably embarrassed to be rescued by a girl, she thought,	 as she
squatted down and started picking up the books that he had dropped. She kept
her voice soft when she spoke to him.
	"Are you alright? Do you need to go to the nurse's office?"
	The kid shook his head, a tight little gesture that looked almost
involuntary. Becka finished picking up the dropped texts and then stood up,
reaching down with her free hand to help him up.
	"You're going to have to watch yourself for a couple of days. Harper isn't
going to forget this, he might---"
	"DON'T TOUCH ME, YOU FREAK!"
	Becka jumped back, shocked, as the boy she had just saved scrambled to his
feet and bolted, sprinting down the hallway and disappearing around the
corner. She could hear the slap of his sneakers echo back, slowly fading. It
sounded like he never even slowed down.
	The stunned look on Becka's face also faded, to be replaced by the same
stony mask that she had shown before. She took the books she still held and
shoved them into the open locker, not bothering to do it carefully, and then
slammed the door and spun the combination lock. She walked away with a rigid
back, and every muscle in her body as tight as a bowstring.

(continued)