Chapter 4. Sometimes a knife is the answer. (Patreon)

Clara found Lacy behind the school, on the rock. It was called the rock in the same way the path behind it was called the path. Not a rock. The rock. The path. During the day the school and the small private areas around it were the whole world. There were no other paths into a clearing where people smoked. There were no other rocks where the quiet kids sat and showed each other their new knives.

Clara climbed up to sit beside her friend.

"What are you carrying?" Lacy said. Clara pulled out her pocket knife and flicked it open. Heavy action. She didn't like switchblades. 

All folding knives had a weakness where the hinge was, but switchblades were flimsy. And, frankly, an automatic knife was for people who wanted to look a certain way. Who wanted to feel like they were in a movie.

Clara didn't understand the value in that. Or, she understood the value, but it was not valuable to her. She did understand that people valued different things. She had learned that. Some people would rather look cool with a knife than be in full control of the knife. It was a fact. And the thing about facts is that they are true whether you feel superior about them or not. 

So it was a waste of effort to judge the punk kids she sometimes saw, showing off their switchblades. Better to enjoy the feeling of the heavy action clicking into place. Better to sit quietly in her room and sharpen the edge carefully. To slice through paper sheets, testing her work. To look up diagrams of human anatomy.

"You?" Clara asked.

Lacy reached into her pocket and pulled out a jack knife with red and black scales, and a sharp angle to the handle. It was a good size. New. A little tight to open, but with nice steel. A perfect slow curve to the blade.

Clara ran her thumb across the blade. Lacy was even more careful with her sharpening than Clara was. More precise. 

"What'd you pay?"

"Ten cents," Lacy said. 

"A gift."

"Yeah, my uncle worked on their website. They gave him his pick." Clara handed the knife back. Lacy preferred classic knife form factors. She had more than one sodbuster, a simple blade that Clara respected but had no interest in.  Their tastes did overlap, but not with folding knives. 

The school bell buzzed, and Lacy took her knife and put it back in her pocket quickly. Nervous. She was always nervous about being caught. Nervous they'd tell her mother. 

Clara knew Lacy's mother would never find her knives. If she found one hiding place, there were four more. There was a waterproof case buried under a bush in Lacy's backyard. She was careful to a charming degree.

After the second bell rang, and the students all wandered back inside, Lacy opened her backpack.

"You got any change on you?" she said.

"I have a quarter," Clara said. "Why? Is it Christmas?"

"I found the perfect knife," Lacy said. "I'm not kidding. A knife that will last you the rest of your life, and it is so perfect that I - without hesitation - got one for my best friend. A lifelong knife, no joke. And I spent the whole night soaking both knives in chemicals to peel off the dumb powder coating, then I sharpened them so that they could cut god himself and -"

"Are you going to show me?"

Lacy grinned and opened her backpack wider. She pulled out two knives. One with a bright safety-orange handle, and one with a more tasteful black grip. They were otherwise identical. 

"I like the orange scales," Lacy said, "But the black is good too. You pick."

Clara lifted the knife with the black handle and it felt good. It was heavier than it looked, and the balance was just behind where the blade and the scales met. It was full tang. Of course. It had a nice fat curve to the blade. A good angle on the point. It was not a delicate thing, but it was beautiful.

"This is thick enough to use as a crowbar," Clara said.

"1095 cro-van steel. Tougher than actual 1095. You could definitely use that as a crowbar. Won't chip. Won't bend. I watched a video of a russian guy hammering it through a steel plate. It kept its point." Lacy was holding her knife proudly. "I was batoning wood with it this morning," she said.

"This is for your apocalypse go bag?"

"I'm into survival."

"Then you take the orange. You don't want to lose it in the dark once all the electricity in the world goes out."

Clara held her knife forward and jabbed a couple times at the air with it. Then she flipped it so the tip was pointed back, blade out. It was a beautiful thing. She swiped at an invisible opponent. It would be good to take this out to the woods. To see what kind of damage it was capable of dishing out. "This is nice, Lacy." Clara pulled a quarter out of her pocket and put it in her friend's hand. "Thank you."

"Well, when the end of the world comes, we should both be prepared." Lacy said. And, like always, she couldn't help but add, "You know to come straight to my house, if anything goes wrong, right?" 

Clara was still taking small swipes in the air with the knife. "You don't win a knife fight," she said in a tough-guy voice. "You survive one."

"Stop fucking around," Lacy said. "It's a tool, not a weapon."

"Every tool has a purpose," Clara said.

"I'm glad you like it," Lacy said. "Okay, I got class."

At the end of the school day, Clara didn't head right home. She went back out to sit on the rock by herself. Not reading. Not even thinking. Just enjoying the feel of the stone under her hands. A couple other kids walked past, toward the path. Headed into the woods. None of her business. She liked the sun on her skin. On her arms. All day she had felt a secret pleasure, knowing that she had two knives on her, instead of just the one. 

She didn't notice Phil until the bigger girl was standing right in front of her.

"What's up, Phil?" Clara said. Which was the exact wrong thing to say.

Phil didn't say anything. She grabbed Clara by the hair, pulled her down off the rock, and kicked her in the stomach. The wind went right out of Clara. Phil knelt down, took Clara by the hair again, and punched her in the face. Once, and then twice. Then she stood up, and walked away.

In the school bathroom, Clara was finally able to stop the bleeding with a handful of paper towels pressed hard against her nose. The black eye would last a while. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her lips and chin were smeared with blood. She smiled.

Phil could sure dish it out.

She winced in pain again, but her reflection did not. It kept smiling. In fact, it was smiling a little wider now. It was standing up straight, tilting its head quizzically.

"Does that girl think you're afraid of blood?" Clara's reflection said. "She must not know you very well." In the mirror, it reached into its backpack and pulled out the knife Lacy had given her. It ran its finger along the edge, first testing the blade, then purposefully slicing open the pad of her thumb so that blood dripped down onto the counter. She put it in her mouth to taste. 

Clara shook her head. 

"She must have hit me harder than I thought," Clara said.

Her reflection leaned toward her. "She must have hit me harder than I thought," it said. "Perhaps you should go and talk to her about it." It tapped on its side of the mirror with the tip of the knife. Even with her head scrambled, even hallucinating, Clara couldn't help but admire the blade. It was such a nice knife. "I bet you know where she lives, don't you?"

"I do know where she lives," Clara told her reflection. She looked down at all the blood in the sink. Her nose had finally stopped bleeding, but she was going to need to clean this up. She took the paper towel away from her face and put it in the garbage can. Then she covered the bloody towels with clean ones. 

"You should pay her a visit. Maybe she doesn't understand who and what she is dealing with."

"I should," Clara said. "This has been going on for too long." She pulled out her pocket knife and flicked it open. Satisfying heavy action. She looked down at it. It was a good knife. She folded it back and then flicked it open again. "I'm going to need more knives though," she said.

Then she looked at her reflection again.

"I know who you are," she said.

"No, I don't believe you do." The smile was genuine, almost kind. "But we'll talk again."

And then her reflection was her own.

Phil's house was only a few blocks from where she lived, so Clara went home first. She set her backpack beside her closet, and got down on her hands and knees to reach for her makeshift knife roll under her bed. It was securely tied. She unrolled it and slid the gift from Lacy into one of the empty slots in the roll. She switched out her cryo 2 for the rat 2 with its pink handle, clipping it to the inside of her jeans pocket. Then she rolled up the knives. Tied them again, and stood.

"What happened to your face?"

"Is that a black eye?!"

She ignored her parents and went out the front door without stopping. This was something she should have done the first time Phil had hit her. Or the second.

At Phil's house, she rang the bell. There was a long wait, and the door opened. It was Phil.

"Come outside," Clara said, and she turned and walked around to the side of the house, where it was more private. She sat down on the lawn, and unfastened her knife roll. She gently unfurled it, exposing her collection. She loved these knives. They each had their own purpose. Their own story. Their own future. At the front of the house, she heard the door close. Phil Came around the corner.

"What do you want?" Phil said, standing over her. She saw the knives laid out on the grass. She looked at Clara and then back at the knives. She didn't look nervous, which Clara respected.

"My friend Lacy gave me this knife this morning. Look." Clara picked up the newest knife, with its weight and its black handle, and held it out for Phil to take. Handle first. 

She took it, reluctantly.

"It's heavy," she said. 

"Sit down," Clara gestured, and so Phil sat. Phil handed the new knife back. 

And so Clara showed Phil her favourite knives. The long thin knife that a local man had made, with a polished driftwood handle. The cryo 2. Fast in the hand. The wicked hooked CRKT that you could hide in your palm, hooked into your finger so it wouldn't slip. 

Phil wasn't looking at the knives, though. She was watching Clara. Clara went on and on about the blades. The types of steel. Where she had bought them. Why each knife was special. 

And then, they got to the reason Clara was here.

"This one is stupid. It is five dollars at any grocery store. A victorinox paring knife. For the money it is the best you can get." She passed the blade with its cheap neon green handle to Phil. Phil accepted it.

"I don't like being punched," Clara said. "But I do like you. You don't laugh at people's jokes."

"Okay," Phil said. She offered the victorinox knife back. 

Clara took it and slid it into the knife roll. Then she pulled out the small, all-metal push-dagger. It was a knife with one very clear purpose. To punch a hole in somebody.

"This is for you," Clara said. 

"I don't need some cheap little knife," Phil said. "What are you doing? What is this? Are you trying to freak me out?"

"I want to be your friend, Phil. And I wanted to give you this. It is cheap. You're right. The steel is low quality. The handle is uncomfortable. But after you stick it in somebody, cheap is good. Because you're going to want to throw it down a sewer. If it were expensive and fancy, you might be tempted to keep it. That is how people make mistakes. This is not my favourite knife. But it will do one thing very well. It will hurt anyone who tries to hurt you."

"I don't need this," Phil said. "Nobody is going to hurt me."

"Don't let them see it," Clara said. "A knife won't scare anyone. Especially not a small knife like this. If you wave it around to scare them, they will take it from you. They will know you are afraid. Wait until they are close. Don't let them see the knife until it has been inside them at least twice. Then run."

"I don't understand."

"Do you have a quarter? Or any change?"

"What?"

"Give me a quarter." Phil dug in her pocket for change, and found a nickel.

"That'll do," Clara said. "It is your knife now. And you can hide it wherever you want. You can take it out and look at it sometimes when you're alone. Nobody even has to know you have it. You'll know." 

There was a long, long pause. Clara could never tell if she had said too much. She had talked and talked. But she wanted Phil to understand. Finally, Phil looked down at the knife roll and nodded. She gave Clara the nickel. She reached out and took the push-dagger. She wrapped her fist around it, and punched at the air. Short fast jabs. Then she looked at Clara again.

"Thank you," she said. "I like it." 

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