Z 2134

Liam, especially drunk, could hurt him badly. If Ana were to lose Michael, she would be friendless as well as motherless.
    “Someone oughta teach you to respect your elders,” Liam said, sauntering to their table, wearing a wide grin, as though he had just finished a hysterical joke, with a punch line only he got.
    “You’re only a year older than me, hardly an elder,” Ana said, half-laughing, and only on the outside.
    “I’m talking about Jonah,” Liam said, looking down at Ana, while ignoring Michael entirely, which Ana was sure must be digging under Michael’s skin. “You ought not to talk that way of your father. He’s a good man.”
    “Yeah, I suppose if you like murderers,” Ana said. She glanced at her hands and forced herself to sip her sugar water rather than give in to her mind’s usual tangent, which would start with the many reasons she hated her father and end only after the exhaustive list was finished and a new one, maybe the reasons he deserved to die, began.
    Ana had plenty of feelings about her father, but not a single one was any of Liam’s goddamn business.
    “You still buying that bullshit about how he killed your mom?” Liam shook his head. “Come on, Ana, you know better than that. He was fucking set up.”
    “Whatever,” Ana said, not wanting to get into an argument or relate how she witnessed her father with her own two eyes.
    It was, after all, her testimony that had sent her father away. Ana was still considered a child, so that detail of the famous case had been kept from the News Agency and off the public reels, though she had assumed word had been whispered anyway. Perhaps not, if Liam didn’t know.
    Liam laughed, a drunken, almost sick-sounding cackle, which quickly fell into a dry heave, like he was trying to think of something more to say, maybe something clever, but couldn’t draw a drop from the well. He raised a fist to his mouth, bit it, then turned from their table and stormed back to the bar.
    Ana watched as he marched off, surprised when he suddenly spun back toward her and shouted, “You know, you really ARE a brat!”
    Ana’s mouth dropped open, shocked that Liam had called her a “brat,” of all things. And the way he said it suggested it wasn’t something that had just come to him — it was a long-held belief that he’d thought a million times before that moment. She wasn’t sure which surprised her more — that Liam thought she was a brat, or that he’d thought of her at all. It wasn’t as if their paths crossed all that often. Liam hadn’t gone to school with her since he was placed in The Orphanage almost a decade ago. And they rarely saw each other outside of the occasional run-in at the market or City Park, where she used to hang out before she had to start working at age 17.
    “I am not!” she snapped back, feeling her face redden as her fists curled into balls beneath the table.
    “Oh yes you are!” Liam said, cackling like before, now louder. “Your father had nothing but the best things to say about you, and you have the gall to sit here, sipping on your sugar water while wishing him dead? Dead? You aren’t just a brat, Ana, you’re an icy-hearted bitch.”
    Ana was too shocked to do what she wanted — punch the fucker right in either one of the fat sneering lips flapping from the front of his smug mouth.
    Michael leapt from the table and to Ana’s defense. “She said to leave her alone!”
    “Sit down, Michelle,” Liam snapped, taking a long step toward Michael and shoving him hard toward his seat.
    The nudge was just enough to send Michael’s ass banging against the back of the booth, where he only stayed for a second. Michael lunged from his sprawl, swinging before he was even standing.
    Even drunk, Liam was too fast, deftly stepping aside as Michael shot by and fell awkwardly to the ground. Scattered laughter rippled through the bar.
    Ana fumed, then stood and yelled, “Stop it!”
    Liam, whose back was to Ana as he waited for Michael’s next move, turned to her, eyes wide, surprised by the sudden outburst.
    Their eyes met — his were icy blue but blushed with spirits — locked in the realization that everyone in the bar was staring at them, and that trouble was a coiled snake, ready to strike.
    Liam’s friends were watching, but they weren’t hooting or hollering, like most of the bar patrons. They seemed concerned for their friend, and possibly worried about what he might do next. They approached Michael