A prickling, angry heat climbs up my back and burns between my shoulder blades. “Good. Maybe they can slice your brain open and figure out why the hell you were so fucked up, Mom.” I turn and bolt from the room before she can get in the final word. I’m not fast enough, though. I’m never fast enough.
“Meredith, darling! Meredith! You know I don’t like it when you call me that!”
13
PAX
* * *
I’m in a foul mood. I want to break something.
I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. I get off the elevator, following the person in front of me, not seeing or hearing, or feeling anything. Suddenly, Pete the security guard is standing in front of me, and he’s wearing a smile a mile wide. “Good man! Remy said he thought you’d come but I admit, I was betting against you, kid.
“What?”
“There’s half an hour left before they kick everyone out. Come with me.”
I’m still reeling from my encounter with Meredith too badly to fully process what he’s saying. I’m barely processing anything at all as I dumbly follow Pete toward a small gift and snack store, where he heads for the back corner and begins operating a small icy machine, dumping pale yellow gunk into a little plastic cup. “She looks like lemon’s her favorite, doesn’t she? Personally, I like the bubblegum flavor. My daughter’s always giving me grief for ordering the fake blue shit. And before you say it, I know it looks gross. Just a whole heap of processed sugar. Nothing nutritious about it. Still. It makes me feel better when I’m sick. I’m sure it’ll make her feel better, too.”
I’m itching for a cigarette. I wonder if anyone will notice if I light up in here. I don’t think I can wait ’til I get outside; my blood is fucking boiling.
You need to find a way to self-regulate, you know. You respond to very normal situations in truly bizarre ways.
Fucking. Unbelievable.
My hands are cold. Why are my hands so cold? I look down and I’m standing in front of a register, holding a small cup of lemon gelato. Wait…what the fuck?
“Three-eighty for a small, thanks.” The cashier standing on the other side of the register looks at me expectantly.
To my right, Pete nods. “I’m not allowed to carry a wallet while I’m on duty,” he says. “But it’s better this way. Better that it comes from you.”
“Better that…what?”
“Sorry, man. If you’re not ready to pay, can you step to one side?” the cashier asks. “There isn’t much room in here and there’s a line forming.”
Mechanically, I pull a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket and hand it to the cashier. He gives me change, and the whole time the gelato burns the palm of my hand, it’s so cold.
“Great stuff. Now, when you go in there, don’t…y’know. Don’t mention anything about…y’know.” Pete steers me by the shoulders out of the little store and left down the hallway. “It can be really confronting for some patients if people talk about their injuries right out of the gate. I think it might be prudent to hold off in this case, though. Her dad was here earlier and caused quite the scene.”
My head is pounding. “I’m sorry, what the hell is happening? Why am I getting frostbite from a cup of yellow dogshit? Where the fuck are you taking me, old man?”
He frowns. “Language hasn’t improved, then. Shame. Still. I suppose it’s normal for kids your age to curse a lot. Here we go.” Pete twists me, hands still on my shoulders, and before I can piece any of this together, I’m walking through a door into room 3e, and low and behold…there’s Presley. The girl. The one with the auburn halo of hair, the burned caramel eyes, and the open wrists. Her wrists aren’t open anymore, though. Presumably, her wounds have been stitched back together beneath the thick bandages she’s wearing. Unlike the early hours of this morning, outside on the blacktop, she’s no longer covered in blood, either. And when she rolls her head across the mountain of huge pillows propped behind her head and looks at me, her eyes focus instead of rolling back into her skull.
She takes one look at me and her knees fly up underneath the blankets, like she wants to form a barrier between us. “Uhhhh…no. No, no, no.” She’s a deer in headlights.
I feel like I’ve been Parent Trapped. That reference probably doesn’t work here but fuck it. It’s how I feel. Pete’s sticking his nose in, and it doesn’t look like Presley appreciates his meddling. I definitely don’t fucking appreciate it. “I’m tired. I was just about to sleep,” she whimpers. “I can’t have any more visitors today.”
“One more won’t hurt,” Pete argues. “Your dad’s been gone two hours already. Stop being so rude and say hello to your guest. He’s brought you something.”
The gelato has melted, and a river of sticky, neon liquid is running down the back of my hand. Presley looks me over, quickly skipping over my face and torso, homing in on the desert; her expression doesn’t change. If anything, she looks even more distraught. “Is that…Lemon Sherbet?” she whispers.
“Ask the meddling security guard.” I throw a pissed scowl over my shoulder, but would you believe it—Pete has miraculously disappeared.
“I’ve only known him for six hours. He has a way of just…making himself comfortable,” Pres says. “He brought me a magazine. Then a DVD. I didn’t expect him to bring me you.”
Kind of pissed, kind of horrified that I allowed myself to be coerced into this without realizing what was happening, I enter the room properly and place the sticky-ass gelato down on the bedside table next to her.
She blinks up at me, very alert and very curious. Also, very pale and very tired. Dark shadows bruise the skin beneath her eyes. She looks haunted. Irritated, I realize that she’s interesting to look at. She has the air of a Victorian consumption patient—fragile, the details of her fine and delicate as lace. In contrast to her deathly pale skin, her hair looks like it’s ablaze.
I crack a thumb knuckle, staring blankly at her. “How are the ribs?” I ask.
“Sore. It hurts to move.”
“I didn’t mean to break them.”
“You didn’t. They’re just bruised.”
Huh. No rib cage should bow the way hers did under my hands. I thought for sure that I’d broken them. Not that it matters. “Okay, well. Good luck with…everything. I gotta go. Bye.”
She catches me before I can make for the exit. “Wait.”
Oh lord. Here it comes. The explanation. The why behind all of this mess. Tired to the bone, I stare at her with steely irritation. “What?”
Her eyes shine brightly. At first, those eyes seem unremarkable. Up close, they’re far from it—a deep and rich amber, like warm honey, mottled with flecks of brown that transitions to a starburst of pale gold around her pupil. They’re actually stunning. She blinks up at me, and I realize to my horror that I’ve been staring. “Don’t...please don’t say anything,” she whispers.
“To who? About what?”