She lets out a sputter of laughter. “To your friends. About this. About me being here. The way you found me. If you tell them, they’ll tell Elodie and Carina, and I don’t…I don’t want them to…”
That tracks. A normal person might not want their friends to find out that they acted so foolishly. I guess I can see that. And any other normal person, who’d experienced what I experienced last night, might feel the desire to tell their friends about the crazy night they had, literally saving one of their classmate’s lives. I’m not a chatty fucking Cathy, though. Gossip is the last thing I care about. “Don’t worry. I have better things to do with my time than recount this kinda shit.”
Her expression falters. She looks relieved, but also…torn? Christ. I don’t know how she looks, or what she’s thinking. I have no clue what goes on inside girls’ heads. She swallows, nodding slowly, though, and I can only assume that I’ve made her happy. “Thanks,” she whispers.
“Are we done here?”
She nods.
“Great. I’ll see you at school. I hope you get better soon, or…whatever.”
“Wait. Pax?”
I will make it out of this hospital today. Even if it fucking kills me. “Yes, Presley?”
“I heard about your mom. She’s a patient here, right? The nurse said that was why you were outside. Because she needs a bone marrow transplant, and you’re probably a match? Are you going to save her, too?”
Oh, for pity’s sake. “Meredith doesn’t want me to save her,” I grind out. “If she did, she would have asked me to get tested months ago, when she started getting really sick. She hasn’t even asked me now. So, no. I’m not gonna fucking do it.”
Presley doesn’t say anything. She sags back against her pillows, looking down at her hands, and I can feel the censure rolling off her. Who cares what Presley Chase thinks, though. Fuck, I sure as hell don’t. So, why then, am I still standing here like a loser? I should just turn and walk out of this room right here and now. Only, for some reason…I can’t.
Presley picks up the gelato, stabbing at the melting yellow goop in the cup with a plastic spoon. “So…she’s supposed to beg for your bone marrow then?”
“Y’know, I much preferred it when you couldn’t get a solid sentence out in front of other people,” I snap. “You were far less annoying then.” The past three years, the girl has blushed madly and run away every time I’ve even looked sideways at her. I would have assumed she’d be even more shy around me given the circumstances, but she doesn’t seem that bothered by my presence now. I’m mad because her statement stings in a way that only the truth can. If she was wrong, I’d brush her off without breaking a sweat, but I can feel myself getting hot under the collar. “I wouldn’t give it to her even if she did beg for it,” I grit out.
“You hate her, then. You want her to die.” There’s no judgement attached to this statement. She just looks at me curiously—a ghost girl with bandaged wrists, swirling her spoon around in her gelato. It’s a miracle she can even use her hands considering how deep her wounds were when I found her. She must have just missed her tendons.
“If I agree with you, will you let me go?” I growl.
She looks at me but can’t hold my gaze for long. She glances away, looking out of the window instead. “Saving her would be better revenge than letting her die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If you donate your bone marrow and save your mother’s life, she’ll owe you everything. She’ll be forever indebted to you. No matter what she says or does, or how awful she is, you’ll know that you’re the reason she still gets to walk the face of the planet. There’s something poetic about that.”
I grind my teeth together, nostrils flared. Letting Meredith die is one thing. Forcing her to live…that really is wicked. And yeah. The theatrical, melodramatic side of my mother is enjoying her own slow and tragic demise. She probably thinks that fading away to nothing in a comfortable hospital bed is terribly romantic. It’s not, though. It’s fucking stupid. And I could destroy her macabre little fantasy like a soap bubble, if I just stick out my finger and…pop it.
Food for thought.
“I s’pose you’re right. Thanks.”
She looks at me thoughtfully. “You’re welcome. Do you think you could do me a favor?”
“’Cause saving your life wasn’t enough?”
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t shrink away from me either, though. Her eyes fill with a brand new, unfamiliar kind of resolve. “Will you do it or not?”
“Depends. Are you going to thank me for saving you?”
“No.”
Such a quick answer. Firm. Most girls would have turned bright red and stumbled over a humiliated thank you, quick as you like. The Chase (her name’s too long to give her the full title, even in my head) I know from school would be too anxious to even do that. But this girl right here, who looks so much like Chase, and sounds so much like her, is resolute when she issues her refusal.
Moderately amused, I fold my arms across my chest. “Why the hell would I do any more favors for you if you’re this ungrateful, then?”
“I will be grateful for this one,” she replies.
“What is it?”
“I want you to kiss me.”
“What?”
“I have a theory.”
The girl is batshit crazy. She’s been cleaned up, yes, but they haven’t done a perfect job. Her hair is still caked with dried blood, and there are flecks of it spackled across the backs of her hands. She looks altogether too pale, and too sick. Ghastly, all around. “I’m not fucking kissing you. Why the hell would I do that?”
She shrugs. “To see what it feels like to kiss a half-dead girl? To see what if feels like to kiss a girl who’s just as broken as you? Think of it as an experiment.”
“Ignoring the broken comment—rude, by the way—what am I hoping to accomplish by participating in this ridiculous experiment? What the hell am I supposed to learn?”
Again, she bounces a shoulder, looking down at her hands, fingers tangled together in her lap. “I don’t know. I suppose you’d find out.”
I have never heard anything so stupid or pointless in my entire life. There is something intriguing about this pale, half-dead girl. She’d make a great ghost. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make out with her while she’s laid out in a hospital bed.
“What are you afraid of?” she asks. “Suicidal tendencies aren’t catching.”
“I didn’t think they were. I’m not afraid of anything—”
“Then prove it. Kiss me.”
This is just plain stupid. She’s trying to bait me into giving her what she wants by implying that I’m a coward if I don’t? I’m not in kindergarten anymore, and even when I was, I wasn’t that easy to manipulate. But the level, steady way that she’s looking at me is different. Whenever I’ve bothered to look at her in the past, she’s always ducked her head, or straight up turned around and bolted out of the room. I’ve never actually seen her face properly before, and I’ll admit that she’s quite beautiful.