Time unspun into textures, the wood against her cheek, the cotton of her sweats against her damp skin. Colorful circles brightened and dimmed behind her eyelids, salt dried on her face, and the muscles of her arms stayed locked around herself. Everything outside her room, outside the puddle she was in on the floor, it all melted away. Bitter used to do this inside the lost years, in those houses she didn’t remember anymore, curling and floating away until the pain wasn’t real anymore, until nothing was real and she was lost inside a kind of trance that bled smoothly into a halfway sleep.
Hours could vanish like this, warped away in a place her mind had made safe, so by the time Bitter uncurled herself and sat up, she wasn’t surprised to see that the day had already gone into deep dusk, a touch away from dark. She dragged her hands over her face, then pushed herself off the floor, scrambling unsteadily to her feet. Nothing felt quite real. She grabbed her backpack from where it was slumped against her closet door and emptied it onto her bed, her phone falling out in a shower of energy bars. Bitter woke her screen up and winced at the number of notifications she’d missed. Aloe had called several times, texted her to call him, then left a bunch of voice notes. Bitter hit play on the first one.
“B, I’ve been trying to call you—” Aloe’s voice was drowned out in a wave of chaotic sound, people yelling, sirens, and then an explosion. “Shit! Stay inside, okay, B? Tonight’s not good—things are really bad. I need you to stay inside—Pull back, pull back! More milk, pass me more milk, it’s all in his eyes, shit—B, I gotta go. Stay inside, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
The background sounds were everything Bitter was afraid of. She wondered what had gone wrong, what had escalated, but this was Lucille—everything always escalated, even if it started out peacefully. You couldn’t predict what the police would do, when they’d hold defense or when they’d swarm like soldiers of death. It kept everyone on edge, jumpy, the way they liked it. There was no peace.
She listened to the second voice note, telling her that Blessing and Alex were headed back to the school, then to the fragmented ones that came after that, alarm building in her with a hot urgency. There had to be a mistake—she couldn’t have heard that right, what Aloe had said about Eddie. She was playing his voice again when the phone rang with a call from him. Bitter answered immediately.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Where’s Eddie?”
“Where the hell are you?” he replied, his voice taut with relief. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you from since.”
“In my room. I didn’t go out. But, Aloe—”
“I’m coming upstairs now. See you soon.” He hung up, and Bitter stared at her phone, some of the tension easing now that she knew he was back inside Eucalyptus. Maybe he was wrong about what he’d seen, maybe he’d made a mistake and he was going to walk in and tell her it was all okay, it was all a misunderstanding.
Aloe knocked on the door once before pushing it open, and Bitter threw herself into his arms. “You’re okay,” she whispered. “You’re here.”
He hugged her tightly but didn’t say anything. Bitter looked over his shoulder, as if Eddie was going to be right behind him, smirk on her face, her braid spikes clattering between her shoulder blades. “Where’s Eddie?” she asked. He had to tell her there’d been a mistake.
Aloe held her even more tightly, as if that could stop her from spinning out. “Eddie’s going to be okay,” he said, but there was no confidence in his voice.
Bitter pulled away from him. “No. You said—you said they shot her!”
“With a rubber bullet.”
“How does that matter? They shot her!”
“She’s alive.” Aloe’s voice was somber, and it brought Bitter down to earth like she’d been thrown from a building. “I mean that Eddie’s alive. It could have been worse.”
Bitter’s eyes went hot with tears. “What did the hospital say?”
There were shadows under and inside his eyes. Aloe stepped away from Bitter and slumped down in the gray armchair. “They shot her in the face, B.”
Bitter felt her legs give out, dropping her gently onto her bed. “What?”
“It was on purpose. The doctors, they said she might lose her eye.”
“They shot her in her face?”
He passed a hand over his mouth. “Yes. I just—” Aloe shook his head, unable to form more words.
There was a sick weight in Bitter’s stomach, and she didn’t know what to do with it. “Is she having surgery?”
“I don’t know. That was the last update I got. You know how Assata is. They’re not talking to outsiders right now.”
“That’s bullshit! You been working as a protest medic for them.”
“It is what it is. They have protocols, and she’s one of their own. Ube said he’ll text me as soon as they know more.”
Bitter scoffed. “And yuh believe him?”
The look Aloe shot at her was cutting. “Of course I believe him, Bitter.”
She bit her lip, flushing at the censure in his tone. “Sorry. I’m just—”
“It’s fine. It’s a hard time for everyone, and she’s your friend too.”
Bitter sank down to the floor, leaning against her bed, the base of her skull digging into the frame. “She’s my friend,” she repeated. “Could you imagine it?”
Aloe gave a short laugh. “I’m as amazed as you are. I thought you two were going to kill each other at first.”
Bitter tried to smile, but her mouth couldn’t quite make it. “The girl like a cyst, you know. She does grow on you.”
Aloe looked over, then slid off the armchair and sat next to her, leaning his thigh and shoulder against hers. “How are you feeling?”
Bitter didn’t look at him. “I’m fine,” she bit out. “I was in here, safe and sound, while Eddie was getting shot in the face.”
“Bitter …”
“No, it’s true. I wanted to come out, just this once, and I couldn’t even manage that.”
Aloe took her hand in his. “You don’t have to come out. We’ve told you that.”
“Well, I still feeling like ah little bitch for staying in.”
He made a sharp annoyed sound. “Don’t talk like that. Remember what Eddie said—we all have a role to play.”
“A role?!” Bitter pushed up from the floor and paced the room. “I doh have no fucking role, Aloe. All I doing is drawing pictures while you out there helping people and Eddie out there fighting for us. I eh doing nothing!”
“That’s not true—” Aloe broke off as his phone vibrated. He looked at the screen, and Bitter saw his jaw tense up.
“What is it?”
Aloe turned the screen toward her, and Bitter flinched when she saw the photo of Eddie, her face swollen and almost unrecognizable beneath gauze and bandages. “Ube said she’s lost the eye,” Aloe said, and a thick oily feeling started in Bitter’s stomach, hot and ugly and hateful.
“No …,” she whispered. Aloe was already standing up as he texted back. “Not Eddie, she can’t have—”