If they’re my brothers, that means we have the same blood in our veins. That could explain why I’m so fucking angry all the time.
“Get out.”
“Yeah, you look like you could use some rest,” he answers coolly. Before he leaves, he turns back to me. “And, Lana, stay the fuck out of my room.”
Then he’s gone, and that boiling rage bubbles to the surface.
“Screw you!” I scream and throw every single one of my decorative pillows at the door despite the torrent of pain igniting my muscles. “Stay the fuck out of mine!” When my room looks like I blew it up with pillows, I sprawl across the bed and close my eyes in exhaustion.
A faint knock draws my attention.
“Lana?” The bathroom door cracks open. “Can I come in?”
“Whatever,” I grumble with my arm flung over my eyes.
“Your brother is a pompous ass,” Arden declares from somewhere near the couch. “But he does care about you, whether that helps you forgive him or not.”
“How do you know?” I ask, not moving. “You’ve been here all of a minute.”
“It’s a gift—or maybe a curse,” she says as if contemplating it.
A floral aroma fills the room. I raise my arm to peek and find her tea set displayed on a tray that’s placed on the coffee table. She sits on the couch to pour a cup.
Arden’s styled in a gorgeous pink kimono with white flowers. Her feet are bare. And her hair is gathered into a ponytail sticking straight up on the top of her head. Hot-pink lipstick is painted only in the center of her mouth like a geisha, and she’s drawn such dramatic black wings on her eyes, they look like they could take flight. She’s peculiar, but it suits her.
“Come, sit. This will help you heal.”
“Please don’t tell me that you hack into computer files too.” I cannot handle another person violating my life. I just can’t.
She chuckles. “No. Ashton told me what happened, after Lance told her.”
“Great,” I grumble.
Lance really does suck at knowing what to keep to himself.
I scoot off the bed and drag my feet to the couch. “I feel like someone stuffed me in a dryer and kept me in there for a day.”
“That would be very uncomfortable,” Arden ponders, her eyes angled toward the ceiling like she’s picturing it. “But it could be fun for a few minutes.”
Maybe it wasn’t my best analogy.
I lower onto the couch next to her and accept the cup of tea. In my gut, I trust Arden. And that’s all I have to go on most of the time anyway. Besides, it smells like a flower garden. I bring it up to my nose and inhale. But when I take a sip, I nearly gag. It doesn’t taste like it smells. It’s earthy and pungent, the stems and roots of the flowers rather than the buds. Maybe my intuition sucks.
“Sorry, but this is terrible,” I say, unable to relax my puckered face.
“Of course it is. It’s medicinal. But it will help, so drink it.”
With a finger on the bottom of the cup, she tips it back toward my lips. I comply but not happily.
Once I’ve forced the rest of it down, she takes the delicate china cup from me and places it on the tray. Then she stands, sets a salve on the table and picks up the tray. “Rub this on anything that hurts, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, Lana.”
“Uh, goodnight, Arden,” I reply, perplexed by her sudden departure. I know I’m not the best company right now, but she was here maybe two minutes. “Thank you.”
I change and prepare for bed before inspecting the small container of ointment. “Might as well,” I declare in defeat, dabbing the clear petroleum-looking substance onto my aches. I’m yawning as I crawl under the covers, the throbbing in my head and the soreness in my muscles already subsiding. I have no idea what was in that tea or ointment, but I’d rather not touch the bottle of pills Brendan set on my desk.
I really don’t suspect him of tampering with my mother’s medicine. But I have no idea what he’s capable of or how he’s involved with Vic. He’s supposed to be on my side. But that’s naive. I’ve known since the second I met him, Brendan’s only on one side … his.
Before I leave for class the next morning, Arden leaves another cup of tea on the countertop. This one doesn’t taste like I’m swallowing lawn clippings, but it’s not much better. It has a spicy licorice flavor that clears out my sinuses. I have no idea why I’m trusting her. She could be giving me psychotropics for all I know. Except … I already notice a difference. The pain isn’t as intense, and I’m a little less edgy. So instead of feeling like I could burn the entire campus down in a single breath of fury, my anger smolders in my gut.
I get my meal to go and sit in a weird garden I discover by the languages building. It’s made up of large, spongy beds shaped like mushrooms. But to reach the top of them, you’re supposed to bounce on a trampoline pod—which I can’t. So I sit on the trampoline instead and use the mushroom as an umbrella. I think whoever designed this garden was on psychotropics.
I can easily imagine Ashton jumping around, landing with a plop on top of each colorful mushroom in their various shades of neon. I wonder if she’s found it yet. There’s this childlike wonder about her most of the time. She observes the world around her as if she’s in awe of it. But I know she’s also witnessed and experienced too much of its ugliness.
The smolder ignites into a flame at the thought of what she’s been through, and I’m an inferno again. My fist ricochets off the trampoline when I punch it. I have no control of my anger; it controls me. Feeding off the frustration, knowing Brendan’s playing with me. The homicidal rage I feel toward Vic. The disappointment and hurt that keeps my mother at arm’s length. Just sprinkle the betrayal of my best friends on top, and I’m an all-consuming fiery ball of fury.
So how can I be anyone’s best friend, especially Ashton’s, when I feel like incinerating everything in my path?
When I leave for class Wednesday morning, I tape a sign on my door that reads Need More Time, kind of like Ashton did when she wanted to be left alone to sleep when she was hurting. I’m hoping this will let her know that I’m not gone, just in a sort of time-out. When I return at the end of the day, after picking up dinner to bring back to my room, there’s a sign beneath it written in what I believe is Chinese.
“What does it mean?” I ask Arden when she appears in black-and-white-checkered leather leggings, a neon-blue soccer shirt cropped below her bustline and five-inch platform white sneakers tied with thick lemon-yellow ribbons. Her eyes are lined in white with blue feather lashes. Her lips are matte black, and her hair is knotted in two buns on top of her head.
I’m not sure what she’s dressed for; maybe she’s throwing a party in her room later. Then again, I’m beginning to suspect that this is Arden … always.
“Peace in chaos,” Arden explains. She pours the floral tea, and my jaw tightens in anticipation of its dreadful taste. “Drink.”
She waits as I do, and I cringe the entire time.
She picks up the tray and walks back through the bathroom, her voice echoing, “Goodnight, Lana.”
The next day is pretty much the same, except I spend a few hours in the afternoon with my chemistry partner, reviewing what I missed on Monday. He’s not nearly as patient with me as Grant.