by L V Chase
I skim through my memories, trying to recall if she’d hurt it when she fell. Maybe she does need help.
“I didn’t know Sadie talked to so many people about me,” she says.
The butter is already slathered on top of my pancakes, and the syrup is spilling over on the sides. My grandmother has given up a lot for me. I could be indebted to Roman without feeling required to sleep with him.
“She didn’t mean it in a bad way,” Roman says. “She knows you’re a tough, strong woman. She just wants you to get a little help. Like she did over the summer, right Sadie? It doesn’t have to be weird. We’re all friends. If I needed something, I know Sadie would be the first one to help out.”
“She would,” my grandmother agrees, her hand settling on my shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. “She’s grown up to be a good woman.”
Roman looks at me with a small smile on his face. To my grandmother, it must look like an expression of admiration, but I hear the suggestion in his remarks. He’s telling me that I owe him.
And, worse, I do.
“Thank you,” I murmur to both of them, picking up the fork off my plate and cutting into a section of the pancakes.
If it’d been something that Roman had simply given to me, I’d reject it, but he presented it to my grandmother. It’s something she needs. I hate it, but I need it. It’s just like how I feel about Klay.
24
Klay
The situation’s changed.
Ethan prowls through the school’s halls, his shoulders pulled up higher than usual as he searches for his dignity or an upper hand in this shit show. Roman swaggers from class to class, acting like one of his stocks skyrocketed in value. I know Sadie’s behavior toward me shook Ethan’s confidence, but Roman’s change is harder to pinpoint.
He must have made a move. He’s a moron overall, but if his father is helping him and money is involved, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to tilt the stage in his favor. Shit, his family has enough money to tilt the earth in his favor.
It’s easier to hate Ethan, but Roman is working his way up the ladder with the way he smirks at everyone in the school.
As I walk into biology, I notice Ethan’s arms crossed over his chest. He pretends to be absorbed in the poster on the wall showing the human digestion system. Roman is talking to Sadie, his shit-eating grin making him look like the world’s ugliest piranha.
Sadie’s eyes follow me as I pull out my chair. She’s wearing a navy hoodie with her jeans. Her hands are shoved in the pocket of the hoodie, and her hands pull it forward around her as if it’s a protective shell. I wish I could have given her better security and shelter, but all I gave her was a promise I’m no longer certain I can fulfill.
“—And then I ate half that pizza,” Roman says, continuing some story that nobody cares about.
I pull a stack of paper out of my backpack and drop it in front of Sadie. She flinches but quickly recovers, picking up the stack.
“What’s this?” she asks.
Roman’s jaw juts to the side in irritation.
“The introduction for our experiment, along with section for materials, methods, and literature cited page,” I say, leaning over and flipping it open to show her. Our arms are close enough that it’s tempting to move closer to steal a touch.
“We were supposed to do this together.” She shoves the paper back at me. It lands on top of the dissection tools in front of me. “Why won’t you work with me? And why are you denying that we knew each other before? My memories are coming back.”
I glance in front of us. Ethan is still pretending to be fascinated by the human digestive system, and Roman is rifling through his bag. But Ethan’s turned more toward us, and Roman is moving his hand through his backpack slowly, avoiding making too much noise.
They’re both listening. I can only hope that they’re more focused on the fact that her memories are coming back than the part where she remembers me more than anybody else.
Sadie grabs my arm. “Stop avoiding me. Tell me what’s going on. Did something happen between us? Did we have a fight? Did you—”
“Stop,” I say, loud enough that everyone except Ethan and Roman turns to stare. “Bell Jar, I don’t know what your meltdown’s about, but you need to stop making your delusions about me. Share your insanity with someone else.”
“They’re not delusions. I know they’re real,” she says. “You can’t keep denying it. I deserve to know what happened—”
“Maybe we did know each other. Maybe you saw me once and became obsessed. Maybe when your grandmother had surgery, you researched my father and found out about me. It doesn’t matter. I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you.”
I almost can’t bite out the last words as I see the pain break across her face. The creases in her face and the hurt in her eyes remind me of shattered glass. I’d do anything to be the one who picked up the pieces and cut myself on them, but all of those things I could do would only hurt her more in the long run.
“I remember the hospital,” she says.
The way she says it, I know she’s not talking about her grandmother’s surgery. She’s talking about that night.
“It was late, nobody was around, and—”
I snatch the scalpel in front of me. My hand movements are fast enough that most people could only see the obvious motion, but Sadie knows what I did when I press the tip of the blade against her thigh. Her words stop. I focus on the tip of the blade, so I don’t have to look at her face.
“I told you to stop,” I say quietly. “You think we had something deep? How deep do you think we went? Right under the skin? A little deeper?”
I push down on the scalpel a little harder. Her jeans are cheap and old. The material is ready to break. Mr. Miller walks in, taking everyone’s attention away from us.
“I don’t know,” Sadie says, her voice as fragile as snow. “But I know that something happened between us.”
“If you believe those delusions,” I say. “If you truly believe that we had something together, do you believe them enough to trust me? Would you give up everything for me?”
Her body shifts, digging the blade in deeper. I relieve some of the pressure. She places her hand over mine, the scalpel encased in both of our hands.
“Yes,” she says.
I’ve failed.
I let her down, and everything is going to collapse underneath us because of it. I can see all of the mistakes playing out in front of me—I shouldn’t have tried to instigate her revulsion. I should have stayed far away. I shouldn’t have followed her to the country club. I should have cared less, so this wouldn’t be so fucking difficult.
“You’re an idiot,” I say. “You have no idea what you’re agreeing to.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It fucking matters,” I hiss. “Would you trust me with your life? If you broke your back and paralyzed yourself, like we talked about, would you put everything you are into my hands? Would you care if I owned you completely?”
Her hand relaxes over my hand before slowly sliding down and resting on her lap. Neither of us talk further as I pull the scalpel away from her. I set it back on the table, then take the packet of papers and put it into my backpack.
“I’ll work on my own,” I say.
She doesn’t respond. I focus on my hands, clasped on the table. I shift my gaze forward to the scalpel. A bead of blood sits on the tip of the blade. Even though I know it’s going to happen, when the blood drops down, I’m still surprised.
25
Sadie
Sitting still while Roman talked all day was an exercise in patience. While my grandmother had initially been hesitant about the idea of a caretaker, she’d spent the morning making a list of how an aide could help her with chores—scrubbing the bathtub, which was difficult for her with her bad knees, cooking meals, which could be dangerous with her fainting, and dusting her porcelain animals since, which required her to stand on a step stool.
I told her
I could do all those things, but she insisted that I focus on my schoolwork and mental health. When I returned home from school, she was bursting with energy, filling my ears with news about how she’d talked to Lertola’s Companionship & Care, and ow they had given her several options for an aide along with several phone interviews. She kept thanking me and telling me to thank Roman for getting her the service.
Listening to Roman ramble about his expensive life is a small price to pay for my grandmother’s joy. I just don’t know how much more I’m willing to give. I’d like to think I’d do anything for her, but some lines are harder to cross than others.
After eating macaroni and cheese for dinner with her, I lay on my bed with my book for English, Brave New World. I’ve either read it before in the last two years or Aldous Huxley’s characters feel a little too real. My head settles onto my pillow, the thought of sex and soma dripping into my thoughts.
It starts in the same hospital as last time, but instead of the walls with pencil marks on it, they have steel studs and insulation. Klay is standing in a room covered in plastic sheeting. I’m lying down near his feet.
“Would you care if I owned you completely?” he asks, exactly like he said to me in class.
I try to move my arms. They don’t move. I look down. Large pins—oversized versions of the dissection pins—pierce through my shirt sleeves. With how close the pins are to my body, it makes it impossible to pull my arms out.
This isn’t a memory. It’s a dream.
I let the thought go. I immerse myself in the way Klay’s face is sharper than it’s ever been—both in its clarity and the small details of his carved jaw.
He shows me the scalpel in his hand. I catch the reflection of my reddish-brown hair in the blade. It’s more evidence it’s a dream—a scalpel blade is too small to see any reflection in it—and that I should be afraid, but I don’t try to wake myself up.
If I were awake, I might question my sanity and motives, but I push those aside as he places the scalpel in the same place on my jeans as he did in class. His hand grips onto my thigh above the knee as he slides the scalpel down in a straight line, cutting the material. It’s much easier than it would be in real life, but every physical sensation—the dissecting pins bumping against my arms, his hand on me, the blade barely scraping my skin—still leads to a celebration throughout my body.
Klay pulls away the flaps of the jeans that he slit—just like he pulled the frog’s skin away from its muscles. He yanks the jeans out from under me. My ass bounces on the plastic underneath.
He steals a kiss, his mouth opening my mouth and his tongue clashing against my tongue. His hand moves under the waistband of my underwear, cupping my pussy with his fingertips tapping straight into my temptation. The tightness of his grip shows a possessiveness that should frighten me, but it only sends a thousand tiny shocks of pleasure through me.
My knees pull up as his fingers continue to play me like a piano. He pulls his hand away from me, setting it on my knee, and slowly pushes down. He forces the other knee down as well.
“I’ll lock those legs down too,” he says.
His dream voice is a little softer, a little more sultry. I wish it wasn’t. His voice is the one sound that could call, and I’d always come running.
“Do you want me to?” he asks.
Yes, I want to scream, but I can’t speak in this dream.
“You don’t have to answer,” he says. “I see it in your eyes. I’m going to take what we both want.”
His hands move up from my knees to the middle of my thighs. He forces my legs apart, laying my thighs awkwardly sideways. The scalpel slips under my underwear, scraping above my pussy.
My instinct is to close my eyes, but the blade is too close to my most sensitive skin, and the idea of disobedience seems downright foreign.
He yanks up on the underwear, pulling my ass off the plastic, and makes two quick cuts. My ass falls back to the plastic as he keeps hold of my underwear, leaving me naked. He carelessly throws my underwear a few inches away from my right hip.
The slippery chill of the plastic elicits a sense of numbness against my ass. It doesn’t last long as a faint breeze hits against the moisture between my legs, sending a shiver through me. But even that feeling is fleeting as my body runs hotter than it ever has.
I briefly wonder what I’m going to do without any clothes to wear home, but that thought fades as his scalpel’s handle scrapes down the front of my pussy.
“Do you remember this?” he taunts. “You act like you remember so much, but do you remember my teeth on your shoulder? My mouth on your breast? My cock inside you?”
He tosses the scalpel down beside my discarded underwear. His head ducks down.
When his tongue brushes against my pussy, my hips buck. His tongue continues its holy work, switching between quick, frequent movements to slower, longer teases.
The lower half of my body is tensed, and it takes all of my effort to keep my thighs from crushing his head. His hands move to my knees, pressing them back down as if he knows my body well enough to deal with these small obstacles. When he kisses my there, my knees overpower his strength, shooting upward.
He exhales on me, my wetness causing the breath to feel much colder.
“Give up everything to me, Sadie,” he says. “Give me control.”
I keep my eyes locked on his. His command beckons me closer to him. When I kiss him, my lips moving ever so slowly in this dream, the ache between my legs only grows.
He nestles his face against the curve of my neck. The roughness of his stubble scratches at my skin. As he kisses the side of my neck, I let myself imagine losing control. It wouldn’t be so difficult if he was the one who found it and kept it.
The pulse between my legs is begging for pressure and, god, in the shadows of the hospital, he has the face of a con man—beautiful enough to be forgiven after he lies through his teeth about his identity and his desires. He looks like the type of man who could rob me of everything, and I’d still believe everything he told me. And, in the back of my mind, I wonder if he has.
I pull my arm forward, tearing my shirt off of the dissection pins. My hand presses down on his neck and pulls him closer. I kiss him, giving him all of my virtue and secret weaknesses.
He takes off his pants and boxers, the clothes brushing against my skin, and his cock presses against my entrance. He no weaknesses to give back, but I know he’s going to give me his brutality.
I tense. His hand slides down my left arm—still pinned down—and grasps my hand.
“I have all of the control,” he reminds me. “I have you. Worrying is a waste of your time.”
I nod once. When he thrusts into me, flickers of pain burst in my head, but as he sinks deeper inside me, the pain changes into a thrumming famine, where my only hunger is for his body.
And as he thrusts into me, I feast.
The fullness his cock gives and steals away, his heady scent, his weight pressing down on my body as he grips my hips, the way his mouth moves over my skin, the power as he drives into me—I could dine on it forever.
As he continues to thrust into me, my body can’t get close enough to his body. Physically, our bodies slam into each other, but my body wants more. I want to give all of myself to him because I know he will keep all of me safe and satisfied.
In the back of my head, I remember his emotional torture. I remember how much he’s hurt me and how little remorse he’s shown.
He reaches for the scalpel. It’s in his fist. It comes down fast and flashing for my throat.
I wake up with a start.
I’ve fallen off the bed, with my sheets twisted around my ankles. My back and chest are slick with sweat. I touch my throat to check for any damage.
It was all just a dream.
I wipe sweat off of my face and sit up.
Does that mean that some of my memories are dreams? That Klay was right about how I had invented a relationship with him?
If
I had, it means that I’m drawn to him for no reason. I’m simply messed up in the head. Crazy. Sick.
I collapse back onto my bed. At least it was a good dream until the end.
I close my eyes. I try to get back to the beginning of the dream. I try to ignore the knot of tension deep in my muscles, waiting for him to unravel me completely.
26
Sadie
I look over at the clock. 4:27 a.m.
The tension’s still there.
I flip my pillow over, letting the cool side sink into my skin. I flip off one of my blankets. The sheets end up wadded below my feet. I fold my pillow in half underneath my head, causing my neck to rest at a strange angle. I get a glass of water and gulp it down. I pee. I lay back down, folding the pillow again. I move the pillow between my knees to stop them from bumping against each other. I slip my hand in my underwear. I touch myself, my eyes squeezing shut tightly as I try to imagine it’s Klay, but my hands are too small and soft to mistake them for his.
It’s hopeless. I can’t sleep anymore.
I get up. I walk to the bathroom. I wash my hands. I cup my hands under the water, letting them fill before bringing it up to my face. I quickly dry my face with a towel.
I sit down on my bed and stare at the wall. My tired mind should be bouncing between a thousand thoughts, lacking enough concentration to focus on, find, or fix anything, but Klay moves through my mind like a slowly sinking anchor.
I need to talk to Klay.
To find out the truth.
To confront him about our past.
To touch him.
No, not to touch him. Just to get him to confess about our past. I can’t get involved with somebody like him, if he abandoned me because I went into the psychiatric ward. If that’s the reason he turned into my tormentor.
Three hours until school starts.
I’ll show him crazy. I’ll show him downright insane.
