Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two)

by Rachel Dunning

  “Is possible. Papah is never very surprised when I say things to him. I wonder if he is just stoic, or if he truly has eyes everywhere.”

  I laugh and shake my head. “He really sounds like Russian Mafia, Vikki!”

  She cracks up, and before I know it, I’m downing another half-glass of Imperial.

  -2-

  She asks me about Skate. In true girl-to-girl style, I tell her everything! Including that his name is really Sebastian Kade Darby II. This elicits uproarious laughter from her.

  “So he is also rich, like me.”

  “Apparently.”

  “And he chose to give up college to pursue a life in arts, like me.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Hmmm.” She pulls out the erotic sketch and I see her legs go closer. She downs a quick glass of vodka. “Blaze, dis picture and dis vodka make me so fucking horny. God!” She gets up and fans her top, walks to the balcony. She opens the glass door and lights up a Parliament. a gust of chilled air rushes in, blowing her lightly curled hair back, and crawling up through my denims to make my skin break into goosebumps.

  “Is warm today, no?”

  “No!”

  She smokes her ciggy dry and kills it in an outside ashtray. When she gets back in, she says. “Blaze, I hope you are not planning on seeing your sexy boyfriend tonight. Because in Russia, whenever we meet a good friend, we drink lots of vodka.”

  “Well, in America, when someone offers you lots of vodka, you never turn it down.”

  She smiles. And that’s when the girl-fun starts for real.

  -3-

  Vikki’s accent not only comes out when she’s flirting with boys, but also when she’s getting a little tipsy. “Tonight is not deserve cheap Vodka.” She lifts her glass. “Cheerrrs.” And downs it. She’s standing. I’m sitting. The Vodka’s cutting a blazing firetrail down my throat by the time she’s poured and downed another for herself. She smacks her lips. “Ahhh,” she says. “Is good for voice!” And she pulls out another Parliament, but doesn’t light it.

  I’m still trying to recover from the red-hot liquor shock. She takes the glass from my hand, fills it up. I down it. This time I don’t stay quiet. I stand up like there’s a poker up my ass. “MotherFUCK! GAWHD that burns!” She takes my glass. Pours. Puts it in my hand. When I stare at it, wondering why it’s moving when I’m absolutely certain my hand is steady, she nudges it up with her fingers. And it lands in my mouth.

  My legs go wobbly. I sit, glass dangling.

  She takes it, pours, in my hand, nudge. Drink.

  Again.

  The room spins faster. I feel like I’m at the end of a lasso, being swung by a freaking cowboy on a hotdamn bronco Oh yeah baby bring it on WOW!

  And now I’m guffawing.

  The forty-plus dollar bottle of Vodka disappears in less than an hour.

  Vikki pulls out a phone from her purse, flips open the book-style cover. Plugs it into a solitary speaker standing on a pedestal in one corner.

  Understand this now: I’m standing looking at her (more like swaying—and don’t ask me how I’m standing when I was sitting a second ago), the empty glass in my hand, and it’s difficult to keep her in focus. I’m also feeling...warm and bubbly and happy...in my chest. And I’m kinda wondering why, because...

  Wait. Where was I?

  Thump. Thump. Click. Thump. Thump.

  Lorde. The song is Royals. “OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SONG!” I sway, close my eyes. The glass and my hand are doing this kind of sixties hippie-in-the-sky movement where all I need now is a tie-dye shirt and a little extra hair down below my arms and I’d be talking to Vikki about how much I love her and the world and how it’s all connected and— Wow, I’m happy! “Gimmmeszummorrevodka!”

  Vikki cracks up laughing. I stumble back onto her two-seater, examining its leather intently. Trying to discern its very substance. Now, if it would all just sit still long enough...

  Vikki’s next to me with—and it takes me about a whole minute to figure this out—orange juice. “Huh?”

  “Ve drink more orange juice first, then back wiss Vodka!” VawhdKKA!

  I can’t put up much resistance. She pours a bunch of OJ in my glass. I down it, stick my hand out. After the third glass, I’ve had enough. I lean back on the couch’s side-rest and look up at the twirling ceiling. When I say “I love him, you know” (which comes out as “I...lovem...yoooooo no!”), it’s as if I’m expressing a revelation to the universe itself. As if I’m talking to some unknown entity in the room here with us. A gaseous substance. A fabric of some sort—the very essence of our galaxy...

  Yeah, Imperial Vodka—good shit.

  The spin of the room becomes too pronounced—a dying ship on a swirling ocean. I kick my Skechers off, stretch my legs out onto Vikki’s lap (she’s since sat down.) She’s drinking out the bottle now (the OJ bottle!) “Love is good ssing, you know? Is reason for life. That and music.”

  In my current state, any statement requires deep thought, whether to understand its ramifications, or simply to understand what the hell’s just been said! My lip goes numb as I ponder that last word from her. Music. She’s staring straight ahead at her cupboard with no TV. Then she looks at me, and starts laughing. I laugh with her, not because anything’s particularly funny. But also because it is, I mean, it really is freaking uproarious!

  “You’ve made me feel so much better, Vikki! So much better about...everything.” She grunts a chuckle out.

  She gets up and pulls out another Imperial bottle, gestures with it toward my glass.

  “Oh, god, no. I’m done for today!” I look back up at the ceiling. I hear the bottle hit the glass table after she pours herself another drink. “I really do love him. I dunno if that’s because I’m drunk as a skunk and I’d probably love anyone right now. But I do. I love him with all my heart. All of me.”

  “You are talking of blonde boy, no?”

  I frown at her, notice she’s starting to sway a little more herself. And it’s not just my vision. “Yes! Him! Declan Cox.”

  “Cocks?”

  No funnier statement has ever been made in the history of funny statements. I make a note to let Kevin Hart know about this one. When we stop laughing, she says, “He is really sexy guy. Big muscle. And unbelievable tattoos.”

  “Yes, and unbelievable sex! Fuck, it’s hot with him!” I realize—somewhere in the distance—that this is the vodka talking, sort of.

  “Blaze, you must stop or I am going to get even more horny now.”

  “Call him!”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “No! He’s mine!” I slap her wrist. “Sebastian Kade the Second!”

  “Who?”

  I snatch the sex sketch from the table, shove it in her face. “SKATE!”

  “Oh. No, Vikki is not in good state of mind.”

  “You’re in the perfect state of mind! Call him!”

  She suppresses a chuckle, and a mischievous glint passes over her liquid eyes. She gets up and stumbles over to her bag. (At which point I think: If she’s drunk, I must be utterly and completely zonked!)

  She hunts in her purse for her phone. She can’t find it. She empties the contents out onto the floor (one box of Durex Pleasure Pack, three lipsticks, a mirror, a scrunched-up copy of Vogue, cigarettes, papers, half a sandwich, a piece of lettuce, sunglasses, sunglasses, sunglasses...etc etc etc ad infinitum forever and so on) then sits on a stool by her kitchen counter, scratches her head. “Where is my phone?” She looks up at me, and about an hour later (or so it feels like it), I look at the speaker she plugged it into. We laugh. She gets up and grabs it (oh thank god that thumping noise is over. I need silence!) She sits back on the stool. Her heel slips twice off the crossbar at the bottom of it. She holds the phone to her ear.

  “Is...Skate?” She smiles at me. “Skate...is Viktoriya here.” She almost falls off the stool.

  Then she says, “Want to fuck?”

  And then she puts the phone down.

&
nbsp; -4-

  Before we pass out completely, I actually remember to ask Vikki to give me her demo songs. Because I wanna mix them into my set at Sacrament.

  It’s not long after that when I fall asleep...

  The dreams I have are hot and sensuous. I toss, I turn. My skin goes fiery. Declan’s pulsing cock enters me and I’m sweating, moist, thrumming all over internally. My pussy tightens, wettens, squeezes and zings as his shaft grinds slowly in and out of me, glistening and massive.

  He groans, roars. I moan. His bright blue eyes shine into me. His face contorts.

  He explodes inside me and, in my dream, I explode as well...

  In life, my eyes fire open. And I’m starting to get an idea of how Vikki felt when she got up earlier and fanned herself after I reminded her of Skate. Because I feel the same now: Tense as a steel-iron pole holding up a mammoth skyscraper, needing only a breeze to make it snap.

  I stretch a hand down over my underwear. I’m sticky as hell; just examining it almost makes me burst. I bite my lip hard.

  I put my hands back under my head, and I think of Declan. And how much I need him...

  Vikki’s on the floor, head on the couch, legs stretched out. Passed out.

  I call Deck to see what he’s doing, and to tell him I love him. And that I need him.

  But he squashes the call.

  And that makes me abruptly cold.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “YOU’RE THE WHOLE DAMN SONG TO ME”

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  Someone calls. I squash it without even looking at my phone.

  I’m talking to a Dr. Abrahams because “Dr. Gehrig is at our Swiss institution right now.” Abrahams tells me that Gina’s case is worse in the sense that she’s fallen into a catatonic state where she doesn’t even receive perception from the environment anymore. Before, she might startle at the break of a bottle, even throw a fit and maybe get violent.

  None of this is happening now.

  “And that’s a bad thing?” I ask, simple-minded that I am. “Is it not good that she’s not getting violent?”

  “A child who cannot speak will cry and wail when it needs something. It will make itself heard. It never sits back and lets its toothache pester it, or its feces sit unaddressed. It makes a noise. It’s a natural survival mechanism: Calling out to those stronger than it, to help it. As it gets older, it will resist and protest actions that it feels hurt its survival. Sometimes violently. Children lack the speech and vocal abilities to reason with their enemies, so they resort to physical defenses. At least when Gina was reacting, she was still, in some remote way, in touch with the world. Yes, the world was full of monsters and living gargoyles, but those gargoyles represented real people. I’d enter a room, and she’d think I was an angel. Not insane, just a little ‘incorrectly wired’ so that the perceptions aren’t received accurately. But, now, she doesn’t even notice me entering the room. In other words, she doesn’t fight perceived threats to survival. She’s given up—or, her mind has given up, which is really the same thing. And that is very bad. Because when a person fights, there is still hope for them, even if they fight the wrong thing. It’s when the fight goes out of them that the hope is gone. Gina’s fight has gone out of her, completely.”

  “My friend—our friend, Gina’s and mine—told me you think me seeing her might...jog...something or other?”

  He sighs. “Dr. Gehrig’s idea. He’s the head doctor here. He had a look at her before returning to Switzerland. Her case had deteriorated drastically by then. And he suggested it to her parents.”

  “Who no doubt went ballistic.” Doc Abrahams here doesn’t comment on that. “Doc, can’t you just medicate her or something? I mean, aren’t there drugs for this kind of stuff?”

  “Medicate what? She’s already...” He looks around, then turns me away from a nurse at the end of the corridor. When he talks, his voice is low. “Mr. Cox, I wouldn’t say this to her parents. But what exactly would we give her—sedatives? Her mind itself is a walking sedative. We’re trying to wake her up from this dark sleep of hers, this continuous nightmare she’s in. It’s so simple, a light trigger, a person from the past... Anything could do it. If we understood the triggers of the mind, we could simply press that button. But we don’t. Either way, this isn’t a psychiatric institution. We’re a home. We offer rest and quiet. Her parents chose us because we don’t prescribe drugs. If they want to go that route, they’ll have to put her in an institution. We’re not holding her here. They could do that if they wanted to. They don’t believe it’ll help her—devout Catholics or something.”

  I forgot, they’re into that whole Holistic Approach thing here...

  “So, Mr. Cox, are you ready?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He puts a hand on my back, gestures me ahead. “None of us ever are.”

  He opens the door to a room that looks simply like a teenage girl’s bedroom—a young teenage girl, even though Gina’s twenty-one or twenty-two now. Pink walls, a dresser on the left with a hairbrush on it. A photo of her parents. A canopy bed.

  A black-haired girl sits on it, facing the window on the other side, her back to me. She’s swaying left to right, lightly, as if she were a twig on a tree being pushed by an early Spring breeze. Must be Gina, I think. Only, Gina was twice her size. This girl—in her over-baggy white shirt—looks like a frame of bones.

  “I’ll stay with you, Mr. Cox,” the Doc whispers.

  We’re standing behind her, looking at her looking out the window.

  “Gina, Dr. Abrahams here. How are you today?”

  Gina sways. Twig in a tree.

  “We have someone here to see you, Gina.” He edges me forward.

  She sways.

  “It’s Declan Cox, Gina. You remember Declan?”

  She sways, lightly. Gentle breeze...

  I get to the end of the bed, look at her profile. Her skin is gray and gaunt, her eyes as deep blue as the bottom of the Pacific. They quiver, wild and frantic—left right left right left right. Up down, left right, up down up left right—

  Doc Abrahams: “Gina?”

  She’s holding a Rupert the Bear teddy, stroking it, rubbing its head. Stroking it like she’s looking into an endless abyss of flaming madness. Staring at the devil himself. Or god. Or god fucking the devil.

  “Gina? We have Declan—”

  Her head cocks slightly to the left, then it gimbals over to the right a little. She looks at me. Spittle drops gently from the side of her mouth, a trickle of it flowing lightly all the way down to her sweatpants.

  “Gina? Declan—”

  She closes her mouth. The minutest of twitches pushes her left eyebrow down. The hand on Rupert’s head presses a little harder down on it. The other—around Rupert’s neck—squeezes, squeezes, squeezes...

  The hand on his head pushes down further. And then it starts squeezing it as well. Rupert’s ear pops in between her fingers. Her middle finger is going into his button eye. Her head’s still cocked left, looking at me. Expressionless.

  “Gina. Do you remember Declan?”

  And that’s when she bolts, upwards, backwards! Slam! Hits the back wall! Her eyes terrified! Frenzied! She starts to shake.

  And then...she screams.

  -2-

  I guess it’s the sound a young girl would make if her face were being slowly cut with a razor by a man with yellowing teeth and breath smelling like old cat.

  That’s the amount of terror I hear in her shrill voice.

  -3-

  Two nurses come in. I swear I was expecting a Cuckoo’s Nest scene here. But the nurses don’t even dress in white. They gently coax Gina to calm down, and after a few minutes, the screaming stops. We’re outside the room already. Doc is smiling. My palms are wet and cold, my legs are weak. I feel like I need the bathroom.

  “Well, I guess that was a bad idea—”

  Doc looks up at me. “Mr. Cox, that was the most progress we’ve had in over six months!�
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  My heart still hasn’t recovered. Razor and cat’s breath is all I’m thinking. “I’m sorry— What?”

  He explains how there was indeed recognition. A step forward.

  “But she was scared out of her mind!”

  “Scared of what? Reality? We don’t know. Our job is to help her face what’s here. Sure, when she saw you, she probably didn’t see you, she saw something else. But at least she saw something! There was perception, recognition!”

  “Can I sit down? That was a little...intense.”

  He takes me to the nearest bench. “Mr. Cox—”

  “Declan, sir. Please, call me Declan.” Because Mr. Cox was my father’s name.

  “Declan, I’d need to confer with Dr. Gehrig. But I think we’ll need you to come back here. With proper counseling, we might be able to coax her back to reality with your help!”

  I feel sick to the stomach and I don’t know why. “Uhm, sure. I mean, it’d be the least I could do.” I give him my number and he tells me he’ll be in touch with me as soon as possible.

  When I get outside, about a hundred yards from the huge black gates, I hurl.

  Then I hurl again.

  On the third time, I’m thinking about Gina’s last words to me: You’re a devil, aren’t you, Deck?

  I think that’s what she sees when she looks at me. And who is the devil to you? And how would you scream if you saw him in your room, only a few feet away?

  The thought makes me retch one more time, even though there’s nothing left to come out except blood and spit.

  -4-

  Back in the car, I can’t join in with Skate’s enthusiasm about “the hot blonde singer from Red Lipstikk and how she wants to fuck me.” All his words just make me sick to the stomach.

  That scream. God, that tormented scream. And how long has she been living in that world? And was I the one who put here there? How can you move forward from that shit? Dino deserves to take a piece of me. He deserves it. Blaze? No, he won’t hurt her. But me? I won’t even put up a fight...