Wicked Me

by Lindsey R. Loucks

A firm resolve settled into the pit of my stomach, and just before I looked away, he must have seen my thoughts stamped in the rigid lines of my face because he said my name in a soft plea.

  “Get away from me,” I said, my voice as shaky as the rest of my body.

  The officers read him his rights and steered him out of the room, but I hardly glanced at his retreating figure. A collective exhale sighed from the crowd once he was gone.

  Charlotte appeared at my side again, her face flushed with anger and her mouth moving, but too many things. Too many things were happening all at once, and I desperately wanted the earth to stop spinning for just one second. One second to curl my hands around my cracked heart and breathe.

  30

  Paige

  FUELED WITH ENOUGH Styrofoam cups of coffee to power a small nation, I stayed awake the entire night at the hospital. Deep vein thrombosis, the doctors had told Charlotte. Blood clot. She would have to stay in the hospital for at least a week, and Nicole and I were happy to keep her company from our permanent spots on the couch that had been shoved into her room by one of the nurses.

  Happy. Such a relative term. My mind reeled the entire night with everything that had happened. With Rick. Worry for Charlotte. Honest-to-goodness glee for Nicole.

  And Sam... Even without the coffee, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. From one minute to the next, I went from hating him, to wanting him to explain to me what the hell had happened, to fear. All-consuming fear that the man I thought I knew wasn’t the same person I had fallen in love with. That kind of fear reopened old wounds that I thought had sewed themselves shut a long time ago.

  Rick had been kind and gentle during our secret rendezvous, but when the end of summer neared, he turned cold and heartless. He began talking about his wife I didn’t know he had nonstop at the dinner table while I hyperventilated into my napkin. When I stopped coming to his bedroom at night, he would steal into mine when I wasn’t there and plaster my walls with naked photos of myself. On his last day at my parents’ house, we didn’t say a word to each other. And then he was gone, leaving me with an infinite supply of shame and his baby.

  It was hard not to believe that returning to D.C. had been a mistake, in more ways than one. I really had stepped into the past and relived the same lapse in judgment, this time with a different man. All of this twenty-first technology and we still didn’t have an invention that stamped all our secrets on our foreheads, scarlet-letter style. I would pay someone to be the prototype to test it out and not-so-proudly flaunt my mistakes as long as I could see others’. Because privacy is overrated, thought the girl who had only told two people about her past transgressions, and one of them was my therapist. I was the queen of secrets, but I no longer cared to have them anymore.

  But a part of me just wanted to hear Sam’s voice again, to breathe in his existence like I’d been doing for the past six weeks. Without him, the air felt heavier, clogging up my throat with a sharp sting that burned into my eyes for hours.

  “Paige,” Charlotte whispered, and I instantly swiped at my wet cheeks. She stared through glassy eyes, evidence of all the morphine they’d pumped through her IV, her head tilted to the side on the bleach-white pillow. She’d likely been watching me for some time.

  “What? Do you need something?” I leaned forward on the couch, careful not to shift Nicole’s head in my lap too much, and rested a hand on Charlotte’s arm, ready to spring up and tackle a nurse if I had to.

  “You’re sad,” she said on a sigh. Her eyelids drooped, but she fought them back open.

  I shrugged at that severe understatement. “You just focus on declaring war on that blood clot.”

  “My blood, the traitor. What did I do to it?” She blinked hard as if struggling to keep awake. “Want some morphine? It will make your whole chest fly away.”

  “As tempting as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”

  “Call the jail. See if they’ll let you talk to him.”

  I shook my head, wishing we didn’t have to go there. Besides, I’d already called. The officer on duty at the jail had said Sam was in the infirmary. He wouldn’t give me any more information than that.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk to him even if I was able to,” I said.

  Several chunks of Charlotte’s black and purple hair cradled her cheek, and somehow that and her soft smile made her appear childlike. Almost vulnerable. And for reasons that made no sense, I wondered if Her had ever been in a hospital with her hair tucked beneath her cheek and an IV pole next to her bed.

  A heaviness pinched my lungs, the same soul-crushing kind I had lived with for years. Guilt. Raw guilt. I envisioned it as a collection of sharp needles I had somehow worked into a ball, repeatedly stabbing myself until it was manageable to hide away somewhere dark and lonely. And now... It was uncoiling from its foundation—had been uncoiling since I’d come back to D.C.—with violent jabs straight to my heart. But my heart could only take so much, especially after yesterday.

  Carefully so I wouldn’t wake Nicole, I shifted out from underneath her thirty-pound head and stood. “I’ll be back.”

  Charlotte giggled. “Okay, Ah-nold.”

  “You’re high,” I said and touched her foot underneath the blanket on the way past.

  “And you smell like a coffee factory, but I don’t love you any less.”

  I blew her a long-winded, coffee-breath kiss and swept past the smiley-faced curtain that separated her bed from an empty one. Nurses of all shapes and sizes rocketed up and down the hallway, genuine smiles lighting their faces, their shoes a symphony of squeaks on the pristine floor tiles. I hadn’t met a crabby nurse yet, which made me wonder if I had been offered the LOC job, would I be all happy feet like them? I honestly didn’t know.

  During one my many treks throughout the night for a coffee bath—I mean break—I had seen an honest-to-goodness pay phone on the wall near the cafeteria. An archaic invention like a pay phone in an otherwise modern hospital might have gone ignored by most people, but thank goodness I wasn’t most people. Plus, I’d needed a phone.

  After my part in what I would forever call the LOC last-day circus, I’d discovered that my cell was missing from my purse, and all signs pointed to Rick as the prime suspect. He must’ve snatched it to destroy the evidence of his debauchery before he hightailed away from Sam’s fists and the police. It had all my contacts, all my saved photos of Kay and her little boy, Drew, grinning in front of dramatic Kansas sunsets, and Sam’s number, which I could throat-punch myself for not committing to memory. It wasn’t as if I could call it and he would pick up right then, but still.

  I wandered past the pay phone several times the rest of the week, drifting from the cafeteria to Charlotte’s bedside and back again.

  “Call him,” Charlotte said on Tuesday. Her leg was stretched out in front of her on the bed, her calf still swollen but not near as bad as it had been. Nicole’s turtle, Jimmy, sat near it, blinking slowly at the blanket fibers.

  I shrugged at an episode of The Brady Bunch, which ended that conversation. But later that evening, I did call and learned he’d been transferred to the Department of Corrections. After signing up for their collect call services, several long minutes passed while I waited for Sam to pick up, my mind tumbling over what he might say to me and if I was prepared to hear it.

  “Hello?”

  So many different emotions clogged my throat at the sound of his voice that I had to swallow several times before I answered. “Sam. Are you all right?”

  Silence for a long moment, and then, “It would be better if you didn’t call again.”

  I shook my head, my reflection only a dark blur in the pay phone’s silver metal box. He sounded different, stiff, like he didn’t know who I was. “No, Sam, it’s—”

  “Bye, Paige.” The line went dead.

  I held the phone away from my ear, not sure what just happened. It would be better if I didn’t call? Better for whom? Certainly not me. Did he not think I deserved ev
en the vaguest of explanations? Even after I’d let myself spin out of control and fall for him?

  I hung up the phone and blinked down at the lines between the shiny tiles on the floor. Straight and narrow. Like the path I’d had all planned out when I’d arrived back in D.C. Instead, I’d let my heart lead me blind like a dumbass. The lines on the floor seemed to sway until I pinned all my balance on the right toe of my sandals, which cut through the center of one of the lines. Breaking it while simultaneously crushing it.

  Charlotte didn’t tell me to call him the rest of the week. Somehow she and Nicole knew, even though I didn’t say a word. Charlotte let me rule the remote to her hospital room’s TV while Nicole forced chocolate milkshakes down my throat. Okay, maybe not forced.

  Thursday afternoon, the day Charlotte was to be released, I wandered once again to the cafeteria. Adele’s “Hello” began playing softly from the television in the corner at the same time my gaze connected with the pay phone. Her haunting voice followed me around like some sort of ghost from the past. It was spooky, and yet I never got tired of listening to her.

  Now, though, hearing this song felt like some kind of sign, like I had almost made it to a destination I’d been heading toward for years and didn’t even realize it. I strode toward the phone, my movements calm, practiced even.

  A few coins I found at the bottom of my wallet clanked inside hollow metal when I plugged them into the slot. Some phone numbers I did commit to memory, especially that of my parents. Whether they wanted to hear from me or not, it was probably coded in all child DNA to have their parents’ numbers on hand, just in case.

  It took four rings for Mom to answer. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.” I had to smile even though the sound of her voice stung my eyes. “Paige. Your daughter.” It felt silly to say, but we hadn’t talked in a long while.

  “Hi, honey. Is everything okay? Where are you calling from?” Her slight Latina accent always rang clearer when she was worried.

  “The hospital, but it’s for a friend of mine. I’m...okay...” I didn’t know how to finish that lie, so I let it dangle and drop. “But listen, I didn’t get the job at the Library of Congress, so I’ll be coming home soon, and I would like it very much if you and Dad would have a conversation with me about...” I swallowed hard, my throat ticking and protesting on the name I’d hidden away, but now perched on my tongue with a surprisingly sweet flavor I hadn’t tasted in years. “Sophia.”

  And oh my God, it hurt to say Her name, to relive the nine months I’d spent falling in love with her in a split second. Every craving for pickles. Every somersault inside my womb. Every Adele song that would calm her down so I could sleep. Her favorite was “Crazy for You,” and I was. How could I not be?

  Tears blurred the number pad on the phone. A sob welled, but I clamped a hand over my mouth to contain it. That guilt I’d shoved away within myself in a tight little ball lay bare for all to see, a pile of needles with sharp points shimmering with all the tears I’d cried for her. The day her adopted parents took her home, I didn’t think I could ever say goodbye to her and survive it. It had gutted me so thoroughly, I knew I would never be the same again.

  “Okay,” Mom said, her voice laced with concern.

  I nodded into the phone, not quite sure if I was ready to speak yet, but I wasn’t finished. I wouldn’t be finished until I explained to them both that I wasn’t wicked. It was a mistake, a complicated one that had cost me my childhood, but a single moment in time couldn’t define the rest of my existence. I refused to let it, starting now.

  “Someone stole my phone, so I don’t have her number.” I sounded calm, collected, like I had rehearsed this conversation in a dream I didn’t remember. “Could you give it to me again?”

  “Of course. Let me go get her parents’ letter. They’re all eager to hear from you.” She put the phone down, and shuffling papers filled the line. When she returned, she said, “It’s okay that you didn’t get the job. You know that, right?”

  Her words lifted a burden on my shoulders I hadn’t realized I was carrying until it was gone. She didn’t sound disappointed at all. Just...motherly.

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yeah, I know.”

  She recited the number, which I jotted down on my hand like a Nicole clone. I promised to call when I was back in Wichita, and then we hung up. It was kind of shocking how little awkwardness there had been during that conversation. Sharing cat video links via email to an actual two-minute conversation. With words. The very definition of baby steps.

  And now the biggest baby step of all. I smacked my forehead with the receiver while I plugged more change into the slot because my hands were shaking. If my goal was to have stray hospital visitors slide me wary glances, then mission accomplished.

  All I had to do was relax. Be myself. Be myself but toned way down on the quirky scale.

  Each number I jabbed on the dial pad thinned the air and tightened the collar of my button-up shirt. Never mind. I couldn’t be myself because I had no idea what to say. Because what if her parents answered? Or what if she did and she asked tough questions? She should ask those questions, but I didn’t know if I was ready to answer them for the single person to whom the answers mattered most.

  Somehow, my finger finished dialing, and a shrill ring swamped my body with a cold sweat. I could’ve hung up and done this another day, but I wanted a promise of some kind of future away from Washington D.C., away from heartache, away from Sam.

  And that future sounded bright and cheery and delightfully intelligent in the form of a little voice. “Hi, this is the Caladan residence. This is Sophia speaking.”

  I gasped at the instant connection that seemed to tug me through the phone. Even though I had never heard her speak, I recognized the sound of her. Her voice solidified her into a piece of myself, and I so desperately wanted to look at her, to hold her.

  “Hello?”

  I took a deep breath and said the first words I’d said to my daughter in a long time, “Hello...Sophia. My name is Paige Sullivan.”

  31

  Sam

  Six Months Later

  “HUUUH-HUH-HUH-HUUUH, huh huh huh.”

  Ten more minutes. I just had to keep my shit for ten more minutes, then I’d be out of here.

  “Huuuh-huh-huh-huuuh, huh huh huh.”

  My cellmate Co, who lay on the bottom bunk with headphones drilled to his ears the last few months he’d been here, slapped his chest and stomach for a drumbeat while he sang along.

  Nine minutes and forty-five seconds, then I’d get to see the sun, inhale air that wasn’t infested with farts and rotten teeth, stare at something other than Co’s ridiculous number of Lego “spaceships” swinging from the ceiling. They weren’t even glued together, so pieces rained down on the floor all the time. Nothing brought thoughts of violence and murder quicker than leaping from the top bunk in the middle of the night to take a piss and landing on a deadly Lego piece. But I’d pushed passed it, breathed through it, whatever it took to be released on time. And in nine minutes thirty-one seconds, I would be.

  The game of teeter-totter politics made the last few months into a media circus. Hill’s fuzzy video of me not shooting Alex had been trumped by the crystal clear video Tony’s camera had taken. Hill hadn’t been expecting that, I was sure, or the found gunpowder residue that corroborated my story over his. He had hundreds of pictures of me standing at 131st and Chestnut, but none of them showed my face because of my hood. It had been my word against his that he had been blackmailing me, because all of his texts had been from pre-paid phones. The police were still investigating him for an unrelated drug charge at his club, the Underground Hill. I’d been cleared of the two murders, but not drug possession with intent to sell the heroin in my backseat, fleeing from police pursuit, resisting arrest, or assault against Senator Rick Chambers. The judge told me I was getting off easy with six months in jail and a $500,000 fine. I didn’t argue.

  Riley
, on the other hand, was in deeper shit than me. Taking bribes from Rick in exchange for campaign funding, soliciting bribes to Hill, campaign finance fraud... The list went on. I honestly didn’t know when I would be seeing my big brother again, but at least his and Dad’s dick pics were secure. So hurray for that.

  Mademoiselle Goldfinch gave an anonymous tip to the police, and they found Rose’s little black book at Rick’s house. She had made sure they checked for tampering, because somehow my name had been written in it. Riley had ripped part of it away from Rose when he’d visited. He’d given it to Rick so he’d help fund Dad’s campaign, as part of the deal he and Riley had made. Then, Rick had erased some poor schmuck’s name in it and stuck mine in, the fucking bastard, with clipped on photos that kind of looked like me, but weren’t. Every listed name in the book had been investigated. With Rose’s knowledge of who was and wasn’t in the book, as well as more pictures she’d kept hidden to prove it, the resulting scandals lit up every news channel. Mademoiselle Goldfinch was a household name. Needless to say, Dad’s bid for presidency ended before it began.

  “Huuuh-huh-huh-huuuh, huh huh huh.”

  “Co,” I shouted from my seat at the desk. I leaned forward and waved a hand in his face, not hard to do since we lived in a six-by-eight-foot room, but his eyes were closed. So I snatched at the wire and yanked.

  He snapped upright, two huge feet thudding against the tile, his wide, coffee-colored nose pulsing like a pissed-off bull’s. His fists, which were about as big as my head, clenched against the thin blanket on his mattress.

  “Sorry, man.” I held his headphones out to him. “It’s time to say goodbye.”

  Co’s shoulders drooped a little. He tucked his chin, but his brown eyes never left my mouth.

  Dude was a master lip reader. He could see a conversation across the room and retell it in his own unique voice. It served me well on more than one occasion, once I learned how to understand him. I didn’t know sign language. I was pretty sure he didn’t, either. He didn’t seem all that excited to learn, even though there were signing books in the library, because he said he’d be made fun of, said it was best not to talk at all, except to me. Maybe he was right, but what would he do when I left? Become mute?