Dead Man's Stitch

by Meg Collett

  “I don’t blame her. That’s probably what happens when you see milk being used as a—”

  “Okay! That’s enough. See you two later,” I nearly shouted over Ollie.

  With a laugh, they went through the door, letting it slap shut.

  I turned to gather my supplies from the autopsies. I didn’t relish rolling the bodies back into their little square cubbies, but I wanted nothing more than to get their bare feet out of my sight. It felt like my chest was wrenched tight with a deep breath I hadn’t released all night. My hair reeked of formaldehyde, and I wouldn’t have time for a shower before the first bell.

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  I yelped in surprise and spun around.

  Hatter still leaned against the row of cabinets. I’d forgotten he was in here. It was eerie how easily he could tuck himself into a corner and disappear, almost as skilled at the feat as Zero. I was so used to the Hatter who laughed and joked his way through every moment that I almost didn’t recognize this new man staring back at me with glazed eyes, dark circles beneath them, and slumped shoulders. He hadn’t changed his shirt in days.

  “Think what is true?” I asked once my heart rate had slowed.

  His eyes slid to the bodies behind me. “About hope blinding us.”

  Without my consent, my focus shifted to the loose shirtsleeve. I jerked my eyes back to his face, but he’d seen. He knew. “I think in Ollie’s case it’s true. This isn’t a chemical spill,” I said, motioning to the body behind me, “and I would put money on the fact that Dean is on Kodiak.”

  “And what about me? What about my case?”

  I didn’t know this Hatter. He scared me. It wasn’t that he’d lost his arm and wasn’t the same man physically who I’d loved. That wasn’t it at all. I would have loved him no matter what.

  But he’d lost more than his arm that night outside the slaughterhouse.

  Somehow, he’d lost the vital thing that made him Hatter, and its missing bit hung just as loosely as his empty sleeve.

  “You think hope is blinding you?” I asked.

  “I think it did—once.”

  My chest tightened around that wicked breath I still hadn’t breathed. “When?”

  He straightened off the counter. Even standing at his full height, he looked small. Shrunken. Defeated. But it was the look in his eyes, like he had something to prove, that scared me most.

  And he wouldn’t stop until he did.

  “Before Milhousse,” he murmured. “Before the antidote. Before Hex’s attack on the school. When it was just you and me and nothing between us.” His eyes briefly met mine. “When I thought we could make it.”

  He left, and I stared at the place where he’d stood, my gaze unfocused, my heart pumping dully in my chest.

  Finally, I breathed.

  It hurt as much as I’d thought it would. It ached deep in my chest, right in my heart.

  I turned back to the bodies, my gaze on their bare feet.

  They must have been so cold.

  * * *

  A finger tapped my shoulder.

  I bent lower over my notes and scribbled faster, purposefully not glancing back. At the bottom of the lecture hall, the cryptozoology professor droned on about origin symbiosis. My pen flew over my notebook as I struggled to listen and take adequate notes. I would have to teach all this to myself later tonight for the quiz tomorrow—

  The tap came again, this time a bone-bruising rap against my shoulder blade.

  With a hiss, I twisted around in my seat, drawing the attention of the other fourth-years around me, and whisper-snarled, “What?”

  Ollie leaned forward in her seat, her notes long forgotten on the small desk at her side. Her face was almost right next to mine. “I had another thought.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes. After my talk with Hatter in the morgue this morning, my entire day had been shot, along with my nerves and patience. Ollie’s insistence on discussing Marley’s presence at the school and all her ulterior motives had my teeth on edge. Not to mention I was falling farther behind in my classes, and it was only the second day of the semester.

  Without waiting for me to ask, she continued in a whisper that drew glares from other students. I grimaced apologetically. “Marley came in a helicopter.”

  “You’ve mentioned that already,” I said through my teeth.

  “But she can just call up the governor and ask about oil deliveries? It means she comes from an important family, right? Who has the governor’s number in their phone?”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “What if she’s Dean’s sister?”

  I swiveled around in my seat again. “What? Why do you think that?”

  Nearby students hushed us, but I ignored them.

  Ollie smirked. She had my attention and she knew it. “Who else would have that kind of power? You’re from an Original family, you tell me. What other family can swoop in on a private helicopter and tote around a phone with the governor’s number in it?”

  My shock was already dwindling. “But—”

  “Hear me out.” Ollie leaned closer. Our noses were almost touching. My notes were as forgotten as hers. “Dean disappears with Milhousse. While he’s regrouping, what better way to keep an eye on the university than to stage an attack and send in his sister or cousin or whoever she is to save us, win our trust, and then act as an inside spy for him? How else would she know he’s on the island?”

  She was feverish with the idea. As rabid as the aswangs in the morgue had been. “So, you admit the aswangs were Milhousse’s doing.”

  She scowled; I had her there. “I can admit they’re suspicious.”

  “And if Marley is related to Dean, you’re admitting he’s coming back. That things aren’t all that normal.”

  She leaned back enough to cross her arms. “I know he’s coming back. Hell, he might even already be here. I’m not stupid.” She pressed her lips together and swallowed.

  “Then I think it’s time to admit the aswangs were Milhousse’s concoction. Dean is up to something, and maybe instead of focusing on Marley, we should figure out where Dean is hiding on Kodiak.”

  Ollie’s forehead gleamed in the low lighting of the lecture hall. She swiped at it with the back of her hand. I frowned. “I’m not giving up on Marley. She’s lying about something. Hiding something. I don’t care if she … if she …” Ollie swallowed again. “If she knew my mother. She might just be saying that to get on my good side. And no one else is using my mom to win my favor. Not after Anchorage.”

  She took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her stomach, her eyes glazing over.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, watching her closely. “You don’t look well all of a sudden.”

  “I don’t feel so great …” Her gaze slid to her bandaged arm. “Do you think that bite—”

  But she didn’t finish. She jumped up from her seat, sending her notes fluttering to the floor, and took off for the hall’s back door.

  Sticking my pen in my mouth, I scrambled to grab my book bag and hers and gathered our notes in my fist. “Sorry. Sorry. Excuse me,” I mumbled around the pen as I dove over students’ legs.

  Down in the front, the professor stopped. “Miss Lyons, am I bothering you?”

  “Sorry!” I called over my shoulder.

  The door banged closed after Ollie. A second later, I slammed through it. Outside the class, I glanced both ways down the empty second-floor hall. In the near silence, a door closed to my left. I took off that way, juggling my notebooks, Ollie’s haphazard stack of notes, and our bags.

  When I burst through the bathroom door, Ollie’s puking was the first thing I heard. I sat our things down and walked to the first stall door. I tapped my knuckle against it. “Ollie?”

  She groaned in answer.

  I grimaced as her retching continued. Pushing at the door, I found it unlocked. I crouched behind her and held back her hair, my hand rubbing circles on her back.

&nbs
p; “This is starting to feel familiar,” I said with an attempt at a smile.

  She laughed weakly.

  I followed her out to the sinks, where she rinsed out her mouth and gargled water. With a weak sigh, she sat on the counter, her shoulders sagging. Her face was pale and drawn when she looked up at me.

  “Let me see your arm.” I held out my hand and waited.

  She pulled up her shirtsleeve to expose the bandage.

  Carefully, I unwrapped the gauze. As the last of it fell away, we stared down at her skin.

  Her muscular forearm was swollen, but the bite was clean, the torn edges a soft pink. The bite hadn’t been deep enough to require stitches, and I’d given her a dose of my antidote, even though she hadn’t felt her normal saliva effects. The wound smelled of antiseptic. Already there was a faint dark tint building as the scar formed. She was healing quickly, as she always did thanks to her halfling heritage.

  “Nothing looks wrong.”

  “But the ’swangs were foaming at the mouth,” she argued.

  “You were feeling sick before the aswang bit you,” I said, bringing my eyes to hers.

  She stared back at me. “A stomach bug? Everyone has been sick since the lab kids came in.”

  “Do you get sick every time after you eat?”

  Slowly, Ollie shook her head. “It’s just random, I guess. I wasn’t even hungry at lunch today.”

  “You’ve been nauseous. Puking. Your appetite is off. You’ve been more tired than normal. More emotional.”

  At my list, Ollie nodded. “Do you think it’s a side effect from the antidote?”

  I took her hand in mine. “Ollie.”

  She cocked her head. “What?”

  “When was your last period?”

  S I X

  Ollie

  The needle pierced my skin with the faintest hint of heat before drawing up into my flesh. Thick, bright red blood whooshed into the vial.

  “You won’t pass out, will you?”

  I blinked up at Sunny. She kept her eyes on the needle as she filled not one, not two, but three vials of blood from the crook of my arm. “What?”

  “Pass out? I can’t catch you. Just breathe, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Her eyes flicked to mine. In her gaze, I read fear. Worry. Panic. Her brown eyes stretched as wide and glittering as two brightly polished stones of amber. She used her thumb to hold down the needle beneath my skin, pulled out the last vial, undid the tourniquet around my arm, and eased the needle out. With a quick efficiency that equally startled and marveled me, Sunny had a ball of gauze against the tender skin of my inner elbow, followed by a piece of tape. She held it until it stopped bleeding then carried off the vials of blood.

  I stared at her back as she bustled around the lab she shared with Nyny. Thankfully, the lavender-haired Russian was nowhere in sight. I didn’t know what I would have done if I’d had to watch Sunny prepare my vial of blood for a chemical test while listening to Nyny’s constant incoherent chatter.

  Just watching now, while I sat here doing nothing, was almost too much.

  “Sunny,” I croaked, “wait.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, the vial held tightly in one hand as she was about to drop a chemical reactant into the tube. Her eyes showed concern. “This will be more accurate than a pregnancy test. It’s a chemiluminescent hCG test.”

  On legs that threatened to wobble right out from under me, I stood. My steps were small and slow, but Sunny waited until I came up beside her. I leaned heavily against the table.

  In that tube of blood, my fate waited.

  It was really screwed up.

  “Maybe I’m just sick.”

  Sunny’s mouth dipped into a little frown that I couldn’t look at because my eyes were watery again. “Ollie …”

  “I could have rabies.”

  “You were sick before the aswang bit you.”

  “Maybe …” But I had no more maybes. No more excuses. I just had that drop of blood and a moment of not knowing.

  In my silence, Sunny dragged her eyes from mine and turned them back to the vial. She dropped the chemical reactant into my blood, shook it, and set it carefully onto a metal tray.

  Almost instantly, it began to glow.

  Sunny looked at me. I thought she was intentionally keeping her face blank and devoid of any emotions, because I couldn’t read her, and I could always read Sunny. She was my best friend. My sister in every way but blood.

  “Ollie …”

  In her voice, I heard the answer. As if the glowing tube of blood wasn’t enough.

  My legs gave out, and I slid to the floor in a heap of puddling flesh and bones and blood that contained far too much fate for me to handle. I covered my face with my hands, but tears were already streaming down my cheeks. My throat made this weird hitching, gasping noise, and I was rocking back and forth, my body shuddering with uncontrollable sobs.

  It all felt so … separate. Like I could look down from the ceiling and watch as Sunny dropped beside me and wrapped me in her arms, her face pressed to my hair as she held me while I lost my ever-loving mind. She ran her hand up and down my back, through the ends of my fishtail braid, over and over again.

  She should have been the pregnant one.

  She would make a good mom. A great mom. It should have been her.

  “Oh shit,” I choked as the thought settled into my brain. It brought me crashing down from my viewpoint by the ceiling, where I was detached and safe, and trapped me back in my body. I felt every single drop of terror pumping out of my heart. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit.”

  I was going to be a mom. A mom.

  “You’re okay,” Sunny was saying against my hair. “It’s going to be okay. You’re fine. You’re—”

  “I can’t. I can’t do this.” I pulled away from her, shaking my head like I could shake the baby right out of me. “This won’t work.”

  Sunny took my hands and squeezed them hard enough to send waves of heat up my arms. “You can.”

  “No,” I sobbed. “I can’t.”

  “You’re just scared. That’s all. You’re fine.” But Sunny’s doe eyes were flooded with fear too, and her voice shook when she spoke, and she wasn’t reassuring at all. Nothing about this was fine.

  I ripped my hands free from her and jumped to my feet. I paced back and forth in front of Sunny, between the lab tables, my eyes darting between the microscope and my nail as I chewed the shit out of it. “Could you be wrong? Should you check it again?”

  “I can have Nyny double-check it,” Sunny offered without an ounce of offense because she was a saint. “But there’s definitely hCG in your blood if the chemiluminescent test is reacting that way.”

  “What’s that? What’s hCG?”

  “A hormone that tells your body to start preparing for a …” She paused to collect herself. “For a baby. Ollie, you are pregnant.”

  My knees quaked again, and I swayed to a stop in front of her. My vision of her wavered behind a sheet of tears.

  There were rabid aswangs in the woods of Kodiak Island. One had bitten me last night. I had a pack of two hundred ’swangs waiting just beyond the fence. I’d killed my father with the blade he’d given me. My boyfriend’s father had murdered my mother. I was a halfling, not even human. I’d been kidnapped, tortured, left for dead. I’d been rebuilt in my father’s image and torn back down and reconstructed in my mother’s. I’d come home to Fear University and exorcised a demon, but he’d be back. Dean always came back. And when he did, there would be a reckoning. Until then, my home was a half-empty school behind tall fences, protected by a pack of aswangs that terrified me.

  My life was a disaster. It was a wonder I’d stayed alive this long.

  And I was bringing a baby into it?

  “I can’t,” I whispered, blinking at Sunny and freeing more tears from my eyes. “I can’t. This won’t work.” Then, louder, “I can’t, Sunny.”

  She stood and watche
d me like I was a dog that might attack her. “You’re just scared—”

  “No,” I snapped. “I’m being realistic. Isn’t that what you and Luke wanted from me? To stop hoping and be realistic?” I threw my hands into the air and shouted, “Well, I’m being fucking realistic, and I can’t be a mom. I can’t be pregnant.”

  “But you are,” Sunny said softly. “You’re pregnant.”

  “So … so …” My voice wavered back to a near whisper, trembling on the vowels like my heart trembled in my chest. “So take it out. We take it out.”

  Sunny blanched. “Ollie,” she whispered, my name hush-hush on her lips.

  But I shook my head. “We have to. I can’t do this. We have to take it out. I don’t—” The words choked me, but I shoved them out. “I don’t want it.”

  The four words hung between us like stardust drifting from the cosmos. They were too ephemeral to pull from the air and stuff back into my mouth, too much like vapor to clutch to tightly and reassure myself they were the right four words. They floated there, and I could see them, I could taste them on my tongue, but they would forever be out in the world. I could never unspeak them.

  Sunny walked through the words as if she didn’t even see them right there and took me in her arms. She wrapped me in a hug so tight my ribs bowed. I wanted to push her away, to be strong enough to hold myself up and repeat those four words and get down to the business of them, but my body betrayed me.

  I fell into her hug like a tree deep in the woods that no one saw or heard. I fell into her because she—her friendship—was the only thing that made me feel like I actually existed. That I was alive and breathing. That I wasn’t just four words of stardust forever caught in the air.

  I don’t want it.

  I can’t want it.

  “You,” I mumbled against Sunny’s shoulder. “I can’t want you.”

  Together, Sunny and I sank to the floor, almost right back in the same spot we’d started. We always ended up on the floor, clinging to each other as we cried.

  This world was just pain and fear, and it made best friends spend more time on the floor crying than laughing.