by Megan Hand
There’s that smugness again. “Actually…yes.”
When we’re on the road, Jay asks me if I found anything.
“No, just an office address and number in case we need it, but I don’t even know if his dad lives in the state since he’s in the Senate. I wrote it down just in case.” I lay the paper down on the console between us.
Jay’s brows are creasing again, but he doesn’t say anything. I wish I could just wipe it all off his face. I wish I could kiss him and take both of our minds off of our task at hand. I wish…well, as long as I’m wishing for things I’d actually wish for my life to rewind two days, so I wouldn’t know about any of this. But that’s not fair, is it? If it weren’t for this strange rewind, dream, whatever, other girls would be hurt. It would be someone else’s daughters or sisters or girlfriends.
Trigger wasn’t kidding about the lab thing. When we arrive back at campus, he directs us to Landon Laboratory. He also wasn’t kidding about being a super genius. Despite my original prediction of his age, he’s actually twenty-two and a first year master’s student in the pharmacology program. The kid already has his Bachelor’s in science with minors in chemistry and biomedical engineering, and he’s involved in a research program with one of the prominent professors here. I can’t catch the name because it’s about fifty-nine letters long. I think the professor is Indian or Romanian or something.
He tells us all of this on the way, and all I can think is, No wonder they wanted him. They do go for the best.
“So,” I recall something he said in the car, “when you said ‘finish,’ that didn’t mean…”
“Yup.” He grits his teeth. “I still have to make them.”
“Make? As in they’re not all finished?”
“Nope.”
He swipes his keycard for the front security door, holds it open for us, and we follow him in. We take an elevator to the fourth floor, dubbed the Pharm Wing. He swipes, holds the door again, and we’re in a lab.
I’ve been in plenty of labs over the past year. None looked like this. There are three long stainless steel tables, lined up one after the other. There are no actual walls, only frosted-glass cabinets separated every few feet by skinny, long windows. Beakers, tubes, fancy thermometers, whoozits, and whatzits are already set out neatly on the tables.
In the pre-med program, we’re supposed to major in something bodily for our undergrad. I chose biology since I’m obsessed with the human body, but I’m only a sophomore. I don’t recognize anything in here.
Trigger goes straight to work, leaving Jay and me to stand here and watch him. He sets his phone and wallet on one of the small windowsills, then he slips into a white lab coat. Cabinet doors whir open and click shut as he gets things out, setting them at a station on the middle table. One is a small white box. As he foots around the room, collecting bottles and gadgets, I gently lift the lid. It’s an entire box of empty syringes.
Gasping, I step back, stubbing my toe on a metal stool.
“What is it?” Jay asks. He checks the box himself, and his face goes white. “What is this?”
“It’s what they wanted,” Trigger states simply with undertones of anger and fear. “The injections are for emergencies only, but they needed something as a backup. In case…” He doesn’t finish. It doesn’t matter. I know what the in case means.
I was the in case.
“Guys,” I say really softly.
Trigger halts mid-stride. Jay and I make eye contact.
“We have to promise each other. Right now.”
“What?” Jay asks carefully.
“We have to promise each other that we won’t just stop these guys tonight. We have to make this permanent.” Meaning, we have to put these guys away forever. I think we’ve been tiptoeing around this very conclusion all day. Stopping tonight is one thing. Making this permanent, getting evidence, yadda, yadda. I want to wet my pants just imagining this undertaking.
“That’s a nice sentiment,” Trigger says. “But we still haven’t come up with any way to do that.”
I put a hand at the base of my throat. “Well, for starters we need to take pictures. Of everything we see.”
I immediately think of my camera discarded on the passenger floor of Jay’s car. So far, there’s been nothing to take pictures of. We need real stuff, like H getting girls and Brandon spiking drinks or water. Remembering that leaves a sour taste on my tongue.
“We need real evidence, like them…” I can’t say it. I have to say it. “Doing things.”
Now I feel a full-on queasy, and it’s way too soon to have this strong of déjà vu. I brace my fingers tightly to the edge of the metal table, swooning a little to the left. Jay starts in my direction, and I ping back up, hiding my green face from his scrutiny.
I feel my breath running out as I speak. “We just need to decide that we’ll do whatever it takes tonight.” To make sure there are no more nights like this for us or anyone else.
Jay’s jaw tightens. “What did we just discuss in the car?”
My shoulders sink. I walk over and stand in front of him, taking his hands in mine. “I don’t want to do anything dangerous.” I squeeze his hands. “We can do this and still stay safe. We’ll just…stay out of sight. Follow them. Do what we need to do, but at a distance.”
I’m counting on Jay to forget how unpredictable and reckless I can be. I want him to trust me more than ever right now. If I have to endure anyone getting hurt tonight just because we need proof that what these guys are doing is real, then it sure as hell better be a once-in-a-damn-lifetime kind of deal because it won’t be happening again.
Look away. Don’t cry.
I called Heather once more in the car on the way here. They’re still in the dorms, dutifully following my panicked instructions. They are safe, but it’s really hitting me that someone else is probably going to get hurt. All because I screwed up with the police. Because I couldn’t keep it together.
Or maybe it still would’ve turned out the same way. I don’t know. Maybe if this had really happened in the way that I described it to the police, and we had real proof, then they would’ve listened. But it didn’t. And they didn’t.
Trigger’s frown deepens. “No.” He goes right back to collecting things and begins arranging everything on the table where he needs it. “We’re meeting Alpha. We’ll think of a way to…I don’t know, get the police to the place, maybe? I could make a call? It’s not gonna be easy. I told you, these guys are careful. They cover all their bases. They leave no room for error.” He makes quick eye contact with each of us and returns his attention to his work. “Either way, I’m doing this tonight and I’m done. I’ll just tell them that. That’s the deal.”
“Trigger.” I can’t help but call him that. I guess he’ll always be Trigger to me. “These guys don’t make deals. Didn’t you say something like that? You don’t think they’ll want more? Do you really think that you can just participate in this, and then walk away?”
His hands go up, and his eyes dart back and forth like he’s misplaced something. A second later he finds it and adds it to his collection. “If you take pictures, I’ll be in them. My life and career will be over. Tonight was the deal. After tonight, I’m done.”
“What if you’re not?” Jay asks.
The whites of Trigger’s eyes are turning red. “Then nothing matters anymore.”
I go to the opposite side of the table where he’s carefully lining up bottles. “Why did they want you?”
“I told you why.” He pokes a needle into one of the bottles and extracts a fraction of the liquid. “They needed something new. A mixture. A cross between an anesthetic and GHB. Something that couldn’t be tasted in alcohol or water, that couldn’t be traced, that would slow the heart and erase all memory function. Rohypnol and ketamine can be traced, and GHB has a salty taste. It has to be absolutely foolproof.”
His knowledge makes me woozy, but something pushes me on. Call it morbid curiosity. “What is that?” I
jerk a finger at the bottle he continues to empty.
“Methohexital. It’s a fast-acting anesthesia. Lyxo—”
I cut him off. “Never mind.” I don’t want to hear. I hate how he seems so business-like. My curiosity turns to despair.
Jay is standing uncomfortably with his arms folded across his chest. We should be discussing details, plotting, but nobody speaks. He’s probably plotting on his own—a hundred different ways to keep me a hundred miles away from Alpha and the bar and Harrison Road.
I love him for it, but if he thinks he’s going to shut me away in a bubble tonight, he’s seriously underestimating me.
While Trigger works, I cross the room to the window, my gaze spanning the campus. It’s a beautiful sunny fall day. Students crisscross each other in every direction, going about their day in blissful ignorance.
I envy their ignorance. I hate them for it. Then I hate myself for hating people I don’t know, especially when my main goal right now is to save someone I don’t know.
Splaying my hands on the sill, I notice Trigger’s wallet and phone. With my peripheral vision, I peek sideways at Trigger, who’s still working, then at Jay, who now has his back to us, reading a poster with charts and numbers that’s taped to one of the cabinet doors. Jay and his posters. I’m too far to read it, but I can tell Jay is pretending to be engrossed. His stance is too stiff.
I turn back to the window, listening intently to the clink of bottles as they hit the metal table, the soft tap of plastic as Trigger lines up the syringes, the glass tinkle as he mixes something in a beaker. With my focus on the brown, orange, and yellow leaves of a maple tree twenty feet away, I reach down and lift Trigger’s phone to my chest. I look down. Thankfully, it’s not a password-protected touch screen. It has a small front screen. I press a random button to prompt the backlight and see he’s already enabled the vibrate setting, which means the keys are silenced.
As I press the button for recent calls, the only sound I can hear anymore is the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears. I see the number and memorize it. I close the phone and set it soundlessly back on the sill, then I chant the number in my head.
When I turn around, Jay is staring at me. He saw me. I can tell by the deep suspicion all over his face with the barely there squint of his right eye.
I lift my chin and stare defiantly at him. Suddenly, I feel very fidgety. I need space. I glance over at Trigger’s progress. He’s still in the middle of mixing drugs and filling the syringes with his mixture.
“I have to pee,” I blurt out.
Neither stops me as I head for the door. Neither says a word, but Jay watches my every step. On my way out, I subtly swipe a marker from the metal shelf of a small dry-erase board. The door shuts behind me, and I walk fast through the halls, searching for the nearest restroom. I have this frantic need for privacy. I have to find a place to write down this number before it leaves my head.
I bang through the door of the women’s restroom and lock myself in the nearest stall. I uncap the marker, holding the cap between my teeth, while I roll my eyes over my body for a place to write, somewhere Jay won’t think to look.
I can’t do it on my arms because I have a short-sleeve tee on. My stomach is probably the best place. I lift the bottom of my T-shirt above my bra so it doesn’t slip down and poise the marker just above my belly button. Briefly, I wonder if dry-erase markers even work on skin. I discover swiftly that they do. I jot Alpha’s number down sloppily and upside down, so I can read it.
Once I’m sure it’s dry, I let my shirt fall back into place, and then I lean my arms and forehead against the cool metal walls of the stall.
Why did I just do that? Why did I sneak Alpha’s number? What will I do with it? All these questions are reviving my headache. Why did I do it? And what was Jay thinking when he saw me? Does he think I’m planning something without him?
The answer is yes. Jay does have a reason to worry. But right now, bringing these guys down is my number one priority. I don’t think he sees it that way. He barely argued against my don’t-just-save-the-day-but-save-the-future speech as Trigger made all those vaccines. I half-expected him to go all protective as he did in the car earlier.
I’m sure it’s nothing, but I’m calmer now that I have something I can fall back on in case everything else goes to hell. It might require leaving Jay behind somehow. I don’t want to do that, but I will if I need to. I will if it means ending this. They never did agree to my proposal.
My protesting bladder reminds me that I really do have to pee, so I relieve myself, wash my hands and face, and dry them with unrushed luxury.
For the next half hour or so, I keep myself busy in the bathroom. There’s no way I’m going back in there to watch Trigger make those just in casers. I don’t have the guts to be around Jay right now either, not when I’ve spent this time coming up with all sorts of ways to ditch him after Trigger is gone.
Of course, we’ll meet with Alpha first. But if that goes awry, or he never shows, then what? After the cop thing, I don’t have much faith in plan A’s. I now see that there should also be plans B–Z.
If I don’t get away from Jay, he’ll find a way to extradite me back to Ohio, where he’ll probably keep me hostage for the next fifteen years until I come to the conclusion that he was right to take me away. I’ll just have to admit that I was going a tad nuts when I said all that stuff about psychic dreams and maybe there never really was a Trigger, or an Alpha, or an H, or a Brandon. I must’ve just accidentally gotten high the night before, even though I’ve never touched drugs in my life.
I’ve completely forfeited any germ phobias as I sit on the floor near the sinks, my back relaxing against the tiled walls. No one comes in. I’m not disturbed once, but the room isn’t silent. The water in the toilets makes a running noise every few minutes, one of the sinks is dripping, and of course my thoughts add to the symphony.
I’m so absorbed in the rhythm of it—the toilet noise, the dripping water, and the words in my head—that I jump when I hear the door open.
Jay peers at me. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I reply, coming to my feet.
We’re alone, surrounded by the soothing grays, browns, and blues of the tile, though I feel anything but soothed.
He clears his throat. “You okay? You never came back. I could tell you needed space.”
I let out a breath through my nose, gulp, and hold back tears. He never ceases to surprise me with how well he knows me.
My voice sounds rusty as I tell him, “Yeah, I’m okay. I couldn’t go back in there and…” I fidget with my fingers.
He nods. “C’mere.”
Reaching out, he tugs my hand and pulls my back against his chest, nuzzling his cheek against mine. I see our tender reflection in the mirror. From the outside, we look like normal sweethearts sharing an intimate moment. On the inside though, we’re both brewing.
His arms wrap around me as he sways us gently, calming me. I close my eyes and allow myself to be swept away to another time and place.
We’re not really here in this laboratory bathroom. We’re seventeen and back in my bedroom. My parents are at work still, and I’m warm, safe, and satisfied after making love. He’s spooning me, our bodies forming a perfect S-shape as we curl against each other. We’re hugging so tightly that I can feel his abdominal muscles tightening. His hand brushes the hair from my shoulder, exposing my neck. As I wait for his lips, I hear the tiniest clip-clop-clop of something plastic and hollow hitting to the floor. Then I feel an almost painless pinch.
My eyes flutter open, and the moment comes to a screeching halt. I’m frozen in horror at what I now see in the mirror. Jay is behind me, holding me. The picture is still tender, but in his hand is one of Trigger’s syringes protruding from my neck.
I totally forgot how good he is with a needle. That’s why I barely felt it. His mom has been a diabetic since he was three, and he’s given her hundreds of insulin shots over the years. Jay’s mom has never been go
od at taking care of herself.
As the needle drains, he whispers in my ear, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry, but I can’t risk you. I know you’re planning something. I can see it. I know you too well, and…I won’t. I just won’t. You’re too precious to me.”
He pulls the needle out and lets the empty syringe clamor to the floor, much more noisily than what I’m now realizing was the needle cap earlier.
I gape into the mirror as he gives me what I was waiting for a second ago—his lips. They kiss lightly over where the needle just was, and he licks away the dot of blood. I don’t know if he’s asking for forgiveness or understanding.
He looks into my eyes through the mirror, allowing me to witness his anguish, but there’s no regret. “There’s something I didn’t tell you before. I had a dream too. At first, I forgot about it with your freak out this morning. But after we were in the car, and you told me everything, I had time to think and it all started coming back. You and I were in a club, and we were waiting for someone. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t a pleasant dream, Lil. I was terrified and couldn’t figure out why. Then in my dream, we had a moment, and you had this look in your eyes. This fuck-everything, caution-to-the-wind look. I didn’t understand it then, because that’s usually just you, but this was,” his voice cracks and drops to a whisper, “different. Now I’m fucking terrified because you’ve had that look in your eyes all day. Like you’ll do anything, even it kills you.”
His eyes slip shut, and he kisses my neck again. I watch a solitary tear stream down his cheek. He sways us back and forth, lulling me as the drugs course through my veins. The shock of knowing he had a dream can’t even touch me. I’m too frozen from the fact that he just plunged a needle into my neck, and too heartbroken from that one tear.
Despite his sweetheart disposition, I’ve only seen him cry once. During our senior year, his dad knocked his little brother around so hard that he had to go to the emergency room for a broken nose. That was only a glimpse into his dad’s greatest hits. The number one was when Jay’s father karate kicked his mom when she was five-months pregnant, which broke two ribs and took the baby’s life. She’s always been a frail person, along with the diabetes.
