Sun Poisoned (The Sunshine Series)

by Rae, Nikki

  “Because he knew Adrienne would survive,” she says emphatically. “He wanted to make him stronger.”

  I blink and my eyelids are so weak I’m half surprised that they don’t shatter. “Okay. What’s your point?”

  Alex sighs but her expression softens as she inches closer to me, sitting on the bed near my legs. “Sophie,” she says. “Myles loves you. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

  She waits for me to respond so I nod.

  “Here’s the thing you don’t understand,” she says. “Even if a vampire is in love with a human, even if he wants her to be with him forever, it means nothing if they aren’t strong enough.”

  “Okay…”

  “Myles has chosen you,” Alex says slowly, like she’s explaining it to a little kid who doesn’t understand. “Even if you betrayed him by letting Evan bite you after Myles marked you.”

  “Alex, I don’t think—”

  “And you’re sitting here, worrying about what he’s hiding from you, where your brother is, and I get that,” she continues like she didn’t hear me. “But for the love of God, Sophie, stop acting like such a bitch about this whole thing.”

  I was about ready to drift back to sleep, but when she says that, I can feel my jaw snap open in a gaping expression of shock. “What?”

  Then she stands, smiling sweetly without even a hint of sarcasm or malice behind it. She takes my empty bowl from the nightstand.

  “You rest now,” she says simply. “We can talk more later if you want.”

  If I wasn’t so exhausted, I’m sure I would be able to stay awake long enough to respond to everything she’s just said to me. But it just so happens that I am that exhausted, so I let my mind shut off and my lids creak shut.

  Then I’m awake again. Barely. It feels like it’s only been a few minutes, but the room is completely dark now. This time the cramping is almost completely in my stomach. I gasp as hot razors run their way through my veins from my abdomen to my lower back, encircling me like a boa constrictor. I wrap my arms around myself and my palms come away damp. The blanket’s been kicked off and the dark grey T-shirt I’m wearing has dark stains on it that I know aren’t from sweating.

  I want to scream but I can’t. I don’t have to. Alex is there, turning me on my side right before I start throwing up. Most of it gets on the floor.

  Tears start rolling down my face and I’m not even trying to cry.

  “I know,” she says.

  Another wave of vomit comes up. Then the spasm moves.

  It squirms its way to my ribcage, then back down to my stomach and across my midsection again. It does this multiple times, over and over, only getting worse with each movement.

  Alex is lying me back onto the bed when I hear a door slam somewhere in the room. I’m shaking and I can’t see straight, only half aware that I’m screaming, begging for someone to make it stop.

  Then I feel cold hands on my face, my arms and legs, trying to make my body still.

  I black out and wake up; fade out and back in.

  The only good thing that comes with that is that each time I come back, the pain lessens.

  When I’m able to stay awake for more than a few seconds, I can recognize who is here: Alex, standing near the sofa and farther away than anyone else, Evan is somewhere near the end of the bed, and Myles is sitting right next to me. He’s holding my hands and staring at me anxiously, waiting for me to fade into blackness again. I’m really weak but I decide to stay.

  It’s quiet. No one’s talking and everyone is staring at me.

  Then another, smaller pain in my right hip. I grab onto it over the blanket like it would make any difference. Myles’ hand appears on top of it.

  “It’s okay,” he says softly, and his voice sounds tired.

  He keeps saying that. That everything’s going to be alright and that I’m going to be fine. But that’s not true, is it?

  “Stop it.” I’m surprised that I can almost yell. Myles freezes, then takes his hands away. “I’m not okay.”

  I try to sit up, but that doesn’t happen. Before I can think of an alternative, Myles’ hand returns, this time, holding a needle.

  “No,” I say evenly. “I don’t want any more damn drugs, Myles.”

  He shushes me the way you would a newborn baby. The needle comes closer.

  “I said no!” I yell, and another spasm shoots through my right leg. Somehow, I manage to get him to look me in the eye.

  Myles touches my face briefly. Then sticks the needle into my arm.

  That does it.

  I start kicking my legs and trying to punch him with strength I didn’t know I had. I scream as he jumps away at first, then holds down my arms at my sides.

  He’s just going to ignore me, isn’t he? They’re going to pump me full of drugs until I make a decision to live or die.

  “Just stay still,” he says.

  “Just fuck off,” I spit.

  That’s the last thing we say to each other before I’m pulled under.

  ***

  That’s how my life goes for a while. Minutes, hours, days, a week, more than one week? It’s all the same when your days are punctuated by how many times your body cramps up, vomits, tries to stay hydrated, and vomits some more. When your nights are interrupted by nightmares of black masses covering your vision and swallowing up everything you know or thought you knew, everything and everyone you love or thought you loved.

  Myles urges me to make a decision as to what we’re going to do a few times, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Even if I survive, Michael will be waiting for me, won’t he? Ready to hurt me and the ones I love.

  We drop the entire subject as if it’s not important. As if I have all the time in the world.

  And that’s when I can still move on my own.

  Mostly, the drugs and infected blood keep me immobile with my eyes shut. It’s easier like this in a way. I don’t have to talk. I don’t have to think.

  Sometimes people come in to talk to me, like Phyllis, who usually just asks me how I am when I can’t answer, Alex, who only repeats how strong I am. How I can do this.

  Evan comes in the most, asking me more questions that I can’t answer, like can I squeeze his hand or blink. A few times I can do those things for him, but mostly, I just sit and listen with my eyes closed, completely entombed by my body like it’s an exoskeleton.

  I begin to get scared because I can feel myself fading and I don’t know what to do.

  Instead of worrying, I concentrate on getting caught up in time. With your eyes closed, it’s a hard thing to measure. It feels like a day and a half goes by before I can sense anyone else in my room again.

  “Sophie,” Myles’ whisper comes to me through the fog of alternating pain and painkillers.

  I try opening my eyes but they won’t respond, no matter how hard I try.

  “You can sit with her,” I hear him say. “Just be careful.”

  I feel what could be a dip in the bed.

  I hear a gasp. Wet, sniffling sounds. Someone is crying.

  Someone else is saying, “No, God. How?” Then stringing together more questions such as, “Is-she-okay? What-is-going-on? No. I can’t. This-is-insane.”

  There’s a hand on my face. I’m expecting it to be Myles’, soft and cool against my probably fevered skin. But it isn’t. It’s rough and warm and familiar.

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fade back into sleep, and feeling that hand now, I know I must be at some new hallucination stage of this nightmare. I don’t think I can take that right now, so I let the darkness grab hold, wrap itself around me, ready itself to drag me down, down, down.

  “Just talk to her,” Myles says.

  A sniff. A breath. Some whispering that is too low for me to decipher.

  Then, louder, “Sophie?”

  There is no mistaking the voice, whether it’s real or fabricated by my trauma-soaked mind.

  Jade.

  I swallow, and it feels like sand is being
poured down my throat.

  “Sophie,” comes Myles’ voice, softly. “Can you hear me?”

  I nod. It’s just him. He’s been talking to me this whole time. There’s no one else. My brother’s not here.

  The bed dips in near my left leg. My eyes start opening, but everything is too bright and fuzzy. The hand that grasps mine now doesn’t belong to Myles.

  I blink a few times and my eyesight clears long enough to take note of an unmistakable mark on the inner wrist.

  An “S”.

  Brother and Sister

  Chapter 17

  “I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s and not one spec will remain.”—Deathcab for Cutie

  “Jade?” I say his name before my eyes meet his face.

  And there he is. His shaggy, dirty blond bangs are plastered to one side of his forehead. His green eyes, the same as mine, are searching my body for the obvious damage, dark purple circling them so they appear to sink back into his skull. My brother’s full lips are a little chapped, like he’s been biting them, but they say my name.

  “Sophie?” His voice is too strained, too high.

  I stare at him with hot tears welling behind my eye sockets. I’m too afraid to reach out and hug him because there’s a huge chance he won’t be real.

  But his arms are under me, lifting me off of the bed until my face is against his chest.

  “Oh God,” he whispers into my neck.

  “Careful, Jade,” Myles says. By the sound of it, he’s sitting in the chair near the window. “There are a lot of open wounds.”

  I wrap one arm around my brother’s neck as tight as I can. Jade doesn’t seem to hear Myles’ warning, but he’s gentle and careful not to hurt me. One of his hands finds the back of my head.

  “He told me,” Jade says in my ear. “He told me everything.”

  Jade moves away slightly so he can set me back down onto the pillow and mattress. One of his knuckles wipes a stray tear away from my cheek that didn’t get soaked into his shirt. Behind him, I see Myles staring at the floor. The curtain behind him is illuminated in light blue, indicating that once again, it’s daytime.

  “You have to let him help you,” Jade says.

  Then another spasm rolls through my arms and legs, fire and razors and rattlesnake bites.

  Is that why Jade’s here? Myles knew I wouldn't make a decision so he brought my brother here to convince me? Does it matter? He’s here now, and that’s what I wanted.

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  Jade turns his head to Myles, but he doesn’t take his hands away. I’m grateful for this. I’m afraid that if he lets go, either of us could disappear.

  “She said yes,” Jade says.

  I blink, and Myles is standing next to my brother. I fight to keep my eyes open while at the same time stifling a scream that wants to rip through my throat the way Michael’s blood is ripping through my body.

  Jade inches away enough to let Myles through. His eyes flit from me to the bags hanging on the metal stand beside me and then back to my face again.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod.

  Myles places his hand on top of my arm “I’ll be back,” he tells both of us.

  Before he has a chance to move, I reach my hand to his, and he grasps it. I want to tell him thank you, that I’m scared. I want to ask him what he’s going to do and if I’ll be okay, but nothing comes out but my heavy breathing.

  “It’s okay,” he says gently before setting my arm down and leaving the room.

  Jade brings the chair over from beneath the window and sits down next to the bed. He holds onto my hand that’s curled around my hip over the sheet. A few seconds pass and the pain tapers off, but doesn’t disappear. It turns into a dull stab, matching the rhythm of my pulse.

  “I was so worried about you,” Jade whispers.

  When I look at him, he’s pinching his nose with his thumb and index finger. “None of us could find you and then I’m supposed to believe that you want to be left alone? That when Myles calls me, not telling me where you are, you say you don’t want to talk to me?”

  “I’m sorry.” My voice comes out in tiny, jagged pieces.

  Jade shakes his head. “It’s not your fault.”

  There’s an edge to his voice that makes me say, “It’s not his fault either, Jade.” Though I have to cough half way through the sentence to get the entire thing out.

  “He told me you asked for me the minute you woke up,” he says evenly.

  “You don’t…understand,” I wheeze out, shaking my head. Honestly, neither do I, but all I’m interested in trying to figure out right now is how to breathe, not throw up, and stay awake.

  He gives my hand a squeeze. “Not now.”

  I nod, not wanting to get into this right now either.

  Myles comes back just then, cupping the side of my face with his hand, but addressing Jade. “We need to bring the fever down the best we can before we do anything,” he says quietly.

  Jade straightens his posture and sniffs one last tear away. “What do you need me to do?”

  Myles’ fingers are covered in white latex gloves, which make small sounds as he unscrews the tubes coming out of my arm, leaving the needles taped down to my wrist and hand.

  He turns his head slightly in Jade’s direction. “Grab a pair of those gloves and put them on.” Myles nods to the box on the nightstand.

  Jade does as he’s told, and I give him a weak smile to show him I’m not scared. But that’s bullshit. I’m terrified. I’m so unbelievably terrified of everything.

  Myles begins to slowly unwind red and brown gauze encircling my right arm.

  “We have to take all of the bandages off,” Myles explains to Jade, who takes my other arm.

  He begins unwrapping it but he hesitates after a second. Myles has already moved on to peeling the bandages from my neck and chest, but he probably senses something coming from Jade.

  “If you’re going to be sick, the bathroom is down the hall,” Myles says matter-of-factly.

  I turn my attention to where Jade is staring. A circular wound stitched together on my left wrist. A few days ago, there was only light blue thread and a small pink mark, but he’d never guess that now with the black and blues, the small amount of blood seeping onto the white sheet underneath me.

  “Jade,” I say, and his eyes are on mine immediately. “You don’t have to.”

  For a moment, I think he doesn’t hear me as he rolls up my shirt sleeve and moves on to the next bandage on my shoulder. He slows a little to stare at the dark red stains under my skin located there.

  “No,” he says quietly. “I’m okay.”

  I stay as still as possible as each of them lift up my limbs, peeling everything away like they’re helping me shed skin. I find that if I let them move for me, it’s not as painful. Not as painful, yet still excruciating.

  They’re both silent, so I don’t talk either.

  My breathing fills the space instead. Air scrapes up my lungs and throat. That sound is accompanied by rubber gloves quietly moving together, sticky Band-Aids peeling off, being crumpled, and then thrown out. I want to be sucked back down into sleep, but as soon as I begin to drift off, Myles and Jade stop touching me; they’re done.

  “Okay, now what?” Jade asks.

  Myles sits down on the bed next to me, careful not to move me too much. “The fastest way to bring down the fever is to give her a cool bath,” he answers. Then, to me, “Do you want Jade or me to do it?”

  “I’ll do it,” Jade says before I can even formulate a way to make my speech work.

  I nod. At this point, I don’t care who does what. One of them can start tap dancing while the other pulls rabbits out of a hat as long as it’ll make everything stop.

  So Jade lifts me up and I grab around his neck with my hands, trying to ignore the way some of my wounds crack and bleed when I do.

  Myles leads the short way down the hall to the bathroom, but stays outside whe
n Jade and I go in.

  “Wait,” Jade says, as if Myles was about to shut the door.

  Hell if I know, my eyes have been closed since this whole process began.

  “What do I do if, you know. . .” he says quietly. “It happens again?”

  “She’ll be ok.” Myles pauses. “Just keep her in the water for about twenty minutes.” His tone is almost professional, but it wavers.

  Soon after, the door closes and I’m alone in the bathroom with my brother.

  “Okay,” he says to himself as he sits me down on the closed toilet seat. I brace myself with my hands and try to keep my eyes open and not fall over. Jade turns on the water in the tub before coming back to me and helping me take off my shirt, careful not to touch the skin on my stomach, because there’s a trail of bright red trickling downward. Now I’m just wearing a bra and pajama bottoms.

  “You remember last time you got sun poisoning…you know, when you were little?” Jade asks me, brushing my hair to the side, and then seeming overly concerned with folding the shirt and placing it on the edge of the sink.

  I shake my head.

  “You were I guess, about twelve?” he asks himself. “Yeah. twelve.” He takes a towel that’s folded somewhere else around the sink and begins to unfold it.

  “It was in May, and there was some pool party going on. A girl in your class invited you.” He smiles a little, wrapping the towel around me, but motioning for me to lift up my arms so I can cover myself up. “Mom and Adam went on vacation somewhere, and they left me in charge of you and Laura.” Again, a small smile appears on his face and then fades as soon as he looks back at me.

  “I don’t know how it happened. I can’t remember. What I do remember is running around like crazy trying to find out where the kid lived so I could scoop you out of the pool.”

  I snort a little. As much as my body will allow.

  “You were determined to go.”

  Next, Jade starts going for my sweatpants, and without even thinking I lift up my butt to help him.

  I don’t know how I forget about the scars.

  You have a monster live inside of you and follow you around for most of your life. You hide it so well that mostly everyone you come in contact with never gets a glimpse. So how do you explain it to yourself when you slip up and someone suddenly sees? How are you supposed to even begin to explain what you’ve done?