Heartless

by Leah Rhyne

  I wasn’t so sure. What if they won’t fix me? What if they can’t fix me? Those questions plagued me as I switched from staring at my computer screen to staring at my hands, never without a manicure in my normal life, but now without half my fingers or fingernails. I couldn’t bear to look at my face anymore, and covered my makeup mirror with a scarf.

  Nor could I look at the pictures on my tackboard from earlier in the year. Lucy and me, smiling and hugging. Eli and me, arms around each other. Blissfully happy. Blissfully beautiful. Blissfully ignorant of any trouble greater than a C on a calculus test.

  That was the old me.

  Finally, I hung a scarf over the tackboard, too, so the old me would stop tormenting the new one.

  At seven that evening, Lucy wandered back in and lay across my bed, her nose twitching as she readjusted to my scent. “More rotten,” she said, sniffing the air like it was a fine wine. “Less chemical.” I sat at my desk, running searches on local real estate listings. The knock on the door made us both jump. I almost fell from my chair, but caught myself at the last minute. The banging of my wrist against the desk corner sent a few chunks of skin sloughing to the floor.

  “Ew,” said Lucy, looking slightly gray. “Be careful!”

  The knock sounded again, and Lucy cocked her head like a puppy. “Shave and a haircut?” She hopped to her feet. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Don’t know. I guess it could be Eli. Look through the peephole!”

  She crept to the door. “Yep, it’s Eli.” Lucy pulled the door open and I grinned when I saw him. Eli stood with his arms out, holding a pizza box in one hand and flowers in the other.

  “Sustenance for Lucy and me,” he said, sheepish. “And prettiness for you. Because don’t guys bring flowers when they’re sorry?” He slid his backpack from his shoulders to the ground, and held out his offerings.

  “Didn’t we go over this already?” I said. “What’s done is done, no need to be sorry. You’re here and you’re helping, that’s what matters.” I stood up slowly from my seat at the desk. My whole body was stiff; it was getting harder to move. I ignored Eli and Lucy when they both cringed at the popping and rattling sounds from my joints, and walked toward Eli, arms outstretched to thank him with a hug.

  He ducked away, looking sorry as he did it.

  I dropped my arms and walked to the window. “Well, thanks anyway.” Though no tears came to my eyes, I stared out the window, regretting their absence.

  Lucy went into damage-control mode. “They’re pretty, Eli! What can I put them in? Oooh, I know, I think there’s a vase in my room. And thanks for the pizza, I’m starving.” She smiled at each of us in turn, and then bounced over to her room in search of the vase. I was relieved she was being nice to Eli again. That would help, whatever our near future held.

  Eli set the pizza and flowers on my desk. “It smells pretty good in here,” he said, surprised.

  “I had the windows open all afternoon, and clearly Lysol does wonders. I’ve even Lysoled myself a few times.” I didn’t point out the candles that burned in every corner and on each raised surface, lending the room an eerie, coven-like feel, and covering up the stench I emitted. I knew he saw them. I tried another thin smile. “So, I smell okay now. But how do I look?”

  “Jo…”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  My skin was gray by then, without any lingering hint of healthy flesh color. The hair from my eyebrows and eyelashes fell out in frequent, delicate clumps. A splint held my arm in place, but it was crude at best, my forearm still bending in a suspicious way. I was quite literally falling apart before my own eyes, and his. It was hard enough for me to handle; I couldn’t imagine being a third-party observer.

  Eli appeared beside me and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. Like a scratch on an old, decrepit dog’s chin, though, the contact was over far too soon as Eli let his hand drop. He shrugged. “How are you feeling?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m fine. Really fine.” It came out sharper, more sarcastic than I intended.

  “I know. I’m sorry.” He patted me again. Once, not long before that day, Eli liked to sleep with his whole body pressed against mine. Suddenly he was afraid to touch me with more than his fingertips.

  Still no tears came. I pressed my forehead to the glass, wishing I could feel its sharp coldness against my skin. I felt nothing.

  Eli exhaled, a low, sad sound, but quickly brightened again. “I almost forgot. I have two other things for you.” He walked to his backpack and pulled out some papers and a small plastic bag.

  “What’s in the bag?” I asked.

  Eli opened it and pulled out a long electrical cord, with a plug at one end. “I cut it off one of the lamps in the apartment. It was Kyle’s. Consider it his payment for being such a dick to you earlier today. I thought I could try to hook you up for a while with a real plug.”

  The thought of Eli “hooking me up” would have been nauseating, had I had a stomach with which to feel nauseous, but anything was better than burning off another finger every time I needed a recharge. “Great, thanks! And what’s in the papers?”

  “Real estate listings! Tons of them. Rentals, mostly, but lists of other properties too. Neighborhood descriptions, things like that. I thought we could go through them together and see if you recognized any of the cabins.”

  “You’re awesome,” I said. “Really, Eli. Thank you.” Still, I felt sadder in his presence than I had alone. I turned back to the window and stared at the smokers’ bench below. It was covered in fresh snow from a minor squall earlier in the day and looked more like a hump than a bench, but the ground around it was trampled with footsteps, and the snow on the ground was dirty and brown instead of pristine white. People were smoking, just not sitting. Moonlight reflected across the whole area, lighting it almost as brightly as a cloudy day.

  “Come on, let’s work on your plug first,” he said. Then he laughed, a tentative, quiet laugh. “Mark that down for things I never thought I’d say to a girl.”

  When Lucy returned minutes later, I was face-down on my bed, my shirt pulled up and the crusty, green bandage that had been around my waist discarded on the floor. Eli sat on my butt, his knees supporting most of his weight on either side of me, with Vicks VapoRub smeared beneath his nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy choked, almost dropping the heavy glass vase she carried. “Am I interrupting something? Should I come back another time?”

  “Quiet,” Eli said from his perch. “I’m concentrating.” I couldn’t see, but could almost hear the scowl on his face; his voice always changed when he was irritated.

  As I lay, immobile, and Lucy watched, Eli used wire strippers and electrical tape to splice the two cords together. He had me sit up, and he rewrapped my waist with a new, clean bandage, wrapping it carefully around the cord. Just as he was about to plug me in for a test drive, there was another knock on the door.

  “Now who?” Lucy said. “Do you know if anyone else is coming by?”

  I shrugged. “Go check,” I whispered.

  Lucy peeked through the peephole as Eli brushed the wires and bandages under the bed. “It’s a lady,” she whispered. “I don’t recognize her.”

  “Help me get to the door,” I said to Eli. I was stiff, and it was hard to get up. He pulled me up, taking care to touch only my sleeves. “It’s my professor. Professor Lewis. What’s she doing here?” I knew we went to a small, fancy college, but still, house calls from English professors weren’t the norm.

  She called out. “Jo? Are you in there? I hear people talking. Are you all right? I came to check on you.”

  “Shit!” I squeaked.

  “Quick,” said Eli. “Into your bed.”

  “Toss me my sunglasses,” I said. “I told her I have the flu.”

  “Why would the flu make you wear shades?”

  “I don’t know! Just give them here!” Eli did.

  Lucy waited a few seconds for me to get settled in, and then she opened the door
. The sounds of Sunday evening dorm life filled the room. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Without waiting to be invited in, Professor Lewis breezed into the room, like a tropical storm into port, windblown and dangerous. Her presence made me nervous, an outsider in our little dead girl club. “Yes, hi, I’m looking for Jo Hall. Do I have the right…oh, Jo, there you are! I’m sorry to barge in like this, dear, but when I got your email this afternoon I just had to come check on you for myself.” In her arms she carried a plastic shopping bag, which she set on the desk next to the pizza box. “I brought you some soup, and some other supplies, to try to help you get over your flu. I know how hard it is when you’re sick so far from home.”

  I pretended to try to sit up, but collapsed back on the pillow. I coughed, a terrible sound that was much more like a goose honking than anything human. It was the best I had. “Professor Lewis. Thank you so much!” I played up my voice’s rasp to my advantage. “I’m so sorry to have missed class last week. I just couldn’t get out of bed. My friends have been taking care of me. This is Lucy and this is Eli.” Eli eased himself down beside me on the bed, acting as a barrier between the professor and me, but taking care not to actually touch me.

  She nodded at each of them. “What a lucky girl, to have such lovely friends to care for you. You must be a deserving girl indeed.” She stepped closer to the bed. “But Jo, how are you feeling? Are you any better? Fever? Chills?” Professor Lewis reached out a hand as if to feel my forehead.

  Lucy spoke up. “She’s had the chills for days now. We try to keep her covered up.” She stepped in between Professor Lewis and me, knocking my teacher’s hand away before she could reach my face.

  But the professor wouldn’t be held at bay. She reached around Lucy, nudging her aside, and then placed her hand on my forehead. The pressure forced my head to sink deep into my pillow. “That’s strange. You don’t feel like you have fever. You feel cold to me.”

  “See?” I said, as weakly as possible. “Chills.”

  “Excuse me,” she said to Eli, almost knocking him to the floor as she sat beside me on the bed. It made me uncomfortable, to have a teacher so physically close to me, but in a way it was nice to have someone being motherly. She looked down at my face. “Gray. Your skin looks gray. How terrible to be so sick. But, dear, why do you have sunglasses on?” Then, as though she were my mother, she brushed my hair back from my forehead, allowing it to slip through her fingers for a moment before she pulled away, still eyeing the rough, jagged split ends.

  “Migraine,” I said, too quickly. “The light hurts my eyes. But Lucy and Eli are being so sweet, staying with me, I couldn’t ask them to sit in the dark.”

  “I see. My dear, you really look terrible. Can I make you some soup? I brought Campbell’s and Cup-o-Noodle.” She stared at me, her eyes lingering on every detail I tried to hide.

  “No!” we all said simultaneously. I could barely swallow, let alone choke down Cup-o-Noodle soup. I raised my head. “I mean, I’ve been struggling to keep food down. They’ve each had to clean up after me a couple times.”

  “Jo!” Professor Lewis sounded alarmed. “Dear, we need to get you to the clinic. Right away.”

  “We did,” Eli said quickly. “They gave her Tamiflu. Lucy and I are on it as well, so we haven’t gotten sick. But that’s what’s causing Jo’s migraine and nausea. The Tamiflu. But we can make her the soup when she’s feeling up to it.”

  Eli, you genius. I smiled at him. Professor Lewis noticed. So did Lucy.

  “Yes, and you shouldn’t be here anyway,” said Lucy. “You definitely don’t want to catch this, and Jo’s still very contagious, Professor Lewis. Thank you for stopping by, of course, but…”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve seen enough. Jo, dear, please consider yourself excused for last week’s absence and, from the looks of things, tomorrow’s as well. I can come by again if you need anything. Just drop me a line and let me know. You have my email.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” I said, and I meant it. “It was sweet of you to come by to check on me.”

  Professor Lewis nodded. “Yes, I’ve surely seen enough,” she said, her voice quiet. She stood and headed to the door, Lucy and Eli on her heels to usher her out more quickly. She turned one last time and narrowed her eyes at me. “Dear, if you do get worse, please call me. I can help.” And with that, she handed Lucy a card, then headed out the door.

  I sat up in the bed as Eli closed the door. Lucy looked confused. “Since when do teachers make house calls?” she asked. “And leave business cards with their cell phone numbers?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” I said. “But I’m one of her better students, I think. Sometimes when she asks a question, and no one knows how the hell to answer, I make something up to get a discussion going. I bet with me being out last week, she was listening to crickets the whole time.”

  “What class of hers do you take?” asked Eli.

  “English Lit of the Sixteenth Century.”

  “Gah,” said Lucy. “No wonder nobody talks. I didn’t even know there was literature in England in the sixteenth century.”

  I laughed, while simultaneously attempting to extract myself from my bed. It wasn’t easy, since my knee decided at that exact moment to lock completely. “Oh, shut up,” I said, sharper than I’d meant. “I know you’ve heard of Shakespeare. Please tell me you’ve heard of Shakespeare.”

  Eli leaned over to give me a hand, wincing as he did. With his help, reluctant though it was, I was on my feet again a moment later, which was better than being stuck in the bed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Enough about English Lit and teachers who make house calls. Let’s get back to work. Jo, mind if I test my handiwork on your cord?”

  I shook my head and shrugged.

  “Come on over to the wall then. Have a seat.”

  Once I sat in my desk chair, Eli leaned over to plug me in. As I watched him near the outlet, a thought occurred to me. I held out a hand to stop him. “You better let me. Just in case.”

  He stepped back, but his eyes never left me. “You sure? I don’t mind.”

  Nodding, I took the cord from his hand. I leaned over and gently pushed my cord into the wall socket. The lights flickered, but barely, not at all like when I’d reached directly into the sockets. I felt the warm buzz of electricity surge through me.

  “It’s working!”

  Eli grinned. “Great! And now you won’t mess up your fingers.” His face was smug. “I don’t know the first thing about electronics, to tell you the truth. I’m glad I was able to help.”

  Lucy clapped her hands together and did a happy Lucy dance. “Good job, Eli. You deserve a cookie.”

  “Do you have a cookie?” he asked, hopeful.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  They stared at each other, distracted by electricity and cookies, but I was ready to get back to work.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, trying to reel them back in. “How about those real estate listings?”

  I’d just described the cabin as I remembered it for the third time. We each dug into our pile of printed listings, scattering papers from one end of the room to the other, when the lights in the room began to flicker.

  “Jo?” Lucy said, a slight waver in her voice. “Is that you?”

  The warm flow of electricity through my body shook like Lucy’s voice. As soon as it began to go, I missed it. But I wasn’t causing the lapse. “No, not this time,” I said.

  “The lights here never go—”

  But before Eli could finish what was probably going to be a hopeful statement, the lights flickered, surged, and then went out entirely. The power of the surge made me jump to my feet, and my hair stood on end, crackling with static.

  Lucy cried out. I would have but I was still reeling from the jump-start. I felt like I could run a marathon.

  “What just happened?” Eli said, looking around. With all the candles we had in the room, we could still see each ot
her, though the light danced and flickered and threw monstrous shadows against the wall.

  “Power went out,” I whispered. I struggled to stand still, my muscles and nerves all fired up and ready to move.

  “But the power here never goes out,” said Lucy. “And it’s not even snowing.”

  “I know,” I said, looking around the room. “Something’s not right. Can you go look in the hall. Is it just this room?”

  As though in answer to my question, the hallway filled with the voices of other students, calling out to each other amid the sudden darkness. Lucy turned to me. “Definitely not just us.”

  A breeze flew in through the window, blowing a candle flame higher. Eli walked to the window in the flickering light. He slid it up higher. “The moon’s so bright,” he said. “It’s lighter outside than in.”

  The air around me crackled and snapped. Something was wrong. I could feel it in a way I’d never felt anything before. I crossed the room in two big strides, and without knowing why I pushed Eli aside.

  “Hey…” he said, just before a stone, a small boulder, really, came pummeling through the open window. The thin screen was an inadequate barrier, and it hit me square in the chest. I flew back from the force and tumbled to the ground, holding the rock like a star receiver catching the winning touchdown pass.

  “Jo!” Lucy shrieked, and ran to me. “What the hell? Are you okay?”

  She grabbed me under the shoulders and began to haul me to my feet, but I was ahead of her. I hopped up, still holding the boulder.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Eli interrupted. “Guys, help. Get a blanket, a towel, something!”

  I turned my head. When I knocked Eli aside, he’d crashed into a small cluster of candles on my desk. One had fallen over, hot wax dripping down the desk leg. Worse, though, was the flame that had alighted on the curtains my mother and I so carefully selected and hung on the day I moved in. The flame now danced as it moved up the curtain’s thin cotton fabric.

  “Oh God,” I said, dropping the rock. I ran to the bathroom while Lucy ran to the flames to help Eli. I yanked a towel off the rack and turned on the shower. Keeping my torso away from the water I stuck the towel into the stream. Electricity sparked around my fingers, but I ignored it. The towel soaked, I ran back to the flames. Eli and Lucy had no luck batting at them with my comforter.