by Rae, Nikki
“Things will get better,” he said. “They always do.”
A hand on my arm breaks my concentration and I don’t have to look to see who it is. Grey floods my vision. Two grey eyes staring down at me as Iron Maiden echoes faintly down the hallway of my brain.
“If you want to keep that hand,” I say. “I suggest you remove it.” I don’t move. I don’t open my eyes. The color fades away and I finally look to my left, hoping that it’s some form of a memory and not any form of reality. But there he is, sitting in the sand. Dirty blond hair, stubble that scraped my chin. It’s all there, in front of me.
“Please don’t be upset,” he says straight off. He backs up another few inches. I want to throw him into the water. Even if he got swept up in a riptide, he wouldn’t be far enough away.
“How did you find me?” My hands feel hot and my pulse thuds in my temples. I stare at the ocean ahead.
“You have tour dates posted online,” he says. “Anyone could find you.”
Of course. How dumb was I to go on tour? How fucking stupid can one person be?
“Why are you here, Jack?” I try to keep my voice even.
How can it be that now, when I’m so different, so powerful, that this one person can still have the ability to get underneath my skin and make it crawl, like it doesn’t even belong to me?
“If you touch me again, I’ll kill you,” and it isn’t until it’s left my mouth that I believe it.
I look up at him briefly and he looks uncomfortable with my words. Like I’ve thrown boiling water on him and he’s trying to hold in a scream.
Good.
“You stalk me to where I live now, try telling me you ‘uncovered’ something in that mental hospital or whatever, and then,” I lower my voice so no one else hears. “Then you say that you know about Myles. For what? To torment me even more?”
Jack’s voice takes on a defensive tone now. “I know all about your boyfriend, Sophie.”
My name coming out of his mouth is almost too much. Too much for human Sophie. It can’t be too much for vampire Sophie, can it? I’m stronger now.
“But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. You obviously know about him.”
I wait. He inches away a little more.
“I wanted to tell you about Michael.”
My dysfunctional heart pounds so loudly that I think everyone on the beach has heard it but a quick glance around tells me that they haven’t. They’re walking around, laughing and having normal, human lives.
“What?” I practically hiss.
He shifts, thinking about something that doesn’t look pleasant, by the expression on his face.
“What I did to you...” he says. “What he did.”
I hold up a hand. I turn away from him, bile rising in my mouth. I can’t believe he’s trying to apologize for what he did. Again.
“No,” he says. “You need to hear this.”
“No, I really don’t.” I find myself standing. “You’re not going to say what you’re about to say.”
“Sophie.” He doesn’t bother to get up, just absently reaches out like I would ever grab his hand. “It wasn’t me.”
I spin on my heel with enough force to spray sand into his face. He shields himself for a second, then opens his mouth again.
“You’re not going to do this,” I say. “You can’t even own up to what you did, can you?”
“Sophie, please,” he says. “You don’t know what they’re capable of. They can make you forget anything. Remember anything. Believe anything.”
So this is what it’s about. He finds out all the information he can on vampires and then tries to cover up what he did by blaming them for it? “You’re lying,” I say, but it’s a weak sound.
He looks up at me, not hiding anything. “No, I’m not.”
This time, I believe him.
Whenever Jack lied to me in the past, his mouth would twitch like he was amused at getting away with it. His expression now is made of stone.
I lower my voice yet again but I don’t bother sitting back down. “What would Michael have to gain by making you rape me?” The words fly out of my mouth, and I don’t think I’ve ever said anything quite like them.
“He told me,” Jack says. “Last time he took over my body.”
I cross my arms. “Bullshit.”
“Just listen,” he says, his tone almost pleading. “If you don’t believe me, you don’t believe me. But you need to know.”
We stare at each other for a long time then. “You’ve got three minutes. Talk.”
He takes in a breath and holds it, not bothering to exhale until he’s started talking again. “He told me that he was going to use me for a little while,” he says. “That was the first time.”
“When was this?”
“My birthday. When he drugged you.”
I blink a few times.
“I think he wanted to do it then, but I fought him and he left me.” He glances at me for a millisecond before going on. “I’m not saying I was innocent. I was a complete dick. I wanted to sleep with you no matter what, I tormented you on purpose so many times...but I would have never...”
“Just get back to how Michael made you do everything so I can leave.”
Jack nods to himself. “The dance,” he says. “I was feeling weird all day. Then there was this missing chunk of time. I remember finding you in the bathroom but I didn’t know why I wanted to find you in the first place. Then...there was nothing until I woke up in my car later that night. The dance was over and I had claw marks on my arms and blood on me. I knew I had done something horrible but I couldn’t remember what it was.”
I shake my head.
“And there are other times I don’t remember too— short spans of time that I think he took over me but I’m still working on piecing it together.”
I sniff, refusing to cry. “You expect me to believe this?”
“No,” he admits. “But.” He’s crying now. Fucking fabulous. “I can’t just keep it from you. I know I treated you badly. I treated Barbie–a lot of other people–like crap too. But you had to know that it wasn’t me that did some of it. Okay?”
“No.”
He blinks a few times, like I’m a bright light blinding him.
“It’s not okay.” I realize now that my fists are clenched so hard that my knuckles are going numb and my fingers are beginning to ache.
“I’m so sick of people saying that word when they can’t use it.”
He says nothing, so I turn to leave.
“Sophie,” he calls after me, but it’s not in a tone that tells me he wants me to stay. He probably knows that I’m not going to. “Be careful. I’m sorry.”
***
I run.
I run as fast as I can, looking at as little as possible. For a moment, I believe that I’m actually flying, with how blurred everything is. After a few minutes, I close my eyes completely, deciding that I don’t need to see anyway. I can’t really keep track of how fast or long I’ve been going. All I know is that it feels good. The wind in my hair, the sweat on my back, even the pounding of my heart and the heaving of my lungs as air tries to get in as my feet thud, sometimes against sand, then grass, then concrete.
Stop running. The voice is familiar, but I can’t place it. Even if I could, I wouldn’t listen. This is too simple. Too easy to give up. One foot in front of the other. One breath in, another out. I don’t have to think about how Jade is, what he’s thinking. Where Michael is or if he’s looked up our tour dates just as easily as Jack did to find me. And I don’t have to think about Jack or how all of this is connected in some sick, screwed up way.
I don’t stop until my lungs absolutely can’t take anymore and even then, I don’t open my eyes. My head is spinning, each thought blurring into the next. I take in air like I’ve been underwater for hours, drowning.
Something warm touches my hand. It isn’t enough to startle me or make me open my eyes, but it’s something to concentrate on b
esides my own body. My hands are so cold but whatever my hand is against makes it so my knuckles finally relax, my wrists stop aching. The color trickles in and I don’t exactly hate it. It’s a warm, yellow ball of light that I lean down to meet. It sits in my lap when I sit on the ground and I wrap myself around it, absorbing everything I can from the color in my hands. I bury my face in it, unafraid of getting burned. Unafraid of everything in this moment. Flowers pop up behind my eyelids. Pink, purple, and orange. Fields upon fields of them and I float along their edges, gathering each color in my mouth.
And it’s all torn away instantly. The light dulls and fades away, the fields dry up, fall apart, then combust. My mouth, throat, and stomach are filled with splinters. Dirt.
The world comes rushing back and the first thing I see is blood, bright red against the palms of my hands and on my jeans. But it’s dark out now. The sun is gone. The only light I can see is one streetlight over me, spotlighting everything I’ve done. My eyes adjust as I look around, taking in brick and the smell of garbage. I’m in some alleyway, the ground damp beneath me.
The warmness is against my leg, brushing against my knee. I’m terrified to look at what it is, but I can’t stop myself either. Something small and brown leans against my leg, its throat bleeding from a large scrape at the back of its neck.
A dog is bleeding next to me and I have its blood on my hands. I reach up to my mouth and find more of the warm liquid there, sticking to my fingers, metallic in my mouth.
“No,” I whisper as my shaking, dirty hands reach over to the animal. If it wasn’t for the blood, it would look like it was just sleeping. If I’m lucky, maybe it is.
I kneel next to it, careful not to hurt it anymore. “Please,” I say. “Please, please, please.”
It moves a little, twitching its leg. I’m too afraid to touch it again so I stand against the wall, shutting my eyes as everything starts to spin away from me again.
“Hey,” A voice. Right in my ear. “You should come with me.”
Their arm is around my waist. I try pushing them away, but that only makes them position my head against their chest.
“Sophie,” he says, “It’s alright.”
They know who I am. Do I know who they are? I’m crying uncontrollably. I don’t want to look at what I’ve done.
“Do you need me to carry you?” It’s a familiar voice but I still can’t figure out who it is.
My head feels like it’s splitting in half. There is no way there isn’t a wound running down my forehead, exposing my brain for all to see.
His arm is at the backs of my knees, but I push him away. “No.”
He stops.
Then he starts to move forward, taking me with him.
I plant my feet on the ground like they’re rooted there. “No.”
He lets me sink to the ground then. Hard, warm pavement meets my knees. Little bits of rocks or trash stick to my sweaty palms. “No, no, no, no.”
“Hey.” His hand is on my arm, less forceful this time. I get the sense that he’s leaning down next to me, but I can’t see anything. I don’t know if it’s the tears or my actual vision and I don’t care. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see anything.
Whoever it is holds my head with one hand, and I don’t have the strength to pull away. “Look at me,” he says.
I open my eyes and the only image that greets me is a blur of blond hair and a black shirt. “I can’t see.”
“It’s Adrienne,” he says. “Here.” He places something on my face. Sunglasses. They must have fallen off. “Now, we have to get up.”
I shake my head. “I—I can’t,” shakes out of me.
“It’s going to be alright,” he says. “We’ve just got to get you out of here. That’s all.”
Several seconds pass by without a word from either of us. A stranger passes by the alley entrance and asks if I’m okay and Adrienne presses my face into his chest so they can’t see.
“She’s fine,” he says. “Had too much to drink, that’s all.”
I want to throw up but I control my stomach easily enough.
The person walks away and I’m on my feet again, leaning almost all of my weight into Adrienne. My legs are so shaky. My knees won’t lock.
We start walking. Past people on the street and car stereos blaring, the sounds of people yelling and laughing fades to a dull white, noise. After a while, I hear a door open, and we must walk through it, because our footsteps on the concrete turn into a clack of footsteps on linoleum.
We abruptly stop walking. “I need to know the room of Myles Lott, please,” Adrienne says to someone.
I don’t want to see Myles. Not now. Not after what I know and what I’ve done. My pulse is thrumming in my head, splitting it more and more. There’s some clicking of computer keys in front of us. “You must be the guests he’s expecting,” the person says.
I try to turn my head so I can see who we’re talking to, but Adrienne keeps my head firmly in place. “Yes. My friend is sick,” he explains. “He told me she could lie down a while in his room.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the stranger says. “There’s a bit of a stomach bug going around, isn’t there?”
Adrienne laughs easily, molding into the small talk. “Yes,” he says. “Just last week my sister had the same thing.
If they continue for much longer, I’m going to throw up right here.
“Ah, yes,” the guy says. “Room 336. Shall I phone him so he knows you’re on your way up?”
“That would be great,” Adrienne says, and we’re already walking away.
Chapter 15
Okay
“Soon as you came in, all the beasts went away.”–Deftones
I meet them at the elevator but Sophie is too out of it to notice me.
“Found her behind a restaurant a few blocks down, “Adrienne says. He wants to have Sophie lean on me but her face is already hidden in his shirt and I don’t want to risk anyone seeing her like this. Her face will give everything away.
“Can you carry her?” I ask.
“She won’t let me.”
I motion with my head for him to follow me.
It’s only a short distance from the elevator to my room but we have to walk slowly. Sophie can barely move. I want to hold her, help her. But I don’t know how anymore. Everything is so different now.
I let Adrienne step in front of me so I can shut the door behind us. He doesn’t say anything and he barely thinks when he tries to lie her down on the couch.
“No,” Sophie says.
“Let her sit,” I suggest. I can’t stop myself from moving forward.
Adrienne helps her back up and though she’s unsteady, she holds a sitting position.
He slowly backs up so I can sit next to her but I make sure I’m not too close.
“Do you need me to stay?” he asks.
Sophie is staring out the window. It’s closed. The shades are drawn. I wave a hand in front of her face and she doesn’t respond. “How long has she been like this?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Adrienne says. “I saw her walking around aimlessly and then…” Then she pounced on a stray dog and nearly drained it.
That can’t be right. I wave my hand in front of her again and this time she blinks.
Something isn’t right, that’s for sure, he tells me.
“You don’t have to stay,” I tell say. “I’ll be alright.”
He looks unsure. His thoughts are even worse. What if she lashes out and hurts him? What if she can’t drink any kind of blood, what then? That’ll kill him.
“Adrienne,” I say loud enough to draw his attention but not loud enough to bring Sophie back from wherever she is. “I said I’ll be fine. Go.”
He nods once before turning to the door and shutting it behind him.
I brush some hair away from Sophie’s shoulder. Goose bumps rise on her skin. I take in her appearance for the first time. One of the buttons of her coat has come undone and under
neath, I can see her shirt is stained red and brown. Her neck, lips, and face have the same stains as well.
Though I don’t want to, I stand to get a washcloth from the bathroom and return to Sophie, still unmoving on the couch. I know she can hear me, so I speak gently.
“I’m just going to clean you up a little bit, okay?”
She doesn’t say anything but her eyes move the slightest bit in my direction. It’s an improvement.
I slowly unbutton her coat the rest of the way. It falls from her shoulders easily and it doesn’t take much to move her so I can place it over the back of the couch. I can tell by where the stain on her shirt is located and how old it looks that her collar bone was bleeding earlier. That must have been how the blood escaped this time.
I begin at her throat, wiping away dirt, sand, and blood.
“There,” I say, and I’m not entirely certain I say it for her or my benefit. “Isn’t that better?”
She starts crying. It’s silent, the tears slowly trickling down her cheeks.
“It’s alright,” I say, knowing full well that everything isn’t. That if she could speak right now, she’d tell me just as much. “Okay,” I admit. “It’s messed up right now.” I wipe a few tears from under her eyes, but only more come. “But we can fix this,” I say, knowing full well that maybe we can’t.
“Did I kill it?” she finally whispers.
She takes in a long, trembling breath and squeezes her eyes shut. She lets a few more tears fall before turning her head toward me. When she blinks, her eyes, which are usually bright green, have lightened to almost blue.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
She starts rocking back and forth then, breathing heavily and placing her head between her knees.
“Do you feel sick, Sophie?”
She nods. And before I can help her, the blood is coming back up on the area rug in front of the couch.
This makes her cry more. She’s hysterical, gasping for air that her lungs still need. Her heart is pounding with blood her body cannot let go of. I place a palm on her back, trying to comfort her when there is no way I possibly can.
“Shh,” is the only safe thing that can come out of my mouth. I can’t tell her it’s okay. I can’t tell her to calm down. I can’t make this any better and it kills me.
